The first snow of the winter had arrived early and melted away quickly. Within twenty-four hours it had turned to slush and run off down the gutters, leaving children resentful and frustrated and adults relieved.
When it snowed again, things were different. Cell phones leaped into action as the children of Modesta called each other to spread the joyful tidings: “It’s sticking! It’s going to last!” Mr. Johnson arrived at his former home with shovel in hand to clear the front walk and driveway; Chris went outdoors to help her father, and Mrs. Johnson served them hot chocolate and homemade cookies. Eric Grange and his friends hauled out the sleds that had been stored in their garages since early springtime and sanded the rusted runners.
It was a wild, white world.
At a special meeting, the Daughters of Eve voted to send a letter to Mr. Shelby requesting that, if their contribution to the school athletic fund wasn’t going to be used as designated, it be returned to the club. Since the secretary, Ann Whitten, wasn’t at the meeting, Madison Ellis volunteered to write the letter.
She delivered it by hand to his box in the office.
Suddenly, with the second snowfall, Modesta came alive with the anticipation of Christmas. Colored lights appeared as if by magic in blinking strings down Main Street, and stores throbbed with the strains of “Silent Night” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” Salvation Army Santas materialized on street corners, tinkling their silver bells, and Mrs. Underwood hung a massive wreath of holly on her front door, explaining for the eighteenth season in a row, “This wreath means a lot to us! We named our own daughter after it.”
The Senior Honor Society was sponsoring the winter formal, which was to be held on Friday, December 15, the last day of school before the holidays.
“It’s such a shame Peter is sick,” Mrs. Ellis remarked sympathetically to her daughter. “It’ll be hard going to all the holiday parties without a date.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Madison told her. “I’m going to the dance with Craig Dieckhoner.”
Tom Brummell invited Kristy Grange.
Gordon Pellet invited Erika Schneider.
On Friday, December 8, the Daughters of Eve had a group dinner and early gift exchange. The get-together was held at Irene Stark’s apartment.
When Jane Rheardon returned home at 10:20 p.m., she found Mrs. Geiger, the woman who lived next door, waiting in the living room.
“Don’t take your coat off, Janie,” her neighbor told her. “You’re going to be going right out again. Your mom’s had an accident. She’s at the hospital.”
Jane froze, her hands poised over the second button of her jacket.
“What happened?”
“She was carrying dinner in from the kitchen and slipped on a spill,” Mrs. Geiger said. “She fell and hurt her hip.”
“Where’s my dad?” Jane asked.
“He’s already over there. They let him ride with your mom in the ambulance. He wanted to get hold of you, but he didn’t know where you were. He asked me to wait and bring you over to the hospital when you got home.”
“He knows my cell phone number,” Jane said.
“People get confused when they’re upset. Your poor daddy is about out of his mind, he’s so worried over your mom.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Jane said shortly.
Mrs. Geiger drove her to the hospital and went in with her. Mrs. Rheardon was in surgery when they got there. Jane’s father was in the waiting room, leafing through a magazine.
“It’s a fractured hip,” he told them. “They’re operating now to remove some bone chips that got wedged down into the joint socket.” He addressed himself to Jane. “She fell in the kitchen. There was grease spilled on the linoleum floor.”
She didn’t look at him.
“You know how careless your mother can be about things like that,” Bart Rheardon continued. “She never cleans things up when she ought to. It’s a wonder something like this hasn’t happened before now.”
They sat in the waiting room, Jane in silence, her father and Mrs. Geiger making stilted conversation, until a white-clad doctor came in to inform them that Ellen Rheardon was out of surgery and was being transferred to the recovery room.
Jane got up from her chair and went out into the hall. When her mother was wheeled past her, she stepped in close and stood, gazing down at the slack face.
The eyes were closed, the lashes a sooty fringe against the pale cheeks. The mouth hung open. The left side of the jaw was puffy and purple.
“Mom?” Jane said tentatively.
“She won’t be out from under for a while yet, honey,” one of the nurses said. “You’d best go on home and get some sleep and come back in the morning.”
Jane walked outside to use her cell phone.
“It’s Jane,” she said when a woman’s voice answered. “Irene, could I please come back to your place? My dad almost killed my mom, and I need somewhere to spend the night.”
Saturday, December 9, was a gray day, and cold. The snow, which had softened slightly the day before, had refrozen during the night, and the roads were slick and icy. Few people ventured out unless they had to.
Mrs. Schneider spent the morning happily snipping and stitching as she made adjustments to a formal dress they’d purchased for Erika to wear to the dance.
“I told you she had a boyfriend,” she told her husband with satisfaction.
At the Johnson home, Mrs. Johnson sat at the dining-room table, addressing Christmas cards. Kelly came and stood behind her, reading over her shoulder.
“Are you writing notes in all of them?”
“I thought I should. It’s one way to let out-of-town people know about your dad and me.”
“What about our tree?” asked Chris, who was sprawled on the sofa with a book. “Is Dad going to take us out to the woods to cut it?”
“What do you mean, ‘it’?” Kelly said. “You mean ‘them,’ don’t you? He’ll have to cut two trees. He’s got his own place to decorate.”
“Okay—‘them,’ ” Chris said mildly. “Is he, Mom?”
“I don’t know,” their mother said. “I was thinking about getting an artificial tree this year. There wouldn’t be those needles all over the rug, and after Christmas we could just collapse it and store it in the attic.”
“Sounds sensible,” Kelly said. “An artificial tree for an artificial family.”
“Kelly—” Mrs. Johnson lowered her pen and turned to look at her older daughter. Her brow furrowed as she struggled to find the right words.
“What is it?”
“I think—after Christmas—” Mrs. Johnson said slowly, “it might be good for us to get some professional counseling. All three of us, you and Chris and me. We’re not adjusting the way we should be.”
“You don’t mean ‘we,’ ” Kelly said. “You mean, I’m not adjusting. You and Chris are doing fine. You’re having a good time playing the martyr, and Chris is milking it to get more from both of you. If you think I’m going to go to some shrink so I can be more like you guys, forget it, Mom. I don’t want to be ‘adjusted.’ ”
“I just can’t bear to see you so bitter,” her mother said. “Other children seem to survive a divorce in the family and still keep on loving their parents and feeling good about their lives.”
“Other ‘children’ may not realize how terrible the world is,” Kelly said.
Late in the evening, more snow began to fall. Ann Whitten’s mother went out to the woodpile at the side of the house and brought in some logs and built a fire in the fireplace in the den. Mr. Whitten sat in front of it with his stocking feet propped up on a footstool, letting the flames warm his toes.
After a while, Ann, who’d been resting in her bedroom, came into the den, drawn by the scent of the burning wood. She dropped a light kiss on her father’s scratchy cheek and settled herself on the floor beside his chair.
“Feeling better now, baby?” he asked her fondly.
“Yes, a little, thanks. I must have eaten something weird at the potluck last night.”
“The stomach flu’s going around, I hear.”
“I guess it is.”
“David called twice already this morning,” Ann’s mother said. “He said he’s been trying your cell and just getting voice mail. I told him you weren’t feeling so good and were lying down awhile. He said for you to call back when you could.”
“I don’t feel up to it now,” Ann said. “I’ll call him later.”
“Is there something wrong between the two of you?” Mrs. Whitten asked her. “You haven’t been spending much time together lately. I thought winter was when farm people always had plenty of time free.”
“Lovers’ spat?” Ann’s father suggested playfully.
“No, nothing like that.”
Ann leaned her head against her dad’s side, and he slipped an arm around her shoulders. The flames in the fireplace leaped and fell, and the orange light danced. Mrs. Whitten was knitting, and the click of the needles seemed to keep time with the crackle of the logs.
“This is going to be a sweater for your cousin Debbie’s baby, if I ever get it finished,” she said. “I’d forgotten how long it takes to make something with these little needles.”
“When’s Deb due?”
“Sometime in January.”
“Is she happy about it, do you think?”
“Your Aunt Bonnie writes she’s been in maternity clothes since her second month. So everybody would know. You know how Debbie was when she was little, always fussing over a cradle full of dolls. That girl’s never had a dream in her head except to be a mother.”
They were quiet for a moment.
Then Ann said, “You lost a baby, didn’t you, when I was around three? Do you think about it much?”
“I used to,” her mother said. “Not anymore, though. It’s been so long now.”
“Was it a girl or a boy?”
“I wouldn’t let them tell me. I thought if I knew I’d start seeing its face in my mind, looking in carriages and strollers at other people’s babies, thinking ‘That’s the way it would have looked if it had lived.’ It was easier not knowing. That way it didn’t seem so much like a real person.”
“Why did it die?”
“Who knows?” Mrs. Whitten said. “Doctors didn’t know as much about such things back then. I always figured God just didn’t mean for it to get born. His plan was to take it back with Him, and that’s how it was.” The knitting needles stopped clicking. “Is anybody ready for some lunch yet?”
“I’m not hungry, thanks,” Ann said.
“Is there any of last night’s stew sitting around out there?” Mr. Whitten asked.
“There sure is. Would you like me to heat you up a dish?”
“You don’t have to ask me twice to get a ‘yes’ to that one.”
The couple smiled at each other, and Mrs. Whitten set the knitting carefully down on the arm of her chair and got to her feet. A moment later they could hear the clank of pans in the kitchen.
Mr. Whitten tightened his arm around his daughter’s shoulders.
“Annie,” he said softly, “this is your own life you’re leading. Nobody else can live it for you. You’ve got to decide things the way you think they’ll be best.”
Ann looked up at him in disbelief. “What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what you think I mean.”
“How did you—know?”
“I’m your daddy. I’ve been around you a long time. I’m not likely to sit here blind when my daughter gets sick every morning and goes around looking like the world’s coming to an end.”
“Mom—?”
“She doesn’t want to know. That’s all right. Your mom has enough to worry about with me sick without taking on an extra other thing right now. She’ll stand by you, though. She’ll always be here to help you. The thing is, she can’t face it now to talk about.”
“What do you think I should do?” Ann asked him.
“I can’t tell you, Annie, and nobody else can either.”
“There’s a friend who thinks I ought to have an abortion.”
She expected a violent reaction, but she didn’t receive one.
“That’s one answer, I suppose,” her father said. “They’re safer these days. You can even go home the same day.”
“Do you think it would be wrong?”
“What I think doesn’t matter,” Mr. Whitten said. “It doesn’t matter what your mom thinks either, or what this friend of yours thinks. I don’t know about Dave. I guess what he thinks ought to matter some, but then again, maybe it shouldn’t. It all comes down to you. You’ve got to make a decision you can live with, and once you’ve done that, you’ve got to accept it and go on from there.”
“It’s not fair,” Ann said miserably. “Why do I even have to decide this? It’s because I’m a girl, that’s why! Look at all the guys out there, sleeping around, and not one of them ever has to worry about who ought to live and who shouldn’t get born.”
“Of course it’s not fair,” her father said. “Why should it be? Whoever said life is fair was a moron.”
“What?” Ann said in bewilderment.
“Nothing’s fair,” Mr. Whitten said briskly. “It isn’t fair for a man of forty-six to have a heart attack. There I was with everything—a good job, a happy marriage, all the makings for a great life—and what happens? Clunk! The old pump goes out on me. Suddenly I’m an old man whose feet are always cold. There’s half a lifetime that somebody owes me, and I’m never going to get to use it.”
“Daddy, you are!” Ann protested.
“Don’t give me that guff. I’ve got months left, a year maybe. I’ve been cheated out of what’s due me, and it’s not right. Do you know how many nights I’ve laid awake in my bed and cursed at God and asked Him, ‘Why? Why me? Why John Whitten who’s always tried to do good and live by Your holy laws? What have I ever done to deserve a blow like this?’ A thousand times, at least, that’s how many. And do you know what He’s told me?”
“What?”
“Not one word, that’s what. Whatever the answer is, it’s not for me to know it on this earth.”
“I love you, Daddy,” Ann said.
“And I love you. More than anything else in my life.”
“And you’ll be okay—whatever happens? Whatever I decide to do?”
“Whatever you decide.”
They sat, staring into the fire, his arm still around her. The dry wood snapped, and the sparks flew, and the logs resettled themselves. Outside the den window the flakes of snow continued to fall.
After a while, Mrs. Whitten came in with a bowl of stew and set up a TV tray so her husband could eat by the fire.
“Well, Tammy, this visit is certainly unexpected,” Irene Stark said.
“I’m sure it is.”
Tammy had been in Irene’s apartment only the month before, when the Daughters of Eve had gathered there to work on posters for Madison’s campaign. At that time it had seemed like a pleasant place, warm and inviting and humming with happy activity.
Today it was different, quiet and empty. The furniture looked as though it had never been sat on. Glancing around her, Tammy became acutely aware of the oil paintings that covered the walls. All were abstracts, done in dark, intense colors against a background of white. The size of the pictures and the starkness of the sharp, strong images crowded so close upon one another in the confinement of the small room made her oddly uncomfortable.
“Won’t you sit down?” Irene asked politely.
“Thank you.” She seated herself on the edge of the sofa and then hesitated, caught by the sight of a familiar jacket thrown across the back of a chair. “Do you have company?”
“It’s only Jane. She’s asleep in the bedroom. The poor girl was at the hospital most of the night waiting for her mother to come through surgery.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Tammy said awkwardly. “I didn’t know. Is Mrs. Rheardon going to be okay?”
“They can’t say yet. Her husband hurt her badly.”
“That’s horrible,” Tammy said. “Jane can stay at our house if she needs to. I know my parents would be glad to have her, and we’ve got an extra room, with Marnie away at college.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Irene said.
“I wish you’d tell her—”
“Jane is taken care of, Tammy.” Irene paused. “You wanted to see me about something? It must be important if it brought you out in this weather.”
“It’s about what happened in my dad’s classroom.”
“The Pellet boy’s experiment—” Irene began slowly.
“It wasn’t just Gordon’s demonstration,” Tammy interrupted. “It was everything! All the lab equipment! All Dad’s personal things! And the manure they plastered on his desk and on the walls! I knew something was going to happen when I left the meeting, but I never guessed it would be so bad—you called him a sexist pig!”
“Peter was punished. Why shouldn’t your father be?”
“My dad isn’t like Peter! He doesn’t go around hurting people! He had a good reason for rejecting Erika’s experiment—”
“Don’t shout, Tammy,” Irene said quietly. “You’ll wake Jane.”
“You can’t go on doing these things,” Tammy said, fighting to get control of her voice. “I have a terrible feeling about what’s going to happen. You’re making people do things that are wrong.”
“I hardly think it’s up to you to pass judgment,” Irene said. “I have never forced anyone to do anything. Daughters of Eve is a democratic organization. Every issue is decided by a vote of the members. As sponsor, I don’t even participate in the voting.”
“Maybe you don’t exactly force people,” Tammy conceded, “but—you do something. You make things happen. I’ve known most of these girls for years. They’ve changed. You’ve changed them.”
“By helping them face reality? By giving them courage to stand up for their rights?” There was satisfaction in Irene’s voice. “If I’ve brought about those changes, then I’m delighted. Men have to learn that we are a force to be reckoned with. I’ve lived longer than you have, and I know what I’m talking about. Men don’t know the meaning of words like ‘loyalty’ and ‘love.’ They care about nothing and no one except themselves. They view women as servants to be exploited. We have to rise up and overthrow them if we are to survive!”
“Maybe there are a few like that, but—”
“All of them! All of them!”
“You can’t really believe that,” Tammy said incredulously. “If you do, you’re as prejudiced as you think they are.”
“You truly can’t see the difference?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Then I think this conversation is over.” Irene regarded her coldly. “You are no longer one of us. You have disassociated yourself from the sisterhood. Our goals are not yours. There is really nothing more for us to discuss.”
“Yes, there is,” Tammy said. “There’s my dad’s classroom. You led the girls into doing what they did there.”
“There’s no way for you to have any idea of what went on that afternoon,” Irene said. “You weren’t even with us.”
“It can’t go on, Irene! If it does, something terrible will happen! I feel it—I know it!”
“You took an oath,” Irene reminded her.
“I know that, and I’ll live by it. I will ‘divulge to no one words spoken in confidence within the sacred circle.’ But that doesn’t apply to anything else that might happen. From now on, I’m not a member of Daughters of Eve. I’m just me, Tammy Carncross, on my own, and I’ll do whatever I think is right.”
“Are you threatening us, Tammy?” Irene asked quietly.
“I guess you could say that.”
“Then I think I should warn you that threats have a way of boomeranging. It makes people very angry when they’re threatened. Emotions get out of hand, and regrettable things can happen.”
“Do you remember what I told you about Robert Morrell?”
“No. Yes—I mean, I think so.” Tammy was confused by the turn of the conversation. “Was he that PE coach at the school in Chicago?”
“That’s right. He blocked my friend from her new position. Well, I may have told you, some students staged a demonstration. Emotions ran high, and somebody threw a bottle.”
“Threw it at him?”
“It undoubtedly was an accident, but the result was very sad.” She paused. “Your father isn’t as handsome as Morrell was, Tammy. Still, it would be a shame—” She let the sentence dwindle off, unfinished.
Tammy sat staring at her, too stunned to speak.
The telephone on the end table jangled shrilly. Irene leaned over and picked up the receiver.
“Hello? Oh—Madison.” There was a moment’s silence. Then she said, “I see. Can you hold a moment?” She turned to Tammy. “I think we’re done, aren’t we?”
“You’re insane,” Tammy said hoarsely.
“Oh, no, my dear,” Irene said softly. “It’s just that I refuse to be intimidated—not by the men in this world, and not by you. And I won’t let my girls be threatened either. We are a sisterhood, and we take care of our own. Do you understand me?”
Silently, Tammy nodded.
“Then don’t you think you should be leaving? You have a long walk home through the snow.”
Numbly, Tammy got to her feet. When she was standing, her eyes were even with the painting on the wall directly across from her. The images swam before her—black and purple and red—the red, thick and dark like blood; the black, like a heavy metallic object—strong, brutal shapes that were a silent cry of fury.
“That picture—” She blinked, and the forms seemed to shift. There was no recognizable object there at all, only hatred. A canvas full of hatred.
“That day—at the initiation,” Tammy said haltingly, “something was wrong. I knew it—but I didn’t know what. I got scared—I ran—but I didn’t know what it was I was running away from.
“I know now. It was you. I was running from you.”
The snow delayed the delivery of the day’s mail. It was 2:45 p.m. by the time the mail carrier had made it along the slippery roads as far as the Ellis house on Fourth Street. He brought an assortment of cards in square envelopes bedecked with Christmas seals, and a letter for Madison.
The letter read:
Dear Miss Ellis:
It is my understanding that those citizens of Modesta who contributed so generously to the school athletic fund through the November raffle did so out of a desire to support the program as it currently exists. To use these funds for another purpose would, I believe, be unfair to the contributors.
I appreciate your group’s concern for the future of the Modesta athletic program. Your desire for the development of a girls’ soccer team will be kept very much in mind in the future. However, at this particular time, I feel the donations from the community will be best used to further the sports activities the school already sponsors.
I am grateful for the continued support and help of the Daughters of Eve.
Sincerely yours,
J. Douglas Shelby, Principal
Modesta High School
“That self-satisfied bastard!” Madison said softly when she’d finished reading the letter. “The nerve!”
She took out her cell phone and made several short calls.
Then she told her mother, “I’m going out for a while.”
Hurriedly, before her mother could question her further, Madison put on her ski jacket and left the house.
Throughout the town of Modesta, the doors of other homes were opening to spill an assortment of teenage girls out into the blowing snow. Some were on foot. Others borrowed cars from their parents. The ones with the cars collected those without.
Paula Brummell stopped at the Schneider house to pick up Erika.
To her surprise, she found her upstairs in her bedroom, doing homework.
“I’m not going,” Erika told her. “I don’t think this is the way to handle things.”
“We did it for you when you got screwed over,” Paula reminded her.
“I know, and I wish you hadn’t. If I’d been at the meeting that day, I’d never have let you. You can’t go around destroying people’s property because you’re mad at them for doing things you don’t want them to.”
“You think we should sit still for discrimination?” Paula demanded.
“It wasn’t discrimination that kept me from going to state. Mr. Carncross knew my project would be disqualified. He told me about a student two years ago who trained a rat to run a maze by rewarding it with food. To get it hungry enough to perform well, the student didn’t feed it for twenty-four hours. The decision committee banned the project because they thought it showed cruelty to animals. If they’d do that, you can imagine how they’d react to a bunch of rats crawling around with the d.t.’s.”
“He probably made that story up,” Paula said.
“I don’t think so. I believe him.”
“You can’t know it’s true.”
“And you can’t know it isn’t true,” Erika said. “But if it wasn’t, if he was deliberately trying to keep me from going to state because he liked Gordon better, that still wouldn’t have been reason to smash up all that expensive stuff. I saw that place the next day. It looked like a bunch of animals went crazy in there.”
“So what about punishing Peter? Do you think that was wrong, too? You were part of that as much as the rest of us.”
“It didn’t seem wrong at the time,” Erika admitted. “Now, though, I think it might have been. I did take part in that, but I thought it was going to be a one-time thing because of Laura. I didn’t know it was just the beginning.”
“We have to stand up for our rights!”
“You sound like Irene.”
“So what’s wrong with that? Are you turning on Irene now?” Paula regarded her incredulously. “I’ll tell you, Erika, you and I have been friends for a long time, but if you dare say one thing against Irene, our friendship’s over. Look at all she’s done for us, at all she’s taught us. How many teachers give their all for their students the way she’s done? If it wasn’t for Irene, we’d still be the same bunch of spineless nothings we were a year ago, rolling along without any real direction, doing do-gooder projects and having our little parties. It’s Irene who’s shown us what sisterhood can be.”
“It’s gotten out of hand,” Erika said. “It’s gone too far. The basic premise is fine, but there’s so much hate, we can’t see anything clearly anymore.”
“Of course there’s hate! It’s normal to hate people who hurt you!”
“I don’t hate Mr. Carncross, and I don’t hate Gordon. I like Gordon. He’s a cool guy.”
“And I suppose you ‘like’ Mr. Shelby? Did Madison read you that letter?”
“Yes, and I don’t like it, and I don’t like him. I think the letter was insulting, and there’s got to be something we can do about it. But not this. This isn’t going to get us anywhere. What good will it do?” Behind the thick lenses of her glasses, Erika’s eyes were solemn and worried. “Paula, this scares me. If things go on like this, somebody’s going to get hurt. Badly hurt.”
“Mr. Shelby, you mean?”
“I don’t know who, but somebody. Violence leads to more violence. You know Tammy’s ‘candle with the blood on it’? I don’t want to be there to see it burn.”
“That’s your problem, then,” Paula said.
“I guess it is.”
Erika didn’t bother to go downstairs and walk Paula to the door. It wouldn’t have mattered. Despite the years of closeness between them, they were no longer friends.