How swiftly it was decided. What my life would be!
By late morning of the next day most of Skowhegan was plowed out and reasonably navigable. There was that festive communal air she recalled from her childhood, a sense of holiday. The partly clouded sky was laced with thin cold sunshine drawing the eye upward in the childlike hope. Burt Proctor, a practical-minded man, had arranged for a tow truck from the Sunoco station to haul her car into Skowhegan and repair it. She wasn’t going to fly to Bangor after all — wasn’t going to fly to Berlin — impulsively she’d decided she would stay in Maine for the next several weeks at least, for Burt Proctor had begged her, Burt Proctor had opened his heart to her as no other man had done in her life, and in a haze of happiness she’d said Yes, yes of course, my life is yours, you saved it. This would be the tale they would tell each other through the years of their love.
She’d said yes to each of Burt Proctor’s requests except one: she would have to drive back to her parents’ old house one final time, alone. Burt Proctor was astonished. “What? Why? In all this snow?” She said, “Because I’ve left something behind. Something I must have if we’re to be — married.” “But what is it?” “I can’t say. I’ll show you.” “All right. But I’ll drive you, you aren’t going alone.” “Yes. I must go alone.” “You’re not thinking clearly, you’re still upset from yesterday. You’re in no condition to drive anywhere by yourself.” “I’m fine. You can see I’m fine.” She dared to kiss Burt Proctor, though he was becoming impatient, upset. He asked, “What did you leave behind, that’s so damned important? That won’t wait for another few days?” She smiled evasively, and did not answer.
For in truth she wasn’t certain exactly what the left-behind item was, but believed she would recognize it when she saw it. Again she kissed the man who was her rescuer, and her lover, holding him in her arms so tightly her slender body throbbed with pain. Stubbornly she repeated, “I must go alone.”
And so she drove back to the Cuttler’s Mill Road which had been plowed out, though not very cleanly, a single icy-rutted lane between heaped banks of snow. And she returned to the old farmhouse, which she’d locked up only yesterday, with no reason to believe she would ever return. Snow had drifted across the driveway to a height of several feet in spots, she had to leave the car out on the road, stumbling and staggering to the front door. In the wan sunshine the house’s tall narrow windows reflected light as if lights were burning within but in fact the interior of the house was unnaturally dark for midday, snow heaped against downstairs windows on three sides. She was both eager and hesitant to enter. “Hello? Hello? Hello?”—she spoke brightly, simply to hear her own voice. And the silence that followed, like a subtly mocking echo. How strange this house of her childhood seemed to her now, emptied of most of the old, familiar furniture, curtains removed, floorboards bare and exposed, the floral wallpaper her mother had loved, which she’d always thought attractive, stained with time as with smudged fingerprints. She was embarrassed to think that outsiders would enter this house, examine it critically, when it seemed so diminished now, so very ordinary. The dank, melancholy odor of neglect made her nostrils pinch.
Abandoned to darkness. To oblivion. Why?
She searched the downstairs rooms, finding nothing, then upstairs in her old room, of course it would be in her old room, she saw it—Favorite Fairy Tales. The book Grandma had given her. It was lying on the floor, as if discarded. The familiar cover was warped from having slipped into her bathwater but the illustration was surprisingly vivid, a golden-haired princess astride a prancing silver-maned horse. He was right. He knew! Her heart filled with joy. She smiled, ignoring the bitter cold as she leafed through the book’s mildewed pages, recognizing the illustrations, tears and stains on certain of the pages, crayon scribblings. On the last blank page she’d scribbled her name in orange crayon.
When she glanced up, she saw to her surprise that the windows of her old room, though curtainless, gave little light. She went to investigate. Had the sky darkened so quickly? Was it already dusk? There couldn’t be a second snowstorm already — could there?
Again, snowflakes were being blown out of a pewter-gray sky.
By the time she left the house, stumbling through the snowdrifts to her car, the wind was ferocious. Snow was being blown in a frenzy, yesterday’s drifts were being reshaped. She tried not to succumb to panic. He knows you’re here. He’s waiting for you, this time. At least she had the forgotten item she’d returned for, safe in her possession. She had not failed in her reckless quest.
There was an unnerving moment when her car motor didn’t start. But then, to her relief, it did start. She managed to turn the car in the road, maneuvering back and forth in a narrow space, and, at first, she was able to drive fairly steadily through the swirling snow, determined not to make the same mistake, skidding off the road a second time. For what are the odds that any event in time might repeat precisely itself at another point in time? — such odds must be astronomical. She and Burt Proctor would laugh together over this episode, this folly of hers, such a stubborn, obstinate woman she was, when convinced she was right. Today, after the ravages of yesterday’s storm, there appeared to be no other vehicles on the Cuttler’s Mill Road. Snowdrifts were re-forming in the road as if alive, sinuous snaky coils lunging into the path of her car, which was now barely moving, inching forward at five miles an hour. Her windshield wipers began to slow, defeated by the snow’s weight. For today the snowfall was damp. She began to talk to herself, reassure herself. As, a child, she’d sometimes talked to herself, waking alone in the night disoriented by sleep and not knowing at first where she was or, what frightened most, who she was. Anyone I wish. I can become. If I love no one. But that was the chill wisdom of an older child, a more calculating child. That was not the child she recalled now.