“But that was all Cassie ever did, just sit up here in her room and read and sleep, starve and wither, pass the years quietly, gently. There really had never been much else to her, at least nothing that Sally could remember. She wondered for a moment what Cassie thought about up here all by herself, if indeed she thought at all.”
Her sister’s room was cramped and the air inside was stale, only barely breathable. Dust and grime, piles of clothing, old paperbacks—junk, all of it—covered the floor, allowing little room for footsteps. The window was stained with age and dirt, and it filtered the sunlight into a stomach-churning shade of yellow. Just a few feet past the door was the bed, unmade, and the sheets looked like they hadn’t been changed in years.
Sally took a deep breath and covered her nose with her right hand. It was hard to take in this stagnancy all at once.
“Fuck.”
She stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips and her face scrunched up in disgust, not sure what to do. Her head still ached from all the paperwork, and she thought it would burst if she had to talk to one more insurance agent. Going up to sort through Cassie’s things seemed like it’d be a break, but now she wasn’t so sure.
She gently fingered the sore spot on her face where she’d let Jeremy slug her. It wasn’t healing anywhere near as quick as she’d figured.
She took another glance through the window. The snow was falling fast and thick—nine, ten inches were expected by nightfall alone—and the sound of the wind had a wintry drone to it that made her wince.
She sighed and kicked at a small pile of books near her feet. They were all more of that Greek shit that Cassie was always reading, and there were probably enough of them on the floor to stock a small library. Sally had bought her a book by someone called Virgil when their parents had died, something to keep her busy. She’d talked about it for weeks, and Sally went on buying the things from the secondhand stores whenever she was in Marquette—a dime here, a quarter there—and somehow it had turned into this. Good for kindling, maybe.
But that was all Cassie ever did, just sit up here in her room and read and sleep, starve and wither, pass the years quietly, gently. There really had never been much else to her, at least nothing that Sally could remember. She wondered for a moment what Cassie thought about up here all by herself, if indeed she thought at all.
The wind picked up more strongly outside, and freezing tendrils of air whistled in through cracks in the window frame. Sally shivered; it was impossible to be comfortable here. She left the room and shut the door behind her, hoping to keep the cold air sealed off from the rest of the place.
Downstairs the house was quiet, save Ophelia nipping at her food every now and again. Elise was out—maybe at Joel’s, though more likely at her piano, alone, dreaming herself to death. Sally frowned; Elise didn’t need to be out by herself in weather like this, especially in a house with no heat. But what of it. She’d be back sooner or later.
Sally grabbed her coat and headed out to the porch for a smoke. Maybe, if she felt up to it, she’d go out to the barn and make sure the snowmobiles still ran, make sure there was enough gasoline for the generator. Or maybe she’d deal with it later. What difference did it make.
So she stood on the porch and stared until the wind burned her face and turned her hands pink and gray and lavender, stared until the snow’s terrible shine forced her eyes into a tight little squint. The fields were already buried in a desert of snow. What had remained of the Viljanens’ crop was all but gone, and Elise had blown every opportunity to make a little cash from it. Now it was just a great empty expanse, all drift and dune, blinding white in the sun and quiet blue in the shade, and the land would probably never yield again.
The snow was falling hard enough, too, that she could hardly see across Cavanaugh, and just barely see Elise trudging back from her home, emerging slow and difficult from the white curtain like a half-dreamed nightmare. She was barely there and pale as any shifting drift. If it weren’t for her hair Sally would never have spotted her.
She struggled up to the porch just minutes later.
“What are you up to,” Sally said, her voice lilting low enough that it had ceased to be a question.
Elise shrugged. Her wind-reddened face was without expression, and her scars glimmered pale as bone and snow.
“Nothing, really, just…” She pointed down Cavanaugh, back toward the Viljanen house, now visible only in the white curtain’s occasional billow. “…just at my piano.” She paused a moment and cringed in the wind’s bitter current. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not doing anything, either,” Sally mumbled, staring off down the road. It vanished into white about thirty feet from where she stood. “Thought maybe I’d check the sleds. Road’s looking pretty bad, eh?” She grazed the fingers of her left hand across the knuckles of her right; already they were rough and cracked—gray as stone and just as coarse.
“We’re almost out of milk,” Elise announced slowly, absentmindedly. Her gaze was lost in the drifts like everything else.
“Are we?”
Elise nodded.
“Toilet paper, too.” Her body shook in the cold as she spoke, though she seemed not to notice.
“Shit. Guess I’ll take the sled into town later. Come with?”
“What?” Elise narrowed her eyes into an inquisitive slit and took a step forward, hugging her body to keep warm.
“You should come into town with me later.”
“Nah.” She shook her head and gave her hair to the wind; it snapped about her body like an explosion of ink.
For a while they stood there dumb as strangers, silenced and frozen still by the wind, both gazing out across the eternity of white and blue until their eyes burned.
“Is Joel still in town?” Sally asked, her voice slightly aquiver, her hands busy at her chook.
“I don’t know. I think so.”
Sally laughed to herself.
“Poor bastard’s stuck here now.”
Elise didn’t react. Her attention was still given wholly to the wandering tides of ice and snow.
“Well, anyway,” Sally went on, shrugging, “you look like you need sleep.”
“I can’t feel my hands.” A strange, confused look came upon her face. “I’m going to bed.” Still perplexed, she shook her head as if awaking and entered the house without a further word.
Elise didn’t make sense anymore. Sally cursed under her breath and followed her inside, forgetting to smoke.
The guestroom door was slightly ajar. Just beyond, Elise had already collapsed gracelessly on the bed, and Ophelia was curled up at her feet. Sally moved past, into the kitchen. She took a seat at the table and stared; the room was a mess. She told herself she’d get to the dishes as soon as she was done with the paperwork and the phone calls. Same with the floor, the crumb-strewn table, the smudged windows, the half-empty coffeepot on the counter, the overflowing wastebasket.
Everything was the same, oppressively so, a thousand years changeless. There was nothing new in the house, except maybe a few more cracks in the drywall, a few more sputters in the furnace, a few more groans in the floor.
But fewer thuds and footfalls and creaks above the parlor ceiling. Maybe that was the single indication that Cassie had gone. Sally couldn’t help but smirk. All Cassie’d left behind were a pile of books and a small measure of silence. How long had it been now—no more than ten or eleven days. Sally wondered if it felt longer, but no—it felt like Cassie had never lived at all, and that Sally had at some point dreamed her up in a drunken reverie. No more real than Adrienne now, and how long ago had that been? Eight years? Sally couldn’t even remember what she looked like anymore. Had she looked like Cassie?
She pulled a cigarette from her coat pocket, lit it up, and let her eyes drift to the window. The snow and cloudcover blotted out the sun, and it was impossible to tell what time it was. But that didn’t make a difference, she thought, and for that matter, neither did the day of the week. Or even the month. She bit her lips and put out the cigarette after only a couple of puffs.
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