The Snow Queen

  The girl wants to walk out of the shop as the girl wearing this necklace—this talisman, this assertion. I chose this on my own, it has nothing to do with my fiancé. It is, in its small way, a distillation of her separateness, of a privacy that can’t be violated.

  Barrett says, “Okay. I’m going to close my eyes, and point to one. See if you feel happy about the one I point to, or disappointed that I didn’t point to the other one.”

  She smiles shyly. “All right,” she says.

  Barrett shuts his eyes, points. He’s chosen the necklace with the three fetishes.

  “Oh,” the girl says.

  “You want the other one.”

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  “There you have it, then.”

  She carefully lifts from the velvet the silk cord with the icy, asymmetrical little diamond. She drapes it around her neck, has a moment’s trouble with the clasp, gets it.

  “It’s good,” Barrett says. “It looks right.”

  The girl turns to the small oval mirror on top of the jewelry case. She seems happy about what she sees.

  “It’s beautiful,” she says.

  Barrett is poised to say, Don’t marry that guy. You love him right now, he probably dazzles you in bed, but you know, in a way you can’t articulate, not even to yourself, that you’re about to be usurped, you’re about to go live in a world where you won’t be welcome, and you don’t have enough history yet as a pretty girl, you’re still too grateful for his attentions. Gratitude will fade and you’ll still be going to those Sunday dinners in Jersey, where you’ll be merely tolerated, until he begins to side with his family, to regret the rebelliousness of his choice, to wonder why he married you and not the wisecracking big-breasted Italian girl his mother had in mind for him. He’s a citizen of his mother, he probably does love you now, but his interest will fade, he’ll start compiling a list of your lacks, he’ll get sullen and resentful over crimes you don’t know you’ve committed.

  What Barrett says is, “Yeah, it’s beautiful. Are you set, then?”

  “Yes. Finally. Thank you for being so patient.”

  “These are serious choices. In their way, I mean. So. Cash or credit card?”

  She produces a MasterCard from a slim green wallet. He runs the card, she signs the slip.

  “Would you like it in a box?” he asks.

  “No. Thank you. I’m going to wear it.”

  “Good luck,” he says.

  She gives him a questioning look.

  “It’s wedding etiquette,” Barrett tells her. “You congratulate the groom, and wish the bride good luck.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  A pause arrives. For a moment, it seems as if Barrett and the woman are the ones getting married.

  “Thank you,” she says, and walks out of the shop. Barrett returns to the folding of T-shirts.

  •

  Liz arrives almost an hour later. Her face is unlike itself, though Barrett can’t interpret this unfamiliar version of her, this expression he’s never seen before. He can only think of it as calmly appalled.

  “Everything okay here?” she says.

  “Fine,” he answers.

  Liz takes off her jacket, goes and hangs it on the hook in the storage room. She returns and stands straight-backed behind the counter, checking the register, the way a spinster who runs a boardinghouse might count the spoons after supper has been served.

  “Everything okay with you?” Barrett asks.

  She pauses, considering.

  “I was just at the apartment. With Tyler,” she says.

  Barrett goes and straightens the skateboards that hang on the wall at the back. Liz says, “I think we’re not going to reorder the skateboards.”

  “I like the skateboards. They kind of sell. Sometimes.”

  “They’re just starting to feel a little … contrived,” Liz says. “Like we’re trying too hard to be cool.”

  “Got it.”

  “The thing about Tyler is, I couldn’t seem to talk to him, or just hold him, the way most people would have.”

  “You were there. I’m sure that was all he needed.”

  “I never wanted to be one of those women,” Liz says.

  “Come again?”

  “I mean, one of those women who are, you know, consoling and maternal and all.”

  “You’re not that kind of woman. Which is one of the reasons one loves you.”

  She says, “I beat my father up when I was fifteen.”

  “Really?”

  “He was violent. I’ve never told you about this, right?”

  “No, you don’t talk about your family much. Well, you finally told me about your sister, but it had to be New Year’s Eve, there had to be drugs, and miracles …”

  “He wasn’t take-out-an-order-of-protection violent,” she says. “Just regular violent, he’d get mad and he’d cuff us, with the back of his hand, all three of us, my mother and my sister and me.”

  A silence passes.

  Presently, Liz says, “For a long time it just seemed like, I don’t know, part of our lives. Part of what happens. But one night, my sister got home late. She would have been thirteen then. She was dating a junior. Which was a big thing for her. She was this shy, pretty little girl, and to her total amazement she started ninth grade and was suddenly seeing this insanely hot guy. So she got home a little late one night, and our father started in on her about that, then he started accusing her of having sex with the boy. This, as our father put it, thug.”

  “Was she? Having sex with the guy?”

  “Of course she was. She told our father no, though. But he hit her anyway.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was just the regular thing that happened. But that night, I don’t know. My sister was so happy, she wasn’t doing anything wrong, she was in love for the first time, and I couldn’t stand seeing her get punished for it.”

  “Maybe thirteen is a little young to be having sex,” Barrett says. He hurriedly adds, “Not that anybody should get knocked around for it.”

  “That boy she was seeing, I don’t remember his name, it didn’t last all that long, him and my sister, and years later he died, he was in a train crash in Europe …”

  “Stay with the story, okay?”

  “Well. I picked up one of those little shovel things by the fireplace, you know, the things you use to scoop out ashes. I hardly even thought about it. I picked it up and hit him with it. Our father. On the side of his head.”

  “Go, girl. Um, was that inappropriate?”

  “I didn’t hit him all that hard. I mean, I’d never done anything like that. I was scrappy, I got into fights at school, but they were just girl fights. I’d never picked something up and hit somebody with it. I didn’t really know how to do it. So I kind of clipped him. As opposed to hitting him.”

  “And …”

  “He turned and stared at me. In complete astonishment. Like, the aliens have landed. And I thought, Oh, I’ve really started something, haven’t I?”

  “And so you …”

  “I hit him again. Really hard, this time. Right across the face.”

  “No shit.”

  “He went down. Not down down, he just sort of crumpled to his knees. I stood over him with that shovel thing in my hands. And I said to him, ‘If you ever hit any of us again, I’ll kill you.’ I said that.”

  “And he …”

  “It was the strangest thing. I was just a fifteen-year-old girl with this tiny weapon, he could have jumped me so easily, he could have murdered me. But he didn’t. He didn’t even get up. He stayed on his knees on the floor. And he gave me this awful look. It was so not what I was expecting. It was, well, a look of defeat. Like, all I’d had to do, all any of us had had to do, was tell him to stop.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was sort of … amazing. Neither of us knew what to do next. I started feeling ridiculous. Standing there with that little shovel in my hands. I didn’t feel heroic. Th
en, after a while, he stood up and left the room. He went upstairs. He went into his and Mom’s bedroom, shut the door, and that was that. He showed up for breakfast the next morning as if nothing had happened.”

  “And after that?”

  “He never hit any of us again. Plus, this is strange, after that it was like he was a little bit afraid of me, and also maybe loved me a little more than he had before. But, you know, ever since then, I’ve felt like, No man is ever going to fuck with me. I’m sure I’d felt that way for a long time already, I just kind of think of myself as having turned into … myself, the night I hit my father with that stupid little shovel.”

  Barrett can’t shed the conviction that he should say something, nor can he think of anything to say.

  “Here’s a funny thing,” Liz says. “My sister was a little bit afraid of me after that, too. I thought I’d rescued her. I had rescued her, in a way. But it didn’t really bring us closer. It seems to have meant I was dangerous in ways she’d never thought I could be.”

  “Why exactly are you thinking about all this now?”

  “Now my sister is schizophrenic and she’s on drugs that make her slow and fat, she’s living with our parents again …”

  “Why are you thinking about this now?”

  “Because,” Liz says. “I suppose because today there was this moment, with Tyler, that, well, reminded me of that night. With my father.”

  “You didn’t hit Tyler.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever really been in love,” Liz says.

  “Never?”

  “Oh, I’ve loved all kinds of guys. Some more than others. But there’s this other thing I hear people talk about, Beth used to talk about it, that I’ve never really recognized. It’s sort of this feeling of abandonment, of … I’m not sure how to put this … of crossing over, inhabiting another person and letting him inhabit you. I’m not putting this very well …”

  “No, it’s okay, I understand.”

  “I’ve never felt that. I never really exactly missed it. Until. This is funny. Until just now. I wanted to feel it with Tyler.”

  “Tyler’s not your lover.”

  “I just couldn’t seem to comfort him. And I wanted to. For him. And for Beth. I suppose I wanted to do what Beth would have done.”

  “Beth was a different kind of person,” Barrett says.

  “Of course she was. But it’s not like doing whatever you can to make another person feel better is such a huge talent. Most people can do it.”

  “Tyler loves you. Tyler respects you. You probably did him more good just now than you can imagine.”

  “You know what? I’m not really thinking about Tyler right now. I’m thinking about myself. I’m thinking about this perfectly simple human thing I can’t seem to do.”

  “You can do a lot of other things.”

  Liz looks through the receipts again.

  She says, “I had the strangest idea, as I was coming to the shop. I started thinking, wondering, I started wondering. I’ve always thought I won with my father. I stopped him from hitting us. And on my way here, right there on the L train, I started wondering if he won, after all. If he won by making me hit him.”

  Both are quiet for a while. Barrett offers silent thanks to all the customers who don’t come in.

  Liz says, finally, “Do you really think the skateboards don’t seem slightly desperate?”

  “I do. Maybe we should balance them out with something a little more sophisticated. What would you think about some really high-end leather jackets? New ones, not just the vintage.”

  “Do you think you could take care of the shop, if I went away for a while?” she says.

  “Where would you go?”

  “I don’t know. I feel like I’d like to go somewhere else. For a while.”

  “This is a little sudden, don’t you think?”

  “Have you heard from Andrew lately?” she asks.

  “He called me. He wants to meet me in Central Park tonight, for some reason.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “It’s more like, peculiar. I mean, why me?”

  “He likes you,” she says.

  “Doesn’t he more or less like everybody?”

  “Maybe it’s because you like him. No one else did.”

  “People just thought he was … Not right. For you.”

  “Is he still with Stella?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t look at me like that, it’s good, she’s good. For him.”

  Barrett says, “She’s a little …”

  “She’s not the sharpest tack in the box. I know. She’s a weaver, did you know that?”

  “Oh, well, she’s just kind of a funny girl, really. It seems that she’s a yoga teacher and, yeah, some sort of weaver, I mean, she’s actually got a loom …”

  “She’s okay, though,” Liz says.

  “She is. You want to hear something funny? The last time I saw them, she told me she was psychic.”

  “She adores Andrew, though. Somebody should adore Andrew.”

  “Why did you stay with him all that time? I never quite got around to asking you. I guess it seemed rude. Or something.”

  “Oh, you know,” she says. “Having him around sort of … took care of things. He was sexy and a little dull and he never caused any trouble and so there was one less thing I had to think about.”

  “Not the worst of all possible arrangements.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to get another one.”

  “Uh, another what?”

  “Another sexy silly boy who sticks around until he comes to his senses and goes off with a girl his own age. I think I’m done with that.”

  “Probably just as well.”

  “Are you in love with Sam?” she asks.

  “Oh. I don’t know. It’s only been a few months …”

  “You know. Or so rumor has it. I hear you know pretty quickly.”

  Barrett says, “He’s not anything like who I was expecting.”

  Liz nods, as if receiving a bit of news—neither good nor bad—that’s been long anticipated.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she says, “that I might want to go west for a while. California, maybe.”

  “California is great.”

  “I might go. I’m thinking about it.”

  “I could take care of the shop, if you want me to.”

  “You’re better at it than I am, by now.”

  “Not true.”

  “You’re a nicer person. You pay attention to the customers. You care about them. I just hope they’ll buy something, without me having to bullshit them into it.”

  “What do you think you’d do in California?” Barrett asks.

  “I don’t know. Right now, I stop at the idea of going there. It’s a blank, beyond that.”

  Barrett asks, “Do you ever think about that light?”

  “What light?”

  “The one we saw. Up in the sky.”

  “Not really. Do you?”

  Barrett nods, sadly. “All the time,” he says.

  “But you haven’t seen it again?”

  “No. I haven’t.”

  “Honey. I was stoned. You were … oh, well, who knows what you were. You’d just been dumped by asshole number seventeen, why wouldn’t you want an airplane behind a cloud to be something more?”

  “And then Beth got better …”

  Liz looks at him with compassionate steadiness.

  “And then she died.”

  “I know. But she had those months, didn’t she?”

  “I just don’t think a light in the sky had anything to do with it.”

  Barrett says, “I keep waiting for … something.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Another sign, I guess. A follow-up.”

  “A sign of …”

  “Like, there’s something more than just us. You know, more than looking for love and wondering where to go for dinner and selling necklaces to some poor
girl who’s about to marry the wrong guy …”

  Liz says, “Everybody wants that to be true.”

  “And what if it is?”

  “Right,” she says. “What if it is?”

  She says it in a tone of patient, slightly vexed consolation. Sure, sweetheart, what if that flea market painting turns out to be an unknown Winslow Homer, what if the number you’ve been playing all these years finally, this time, wins the lottery?

  A moment later, a couple walks into the shop, two young men with post-punk haircuts. One says to the other, “Sparkle, Neely, sparkle.”

  Liz says hello to them.

  “Hi there,” one says, and the other laughs, as if his boyfriend has made a joke.

  “Let us know if we can help with anything,” Liz says.

  “We will.”

  The young men start browsing. Liz goes through the receipts again. Barrett goes back to folding T-shirts, although he’s folded all of them already.

  It’s almost three o’clock, which means Liz left the apartment more than four hours ago. Tyler has been lying on the sofa ever since, in his nimbus of floating glow, contemplating Liz and music.

  That thing with Liz … Hm. That thing with Liz …

  How long have they been having sex? Since Beth’s diagnosis? Longer than that? Strange of them, to have been secretive about it; they who keep almost no secrets at all, not really for moral purposes but because the truth is so much easier, the truth is right there, no efforts at modification or embellishment required.

  When did they stop? It must have been when Beth recovered, though Tyler has the sense—more dimly recollected dream than memory—that it went on longer than that. He seems to remember not so much the sex as the shame; the conviction that he and Liz were, toward the end of it, committing a shameful act. Although he did, no denying it, flirt with shame all the while.

  He’d been so lonely and panicked, as Beth diminished. Liz was there. Liz was as unsentimental as it’s possible for anyone to be.

  Tyler prefers, he’s preferred all along, not to seriously entertain (not at length, not in depth) the possibility that, for Liz, the attraction has always resided in his ever-so-slightly skanky middle-agedness; that he is, for her, the un-Andrew—no blank-faced young Olympian, no visitation from a parallel dimension of hormone-gloried youth, no Ariel who’ll soon be off to perform other enchantments; just a regular Joe, Mister Easy, Mister Grateful.