Angels in the Snow

by Rexanne Becnel

  Though it was still not toasty warm in the big room, the fire Joe had built earlier had settled down and now was exuding a steady, glowing heat. Josie was curled up in one of the big chairs, fast asleep with her thumb in her mouth. Judith sat in the chair next to her. Although her eyes were closed, Charles was certain she wasn’t asleep.

  Jennifer and the other girl were sitting cross-legged before the fire. The Monopoly board was set up on the coffee table. Paper money, dice, and yellow and orange cards were spread out, forgotten for the moment as they both leaned over to look into the rabbit’s box.

  “Leave the poor animal to rest,” Marilyn mildly rebuked the two as she bent forward, potholder in hand. She fiddled with several cast-iron rods attached to one side of the massive fireplace and finally managed to make them swing forward past the main heat of the fire. She looked up with a pleased expression on her face. When she saw Charles watching her, she smiled.

  “Whoever built this house did us an enormous favor by including these swivel pot hangers in their new fireplace.”

  “I’m sure it was done for its picturesque quality, not for any real cooking,” he replied.

  “Well, picturesque they may be, but they’re practical, too. Cooking will be much easier if we don’t have to set everything directly in the coals.”

  The fire flamed a bit, heralding the entrance of the woodcutters on a cold gust of air.

  “Ahh, does it feel good in here,” Joe exclaimed. He put his stack of wood down in one corner, then crossed to Marilyn.

  “Good lord!” she squeaked when he gave her a hug, nuzzling his reddened nose against her neck. “You’re as frozen as a snowman!”

  She twisted in his arms and put her hands against his cheeks, then shook her head in mock exasperation. She glanced over at the two boys. “I hope you didn’t chop off any fingers or toes. Until you thaw out, you wouldn’t even feel their loss.”

  “Man, you should have seen Alex. He never chopped wood before today, but he did real good!”

  “Did you save a chip?” Marilyn asked as she pulled Joe’s hat off.

  “Yeah, right here.” Alex produced the chip. “Robbie said I have to carve something out of it.”

  “Is that an old custom?” Charles stepped forward, nearer the circle that had formed in front of the fireplace.

  Joe shrugged out of his heavy coat. “I don’t know how old it is. My grandparents celebrated every ‘first.’ First tooth. First step. First word and every other first. Each of their kids had a little treasure box for all kinds of ‘first’ mementos. My folks did the same for us, and now we do the same for ours.” He reached down to tousle Lucy’s hair. “I thought we’d never get a lock from this one’s head.”

  Jennifer peered at Lucy. “You’ve never cut your hair?”

  “ ’Course I have. Mom cut my bangs when I was eight.” She poked out her lower lip and blew a puff that lifted her bangs. She grinned when they fell back in a straight silky line. “They saved my first tooth, too. Gross, huh?”

  Jennifer switched her gaze to her mother. “Do you have my first tooth? Or hair from my first haircut?”

  Charles answered. “Of course we do. In your baby book. Don’t we, Jude?”

  Judith lifted her gaze to his. “Yes, we do.”

  “That is gross,” Alex interjected. But for once his grin was good-natured. “Watch out, Lucy. Jenn invents her own rules in Monopoly.”

  “I do not.”

  “You guys want to play?” Lucy asked. She scooted over to make room for them to sit. “We can start again, can’t we, Jennifer?”

  Jennifer stared up at her brother, then over at Robbie, who was already shedding his coat and crossing to them. “Sure,” she finally said. She edged over as well, then followed Lucy’s lead by collecting the paper money and redistributing it in four equal piles.

  Charles stared at the scene before him. The four children gathered around the low table, amicably jostling for the most comfortable positions. They took the pillows Judith handed them, then settled down to the serious business of rolling the dice.

  Joe and Marilyn sat on the hearth and talked quietly while Joe tested the coffee sitting in a pot to the side. He started to tuck a loose strand of Marilyn’s hair behind her ear, but stopped first to wipe the soot from his hand before finishing the gesture.

  Charles looked away and met Judith’s hooded gaze. He shifted from his left foot to his right. Finally he moved to one of the couches.

  “Why don’t you come sit over here,” he began, indicating the couch. “It’ll be warmer.”

  “I’ve got this spot all heated up,” she answered after only a brief hesitation. “There’s a comforter behind you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  There was an awkward silence between them that not even the children’s chatter and the Walkers’ quiet conversation could disguise. He felt defeated already. But with no alternative—no other rooms warm enough to retreat to and no phone or television for distraction—Charles sat down on one of the couches. Just beyond his feet Lucy perched on her knees, shaking the dice in her hands, trying to talk the plastic cubes into the best pattern for her.

  “Six. Yes!” She moved her piece forward with six enthusiastic jabs.

  “Marvin Gardens. Don’t waste your money on it,” Robbie advised her. “I already own one of the yellow ones, and Alex has the other. It doesn’t do you any good to buy it.”

  Charles leaned forward. “No real estate investment is ever a bad idea. If nothing else, you can always trade it. Before this game is done, I guarantee someone will want it.”

  Lucy looked over her shoulder at him and grinned. “All right. I’ll buy it.”

  Robbie and Alex both groaned, but Jennifer laughed. “My dad knows everything about real estate.”

  “Real estate?” Lucy asked.

  “Yeah. You know, buying land and buildings and stuff. Just like in Monopoly. Only he builds real hotels.”

  Joe looked up. “A real estate developer? I guess business must be a little down these days.”

  Charles relaxed back on the couch. “For some people. But a tight economy doesn’t have to be a curse. There’s always a good deal waiting to be made if you’re smart. The people who lose out are the short-term players. If you plan for the long haul, you’ll always come out to the good.”

  Joe nodded and glanced at the game board as Alex rolled the dice and moved his piece. “We bought nineteen acres a long time ago. North of Edgard. Built a dome first, then later on we built a bigger house.”

  “A dome?” Charles grinned. This family was even stranger than he’d thought.

  “Yeah.” Joe looked at him with a patient expression, much like a tolerant parent gives a difficult child. “We built it in one long weekend with the help of a lot of friends. I’m sure you can appreciate the fact that for less than two thousand dollars, we built almost a thousand square feet of space that’s still in use twenty years later. With only routine upkeep, I might add.”

  Charles studied the other man. “Not a bad return on your investment. Too bad I can’t get free labor for the new hotel, eh, Jude? ’Course, I don’t think the Neighborhood Preservation Center would go for a dome, anyway.”

  It irritated Charles to no end that the man’s tolerant expression didn’t change, except perhaps to become a trifle amused. What in the hell did a wannabe hippie who lived in a dome find amusing about him? He lived in a mansion in the finest neighborhood available. He employed close to a hundred people and kept over five hundred construction workers busy on a pretty regular basis. All this guy did was live in the boondocks and sell cheap art.

  “A dome isn’t for everyone,” Joe agreed. “Have you ever been in one?”

  “It’s cool,” Robbie threw in. “You can stand in a certain spot and just whisper, and someone in another certain spot can hear you really well.”

  “It feels like you’re inside the world. Like inside a globe,” Lucy chimed in. “Mom’s big loom is in China. Dad’s easels are
in California, and the wood stove is in the Middle East.”

  “That’s ’cause it’s the hot spot of the world right now,” Robbie explained. “Hey, it’s my turn.” He took the dice from Jennifer. “Anyway, you guys should come visit us one day. You’d like the dome a lot.”

  “We have our own swimming hole, too,” Lucy added.

  “We have a swimming pool,” Jennifer replied. “And a three-car garage and a huge rec room in the basement.”

  “A wreck room?” Lucy asked. “What’s that?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence in the room and Charles felt a stab of guilt. Jennifer sounded like a little braggart. He probably did, too. But dammit, Joe Walker had a patronizing way of looking at a person.

  Alex broke the awkward silence. “It’s short for a recreation room. Are the acoustics in that dome good for playing music?”

  Marilyn answered him. “It depends. It’s probably better for quiet types of music than for amplified sounds. What do you play?”

  “He’s a retro heavy-metal freak,” Jennifer piped up.

  “Shut up, dork.”

  “Well, you are.”

  “Heavy metal,” Joe mused. “Like Metallica, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper.”

  “Skid Row, Guns N’ Roses, Whitesnake,” Alex added.

  “Whitesnake. Who’s that guy that played guitar for them? Steve something . . .”

  “Steve Vai.” Alex stared at Joe with a surprised expression on his face. “You like Whitesnake?”

  Joe started laughing. “When I was in my twenties? Heck, yeah. There was some real talent there. Especially Steve Vai—that man can coax anything out of a guitar.”

  “Alex has a Steve Vai poster over his bed,” Jennifer said as she threw the dice. “He loves Steve Vai. He wants to be Steve Vai!”

  “Hey, my room is off limits to you. How do you know what posters I have?”

  “A bunch of long-haired scuzzballs,” she replied. Then, realizing what she’d said, she stared guiltily at Joe.

  “I take it you don’t like longhairs,” he said, pulling his own long ponytail from behind his back. “You think I should cut this off?”

  Jennifer’s gaze veered to her mother, then her father, and finally even to her brother. But she received no help from anyone. She peeked tentatively at Joe. “Well, I didn’t mean you.”

  “The music I really like was what came before heavy metal,” Joe said, glossing over the awkward moment. “Jimi Hendrix. Bob Dylan.”

  “So you probably aren’t a Katy Perry fan,” Jennifer said with an impish grin.

  Everyone started laughing at that.

  “No, I’m not really a fan of Katy Perry’s style of music. But she does have a positive message, which I wholeheartedly support,” Joe added. “I think every kind of music has its place. Music has always been an expression of culture, like all art is. Just because a particular style of music is foreign to our cultural knowledge doesn’t mean it’s not valid. In fact, music and all the other forms of art are mankind’s finest means of learning about one another.”

  Alex and Jennifer were staring at Walker in amazement. Judith also seemed fascinated by his words. In contrast, Lucy and Robbie were completely unaffected. No doubt Joe expounded like this all the time to them.

  “What’s the cultural significance of heavy metal music?” Charles asked. He knew at once his tone was too strident, but he couldn’t help it. This guy irritated the hell out of him.

  “Those who write it, perform it, and listen to it obviously enjoy it. Perhaps they’re angry with the status quo. Perhaps their childhoods were troubled or unhappy, and they view the whole world as an extension of their parents. They’re dissatisfied with some aspect of their life and are frustrated and angry about it. I think we’ve all been there. I know I have.”

  “Is that supposed to excuse satanism and all those rituals—they had unhappy childhoods?”

  The game had stopped and now everyone was staring at Charles. He hadn’t meant to sound so angry. Judith shifted nervously in her chair and both of his children were clearly uncomfortable. But he couldn’t back out now.

  “Everyone has a less-than-ideal childhood, somehow or other,” Joe replied. “I’m sure our somewhat nomadic lifestyle has left its marks on our children—both good and bad. The thing is, they’re three very different individuals. Robbie is the real settled sort. He digs his roots in deep wherever he is. Lucy is an adventuress, always up for our next trip. As for Josie.” He gazed fondly at the sleeping child. “I’m not sure; who knows where her boundless curiosity will take her.”

  He gave Charles a keen look, then glanced at Alex. “You like heavy metal. Are you a satanist?”

  “No!” Charles answered before the boy could.

  At once, Alex’s face clouded over. “How would you know?”

  “Alex!” Judith jerked upright.

  He sent her a furious glare. “I’m not a satanist. That’s too ridiculous for words. But even if I was—even if I burned dissected animals in my room—he wouldn’t know. He doesn’t know anything about me!”

  He leaped up from the floor and stormed away. Charles wanted to storm away, too. To hide from all the eyes that were now riveted upon him. But it was useless. The damage was done. The imperfections of their family life had been laid whole before these self-righteous strangers. And now they’d be even more smug.

  Marilyn broke the awful silence.

  “I think the hardest part of being a parent is accepting that our children are growing into people quite separate from us. They don’t need us as much as they once did.”

  Charles was trembling inside, but there was a soothing quality in Marilyn Walker’s voice. “Is it wrong to hope you’ve imparted a decent set of values to your kids?” he asked bitterly. He stared at the curtained-off stairs, where Alex had disappeared.

  “He probably has those values. Mom, the flag, and apple pie aren’t exclusive to the penny-loafers-and-Dockers crowd, you know.”

  If Joe Walker had said that, Charles’s temper would have boiled out of control. But coming from the soft-spoken Marilyn, the words served to deepen his depression. Was he being unfair to Alex? At that moment, he honestly didn’t know.

  “Well,” Jennifer interrupted. “What do we do with all of Alex’s properties? Do we divide them up or give them to the bank, or what?”

  “Maybe you could go convince him to come back,” Lucy suggested.

  “Are you kidding? When he gets mad he won’t talk to anyone. He just plays his guitar.”

  “Well, I guess we should just put his property back in the bank and keep on playing without him.”

  The game resumed, but not with nearly the same level of enthusiasm as before. Charles retreated into a National Geographic article about an archaeological dig in Greenland, but he remained acutely aware of the movements of everyone. Marilyn pulled out some yarn from her pocket and began to crochet—at least he thought it was crocheting. Judith closed her eyes again, although he was sure she wasn’t asleep.

  Joe checked little Josie’s brow and murmured to Marilyn that she felt cooler. Then he disappeared up the stairs.

  Probably going to seek out Alex, Charles thought sourly. He couldn’t pretend any longer about the root of his irritation with Joe Walker. He was jealous, plain and simple. The man connected with Alex in a way he himself never had—at least not in recent years.

  He stared at a picture of a Norseman, frozen for centuries, but the ancient features didn’t really register in his mind. Instead he saw the picture from his desk. Himself with Alex, Judith, and baby Jennifer. Alex had thought his dad the most important man in the world back then.

  He looked again at Judith. Her eyes were open now, but she was staring blankly at the ceiling.

  He’d been more important to her, too. Despite their struggles back then, she’d never talked of leaving him.

  He let the magazine fall to his lap, and closed his eyes. The fire crackled in the hearth. The three children’s voices were quiet as t
hey rolled the dice and moved their pieces on the Monopoly board.

  “Uh, Lucy. Would you consider selling me Marvin Gardens?” Robbie asked his sister sheepishly.

  Charles heard her giggle. “You were right, Mr. Montgomery,” she called. Then she turned to her brother. “Sure, I’ll sell it to you. But it’s gonna cost you plenty.”

  Chapter Seven

  Joe Walker came down the stairs with a battered-looking guitar. There was little conversation in the room as he fiddled with the instrument, tuning it and strumming a few chords while he hummed under his breath. The mood of the room was decidedly subdued. But being confined to one room with eight other people for the duration of a blizzard was enough to subdue anyone, Judith thought. Seven, she amended as she once more looked at the red bedspread that curtained off the stairwell, preventing the loss of precious heat to the upstairs.

  Alex was still up there. He must be freezing.

  She glanced over at Charles. Why didn’t he go up after him? Alex would never come down at his father’s request, though. Maybe if he ordered, but not if he asked.

  How had their relationship become so skewed? Most kids would balk at the order but consent to the request. But Charles and Alex were embroiled in a classic power play. Charles demanded that Alex be what he expected of a son—to look and act, and even think like a younger version of himself. And Alex was equally determined to be just the opposite.

  From the corner of her eye she saw Josie shift in her make-do bed. Her eyes opened, revealing a wide and blurry blue gaze. For a moment she appeared frightened. Clearly she did not remember where she was. Then her mother bent over her, and her rosy cheeks relaxed in a smile.