Summer Snow

by Nicole Baart

  Though I had felt more or less indifferent when we stepped into the church, by the end of the wedding ceremony I was a hopeless mess of crude emotion. It was like watching my life flash before my eyes: the life I was supposed to have. But my reality was a life without. Without Dad, without Thomas or a white dress, a wedding ring, a father for my baby. I wanted to close my eyes when the pastor told Thomas, “You may kiss your bride,” but it was like watching an accident in slow motion. I couldn’t look away.

  The wedding program informed us that the receiving line would take place at the reception hall, and I was thankful that I wouldn’t have to greet Thomas and Francesca in my current state. There would be time for a bathroom stop, a tall glass of water, and best of all, a half-hour drive with Grandma so I could clear my head and arrange my face to survive the rest of the festivities.

  We clapped and cheered when the bride and groom ran down the aisle arm in arm, exuberantly laughing and crying in the same shared breath, and then the ushers stood to tell us that we could depart at our leisure. Three hundred guests rose as one, and I quickly tried to pull myself together, feeling lost in the melee and yet also exposed as the crowd began to talk animatedly and survey the sanctuary full of their peers.

  “You okay?” Grandma whispered, sliding her arm around my waist to give me a gentle squeeze.

  I attempted a smile. “I’m fine. It was a beautiful ceremony.”

  Grandma nodded in agreement. “Weddings always make me cry.”

  “Apparently me too.” I laughed self-consciously and pressed a tissue beneath my eyes. Taking a calming breath, I tried to relax my face. “Can you tell I’ve been crying?”

  “Maybe a little,” Grandma said honestly. “But look around you—nearly everyone looks like they’ve been crying.”

  It was true. The knot between my shoulder blades loosened slightly when I glanced around and saw a number of people still dabbing tears.

  The church emptied quickly, guests making a beeline for their cars to steal a few moments of peace before the reception started in an hour. Grandma and I melted into the crowd, eager to be swept outside and thinking maybe we could still grab a latte, when for the second time that day someone grabbed my arm from behind.

  I turned promptly, ready to see Mrs. Walker and prepared to compliment her on the beautiful ceremony. On the marriage of her son. On her new daughter-in-law. I had rehearsed what I would say, and I was afraid I could say it only once if I hoped to be sincere. The words were on the very tip of my tongue.

  But Mrs. Walker wasn’t standing before me. It was Michael.

  Surprise must have been written all over my face because Michael said with a smile, “Didn’t expect to see me here, did you?”

  “N-no,” I stammered, trying to recover. There was nothing I could do about the state of my face, but I touched my hair insecurely and wished that I could disappear into thin air. I managed to choke out, “I didn’t know that you knew the Walkers.”

  Michael dropped my arm and pointed over the crowd to where Thomas’s siblings stood clustered around Francesca’s extended family. “I played on a summer league slow-pitch team with Thomas and Jacob a few years ago. We hung out a bit. How do you know them?”

  “Next-door neighbors,” I explained. “We’ve known each other for years.”

  Michael snapped his fingers. “Of course. I thought of that when I dropped you off that night your car was going click.”

  I smiled a little in spite of myself and was about to attempt some comment about his obvious grasp of mechanics or lack thereof when I felt Grandma beside me.

  “Is this the young man who brought you home?” she asked, a sweet look twinkling in her eyes.

  “Oh, Grandma, I’m so sorry.” I put my arm through hers and motioned at Michael. “Grandma, this is Michael Vermeer. We work together at Value Foods. Michael, my grandmother, Nellie DeSmit.”

  It was nice to have somewhere to look other than at the man in front of me. For slightly longer than necessary, I studied Grandma’s profile so I didn’t have to acknowledge the tailored lines of Michael’s charcoal suit or the lay of his sky blue tie. I tried not to notice that the pin-striped tie was the exact same color as his eyes.

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. DeSmit,” Michael said politely, shaking her hand.

  “Call me Nellie,” Grandma insisted. “Mrs. DeSmit is my mother-in-law, and she’s been gone for almost thirty years.”

  Michael laughed. “Okay, Nellie. You can call me Mr. Vermeer.”

  Grandma’s eyes widened. “He’s cheeky, isn’t he?” she said, elbowing me. Her voice was light, pleased somehow.

  Because it was the complete opposite of the truth and because I felt more comfortable teasing him than having a real conversation, I quipped, “I’ll say. He’s a pain to work with.”

  Michael feigned indignation. “Hey now. We were being nice.”

  We chuckled for a moment, but then there was a gap in the conversation, a moment when we all looked at each other but could think of nothing more to say. I stole a peek at Michael, and he raised his eyebrows at me. Caught in the act, I turned to Grandma and found that she was staring at Michael. The silence was about to become uncomfortable, and I opened my mouth to wish Michael a good evening and slip back into the crowd.

  But he spoke first. “Nice wedding, wasn’t it?”

  Grandma and I nodded.

  “Beautiful,” Grandma said.

  “I’ve been to lots of weddings,” Michael told us, “but you don’t always see two people who are so obviously meant for each other.”

  I tried not to look skeptical thinking of the bumpy road that Thomas and Francesca had traveled to this day. I wasn’t even sure that Thomas’s family would agree with Michael’s assessment of the now blissfully wedded couple. But then again, they had seemed like the happy ending of a fairy tale as they repeated their vows to each other. I smiled tactfully in agreement with Michael’s proclamation and found myself earnestly wishing that, from now until death do us part, his assessment would be true for Thomas and Francesca.

  “They have an incredible life ahead of them,” Michael continued. “A happy home.”

  I knew he was just making small talk, trying to say the right things because it was the solicitous thing to do. I also knew that every group scattered around the church was having the same flattering conversation as though they could will each word into being by saying it aloud. But Michael’s statements felt like little assaults. I told myself that he couldn’t know what Thomas’s wedding meant to me. He couldn’t understand that each reference was a reminder. A glimpse of what could have been. A happy home. Together forever.

  Grandma said something back to Michael, and I listened to them chat for a few more moments, their niceties washing over me but not sinking in, before someone suddenly called Michael’s name. I was relieved and disappointed to see him look past us and wave, pointing out a group of young people lingering near the door.

  “That’s my ride,” Michael said apologetically. “Guess I gotta go. See you at the reception?”

  I nodded but wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to see Michael at the reception. The guys at the door were attractive and laughing, jock types with broad shoulders and matching smiles, and the girls spun on their high heels to give me an appraising look. It didn’t seem that they were very impressed with what they saw. I wondered which one of them was vying for the position of Michael’s girlfriend.

  “Nice to meet you, Nellie,” Michael said, taking off in the direction of his friends. “Talk to you later, Julia.”

  I smiled my good-bye and then turned away as if there were someone else I wanted to talk to. In reality, I just didn’t want to watch him go.

  And I also didn’t want to deal with the thought he had inadvertently solidified in my mind: a baby was intended for a happy home. A home like the one Thomas and Francesca had just created.

  The kind of home I couldn’t provide.

  Christening

  WHILE GRANDMA AN
D I were at the wedding, Janice and Simon were having so much fun at the beach that they commandeered the following Saturday and insisted that we all go to the lake together. Grandma loved the idea, and she immediately and enthusiastically jumped on board by planning a picnic that would send every ant within a five-mile radius into a fit of pure, unadulterated joy. It was going to be the family event of the summer.

  But I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if Janice had ulterior motives.

  Twice before Saturday I caught her on the phone when no one else was around. She seemed secretive, cagey, and she looked at me with barely concealed guilt at being caught doing something that she should not have been doing. Had she ended the conversations with a smile and a simple good-bye, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But she didn’t. It made me very suspicious.

  The first time was shortly after ten on Wednesday night. The weather was beyond hot—energy sapping, strength draining, exhaustion inducing—and by nine thirty everyone in our little farmhouse had gone to bed. The television was turned off, lights were extinguished, and we flopped into our beds, sweaty and sleepy.

  Although I was asleep within minutes, I had started to get up more and more during the night as my pregnancy wore on, and I often stumbled through the kitchen a handful of times nightly on my way to the bathroom. Usually I was half-asleep and hoping to remain semiconscious, but that night I emerged from the stairs to the sound of a voice in the mudroom. Shocked and startled wide-awake, I crept toward the door and peeked cautiously through the leaded window. A small square of clear glass in the very center afforded me a glimpse of Janice, pacing the floor with the telephone pressed securely to her ear. She was framed and indistinct, a shadow of softly blurred color in the darkness.

  Janice’s voice was muffled and unclear, but I was quite sure I heard her say, “No! Not yet. She can’t know.”

  And then, that woman’s intuition, that subtle little prick at the back of your neck that tells you someone is watching you, must have alerted Janice to my presence. She turned suddenly, and I was caught staring at her through the transparent see-though in the door. From her perspective I must have been nothing more than a disembodied eye.

  “I gotta go,” she blurted out. Then, “What are you doing up, Julia? I thought you went to bed.”

  I left without saying a word.

  The second time I wasn’t lucky enough to hear any of the conversation. Janice was more cautious, fearful of getting caught, maybe. I stepped into the kitchen after work one night to hear her mutter an awkward good-bye and slip the telephone into its cradle shiftily, as if putting it down gently would stop me from realizing that she had been on the phone. The utter silence in the house told me that Grandma and Simon were not home.

  “Who were you talking to?” I questioned Janice without preamble.

  “Oh, no one,” she murmured dumbly, forcing herself to smile at me. It was so unnatural, so fake, that I was afraid it would crumble off her face.

  I continued to pursue her with my eyes.

  “Just an old friend,” Janice finally admitted, unable to stand up beneath my wilting stare. “No one you would know.”

  To say that her covert conversations made me apprehensive would be an understatement. Janice’s behavior didn’t change at all; she was no different than she had always been around Grandma and Simon, but I felt like I could sense something brewing just out of view. There was a brooding, indecipherable shift in her manner. It was as if I could feel her expression alter the moment I left the room.

  I was sure she was conspiring against me. It occurred to me that Janice was so bent on getting me to give up my baby that she was ready to take matters into her own hands. I just didn’t know how far she was willing to go. Not that there was anything she really could do about it—I was no longer a minor—but I still had a difficult time shaking the feeling that she was hiding something from me. What could it possibly be about but the baby?

  And for some reason, I balked at the idea of going to the lake with her. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for her to poison my thoughts, to talk me into what she thought was my only real option. Maybe even to try to win Grandma over to her side. I wanted to beg her to leave me alone. I needed to figure this out by myself, without the shadow of her own broken past hanging menacingly over me.

  But there was no way out of it. Simon was single-minded and even Grandma exuded a feeling of magnitude, as if this act of togetherness, of normal family behavior, was the culmination of four months of struggle, sweat, and tears. It seemed significant to me, too, though somewhat less promising.

  We all piled into Janice’s car on Saturday and left for the lake with Simon making up songs to the tune of “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” in the backseat. His words rarely rhymed or fit the meter of the song, but he more than made up for his lack of skill with an abundance of intoxicating gusto. Grandma and Janice giggled from the front seat and I sat next to Simon, shooting him sidelong glances of theatrical annoyance that only egged him on to grander verses and exaggerated accompanying arm gestures.

  Mill Lake was a forty-minute drive north, and by the time we had entered the outskirts of the nearest town, I was enjoying myself far more than I had anticipated. Even the cloud of Janice’s clandestine late-night conversations seemed to evaporate in the elation of Simon’s singing and the blissfully warm sun that blazed through the back window of the car.

  Not today, I told myself determinedly. Today is a cease-fire, a rare oasis of peace in this seemingly endless journey.

  Though we were probably the only group of people at the lake that didn’t drive up with some form of water entertainment hitched to the back of our car, we didn’t mind. We spread our oversize blanket on the sand near the water, taking advantage of the sprawling shade of a burr oak that would have required at least three of us linking arms to reach all the way around it. Half of the blanket was draped in sun so that the already yellow-toned quilt took on the appearance of melted lemon sorbet. A fluttering division of leafy shadows flung the rest of our little island into tones of hushed blue-gray, and Grandma parked the cooler and picnic basket deep in the shade, where there were almost no coins of golden light glittering between the leaves.

  We were set up in less than five minutes. With a contented sigh, Grandma bunched up a couple of beach towels and positioned herself against the cooler, gazing out at the water. The rest of us took to the sun. Simon looked to his mother for permission and, seeing the slight nod that he’d hoped for, kicked off his shoes and ran for the water, trailing a bucket in one hand and a long-handled scoop in the other. Janice plunked down on the blanket, rolling up her shorts instead of taking them off, even though I could see the lime green strap of a swimming suit peeking out from underneath her tank top. Consulting the sky, she aligned herself perfectly to the arc of the sun and lay back with her eyes closed. I found a comfy spot to sit cross-legged in the middle, Grandma’s foot resting lightly against my knee on one side and Janice stretched out beside me on the other.

  The lake spread out before me, a sheet of rippled, stone-blue steel that was dotted with boats and Jet Skis. All along the shoreline, trees stepped right up to the edge and hung dropping branches over the water so that the cove we were in was soft and rolling, spreading gracefully out to disappear around the bend almost a mile away in both directions. There were a few people on the beach, a handful of kids splashing in the water, but Simon alone could have been a portrait at the edge of it all.

  He stood up to his ankles in the tiny, lapping waves, the red bucket at his side and his other arm still clutching the yellow scoop as it swept across his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun. His swimming trunks were almost exactly the same color as the water, and his white T-shirt popped as if cut out against the immense blue backdrop. I could see the breeze rake invisible fingers through the dark curls at the nape of his neck.

  “Perfect,” Grandma exhaled.

  I turned to look at her and found her eyes closed, her head thrown back in su
rrender to the luxury of the day. The dancing shadows cast her wrinkled profile into relief, the angles sharp and chiseled, a reminder of the beauty she had once been.

  “It is,” Janice agreed, not moving. “It’s why we wanted to take you here so badly.” She popped her head up to shoot me a phony dirty look. “Why haven’t we been here every weekend this summer?”

  “Don’t look at me.” I raised my arms as if to fend her off. “Why is it my fault it took us half the summer to make it to Mill Lake?”

  “Because you’re young and cool, Julia. You should think about these things. You know, be our social coordinator and such.” Janice flopped back down and raised her chin just so to take full advantage of the hot rays.

  I made a noise of dissent but didn’t bother to defend myself. Young and cool. Yeah right. More like old beyond my years and experiencing a pregnancy hot flash. I moved into the shade.

  There was a boat pulling into the dock at the opposite end of the beach, and I watched wistfully as a guy in board shorts and dark sunglasses hopped barefoot onto the smooth planks. He ran both of his hands through his longish hair and then reached out an arm to help a number of young women climb out of the boat. They were all bikini clad and wet, the last one still removing her life jacket after what I assumed was a stint on the kneeboard. I could see another guy lifting the board onto the wide, flat back of the ski boat, wrestling with the long Velcro straps as he tried to reposition them for the next rider. Somehow they all reminded me of Michael and his group of friends at Thomas and Francesca’s wedding.

  It had been easy to avoid them throughout most of the reception because Francesca hadn’t overlooked a single detail and our seats were meticulously assigned. Grandma and I sat around a table with six other adults who were all at least thirty years older than me, while most of the people my age were across the room from us, crowded around a few tables near two towers of stacked speakers. When the deejay put on something fast and loud after the first few slow dances, I watched Michael and his friends hop to their feet and loosen their ties as they flooded the dance floor. Grandma and her companions laughed and seemed ready to settle in for a long night of observing their flailing attempts at the actions to “Y.M.C.A.” and “Stayin’ Alive.” But I wanted to leave so badly that I could hardly make myself sit still.