River Road (2 page)

I looked around me as if I could find the answer to my question in my current surroundings. I'd come farther than I'd meant to and the woods were turning dark—
lovely, dark and deep,
as Frost was no doubt quoted in half the Intro Lit essays lying on the backseat of my car.

Maybe that's why I was here tonight. I'd been led here by that deer to this place to watch these woods fill up with snow—yes, Dottie had
been right, it
was
snowing—on the darkest night of the year. It was the solstice, I remembered with a chill that had only a little to do with the dropping temperature. Dottie had mentioned it at the party. John Abbot, who taught the gothic novel and twentieth-century horror fiction, had made a
woo-woo
noise and reminded us all that the Victorian tradition of reading ghost stories on Christmas Eve came from the belief that the solstice was when the dead were supposed to walk. Joan Denning, an adjunct who taught ghost stories to her ESL students, said that one of her students had just handed in a paper on our own local ghost, Charlotte Blackwell, who always appeared on the winter solstice seeking a blood sacrifice for her daughter who had drowned in the Hudson. Dottie, who hated ghost stories, had covered her ears and Cressida had given Joan a nudge and a meaningful look at me to shut her up and Joan had blushed scarlet. I shivered now, but not with cold or fear. I'd already made my sacrifices. What more could this place take from me? If the dead were walking in this snowy wood I'd wait for them here. I sank down onto the ground, leaned against the tree, the bark rough against my back, and looked up at the snow sifting through pine needles, a half-moon caught in tangled branches, so bright I closed my eyes against it . . .

 . . . and drifted off for a few moments. Long enough to have the dream. Someone shouting
Come back!

Me. I was the one shouting
Come back!
to Emmy as she ran down the hill, the lights of her sneakers flashing red through the grass, her childish laughter cut short by a screech of tires . . . a shrill, heartbreaking cry.

I startled awake, my face wet as it always was when I awoke from the nightmare. The nightmare of Emmy run over on River Road. The worst ones were when I saw her running from the house and I looked up from my desk in time to call her back—

Come back!

—and save her.

But I hadn't saved her in this dream. I'd heard the screech of tires and her startled, surprised cry just as I had on that day. I wiped my face. My tears were ice water. My lap was full of snow. It must have been in the teens. The alcohol in my blood—not that I'd had
that much
to drink—had probably lowered my core temperature. How long had I been asleep? If I stayed here much longer I would freeze to death.

It was supposed to be a gentle way to die. You felt warm at the end, like in that story by Jack London. . . .

I shook myself and looked around at the woods. What a pathetic way to go—half drunk (maybe I really had had a little too much to drink), freezing to death . . .
because I didn't get tenure?
That's what people would say. That I was so upset at not getting tenure that I drove off the road, stumbled into the woods, and froze to death.

Well, screw that. So I hadn't gotten tenure. After all that had happened to me—

Emmy running down the hill, sneaker lights flashing, a voice crying
Come back!

—I wasn't going to let a tenure decision be the thing to undo me. I could ask to stay on while I appealed the decision. I was a good teacher. I had great evaluations. And if I didn't get the decision appealed I could apply to other colleges. I still had a chance—maybe that's why I had dreamed about Emmy. The time to save her was gone but there was still time enough to save myself. To get myself back on my feet.

So that's what I did. I got to my feet, shook the snow off my coat, and walked out of the dark woods and back to the road.

*  *  *

It was snowing so hard I might not have found my way back without my headlights shining dimly through the snow. My shoes were soaked and my feet numb by the time I scrambled back over the stone wall. I paused for a moment there to clear the snow from the stone and found the painted cross. Someone had painted it after Emmy died. For a while
people had left flowers and candles here but I never had. I didn't want Emmy to be remembered as the little girl who had died at the side of a road in a ditch.

Eventually they had stopped leaving flowers.

I was careful to step over the snow-covered ditch getting into my car, but when I pulled out the left tire got stuck and I had a bad moment thinking I'd have to call Van's and explain to Troy Van Donk Sr. what I was doing out on the river road in a snowstorm, soaking wet, breath smelling of wine, but then with a lurch and a sickening grinding against my poor old car's underbelly I cleared the snow-filled ditch and fishtailed out onto the road.

The snow was coming down heavy now and there was no sign that the plows had been out. I crept down River Road with my high beams on and my hazard lights blinking, white-knuckling the steering wheel and leaning forward to peer through my cracked windshield—
crap, what was that going to cost?
—into dizzying snow eddies. I barely got up Orchard Drive. I knew I'd never make it up my impractically steep driveway. A little farther up the road was a turnaround that the trucks from the old orchard used to use and where Acheron students parked to make out or hike into the woods to explore the old abandoned buildings on the Blackwell estate. No one was there tonight. I pulled in far enough so my car wouldn't get hit by a plow and hiked up my driveway to my house, my feet so numb I couldn't feel them by the time I got to my front door.

Oolong, my ancient Siamese, screamed indignantly and threw her bony body at my feet as soon as I walked in. I apologized profusely as I dumped a can of Fancy Feast into her bowl. I got the bourbon out of the cabinet but then I remembered my resolution in the woods. Maybe I
had
been drinking too much. Not that that had anything to do with hitting the deer—no one could have helped that—but yelling at Ross hadn't been the smartest move.

I made myself a cup of tea instead and added milk and sugar—for
shock, as people were always saying in British novels. I'd certainly had my share of shocks today. I sat down on the living room couch to collect myself a little before tackling the rotting farmhouse stairs up to my bedroom. It really had been an awful day.

Is it true?
I'd demanded of Ross when I'd burst into the kitchen (startling Leia, who had been pouring wine, so that she spilled it on Ross's wrist and then scurried out).
I'm sorry, Nan.
He'd turned away to unbutton his shirt cuff and run cold water over the wine stain so he wouldn't have to look me in the eye.
I didn't want you to find out like this. Cressida shouldn't have said anything.

But Cressida had told me because she was my friend—my best friend in the department. Since her office was right across the hall from mine we couldn't help but hear each other's student conferences.
Can you believe they still don't know what a dangling modifier is?
I'd moan after a student left.
Don't believe that story about the dead grandmother
, she'd say after a student had wept for ten minutes in my office,
she told me that last year when she was in my Women's Lit class.
So when I'd asked Cressida what had happened in the committee she had only hesitated a moment before breaking down and telling me.

I'm so sorry, Nan, I tried everything I could but the committee went against you. If only you'd listened to me—

She was right. A year ago, when Cressida was up for tenure, she told me that it had made a big difference that she'd just gotten a contract for a new book. I really needed to at least have something under way. She even offered to make an introduction to her editor, but I hadn't taken her up on her generous offer and now I'd repaid her with getting her in trouble with Ross. I'd have to tell him it hadn't been her fault that she'd told me. If I hadn't completely blown things with Ross. Snatches of things I'd said to him in the kitchen were coming back to me. I'd accused him of sabotaging my chances because I'd broken off with him six and a half years ago. Shit. How many people had heard that? How many people were gossiping about me right now?
Poor Nan, did you
hear she threw a fit at the Christmas party because she didn't get tenure? Did you know she had an affair with Ross Ballantine? It must have been right after her daughter . . .

I reached for my tea and upset a stack of papers that slid down onto the floor like a sheet of snow coming off a steep-pitched roof. My living room was a mess. I was a mediocre housekeeper at best and got worse as the semester went on. Half-full teacups tottered on stacks of books. A fine layer of dust and cat hair floated in the air. I'd clean up tomorrow while grading papers. And then I'd write a letter to the tenure committee. I would demand to know the basis for being denied. I had good student evaluations and had published an award-winning novel . . .

But nothing for over six years. Nothing since Emmy
.

 . . . but I had an idea for something now. Something about hitting that deer. I'd start on it tomorrow. After a good night's sleep. I stretched out on the couch and closed my eyes. I'd rest up a little before climbing the stairs—
I'd call someone in the morning to fix them
—and fell asleep.

In my dream I was sitting at my desk watching Emmy run down the snow-covered hill toward the road. I knew it was all right because the day Emmy had died had been in spring and the apple trees had been in bloom. She was picking daffodils. The best ones grew down on the edge of the road on the other side of the stone wall. She knew she wasn't allowed to climb over the wall. I'd overheard Evan whisper to her that they would pick flowers for me for Mother's Day when he got home from work. She must have gotten tired of waiting. When I found her she was clutching a handful of daffodils. The smell of daffodils and apple blossoms still makes me sick. But in the dream it was all right because it was winter so this wasn't the day.
I had time.
I lowered my head to my laptop. I was writing my second novel, the one that I would never finish . . .

Come back!

A screech of tires . . . a scream . . . and then . . .
thump.

I startled awake, the remembered impact of the deer hitting my car
reverberating in my chest. It was morning, the living room full of that morning-after-the-first-snow kind of light that for a moment made me feel hopeful—like a child waking up to a world transformed. A new beginning. A clean slate. That's what I had promised myself in the woods. I was going to appeal the tenure decision, clean my house, cut back on my drinking. . . .

Something thumped against the front door. For a moment I had the horrible thought that it was the deer throwing itself at my door in vengeance for hitting it and leaving it for dead in the woods. But then I heard the noise again, and the creak of the loose floorboard on the front porch, and realized it was someone knocking at the door.

“Coming,” I shouted, getting groggily to my feet. It was probably Dottie, stopping by on her way to work, come to see if I was all right. Dear Dottie, I should take her out to lunch over break. Or it was Cressida, who could have seen my car parked in the turnaround on her way in to work and wondered if I was okay. Or Ross, come to say it had all been a terrible mistake. He'd already talked to the tenure committee and they'd reversed their decision—

It wasn't Dottie, Cressida, or Ross. It was a police officer, his uniformed bulk looking too big for my doorway, breathing cold into the room. His bland, broad face and dark, thickly lashed eyes looked vaguely familiar. I thought for a second maybe I'd had him as a student but I realized he was too old.

“Hi,” I said, pulling my cardigan over my blouse to cover up the fact I wasn't wearing a bra. “Can I help you, Officer?”

“Nancy Lewis?”

“I'm Nan Lewis.”

“Is that your car parked on the side of the road? The one with the broken headlight?”

Crap
. “Yes, is it in the way, Officer”—I peered at his name badge—“Sergeant McAffrey? I couldn't get it up the driveway in the snow last night so I pulled into the turnaround so it would be out of the way of
the snowplows. I was going to take it to Van's when I got dressed.” I saw his eyes roving over the disarray of my living room, lingering on the bourbon bottle on the kitchen counter, disapproval in his eyes. Well, fuck that. Who was he to judge me?

“Look, I had a crappy night last night. I hit a deer on my way home from the English faculty party. So if you're going to ticket me for a broken headlight . . .”

He turned his cold, disapproving eyes on me. “I'm not here about a broken headlight, Ms. Lewis. I'm here about a hit and run—a student at the college named Leia Dawson. She was found dead on the river road this morning.”

“N
o,” I said, gripping the edge of the door to steady myself, “you must be mistaken. Dottie drove Leia home last night.”

“Dottie?”

“Dorothy Cooper, the English Department secr—administrative assistant. Call her. She'll straighten this out.” Dottie could straighten anything out, I started to tell him, but then my stomach flipped over and I realized I was about to be sick.

“Excuse me,” I managed. I fled to the downstairs half-bath off the kitchen and emptied my stomach of the red wine and three mini quiches I'd had last night. I rinsed out my mouth and looked at myself in the mirror. Mascara under my eyes, hair a rat's nest.
Do rats have nests?
Emmy had once asked me when I used the expression. I finger-combed it back into a sloppy bun and scrubbed the mascara off with soap and cold water. It couldn't be Leia dead, I told myself, but it must be someone.