The Winter People

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “What’re you looking for?” a voice said from the edge of the woods.

  I whirled and saw Keith McIntyre standing some distance away, where pines ended and bare winter trees began. I walked toward him slowly, making no rapid moves—as though he might himself be a creature of the woods who would take off like one of the brown rabbits if I startled him. When I was close enough to see his face clearly, I spoke to him.

  “I’m looking for the tracks of someone besides myself who climbed over the rail this morning.”

  He shook his head as if I puzzled him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why should there be tracks?”

  “I think you know;” I said. “I think you must tell the truth to Glen sooner or later.”

  “You off your rocker?” He tossed the words over his shoulder as he turned away and started downhill, moving with a long, easy lope, the rifle with him as always.

  I went back to the house. I would have to find a way to coax the truth from Keith—since his mother would not tell it. But he would only run away from me now. And in the meantime I had to learn how to live with the death of my marriage. I knew it was over, unless I could prove to Glen what his sister had done. It might be the end of it, even then, since he might not thank me, or forgive me, for such proof.

  In the days that followed before Christmas Eve I did not see Keith again. My ankle improved and I tramped through the woods several times a day, always looking for a boy with a gun. I climbed down to the base of Gray Rocks more than once, but Keith took care to evade me, and I caught no glimpse of his red-checkered cap anywhere.

  I would not go to his father. I would ask nothing of Trent McIntyre. All that was uprooted, done with, over. The young girl in me was silent, unable to cope with a woman’s problems. I knew that Keith was under Glynis’s spell, and not altogether accountable. I did not want to bring Trent’s anger down upon him again. I must find Keith myself and talk to him first. There must be some way in which I could make him understand what had been done to me—what he had done. I had been made to smash Glen’s work, and as a result my husband had turned away from me completely. Surely this boy was not so callous that he could not understand my suffering. For his own sake, too, he must be made to understand the motives of his mother. He must be made to see her without the glossy veneer his own idealism had built around her. There was tragedy in the shock of such an unveiling, but it was better if it came now before she corrupted him completely.

  In small ways life went on as usual. Nomi had the driveway plowed out so that Colton would have no trouble when he came home. Christmas wreaths and boughs were hung. There was mistletoe under the drawing room chandelier—but I did not stand beneath it joyously, as I had hoped to do. Nomi was endlessly busy with Christmas baking. We shopped for the usual weekly groceries, and a large turkey besides. Gift wrapping was done behind closed doors. All normal preparations for Christmas went on, but underneath nothing at all was normal.

  The day after I had been locked in, Glen moved out of the room we shared and into the smaller room he had used as a boy. I came upstairs in the afternoon to hear Glynis laughing as she helped him move his things. I knew it was she who had suggested this change, but there was nothing I could do. I could scarcely plead with Glen for a love he had ceased to give, and yet I did not wholly believe that he had lost all affection for me so suddenly. If only I could cut him off from Glynis’s influence, find a way to reach the old Glen whom I knew and loved! But Keith was my only hope, and Keith had turned into quicksilver.

  Sorrowfully, I wrapped the white silk turtleneck sweater I had bought for Glen in New York—and had hoped to give him lovingly. Now as I touched its soft folds I felt a little dead inside. He had scarcely spoken to me since the alabaster head had been shattered. No trace of stone remained on the floor, though the shattering had left a scar, and the key had disappeared from the door. But for Glen I was not there. I was a stranger he did not know. Often my throat ached with suppressed tears because I would not cry and humble myself before Glen or Glynis.

  The twins were closer than ever during this time. A curious thing seemed to have happened. It was as if they had both failed in their work and had thus been drawn closer together—to the one they were—than before. But if Glen had ceased to know that I was about, Glynis never stopped watching me. Perhaps that was the worst thing of all—to have her eyes follow me slyly, watchfully, smilingly giving me the feeling that she was not really done with me yet. She had felled me with a stab in the back, but the coup de grace was still to come.

  Nomi was my only confidante. I told her everything. I told her just what I believed had happened, but though she sat working quietly with her shuttle at her loom, and heard me out, she had nothing in the way of advice to offer. She agreed that what happened had been engineered by Glynis and that Keith was undoubtedly the instrument she had used. But there was nothing to be gained by making charges unless I had some sort of proof to back them up. Indeed, even then, Nomi said, it might do me no good. Glen and his twin were reunited, and he would not thank me for any attempt to split them apart once more.

  The twinness was remarkably in evidence during that time. They were entirely one. Their every act was that of identical persons. Anything at all would set them off—a look, a word, an incident. Their eyes would meet, and they seemed to read each other’s thoughts instantly. Laughter would come to them at the same moment—and they both laughed quite a lot. I could not understand this in Glen. He had suffered serious damage, met with real tragedy in the destruction of his best work—yet he could laugh lightheartedly with his sister as though nothing disturbed him in any way. If he recognized that he possessed a wife, I saw no evidence of it. It was as though Glynis had truly bewitched him. It was as though the lighter side of her had been freed from the broken alabaster and the black marble was in eclipse.

  There were times when I ached with self-pity, wallowed in my new loneliness and the loss of Glen’s affection. But there were other times, and they were increasing, when I was too angry to suffer. I remember the phrase Trent McIntyre had used when he called me a “victim.” I did not like being a victim, and I meant to expose Glynis and the wicked trick she had played at my very first opportunity. I wanted most of all to save Glen, to find him as a separate person once more, whole in his own right. I would wait it out. My marriage was at stake, and so, in a way, was my integrity.

  Once or twice I tried to talk to him in a quiet, reasonable way, but I could not reach him at all. Obviously he felt that I was trying to shunt off my guilt upon Glynis, and he would not listen. His coldness reminded me that, even in happier times, I had felt the Chandlers were winter people.

  After the snowstorm we had days of warmer weather. Everywhere snow began to melt and run down sunny hillsides in rivulets. Where the hills stood in shade the snow stayed on, diminishing only a little day by day like that ice that Glen had laid on my heart. Often by night the temperature dropped so low that the surface water froze again and offered a good skating surface. But though I had learned to skate in New York, I had no heart for taking out my skates now.

  As Christmas Eve approached, plans went ahead, as if nothing had happened, for the McIntyre bonfire party. Pandora had invited neighbors from along the roads that led to Gray Rocks for Christmas Eve by the lake. They were bringing in cords of wood, contributing food for outdoor winter cooking, as well as home-baked pies and Christmas cookies. Nomi was at her best, her cheeks a little flushed from the warm kitchen, her eyes bright as those of a child who anticipates a party. Now and then she would remember herself and prophesy doom and disaster, but the rest of the time she was as happy as I had ever seen her.

  Both Glen and Glynis behaved as though his alabaster figure had never existed. I found this impossible to understand. Why wasn’t Glen suffering as I was suffering? Sometimes at night I dreamed of that icy face he had created—a face that was mine and yet not mine. I yearned over the destruction of Glen’s work, over the destruction of my marriage, my lov
e. To Glen none of this appeared to matter. He and Glynis were one again, and that seemed enough for both. He’d obviously forgotten that he had ever spoken to me of escape from his sister’s domination.

  One thing in particular disturbed me about these two. They seemed to be plotting something against Pandora. Some scheme was afoot to discourage her development of a planned community on the other side of the lake. I caught meaningful looks exchanged between them when her project was mentioned, heard their whispering when no one but me was around. They seemed like prankish children—rather wicked children, against whom one must be constantly on guard because their behavior was not adult and rational.

  Glynis had a new glitter about her that frightened me. She wore black a great deal—often trimmed with shiny jet, so that she caught the light as she moved, and it was a dark light that suited her—dark and cold, like a winter’s night. I wondered if she wanted to remind Glen of the black marble head he had done of her—his real masterpiece.

  The day before Christmas was bright, with a temperature just below freezing. The weather report promised a clear, bright night—not too cold. The Christmas tree was up in the drawing room and we were decorating it that afternoon when Colton returned. He came in laden with packages, cheerfully expansive, expecting nothing of disaster. But when he walked into the drawing room where we worked on the tree, the four of us looked at him in a sudden guilty silence that must have told him something had happened in his absence.

  I glanced at Glen and realized how much he hated to have his father know what had happened to the alabaster head. His work had reinstated him in his father’s eyes, and now he would dread to see this new respect diminished.

  While we stared, Glynis broke the pause of silence by running to kiss her father and taking the packages from his arms, helping him off with his coat. This afternoon she wore tapered black velvet trousers, and a black crocheted pullover trimmed with black bugle beads. She had even tied a black silk scarf about her head to subdue her bright hair, and when Colton saw her he called her his “dark angel.”

  I would have chosen a different word.

  Nomi had seen Glen’s face, and she came down the ladder from where she had been hanging higher ornaments.

  “Leave it to me,” she whispered to him. “Don’t say anything till I’ve talked to your father.”

  I kept in the background, sitting on the floor near the tree as I looped streamers of tinsel over low branches. When Colton had greeted Nomi and put an arm about each twin for a welcoming embrace, he came to draw me up from my place.

  “You look like a small pink and silver ornament yourself in that sweater and gray skirt,” he said. He did not kiss me as he had the twins, but held me at arm’s length, studying my face gravely. “Something’s wrong. I know faces. Something has broken you up inside.”

  “Leave Dina alone,” Nomi said. “You’d better come and have a talk with me before you ask any questions.”

  Glynis smiled at him brightly, but Glen would not meet his eyes, and after he’d given me a light pat on the shoulder, Colton went with Nomi to her sitting room.

  The moment he was out of the way Glen and Glynis behaved as though I were not there. They put their chestnut heads together and whispered in tones that were not low enough for me to miss.

  “Don’t worry,” Glynis murmured. “When Pandora begins to see that the Lenape Indian name of the Haunted Place is the only right one for Gray Rocks, she’ll give up her silly scheme.”

  “But how can you be sure—” Glen began.

  Glynis tapped his arm gently and nodded toward me. “Little pitchers,” she said, and they both burst into laughter.

  Never had I felt so furious and alone and frustrated. When I tried to think of some plan, to see some clear road ahead, everything vanished in murk. My one hope still lay in Keith, and tonight he would be at Pandora’s bonfire party. I must be alert enough to catch him off guard and get him to myself, so I could talk to him, make him understand. Perhaps Colton would help me. Surely, as the boy’s grandfather—but I knew this would depend on what Nomi chose to tell him. If I knew Nomi, she would save him as much grief as possible.

  They were not gone long, and when they returned Colton strode into the room ahead of her and went straight to Glen.

  “Don’t look like that, boy,” he said. “Nomi’s told me about this miserable accident, and I know it seems tragic to all of us at the moment. But you mustn’t brood over the loss. Don’t you suppose I’ve had work destroyed before this? Once I had six portraits go down on an aircraft. And do you know what I did?”

  “Yes, darling, we know,” Glynis said, slyly teasing. “You’ve told us a good many times. You started over. You did every one of those pictures over—at great cost of time, and all the trouble of getting the people concerned to sit for you again.”

  He nodded at her triumphantly. “And every one of those portraits came out better than it did the first time!”

  Glynis smiled at him sweetly. “This is different. I don’t think Glen wants to do Dina a second time.”

  “Of course he’ll do her! He can’t let something like this be lost. Glen—”

  “No, Colton,” Glen said, speaking up to his father as I’d seldom seen him do. “I won’t do Dina again. I have another plan. I’m going to do a head of Glynis—in wood this time. I’m going to use some rich dark wood that will give me the texture and patina I want. And it will be better than the alabaster head. Glynis has always been my best model.”

  It was clear for all of us to see that he had kindled again. This was the way he had looked when he found me in the museum. This was the same sort of excitement that had lighted him while he worked on the alabaster head. I felt as completely shattered as the block of alabaster had been. Now I was truly bereft.

  Glynis had kindled with excitement too. They were alike—dreadfully alike.

  “At the same time that he uses me for a model, I’ll use Glen!” she cried. “I can already see how I’ll paint him. This will bring me out of my doldrums too!”

  Colton was pleased with them both. In that remote fashion of the man to whom art alone matters, he had dismissed anything except getting his children to work again. He was not very pleased with me. He had tried. He had used the word “accident” about what I had done. But Nomi must have told him much of what had happened, and he had chosen to blame me in the end. It was simpler that way.

  If I had not wanted to find Keith, I would not have gone to the bonfire party that night. But since Colton would not save me, I had to go. I did not blame Nomi for not stressing Glynis’s part in the story. She could hardly throw that wild tale of mine too strongly in Colton’s face, when it was only my word against his daughter’s as to what had happened. So I must go to the party, and I must talk to Keith. I must find some way to defend myself.

  It would be difficult for me to cope with any rival, but how did one defeat a twin sister?

  10

  That afternoon when the tree was done, decorated by the twins in wild hilarity, they went to work upstairs in the attic, so eager to be at their double project that they could not wait until tomorrow. I offered to help Nomi with whatever further preparations she needed to make, but she swept me aside. She was too impatient with me at the moment. Colton was in his study writing letters, and even Jezebel had vanished outdoors into the bright sunshine of late afternoon.

  Left to myself, I dressed for climbing, took Glen’s pair of light binoculars with me and walked down to Gray Rocks. Again there was no sign of Keith, but the bonfire had already been lit. This time I sought the saddle at the place where the rock divided and climbed into it. These were twin pinnacles above me—his and hers, I thought dryly. Where one towered into the sky, I could see the stepway that led upward. The niches, some natural, some carved, fit easily to my hands and feet. I mounted step by step to a level space near the top and found that here the rock had been hollowed into a shallow cave. I sat down within its shelter, and stone walls pressed around me so that I w
as hidden from the world. No one would know I was here unless I chose to shout the fact above the lake.

  Gathered in like a snail that had withdrawn into its shell, I thought about my predicament on this strangest of Christmas Eves. Nothing left like Christmas. All anticipation had died. Wistfully, I missed other times when there were city shop windows and hurrying shoppers, missed the Salvation Army Santa Clauses, even the mechanized blaring of Christmas carols. Brown winter woods, with hardly a trace of snow left, had nothing to do with Christmas. Nor had bonfire picnics.

  I was a bride without a groom. But I had better not dwell on that. What had happened to Glen was temporary—it had to be. He would come back to loving me. I knew how he had felt about me. I could not lose something precious because a piece of alabaster that had been nothing a month ago, now lay shattered. I must fight down the sick doubt that welled in me. Vaguely I thought of Trent, wishing I could talk to him as a friend. Once he had comforted me, but I knew he would not now.

  A sound of distant shouting reached me, and I crept from my snail’s shell to stand up. Were they calling me? Was that Glen’s voice? Or an echo?

  Although there was only the rock wall of my crevice around me, and a bare face of rock opposite, I found that I could lean upon a chest-high barrier and see almost the entire lake. Up here I could hear amazingly well the sounds that came from a distance. No one was calling me.

  The winter sun dipped toward the place where it would vanish beyond hills, and there were signs of a splendid winter sunset beginning to stain the sky. The bonfire across the lake was burning strongly now. I could smell woodsmoke from this high perch. In a little while it would be time for the Chandlers to go down to the lake, and I would not be with them. If they missed me, let them call. I would not answer. I was playing games—and knew it. But I was tired of their dares. I was separate now, and I would at least be myself.