The Body in the Snowdrift (3 page)

Inside, the two sisters concentrated on the task before them.

“Trust the French to combine practicality with frivolity,” Hope commented, holding up a lacy camisole that was as filmy as milkweed and the same color. “Are you sure this can keep you warm?”

“Absolutely,” Faith assured her. “Almost too warm.” Having Hope along was making the errand, which she'd been dreading, fun. She'd been dreading it because it meant she was really going. She wasn't sure she wanted to go into the whole thing with Hope. Not that she wouldn't be sympathetic, but it felt like a betrayal of Tom to dissect his family. Eminently dissectible though they were.

At Barneys, the next stop, Faith found a great Marc Jacobs cashmere turtleneck, which she would definitely not take to Pine Slopes. But merely contemplat
ing how warm, cozy—and chic—it was made her feel better. A week wasn't
that
long. Hope bought two of the sweaters for Switzerland. Then they went up to the Guggenheim.

“I've never been able to decide whether I always like the shows here because I like the space or whether it's that they mount great shows,” Hope commented.

“I know what you mean,” Faith agreed as they slowly wound their way up Frank Lloyd Wright's ramps to the top of the exhibition. “But these really look marvelous here, especially when you look across at one, or down.” She gestured toward
Welcome to the Water Planet,
a huge canvas filled with exploding images of celestial and aquatic images, dominated by a sensual water lily.

“I'm so glad I came. I almost didn't. Arranging to get away, even packing, seemed like such a big deal.” Faith gave her sister an impulsive hug. “Now that I'm here, I feel as if I've been gone for weeks. The city does that. Something about being anonymous. Nobody I've passed today cares that my daughter's teacher has suggested extra time tying bows on the practice shoe or that my fourth-grade son is a teen wanna-be.”

“And that would be a bad thing because…” It sounded to Hope like what she had wanted at that age—a time-saving device.

“Because he's still a little boy and kids are pressed to grow up too fast.” Reading her sister's expression correctly, Faith added, “It's not like what you did. Yes, you followed the market, but you used your crayons to take notes and make those charts.”

“I loved those crayons. Remember, Aunt Chat gave
me a huge box? Fifty, a hundred? How many were there? And all those names—burnt sienna, goldenrod, spring green, maize. When the company celebrated their hundredth anniversary in 2003, for some bizarre reason they let people vote four colors out and new ones in. Teal blue, my favorite, is apparently wild blue yonder now. So much for preserving our past. I should pick up a box for Terry before carnation pink disappears. I know, I know,” she added. “Finger paints first.”

“With chocolate pudding,” Faith said, noting that her sister didn't spend all her time on financial Web sites. Obviously, the Binney and Smith one was bookmarked.

“Chocolate pudding, what an idea! Ooooh, I get it.” Hope dissolved into laughter and the Sibley girls half-ran, half-walked down the spiraling museum and spilled onto the sidewalk, where they each consumed a Sabrett's hot dog with everything before going their separate ways. Faith was having dinner with their parents, and Hope was going to clock in a few more hours at work.

 

“But, darling, we can easily eat here. I have a nice piece of fish and some salad. I'm sorry your father was called away. Poor Mrs. Hammond. I'm afraid she really is dying this time.”

Mrs. Hammond had teetered on the brink, only to claw her way back so many times in the last few years that it had become a private joke between Hope and Faith. And the deathbed calls always seemed to come just when the Reverend Sibley was about to go out to dinner or the opera, his only indulgence, so far as his
daughters could determine. Mrs. Hammond had second sight—or the Met's schedule close at hand.

“I've already booked a table for us at Vivolo. You know how much you like their veal, and we can get them to pack something up for Dad.”

Jane Sibley's idea of dinner, especially since her daughters had left home, was a nice piece of fish and a salad or a nice piece of chicken and a salad. She regarded her eldest's career with astonishment, finding it as exotic—and difficult—as, say, mapping the genome.

In the end, they left the nice piece of fish for another meal and had nice pieces of veal at Vivolo, essentially her parents' Upper East Side nabe. Faith found herself face-to-face over coffee with another nearest and dearest for the second time that day. It was mother and espresso instead of sister and espresso, but it was the same relaxed feeling. She nibbled a biscotti and realized that she hadn't thought of those other nearests and dearests up in Massachusetts for several hours. Then Jane spoke.

“You know when you marry, you don't simply marry an individual, but a family.”

Hope had been blabbing, obviously.

“Oh Mother, I know that. This is about the Vermont trip, right? Well, I'm going with a smile on my face and a heart full of goodwill toward all Fairchilds. Don't worry.”

“I'm not worried,” her mother said serenely. “I just know how it is.”

“But you adored Gran and Granfa—and what about Chat!” Faith's aunt Chat was her father's youngest sister and the only one who had ever been around much.
His two older sisters were Faith and Hope. It was a long-standing Sibley custom to name the girls in each generation Faith, Hope, and Charity. Faith had a sneaking suspicion that Jane had stopped having children when she did to avoid the possibility of the appellation. Aunt Faith had died of breast cancer before Faith was born, and Aunt Hope lived near Seattle, a childless widow. Chat, who had never married, had been and was a major presence in her nieces' lives. She now lived just outside the city, in New Jersey, after retiring from the very successful ad agency she'd started. Most of her friends assumed the flight into Jersey was a temporary aberration, but it had been several years now, and they were forced to cross the Hudson when they wanted to visit her—an undertaking more daunting to a New Yorker than crossing the Atlantic. Gran and Granfa (Hope had invented the latter name at age two) had lived long enough for both Sibley granddaughters to know and love them. These three very important relatives and a bunch of second cousins once and more removed made up the Sibley side.

Since Jane was an only child, Faith hadn't grown up in the kind of clan Tom had. The Fairchilds numbered Dick, Marian, and their four: Tom, his older sister, Betsey, along with her husband, Dennis, and their sons, Scott and Andy, and Tom's younger brothers, Robert and Craig, plus Craig's new wife, Glenda. Marian and Dick came from large families, and the aunts, uncles, and cousins were as numerous as Winnie-the-Pooh's friend Rabbit's relations. Tom had been surprised at Faith's paucity of kin. Although he denied it vigorously, Faith knew he associated it with the city. When
they'd first met and engaged in those heady conversations typical of couples falling madly in love—the desire to know everything about one's beloved: favorite color, favorite song—Tom kept coming up with queries about her childhood. “But where did you play?” he would ask. He'd regaled her with tales of lazy summer days spent building rafts on the North River and winters filled with sledding, skating, and ice fishing. She'd countered with Central Park and the rink at Rockefeller Center, followed by hot chocolate at Rumpelmayer's, but he had remained skeptical.

“Of course I'm very close to Chat,” Jane Sibley said. “I've been lucky to have three wonderful sisters-in-law—and Gran and Granfa were very special to me. But I wasn't used to
en famille
gatherings so en masse. Forty assorted Sibleys at my first family Thanksgiving almost caused me to cancel our wedding plans and elope. There were…well, so
many
of them and they were so bumptious—you know what I mean.”

Faith did. Jane was not a hugger. Faith had married into a family of huggers and had been converted, but she understood her mother's early dismay. For all her high-powered wheeling and dealing in the business world, the confidence that exuded from every pore as she strode into a boardroom, Jane Sibley was actually quite shy.

Faith tried to explain her reluctance about the birthday bash. She'd successfully avoided the topic with Hope. “It's a little of that—the ‘so many of them' part—but it's more the kinds of interactions that take place when they're all together. It's as if they are all still living at home and relating to one another the way
they did when they were children. Somewhere along the line, roles were assigned, learned—and no changes in the script, please. Not Tom, of course.” Or not so much, she said silently to herself. “But the others—and we'll be together for a whole week!”

Jane gave her daughter's hand a gentle pat—a gesture tantamount to a Gallic kiss, Eskimo nose rub, and Bavarian bear hug rolled into one. “You'll survive, darling.”

That night in bed—the bed she'd slept in all her life postcrib and prenuptials—Jane's words reverberated in the familiar room that still contained a bookcase filled with childhood favorites and the Brunschwig & Fils wallpaper she'd picked at thirteen and still loved. It had been a lovely day, a great escape. Her eyes fluttered closed, then opened wide as she recalled her mother's words. She'd survive, but would they?

 

Pete Reynolds, the head of maintenance at the Pine Slopes ski resort, stood with his thumbs looped on his belt, surveying the damage with the resort's owners, Fred and Naomi Stafford. Naomi's face was flushed, and there were angry tears in her eyes; Fred was biting his lower lip. Pete was just looking.

“Animals! And the chaperones swore that this was a good group!” Naomi cried.

A high school ski club from the New York State side of Lake Champlain had rented a block of rooms over the weekend. Judging from the number of empty kegs, the kids had packed more than their ski equipment. Towels had been stuffed into toilets. There was vomit on the rugs, the drapes had been torn, and two trashed
microwaves sat there, aluminum containers melted onto the interior walls. And this didn't include the sheer mess—food ground into the floor, broken plates, trash everywhere, and dirt that had been tracked in from outside, since apparently no one had thought to remove boots at the door.

“Well, we've got a damage deposit, but it won't go far,” Fred said. “I'll call the school and talk to the principal, but…”

“But it's a helluva long way from here and they're not going to do anything about it. Add 'em to the list and I'll get Candy up here,” Pete said. Candy Laverdiere was the head of housekeeping. “When are these rooms booked for next?”

“Tonight,” Fred said glumly. The list of schools not welcome at the resort was growing. The room rentals, lift tickets, and often the equipment rentals, plus the revenue the kids generated at the cafeteria and the Sports Center, were an important part of the resort's income, but in the past few years, the cost in damages was seriously cutting into their profits. He'd talk to Boyd and see if they couldn't draw up some kind of ironclad contract that would make the school groups responsible for any and all costs incurred. He'd thought of it before. The big resorts all had them, but he had wanted the business. For the snowboarders, they'd added a terrain park with a half pipe, jumps, and a rail slide, which had been a blessing and a curse. It had brought the families with teenagers back, but it had also attracted school groups and clubs.

“I'll get Ophelia and we can help,” Naomi offered.

Well out of Naomi's sight, Pete raised an eyebrow at
Fred. The day Naomi's sixteen-year-old daughter, Joanie, who now insisted on being called “Ophelia,” pitched in to help would be one for the record books.

“It would have to be one of the new units, of course,” Fred said. Last year, they'd renovated the existing hotel units and added some new ones. “I'll go over and tell Mom and Dad; then I'll get back here.”

It was good to get away from the stench of way too much beer and cigarette smoke, which was going to be a problem, too. These were smoke-free rooms. Fred took a deep breath when he got outside and instantly felt better.

His parents had started the resort in 1969 and he'd grown up here, attending the small local school down at the bottom of the mountain and then driving to Burlington for high school and college. He'd never wanted to do anything but work at the resort. It was his mother, Mary, who'd insisted he go to UVM in order to have something to fall back on. He'd been a business major. But, he realized as he walked quickly past the main lodge, with the economy the way it was, degree or no degree, if Pine Slopes failed, the only thing he'd be falling back on was his own keister.

Fred had hoped that once he took over for his parents, they would be able to settle back and enjoy a stress-free retirement. Maybe travel a little. The first season had been fantastic. Plenty of snow and plenty of people. No problem finding help, either. But in the last five years, things had been a little iffy. Thank God for Boyd. Without the capital he'd pumped in, Pine Slopes would have joined the long list of defunct family resorts. It was amazing to think that in 1966 there had
been eighty-one ski areas in Vermont, more than any other state. The small rope tow and T-bar areas began to disappear rapidly in the seventies. Now conglomerates owned the resorts, and there were only seventeen commercial areas left.

He hated to be the bearer of bad tidings, but his father and mother probably already knew by now about the rooms being trashed. The grapevine was an especially efficient one at Pine Slopes.

He'd intended to inspect the rooms before the group left at six o'clock that morning, but the chaperones had spirited the kids away before then, knowing full well what had happened. He was surprised Simon Tanner, Pine Slopes' manager, hadn't heard the buses—or what must have been at least some commotion the night before. During the season, he moved from his cabin up in the backcountry into a unit in the hotel and kept a close eye on things. Chaperones! They'd probably been partying right along with the kids. He shook his head. It was a beautiful clear day. A good crowd for a Monday, and it was supposed to snow some more that night. They were so high—2,100-foot base elevation—that any precipitation at this time of year would be snow. They'd had to use their snowmaking equipment occasionally, but for the most part Mother Nature was cooperating—and she was the one who could make them or break them. He wished he could invest in some new equipment. Pete was keeping the old stuff going, but only just. It wouldn't be this year, though. Not with what they'd had to put out to update the Sports Center and fine-tune the terrain park.