Snow Angels

by Stewart O'Nan

  The clasp gives way and everything pours out at his feet. The revolver bounces on the carpet. It’s bigger than he remembers, a cheap knockoff of a Colt. He watches her as he kneels to pick it up. It’s loaded, heavy in his palm.

  “It’s your father’s,” he says, half asking. “I remember it from the other night.”

  Annie shakes her head as if this isn’t happening. “Glenn,” she pleads.

  “Shhh,” he says. “Quiet.”

  He rounds the couch, the revolver at his side, pointed toward the floor. He gets behind her, and she turns to watch him.

  “Turn around,” he says. “Don’t worry about what I’m doing.”

  He leans the shotgun next to the TV.

  “Turn the lights on,” he says, but she doesn’t budge. “I don’t want to be angry with you now. Especially now. So turn them on. You can move, it’s all right.”

  She keeps him in sight as she backs around the couch. He doesn’t even have the gun on her. When she flips the switch, the windows blink with a colored light. He bends down to see in the front yard the small dogwood strung with bulbs.

  “Now lower the blinds.”

  She does.

  “Thank you,” Glenn says. He sits down on the couch. She’s stopped crying, interested in what he’s up to, looking for a way out. “Are. you supposed to work tonight?” he asks, though he knows she’s due in at six.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you eat yet?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want something?”

  “Please don’t do this.”

  “Shhh,” he says.

  “Please, Glenn, just let me go. I’ll leave here, I’ll go somewhere, I swear—”

  “Don’t talk. It’ll only make it worse for both of us. I don’t want to do this either.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “No,” he says. “We’re going to do this. We’re going to do it and that’ll be it. I’m tired of this crap and I want it over.” He sees that he’s waving the gun around to make his point; she’s mesmerized by it. He lays it beside his thigh where she can’t see it. “Sit down,” he says, gesturing to the chair by the window. “Sit.”

  “What do I have to do?” she says.

  “Shhh. Take your boots off.”

  “No.”

  “Please. Take your boots off.” He stands and lets her see the gun, and she starts unlacing them. “And your socks. Leave your coat on. You can undo it, but keep it on. All right, let’s go into the kitchen. That’s it. Turn the hall light on. Good. And the switch to the right here. Very good. And have a seat at the table. Turn the chair sideways so your legs aren’t under it.”

  With his free hand he opens the cupboard by the oven and, making a racket, pulls a large pot out. He turns on the hot tap, lets the water warm, then fills the pot. Still holding the gun, he places the pot on the floor by her feet. He lays the gun gently on the linoleum and dips both hands into the water, presses them to her cold feet.

  “Oh god oh god oh god,” she heaves. “Glenn, please, Glenn.”

  He rubs the water over her bones, over the meaty sole, the toes. He cups a handful and rinses her feet clean.

  As he’s finishing, she kicks him in the chest, but not hard enough to move him. He holds her legs while she curses him, screaming and flailing at his head. One or two blows make him flinch, but she’s not strong enough, not big enough. He’s been ready to do this a long time. He pushes her off, holds her by the throat, but she won’t stop. He covers her eyes with his other hand, presses her against the chairback so she chokes. She can’t see the gun, can’t reach it, and finally she tires, reverts to crying. When she’s done, he fetches a dish towel and dries her feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I am. Don’t you know I love you?”

  She doesn’t say anything to this. She’s hanging her head, no longer looking at him. Her neck is red where his hand was. The gun doesn’t interest her anymore.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” he says.

  “Fuck you,” she says.

  “Let’s go.”

  She won’t stand and he has to pull her up by one arm. He pushes her ahead of him toward the back door, but she falls down. He sticks the gun in the back of his belt and lifts her, walks her to the door as if she’s drunk. He clicks the spotlight on and the backyard shines, the snow twinkling, shadowed blue. His footprints from this afternoon are gone.

  The snow makes him blink, flakes tickling his ears. Wind, traffic. Before they reach the woods, she’s begun to mumble from fright.

  “It’s all right,” he says, rubbing her shoulders. “It won’t be long. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Her feet sink into the snow. He wishes it could be any other way, and, unsure of himself, picks her up, keeping her arms where he can see them. She’s weeping, curling herself around him for comfort. He hopes she’s quit. This is the hardest part.

  He sticks the gun in his coat pocket and, with her on his lap, slides down the hill on his bottom. In the darkness, water rushes over the spillway. The constant sound helps him. He holds the back of her jacket and steers her along the shore. From far off comes music, a fragment of some march everyone knows, all drums and trumpets. Above, a truck passes on the interstate, erasing it. She stumbles ahead of him.

  “No,” she repeats, twisting the word, “no, no, no, no, no.”

  “It’s all right,” he says, “it’s not long now.”

  They cross the bridge over the spillway and follow a slippery trail along the creek. It’s overgrown; they shoulder snow from the bushes. Branches whip their arms. He checks his coat for the gun, closes his hand around the grip. He doesn’t want anything long and drawn out, just to get it done. He doesn’t know how to do this.

  The creek stops at the pipe going into the hillside. The water’s high, gurgling tinnily. She stops. He stops.

  “Kneel down,” he says.

  She understands, and kneels facing the water, the soles of her feet sticking out behind. He takes the gun from his pocket. He touches her hair, what he loved about her first, bends her head forward.

  “Tell me when you’re ready,” he says.

  “I’m ready,” she replies.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, but waits, half turns to hear the music.

  “I’m ready,” she says again.

  The gun bucks and she splashes. Birds frightened by the shot flap above him, invisible in the dark. She’s floating, only a hand clenching and unclenching, trying to grip the water. Glenn empties the gun at her, stands a second staring at the holes in her coat, the whiteness of her feet, then runs.

  Crossing the spillway, he notices he still has the gun, and drops it in the water. He falls on the hill, claws his way to the top, where he sees the lights of the house through the trees. The snow is heavy but running is effortless. The music’s gone. He can’t hear a thing, only this wildness inside. It’s done, he thinks. He did it.

  He throws the porch door open, the back door. He runs down the hall, through the kitchen and into the living room. The shotgun’s where he left it. Forgetting his plan, he rushes out the front door and across the yard. The water tower dwarfs him.

  Bomber barks until Glenn tells him to quit. The windows are frosted over. Glenn gets in, tossing the shotgun onto the passenger seat. The truck turns over on the first try but the wipers won’t go. Keeping the lights off, he searches under the seat for a scraper, but like everything else, he’s thrown it away. Somewhere he’s lost his gloves, and he has to attack the snow with his bare hands. He does the front window and his side, gets in again. He opens his window and sticks his head out to back up the road, and then forgets the trash barrel, rams the bumper into it.

  “Fuck.”

  The wheels don’t grab at first; he fishtails past the mailbox, the engine roaring. He knows he’s panicking and squeezes the steering wheel to regain control over himself.

  “Lights,” he says, and flips them on.

  As he nears the stop sign, he sees
the Hardestys are home, the curtain drawn across the living room window. Waiting for a car to pass, he breaks the shotgun and tucks it under his seat.

  “Okay, take it easy.”

  He looks at Bomber but has nothing to say to him.

  Passing the middle school, he hears sirens, probably on the interstate. He’s right, he can see the red sweep of the lights coming on the other side of the bridge’s hump.

  “Shit.”

  Two, maybe three. He’s fucked, probably by Clare Hardesty—or his parents, he thinks. His original plan was to make it back to the lake, but that’s not going to happen. He swings into the high school lot, thinking it’s not a bad substitute. Butler for the lake, his false home for his real one. Born of the water, not this world of clay.

  It’s past six, but a few cars are just leaving. He sees a tall boy lugging a tuba, another with a snare drum under his arm. It’s the band he heard. A group of them cross the lot in his headlights. Behind him on Far Line a state trooper shoots by, siren whining. Glenn’s not paranoid; he can hear more in the distance. They’ll want his ass bad but he won’t let them. He never planned on surviving this.

  He cruises past the front doors, where a few kids are waiting to be picked up. Bomber watches them, wagging his tail. He’s been cooped up too long, probably has to pee. Glenn follows along the building to the end, then turns the corner. The back part of the lot is empty and well lit, the dumpsters snow-covered. They used to throw stones at the vapor lamps so they could make out here. He remembers the exact parking spot, the third from the end. He pulls into it and kills the lights, keeps the heater going.

  “Do you have to go out?” he asks Bomber, who mobs him.

  “Okay, okay,” he says.

  Before opening the door, Glenn holds him, nuzzles his bristly head, breathes the doggy odor of his coat. The fucking bunny, he’s forgotten it again. The thought of it on the couch is enough to make him break down.

  Bomber doesn’t understand, and licks his tears.

  “You’re my buddy,” Glenn says, and hugs him again, feeling his ribs give. He opens the door for him. Bomber leaps and twists in the snow, only partly showing off. Glenn thinks he’s beautiful; he could never be happy like that.

  It’s coming down too heavily to see town, only a muffled light in the clouds. Glenn turns off the heater, turns off the engine. Bomber’s over by the picnic tables, sniffing. Maybe he’s strange, Glenn thinks, but he doesn’t want Bomber to see him the way he had to see Tara. He makes sure his door’s unlocked so they won’t have to break in, lays his keys on his Bible, open to the Seventh Psalm. If there is evil in these hands . . . He reaches under the seat for the gun, and the horn honks.

  “You are such a fuck-up,” Glenn says.

  ELEVEN

  AT THE END OF OUR DATE I kissed Lila Raybern goodnight. She kissed me back harder than I expected and took her glasses off so they wouldn’t poke me in the eye. We stood on the landing in the cold. My mother had gone inside to give us some privacy, though I was sure she was spying from the front window. Lila had been eating wintergreen Life Savers, and the clean heat of her mouth thrilled me. I said I would see her tomorrow and watched her walk across the snow to her building. She waved before going in. In bed I said her name to the darkness. I decided I would buy the chain.

  From band practice I went straight to the Burger Hut. After eight, when it was slow, I called Lila from the kitchen. I helped Mr. Philbin close and he gave me a ride home. More often than not my mother was asleep. I let myself in, wolfed some Pop-Tarts and watched TV before turning in, thinking of how I’d see Lila in the morning. We sat together on the bus now, effortlessly betraying Warren and Lily.

  At school everyone talked about Annie and how weird it was. The afternoon—the evening—of the killing, I didn’t remember seeing Glenn pass through in his pickup. I had to read about it the next day in the Eagle, and when I did I realized that for a few minutes we had been—besides the janitor, who was credited with finding him—the only two people there. My mother was late picking me up. I stood in the light from the lobby, watching the snow, wondering where all the sirens were going, where the dog that wouldn’t stop barking was.

  I told no one this, not even Lila. When asked, I admitted only that Annie babysat me a few times. Our families weren’t that close, I said. At home, my mother would not discuss it, and when it was mentioned on the news, she changed the channel. The memorial service was private; we were not invited. My mother sent Mrs. Van Dorn a card, which she signed for both of us, and speculated out loud whether my father would remember to.

  I still had not had dinner with my father and Marcia. We were supposed to the Saturday after our last home game. It was a secret. My mother had forbidden me to see or even speak to Marcia, but this did not stop my father. Every time he took me out to slide around the snowy parking lot in his Nova, there she was at his apartment, reading and listening serenely to Brahms, with hot chocolate ready for us. My father kissed her at the door, which did not shock me, but which did not seem like him either. I could not get used to her tooth, or the way they smiled at each other, as if waging a silent conversation. When he sat beside her on the couch, his hand found hers, his thumb stroking the back of her fingers. His attentions reminded me of Lila and how we touched, but unpleasantly. I wondered aloud how Tony Dorsett and Pitt were doing; he said he’d have to buy a set just so I could watch it—as if he had no interest in the game, which was untrue. At home all Saturday and Sunday afternoon, he wallowed on the couch downstairs, soaking in a six of Iron City along with the entire college and pro lineups. And when did he begin listening to classical music? It was all for her, I thought, the way I decided to stop getting high so much after Lila said she didn’t like it. I wished that, like Warren jagging me, I could give my father shit about his sudden changes, but I knew that, like me, he wouldn’t appreciate it, no matter how true.

  My mother let slip—over dinner or in the car, watching TV or getting ready for work—that my father was confused, sometimes implying that he was mentally ill and needed treatment. I did not tell her that he seemed happy to me. I was careful never to mention Marcia in the house, but every so often my mother would come out with: “She’ll never marry him. I know women like that, and she will never marry him.”

  Once when she came back wobbly from a night on the town, she said, “That woman of your father’s is no good. There’s a name for women like her.”

  It was a Friday and Lila was with me, watching “Chiller Theatre.” Neither of us said anything. My mother’s shoes dangled from one hand; her lipstick was smudged, her hair rumpled as if she’d been in a fight. She dropped onto the couch beside us and lit up.

  “Your father doesn’t even see it. He doesn’t want to see it.” She leaned across me and spoke to Lila as if giving her advice. “He left me for her, did you know that? That was the biggest mistake he’ll ever make, mark my words. What is this movie?”

  In minutes she was asleep beside me, her shoes nestled in her lap. Lila said she’d better go, and though the movie wasn’t half over, I didn’t argue. I walked her to the door. My mother was snoring, sprawled now across the empty couch.

  “Is she all right?” Lila asked on the landing after I kissed her goodnight.

  “She will be,” I said.

  But she was not, and as Christmas neared she began to talk more often about her unhappiness, which I did not need to hear. She said she prayed to God I would not turn out like my father. She said everybody knew what kind of woman she was and what kind of woman Marcia Dolan was. She said if she did not have to take care of me she would leave this town and never show her face here again, didn’t I know that? When she didn’t talk to me, I could be happy. I had Lila and I didn’t need anything or anyone else. I listened to my mother with the same skepticism I had earlier reserved for my father, and when she had left the room, gave the finger to her long-departed back.

  “What are you doing?” Astrid said over the phone. My mother had begun calling her
every few days, regardless of the hour. “Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Stop thinking about yourself, for one thing.”

  I said nothing. She was right, but wrong in making it sound like my fault.

  “Do you want me to come home?” she asked. “Is that what you want?”

  In the transatlantic silence I thought of my mother, my father and Marcia, Annie and her little girl. Every session Dr. Brady made me talk about her. I still hadn’t dreamed of her, but several times a day I saw her floating in her muddied snowsuit and had to shake my head to get rid of her. Sometimes I pictured her while I waited to be picked up, scarfing down my two chili dogs. The drainpipe and the ice. The mitten slowly nosing the surface. The snow. I’d finish and feel the onions searing my throat and sometimes the heat made my eyes water. I went outside, where it was dusk and people were doing last-minute shopping. In the car I didn’t tell my mother how I felt. I hadn’t told Astrid, though I hoped she knew.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well I can’t,” Astrid said. “You’re just going to have to deal with it yourself. There’s nothing I can do right now anyway.”

  Then what, I wanted to ask, was I supposed to do?

  I could make breakfast. The next day I got up early and put the coffee on and made fried eggs and toast for myself and ate them, all the time waiting for my mother to smell everything and come see what I had done. When I had finished, her door was still closed. I poured her coffee and splashed in just enough milk, set it at her place and called for her. It was seven-twenty; she should have been showered and dressed by now. I knocked on her door and then pushed it open.

  The shades were down, the red numbers of her clock sharp in the darkness. She was in bed but not asleep, propped up on her pillows. Her arms lay limp on the spread, a Kleenex clutched in one hand. On the floor by her night table sat a scattering of used tissues. She sniffed and looked at me helplessly, and I tried not to be angry.

  “I’m not going in today,” she said. “I don’t feel well.”