The Body in the Snowdrift (8 page)

“Yeah, that would be cool,” Scott said.

Andy was already up and pulling on his parka.

“Of course we'd like you to come too, Ophelia,” Faith said. And she meant it. She wanted to get to know the girl better, especially because of the obvious hold she had on Faith's nephews—and her son.

“I don't eat dead animals,” the girl said.

“Well, I hope you don't eat live ones,” said Amy, squealing. She began to laugh so hard at her own joke that Andy had to thump her on the back.

“Good one, Ames. Better than the mouse one,” Ophelia said, revealing a familiarity with her daughter Faith had not known about. Amy had a whole string of typical first-grader jokes. They featured mice, as in: “What do mice wear to play basketball?…Squeakers.” Her riddles were worse, much worse.

“I'm a vegetarian,” Ophelia explained. “You know what that is, right?”

Amy stopped giggling and answered seriously, “Yes. Their church is the brick one. Ours is wood.”

“I think you mean Presbyterian,” Faith said and this time it was the boys who were in hysterics. “A vegetarian is someone who doesn't eat any meat but
does eat fruits and vegetables, and sometimes fish. I'm sure Gracie's has plenty of items on the menu you could eat, Ophelia, and we'd love to have you join us.”

Ophelia shook her head. Whether it was the prospect of watching the others chow down on ground beef or because she plain didn't want to go, Faith decided not to pursue the matter any further, and the girl slipped out the door.

“We just have to leave the note, then stop and pick up Ben. They won't have eaten lunch yet.”

The children in the ski school had cocoa breaks and a hot lunch that fell into the Kraft macaroni and cheese culinary genre. Ben and Amy adored it.

“Get ready, everybody, and we'll leave in a few minutes.”

Faith went upstairs to rinse out their bathing suits, and when she opened the bathroom door, there was a distinct smell of cigarette smoke—at least she hoped it was cigarettes. The window had been left open, so it was hard to tell. She sighed. Any hint of this to her sister-in-law would produce the familial equivalent of the Cuban missile crisis. She resolved instead to keep her eyes open—wide open. Scott and Andy seemed like the last kids who'd smoke, but then all the kids you saw smoking were, too.

Driving down the mountain with a carful of kids, Faith felt a surge of happiness. Yes, the vacation had started out on a sad note, but again she thought how special last night had been. Dick had loved his party.

The cousins were singing “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” much to Ben's delight, and Faith
didn't care. Normally, even one line drove her round the bend.

Both children had described Gracie's to her in minute detail, but Faith was not prepared for the extent of the doggy decor. The small restaurant was on the bottom level of a building in the center of town. A very convincing gas version of a log fire crackled in a large fireplace at one end of the room, and a bar anchored the other. The ceilings were low and the space was filled with booths and tables—all of them filled at the moment with contented-looking diners. Tiny white lights twinkled in artificial pine boughs on the fireplace mantel and along the top of the walls. But it was these walls that drew one's eye. Every square inch was covered with dogs—photographs, prints, paintings, and posters. Fido, Bowser, Spot, Lassie, William Wegman's Man Ray, Lady, Tramp, Rin Tin Tin, Asta—dogs were everywhere. All sizes, shapes, and breeds. Show dogs and mutts. There were dogs playing cards, dogs sleeping, dogs eating, dogs sitting up, and, in Man Ray's case, dogs dressed up. A picture of Gracie, a winsome Airedale rescued from a shelter by the owners some years ago, took best in show.

When they were seated, Faith discovered the menu continued the theme. The burgers weren't named for celebrities like the ones at Bartley's Burger House's in Harvard Square, a Fairchild favorite, but named after breeds. Faith ordered a Chihuahua burger medium rare (burger with guacamole) and the Parkers went for the Boxer (burger with cheddar cheese and bacon). Ben followed suit. After careful consideration, Amy, the adventuresome gourmet—or Gourmutt, as the shop up
stairs selling all sorts of doggy items was called—chose the Blue Tick Hound, asking the waitress for plenty of blue cheese. Faith also ordered a couple of things to stave off hunger until the burgers were ready. The baskets of thin, crunchy onion rings and hand-cut french fries disappeared so fast, she ordered some more. The same with the glasses of milk—it would have been simpler to have asked for a pitcher. She looked at her nephews and could see Ben in a few years. Insatiable. And funny. They were off the leash. The jokes were flowing fast and furious. She vowed that no matter what, she would let Ben—and later Amy—be as independent as possible when they got to this age. Guidance, yes; total control, no.

As if on cue, Ben piped up: “I don't think it's fair for Aunt Betsey to make Andy and Scott do things they don't want to do, Mom. I mean, I don't always want to take a bath or go to bed, but that's different. This is big stuff, like what they want to do with their
lives.
” Ben was impassioned and his voice, still in the range of an English choirboy's soprano, hit a high note.

The hamburgers arrived, and her nephews dug in immediately, but Ben wasn't going to let the matter go.

“Really, Mom, can't you talk to her? Or can't Dad? She's
his
sister!”

“Ben, I don't think the Parkers want any interference in their family life; you wouldn't want someone interfering in ours.”

“Oh yes I would,” Ben said firmly. “If my mother was acting like a tsar.”

Faith remembered the fourth grade had studied Europe in the fall, and one of Ben's countries had been
Russia. “Tsarina,” she said, correcting him automatically; then, hoping to divert her tenacious son, asked, “How are the burgers?”

“Woof!” Amy said, her mouth full.

“Great,” Scott and Andy said simultaneously, then immediately fell mute. The high spirits of moments before had vanished.

Ben had opened Pandora's box, and Faith realized she would have to deal with it.

“You do know that if you ever want to talk about anything that's going on at home or in any part of your lives that Tom or I will be happy to listen—and happy not to repeat anything you told us?” She was afraid she'd been a little too firm in response to Ben, and it was possible that one or both of the boys needed advice. She couldn't help but think of the smoke she had smelled in the condo bathroom.

The two brothers looked at each other. Scott had finished his burger. Andy quickly took a big bite of his. Clearly, he was happy to let big brother handle this one.

“What Ben's been picking up on is that we don't want to do what my mother has planned for us this summer, but there's no use talking to her. When she thinks you should do something, you do it.”

“But I thought Andy liked the music camp. Didn't he go there last summer? And this Hopkins program is supposed to be excellent, Scott. You'll meet kids from all over the country,” Faith said.

Andy swallowed. His newly protruding Adam's apple bulged like a boa that had devoured a mouse. “I did go and I do like it. I like it a lot, but I don't want to play the flute. I hate the flute. Last summer, I started
playing the saxophone at camp, and they said I was really good, but she wouldn't listen—not even to the camp director. No, she picked the flute out for me when I was six, and the flute it will be until I'm at Lincoln Center, another James Galway or Jean-Pierre Rampal.”

“How about talking to your father? Have you tried that?”

“Once or twice about a million years ago,” Scott said bitterly. “He is totally whipped.” He blushed. “Sorry, Aunt Faith. I just mean that he won't get involved. For me it's that I'm tired of doing schoolwork all the time, and the Hopkins thing is heavy-duty. Yeah, I'd meet new kids, but what time would I have to be with them? I wanted to have one summer for myself. I'm going to be in school or working at some job my whole life, or until I'm like sixty something, which is a long time to wait. I wanted to stay home and be with my friends.”

“Especially
one
friend,” said Ben, chortling.

Scott gave him a playful poke in the ribs. “I wouldn't be doing nothing. That is like the worst sin in my house, and anyway, it would be boring. So I asked at the library, and they said I could work there. Plus, I can work for the town recreation department, helping out at one of the day camps. But when I told her all this, she went nuts, kept talking about shutting doors, how it would look on my college applications—as if I care—and ‘deferred gratification,' whatever that is. Anyway, hello Hopkins.”

Faith stifled a groan. She wasn't very good at deferred gratification herself, never had been.

“I still think you have to give your father a try. Maybe he doesn't realize how strongly you feel.” It was all she had to offer, and she knew it was pretty pathetic.

“Dad's not around much. He works late, and sometimes he even goes in on Saturdays when a patient can't schedule a weekday appointment. If he doesn't know how we feel, it's because he doesn't want to know.”

Faith sought to console them with Doggie Bones for dessert—blond chocolate-chip and pecan brownie “bones” topped with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped cream—and the conversation turned to snow-boarding. Ben had moved up a group and was ready to head out with his cousins. They promised to take him to the half pipe as soon as his instructor gave them the okay.

“And Ophelia? Do you think she'd come with me? Mom, she is awesome. The best of anybody.”

“It's true, Aunt Faith,” Andy said. “She should be competing, and she would be if her family wasn't so fu—I mean, kind of complicated. Nobody can do a Missy Flip like she can.”

“That's where you twist and flip at the same time,” Ben explained kindly.

Amy was kneeling on the seat, communing with a large poster of Dalmatian puppies, so Faith felt the adult turn the conversation was taking was all right for the moment. Amy had the kind of mind that retained every word, bringing them forward at inauspicious moments.

“It seemed pretty clear last night that she doesn't
feel she belongs in the Stafford family, but I don't see why. I don't really know them, but I haven't heard anything about her grandparents and parents that hasn't been good.”

Scott, who was rapidly maturing before her eyes, leaned toward her, his arms resting on the table.

“Ophelia was all right with everything until her dad remarried and moved to California. Up until two years ago, she lived with him during the week in the house she grew up in and went to school in Burlington. She came out to Pine Slopes for the weekends and vacations. Now she's stuck here all the time in a school with total morons, and every time she wants to go see her old friends, Fred and Naomi have a fit. They took her car away, which they had no right to do, because her dad gave it to her, not them. Phelie never liked Fred—and face it, he is a total Dudley Do-Right—but she could stand it when she wasn't with him all the time. And he really doesn't like her, Aunt Faith. Yeah, our family has known him forever, and he seemed okay before, but I know he wishes she weren't around.”

“Couldn't she go live with her dad in California?”

“He thinks she should stay in Vermont, her home, with her mother, all sorts of bullshit—sorry again. But that's what it is. The real deal is, his new wife doesn't want her any more than Fred does. And now they have a baby themselves, a boy. They have never once asked Ophelia to come out there. Her dad sends a check every month and that's it.”

“And what about her mom?” Amy was losing interest in the Dalmatians, and Faith wanted to hear the rest of the story fast.

“Naomi is only interested in Fred. It's weird. My mom is too wrapped up in her kids, and Ophelia's isn't enough. Naomi does stuff like take away her car keys—probably because Fred told her to—but she has no idea what is going on with her own kid.”

And that would be what? Faith thought, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

 

After lunch, they walked around the center of Stowe, which took a very short time, and then stopped to browse at the country store, which combined authenticity—it had been there forever—with giftiness, a whole lot of items connected to maple syrup, skiing, and cheese. The food, the unburdening—who knows what?—seemed to bring back the good vibrations vacation feeling. The cousins cavorted along the streets like the puppies on the walls at Gracie's. Finally, Faith realized it was getting late and they'd better get back if the kids were going to have any time to ski. She wished there had been time to see the show of Judith Vivell's extraordinary bird paintings at the Clarke Galleries. They were huge canvases, captivating to all ages. Maybe they'd be able to get back to Stowe later in the week.

There was no one at the condo when they returned. Scott and Andy grabbed their gear, leaving with a hasty thanks to Faith, plus, to her delight, a quick hug from each. She had finished getting Ben and Amy ready, deciding it would be easier to come back for her own stuff after dropping them off. Just then, she saw a note that must have fallen to the floor when they'd come in.

It was written in pencil, and either he'd had the same penmanship teacher as her doctor or he had been in a terrible hurry. It took a moment to decipher the words and even the signature.

Obviously, it wasn't urgent. Otherwise, he would have waited for her at the condo. She was curious, but first she had to take the kids to their classes.

“Okay, helmets, goggles, gloves, neck warmers. Is that everything? Bathroom?”