Winter Loon(90)

I picked up the perfume bottles on the dresser and smelled each one, trying to pinpoint which was her favorite, which one she most smelled like. I pulled open the top drawer and saw a crumpled assortment of colorful underwear and bras. I put my hand in the drawer and felt around, touching the texture of the fabric and the lace, imagining her body underneath her jeans, her T-shirt, the uniform she wore to work each day. I looked up and saw myself in the mirror. I did look like my father. I could see it better in this house where he’d stood. Behind my reflection, I could see her bed. Had my father held her there, pulled the shirt over her head? I embarrassed myself, how far I could go with Aveline in my imagination, occupying my father’s skin.

Annaclaire’s bus dropped her off right when the snow began to fall. We played Candy Land and dolls until the squat senior shuttle delivered Mrs. Blue home. By the time Aveline arrived with bags of groceries and a turkey for Thanksgiving, several inches were on the ground and it was coming down hard. We ate spaghetti for dinner, and I took note that all three of them ate it differently. Mrs. Blue used a spoon to manage the twirl, Aveline spun her fork against her plate, and Annaclaire shoveled and slurped with such force that the ends whipped up and splatted against her nose, which caused eruptions of laughter around the table. So she’s a shoveler, I thought, like our father. My mother used to cut her spaghetti with a knife just to spite him, to prove somehow that she was more cultured. Here, another kind of family—one that didn’t put on airs. Me, a spectator again. I rolled my spaghetti like Aveline, though I was a shoveler, too.

By the time the dishes were done and put away, almost a foot of snow had fallen. Annaclaire kneeled in the sofa cushions under the front window and watched as thick snowflakes streaked the skirt of light from the streetlamps. Aveline sat next to her and turned to look out as well. The street wasn’t plowed. There were no tire tracks. No sign of my father.

“At least let me shovel you out before I go,” I offered.

Aveline answered, though she still faced the window and the falling snow. “You should sleep here tonight.”

Annaclaire jumped up and down on the sofa. “Yes, yes, yes!” Aveline scolded her softly and she bounced down into a perfect sitting position.

“No sense you going back to that old motel tonight. I was going to invite you over here for breakfast tomorrow anyway. I can make up the sofa.”

I accepted, glad to spend more time with them, glad to not be in the motel room where I missed Jolene even more. I put my boots and coat on, the worn gloves from my pocket. Annaclaire insisted on going outside with me. Aveline tried to tell her it was too late to play outside, but she made her case that my being there was a special occasion plus Thanksgiving was a holiday anyway.

“She has a point,” I said.

Annaclaire held out her told-you-so hands.

“I guess, since Wes’s going with you. Take off your coat so I can string your mittens.” Aveline carefully laced both ends of a length of purple yarn through the hole in a safety pin, tied a knot, then secured each pin on the matching mittens that Mrs. Blue knit at the senior center. She stuck her arm down the sleeve of Annaclaire’s coat and pulled the mitten through, then repeated the process on the other side. “That’ll do for now.”

Everything about that home seemed to be about kindness, and for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine why my father wasn’t there. I could see how he might choose Aveline over my mother, as painful as that silent admission was. I would think to myself it was Ruby’s fault my mother was the way she was, Ruby who was nothing like Mrs. Blue at all. But then I’d remind myself that Ruby was brought up in a house full of no women at all and how the only comfort she’d known were those fleeting ones on a dark dance floor after the men had gone home, back to their wives or girlfriends.

I let Annaclaire lead me onto the tiny landing, mittened hand in mine. Every branch and line was draped white, even the moon that could see everything was shrouded. The blanket of snow muffled sound. All that was left was my breathing and Annaclaire’s, and Mrs. Blue’s piano playing floating out into the night. I am holding my sister’s hand, I thought.

Without warning, it was Annaclaire who let go. She took two steps forward, swooned left, and collapsed into the snow. She put her arm straight up. “Do not take one step farther. I’m making a snow angel.”

“I will too, then,” I said, collapsing into the snow next to her. The two of us spread and closed our angel wings, scissored our angel dresses. I looked over at her. Her eyes were squinted shut and her mouth was open. I did the same. Snowflakes fell into my mouth and melted like tiny cathedrals of ice. I savored each one.

“Wes?” she said. The Montana sky was thick with falling snow.

“Yeah?” I turned my head so I could see her face. Her eyes were blinking hard like she was sending signals into the air.

“Nothing.”

Snow melted against my back and neck, but there was no chance I’d move until she gave the sign. “Hey, Annaclaire?”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing,” I said.

She laughed and laughed and I listened to the sound. My sister laughing. Beyond her, from the bright light of the house, Aveline looked on.



AFTER ANNACLAIRE WAS HUSTLED OFF to bed, I sat in the quiet living room, trying to remember any time my life had been so ordered. What could Aveline see in my father? How could he be one person with me and my mother and another capable of deserving this life? It made no sense.