The Snow Garden (32 page)

     At first, she had been struck by how handsome he was. It had become almost reflexive since she had become Randall’s best friend to wonder whether or not Randall would find a certain man attractive. As she stood on the front porch, the question had started to form in her mind: Would Randall agree that this fine-boned man, with his hard jawline, stubbled chin, and expressive, dark eyes, was classically handsome? She must have looked like an idiot, wide-eyed and numb with shock, her voice sounding the way it did when she was twelve.

     “Kathryn. Come on—”

     “How long?” she asked, lowering the suitcase to the floor.

     “Please. Not because of something Jesse did—”

     “Jesse didn’t have to
do
anything.” She turned around. Randall was holding the edge of the open door, his eyes wide and pleading, his mouth hanging open, shaking his head and generally looking like a kid about to get grounded for a month. “How long have you been going to that man’s house at one in the morning?”

     Randall screwed his eyes shut, grimacing.

     “When did you start? Before or after his wife died?”

     “Kathryn, I understand why—”

     “What do you understand? ’Cause let me tell you what I’m feeling. Let me you tell
all
I’m feeling. I’m in awe, Randall. I’m in awe of the number of lies you had to tell to keep this a secret.”

     He moved for her and she grabbed the handle of the suitcase. She made it past him, but the wheels caught on one of his feet and she gave it a yank. She hit the hallway in full stride.

     “Kathryn! Stop!”

     She didn’t. There was no way she was going to wait for the elevator, so she lifted the handle and headed down the stairs.

     “Kathryn!”

     In the foyer, she could see her own reflection as she approached the glass door. Through it, the headlights of the waiting cab cut twin swaths through the falling snow. She heard Randall barreling down the stairs behind her. She popped the door open with one arm and tried to roll the suitcase through ahead of her. The wheels caught on the threshold and she gave the suitcase a kick. It lurched in front of her and landed on the sidewalk outside.

     “Kathryn, I was going to tell you.”

     She had one foot through the door when his hand seized her shoulder. She turned, the door resting against her back. “What made you think I would ever want to know?” She turned, grabbed the edge of the door with ,her hand and slammed it behind her.

     The door shut behind her with a loud thud instead of a bang.

     She whirled. Randall had vanished on the other side. In his place was a thin dark smudge across the glass. Backlit by the foyer, it looked black. Kathryn knew it was red. Then, behind the glass, Randall straightened up, one open hand covering his mouth. Blood stained the spaces between his fingers, and above them his eyes were wide with shock.

     He removed his hand, revealing the smear of blood at the corner ofhis mouth and surveyed his palm. When his eyes met hers through the glass, his shock was replaced by pained resignation and a shame she needed to see. Blood spilled from his mouth. When his eyes swelled with the first sign of tears, he turned, bringing his hand back to his mouth. He disappeared into the stairwell.

     Once her breath returned, she realized she had been holding one hand extending toward the door handle for the past few seconds. Behind her, the cab driver honked the horn. Her arm fell to her side.

As the cab pulled away from the curb, fat flakes pelted the windshield. “What time’s your flight?” the driver asked.

     “Six,” Kathryn answered, watching Stockton Hall disappear from the window.

     “Traffic might be pretty bad, but we should get there in time. Sure hope this blow doesn’t ground yah. Funny, last winter we barely saw a flake.”

     Headlights from an approaching car blinded her and she blinked. The driver’s eyes met hers in the rearview mirror.

     “Oh, hey, it’s nothing to cry about. Takes a lot more than this to shut down Logan.”

     Running water sent his blood swirling down the drain of the bathroom sink. Randall spit again, bracing himself with both hands on either side of the basin. He tongued the tattered, salty-tasting flesh where his teeth had torn the inside of his cheek. Laughter echoed down the hallway, followed by the squeak of snow boots over carpet. Randall’s knuckles whitened against the basin as he brought his face closer to his reflection, seeing not himself, but Kathryn’s empty gaze through the glass door.

     Outside, Jesse spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone as he passed the bathroom door. Another male’s laughter followed, growing softer as they moved down the hallway. Randall ran more water over his face. He got some toilet paper from one of the stalls and methodically dabbed at the corners of his mouth, hoping to pick up any stray dried blood. He had hoped the menial task would distract him, but when he glanced around at the bathroom, everything about it seemed suddenly foreign and alien. Rejected by Kathryn, Randall suddenly felt like a lone intruder in the dorm he had lived in for months.

     Quiet had settled over Stockton Hall. Most of its residents had departed. Wind drummed along the walls. It hissed and howled around the edges of windows in empty rooms. At the door to his own room, Randall couldn’t bring more than three fingers to the knob, letting them rest there.

     “Hey.”

     He spun around. April was shouldering her duffle bag out the door, then pulling it shut. “Is she gone?”

     Randall nodded. April’s eyes shot up and down his body. On instinct, he brought his fingers to his mouth. No blood. From his room came a high-pitched whine followed by a sharp, gasping intake of breath. April flinched. “Good-bye, Randall,” she muttered.

     Randall waited until he could no longer hear her footsteps brushing over the carpet.

     He opened the door. Snow fell past the window with heavy, determined force. The gooseneck lamp spilled light over Taylor’s naked back. His head was pinned to the pillow by Jesse’s hand. His mouth was open in a silent scream. Jesse was a dark shadow above him, hips pistoning.

     Randall gently pushed the door closed behind him.

     Silently, he crossed to his desk chair and turned it around, its legs scraping slightly across the linoleum floor. Taylor’s eyes shot open and met Randall’s. At first, his smile looked like a leer. As Randall sank down into his chair, Jesse’s hips didn’t stop their shadowed rise and fall. As Randall watched, his eyes adjusting to the darkness, the only sounds in the room came from the wind battering the window, the steady rattle of the heater, and Jesse’s breaths, swelling and draining his chest.

     Even as he refused to rise from the chair, Randall realized that Jesse had won. Once Kathryn realized that Randall had shown her only the elements of himself he was willing to reveal, she had reacted with revulsion and horror. And now, the girl who had provided both escape and some hope for a better self had left Atherton carrying a newfound knowledge of him. Hatred would follow, he knew that. It always did.

     Jesse saw him for who he was and had returned him to the person he had run from, ever since the day he had arrived at Atherton: a practiced whore. And Jesse was the first man to realize this and extend kinship rather than desire.

     When Jesse released his grip on the back of Taylor’s neck and extended his arm toward Randall, the gesture summoned not only lust in him but fear—fear of returning to the solitude that had blackened his life before Atherton. Randall rose and crossed the invisible dividing line that had once separated their sides of the room.

II

Thanksgiving

Long before morning glories perched upon opening day
,

I left yesterday under a worn goose mattress

The cotton tapestry still had creases

from my nocturnal lullabies of dreams long past.

— Salih Michael Fisher, "Hometown”

RISING SUNLIGHT PEELED FOG FROM THE TOWERS OF THE BAY BRIDGE
.

     Kathryn shut her eyes. Landing at SFO could rattle the most seasoned of flyers. Winds off the bay rocked the plane as it made a determined descent toward the fog-shrouded water. At the last, precious second, the runway appeared, a ribbon of concrete, and Kathryn felt the wheels hit earth with a shudder in her spine.

     The guy sitting next to her awoke with a snort. He had drifted off right after they took off from Denver, three hours late, and Kathryn had been envious of his simple sleep. It was dawn on the West Coast and she didn’t have the energy to calculate what time her body thought it was.

     Despite their fatigue, passengers leaped from their seats as soon as the plane rolled to a halt, heaving their bags out of the overhead compartments. She was pleasantly taken aback when sleepyhead dropped her suitcase on the empty seat; she tried a grateful half smile that died as an intention.

     The terminal was almost empty. Kathryn was jarred by the transition. In all the hours of flights and delays, the drone of jet engines had been a numbing white noise, but the terminal was hushed save for the staccato of footsteps as passengers crossed the gate area and proceeded down the central walkway.

     Kathryn stopped when she spotted her mother. Marion Parker had dozed off in her chair, a hardcover novel closed on her lap. In the early morning light, she looked like a passed-out drunk. Having expected to meet Kathryn’s flight six hours earlier, she had dressed up in a beige pants suit and matching pumps. Now, her silk blouse had been rumpled up over her breasts, displacing her pearl and silver necklace. Her black hair, usually a neat, shoulder-length bob, had been flattened by the back of the chair, and her glasses rested precariously on the bridge of her nose. The portrait of diligence, Kathryn thought. After hounding her to return, Marion Parker was determined to be there the second the plane landed.

     “Mom?”

     Nothing. Kathryn reached out and gave her mother’s limp wrist a tug. 

     Marion started awake, one hand shoving her glasses into place, eyes darting past Kathryn to the file of departing passengers before she recognized her own daughter before her.

     “Oh, honey.” Her half-groan told Kathryn that her mother was bemoaning her own fatigue. “These idiots,” she said, stuffing the book into her purse. “They couldn’t tell me what time you were going to get in. First it was two, then four.” She hoisted her purse onto one shoulder and got to her feet. “I couldn’t have you just.. . arrive alone.” 

     Marion put her arm around her daughter’s back and began leading Kathryn and her rolling suitcase through the terminal. As they walked, her mother leaned in slightly, squeezing Kathryn’s opposite shoulder, the warmest greeting Marion was going to give. “You made it out just in time. These TVs they have everywhere have been going on about the Thanksgiving Blow. Boston got something like twelve inches in one hour.”

     “I didn’t check anything. Can we just go?”

     “Sure,” Marion said with a yawn.

     When they got outside, Kathryn dug in her pocket for the pack of Camels she’d picked up at Chicago O’Hare. She was exhaling her first drag when her mother looked up and saw her. Kathryn managed a sheepish grin and a shrug. “We’ll walk slow,” was all Marion said. “You can’t smoke in the car.”

     In the parking lot, Kathryn was still searching for the Navigator when her mother stopped next to a gleaming new BMW X5. She unlocked it with her remote. “What happened to the Navigator?” Kathryn asked.

     “Too much space,” her mother told her, ducking inside the driver’s side door to unlock the cargo door.

     On the ride home, Kathryn drifted off, not waking until her mother slowed the BMW as she angled her way into Sea Cliff. Ocean-view houses fought for space on the tiny lots that lined the winding streets. The Golden Gate’s towers rose over the red tiled roofs and dense pine. Squat and finished in stucco, the Parker residence would have looked better beneath Southern California sun.

     Kathryn was lulled out of her stupor when the garage door slammed shut behind them. She and her mother sat in the darkness for several seconds before Marion shook her head and popped open the door. Kathryn didn’t make a move to get out of the car until she heard the wheels of her suitcase being dragged over the garage floor.

     She guessed her father was still in bed. She trudged upstairs.

     Her room was exactly as she had left it.

     Kerry’s photo collage, “The Best of Times,’’ was still on the wall above Kathryn’s old bed, with its metal frame of curlicues, feminine enough to please her mother, but just restrained enough to give her the illusion of maturity Kathryn had desired as a high-school student. Through her picture window, the fog parted in tendrils, revealing the rolling hills of Marin and morning traffic filling the Golden Gate Bridge.

     When she was a little girl, the black mouth of the bay’s entrance had terrified her, conjuring up images of sharks swimming through its depths. Now the view from her window struck her as strangely flat, a painting with a color palette of only grays and faded greens. Not real.

    Kathryn sat on the foot of her bed, and soon found herself rolling onto her back, eyes lazily scanning her old and now unfamiliar surroundings. Her old desk from Ikea looked tiny and inadequate, pushed to the far wall and piled with mail that couldn’t be that important, because whoever sent it all obviously didn’t know she had left for college. The TV set on top of her bookshelf gave her pause; she and April had decided against one and she hadn’t caught more than five minutes of a
Friends
rerun since she went away to school.

     She reached for the phone on the nightstand and her palm landed on empty table space. She started. The phone was on the other side of the bed. Holding it against her chest, she counted four hours ahead. Had Randall gone to New York?

    Has he gone to Dr. Eberman’s?