by Mary Morris
“It’s Vicky’s dog,” I said.
“Oh, Vicky’s.” Margaret took this all in, trying to understand what I was doing with someone else’s dog. Suddenly I felt very tired and my head hurt. I was shivering, my teeth chattering.
“I’m staying with her. We took a walk. Look, I need to call Vicky and tell her where I am. Or maybe you could drive me back there.”
Margaret took me by the hand, leading me to a chair in her sunken living room. “Tess, you’re frozen. Why don’t you have something hot? Or better yet, take a hot bath.”
A hot bath did sound tempting, but I thought I should get going. “No, really—”
“Look, I’ll call Vicky. You take a bath. I’ll let her know you’re here and she can pick you up after work.” That sounded to me like a reasonable plan, not one to put anyone out, so I agreed. Margaret opened a closet and took out a fluffy white towel, a terry-cloth robe. She led me down to the master bedroom, a huge room with a giant, king-size bed and clothes scattered everywhere. “Oh, such a mess,” Margaret said, picking up some dirty socks and looking at them as if she had no idea what to do with them. “The maid comes tomorrow.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” I said.
“You did the right thing, coming here,” she said.
She led me into a large, white-tiled bathroom that was the size of my kitchen. It was complete with Jacuzzi tub, bidet, glass shower, and heat lamp. Margaret started the tub, which I noticed had a ring around it. I thought Margaret might make an attempt to clean it out, but instead she just poured in a green liquid, made a thick bubbly foam. She sprayed the air with eucalyptus. “Here, you just relax. When you come out, I’ll have some tea and something for us to eat. Then Vicky can come and get you.”
When Margaret left, I slipped out of my robe and stood for a moment in front of her mirror. I wondered how often Margaret had stood in front of this mirror, admiring herself. Her long, lanky legs, her thick black hair. Now I gazed at my small but taut breasts, my firm thighs, my skin.
How many times had Nick stood in this bathroom watching her soak in this tub? Had they bathed together? Did he rub soap all over her body in here? I didn’t want to think of this, not really, as I slipped in. The hot water stung my freezing feet. My body sank in, burning. Sweat broke out on my brow. I lay in the water, my eyes closed, and soaked for a long time in the steamy water. It seemed inevitable, somehow, that I was here.
Perhaps half an hour later I wrapped myself in the robe and made my way to the kitchen, where Margaret sat sipping tea. “All right,” she said, “it’s all set. Nick’s on his way home. He’s thrilled you’re here. I talked to Vicky and you’ll both have dinner with us.”
“Oh, we don’t want to impose.…”
She flicked her hair, waved her hand away. “Oh, please, you’re not imposing. We want you to stay. Nick’s going to pick up some wine and some food.”
“Really, I should get going.”
But Margaret waved away my protests. “Please just relax. Have dinner with us.”
I thought perhaps she’d offer me something to drink, but she didn’t. I sat down in my robe, moving an empty coffee cup out of the way. “Your place is beautiful.”
“Oh, we’ve been lucky.”
“This doesn’t look like luck to me. It looks like hard work.”
Margaret nodded, turning away. “Yes, I suppose it is. Nick’s done all right, you know, with his father’s business.”
“Yes, I can see that he has.”
“He’s been able to do some development. He’s got an idea for a resort somewhere. Fiji or something? I’m not sure. Ask him.”
“Yes, I will.” I was struck by how much I wanted to ask her. Over all these years I’d never really known. I thought to myself I should confront her. What about my father? I wanted to say. I’d always wanted to ask her, but never had. Was it really true and had she always known? Had she known even before we became blood sisters? Had she’d known but hadn’t told? Was that her big secret? The one she’d kept from me all these years?
I was gathering up my nerve to ask her when a car pulled into the driveway. There was a screech of brakes that made Margaret wince. The car door slammed and moments later Nick walked in in a blue parka, arms loaded with groceries. He kicked the door open with his foot and a cold breeze swept into the room. “Tessie,” he said, putting the groceries down on the counter, sweeping me up into his arms. “Are you all right? You aren’t frostbitten anywhere, are you?”
“Yes, I’m fine. It was a stupid accident.” He was examining my fingertips, my nose.
“But why did you go into the ravines? You could have been hurt. People have frozen—”
“Can’t you see, Nick?” Margaret said flatly. “She’s fine.”
“Well, thank God for that.” He hugged me and I found myself lost in the down of his parka, the tug of his arms, and the smell of chicken. I had to wrench myself away.
“Here,” he said to Margaret, pointing to the bags, “I brought some things.” When she opened the refrigerator to put the beer and soda away, I saw that it was almost empty. “Are you warm enough now?”
“I had a bath. Really, this is so embarrassing.…” I excused myself, slipped away to get dressed, thinking it odd that there seemed to be no food except for what Nick had brought in.
When I got dressed and returned to the kitchen, Vicky was there. She had arrived just as it started to snow. Not terribly big flakes, just a dusting, but it seemed to be coming harder and faster as the wind picked up off the lake. When she walked in the door, Liberty leaped from the corner where he’d been lying all afternoon and practically into her arms. “My God,” she said, stomping in, covered in white snow dust. “Tess, what happened to you?”
“Oh, it was a dumb thing. I took a walk. It was cold, I went into the ravines. Then I couldn’t get out.”
Nick shook his head. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
“I thought you were Miss Out-of-Doors,” Vicky said.
“I haven’t been in ice for a while.”
“How about on ice?” Nick asked, holding up the bourbon.
“Sure,” Vicky said. “Tess?”
“Why don’t you just stay?” Margaret said, all bubbly now. “Why don’t we have a good time? Can’t we do that, Nicky? Have a good time. Let’s make dinner. What did you bring? It’s snowing; you may as well stay for a bite. Nick, you’ll get them drinks, won’t you?”
Nick was unpacking groceries. He put down the precooked chicken, a head of iceberg lettuce, a pound of spaghetti. “Of course. I’ve got some spaghetti sauce I made the other day.”
“I didn’t know you were a cook.”
“There’s lots you don’t know about me,” he said with a wink. “You’ll be surprised. I’ll make you a wonderful meal.” Margaret disappeared inside the house, then returned, dressed in a blue silk shirt with black velvet stretch pants, gold earrings. Nick poured a good-sized bourbon for each of us. Large tumblers where the ice clinked. Margaret passed them around and we toasted. “To old friends,” she said, taking a sip. “Oh, this is nice.” She reached over for Nick, gave his arm a squeeze.
He pulled back, gazing around. “Where’s Danielle? Where’s my little Danielle?”
“Oh.” Margaret took another sip. “In her room, somewhere. She’s been a grumpy girl all day.”
Nick frowned. “Well, don’t you think we should ask her to join us?”
“I thought since we hadn’t seen one another—the girls, I mean—in so long, it might be nice, just for once—”
“I know,” Nick said with a laugh, “to have an adult evening.”
“Well, yes, that’s what I was thinking.”
In the end Danielle came out of her room, looking sullen as she had when I first laid eyes on her. Obediently she helped her mother set the table. “Can I do anything? Can I give you a hand?” I asked.
“Oh, you can come talk to me,” Margaret said. “I want to know everything. Let’s get caught up.”<
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I followed her into the kitchen while Vicky sat by the fire that Nick had built, legs up, reading a magazine. “It’s so good to have you here.”
“You seem to have done quite well for yourselves.”
“We’ve done well enough, but not spectacular. Nothing spectacular, you know.”
I looked out toward the window in the living room and saw that the snow was coming down hard. “Look at that,” I said.
Nick, who had followed us into the kitchen, peered out toward the lake. The wind was howling around the house and a purple darkness fell around us. “Yes, it does look like a storm.”
From the living room, Vicky glanced up as well. “What is it with those weathermen? They never get anything right.”
“Maybe we should get going. I don’t want to get stuck here.”
“From the look of it,” Nick said, taking a sip of his bourbon, “you already are. We may as well eat. Then see what’s happening.”
I was anxious and wanted to get going, but they all made me see that the blizzard was coming down from the north now and there wasn’t really anywhere to go. But the thought of being trapped didn’t appeal to me. I peered out at the blizzard and found myself wanting to be anywhere else but where I was. I longed for my ramshackle house and wondered what had conspired to bring me here. Margaret looked nervously outside. “It is coming down awfully hard.” Then suddenly she seemed excited, as if this were a great adventure we were embarking on. “It won’t be so bad.”
“Really,” I said to Margaret and Nick, “I should get going.”
In the living room Vicky was peering out through the curtain at the swirling snow. “You can’t see a thing,” she said.
“But I just can’t—”
“It’s much too dangerous to go anywhere on a night like this. We have plenty of room,” Margaret said. “I won’t hear anything of it. You’ll both sleep here. It will be fun. Just like when we were girls.” She was still drinking bourbon, though I had switched to white wine.
Nick gave me an odd look, as if he was uncomfortable with this arrangement. I shrugged, mouthed, “Sorry.” Then I glanced outside again. There was nothing but whiteness. “It’s so strange,” Margaret said. “We hardly see you for years, Tessie. Now you seem to be around all the time.”
“Just twice,” I told her. “I don’t think I’ll be back again in winter.”
“But there’s always spring and summer,” Margaret said with an almost angry voice now. “So perhaps we will see more of you?” Her words slurred a little.
“Perhaps.”
“Well, I’d like that,” Nick said. Margaret shot a glance his way.
We sat down and ate the roast chicken, salad with Thousand Island dressing from a jar, green beans, and a side dish of spaghetti with meat sauce, all of which Nick had prepared. It was tasty and Nick served a nice California Chardonnay that made me groggy and homesick. Margaret only had a few pieces of lettuce and a chicken wing on her plate. She didn’t eat the wing, but she drank glass after glass of wine.
Danielle again made a brief appearance during which her father coaxed her to eat, but she disappeared soon afterward without saying good-bye to either her mother or her father. Nick shook his head as if to apologize. “Funny kid,” he said. “She gets moody. She acts weird when people she doesn’t know are around.” I found her a strange, reclusive child, and seeing the way Nick watched over her made me think that he did as well.
Afterward we cleaned the kitchen and decided to call it a night. “We should get some rest,” Nick said. In the unlikely eventuality that the storm stopped, we’d have to dig ourselves out in the morning.
“Oh, let’s stay up and play charades or Scrabble,” Margaret said. “Who wants to go to bed now?” Margaret began making charade signs—three words, first word, sounds like.
I yawned. “I guess I’m tired from my adventure in the ravines.”
Vicky said she wanted to turn in as well, but Margaret put her foot down. “Nobody wants to have any fun. I don’t understand it.”
“They do want to have fun; they’re just tired,” Nick offered.
“Well, we could stay up and talk awhile,” Vicky said. We agreed to polish off a bottle of wine in the sunken living room, discussing old times. What had happened to whom, what hadn’t happened to so-and-so. Margaret wanted to know who was married to whom, who had children, who was divorced. She wanted to know about people who seemed irrelevant to me, people she hardly knew. Margaret appeared to be oddly out of touch, considering she lived in Winonah. Vicky told her about everyone she asked about. With almost every word we said, Margaret tossed her head back and laughed until it became annoying. Even when Vicky told her about someone who had died, she laughed. When she dropped her glass, it occurred to me that she was drunk.
Suddenly Margaret stood up and went to the window again. The light from the room reflected on the whirling snow. “I hate being trapped,” Margaret said. She shuddered as if the wind that was blowing outside had come right into the room. “You know, when there’s no way out.”
“No one likes that,” Nick said.
“You don’t have to remind me,” Margaret said, snapping at him. Then she turned to us. “What was that room in a house called when there’s only one exit?” We looked at her, perplexed. “You remember, when you guys went door to door with the Firefighters of America?”
Vicky and I looked at each other, not quite remembering. Then I did. “It’s a dead man’s room,” I said flatly.
“That’s right; that’s what this reminds me of. A dead man’s room. There’s no way out.” Margaret kept staring out at the snow, still as a statue, as if she could not move. She let the curtain drop. “I’m tired.” She covered her mouth as she yawned.
We agreed we were all tired. Margaret offered Vicky an extra bedroom on the floor where they slept and gave me a small guest room off a wing of the main floor. Then we went to bed.
* * *
I couldn’t sleep that night as the storm settled in. From somewhere in the house I thought I heard shouting. It seemed as if loud voices had woken me, but perhaps it was the wind. I’ve never been very good at sleeping in unfamiliar places—I wake at the slightest creak of the walls, the sigh of an unknown bed—but now it was especially hard. The guest room was drafty, and no matter how deeply I huddled under the covers I couldn’t get warm. Everywhere around me were noises of rattling, branches flailing about. First the wind seemed to come from the north and then from the west. I could hear Lake Michigan pounding the shore, and the force of its arctic gale sent shivers through me.
From time to time I gazed out the window by my bed and saw the blinding white. I thought how in blizzards like this cows freeze standing up. It brought back all the frigid winters of my youth and I knew that when the storm was over, we could be trapped for days.
I’m not sure what time it was when I got up, threw a robe over my shoulders, and made my way through the house. Besides the wind, the house was oddly quiet as I followed the long corridor that led toward the living room and the kitchen. I was suddenly hungry, though I didn’t know what I wanted. Sometimes I wake up in the night with these unspecified needs. Hot fudge sundaes, granola, Stolichnaya.
Tiptoeing down the corridor I passed Danielle’s bedroom with the door ajar. Peering in, I saw the child asleep. The light from the hallway illuminated her face, which wore a scowl. I wondered what could make a child look that angry. Her room barely seemed like that of a child. There were a few stuffed animals, a unicorn poster on the wall, but other than that the room seemed barren, not the kid’s room overflowing with things I was used to.
I made my way to the kitchen, which was dark, the linoleum cold on my bare feet. Outside the wind howled like a crying child and something in it frightened me. Liberty was asleep in his makeshift bed in the corner and he looked up at me with sleepy eyes, yawned, and went back to sleep.
Though I wasn’t comfortable snooping around someone else’s kitchen, I wanted to eat something. I
opened the refrigerator door. There were a few old pieces of orange cheese, two eggs, some milk. Celery stalks. If we were stuck here in the storm, I wondered how we’d survive.
I poked around in the dark, illuminated only by the whiteness of the snow. Outside the moon peeked through. The storm was breaking up. Liberty got up suddenly and pattered across the kitchen floor. “Well, look who’s here.” Nick laughed as I jumped, pulling my robe, which was too big, tightly around me.
“I got hungry,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Let’s find something.” He was still dressed in his jeans and sweat-shirt and looked as if he hadn’t been to bed.
Peering into the refrigerator, he shook his head sadly as if its emptiness reminded him of something he preferred to forget. “Why don’t we have a drink instead.” He began producing tea bags, honey, cinnamon sticks, and a bottle of bourbon. “I’ll make toddies.”
“Toddies?” I smiled and then I knew that that was what I wanted. Nick boiled the water, prepared the tea, put in the honey, a splash of bourbon, and capped it with a cinnamon stick. Handing me a mug, I warmed my fingers around it. I sniffed and took a sip. “This is good,” I told him.
He nodded. “Just what you need on a night like this.”
He sat across the Formica table from me, both of us with steaming cups in our hands. Liberty went back to his bed, satisfied that nothing was amiss. “So,” Nick said, “isn’t it strange? I’ve been thinking about you all the time, almost willing you back into my life, and here you are.”
“Yes,” I said, “here I am. It was just an accident really that I wound up here at all.”
“Fate,” he said, “Though Margaret doesn’t seem to think so. She seems to think you came here on purpose and there’s something going on between us.”
“I thought I heard angry voices.”
“She has a temper. So is there?”
“Is there what?”
“Something going on between us?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” The steam warmed my face. “And I don’t think this is the time to talk about it.”
He stared down into his cup. “You’re right. It probably isn’t.”