The Winter People

by Phyllis A. Whitney

Colton smiled at me vaguely as he picked up several canvases and started downstairs. For all his words of praise, I was outside the clan.

  I could think only of Glen. I could see only the shock in his eyes. I moved toward him, wanting to offer my love, my belief, my reassurance.

  “Don’t believe what your sister thinks—” I began, but he brushed past me with a look that was almost one of revulsion and went to help his father.

  While they were carrying Colton’s pictures down to the car, I stayed beside the alabaster head, forced myself to look at it clearly. Yes—it was there. I knew what Glynis meant. That hint of the unhuman—that was surely not me. I knew where it came from now, and I felt as though I too were momentarily encased in ice. The face that was not my face would haunt my dreams tonight, I was sure, and I turned my back on the attic and went downstairs, wanting to get as far from it as possible.

  When the pictures were loaded in the car, I stood at the front windows to watch Colton drive away. The afternoon had grown dark, and shredded gray clouds had the look of promised snow about them. Nomi joined me at the window where I reported the superficial results of Colton’s “judging.” I did not mention what Glynis had said. Nomi seemed more than a little pleased—both at Glen’s success, and at Glynis’s failure. She never let me forget that at every turn she was against Glynis, but I did not know for certain whether that put her on my side. Now, at least, having bandaged my foot, she was aware of me, and I took advantage of the fact.

  “Tell me about Glen’s mother,” I said. “Tell me about Elizabeth.”

  Nomi did not answer or look at me.

  Outdoors, Colton got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. He rolled the window down, waved to Glen, and wound his way down the driveway to the road. Glen stood looking after him for a moment, and then went off through the woods—probably in the direction of Gray Rocks, to find his sister.

  When he was out of sight, Nomi took me by the arm, led me quietly back to her sitting room. Jezebel had found her way inside again and lay upon the shabby sofa, purring lazily.

  “You’ll always be safe in this room,” Nomi told me strangely. “Glynis never comes here. It’s too full of her mother, and she can’t bear the accusations it holds.”

  “Will you tell me now?” I asked. “I want to understand. There’s so much about the Chandlers that mystifies me. How is this room full of Elizabeth?”

  “On a stormy night this is the warmest room in the house, and since Elizabeth was so often cold, we used to spend our evenings here. And often our afternoons, when the twins were young. Colton was away a great deal, as he is now, so Elizabeth wanted me with her. She was never very strong, and the children were an unruly pair even then.”

  She went to a desk and opened it, while I sat beside Jezebel and stroked her fur. In a moment Nomi returned, bringing a photograph to show me. It was a softly done sepia print of a pretty, sweet-faced woman with her hair brushed into the upsweep of the thirties. Her eyes were clear, but a little troubled, and I suspected that her soft mouth would tremble easily.

  “She hadn’t the iron in her to deal with Chandlers,” Nomi said, and put the folder away. “That’s why I had to develop enough for the two of us. And I can say that I’ve held my own. They haven’t subdued me as they’d have liked to at times.”

  She rubbed her small pointed nose thoughtfully, and I smiled at her with growing affection. “I’m sure they haven’t. But I’m beginning to wonder about me.” I put out my foot and looked down at the swelling ankle.

  “After the holidays, get Glen to take you away,” Nomi said. “It’s tradition that they all come home for Christmas and stay through New Year’s Day. Then they’ll scatter again, but Glynis may cling to her brother now, so you must insist that you won’t stay in the same house with her for long.”

  That would depend on how Glen felt. If he was finding himself in his work, as his father seemed to think, then I must not be the one to fail him and insist on change.

  Persistently I went back to the subject of Elizabeth. “Keith told me his grandmother fell through the ice out on the lake beyond Gray Rocks.”

  Nomi knelt before the fire and fed it several birch logs. Then she sat on her heels on the hearthrug and held out her hands to the flames as if a chill had touched her. In stark, unemotional tones she told me the story.

  “It happened on a New Year’s Day. Elizabeth took Glynis skating. Glynis was busy playing with some new Christmas toy and didn’t want to go out. Even when she was five Glynis had an imp in her. Glen had the same perversity, but in him it takes a slightly different turn. That day, before they left the house, Glynis was teasing to skate in her favorite place. The weather had warmed, so there had been some thawing and that particular place—though it’s good for skating because the surface melts early, then freezes smooth—is often doubtful as well, because it’s fed by springs all year round. To make her stop her begging, Elizabeth said they would go where Glynis wanted and see how strong the ice was. Exactly what happened we’ll never really know. How is one to get the truth out of a five-year-old child who has been terrified? As far as we could reconstruct from what Glynis told us later, she would not listen to her mother’s warnings. She put on those little skates of hers and went skimming out over the ice that swayed under her weight. Perhaps if Elizabeth had stood on the shore and waited for her naughty child to come back, everything would have been all right. But Elizabeth must have lost her head and tried to go after Glynis to bring her back before the ice cracked through. And of course it did crack under her greater weight. She was the one caught in the freezing water, while Glynis skated safely back to shore.”

  Nomi fell silent. She watched the reddening birch logs as intently as though she saw the whole thing enacted there. Her face was shadowed with pain—and something more.

  “So Glynis watched her mother die and knew it was her fault?” I said softly.

  Nomi got up from the hearth and sat in a chair. “No. It was worse than that. Perhaps if she had run straight back to the house someone might have been in time to rescue Elizabeth. But instead the child knew she was in for punishment, and she ran away and hid. It was more than an hour before her mother’s body was found. In the beginning it was thought that Glynis might be lost in the lake, but we first beat the woods for the child—and found her hiding in that cave at the top of Gray Rocks, where she was forbidden to go. When her father brought her down and carried her home she was hysterical with fright. It was weeks before we found out more or less what had happened.”

  I did not want to be moved by anything which concerned Glynis Chandler, yet the story stirred me. I could feel pity for the child who had caused the tragedy. Her fault was the fault of a child, her misbehavior that of a five-year-old.

  Nomi’s eyes were bright, her expression harsh. Emotionally she had removed herself from the room where Jezebel and I sat, and was reliving an old and terrible experience.

  “You can’t keep on blaming her,” I said. “How can you hate a child for something that was childish folly, whatever its outcome?”

  “She was never a child.” Nomi turned her chill look in my direction. “Glynis was always evil—a little monster even when she was young, and now a more dreadful one. She hasn’t changed. You’ve only to look at your ankle for the answer to that.”

  “Perhaps the adults who blamed her turned her into something monstrous,” I said. “What happened afterward?”

  Nomi shook her head at me indignantly. “We were never cruel to her. I couldn’t forgive her, but I didn’t take out my feelings on her. I tried not to let her see how I suffered over my sister’s death—not when Glynis was a child.”

  But a child would know, I thought. A child would know whether or not she was loved.

  “That was when she turned even more wholly to her brother,” Nomi went on. “They were already close as twin peas, and after what happened she could love and trust him as she could no one else. He never blamed her, and lacking a mother they clung to each
other. Colton was no substitute. And I could only give them my care. I came to love little Glen, and I’ve loved him ever since. But his sister is something else. I warned you she’d break up your marriage if she could. Now it seems that she’ll try to injure you physically as well. Perhaps she’ll even try to use Keith against you, the way she got that trap from him. She’s constantly bribing him with talk about taking him to New York, though I can imagine the sort of life she lives there—the corruption! He’d hardly be of use to her. But here—”

  “Why does Trent let his son stay at the lake where he’s sure to come under her influence?” I asked.

  “That’s ancient history. It had to do with the divorce bargaining that went on. He wanted the divorce. Glynis didn’t care. So the agreement was that the boy remain with his grandmother, where Glynis could have easy visiting privileges. She didn’t want the boy with her, needless to say. And in the beginning it didn’t matter. Now what she is doing matters a lot—yet Trent’s hands were legally tied. This is another score I hold against her.”

  Nomi had revealed herself more than she intended. Perhaps this was the reason why she had avoided talking about any of these things—because she knew she might betray the rage that still seethed in her and was so ugly a thing.

  The sitting room made me uneasy, and once more I wanted to get away. I told her I would go upstairs for a book from my room, and I left her there before the fire with Jezebel.

  I was still horrified by Nomi’s story, still living in the past, pitying the child Glynis had been. I walked down the hall to the foot of the stairs, and met Glen as he burst through the front door with the grown-up Glynis on his heels, storming at him. I had never seen Glen so white-faced and furious. He passed me as though I were not there, and dashed up the stairs. The front door slammed after Glynis as she plunged into the hall. When she saw me she lounged against the newel post, her hands thrust into the pockets of her fawn trousers, her short hair ruffled by the wind that had tossed it. The look in her eyes promised me something—and I forgot the forlorn child. As she studied me for that endless moment she put her left thumbnail to her eyebrow and traced its contour again and again in that gesture which seemed to mean that she was busy once more at her plotting.

  “What’s the matter between you and Glen?” I asked her.

  She smiled as a cat might smile—secretly. I wondered that she did not like cats when she resembled them so much of the time. I did not like the promise of her look. Whatever she was about to do, I would not want to be on the receiving end.

  At the sound of Glen’s clatter up the stairs, Nomi came out of her sitting room and stood watching from the back of the hall. But before I could start upstairs after my husband, Glen ran down again, having pulled a heavy jacket over his sweater. I tried to speak to him, but he brushed past me.

  “I’m going out. I’ve got to be free of this house for a while. I don’t know when I’ll come back. Don’t expect me till tomorrow—if then.”

  “Glen!” I wailed. “Glen, take me with you!”—but he was gone without heeding my words.

  Nomi took action at once. She snatched a coat from the rack in the hall and put it on as she ran after him. When I hurried onto the veranda I saw her rush to Glen’s car and manage to get into the front seat before he started the motor. They went off together, careening around the turns on the way down the hill.

  Glynis’s laughter had an ugly ring. “Nomi will take care of him, dear. My darling brother isn’t pleased with us just now. But Nomi will see that he doesn’t drive too wildly. Which may be a wise restraint with a snowstorm coming on. The first flakes are falling now. How I love winter! I can’t breathe in hot weather. But when it’s cold I can fill my lungs, get outdoors and live. I can hardly wait for the first blizzard—I hope this is it. I hope it will snow forever—pile drifts as high as the house!”

  I looked up at a whitening sky, saw the shimmer of beginning snow.

  “What did you do to him?” I demanded. “How did you upset him so?”

  She started up the stairs. “Don’t you think the point of the matter is what he has done to me?” she said, and ran up to her room.

  As I stared after her Jezebel came out of Nomi’s sitting room. She had heard Glynis’s voice and tone, and every hair on her tiger’s body was fluffed to twice its size. She walked toward me stiffly on the tips of her claws, like a cat in a fit, and her bushy tail was erect, her yellow eyes a little mad.

  I fled to the drawing room and closed the door. Except for Mrs. Dixon, who was busy in the kitchen getting dinner, I was alone in the house with Glynis and Jezebel—both of whom were a little mad. And by eight o’clock the housekeeper too would be gone.

  8

  Mrs. Dixon served dinner early, rushed the dishes into the washer, and was on her way. She had no wish to drive home in a snowstorm, she said, and it was getting worse outside every minute. When she had gone, Glynis and I sat in the drawing room with our coffee as though everything were as usual. All through dinner we had made some effort at conversation, for Mrs. Dixon’s benefit, but there had been hardly a minute when Glynis did not watch me with that dark, veiled gaze which betrayed nothing of what she was thinking. My uneasiness grew constantly greater.

  After the housekeeper had gone we sat before the fire listening to the storm buffet the house and wail about its eaves. I could imagine its pointed ears pricked intently to listening. Blasts of snow rattled against the windows, harsh as desert sand, and now and then the house shuddered under the impact.

  Glynis had dressed for dinner, just as though her father and brother were there, and tonight she wore a long silk jersey print of swirling yellow sunflowers against a white ground—dramatic and bold. I had not gone upstairs to change from sweater and slacks because I had not wanted to be up there alone with her. It seemed pointless to keep up the amenities between us now that she had shattered Glen’s confidence in his work. Most of the time I listened for the sound of Glen’s car returning—a sound that never came.

  “You asked me a question quite a while ago,” Glynis said, sipping her Cointreau, her eyes speculative. “You wanted to know what had upset Glen. Do you still want to know?”

  I let a space of time go by while I finished my coffee and set down the cup. “I suppose that you upset him,” I said. “But how?”

  “I’d like to tell you.” Glynis nestled into a corner of her sofa as though this was to be a cozy family chat. “I think it might be a good thing for you to understand, now that you’ve married him. Neither Glen nor I are separate people. We’re one, really. I’ve always known that; and I’ve always accepted it. Lately he hasn’t. He has developed the curious notion that I am sucking him dry to feed my own talent, so there is nothing left for him that will be his own. Lately he has been trying to escape the tie between us and be someone totally remote and separate from me. Alone. That’s why he married you. That’s why he’s trying to create that little masterpiece upstairs.”

  “From what your father says, it may very well be a masterpiece,” I told her.

  “Oh, it’s all of that! I never said it wasn’t. But he hadn’t seen, until I pointed it out to him, that it is still another side of his twin that he’s creating. This time in that lovely white alabaster. Underneath all that young prettiness that is you, Dina, he has created a force that is me. Only your face is there—something outward and superficial. The soul of the stone, the thing that is bringing him fulfillment is still me—Glynis Chandler, his twin.”

  The notion was absurd. I wanted to tell her that. Yet—what if it was so? When I had looked at the alabaster head this afternoon, I had sensed a quality in it that was nothing like me.

  I left my chair and went to the windows, tried to peer out at the dervish dance of snowflakes, but saw only my own face and the room behind me reflected in black glass.

  “How soon will the snow plows go through?” I asked over my shoulder.

  “Who knows? Sometimes we’ve been snowed in, or iced in, for two or three days. We
’re not on a major road, and the plows go through first where school buses make their pickups. Besides, if the snow gets much deeper than it is, no one will be able to come up our driveway until we get it plowed out. That’s Glen’s job, when he’s home. We have a snow plow tractor that he runs. Or Nomi will call up some neighboring farmer. But neither are here to take care of it now, so I expect we may be stranded.”

  “Can’t you—?” I began.

  She was so still in the room behind me that I turned around to find her watching me with amusement brightening her face. Her thumbnail traced the line of one brow lightly.

  “Perhaps I could—but will I?” she murmured. “Don’t you find it rather cozy here, with just the two of us? The very two who are most closely concerned with Glen!”

  Little cat claws seemed to tap at the back of my neck, almost as though Jezebel was touching me with cold paws. But I knew instinctively that fear was the thing I must never show Glynis. She would enjoy it too much. She would use it, as a leopard stalks and freezes its frightened prey. I must not think now of that glass ball hurtling toward me. I must not think of a trap in the woods. I must never betray that I watched her, waiting for the leap that might destroy me.

  “I’ve never seen a country snowstorm,” I said. “Perhaps I’ll go out for a walk around the house.”

  “Wait,” she said. “There’s something I want to show you first. I’d like you to see a picture I painted a year or two ago. I think it’s right here.”

  She went to a slant-front desk and drew the top drawer open by its brass pulls. When she had shuffled through several sketches and paintings, she selected one and brought it to me. Not really wanting to look, I carried it to where the light was brightest beneath the big chandelier.

  The watercolor was not a large picture—perhaps no more than seven inches by ten—and its subject held me rooted in morbid fascination. It was as if Glynis had known I was thinking about traps and big cats. As if her sensitivity—or hatred for me?—gave her extra-sensory powers that let her read my thoughts.