“How dare you?” she whispered, so as not to wake the child. “Your own daughter is in this house!” The snow was falling more thickly now, slanting down fast and tightly together, filling the air. The air was so full of snowflakes you could choke on them. If you listened carefully, you could hear them hit, it was so quiet. A whispery, slithery sound.
Desmond released the woman. He looked directly into Alma Kingsley’s eyes, possibly the first time he had done so since arriving at Maple Hill Farm. “You sanctimonious old bag,” he said quietly, also unwilling to disturb the child. “Stephanie died over a year ago. And you know something? A year is a long time to go without. You’d know that yourself, if you could remember that far back….”
The floozy—her hair was that hideous aniline red that positively shrieked its artificiality—hung back, embarrassed. Or maybe not; she gaped up at them from the car, as vacant-faced as a cow. Mrs. Kingsley didn’t spare her a second glance.
“I will not tolerate having the morals of a child corrupted within my house!” She moved to slam the door shut in his face.
The father caught the door with one hand, and effortlessly held it open. He was a short, heavy man, with a dirty little fringe of beard. About as far from the Kingsley type as you could get, but a strong creature nevertheless. For an instant, she thought he was going to actually strike her, could almost feel the pain, the old bones cracking under porcelain skin…. But he didn’t. He just grinned, a mean, drunken grin. “I don’t like bringing Jenny up here twice a year,” he said. “I only did it for Stephanie’s sake, when she was alive, and now for Jenny. She likes being on your farm. But I’ll tell you this—either you let us in or this is the fucking last time you’ll ever see the child again.”
She stood motionless in the doorway, losing heat to the out-of-doors while Desmond leered up at her. The snow was gathering already, a light powder-sugar frosting on the bare and frozen ground. The wind was already sweeping it to and fro. The air was cold on her face and it seemed to her that so long as she didn’t move, she could hold back the future, keep from ever having to move, keep from slipping into a situation where she had lost control, where she was defeated before she even began.
At her heel, the dog whined plaintively. “Hush, Iago,” she said automatically. She moved aside.
In the morning, she set out four plates for breakfast—the good Spode china, too, as pointed a bit of formality as it was possible to give a guest. She considered turning on the big plug-in radio on the kitchen counter, all the company she had most mornings as she cooked a solitary breakfast for herself, but there was a delicious quiet and serenity out here this morning, the snow now falling heavily but without sound close outside the window, like a slow fall of feathers, muting the daylight and filling it with shifting highlights, so that it was like being all alone in a bubble on the bottom of the sea. She hated to shatter that peacefulness with noise before it needed to be shattered; Desmond would be down and rattling the china with his booming, cheaply genial voice soon enough.
Besides, there wouldn’t be much worth listening to on the radio anyway. Sometimes she could pull in WGBH from Boston in the mornings and listen to chamber music or string quartets, but for months now there’d been too much static from all the sunspot activity to tune it in clearly, and all she’d been able to get for the last few days were somberly hysterical talk-radio stations yattering on about the current international crisis, lines being drawn in the sand, frantic diplomatic efforts, troops massing at borders, military alerts, security advisories, leaves being canceled, aircraft carriers on the move, and so on—and she was sick to the teeth of that. All the familiar stuff, saber-rattling, jingoism, the vitriolic outpourings of suddenly acceptable racism toward people we were supposed to like only a few months before. Primate Aggressive Displays, chimps hooting at each other and beating their breasts until they had worked themselves up into enough of a lather to attack. It seemed like she’d been hearing this stuff all her long life, one conflict after another, one enemy after another, and she was sick of it. Let them have their war and leave her alone, here in her own kitchen. She didn’t have to listen to them talk about it!
“Hi, Gamma!” It was Jennifer, down first, chirpy-happy as usual, practically bouncing with enthusiasm. Remember when you had that much energy? Mrs. Kingsley thought wryly. Remember when you had a fourth of it? She let Jennifer help by setting out the silverware and napkins, while she fried up eggs and sausages and piles of French toast, all in an iron skillet with lots of Crisco.
The second one up was her son-in-law’s roadhouse pick-up. She slumped down on a chair, eyes bleary under smeared makeup. Her hair was done in that kind of razor-cut where you can never tell if it’s brushed or not. “Morning,” she mumbled. She picked up a fork and stared at it, turning it over and over in her hand, as if she’d never seen Grand Baroque silver before in her life, and were searching for a clue to its purpose.
Sliding breakfast in front of her, Mrs. Kingsley was struck by the horrible realization that this young chippie was somebody’s daughter, and probably came down to the breakfast table in exactly the same sullen way every morning, with grumbled greeting and averted eyes. Maybe she hadn’t even noticed yet that she hadn’t made it home the night before.
“It snowed two feet last night,” the child announced. “Gamma says maybe it’ll snow all day today, right Gamma?” Then, when Gamma didn’t reply, “My name’s Jennifer, what’s yours?”
The woman stared at Jennifer, as if the girl had been suddenly and without warning plopped down out of the sky before her. “Candy,” she said at last.
The child’s father chose that moment to make his appearance. He lifted Jennifer out of her chair, hugged her, and held her up in the air while she squealed. Then he peered out the window. “Still coming down, eh?” He whistled. “Look at that drift over by the barn! Jesus!”
Desmond was wearing jeans and a green football jersey with white sleeves and a double-zero numeral on the back. Bits of lint were stuck in his beard; it would never have occurred to him to brush it before breakfast. He took a sip from the coffee cup that had been awaiting him for the past ten minutes, ever since she’d heard himself clumping about overhead, and made a face. “Could you warm this thing up for me?”
Wordlessly, she took the cup from him, put it into the microwave, and switched the device on.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Candy looked up suddenly. “How deep did you say it was out there?” She went to the window and pushed the curtain aside. “Oh, no!” she groaned. “How am I going to get home through all that?”
“The plows will be by when the snow stops,” Mrs. Kingsley said. “But this isn’t a primary route, and while it’s falling they’re going to keep most of their machines out on the Interstate.”
“My mom is going to have a cow! Where’s the telephone?”
“In the hallway,” Desmond said, and she hurried off without even pausing to ask permission.
A motion in the corner of her eye caught Alma Kingsley’s attention then, and she suddenly remembered the coffee in the microwave. Brown liquid was bulging ominously over the cup’s lip. Hurriedly she cut off the device, and it subsided. The cup was nice and warm; half the flavor was boiled out, but no need to mention that. She set it down in front of Desmond.
The young woman returned, throwing herself down into the chair with a kind of heavy despair. “I can’t get through. There’s this static and a kind of whooping noise, and nothing goes through.”