Girl in Snow Page 8

  Russ had stuck the page from Love in the Time of Cholera on his refrigerator, held down with a magnet that doubled as a beer opener, a souvenir from his sister’s vacation to Key West. That night, they drank whiskey in mugs at the kitchen table and Ines slept on Russ’s couch, which had never been professionally cleaned, but was comfortable enough.

  When Russ told the guys on the force that Ines was staying over—he did not specify the couch—they slow-clapped and whistled. Russ assured them that Ivan had been coerced, paid for menial tasks, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Detective Williams slapped Russ’s back, sarcastic but proud. You finally did it, he said. Finally got yourself a girl. Better lock that one in, quick.

  Those first months, Russ cooked for Ines every night. She loved the old carpet, how it squished between her toes. They cooked steak with brussels sprouts, or salmon and potatoes, and Russ bought bottles of Merlot, fourteen dollars each. They sipped from shiny new glasses on the couch and they talked. Ines was so pretty when she spoke, that lilting accent, lingering on the E. Her English was nearly perfect, though she often dropped the word “the” or added extra plurals. Can you please pass the chickens? She was from Guadalajara, a huge city of Gothic cathedrals, gray spindles stretching toward the sky. More than a million people, she said. She and her family had lived in Zapopan, a suburb of the city, six of them in the apartment above their father’s dental practice. She and her sisters cooked every night. Pozole—a stew with hominy and pork. Ines had gone to Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, and she had been teaching high-school English when Mamá had convinced her to follow Ivan to the States, because one of her father’s clients—a regular root-canal patient—worked at the consulate. Her sisters would come too, eventually. Russ never asked what she’d studied. How she’d gotten here. What she missed.

  Once, Russ found Ines on the kitchen floor, covered in sourdough yeast, crying for her brother. Russ scooped Ines up and carried her to bed. She had gone slack, but not because Russ had comforted her. She was simply exhausted, and Russ was there. Still, he held her. Ines fell asleep, and Russ stroked the soft belly of her earlobe, rolling it across the surface of his thumb, that little patch of peach-fuzz flesh.

  Some nights, when they’d gotten tipsy, Ines would ask about Ivan, who was adjusting slowly to life in prison. Is there anything you can do for him? she’d ask, too casual. And Russ wondered if Ines stayed not for him—though they laughed often and spoke kindly to one another—but for her brother.

  Yes, he’d say. I’ll keep an eye on Ivan. I’ll make sure they don’t send him back home. A few months later, Ines’s tourist visa would run up, and Russ knew she would not go back to Guadalajara, not with Ivan locked in a cold cement cell.

  Despite it all, they got along well.

  On those Merlot nights, Ines would fall asleep in Russ’s lap, and he’d stroke her hair like he’d seen people do. So soft. She’d bought a new bottle of shampoo. She didn’t smell like smoke anymore. Now, eucalyptus.

  They went to San Diego, because California seemed like the next-best thing to Mexico. Ines leaned against the passenger’s-side window and hummed along to the radio, while Russ adjusted the AC. They drove all sixteen hours in one day, stopping only four times for fast food and the bathroom. Ines listened intently to the radio ads, asking Russ about words she didn’t know. Liquidate? Neoprene? Indigestion?

  They stayed in a Marriott Rewards hotel. Ines bought a one-piece swimsuit because she didn’t want to wear a bikini. They drank daiquiris by the hotel pool, and Ines tilted her head up. Sun breathed hot across her cheeks.

  Art museums. Public parks. Three-star dinners. At a street fair, Ines made Russ try mango doused in Tajín, and Russ doubled over coughing. Ines doubled over laughing. One night, they went salsa dancing; Ines tried to teach him the steps at a crowded nightclub with overpriced drinks and sweaty, tan bicep men. Russ stepped on her feet, but Ines didn’t care. She spun around in a red skirt and shook her hips at him and Russ felt wanted. Young and desired. When the club closed down they stumbled home, Russ shirtless because of all the sweat, Ines fanning her neck with one hand as she held her hair up with the other.

  They took a shower when they got back, and, wrapped in a clean white hotel robe, Ines pulled Russ on top of her.

  Tell me about the people you’ve loved, she said.

  I haven’t loved anyone before, Russ said, and he was certain, momentarily, that this was the truth.

  They drove back to Broomsville, where the air was vacuum-sucked dry. That night, they did a load of laundry, and Ines did not go to the couch. She padded up the stairs, her small hand in Russ’s.

  Russ’s sheets were nearly ten years old. He didn’t realize this until he was swollen inside her, Ines lying flat on her stomach, face buried in the pillow.

  Can you breathe? Russ asked.

  Yes, she said. Muffled. Russ pressed a hand to her ribcage, feeling for oxygen. Afterwards, he mopped the sheets with a Kleenex and said, Will you marry me? California hung between them, like a dream or a fruit. Pulpy and ripe. Ines rolled over. She watched the ceiling, black hair splayed across the rumpled pillow like someone underwater.

  Yes, she said. All right.

  A man should always keep his word, Russ’s father used to say. Your word is your dignity.

  So when Detective Williams pulls Russ aside after the briefing to ask about his brother-in-law—Ivan Santos, ex-con and neighborhood idol—Russ puts on his bravest face. I know he’s family, Detective Williams says, so if anyone asks, you’ve been put on temporary probation. But we need all hands on deck here. And hey, between me and you—could Ivan have done this?

  I think so, yes, Russ tells Detective Williams, sinister and noble. I think Ivan could have killed this girl.

  As Russ says it, his father’s voice rings loud in his ears, confirming the valiance of this shaky proclamation—if your word is your dignity, then Russ is a hero. Besides, he has never promised Ines anything except to be her wedded husband, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Russ knows that if it were to come down to it—if he had to choose someone to protect—it would not be Ivan.

  Take care of my boy, will you? Lee Whitley had asked, the day he left for good.

  Okay, Russ had said.

  Okay.

  This was Russ’s word. He had no choice but to keep it.

  Cameron

  Back when Beth DeCasio said that Cameron was the sort of kid who would bring a gun to school, they sent him to the school social worker.

  “My name is Janine,” she said, with a gaze that did not feel. “I’m going to ask you a few simple questions, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you ever thought about hurting yourself?”

  When Cameron first heard about Andrea Yates, he ran a bath.

  The ceramic surface of the tub was slippery. Cameron lowered himself in carefully, one hand on each edge. Rested his spine against the metal faucet and slid down, like a person getting into bed after a long day stomping through loud, slushy streets.

  Cameron sank until he could feel the wall of bathwater against his eardrums, rising, a tide that sloshed gently toward his brain. He tilted his head back. Hair spread around him in slow motion. He could have danced, he thought. Underwater, it would have looked all right. He sank farther, until the only parts of his body exposed to oxygen were his eyes and his nose, which felt very close to the webbed cracks in the ceiling.

  When he went under, it was a pleasant hum he heard, a pressurized sound that was not uncomfortable. He opened his eyes. The cracks in the ceiling were gone. So was the stained shower curtain, and so was the mirror, and even his toothbrush, crusty next to the sink. Muted by this veil of water. He closed his eyes again, reveling in the peace of it.

  Cameron thought how it wouldn’t be so bad, dying like this—aware of your own insides.

  “Have you ever thought about hurting yourself?”

  “No,” Cameron had said to Janine.
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  She scribbled in her spiral notebook.

  “It looks nice.”

  Mr. O stood over Cameron’s shoulder, studying the unfinished portrait. The lion’s left eye was looking much better. Cameron had finished the lashes, and they carried the same texture as the whiskers. The lion was Cameron’s portrait project for art class. He thought lions were both intimidating and graceful, and this was an underrated combination of things to be.

  “Try for more shadows around the eye,” Mr. O said. “See that blended area? Your darks need to be darker.”

  Cameron thought his darks were plenty dark.

  “Come with me,” Mr. O said. “Bring your stuff.”

  As Cameron followed the art teacher past the industrial paper cutter, backpack slung over his shoulder, lion and charcoals in hand, the class fluttered and murmured.

  “That’s the kid?”

  “Yeah, him. Creepy, right?”

  “Sick little fucker.”

  Mr. O’s office was a converted supply closet that he had covered in student art and furnished with a stool and easel. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling. Bits of pink eraser littered the linoleum floor, and acrylic paint spread in dripped patterns across every surface. Cameron suspected Mr. O spent nights here, working on his own projects. He’d seen a painting, once, propped against the wall. A pair of hurting blue eyes set against cotton skin.

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I heard the gossip, Cam. Kids can be so mean.”

  A smash came from the other side of the door. They’d just finished a unit on ceramics. His classmates whooped.

  “You miss her?” Mr. O asked.

  Once, Mr. O told Cameron to try photography. He hadn’t explained why, but Cameron deduced: photography was about capturing moments other people had missed.

  Photography never worked for Lucinda. She couldn’t be reduced to a single second. Drawing was different—lines were intentional and they spanned in range the way she did, light to dark to heavy to soft to smudged and everything in between. He thought this described Lucinda much more naturally than a snapshot.

  “Yeah,” Cameron said.

  Mr. O patted him on the shoulder, hesitated, and cracked open the metal door.

  “You can work in here today,” Mr. O said, and the crinkles around the corners of his eyes looked very kind.

  Mr. O fell in love with Mom last year, when they started a unit on painting.

  “They usually don’t allow it until junior year,” Mr. O had said. “But they’re making an exception.”

  “What kind of painting?” Cameron had asked.

  “Realism,” Mr. O had said. “Acrylics.”

  When Mr. O made the announcement in class, everyone groaned, even the popular girls who were always smiling at Mr. O, blinking fast and passing notes about him.

  “Calm down,” Mr. O said. “We’ll be working together. I’ve been commissioned to finish a painting for a gallery in Denver. We can teach each other.”

  Cameron decided to paint a barn swallow, with a red neck and blue body. He found a picture on the internet, printed it, and traced it onto canvas. The bird was perched on a lone branch.

  The following week, Mr. O showed up at Cameron’s house for tea. He and Mom had met at parent-teacher conferences. So you’re responsible for this talented kid? Mr. O had said, paint-splattered hands shoved in the pockets of his corduroys.

  Mom and Mr. O sat on the old couch in the living room, drinking Mom’s favorite ginger tea. Cameron went for a walk, meandering aimlessly to the foot of the mountains. He debated going up to Pine Ridge Point, but it wasn’t that sort of night, even though he felt awfully sad. It was a specific melancholy, the sort of sadness you felt when you were in the process of losing something: you had to watch it go with the knowledge that you couldn’t stop its leaving.

  When Cameron came home, the house smelled like acetone and turpentine. Mom sang while she did the dishes.

  A few days later, Mr. O showed the class his painting.

  “It’s called The Calla Lily,” he said, propping it up at the whiteboard.

  Mr. O had painted the calla lily in melting shades of yellow, the petals tinged a blushing red. The inside of the calla lily was done with a smaller brush, in quiet strokes you had to focus hard on. The anther and the ovary peeked out from behind the petals, and Mr. O had left blank spots in all the right places—the flower had holes, but they were intentional. Spaces that didn’t need covering, empty parts that made it look more whole. The flower was familiar to Cameron, like a song you had heard as a child and couldn’t remember the words to.

  Mr. O had studied Mom. He’d understood all her edges, the places where she blended into the background, the places where she popped—he’d taken the sound of Mom laughing to herself at late-night television—and he had turned these things into colors and strokes and put them in the shape of a calla lily.

  Cameron guessed Mr. O was around the same age as Mom, but he looked ten years younger. He had black hair with gray bits that poked out around his ears and the sort of wrinkles people got in their thirties. He had a slim, lean build, and he smoked cigarettes against the back fence of the school every day at three o’clock.

  Mr. O’s parents had emigrated from Japan when he was only five. He’d taught himself English by watching sitcoms. He used to have a wife, but she moved to New York to be a ceramics designer. He told Cameron and Mom this very casually, at the bakery after the winter art show, as they dipped three forks into one piece of cheesecake.

  “People change,” he said, and that was that.

  Sometimes at night, after Mr. O had come and gone, Mom would sit on the porch steps, her body folded in half, hugging herself and watching the dim world exist. Cameron wanted to tell Mr. O about loss—the hissing sound it made, like air drained from a tire, how that sound could continue forever if you let it—but maybe Mr. O already knew.

  Cameron tried to work on his art project. He tried to fall into the spaces between charcoal strokes, but today was Thursday. Lucinda had ballet on Thursdays. Cameron had followed her, once, and watched from the Chinese restaurant across the street as Lucinda did pliés and jetés in a tight black leotard. Her hair was pinned up in a bun. Even though Cameron couldn’t see from so far away, he was sure the strands in front were curling wild against Lucinda’s forehead.

  Cameron left his stick of charcoal next to the easel and wiped his hands on his jeans. His fingers left charcoal tracks across the denim. Cameron’s hands were usually steady. Artist’s hands. His hands had a sense for the way things moved, and he could confidently replicate that movement. Cameron’s hands were his favorite part of his own body because they spoke in all the ways his mouth could not.

  Now, they shook as they reached into his backpack.

  Even though Cameron knew Mr. O was probably only nice to him because he was in love with Mom, he had a lot of faith in the easiness of Mr. O’s eyes and the way he gave instructions in class—You have to understand the emotional undercurrents of your work if you want genuine results.

  For this reason, and because he did not know what else to do, Cameron dug to the bottom of his backpack and pulled out Lucinda’s purple diary.

  Mr. O had seen Cameron’s drawings of Lucinda. Cameron had brought them in that September, when Mr. O was deciding about the advanced figure-drawing class. You have an eye for realism, Mr. O said. He’d never seen a ninth-grade student with Cameron’s abilities, he said, and—Wow, Cam—the portraits were lifelike and clear. Majestic. Cameron had exactly replicated her face with his fingertips, drawing her exterior lines and smudging them around to give her a life and texture Mr. O said he wasn’t sure she possessed in actuality. Cameron respected him for this.

  When the bell rang, Cameron wrapped Lucinda’s diary in his oversized green sweat shirt and left the bundle on the stool, next to the lion with half-drawn eyes—an apology to Mr. O with a signature at the bottom.

  Cameron was st
umbling out of the art classroom, breathing hard, when Ronnie grabbed his shoulder. He whirled Cameron around forcefully. Ronnie had PE in the wrestling gym while Cameron had art class, and now he smelled like dirty socks.

  “Dude,” Ronnie said. “What’s your deal?”

  Ronnie glanced pointedly past Cameron, in the direction of Mr. O’s office. Curious.

  “What’s going on with you?” Ronnie said. “Seriously. People keep talking. Asking me what you did, if you really were obsessed with Lucinda. Are you some kind of creep or something?”

  Crowds of kids jostled with their backpacks and squeaked their shoes. Cameron tried to Untangle—in, two, three, out, two, three—but Ronnie tightened the straps of his own backpack and a pen clattered to the floor. Ronnie did not move to pick it up, only drew a reddened hand across his clammy forehead.

  “Fine.” Ronnie pushed past Cameron, knocking him in the shoulder. “Don’t answer. When people ask, I’ll just tell them yes, you are a fucking freak.”

  After one more suspicious glance toward Mr. O’s office, Ronnie disappeared into the swarm of stares. Cameron picked up the pen that had fallen out of Ronnie’s backpack. A Bic, with no cap on the end. It dripped at the head, where ink bled down metal. Cameron would keep it in the Collection of Pens, where he had two other Bics belonging to Ronnie Weinberg.

  Cameron kept the Collection of Pens in an old shoebox at the top of his closet. When he felt bottled up, he would line up the pens in chronological order of acquisition and imagine how certain hands looked holding certain pens. It was like curating a museum of things he knew about other people, and the Bics and gel pens made him feel like those people and their hands were right there with him.

  Last summer, Ronnie and Cameron went to the park. It was misting outside, the sort of rain that came down in drops so tiny you couldn’t catch them in an open palm. Ronnie kept a Bic pen in his pocket (white, chewed at the end). He twirled it compulsively as they walked. He wore plaid shorts that fell below his naked hips. A few wiry sprouts of black hair curled just above the button—Ronnie never wore underwear.