The Snowman's Children

by Glen Hirshberg

  But the house is not my house anymore. It has a second story over my room, for one thing, a cedar-shingle addition that pokes through the pines like a treehouse. The living room window has been blocked off by a white wooden carriage swing. The swing is far too big for our little front stoop, which these people apparently consider a porch. A row of Christmas lights festoons the freshly painted gutters, and a reindeer sleigh rides the slope of the roof. I have one flicker of memory, my mother at the back kitchen window with the phone tucked into her newly dyed hair, chattering away to Mrs. McLean, her best friend. I have not seen my mother chatter like that even once, to anyone, since we moved.

  “We could ring the bell,” Spencer says. “See your old room.”

  “What time is it?” I ask. “Do you have a clock in this thing?”

  “Caveman car,” Spencer mutters.

  “It’s like ten, isn’t it?”

  Spencer’s eyes slide from the road to me. “Mattie, it was after ten when we started.”

  “Shit. We need to go back to the motel,” I say.

  “What for?”

  “I have a source.”

  Wiping a hand across his mouth, Spencer makes a little humming sound, way back in his throat. “You’re a drug dealer now? What does that mean?”

  “The librarian at the Birmingham Library. She was going to do a search for me. She said to check back.”

  “This is ridiculous, Mattie,” he suddenly snaps. “I’m going home.”

  I just stare at him. His shifts in attitude are making me dizzy. After a while, I say, “Fine. Drop me off.”

  Spencer says nothing. He drives.

  The way to the library looks less magical by daylight. All the porch cats have disappeared. There are kids playing football across two of the yards.

  Spencer pulls into the library lot, and I pop open the door. But as I start to climb out, his gloved hand grips my arm and drags me back against the seat.

  “Just tell me this. Are we trying to find Theresa? Or are we trying to piece together what happened since we saw her last?”

  For a few seconds, this seems like an important question, and I wrestle with it. Then it melts away like a snowball held too long. “Is there a difference?”

  “Answer the question,” says Spencer.

  I watch his face twitch. I have no idea what he’s getting at. I haven’t, in fact, for most of the morning.

  “Park the car,” I tell him. “Come with me.”

  Spencer opens his mouth, but he seems closer to vomiting than speaking. He’s so thin, like a paper skeleton folded into the seat.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Are you joking?” His lips twist downward violently, the way they did when he was young and angry, and I almost laugh. I can’t help it.

  “It’s good that you came,” I say, and get out, and he slides the car into the nearest space.

  I’m worried that Eliza will have gone, but as soon as I enter the library, I see her hunched over the newspaper table. Piled before her are three massive manila folders stuffed with printouts and clippings. She glances up, sees me, and grins again. “I—um, had a bit of luck,” she says. Clippings flutter off the table to her feet. She bends down to retrieve them, and I reach her just as she’s collecting the last page. It’s a facsimile of an old Free Press headline, in triple-size black letters, that reads FACE OF A DEMON?”

  I know that headline. I could probably reconstruct the story that goes with it word for word, complete with every print blotch and picture caption. Certainly I could draw the police artist’s sketch of the Demon’s face.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” Spencer mutters behind me.

  I try to remove the folder from Eliza’s hands, but she folds her arms on top of it.

  “You got me curious,” she says, looking over my shoulder at Spencer. “Shepherd Franklin, isn’t it?” she says, and Spencer blinks in surprise. “That is the proper appellation?”

  “Shepherd,” Spencer confirms, and he and Eliza eye each other in a way that makes me uncomfortable. It’s as though I’ve stepped all the way into Wonderland now, and everyone has stopped behaving properly.

  Eliza’s smile widens. “Eliza Findlay,” she says to Spencer. “Librarian. You’ve done some remarkable things.” She touches the sleeve of my coat with her hand. “If you’ve found Shepherd Franklin, there’s probably not much here you don’t know, Mr. Rhodes.”

  “Mattie.”

  “Mattie,” she says, and we sit down opposite each other at the table.

  “We better go,” says Spencer, and both Eliza and I look up at him. “You don’t have long, Mattie, you’re going back today, right? And she says she didn’t find anything.”

  “Mmm,” says Eliza, smile fading, curious expression trained on Spencer now. “I don’t think I quite said that.”

  Spencer plunks down on my right. He’s mumbling to himself under his breath. Except for the new librarian behind the library desk—a bespectacled, fortyish man with black and gray curls of hair dangling down his cheeks like dreadlocks that have come uncoiled—we appear to be the only people in the room. Eliza props the top manila folder in her lap and opens it.

  “Look,” says Spencer, his voice unreadable, strange. “Anything in there about neighborhood lawsuits? Or lawyers? We’re trying to track down the current owners of the Daughrety house.”

  Why he’s speaking this way, I have no idea. Eliza just eyes him. His mouth seems to have come unhinged, because he can’t quite keep it shut. Eventually, Eliza looks down, thumbs pages, then tosses me a small sheaf from the stack in her lap. The first piece is a feature from the Metro section about a threatened community lawsuit concerning the condition of the home of one of the city’s most prominent physicians and social activists, who died tragically two years ago. Speaking for the estate, Mrs. Rosa Daughrety Mills of Shaker Heights, Ohio, would say only, “We understand the concerns about the upkeep of the house, and we are doing all we can afford. But my brother left instructions in his will that the house is to be kept for his daughter, should she ever want or be able to use it, and we plan to honor his wishes.

  “Nothing about what’s happened in the suit since then?” I ask, looking up to find Eliza still watching Spencer, who may or may not have been mouthing something at her.

  “I don’t think it’s been resolved,” Eliza says. “I think that would have turned up in my search.” The light in here skims the surface of her brown-black eyes but illuminates little underneath.

  “Do you have a pay phone?” I say.

  “Over there.” She gestures behind her.

  I start to stand, then reach across the table and grab her hand. The gesture isn’t so much surprising, I think, as clumsy. “Thank you,” I say.

  “A pleasure, Mattie Rhodes,” she says, with no pleasure in her voice.

  The operator on the Cleveland end produces the number for Rosa Daughrety Mills of Shaker Heights, Ohio, and with a single click another phone in a whole new Daughrety house begins to ring. I turn around to signal Spencer and find him leaning toward Eliza, whispering.

  “Yep?” says a cheerful male voice on the other end of the line.

  “May I speak to Rosa Daughrety Mills, please?”

  “Telemarketer?”

  “What?”

  “Do you always ask for people by three names?”

  “Is she there?” I say. “Can I speak to her? I’m a friend of Theresa’s.”

  “Of Ther—” The line goes silent, and for a moment I think I’ve been cut off. Then I hear him exhale, and when he speaks again, the cheerfulness is gone. “Hold on.” Back at the table, Eliza’s face has reddened under her tan.

  “Who the hell is this?” says a voice in my ear, and my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. “Well?”

  “Ms. Mills, my name is Mattie Rhodes.”

  “So what? Why are you calling me?”

  “I’m a friend of Theresa’s. I’m calling from Detroit.”

  “What does that mean, ‘fri
end of Theresa’s’? Friend from when?”

  “Years ago.”

  “Be more specific, please.”

  “Look, Ms. Mills, I’m sorry if I’m bothering you. I knew Theresa in grade school. I’m...I’m here trying to find some old friends who meant a great deal to me. Theresa is one of them. Do you have any idea where she is?”

  When I called Jon Goblin, there was a constant hum of activity in the background—dog, child, vacuum cleaner. But Rosa Daughrety Mills’ house is as silent as the Daughrety house I once knew.

  “I don’t think I can help you,” she says. “Theresa never mentioned you.”

  “Ms. Mills, please. She really might want to hear from me.”

  “Mr.... Rhodes, is it? I seriously doubt that Theresa could give you whatever it is you’re looking for, and if you ever really knew her, you know she doesn’t respond very well to surprises.”

  “Wait!” I practically shout into the phone, closing my eyes in anticipation of the severed connection. When it doesn’t come, I open my eyes again. “Can you tell me how I can get in touch with Barbara Fox?”

  “Is that some other friend of Theresa’s?”

  “Oh. Sorry. I mean Barbara Daughrety. Your brother’s second wife.”

  “If you find her,” Ms. Mills says, “you can tell that gold-digging, self-centered, self-righteous little bitch never to get within a hundred miles of Cleveland, or she will have me to deal with. Got it?”

  The line goes dead. I stare at the wall while aftershocks vibrate all over my body. A long time passes before I turn around.

  Spencer and Eliza are no longer talking. Only Eliza is looking at me. Her cheeks are red, her eyes narrowed. She looks determined, or flustered, or furious. Spencer is staring at his knees.

  “Success?” he says, without lifting his head.

  “Weren’t you listening?” I mutter, and drop into the seat next to him.

  “I think you should tell him,” Eliza says. Several seconds go by before I realize she’s talking to Spencer. Snow ghosts sail past the window on the rushing breeze.

  “Tell me what?”

  “This is public information, Shepherd Franklin. He’ll find it anyway, if he wants it.”

  But Spencer is still speaking to Eliza. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he says. “You’re messing with things you don’t understand. And you’re going to hurt somebody. Or you’re going to help him hurt somebody. Again.”

  Coolly, Eliza flips open the massive folder in her lap and begins lifting pages out of it. Her eyes stay fixed on Spencer’s. “Mattie, I was hunting through the archives this morning and I came across something strange, right about the time of the Doctor’s death. I don’t know what connection it has to whatever you’re looking for or how your friend here got involved, but I suspect it might explain a lot. I suspect Shepherd Franklin thinks so too, though I admit I’m baffled as to why he would—“

  Spencer flies to his feet and rips the pages out of her hand. I jerk backward, stunned. Eliza barely flinches. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Really, Shepherd Franklin, I am. But I don’t see that you have a choice. And I don’t see why you’d want one.”

  “Tell me what?” I say again.

  “Fuck you,” says Spencer.

  “Tell him.”

  “I’m trying to protect her, goddammit.”

  He drops the pages on the table, face down. When he looks at me, his eyes are blazing in their sockets like black suns going nova. His body doesn’t shake so much as rock on its heels, too far back and then too far forward.

  “Spencer. Where is Theresa?”

  He collapses into a chair, as if I’ve let out all the air that held him upright, and his arms drop limply to his sides.

  He knows. He’s known all along.

  Chapter 22 – 1977

  My father yanked me inside, grabbed me around the shoulders, and crushed me against him while my mother screamed into the phone for the police. I tried to free my mouth from his sweater, spoke fast.

  “Dad, I think if I could just talk to Theresa—“

  “Sssh,” my father said.

  “Dad, really. I think she saw something. Maybe it’s not what—”

  Our yard exploded into light. The first three police cars and the famous red-and-white Special Update Action Van arrived simultaneously, horns and sirens screaming. All four vehicles careened to a stop in front of the drainage ditch at the bottom of our lawn. Twitching red lights from the squad cars and one blazing white beam from the Action Van’s floodlight raked the neighborhood. The van’s side door slid open, and Coral Clark, the Special Update on-the-spot reporter, spilled onto our driveway, her hair teased into its Farrah Fawcett wave, the snow-white jacket she always wore snapped tight up to her neck.

  Coral Clark and her two-man camera crew reached the doorway first. My dad had fallen back somehow, and I found myself drifting outside. I was mesmerized by the lights and the cameras and Coral Clark cooing at me. Shapes detached themselves from the shadows of trees along our driveway and slithered toward me. Neighbors, I told myself, but I couldn’t see their faces, and they moved spastically in the whirl of light. A microphone appeared in midair and hovered near my mouth like a fat black wasp.

  “What?” I asked Coral Clark, realizing she’d asked me a question.

  “Don’t talk to them,” said the first police officer to break through the circle of television people. I didn’t see his face, but his badge winked in the glare, as if he were some cartoon crusader coming to my rescue. The badge bore his name: SGT. ROSS. He put one enormous hand on my shoulder and said, “Come inside, son.” His voice came out slow and thick, like syrup.

  With no warning, I burst into tears, and the cameras zoomed in. They were panic tears, as far as I could tell. I didn’t know what to do or say. But I had to tell someone the truth right now. I didn’t want to tell it on TV or to a policeman. I was thinking I’d go to jail, that Ms. Eyre and Mrs. Jupp would hate me. But mostly I thought I’d never be allowed to see Theresa again.

  “Did you see his face?” Coral Clark asked me again.

  Still hypnotized by Sgt. Ross’s winking badge and the snow tinted red by the lights, I shook my head.

  “Did you see anything?”

  “His car,” I mumbled, as freezing breath burst in my chest. In my mind, a blue Gremlin was pasted onto Cider Lake Road like a Colorform. It was disappearing down the block toward the lake, brake lights flashing. “It was rusty,” I said. “Blue.”

  “And your friend—Spencer, right?”

  “He waved to me,” I said. I thought of the Cory twins at the moment of their abduction, walking and laughing with the long-haired man. Then I thought of nothing at all. Dazed, I raised my hand and waved to Detroit.

  One of the cameramen yelled, “Great!”

  The other said, “Shut up, man,” and Coral Clark patted me on the head. She wore bright red gloves that still smelled like leather. The neighbors’ faces had been seared free of features by the lights. Sergeant Ross dropped his hand on my back and practically lifted me through the crowd toward my house.

  When I came through the door, my parents engulfed me in their arms and began to sob. I became aware of their smell, the way they clutched me and each other. It was like being present at my own conception, suspended there between them, already myself at the moment they made me. Slowly, I emerged from my protective stupor and tried to talk. My whisper must have been audible; I could hear myself so clearly.

  “It’s a lie,” I said, while my skin tingled and stung. I tried to repeat it, louder this time. But the louder I got, the tighter the words knotted in my throat, until they became indistinguishable. “It’s a lie it’s a lie it’s a lie.”

  Sergeant Ross’s hand fell on my shoulder again like a lump of snow off a roof, and he steered me toward the living room couch. Alarmed, I dug my heels into the carpet, to no effect. He let me sit down on my own and then sat beside me, his bulk pinning me against the armrest. My brain buzzed as thoughts sizzled
through it. I couldn’t take my eyes off that ridiculous winking badge. Stiff strips of black licorice had been arranged in the pocket of his uniform like pens. When he saw me staring, he offered me one. I took it, but I had no desire to eat. He must be the department’s Kiddie Cop, I decided.

  “I think Theresa saw something,” I said, and then bit the insides of both cheeks. “She was at the window.”

  Sergeant Ross didn’t move or drop his gaze or change his tone. “Who is Theresa?”

  “She’s my friend. She lives up the block. Spencer and I were playing in her backyard. We should go talk to her. We have to hurry. We—“

  “Mattie,” Sergeant Ross said, his voice like a snake charmer’s flute. “Why don’t we start at the beginning?”

  I looked at the letters of his name. He had a thick chest. He was young.

  “Mattie, what were you and Spencer doing this afternoon?”

  I shrugged. “Playing.”

  “Playing what?”

  “I don’t know. Playing in the snow.” I flushed as I said that, and my voice broke.

  “Mattie, did you notice anyone following you?”

  I shook my head. “We came on the bus. There could have been someone following the bus, I don’t know.”

  “But as far you remember, the street was empty.”

  “Please, if we could go to Ther—”

  “Let me ask you this. If Spencer managed to escape, where would he go?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “My house, I think, if he got away fast enough.”

  After that, Sergeant Ross was silent for a while. Then he asked, “Is Spencer happy at home?”

  I thought of Mrs. Franklin in her flashing gold coat, and a new but fainter sadness slashed through me like distant lightning. “I don’t think his mom is happy.”

  Once more, Sergeant Ross went quiet, but I could feel his eyes. When I finally glanced in his direction, he said, “You’re an interesting boy, Mattie.”