House Under Snow (23 page)

I reached for his hand and pulled him up. He reached over and kissed my mother’s cheek. “Thanks for the dinner,” he said. A smile half budded on my mother’s face. And then as we turned to leave, her eyes were flooded with that familiar look of abandonment.

Once we were in Austin’s car, he turned to me. “Anna, I like your mother,” he said. “She’s different.”

He held me in his eyes and between a catch of breath I could read his thoughts in the expression on his face, in the long curve of his cheekbone. And looking at him, I felt a glimmer of what I’d lost, because the loss of his mother seemed so powerful just then. Both of us had lost a parent—in a way that’s what bound us, what we had in common. He pulled me next to him, so close I hit my hip on the gearshift between the two bucket seats of his car, turned my face to his, and with the other hand he rubbed the inner part of my thigh. I thought we were good for each other. I had convinced myself that we were so much alike that we never had to talk about it, that we could see the lost parts of ourselves in each other.

We made it
to the track for the last race. In another week the track would close down for the season. After the photo finish we walked past the scattered trash, beyond the bleachers, where the roar of the crowds siphoned off, and then we were in the tack room, with its empty sound of trapped air. I was sure Austin would bring up my pregnancy, and we would talk about what we were going to do. Finally I blurted it out.

“What are we going to do?”

“Anna. I’m bad news. You should get up right now and walk away and never see me again. I’m warning you.”

I hugged him. It was always an effort to pull myself out of his long, cool embrace and into the shock of morning, and I remembered, then, that in the morning he’d be driving me back to my mother’s house. I buried my face in his shirt and inhaled his smell. I didn’t want to think about the baby anymore.

Austin said he had to go back to the barn, that one of the horses needed to be rubbed down, and like a fool I sat on the rusted cot and waited until he returned.

During lunch at
school on Monday, I called the free clinic from the phone booth and scheduled the procedure for the following Saturday. I was relieved. I didn’t want to have to spend another day sitting in class knowing I was pregnant. I tried not to think about the stories I’d heard. That if something went wrong, you might not be able to have another baby. The rumor was that Nancy Newby had had an abortion. I had run into her at the grocery store, and scanned her body and face for any residue of damage. She was tan from having spent the summer on a dude ranch in Arizona, and her personality was as bubbly and vacant as ever. I rationalized that if she had come through it, seemingly unscarred, so could I.

It wasn’t until the Friday night before the procedure that I told Austin what I had decided. By not telling him, I thought I was getting back at him—it bothered me that he didn’t press me, that he was leaving it up to me to decide. I was always putting him under these kinds of tests to see whether he loved me.

On the floor of the tack room were balled-up, dirty T-shirts and heaps of unwashed clothes. Socks and old towels hung over his only chair. He raised his head in the casual way boys do, and nodded when I told him that the next morning he needed to take me to the clinic. He was relieved. Outside we could hear the sluggish clip-clop of horse hooves. It was dark, save for a sliver of light from underneath the door. Austin held me, and for a brief second I felt the quiet, steady
sound of my heart. It was going to be okay. I was going to get past this.

Someone pounded on
the door. Austin jumped. I was still inside the cool heat his body gave off. It was Beep. The sharp, overpowering light from the overhead lights in the barn blinded my eyes when Austin opened the door. I heard them talking in heated whispers outside the metal door. I heard Beep say something about his big horse, a euphemism I’d picked up that meant it was the horse the owner had the most riding on, the horse that was winning.

Austin came back in and paced the tiny floor of the room. He was pumped up, ready to explode. He cracked his knuckles on each hand. He’d gotten himself a tattoo a few days before, a snake that coiled around the muscle of his upper arm, and as he walked, I stared at the intricate, flashing colors.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Are you in trouble? What did Beep want?” I pulled the sheet up over my chest.

“You have enough to worry about,” Austin said. The muscle in his jaw popped. He took a coin from the top of the TV, where he kept his change, and threw it in the air. Caught it. Threw it up again. He was agitated. “Come on. Get dressed. I have to take you home.”

I was sitting up on the cot, my back against the cement wall.

“I don’t want to be alone tonight.” I wanted to sleep next to Austin so I wouldn’t have to think about the next morning. I had it in my head that we would hold each other all night as if we were performing some kind of sad ritual for our baby.

I don’t remember what I had told my mother about where
I was that night. By then I wasn’t making excuses anymore for when I didn’t sleep at home. My mother must have known Austin and I were sleeping together. Looking back, I probably would have gone ahead and slept with Austin anyway, even if she had attempted to stop me. I had no limits, and didn’t think twice about being too young to lose myself in a boy.

At times, when I’ve completely forgotten about Austin, when I feel squarely planted inside my own life, it catches me unaware, the reality that, if things had gone a different way, my child would be three, four, five. . . .

I had no idea what was going on with Austin that night. Maybe Beep was trying to con Austin out of some money, or maybe he wanted Austin to come out and party with him. Or maybe Austin was dealing drugs. And then I remembered what I had heard Beep say, and thought maybe he was involved in some seedy scam at the track.

“You can’t take me home,” I said again. “Who’s going to take me tomorrow?”

“It’s your problem,” Austin said. “Don’t give me a hard time, Anna.” He threw my sweater and my jeans in my lap. “Let’s go,” he said. “I mean it, Anna. Let’s boogie.”

My back felt tense. The room spun, like that feeling of drinking too much, only I was dead sober. I thought I was going to throw up.

Then, when I was in his car and we had started toward the gate, he pulled over, stopped the car, and turned off the ignition. Then he went into Howard White’s office and came back with the next day’s marked-up program. I sat facing the window to hide my emotions.

On the ride through the dark, nearly trafficless streets, we were silent. We followed a trail of endless back roads. Austin
barely stopped for stop signs. He ran a light. In the past, when Austin drove recklessly, I’d panic and tell him to slow down. This time I was quiet.

Austin reached for a warm Budweiser from underneath his seat, popped open the can, and guzzled it down. When he pulled up the driveway of our house, he said, “Go on, now. Get out. Don’t give me a hard time.”

I mustered all the strength I had into a look that said he was crazy. I followed with my eyes the telephone wires running from one house to another and felt trapped, as if they were barbed wires surrounding a prison and not simply lines we depended on to make our town function.

“This is it?” I said. “You’re just going to leave me? You’re not going to take me in the morning?”

“Anna, you don’t know a thing about what’s going on.”

“Tell me. I want to know.”

“I don’t have time for this, Anna.” He barely looked at me. 1 tried to reach for his hand. He revved the engine. He practically pushed me out the door, he was that anxious to get rid of me.

After I’d climbed out, heard his car race down the street into the half light of the horizon, I stood motionless on the front steps, sure he would come back for me, until the sound of his tires faded away.

“How dare you humiliate me?” Lilly asked Max. They had just come home from a party. I thought she meant when Max wasn’t around when she miscarried. Or maybe it was the affair. She tipped against the wall and began to sob. We had experienced this scenario so many times, doors slamming and windows
rattling, it was nearly casual. After my mother’s miscarriage, their relationship plummeted further. It was months before they finally split up.

“Girls, your mother isn’t feeling well. Go upstairs to bed. You’ll see her in the morning.”

I didn’t know Max well, not the way you know a friend you have shared life stories with, seen through tragedy and joy. He came in and out of our lives so quickly. I’m not sure exactly what happened the day Lilly threw him out. All I knew was that my mother was not the kind of woman who could live with a man’s betrayal. I do believe Max loved us, in love’s simplest form. Because he saw how much we needed him, and because he felt sorry for my mother, he let his love for her redeem him, give him a purpose for a short time. Max and Lilly were an ill-fated pair. And yet I understand it, the way we are drawn to what threatens us.

Doors slammed. They had stormed up to their bedroom. Something, maybe a vase or Lilly’s perfume bottles, crashed to the floor.

All night through our bedroom walls, my sisters and I could hear Max and our mother fighting.

“How could you betray me when I was carrying our child?” Lilly shouted. In the last year their fights always circled back to this one issue.

“Lilly, she meant nothing to me.” Max pleaded with her.

“How could you?” Lilly yelled again.

“Why don’t they stop?” Louise asked. She snuggled closer to me in my bed.

“Try not to listen.”

I can’t.

“Then put your pillow over your head.”

In the next room I heard my mother turn and sigh, and then the stops and starts her breath made as she tried to hold back sobs.

The next morning, a cold November day, Lilly came down the stairs with her hair flyaway and her face swollen. A small brown bird was perched on the windowsill, leaning its feathers against the glass for warmth.

A black-and-blue bruise surrounded my mother’s eyes and stretched to the bridge of her nose. My sisters and I were eating Froot Loops at the breakfast table. Our kitten had filled out to the elegant shape of a cat, and was perched on the kitchen counter. Lilly took a dishrag and shooed him off.

“Mom, what happened?” Louise cried.

“I had too much to drink last night, sweetheart. I bumped into a door.”

I looked suspiciously at my sisters.

Max pushed open the front door with a bag of fresh bagels in his hands. Their smell of steam and flour filled the stale house.

“How are my princesses?” he bellowed.

Lilly took one long look at him. Her body contracted. “This is it, Max. I don’t want you in this house ever again. Go upstairs and pack your bags and get out of here, or I’m calling the police.”

I was proud of my mother. She was standing up for herself. I could see clearly now that things were not going to return to normal, that my mother had been hurt too deeply, and worse, that Max seemed to have lost all respect for her. I got up from my chair and stood beside my mother.

Max’s face went pale. He stepped back and breathed deeply.

“What the hell are you talking about, Lil?”

“I mean it, Max. This is it.”

“Lil, we had too much to drink.”

“I don’t love you anymore.”

“That’s rubbish.”

“I don’t want you in my bed. Don’t you understand? It’s over. Now get out of my house.” Lilly’s body quivered; she rested her hand against the kitchen counter to steady herself. “I don’t love you,” she said again, as if to convince herself.

“You’re damn right, I’ll get out of here,” Max said. “Take one last look.” He pointed to his face. “Because you’ll never see it again.”

Max marched up the stairs. He threw open drawers. He swore loudly. Something crashed to the floor. It was as though a wild animal had been set loose in the house. Lilly continued to make breakfast, but her hands shook.

“Drink your juice,” Lilly said to Louise, who looked like she was going to burst into tears. “Did you hear me?”

Max came down and set his suitcases in the hallway. They were the same suitcases he’d come with the day he walked inside our house for the first time.

“Please, Lil, don’t do this,” he said. His shoulders crumbled and he wept. No one moved an inch to comfort him. I went back to the breakfast table. My sisters and I sat stiffly in our chairs. Our allegiance was with our mother. I tried to focus on the crook in the tree I could see in the backyard from the breakfast room window. I imagined curling inside its bark like a caterpillar.

Max grabbed Lilly by the arms and pleaded with her. “I’ll change, I promise,” he said It looked like it took all Lilly’s strength not to comb her fingers through his boyish hair.

Max took the suitcases from the front hallway. He shut the heavy door first gently, but when the lock didn’t catch, he opened it again and slammed it so hard the panes of the
windows shook. This time, Lilly didn’t run after him, begging him to come back home. She buttered a piece of cold toast with fierce strokes.

Louise and Ruthie and I sat there, stunned. I don’t think it had occurred to us that Max would actually leave. We just thought we’d go on with the perpetual state of tension Lilly and Max’s relationship sent through the house.

“Don’t look at me that way,” Lilly said curtly. “I had to do it. You must never let anyone humiliate you. If I didn’t do this, I would never be able to look at myself again.”

Lilly leaned over in her chair and began to cry. A small part of me was sure Max would come back the next morning, that my mother would soften and forgive him. But I was wrong. Lilly tightly closed the door on that chapter of her life and never looked back. Even though I wanted him to leave, I felt abandoned.

After Austin’s Mustang peeled into the distance, I went into the house and prayed Lilly was asleep. I went directly up to my room and closed my door. Still, I listened for the sound of his car. I knew its cough and purr so well. Louise returned nearly an hour later. Why wasn’t I like her? Why didn’t I have something I was good at, a talent or skill or passion, something to calm me, other than the shape of a boy’s body next to mine?