Girl in Snow(67)

It’s a small gift box, from a cheap pair of department-store earrings. Pearly pink, lined with foam. When I pull the box out, I refuse to cry. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

The shell feels exactly how it used to, curled gracefully in my palm. The shell Zap gave me so many years ago, the one that lived under my pillow, with memorized ridges and folds, which I’d touch just to remember: One day, we’ll go away together. One day, we’ll get out of here. One day. It is smaller in my hand now, and only slightly less beautiful. This afternoon, the shell is just a shell from a beach in France. A doll’s ear. Whispered promise, lost to the wind.

The Token.

You’re supposed to act after three signs. You have to. A third sign is a last chance.



On my bike, Broomsville isn’t so limiting, or constrictive. Just a corner of the world, with whitewashed people and fuming mountains. The houses race backwards, a suburban conveyer belt, until I’ve reached the highway that winds up into the foothills.

I remember all those playdates with Lex and Lucinda. Lucinda was never cruel to me—just indifferent. And who am I to hate someone for not giving a shit? As Broomsville rushes past, I recall shy smiles and vague offers of lemonade, Lucinda handing me the remote so I could pick the last half hour of television before Ma came to retrieve us. Small things that did not count as friendship, but had to count for something.

And I remember what Cameron said, about places you go when you’re feeling locked inside yourself, and I go there—not for me, or Zap, or even Cameron. For her. This stupid, perfect girl with the inexplicable misfortune of being dead. I go because I am alive, and she is not, and there must be some cosmic reason for this.

It’s this cliff, up in the mountains. It’s very calm.





Russ





When Russ comes home from the station, Ines is standing at the refrigerator. The rusty door hangs open, the only light in the house. The page from Love in the Time of Cholera is still trapped beneath a magnet, faded, with curling edges. From behind, Ines could be anyone. Her hair hangs in a sheet down her back.

Russ had left in the middle of interrogating the art teacher—no explanation. A frantic need to get out from beneath the station lights.

Ines? Russ asks now, soft.

When Ines turns around, tears bubble in her lashes. Something is terribly wrong. She looks very sad to Russ, who holds his car keys too tight in his fist. The kitchen, all shadows.

What’s wrong? he asks.

Russ, she says, a quake. There’s something I need to tell you.

Ines slumps against the refrigerator door, next to a crusty bottle of mustard and a liter of flat Pepsi. Russ, she says again, this time an apology, a word she has knitted, soft, just for him. Behind her, a solitary bell pepper wilts in the vegetable drawer.



They’d started meeting months ago, at the Hilton Ranch hotel bar, to talk about Ivan. Marco had just started his program at the community college, and he knew all about tuition loans and applications—maybe this was the next step for Ivan. He could put all his philosophy to practical use. Marco suggested social work.

It just happened from there, Ines tells Russ. I am sorry.

Russ gathers his keys, wallet, jacket. Before he leaves, he asks his wife one thing.

Do you love him?

Though Russ knows the answer. Maybe instead, he should have asked—Do you love me? But Ines is weeping into her hands now.

Do you love Marco? Russ repeats, one hand on the door.

A stranger asked me that just last night, Ines says. I did not know until then, but yes, I think so. I think I do.



Russ took Ines up to the cliff in the mountains. Lee’s birthday, five years after he left.

They got out of the car on that winding forest road, and Ines was shivering, so Russ gave her his police jacket. They made the hike hand in hand. When they got to the top, Ines gasped. Russ had almost forgotten the beauty of the place, the reservoir spreading beneath the cliff, glassy and sanguine. The city on the other side, unimpressive clusters of beige homes.

It’s beautiful, Ines said.

I know, Russ said. This used to be my favorite spot.

Used to be? Ines said.

Russ nodded, left it at that. He wrapped his arms around his wife’s waist and breathed in her familiar scent. Top of the scalp. Ines, so warm against his torso, fleshy and malleable. It was late afternoon; the sun pierced the sky like an open sore. It hadn’t rained in over a month, and the reservoir was slowly ebbing to a cracked, dry crater.

Russ tried not to think of Lee, as Ines kissed his neck. But the memory of this place. He laid Ines down on a flat stretch of dusty earth and lowered himself on top of her. She laughed, pinned beneath him. Right here? Out in the open?

Only if you want to, Russ said, and he traced the side of her cheek with a hangnail thumb.

I want to, she told him.

Russ gave a part of himself to the woman in the dirt, the same lactic muscle that had loved and snapped before. She took that fragile, aching thing. Kissed it lightly. When Russ came, he cried. Collapsed on top of her. Ines held his face in both hands and sucked the tears from the corners of his eyes.

They never spoke of it again, and they never went back to the cliff. Ines didn’t ask what had cracked Russ open. She had made her move in this long game they played, this strategic withholding of crucial information. Russ was thankful she had not asked, that she had left that vast black-hole distance between them. Secrets remained secrets. Wife remained wife. Someday, he would tell her, Russ vowed, as they shuffled back down the mountain, sticky and bleary and stunned. He thought of that night, in California. Tell me about the people you’ve loved. Someday, Russ would, and when he brought her back up to the cliff in the mountains, it would just be the two of them—Ines and Russ and the wind over the lake. No ghosts.