Daniel looks up at the second story, expecting that curiosity about this noise will have brought Iris to the window, but all he can see is a blaze ofreflected sunlight in the glass.
“EnjoyingArmageddon?”Ferguson asks.“Beats the hell out oflocusts, doesn’t it?”His voice rings out like a blacksmith’s hammer.He wears neither a hat nor a helmet.His thinning hair is soaked, his bushy eyebrows hold little balls ofice.“What are you doing here?”
“Trying to get home,”Daniel says.“What about you?”
“Iamhome,”Ferguson says, with an excited, expansive wave.“And I wanted to see ifthis thing would work.”He pats the snowmobile as ifit were a horse.His hands are so red it looks as ifthe skin has been peeled offthem.“And this Mexican kid who’s doing some tile work for us was going crazy, so I took him over to the trailer park to be with his wife and kids.Since then I’ve just been cruising, surveying the damage.It’s fan-tastic.Worse than I expected.”He smiles broadly.“Want a lift?”
“Can you manage both ofus?”
“We’ll soon find out!”
They set offwith Ruby sandwiched between them.Block after block ofutter stillness and silence.Ferguson makes educated guesses where the turns would be, trying to adhere to what be believes is the road, and then he slows down as they drive through the center oftown.No store is open and no one is on the street, except in front ofthe old brick fire-house, where a dozen volunteers are trying to clear the way, using chain saws and snowblowers.
At the far end oftown, Ferguson cuts through a thirty-acre cornfield, taking a shortcut.The snowmobile hits an unexpected bump in the field.
A splash ofwet snow.The curved tip ofthe skis thrust black against the scrubbed blue sky.Daniel grabs hold ofRuby’s jacket.Up.Up.And then down with a thud.
“Are you okay?”he cries out to her.
She nods nervously, her shoulders hunched, breathing shallowly through her mouth.
I’m putting her in danger,he thinks.Is anything worth putting her in harm’s
way? Or even hurting her feelings?What was I thinking?And poor Nelson.What must it have been like for him to see his mother in bed with a stranger? Poor Iris.
And now he is going back to Kate, whose intelligence he suddenly fears like a loaded gun.They are speeding through a landscape ofruined trees and blinding snow.They come to Chase Farms, where a dozen Holsteins stand in a foot ofsnow, staring at one another, and then at the ground, and then at each other again.They seem puzzled by the sudden disappearance oftheir pasture.Above them, the blue dome ofsky is start-ing to crack away like cheap paint, showing the cement underneath.
“Stop here!”Daniel calls out.Without asking why, Ferguson slows to a stop, and Daniel slides offthe seat, gives Ruby a little squeeze, and then runs into the wrecked and tangled woods opposite Chase Farms.He is sure Ferguson assumes that he is going into the woods to take a pee.As soon as Daniel’s out ofsight, he pulls offhis gloves, then scoops up a large handful ofsnow and presses it to his face, scrubbing back and forth.
He must.Most adulterers have the luxury ofmodern plumbing with which to wash the scent ofsex offbefore they return to their official life.
But Daniel feels he bears the scent ofevery kiss, every secretion, on his hands, his face, his hair.It’s a painful business, washing himself with snow, but his anxiety acts as a partial anesthetic, and when he finishes with his face he grabs still more snow and squeezes it between his hands.
As it happens, Kate is not in a position or a mood to detect the scent ofin-fidelity on Daniel;she is frightened and a little drunk, and when Daniel and Ruby enter the house they find her in a frenzy ofactivity, trying to maintain some sense ofdomesticity in a house without lights, heat, or water.The only household appliance that works is the kitchen stove, which runs on gas that comes from two silver cylinders near the back door, and Kate hovers continually over this stove, cooking everything that would otherwise spoil, grilling the salmon, scrambling the eggs, broiling the chicken, and steaming the vegetables—without tap water, she uses club soda that she allows to go flat in the bottom ofthe pot before turning on the flame.At one point, Kate has something simmering on all six burners oftheir Garland range (inher-ited from the house’s previous owners) and is swigging on a bottle ofver-mouth as well as a bottle ofgin, as ifto mix a martini in her mouth.
When she is not discussing in hair-raising detail last night’s invasion by the Star ofBethlehem boys, Kate’s spirits are darkly manic, her jocularity seems to scan the horizon for likely targets.To Daniel, she says,“This is some romantic, ain’t it?”and pulls his hair, not quite hard enough to be thoroughly aggressive.“I hope you’re hungry,”she announces to the house, singing it out, like some nutty kid imitating an opera singer.“And I hope you like really really shitty cooking.”Though it is cold in the house, she is flushed, little drops ofsweat collect in her facial down.“Come on, Ruby, I’ll play hide-and-seek with you.”And when Ruby declines the in-vitation—the last thing the child wants to do is slip into a closet or slide under a bed in a house filled with darkness and cold, a house that is in-creasingly unnerving to her—Kate doesn’t only look disappointed, she seems offended, as ifshe herselfwere a little girl, a lonely little girl, suf-fering the rejection ofa playmate.
Without electricity, home life is less private than ever.They are cast back to some preindustrial reliance on each other.When the home technolo-gies are up and running, each member ofthe family can be a self-sustaining unit, in a private room with its own source ofheat and light, listening to music on his own set, watching a movie, purchasing dried apricots from Haifa via the Internet.With only the fireplace for heat, the hearth becomes the locus oftheir lives.IfKate takes a candle to light her way to the bathroom, Daniel and Ruby are left in darkness.
Rubyhas to be next to atleast one ofthem, and the constancyofher presence, along with her nervousness and her boredom, begins to wear on Kate.Finally, however, Kate is able to coax Ruby to go upstairs, giv-ing her a candle and convincing her that the little red radio in her room will afford her some entertainment.When Ruby is finally out ofearshot, Kate makes a martini for Daniel and hands it to him with a certain force-fulness that tells him he had better accept it, though, in fact, he would like to remain coldly sober, so as to defend himself ifKate should turn her intelligence against him, and also to continue trying to figure a way he could leave the house, make it back into town, and see Iris.
“You know when I told you about those men coming into the house last night…”
“I thought you said they were boys,”Daniel says.
”They were men,”Kate says.“Maybe some asshole lawyer could argue they were juveniles, but they were thudding around here like a herd ofelephants.”
He wants to sayBy“asshole lawyer”I assume you mean me,but why borrow trouble?
“And ifthey had found me,”Kate is saying,“then I promise you it wouldn’t have been some boyish prank.”
“Well, thank God they didn’t,”Daniel says.He takes another sip of his martini and realizes that he has practically drained the glass.
When Kate veers closer he eases away from her.He is sure that he still reeks oflast night, and then it strikes him that he ought to do some labor, something that might work up an exculpatory sweat.“I’m going to bring in some wood for the fireplace,”he says.She looks at him a little strangely.
The sky is a deep blue, almost purple, with a crescent moon bobbing up and down in a stream ofpassing night clouds.The temperature is mild; with a fire in the fireplace, they’ll be warm enough inside.Daniel stands for a few moments on the porch, where oak and ash logs are stacked against the gray clapboard ofthe exterior wall.The stillness and clarity of the evening are almost unbelievable—how could such tranquility follow such chaos? Daniel takes a deep breath, spreads his arms out:Iris.Twoof the three old locust trees in the front yard are down, one has been split in two, the other has been completely torn out ofthe ground, its taproot unearthed.A few scattered stars pulsate, diamond chips in the velvet.He wonders ifshe is okay.She cannot bear the cold.She might have low blood pressure, she should have it checked.Maybe the road crews have al-ready cleared out the center oftown, maybe she’s already up and around.