The Snow Garden Read online

  “I didn’t mean to say it like that,” she finally said. “Back there, when I told you I was negative.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was like I was distancing myself from you or something. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe,” Kerry said. She was leaning forward on the railing, hands clasped in front of her, narrowing her eyes against the windy bay. “That’s your right, I guess.”

  “No. Kerry.. .”

  “Kathryn, just because my immune system is compromised now doesn’t mean I get to erase what I did.”

  “I didn’t call you so I could hear you say this. It’s not like you owe me an apology.”

  “That’s fair, I guess,” Kerry said. “Just so you know, that the worse things you could ever say to me—things you might have imagined saying to me a million times—I’ve already said them to myself. You know, the first thing my doctor said when my results came back was, ‘This isn't the death warrant it used to be.’ And you -know what I thought? It should be. But as strange as it sounds, that would have been too easy for me. I could have just curled up in my room, never taken any of my medicines, and thought, ‘Well this is what I get for doing eight balls every weekend and getting so high it didn’t even matter to me that I was sleeping with my best friend’s boyfriend.’”

  Kerry’s candor stung. “How is that easy?” Kathryn asked.

  “It’s harder to live every day with the knowledge of just how low you can go.”

  “You made a mistake.”

  “Kathryn, we never used to bullshit each other like this. That was like our claim to fame.”

  Kathryn met Kerry’s eyes. “This is not how you should pay.”

  “This?” Kerry turned, resting her butt against the railing, her eyes moving past Kathryn to where the sun had almost completed its descent behind the Golden Gate. “This isn’t as bad as you might think.” Kerry’s words didn’t sound hollow, but her voice was tentative enough to suggest that she had forced herself to arrive at this conclusion recently and hadn’t quite found her footing. “I’m not scared of dying. And I might not. Not ’cause of this anyway. I get scared when I think about what kind of person I’m going to be after so many days of being jealous of anyone who’s well. Just looking at people on the street and trying not to hate them because their blood’s cleaner than mine. That could end up being a much worse illness.” Kerry’s eyes centered on Kathryn’s again. “Why’d you call me?”

  “Because I wanted to know if you were okay.”

  Kerry nodded and bowed her head. Kathryn couldn’t tell if she was disappointed with her answer, or content. She turned to the rail again. “I never said I was sorry, Kathryn.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Yeah I do. If not for you, then for me. Part of not dying is calling in a bunch of favors I don’t deserve. And also, it’s being glad that your friends aren’t sick.”

  When she got home, Kathryn poured herself a glass of red wine from the bottle she hadn’t touched at Thanksgiving dinner. She made her way out onto the terrace that jutted over the hillside, its wooden patio furniture fenced in by sleek nautical rails. More often than not, her father had to scramble to remove the cushions before they could be torn free by fierce winds. This close to the ocean, sunbathing days were rare, and Kathryn saw that the cushions had been permanently removed, revealing blonde, salt-stained wood.

  She and Kerry had promised to start “communicating again,” whatever that meant. She sipped her wine, craving the drowsy buzz, as she watched the fog move in. Mist hugged the water under the bridge, and thick, gray tides sluggishly rolled in not far behind. Behind her, the big-screen television flickered in the living room, the rest of the house glowing with what Philip had dubbed "fog combat lighting.”

  She’d left the TV tuned to the Weather Channel and its endless footage of snow plows crawling down 1-95, Boston seen through a white, hazy, swirl, weather maps showing what looked like a giant purple omelet lying across the Eastern seaboard. Her mother had been right. She’d made it out just in time. The Thanksgiving Blow was unseasonable and unpredicted. But the sight of it made her strangely homesick for Atherton, and conjured up images of Randall enduring Thanksgiving dinner in his parents’ Park Avenue apartment. Making no effort to call her, just as she had made no effort to call him. With a jolt she realized she didn’t have his phone number at home.

  That can’t be right, she thought. She was about to go check her address book when she was startled by her mother, removing plates of leftovers from the fridge. Kathryn stopped several steps inside the deck door, the empty wineglass in her hand making her feel caught. "You want something?” Kathryn didn't look at her.

  Marion saw Kathryn’s wineglass and arched an eyebrow before she went about preparing herself a plate. “How was she?” she finally asked.

  “All right,” Kathryn answered, trapped between her mother and the deck door. “It sounds like she’s been to therapy.”

  “Poor baby,” Marion said under her breath, with a tinge of disdain.

  “Excuse me?”

  Stony-faced but righteous, her mother set down her spoon, still filled with a clot of sweet potatoes. She braced herself against the kitchen counter.

  “You think she deserves it, don’t you?” Kathryn asked.

  “No. But I don’t think she’s a victim either.”

  “What about me?”

  Marion looked right at her daughter. ‘You’re fine. Aren’t you?”

  “I may not be sick, but I’m not fine.” Kathryn tightened her grip on the stem of her wineglass in hopes that it would keep her from hurling it to the floor. “Mom, have you ever stopped judging me long enough to ask yourself what I was feeling?”

  Marion folded her arms against her chest, looking her daughter up and down as if to make sure she hadn’t imagined the words she had just spoken.

  “Are you serious?” she asked softly. “I asked myself all the questions that I needed to. I drove you to the doctor, I was there when the results came back, and every time I asked myself if I was capable of caring for you. If I was capable of losing you. And I’ll be honest. I wasn’t happy with the answer that I came up with.”

  “I can’t listen to this,” Kathryn said, one hand already on the deck door.

  “Then you shouldn’t have asked!” Marion retorted.

  Kathryn turned. “It’s not about your anger! It wasn’t about you at all.”

  Marion’s stare was fixed. “Exactly. I had to prepare myself to have my daughter’s life cut short by someone I didn’t even know existed. To a murderer who knew what he had. And now, what does it matter that this guy didn't get my daughter sick or addicted to drugs? Because he managed to take her away from me anyway. She has no interest in seeing me or her father, and suddenly everything I’ve ever done for her has been erased by a guy I never even knew. But you’re fine, Kathryn. You’re away at school and you don’t ever want to look back. And quite frankly, after all the energy I spent, I just can’t fight that son of a bitch any more.”

  Marion’s eyes had welled and she let out an exhausted breath, bowing her head and shaking it slowly back and forth. “Judge you, Kathryn?” she said, sounding weaker. “How could you think that? I wanted to save you. And for the first time, I couldn’t.”

  “You’re right,” Kathryn said, softly. “You couldn’t.”

  Marion lifted her head, not in anger, but at the sound of apology in Kathryn’s voice.

  “You think I hold that against you?” Kathryn asked.

  Slowly, as if summoning courage, Marion closed the distance between them. She cupped Kathryn’s chin in one hand, as if she was debating whether or not to embrace her. “I don’t ever want you to know how much I worry about you.”

  Hesitantly, Marion released her chin and returned to the counter. Kathryn waited—yearned—for her mother to say more, but Marion had returned to assembling her plate, sluggishly, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Kathryn studied her for several more minu
tes, waiting for her mother to continue and push them a little bit further over the divide they had approached so quickly and unexpectedly. “I can make you a plate,” Marion finally said.

  Kathryn nodded before realizing her mother wasn’t looking at her. “Sure,” she said.

  She managed to telnet into Atherton’s network.

  There was one message in her in box, and it wasn’t from Randall. She opened it.

  Kathryn,

  I’ve found the image of you in fog-shrouded San Francisco to be increasingly troubling each time it pays a visit. This is obviously latent something or other on my part, and I’m sure with your keen insight, we could figure out just what. Let’s make a start. Give me your flight number and the time you’re returning on Sunday.

  Solicitously,

  Mitchell Seaver

  She was halfway through typing her response when she realized she was grinning at the computer screen.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BY FRIDAY AFTERNOON, THE NOR’EASTER WAS MOVING INLAND. FRAIL flakes fell over the intersection of Victoria and Prospect, where a utility truck sent flashes of its yellow bridge lights over shuttered windows and snow-covered driveways. Randall slowed his steps, watching as a cherry picker rose with a metallic groan, carrying a Utility worker bundled so tightly against the cold he looked like he was tending to a toxic spill instead of a tangle of frozen branches and coiled wire. The gray sky could pass easily for dawn or dusk. Without power, time had become relative.

  For the first time, duty and not desire drove him to Eric’s house. He yanked his scarf tight around his neck, then drove his hands into his jacket pockets. Snowdrifts covered the sidewalk, but the truck had cut a path up the center of the street. He followed it, his footsteps crunching the tread-packed snow, each step taking him closer to the mission that now offered only partial redemption, if not in Kathryn’s eyes, than maybe his own, and further away from Jesse and his ludicrous but tempting invitation that had followed his successful quest to be the physical embodiment of Randall’s weakness.

  Randall eased open the back gate. On the back porch, Eric was squatting, struggling with something. Randall rounded the porch and mounted the first step silently. Eric still didn’t notice him: he was too busy wrestling with a wooden case of wine bottles. He had the stem of one bottle gripped in both hands. As he yanked, his heavy coat slid farther down his back, revealing nothing more than a T-shirt underneath. It didn’t take long to see why the wine bottle was stuck; its bottom had exploded and a blossom of urine-colored ice adhered to the bottom of the case.

  “You should try the fridge.”

  Eric let out a grunt and jumped. The wine bottle shattered and he landed on his butt with a hollow thud, holding the top half of the bottle in one hand like a weapon. He tossed it aside and brought his forearm across his nose. “Where have you been?”

  His eyes were bloodshot and his nose was running profusely. For a moment Randall wondered if he was sick; But he was just too drunk to have bundled up properly before going outside. He got up, dusting off his jeans with his gloved hands. “You missed the big feast.”

  “I should have called. I’m sorry.”

  “You coming in?” Eric kicked open the back door for Randall to enter. He left it open behind him.

  The kitchen was dark, but candlelight from the dining room guided the way. Randall halted in the doorway, silently appalled at the sight that greeted him. Eric had assembled a Thanksgiving feast out of supermarket takeout cartons. A pre-sliced turkey took up the entire center of the table, fringed by cartons of yams, cranberry sauce and stuffing. He’d stuck tea candles into the fray and in the electrical outage their flames gave the illusion that the food was crawling with tiny insects. Aside from appearing revolting, the spread reminded Randall of too many jerrybuilt holidays he had endured, thrown together with only the decorative trappings that failed to force out the cheer.

  “It’s only been there a day.” Eric moved past him into the living room, where he swiped an open bottle of wine off the mantel and upended it. The result was a weak splash that barely filled the glass halfway. Eric glowered at the empty bottle for a second before returning it to the mantel. He turned around to see Randall still frozen in the doorway to the dining room.

  “I’m not hungry,” Randall said.

  “Something to drink? I managed to salvage another bottle. It’s in the fridge.”

  “Something harder.”

  “Afraid I can’t help you there.” Randall’s eyes shot, to the liquor cabinet across the room. Eric took a seat at the head of the table. 'You didn’t expect me to keep that stuff forever, did you? Funny. In the beginning, I thought it would be childish to throw it all out. Yesterday I had plenty of time to myself to reconsider.” Eric leveled his gaze on Randall, then he smiled tightly, and lifted his glass in toast. “Valinger. A small vineyard outside Santa Barbara. I have to special order it, so needless to say, I’m not pleased about the accident on the back porch.”

  “Why do you keep it outside?”

  “Habit.”

  “Bummer. I thought it was some kind of tradition.”

  To Randall’s disgust, Eric picked up his empty plate and started shoveling day-old turkey onto it. “It started when I was a senior here. Our .. . my refrigerator broke while I was working on a paper and I didn’t have time to get it fixed, so the . .. man I was living with, he and I started chilling our wine on the back porch. It just became habit.”

  “No time to buy a fridge, but you still had time to enjoy a good white,” Randall commented. Eric’s blank expression told Randall he was only going to laugh at jokes he’d made himself. Unsteadily, feeling derailed from his mission of finding the key to Lisa’s storage locker, Randall sank down into the chair opposite Eric’s.

  “Where have you been?”

  “You were worried?” Randall asked.

  Eric shrugged.

  “You thought I had wandered off into Elms like Pamela Milford?”

  Eric’s eyes flared slightly; Randall would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking for it. He pushed his plate back without touching anything on it, proof that assembling it had just been an attempt to drive home the fact that Randall hadn’t called.

  “I was at the dorm,” Randall finally said.

  “Two days at the dorm without power. What did you do?”

  Randall fought a vision of Jesse’s hands pinning his wrists to the pillow on either side of his head. “Not much.” He straightened in his chair. “Maintenance finally came by yesterday and opened all the doors. When the power went out, the ID readers got all fucked up, so I couldn’t leave or else I wouldn’t be able to get back in.”

  Eric’s disbelief was evident in the three seconds he took to glare at Randall across the table. He sat back in his chair and drank the last of his wine. “Did you call; them? Tell them you weren’t going to be able to make it?”

  “My parents?” Randall asked, with sharp anger intended to warn Eric off the topic.

  “They must be worried.”

  “They’re not.”.

  “Why not?”

  “None of your goddamn business.”

  Eric smiled dryly, shook his head, and clucked his tongue. He sat forward propping both elbows on the table. Randall’s hands gripped his knees hard enough to hurt. The key, he thought, I’m here for the fucking key. But first, Randall knew, he would have to endure another interrogation from a man who had lied to himself for the past twenty years.

  “It’s always what you’re not, isn’t it?” Eric asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Every time I raise the subject of who you are, or where you came from, all I get from you is a list of things you refuse to be.” Eric stretched his arms out in front of him, cracked his knuckles and rose from the table. “I have something to show you,” he said, moving into the living room.

  Randall watched him root through a pile of papers on the table next to his reading chair. He returned carrying a piece of paper, which he dr
opped onto Randall’s empty plate. For several seconds, Randall didn’t touch it. He could read it from where he sat. Three terse sentences requesting a leave of absence at the end of the semester without stating a reason why. Eric settled back into his chair.

  “Read it to me.”

  “Fuck you,” Randall whispered.

  “What was that?” Eric asked, cupping one ear. “You don’t like it? You can always toss it into the fire.”

  “I didn’t tell Kathryn anything, Eric!”

  “Why do I find that next to impossible to believe?” Eric barked. “What are you going to say now, Randall? That I should be proud that I was such an accomplishment for you? That you just couldn’t resist bragging to your friends that you’d managed to bed your married professor?”

  “You are nothing to brag about. And I’m starting to feel just as ashamed of this as you are.”

  Eric looked briefly stung, but then he replaced the look with one of feigned concentration. “Finally. What you feel! Maybe the minute you start considering yourself something other than my mistake, you might realize that your lapses in character are just as bad as the ones you’ve accused me of.”

  Randall got up and turned from the table before anything about his failing composure would give Eric an idea of how deep a scar he was prodding at.

  “Start with your parents!”

  Randall hurried to the back door. He heard Eric knock his chair back onto the floor. He was almost out the back door when Eric grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. Randall batted at Eric’s arm, but Eric managed to catch his wrist in a vise grip and Randall grimaced at Eric’s alcoholic rasps. “Enlighten me! Why is it that they have no desire to see you on Thanksgiving?”

  Randall groped for the doorknob with his free hand. Eric twisted Randall’s wrist with drunken force, bending his arm against the joint. “Eric!”

  “Come on, Randall! You’re so right! Can’t you see how generous I’m being? I’m giving you a chance to convince me that you’re something more than the rotten little shit I think you are. Rise to the occasion!”