Pauline put down the sketchbook and thought for a long time. She went to the window, crossed her thin arms, and sighed. “It’s hard to look at that stuff. I get jealous. But I’m grateful.” She nibbled at her dry lips, thinking, working something out. “I don’t think it would have ever happened if there was no you and Liam. When I saw you two together, that night at the Turkey Gobble, before we went and set off the fireworks . . . that’s when I first thought . . .”
Maggie tried to take it in. Pauline had seen what was happening between them, and it had made her jealous?
“You never tried to just be happy for me?” she asked, her stomach churning.
Pauline turned to her. “Maggie, I’ve known Liam since I can remember. It’s not just . . . some fling.”
Fling? Pauline was starting to look flustered, like she knew she was saying all the wrong things. “It’s hot in here,” she said agitatedly. She unbuttoned her coat and pulled it off. And there was . . . it.
Maggie just stared. She was wearing it. The dress. Sea-foam green. Tiny airplanes.
“You got that dress?” Maggie blurted out.
Pauline seemed to remember the dress and shrugged. “From my mom.” She looked perfect in it. “Oh, I have this for you,” Pauline said suddenly. She picked up her coat, reached into the pocket, and put something into Maggie’s hands. It was the bracelet Maggie had sent her in the mail. “I get why you gave it to me. Because Liam gave it to you. But we want you to have it. I want you to have it.”
Maggie cupped the bracelet in her hand. She moved her palm so that the cherry charm dangled back and forth. It should have come with a charm that said, I took a chance and all I got was this lousy bracelet. But she still couldn’t get over the dress. She wondered, with building rage, if Pauline would get everything she wanted her whole life—Liam, the dress, jobs, whatever—because she was beautiful and rich. She wondered, maliciously, if Liam would even love Pauline if it weren’t for her looks. If Pauline were ugly, would Liam have left Maggie? She clung tightly and bitterly to the thought.
“He cares about you,” Pauline said, as if it weren’t possible for the words to hurt. Maggie didn’t reply; she kept her rage inside like a weapon. Sensing she’d worn out her welcome, Pauline went home a few minutes later, pulling her heavy coat back on again and stomping off with bare legs across the field.
* * *
The living always think that monsters roar and gnash their teeth. But I’ve seen that real monsters can be friendly; they can smile, and they can say please and thank you like everyone else. Real monsters can appear to be kind. Sometimes they can be inside us.
I can’t quite stay in this moment. I’m peeling away from it. Something bothers me—and it isn’t just that the hole in the cellar is wider than ever, big enough for me. I can’t concentrate. There’s something about this time, an answer gnawing at me, and after a few moments it takes shape. And it fills me with a terrified heat.
I think I know. Why these people, why this place, why now, why me.
* * *
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THE ADULTS OF WATER STREET HAD ALREADY MADE THEIR PLANS BY THE time the forecast came. The weather that would arrive after they’d gone was sweeping the whole Midwest. All over the middle top of the country sleepy towns and cities were muffled under snow and temperatures that made their bones rattle. In Minnesota and North Dakota, animals froze in their pens.
“You’ll just have to come with us. I don’t want to leave you alone.” Mrs. Larsen stood at the foot of her bed, laying a pair of pumps into her suitcase. Maggie sat propped up against the headboard, watching.
“Mom, please. I’ll be fine. I have a ton of schoolwork right now. And Pauline’s mom will be here.” She remembered after she’d spoken that, actually, Pauline’s mom would be in Milwaukee. But by then her mom was looking halfway soothed.
“Mom, this is our house; we have to feel safe here. I’m not going to go anywhere. I’ll just stay in with the alarm on till you get back. I’ll keep the doors locked and everything. Really, it’s not a big deal. I’ll stay in.”
Her mom studied her. “Maybe you could have Pauline stay over.”
“Sure, I’ll ask her,” Maggie lied. She didn’t want to ask Pauline. But she knew her mom was being overly cautious.
Her parents packed the last of their things, and Maggie helped her mom lug her suitcase down the stairs. They ate a quick dinner together, and then Maggie got up and did the dishes while her mom gathered up her purse and coat. They bundled themselves up and surveyed the room, as if trying to think of anything they’d forgotten.
“Are you sure, honey?” her dad asked.
“Definitely,” Maggie said.
“Call me if you need anything,” her mom said.
Maggie nodded impatiently as she locked the door behind them.
She watched a couple of shows and then some cable news for a while. Everyone was talking about the approaching storm, and around ten her mom called to check on her and make her go over where the flashlights and the generator were. Pauline called around ten thirty and asked if she wanted to meet at the sauna tomorrow around five. Liam’s dad was going to be out late at a job, and Liam had a bunch of chores to do, so they could go naked and not worry about him happening by. Maggie agreed, although she didn’t really feel like seeing Pauline. She climbed the stairs and crawled in bed with a book.
The house should have felt big and warm around her with the weather picking up outside—she usually loved that feeling. But tonight, with her parents gone, her ears perked up at every little sound outside: the crunching of branches, the gusts rattling the old doors as they sent drafts through the house. The house itself creaked so much in the wind that it sounded like someone was walking along the floors. She drifted off to sleep while the wind blew the weather in—it buffeted the windows and made the covers feel cozier. It seemed, in her half-dream state, as if all of Water Street—all the world—was empty, white, silent, waiting.
By the next morning, the storm had taken down the phone lines three streets away. Maggie discovered there was no connection when she went to call Pauline and make up an excuse about not meeting her at the sauna. She looked out the window and considered walking over to tell her in person but decided against it. She’d figure it out when Maggie didn’t show. She knew her mom would be worried and thought maybe she should go wander around to try to find a signal to text her. But when she stepped out onto the deck, it was so frigid and windy that she ducked back inside to wait for everything to calm down.
* * *
The wind has died and left a waiting silence—the kind of quiet that promises the bigger storm to come. I float above the peninsula and wonder: How do you lose the thread of your own story, the one you are supposed to know by heart?
Because, looking down on the snow-tipped trees, I think I’ve seen this story before. It feels like it makes up the shape of my heart . . . or the ball of moths where my heart should be.
I watch Pauline waiting under a stand of pine trees at dusk, looking in the direction of Maggie’s house. She’s brought binoculars for bird-watching. Her breath rises in puffs, and she shivers in her thin, seventies-style plaid coat; she tugs tighter on her off-white, knit hat. Underdressed as usual, she hasn’t worn leggings or pants; her bare legs peek out from under her coat.
Not a soul has emerged from Maggie’s house, aside from me. But Pauline isn’t alone.
He’s standing at the edge of the woods. He must have hiked in from the snow-plowed main road, because the snow’s piled too high for cars here.
James Falk only watches Pauline quietly from the road for a moment, then turns back in the direction he’s come, as if sneaking away from her. Instead of following his tracks all the way back down Water Street, he turns in the direction of Liam Witte’s house, cutting across the field. I realize sh
e’s not the one he’s come for, and I follow him.
Liam’s taken advantage of the lull in the weather to come outside and grab some dry wood from the shed, which is far across the field from his house. He’s just crossing the clearing back toward his house when he looks up to see the figure at the edge of the field. He stands and wipes his hands on his pants and starts walking toward him, recognizing him. There’s a moment when he still seems to think everything is okay. He only seems puzzled as James stands there without saying anything, looking at him like he might bolt. But it’s only a moment before he clearly feels the fear. He keeps his hands in his pockets and smiles at James. He lifts his left hand to wave.
James coils, and Liam pauses midstep. And then James is hurtling. Liam backs up, stumbling, and as he reaches him, holds his hands in front of his face reflexively. Still, he isn’t prepared for the fist as it rips across his nose.
He pivots and pulls away quickly, leaving a growing white swath of ground between them, blood flying off the side of his face. But he’s chosen the wrong direction, toward the fence that lines this part of Water Street.
He comes up hard against it, and James slams up behind him as he tries to climb. He’s halfway over before James pulls him down. Fists fly, but they only belong to James—Liam’s hands are only palms, trying to stop and deflect.
At some point the snow starts again, softly but persistently, falling into the tracks they’ve both left across the snow and onto James’s shoulders as he pounds and pounds. And then Liam’s head hits the fence with a shudder. Liam goes limp. James pulls back, scared now, because of the blood staining the snow beside Liam’s head.
He backs up, then turns and runs.
I want to help. I want to shine a giant spotlight on the boy lying in the snow and on the one running for his car.
But I’m only the ghost, a memory of a memory.
These moments are all in the past. What can anyone do about them now?
* * *
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* * *
I retreat to a quiet moment, back before this night. Just a regular night weeks before, when nothing is happening. I sit at the window of Maggie’s room.
A spider makes a web in the white glow of the floodlights. I watch her work; the moths flutter in her web. Some of them are too big for her to eat or are not to her taste. They’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But not me. There’s nothing accidental about me being in this place, and this time. I’ve sifted through these hours—I’ve hovered above Water Street and below it in dark spaces—because of what I’ve done and what I need to atone for.
I’m afraid I know what it is, and I don’t want to know.
The moonlight on this night, weeks before, is beautiful. The people I love are still living. There’s so much peace here. I want to stay forever. But time pulls me forward.
A key is buried in the dirt under the front stairs of the house on Water Street. The word Subaru is etched across its face in faded letters.
If I still breathed air, I’d take a breath.
* * *
Pauline walks along the snowy road in her black winter boots, trudging in the direction of the Wittes’ and gazing up at the cardinal that seems to be following her from tree to tree. It’s been snowing for about an hour, but only lightly, and every few moments pieces of the sunset shine through the clouds and filter down through the trees.
She walks up to the house and knocks and waits. She peers across the empty field and sees the dim outline of Liam’s tracks, strangely crisscrossed and jumbled. She knocks again.
Pauline stamps her feet together and rubs her mittens against each other, then turns and walks back to the edge of Water Street. She must be thinking that he’s gone on a walk or that he’s gone to her house, straight through the woods, and they’ve passed each other. She peers into the trees in the hopes of seeing Abe.
She sighs. She starts off again in the direction of home.
As she walks back down Water Street, she glances at the field beyond the fence, staring again at the crisscrossed tracks. She listens to the silence and glances at the silo in the distance. Then keeps walking. She’s almost at the edge of the fence when she stops and backtracks a few steps, staring at something. Under the shelter of an evergreen that overhangs the fence, where there’s only a light dusting of snow because of the full branches, there are drops of dark red. Blood.
At first she thinks it must be an animal. Pauline looks to either side of her and then sees the tracks. Whatever it is has set a definite course. The trail—the deep furrow in the snow—leads toward the silo.
She walks through a scattering of evergreens, and now the path opens up into the wider clearing, and from here, the trail leads right to the silo door, which has been left open.
Pauline’s eyes water with fear; she wipes them with her mittens. Not an animal.
She walks forward slowly now, tense. She pauses at the threshold and peers into the shadowy darkness inside the silo.
She only has to push the door a little farther—letting the last of the evening light in—to see the figure. It’s curled on top of a pile of grain.
It stirs and rattles. Its breath is labored.
The figure has a voice. It calls her by her name.
Maggie stood in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom, trying on her blue-flowered dress. It fell to just above her knees, and she liked the way it clung to her hips and accentuated her curves. But there was no denying it was still an ugly dress.
She thought of her dad walking into the store to buy it and kept trying to look at it from a different angle, hoping to magically change her mind.
She wondered if her mom had realized, as soon as she’d seen the dress, that it was all wrong. She was just starting to unzip it when a choked, metallic groan pulled her attention to the window. She could see Pauline’s silhouette in the front seat of the old Subaru across the yard, trying to get it started. Maggie wondered absently where she was trying to go in the crazy weather. The car had snow tires, but that didn’t mean it could plow its way through a foot of snow. She turned to her dresser and rezipped her dress. Maybe if she sat with it a while longer, it would grow on her.
A few moments later, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Pauline’s dark shape crossing the snowy field between their houses at a faltering run, like she was tripping through the snow. Maggie leaned her face up against the window in curiosity as Pauline raced up onto the porch.
She heard the doorbell ring below and then the pounding on the door, the loud staccato of Pauline’s fist.
Maggie turned toward the hall, then hesitated. There was something Pauline urgently wanted to tell her. Or something she wanted to do immediately and couldn’t wait for. Whatever it was, it was another thing that would end up revolving around Pauline. Maggie’s heart pounded in her chest with envy and anger. If she’d had boiling oil right then, like they’d had on the walls of castles in the Middle Ages, she might have poured it out her window.
She turned back toward her mirror. She smoothed out the skirt of the dress with her hands. She decided that, no matter how hard Pauline knocked, she wouldn’t answer the door.
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* * *
Pauline Boden is shaking so hard, her hands jerk like puppets. She clutches the Subaru key in her hand.
Panting and trembling on the Larsen porch, she pounds on the door, then steps back and looks up at Maggie’s window, which is bright while the rest of the house is dark.
“Maggie!” she yells. But her voice comes out raspy and useless. She turns back to the door and pounds harder. She stares up at Maggie’s window as if willing her out, but
the kitchen stays dark; nobody comes. She runs a circle around the house, trying all the doors, pulling at the windows, and then comes back up the stairs to the front door and pounds on it again.
Her lips, her whole face shaking, she is becoming defeated. She’s gone from disbelieving to desperate to slack.
She nods to herself, muttering. She’ll try the car again. She remembers her dad once drove through worse, when she was sick with appendicitis.
She pivots on the stoop and takes two jarring steps down. The moment the key slips through her numb fingers, Pauline lets out a strangled gasp. She watches it slide between the slats in the deck and fall underneath. “No,” she whispers.
She leaps down over the next two steps and falls to her knees, patting the ground around the steps. She tries to reach underneath, but the underside is blocked by wooden supports. “No no no,” she says, her voice like the high whine of a car. “No.” She tries to reach her hands under, kicks the wood, digs at the snow. It’s useless. The key is gone.
Silent tears spill onto her cheeks.
And then she turns and looks toward the lake.
* * *
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MAGGIE WAS READING THE LAST PAGES OF ANNA KARENINA AND WATCHING the snow outside her window whip itself up into a blizzard. The temperature on the thermometer had dropped since the last time she’d looked at it in the kitchen window, though it had already been frigid to start with.
The Vanishing Season Page 16