Ways to Hide in Winter Read online

  “Hello!” His eyes were no longer feverish, but inquisitive, even merry. “Is something the matter? I thought your store was closed today.”

  “It’s still not my store.” The deadbolt turned back with a satisfying thump. “And it is closed, but I thought you might be hungry.” I pushed my way in, dropping my coat and book on the floor. The lights came on with a flickering buzz. “What do you want?”

  He followed me in, startled, looking like a courteous but starved wolf. “Oh, no. I don’t need anything.”

  I crossed to the other side of the counter and folded my arms over my chest, trying to clear the last of the haze from my mind as I surveyed the terrain. “Egg sandwich? That’s probably the best I can do.”

  He stood by the door, hesitant. “Well. If you really don’t mind. All right.”

  “If I minded, I wouldn’t offer,” I told him bluntly, turning the knob on the grill. “Coffee? Tea?”

  “Yes, tea would be delightful.” The hat had come off; he was staring, forming his replies slowly. “Thank you.”

  “Sugar’s over there by the door. I’ll have to open some milk.” I flipped the switch on the coffee maker, which doubled as the hot water machine, and pulled two styrofoam cups from the pile. The grill began to heat, and I scraped it carefully, even though it didn’t need to be scraped. I could sense him behind me, watching, and suddenly became aware that my movements were a kind of methodical flurry, a hurried but well-practiced sequence of pushings and polishings and liftings and turnings, as if I had been programmed to do these things. Vaguely embarrassed, I slowed down.

  “You’re from Russia?” I asked, doing my best to sound indifferent.

  “What? Oh—no.” He cleared his throat. “That is to say, not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “My family is Russian. But I’m from Uzbekistan.” He paused. “It’s in central Asia.”

  “I know where it is.” The eggs cracked neatly. “Or at least, I have some idea.”

  “Really?”

  I turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. “Yes, really.” There was, in fact, a map on the wall in my room at my grandmother’s place, one I had tacked up years earlier so I could follow my brother’s deployments. Over time, I’d found that I’d gradually begun to absorb its web of rivers, oceans, borders, all those remote places reduced to blots of blue and gray. “You can sit down, you know. There’s a stool over there somewhere.”

  The egg whites crackled and hissed in the oil. I smeared slabs of butter onto English muffins with the spatula, dropping the upturned halves onto paper plates. Unwrapped the cheese, poured the tea, slid the eggs onto the muffins and moved everything over to the counter. “Here.”

  “Oh, I don’t need that much.”

  “One’s for me.”

  He drew the stool closer, pinching the hot sandwich between his fingertips and spreading a napkin on his lap, waiting for me to take a bite before he began. As we ate, our heads tilting toward one another, I tried not to stare at him—this stranger who was, indeed, so very strange.

  “And you?” He swallowed a mouthful of the acidic tea, dabbing at his mouth politely. “Where are you from?”

  I shifted, pressing the soles of my feet against the edge of a shelf beneath the register. “I’m from here.”

  “Here?”

  I gestured behind me. “Down the mountain. Centerville. It’s a small town—just a couple of houses, really. Well, and a fire station and a store and a library. That’s about it.”

  The tea warmed my stomach. Through the steam, I could see him, the delicate-looking line of his scalp as he bent over his sandwich. The same slightly musty smell I had noticed the day before seemed to rise from his coat, and I found myself wondering if he’d slept in it. Then a troubling thought made me examine him more closely. “Was the heat on overnight?”

  “You mean at the hotel?” He dabbed at his mouth again. “A little, maybe. Not really. But I had the blankets, of course.”

  “I’m sorry.” I closed my eyes, frowning as I lifted the tea to my lips again. “I’ll fix that.”

  “It’s all right. I may be leaving before tonight, anyway.” He was looking at me curiously. I was wearing a bulky hooded sweatshirt and men’s jeans, my hair pulled back in a knot that was already coming undone and mouth probably set in that severe, distant line I had recently begun to observe when passing mirrors and shop windows. Where had it come from, that sad, wooden expression? I wasn’t unhappy.

  He wiped his fingers painstakingly on a paper towel. “May I ask what your name is?”

  “My name? I’m Kathleen.”

  “Kathleen—that’s a nice name. I’m Daniil.” He extended his hand carefully and correctly over the paper plates, and we shook. “Thank you for the breakfast.”

  “It’s no problem. I’ll give you some soup you can heat up for dinner if you’re still here. That’s pretty much all we’ve got right now.”

  “Thank you.” He nodded. “That would be nice.”

  “And then I have to go. After I turn on the heat.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

  After some searching, I managed to locate some cans of beef stew, which were so dusty I checked each one to make sure it hadn’t expired. He handed me a pair of creased bills that looked as though they had passed through many hands and counted out another dollar in dimes and nickels. Then, almost timidly, he stood with the bag dangling at his side.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked, touching his waist.

  “What?”

  “Your—your side. Yesterday it looked like it hurt you.”

  I stopped, standing behind the register, his money in my hand.

  “No,” I said after a pause. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Oh. That’s good. This morning you seemed to be…” He hesitated. “Well, walking a bit unevenly, I suppose. When you got out of the car.” Heat rose to my face; I could feel it. I pressed my lips together. “No,” I said again, quietly but firmly. “I’m fine.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said hastily, nodding in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. At any rate, thank you once more. It was very kind of you.” When I looked back at him without answering, he cleared his throat. “Well, have a good day, as they say.”

  My eyes narrowed, I watched him go, the bag of cans banging against the door as he closed it behind him. For a moment, I stood there, drumming my fingers against the Formica. Then I locked the store—after all, I had no reason to stick around—and walked to the car, pulling off in the direction of town. I never really relished going there, but I had things to do—groceries to buy, my grandmother’s medications to pick up, all the little tasks that kept our lives moving like a second hand ticking around a clock.

  I pressed my foot against the gas, letting the tires find the ruts in the snow that still hadn’t been plowed. The road cut through the trees, white and smooth, like a path in a fairy tale. The woods seemed to wrap themselves around me as I turned on the headlights. It had an undeniable power, this place, a kind of majesty. I tried to disappear into the feeling of it as the forest passed by outside my window, dense and motionless, a wall of slender brown columns.

  Then there was a gap, a long, empty stretch where a pair of ruts led down to one of the lakes. It appeared and was gone just as quickly, flickering by on my right. Slowing, I found myself looking back at it in my rearview mirror.

  Before I knew it, I had pulled over.

  There were two lakes in the park, Laurel and Fuller, both of which stood where the quarries had once been. When I was a child, bits of blue and green slag from the old iron smelter had still washed up on the sand that had been trucked in. My brother and I would walk along the shore and collect them, along with pebbles and snail shells and shining fragments of charcoal. Laurel was the shallower of the two and was always crowded in summer—small children with their mothers, Boy Scouts, softball teams, fishermen. Laurel had pavilions and grills, fire pits. When I’d gotten married, we’d had the reception there, ou
tdoors, under the sun. Surrounded by hordes of happy, frolicking strangers.

  Fuller was something different: smaller, deeper, darker, encircled by pines. Fuller was where, when I was sixteen, I would lie on the sand late at night, long after the park had closed, and look up at the stars in their endless, stoic expanse. Where I brought friends, the ones who could stand the silence. Sometimes, coyotes would bay, or a small nocturnal animal would crash through the brush, but otherwise nothing stirred. By day, it was just as still. Few people swam at Fuller. It was too isolated, too chilly, too overwhelming in its indifference, its unchanging beauty.

  Grabbing my book, I tramped through the woods to Fuller, drawing my coat around me and following the slight downward slope until I could see a clearing through the trees. A few more steps and there it was: the great, pale expanse of the lake, ice streaked with snow that glittered under the empty sky. A ring of pines surrounded the void like sentries, stretching back over the mountain, dark and imposing, keeping watch.

  A pair of picnic tables stood near the shore, and I walked over to them. With a gloved hand, I brushed the snow off one of the benches and sat, opening the novel I was carrying. The pines stretched overhead, seeming to bend and converge at their tips.

  The wind stirred the pages, tugging them from my fingers. I put the book aside restlessly and rose, stepping closer to the lake that seemed to draw me toward it, its very blankness beckoning to me. How thick was the ice? I’d never seen anyone skating here, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Most people, aside from the hunters, wouldn’t care to risk the steep curves the road made as it wound its way up the side of the mountain. Not in December.

  Edging up to the shoreline, I touched the ice with a foot, and something tightened in my chest.

  It didn’t matter what people thought they saw when they looked at me. I didn’t limp.

  I let out a breath. The cold air was sharp in my lungs, making me feel even more alert than usual to every movement around me, every sound.

  Tentatively, I slid my foot all the way onto the ice, then took a step. The surface was firm beneath me, seeming to push back against my heels. The breeze reached through my clothes, and I shivered, feeling something inside me twist, like hard, dead vines being wrung tight.

  I didn’t limp. I didn’t.

  I took a second step, elbows pressed against my sides. There was a low sound as snow yielded under me, crushed into footprints. Otherwise, the world remained devoid of noise.

  I looked out over the gray plain that stretched around me. Our wedding, mine and Amos’s, had been held in a chapel on this mountain, St. Eleanor Regina—a falling-down clapboard place in a clearing, one with a handful of windows to let in the sunlight, a priest who came through once every couple of weeks.

  It was what I had wanted.

  I scuffed a foot against the surface. The twisting feeling grew tighter, as if something within me would rub together too hard and spark.

  I stood still.

  Then suddenly I was marching forward, half-running, feet pounding against the ice. My breath came quickly as I lifted my boots, one after the other, traces of snow scattering behind me. The hot, clenched feeling burned inside me, pressing against my heart and making me stumble. I banged my knee against the surface, hard, and gasped but pushed on. Slipping and scrambling, I went out fifty feet from shore, then a hundred, then two hundred, farther and farther.

  Before I knew it, I had reached the center of the lake.

  I came to a stop, panting. The ice stretched out around me, wide and smooth, a hundred yards or more to each point of the shore.

  The cold had brought tears to my eyes, and I wiped them roughly with the back of my hand, legs trembling, pretending not to feel my hip burning and my shoulder throbbing where the pins had been put in. Steam rose from my mouth as I breathed.

  When I shifted my foot, the ice creaked, sending a jolt through my nerves. I moved quickly to what felt like a thicker patch and crossed my arms over my chest, listening to the rush of my breath.

  The space before me was deserted, as quiet and stark as the surface of the moon. Tipping my head back, I gazed up at the sky and the dark, ragged points of the treetops.

  Sweat coated my temples and the back of my neck, and I could feel my pulse thudding. Feeling both sick and exhilarated, I let myself drop onto a thin layer of snow, sitting back and letting it soak through my jeans.

  I would never know why I did these things, not really. Most of the time, for the past four years, I had felt as though I were enveloped in a haze of fear, a low sense of terror that hummed and crackled in the background, making me flinch when I lit the gas stove, when I drove in the rain, when I mounted the ladder to fix the gutter. And yet, every so often, I flung myself into danger as if it were the only thing I wanted, as if I could only be alive in moments as swift and violent as the one that had frightened me the most.

  When the surface beneath me remained solid, I gradually began to relax, realizing I’d been holding my breath. After a few minutes, I unfolded backward, lying down to look up at the sky.

  Okay, I thought, waiting for my racing heart to slow.

  The mountain, I could guess, had never been a welcoming place to live, plagued as it was with blizzards in the winter, damp heat and clouds of mosquitoes in the summer. No doubt my great-grandfather had suffered here when he was mining, and the prisoners who had later been held in the camp down the road probably hadn’t had an easy time of it, either. Although, I thought as I rested there, maybe it was just the same where they’d come from. They were long gone anyway, the prisoners, and nobody thought about them much anymore. Hidden in life and almost as hidden in death, remembered only by a few retirees who had time on their hands and saw fit to look into these things, driving up on sunny days to pester the park rangers with questions—uselessly, I thought, since the rangers didn’t seem to know any more about it than anyone else did.

  I picked up a handful of snow, squeezing it, letting it crumble in my fingers.

  There were times when the days seemed to slip away so quickly, one after the other, like paper boats going over a waterfall, until one morning—this morning—I had found myself waking in the cold at my grandmother’s, twenty-seven, alone, body curled tightly under the sheets like some hibernating thing. I didn’t know how it had happened, how I had gotten to be this old, the years falling through my hands before I could catch them. Standing undressed in front of the mirror before I got into the shower, I almost hadn’t known who I was, my face sharp with cares, my limbs shivering, wrapping my arms around myself to keep warm.

  She never was able to light the woodstove properly, my grandmother.

  I gazed up into the gray of the atmosphere. The longer I looked at it, the more it seemed to deepen, revealing itself to be finely graded, clouds blending into one another almost imperceptibly. I waited to see if a bird or an airplane would cross the sky, or something else would come along to break the stillness, but nothing did. I was alone, as alone as I could ever wish to be.

  If I fell through, I thought, no one would see me. I would just disappear into the water. Maybe they’d find me in the spring, and maybe they wouldn’t.

  A strange feeling ran up my spine at the thought, but I stayed where I was. The sky above me remained empty, as if some previous sky had been erased.

  I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before I heard a sound in the woods; nothing much—a small shifting and crackling—but enough to make me come back to myself and peer around.

  Rolling onto my side, I rocked forward and slowly pushed myself to my feet. Whatever it was I’d been trying to prove, I’d proven it. There was no reason to linger.

  Carefully, I began picking my way back to the shore, passing my own footprints in the dusting of snow, trying not to notice that the left ones were slightly elongated. My breath quickened again with effort, and I leaned forward, appreciating for the first time just how far out I had gone. From here, the picnic tables looked like little more than ch
ildren’s toys.

  At last I reached the sand and stepped onto it, exhaling with a startled sound. For a moment I bent in half, hands on my knees, stomach fluttering. My mind seemed to draw back together, rejoining itself from the places where it had scattered.

  What a stupid thing to have done.

  I stayed there, letting my head hang between my shoulders, feeling the weight of my boots in the snow. Finally I straightened, bracing myself against my knees and ignoring the ache that was spreading in my bones, the numbness of my exposed skin. I stumbled to the Jeep and turned the heat as high as it would go, gripping the wheel as I rested my head against it. Then I put the car into gear, continuing north through the forest that petered out into the foothills.

  In town, I did what had to be done, taking care of my business the way I always did.

  “Grandma,” I said as I entered the house that night, pushing the door tightly against the jamb. She was in her orange overstuffed chair, facing away from me, her eyes on the television although she probably couldn’t see much more than a blur of light. The Price Is Right was on, as it somehow always was. Someone, a brunette in her forties, had just correctly guessed the price of laundry detergent and was jumping up and down on the stage, her hands clasped over her mouth, ecstatic. A curl of cigarette smoke rose over my grandmother’s head. “Where’s the sewing box?”

  “In the kitchen closet. On top of the old microwave.” She didn’t turn around. “What do you need it for?”

  “My coat’s torn.” My joints were still aching, but I strode as evenly as I could back into the kitchen at the rear of the old farmhouse, opening the narrow closet. The sewing box—an old cookie tin that rattled with buttons—was there, a rusting dull green. I carried it up to my room and sat heavily on the mattress.

  “Beth called,” my grandmother bellowed from below.

  “Okay,” I said, drawing my knees to my chest and leaning back against the wall. It wasn’t much warmer in the room than it was outside. I draped a blanket over my shoulders and glanced around at the bare space, the stacks of books and folded clothes in the corners, the map. I need to remind her how to re-light the woodstove, I thought, and opened the tin, searching for a needle.