The Forgotten Hours(41)
“Let him finish,” her father says. His cheeks are pink from the steam. “Boys should know how to cook, too, these days.”
“You want to surprise Mum, right?” Katie looks at the clock over the door. “If so, we’d better get a move on.”
“Nervous Nelly,” he says, and then to David: “Get me three bottles of wine from the basement. The merlot, okay? In the crates to the left of the boiler.”
When Katie has finished peeling, John shows her how to chop the carrots into julienne strips and create a glaze. It smells rich and sweet, like dessert. Shania Twain is still playing on repeat. Again and again. The dining room at the back of the house overlooks the yard, a large rounded doorway leading into the kitchen on one end and the vestibule on the other. The oak table is set with the white china from Gram and the silver with the vine pattern on the handles. When a car pulls into the driveway, John waves them over frantically.
“Holy Mother of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, that woman is punctual,” he hisses, flipping the radio off. Katie dims the lights. They hold their breath as a key turns in the front door.
“John?” Charlie calls out from the front hall. “Hello? What’s that smell?”
Katie clamps a hand over her mouth, suppressing a laugh.
Candles cast fingers of wavering orange light over the table settings. David’s body is rigid with excitement.
“Hello?” Mum stands in the arch of the doorway. She wears a sweatshirt, and her hair is greasy and tied in a low ponytail. In her arms she holds a pizza carton and a big bottle of Sprite. Katie waits for a look of delight to cross her mother’s face; why is she always such a downer? “Oh my goodness,” Charlie exclaims. A beat later, she breaks into a smile. “What on earth . . . ?”
During dinner, John lets the children have wine, and Charlie doesn’t complain. When he brings out the ice cream cake, he places it in front of his wife and sticks a huge spoon in it. Written on the cake in pink cursive is Charlie & John Forever. “All yours, honey,” he says. “You sure deserve it.”
The planes of Mum’s face are long and angular, and when she is happy, the angles soften perceptibly. In the candlelight she looks almost like a young girl, and Katie wonders if she will look like her when she is grown. She wants to jump up and hug her, but she’s not sure how Charlie would react. Sometimes her mother will stroke her hair, say how pretty Katie is, but she looks sad when she does it. Other times she seems opaque and unknowable, as though her daughter isn’t of interest to her.
“I’m going to get fat on you—just you watch out,” Charlie says, digging a spoon into the cake with gusto.
“Fat, thin, whatever,” John says, grinning. He spreads his arms wide. “Don’t matter to me either way, woman, ’cause you’re still the one . . .”
Charlie rolls her eyes, licking vanilla ice cream from the corners of her mouth with quick darts of her tongue.
The grown-ups have almost finished a third bottle of wine, and John sends David to fetch another one.
“Go easy,” Charlie says. “It’s only Tuesday.”
“And what a lovely Tuesday it is.” John motions to his son to keep going.
On his way back to the dining room, David calls out, “Wow! Still snowing. Think we’ll have a snow day tomorrow?”
“It’s, like, two whole flakes,” Katie says under her breath. In the last few months everything David says has been getting on her nerves. “It’s all gonna melt.”
“Hey, cool.” David comes into the room, two new bottles cradled in his skinny arms. “There’s a police car out there. Maybe the neighbors got murdered or something.”
“Ugh, please,” Katie says. “That’s so morbid.”
John shoots his wife a glance and stands up, laying his cloth napkin next to his plate. “I’ll see what’s going on. Finish up, okay?”
The tenderloin has been massacred and sits in a pool of cooling blood. Katie is sleepy from the red wine. Mum is talking about the gutters, of all things, worrying about whether they’ll withstand a heavy snowfall. “It’s not a good sign that it’s already so cold,” she says. “Anyone know what Farmers’ Almanac predicted?”
“Charlotte, come here, will you?” John’s voice rings out from the front hall. “Charlie?”
David and Katie look over at their mother.
“Coming,” she says. “Start clearing up, you two.”
Katie puts down her cutlery and scoops up the plates, running them under the faucet and slotting everything into the dishwasher. Her body is in a sudden dichotomy: though she is slipping knives and forks into their plastic baskets, every fiber of her being is attuned to what is going on in the hall at the front of the house.
People standing on wooden floors, footsteps, a shifting of weight that makes the floorboards creak. Multiple voices, one low and steady. At one point her mother cries out. Undergirding it all is the even tone of her father’s voice, like a steady drum rhythm in an experimental modern tune.
Katie goes over to the doorway that leads to the vestibule.
A policeman, in uniform. The swell of his stomach rests on a wide black leather belt from which hangs a nightstick, a pistol in a holster, and a large flashlight. His hands are clasped together in front of his groin as though protecting himself from an oncoming soccer ball, and from his fingers hang a pair of silver handcuffs. Charlie is talking with the other policeman, who stands by the door. Young, with short-cropped brown hair and a baby face. His posture defensive and uncertain.