Under Shifting Glass (15 page)

I trot happily back down her path, thinking how even my footprints have joined me to her, my house to hers.

I don't go home. I have a second mission. I'm so wrapped up in my head that I almost fail to notice there's someone else out in this night. Several doors down from Zoe's there's a young guy I don't recognize heaping snow outside his garage, shaping it into something, molding it. I don't want him to see me, I don't want him to stop me, or chat, or ask me where I'm going, because I realize I don't really want anyone in this world but me. I want it all for myself for a little while longer.

But he's too absorbed to notice anything. His head (like mine) is right inside whatever he is doing outside the garage in our joined-up cul-de-sac. So he lets me be and I let him be as I walk on, on toward the park.

The streetlights stop here, so it is a little darker, but not much. I pass some kind of large electrical junction box, which I must have passed a million times before and never noticed. I notice it now because, in the huge hush, it hums.

The park is a winter wonderland, better than any Christmas card I've ever seen, the trees dark shapes beneath their glittering coats of white, the odd winter pansy, yellow and purple, pushing its velvety head through the blanket of snow. I feel full of joy, as though I could run and laugh, but I don't. I keep very quiet and still, at one with the landscape.

I pass the playground, looking at the ledges of snow on the swings and slide, and on the half-moon swing where Zoe and I have talked so many times, and on again to the bowling green, where the old men and the old women come out in the summer and play together with whispers and the soft clack of balls. The path to the bowling green is lit, though I've never noticed these lamps before. They are not oval-shaped, like the streetlights, but round like little yellow globes, like little worlds all their own.

Why have I chosen the bowling green?

Because it's gated off. Because the bench I have in mind is screened from the rest of the park. It is not a place you just pass; you have to choose to go there, go deliberately.

I open the gate.
No Dogs
, it says.
No Games
.

I go straight to the bench and sweep all the snow from the left end of the bench toward the middle. I hear a rustling, which surprises me, so I look up at the plant that screens the bowling green from the road, which turns out to be a palm tree. Or maybe not a palm tree (because how can there be a palm tree here?), but certainly a tree with long, spiky fronds that looks as if it belongs in a warmer climate. The wind is rustling through the spikes, shivering them.

Next I sweep all the snow from the right-hand side of the bench toward the middle. Now I have two mounds of snow,
very little mounds, but the babies are very little, too, so it doesn't matter. The piles seem to be leaning toward each other. I start sculpting little arms and little hands, and bring the mounds closer together so the space between the two gets smaller and smaller and then, all at once, there is no space between the mounds. The babies are joined.

Then I start on the heads, only there really isn't quite enough snow, so I have to pick up some from the green itself, and I forget that there is a ditch all around the bowling area, and I nearly fall, but I don't, and that feels good. I take only as much snow as fits into my cupped hands.

I begin with Richie's head, because Richie always seems to come first, and I take time to make his head strong and stable. Then I cup my hands once again and I take snow for Clem. I don't intend to use less snow for him, but when I join the ball of snow to his chest it seems as if his head is smaller than Richie's. It is also not as stable. I press it in around the neck, but still the head wobbles, leans, seems to want to rest against his brother. I try to separate the heads.

Joined chest, separate heads.

But Clem resists me. He wants to lean against his brother. He's only happy, only stable when their heads are touching, kissing. I think, fleetingly, how it would be if my head were leaning on Zoe's shoulder, if she were supporting me.

So I let Clem be, let Richie support him.

Clem's choice.

How many other choices does my little brother have right now?

Then I stand back, look at the snow babies clinging there together, and finally pull the flask from my pocket. What am I expecting? A sign, I guess. I'm hoping that the little flame will be just slightly stronger, slightly brighter. What I'm not expecting is what I find: a globe of shining white. The surface of the glass is dense but sparkling, like a frosted windowpane and inside . . . oh, inside. How can I describe it? It's lit and fluttering and it looks like there are strips of paper floating there, thin pale strips, the color paper would be if you cut it from moonlight. It's ghostly and beautiful and it makes me happier than I can say, because I know where it belongs. It belongs at the heart of the snow babies.

So I put it there, lean it just where the babies join, so that they can share. As the flask shimmers between them, I half-expect it to act like a real heart, and for the babies to get up off the bench and walk and dance and fly like they did in
The Snowman
, a movie Zoe and I used to watch when we were five.

They don't, of course. It's just my heart lifting, because I've finally made a difference. Writing the letter, building
the snow babies, one or the other, both, I don't know. But instead of destroying something, crushing something up, as I did in the Shrine Room, I've begun to build, to create, to add to the sum of human happiness.

“Is that it?”

No reply.

Then, as I gaze, the flask tips slightly, responding to some unevenness in my packing of the snow, probably, but it comes to rest more on Clem's side, just under his arms, as though he were reaching for the flask, wanting it nearer. In this night of messages, what can this be but a message?

“You want Clem? Clem wants you?”

No reply.

“Then I'll take you. I'll take you to the hospital. After the operation—yes?”

After the operation. What if there is no
after the operation
?

What if, because there's no time for the rehearsal operation, they choose the wrong socket wrench and Clem doesn't make it—he dies on the operating table?

This is a night for bravery, but suddenly I don't feel at all brave. I feel the monsters begin to crowd around again.

So I hedge my bets. I can't stop myself, I play the Sidewalk Crack Game one final time.

To date, the monsters and I are running even. Si and I won (just) with the timing chain. The monsters won in the church. This will be the decider.

“Winner takes all,” I say. “Yes?”

No reply.

Not from the flask.

Not from the monsters.

“If the snow babies still exist when the operation starts tomorrow morning, then everything will be all right.”

The operation is scheduled for 8
A.M
. I don't know what the time is now (the bowling green clock says 3:30, but it's been saying that ever since I arrived). Whatever time it is, the snow babies only have to last about four or five hours, and it's cold and there's no one in the park, and anyway they're hidden and even the early sledders won't come here because the bowling green area is so flat and . . . surely I can win this one? For sure—right?

“If the snow babies exist when the operation starts,” I repeat, “Richie will live. Clem will live. Both of them. They'll both survive.” Then, like chucking salt over your shoulder for good luck, I add, “As will my friendship with Zoe.”

Out in the moonlight, where the white sky touches the white earth, dreams feel real.

The wet of the snow has penetrated my gloves and my fingers are freezing. I didn't notice this before, but I'm noticing it now, just as I'm noticing how the white-blue sky has gone slightly rose-colored and gray. Maybe it's dawn already. Only three hours for the snow babies to last. I listen for the birds, but I don't hear any. Maybe the birds are hiding. Maybe the hush has gotten them, too. There aren't even any cars. There's just me and my breathing again and a sudden desire to be home, to be tucked up in bed.

I feel exhausted.

I say good-bye to the babies, tuck the flask back in my pocket, and follow my own prints out of the park, messing them up slightly by the entrance to the bowling green, as if I could disguise my going there.

As I enter the cul-de-sac, I see that my neighbor, the other night sculptor, has mounded his snow into a huge snow mermaid, a beautiful woman who seems to be compacted together, carved out of ice. I stop to admire her. The boy (or guy) is no longer there, but he's signed his name on the sculpture, as if it were a work of art: Bruno Teisler, it says. And I wonder briefly about this Bruno Teisler who lives in my cul-de-sac who I've never seen before, and then I pass on by, stopping only to glance up at Zoe's window before arriving at my own house.

The porch light is on. The door is not quietly closed. It's wide open. And in that open doorway, coat and gloves on, is Gran.

“Where on earth have you been? Just what do you think you're doing? Don't you think I've enough to be worrying about without this, you selfish, selfish child?”

These are just some of the things Gran says, or rather she shouts. She is shouting so loudly I think the whole street, the whole world, will hear her. There will never be hush again.

“And you're shivering. Look at you! LOOK AT YOU! And wet. You're wet. Jess, you'll be sick. You'll be really sick. You know that?”

I don't know anything. I just feel tired and silent.

“Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”

Then she scoops me up and hugs me tighter than I've ever been hugged before, and just for once, I don't mind being all scrunched up against her.

She brings me in and strips me down and makes me drink hot cocoa (I am shivering even with my hands around the warm mug). And she never stops talking and still I don't say anything.

“How could you?” she repeats, over and over. “How could you? You know about your father, don't you?”

And of course I know, but it doesn't stop her telling me again anyway.

“He went out,” Gran says. “Went out in the snow when he was six. Not at night, of course. Not at night. Even he wasn't that stupid. No, in the day. He was supposed to be in the garden, playing. Children do play in the snow. For hours. And I was getting on with something in the house, like you do, and suddenly it was six o'clock. So I called for him. Called and called, only he didn't answer. So I went out. And that's when I found him. Lying flat out in the snow. Flat on his back. I thought he was dead. But he was just asleep. Asleep. How could anyone—ANYONE—just fall asleep in the snow? I'll never understand that as long as I live. Never.”

There are tears in her eyes.

“And that's why he always had such a weak chest. He was a sickly boy after that. And I always wondered, when he died so young, I always wondered: If I'd looked out that afternoon, if I'd seen him, if I'd stopped him . . .”

I've heard this story many times and it always ends here, with the blame. But now, for the first time, I wonder, too. I wonder why my father lay down in the snow to sleep. It can't have been because he was tired. There are many more comfortable places to sleep than the snow. So maybe, like me, he was trying things out, experimenting, playing a Sidewalk Crack Game all of his own. If I lie down in this snow and no one finds me, then . . .

The monsters won't get me.

I so wish I could know that game and the boy who played it. The boy who grew up to be my father. Perhaps he would have things to teach me about monsters. And then, suddenly, I experience the loss of my father as a physical thing, an emptiness somewhere deep inside me. And I want to fill that hole with the sound of his voice; I want to hear my father's voice. I could listen to him for a lifetime.

But there's only Gran talking.

When Gran finally finishes, she fusses me into bed.

“And don't think you're going out anywhere tomorrow!” is her parting shot. As she closes the door, I reach into my pocket.

The flask is still white, though not quite as sparkling, not on the surface, anyhow. But inside, among the floating paper strips of moonlight, there's something new, a thread of yellow. Or gold, pale gold, like a hair from the mane of a lion, or the brightness of a smile. It throws a filament of light to the white swirling surface, where a single seed fish swims.

“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

I lie down and sleep. I dream that I am lying in the snow next to my father and we keep each other warm.

I wake to find the flask still in my hand. I must not have let it go all night. The glass has taken heat from my body so it's warm, too, its surface not frosted anymore but transparent. I can clearly see the strips of moonlight, the threads of gold, and, yes, the seed fish; the single seed fish is still swimming.

The snow babies must have made it through the night!

So the real babies will make it through the operation.

Clem will live!

Richie will live!

Zoe will smile on the world and on me!

I pull my alarm clock close. It's ten o'clock already. The babies will have been in the operating room for two hours. I
charge downstairs in my robe and arrive in the kitchen just as the phone rings. I get to it before Gran.

It's Si.

“They're okay?” I cry. “Aren't they? Richie's okay and Clem's okay and it's all going fine, even though there hasn't been a rehearsal operation. Right?”

“Not exactly,” says Si.

“What?”

“The operation. It's been delayed.”

A sudden chill. “Why?”

“The snow. Half the team haven't managed to get in. One of the doctors is marooned somewhere way out of town. Dug his car out, but the roads are impassable.”