The Snow Angel (9 page)

“You should have been an architect,” he says. “You had an eye for it. It takes someone special to build a home, and you built the best.”

The rush of pride that Mitch feels is short-lived as understanding spills over him. “A home is more than a building,” he says. It seems like a profound thought. Something he should have realized sooner.

Cooper looks up and meets his gaze. “You’re right. A home is much more than a building.” He seems to want Mitch to say something, but for the life of him Mitch can’t figure out what it might be.

Instead of responding, Mitch reaches for the checkers and begins to copy the pattern that Cooper made. Black tiles on black spaces.

When they start to play, the rules come back to Mitch like riding a bike. He jumps three of Cooper’s checkers and soon has control over the board. The game doesn’t require much thought, but when Mitch reaches for the bag of chess pieces and fingers the individual tiles, he’s disappointed to find that they are still meaningless bits of stone to him. He simply doesn’t feel up to trying.

“You seem sad today,” Cooper comments when Mitch deposits the bag back on the table between them.

It’s a rather forward thing to say, but Cooper seems to think that they’re on pretty familiar terms. Mitch decides not to be cranky because he doesn’t want to offend the only person in the entire atrium who has paid him an ounce of attention. “I have a hard time remembering some things,” he admits.

“Don’t we all.” Cooper slides a checker into an unprotected corner of the board. “King me.”

Mitch obliges, crowning Cooper’s red disk with an extra from the pile he’s amassed. “This feels different,” Mitch says. “It’s a different kind of forgetful.”

“It’s Alzheimer’s.” Cooper’s proclamation is matter-of-fact.

“Is it bad?”

“Bad enough.”

Mitch considers this for a moment. “My memory feels like Swiss cheese. Full of holes.”

Cooper laughs. “I like that. Swiss cheese.”

“I can almost taste it,” Mitch says. “Swiss cheese, I mean. Why can I remember the taste of cheese, but I can’t remember how to play chess?”

“You were never a very good chess player.”

“I wasn’t?”

“Nah.” Cooper gives Mitch a serious look. “You only started playing because your daughter joined the chess
club in high school. You wanted to be able to play with her. Do you remember that?”

Mitch holds his breath, trying to conjure up the image of playing chess with his teenage daughter. How tall was she? Did she have dark hair or light? Blue eyes or brown? Green? It breaks his heart that he can’t picture her, but just as he is about to give up he feels a flicker of her at the very edge of his memory.

She’s a wisp of a thing, slight and lovely with big, haunted eyes. Mitch is leveled by a yearning to pull her out of the past and hold her, she looks so life-weary and broken. But as much as he wants to hug her now, he can’t fight the sudden knowledge that he didn’t often hold her when he had the chance.

“I was a bad father,” Mitch says, his voice cracking.

Cooper shakes his head. “You weren’t a bad father.”

“I didn’t know how to be a father. Especially the father of a daughter. What did I know about little girls?”

“Well, it’s not like children come with instruction manuals. You did the best you could.”

“I don’t think my best was good enough.” Mitch battles the quick and furious desire to fling the chess-board off the table. To shout. To break something. But what would that accomplish? He knows that things were thrown in his home, and that they had no peace to
show for it. All the fight fizzles out of him. “She was sad, wasn’t she?”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Cooper says, but it’s little consolation. “Life is sad sometimes.”

“My wife …” Mitch trails off, afraid to finish the sentence. “My wife said things, and she did things …”

“See?” Cooper sweeps his hands as if Mitch’s unfinished thought excuses everything. “Your wife did things. Not you.”

“Does it matter who did what?” Mitch may not remember his address or what his teenage daughter looked like, but he does know that there are sins of omission as surely as there are sins of commission. Whether or not he did anything, he carries the guilt of turning a blind eye. It’s devastating. He can’t stand the man that he thinks he was, and he can’t recognize the man that he is. The past is a blur of emotion and fragments of memories that make him feel dizzy and bewildered. He wants nothing more than to be able to lay the years out before him—ugliness and all—and see his life for what it really was. He can’t shake the feeling that it was one colossal failure.

“I can see her, Cooper.” Mitch takes his head in his hands and tries to make the flicker of a girl in his mind’s eye stay put. “I can see her but I can’t touch her. I can’t say the things that I want to say to her.”

Cooper’s silence stretches on so long that Mitch finally looks up. The man across from him is wearing an expression that is rife with pity. With compassion. “What would you say to her if you could?”

Mitch doesn’t pause for a second. “I’d tell her that I’m sorry. That I should have protected her.” He squeezes his eyes shut and makes a wish on every single flake of falling snow. “I’d tell her that I love her.”

October 8

I
found Lily in the center of her four-poster bed with the white lace curtains drawn. Her knees were pulled up to her chest and her eyes were squeezed shut, but even from behind the veil of translucent fabric I could see that she wasn’t asleep. My Sleeping Beauty who was too heartbroken to slumber.

“Is this seat taken?” It was a lame attempt at humor, and Lily didn’t respond. Instead of waiting for an invitation, I pushed aside the sheer screen and perched on the edge of her bed. “I know you’re not sleeping, honey.”

“Yes, I am.” Lily rolled over, giving me her back. She was curled in a tight ball, her knees pulled up to her chest and a teddy bear tucked amid the tangle of her slender limbs. “Go away,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered. Maybe it was the wrong thing to say, but I believed at that moment that what she needed to hear more than anything was that I would stay. “I’m here for you, Lil. I always will be.”

We stayed like that for a long time. I smoothed her lavender duvet with my fingers, and Lily breathed in and out, trying to ignore me. She was wrapped around herself, hemming me out as if she was the only person in the world she could trust. I could hardly blame her. I hadn’t exactly been honest with her throughout her eleven years of life. Perhaps I was wrong for thinking that some things are better left unsaid.

“I was only trying to protect you.” I spoke quietly. “I know what it’s like to be alone, to feel like no one will stand between you and the monster under your bed.”

“There’s no monster under my bed.” Lily’s voice was muffled by the fur of her teddy bear.

I gave a hollow laugh. “There was no monster under my bed either. It’s an expression.”

“I know.” Lily went perfectly still for a moment, I could tell she was holding her breath, trying to decide if she
could say the words that crowded her mouth. After a long moment, she dared. “Is Dad the monster?”

It was an impossible question. Yes. And no. “Dad has a funny way of dealing with life, Lil. That doesn’t make him a monster, but sometimes he does some pretty monstrous things.”

“I hate him.”

The ferocity of her declaration shocked me. Lily had never shown anything more than polite detachment toward her father. Cyrus hadn’t been very involved in her younger years, and when her attempts at a relationship were steadily rebuffed as she got older, Lily learned to exist in a home where the man she called her dad was little more than a prop. He brought home the paycheck and sat across from her at the dinner table every night, but he didn’t take much interest in her and she learned to mimic his behavior. Lily was no daddy’s girl, but she had no reason to hate him either.

“You do not,” I said.

“I do!” Lily pushed herself up and whirled to face me. “He hurt you! How could he … how could anyone…?”

“It’s not as simple as it sounds.” I put a pacifying hand on her arm and gave her a gentle squeeze. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, too. And I’m not the same woman that he married all those years ago.”

“What do you mean?” Lily passed a hand over her cheeks, swiping at imaginary tears even though her eyes were dry.

I smiled wryly. “You might not believe this, but your mom was once passably pretty.”

Lily’s mouth dropped open a bit. “What are you talking about? Mom, you’re gorgeous. All my friends think so. Amber’s mom even told me that Dad married you because you were the best-looking woman this side of the Mississippi.”

“Were. I’m an old lady, Lil.”

“Give me a break. You’re thirty-one.” Lily looked me in the eyes, her gaze earnest, insistent. “You really are beautiful, Mom. If Dad doesn’t think so, he’s blind.”

“That’s nice of you to say,” I murmured, patting her arm absently.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Lily looked confused. “You really don’t believe me. How can you not see yourself the way everyone else sees you?”

“Enough.” I didn’t mean to sound harsh, but my daughter shrank back a bit anyway. “This is silly.”

“But I just want you to know that—”

“Lily, stop.” I took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter what I look like, honey. What matters is you. All I want—all I’ve ever wanted—is for you to be happy. I’ve tried to shield you from …” I fumbled for the right words, my hands
fluffing the air as if to encompass the whole of our fabricated lives. “From this.”

Lily pressed her teddy bear to her chest hard enough to make his fat arms look like sausages. She watched me for a long minute, and I could see the thoughts spin behind her clear eyes. Finally she seemed to reach a conclusion. Carefully setting the bear aside, she held out her hands to me. “You should have told me,” she said when I wove my fingers through hers. “I can take it.”

“But—”

“I want to know the truth,” Lily said.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“I do.” Lily narrowed her eyes. “I might be a kid, but I’m not stupid.” She slid her hand up my arm and pushed the sleeve of my sweater away from my wrist. There were three yellow marks there, all that remained of an old bruise. Cyrus had just grabbed me harder than he meant to, but the end result was the same: I had evidence to cover.

“It’s nothing,” I said, tugging the sleeve back down.

“Fine.” Lily threw herself back on the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. “Go away, Mom. I want to be alone.”

I knew in that moment that I stood at a crossroads. I could go on pretending that everything was okay; I could continue to whitewash a home that was slowly, endlessly decaying. Or I could admit that the facade was only as deep as
the thinnest coat of smiles and lies. As I studied my daughter’s huddled form, I realized that maintaining the deception was no life at all. Lily would never trust me again if I wasn’t honest with her. And I couldn’t lose my baby.

“What do you want to know?” I breathed the question so softly I wondered if she would even hear me.

“Everything,” Lily said definitively.

I squeezed my eyes shut and wished her request away. But I knew that she wouldn’t back down. My daughter was strong in ways I could only imagine. “Okay,” I said after several long heartbeats. “It’s not a pretty story.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m not a storyteller.”

“Mom.” Lily rolled to face me. “Stop making excuses. I want to know.”

“Why?”

She bit her bottom lip, considering. Then she sighed a little. “Because no one stood between you and the monster under your bed.”

My throat tightened. “Sweetheart …”

“I know it’s probably too late,” Lily continued, “but you once told me that sometimes all you need is someone to listen.” She gave me a brave, beautiful smile. “I’m listening.”

When I was Lily’s age, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one was listening. I had already taken to calling my mother Bev, not because she asked me to, but because she didn’t seem like much of a mom to me. My friends had mothers who baked cookies for them and braided their hair. My so-called mom told me cookies would make me fat and assured me that no amount of braiding would tame my curls. Her verbal abuse was hurtful in the beginning, but by the time I was old enough to realize what she was doing, it didn’t pain me so much anymore. Instead, I avoided her as much as possible and shrank away from the rest of the world for good measure.

Bev called me “mousy” once—a rather mild put-down in light of her usual slander—and after I met a mouse up close and personal I decided that I rather liked the comparison. I would happily be mousy all the days of my life.

One of the boys in my fifth-grade class caught a baby field mouse in his backyard and brought it in to our science class for show and tell. The little mouse became a mascot of sorts, and our teacher allowed us to keep it in an old aquarium that we filled with wood shavings and some old hamster paraphernalia that someone donated. Everyone loved the mouse, but no one understood the tiny brown-and-white pup quite like I did.