The rage built as she drove. It made her sharp and quick at the wheel, speeding over the snow-covered roads and once accelerating out of a skid. She was alert to the overcast sky, the jade color of frosted evergreens. And so many hateful images, all of them newly lit by this information. She saw Rita in that pointed rabbit fur hat, shaking out her hair when she took it off. And then Eddie’s hand at Rita’s throat, like he was trying to feel for words he couldn’t hear.
She swerved along the shoulder of the road, half on, half off, recalling again what she’d thought that night. So there. She doesn’t want to play anymore, and neither do I. She veered back onto the pavement and gunned the motor, thinking of Eddie that morning in the cabin, spread out across the couch, talking about all the things he and Naomi would be buying now that they were married. A welter of images followed. Eddie in that god-awful yellow cashmere sweater that belonged to the owner of the brownstone on Sixty-sixth Street. Like mother, like daughter, he had said. And Naomi, so recklessly in his thrall. As Carole drove, she was convinced Naomi had to have known. How easy it had been to pull the wool over her eyes. What a loser, to believe it all this time.
At West Hill, she hooked a left and flew over the snow-packed dirt roads, wheels slipping here and there as the road slush turned to ice in shadow. She went right on Molly Supple, and finally up Naomi’s long, messy driveway. When she was almost at the house, the green Jaguar blocked her way, the passenger-side door wide open. Carole stopped the truck and leaned on the horn.
She waited. As soon as either one of them showed his or her face, she was going to let it rip. She wasn’t scared anymore. She wasn’t responsible for Rita Boudreau’s death. Eddie was. She let the horn blare again. But there was only silence. She got out of the truck, slammed closed the door on the Jag, and walked toward the house. The back storm door was ajar. She rapped and waited, then opened the inside door and called in; her voice was met by silence. The kitchen was piled with filthy plates and open containers of food. Naomi’s big patent-leather purse was on the floor, as if thrown, the contents spread out across the shiny wood. A lipstick, her car keys, junk.
They could be in bed. They could have come home from Chacha’s lusting for each other and gone upstairs to the bedroom. It would explain the car in the driveway, the open doors. They could be lying there, waiting for her to leave. She wouldn’t put it past them. “I’m coming up,” she yelled at the base of the stairs. The outside door swung shut on a breeze and slammed, causing her to jump.
She took the stairs two at a time to the wide-open bedroom, but it was empty. The huge king bed was unmade, littered with boxes from Tripler’s, the men’s store in Manhattan. Tissue from the boxes was strewn around, and so were sweaters and slacks and socks, all still with the tags on. There were two suits, one brown and one blue, in a heap on the couch. And several pairs of shoes. Eddie had been on a shopping spree. She flung open the closet door, but it was empty. Then she raced back downstairs and did the same, opening and slamming doors all through the house, even into the cellar with its dank walls. And she would have left, would have assumed they’d gone out again, except for one thing. She checked the garage and there was the Land Cruiser.
So they had come home, and something had made Naomi throw down her purse, and now the only place they could be was outside. She went to check, and sure enough there were footprints, freshly made in the snow, heading downhill in back. Eddie’s big boots and Naomi’s little high-heeled ones. It infuriated her all over again, the irresponsibility of everything they did, running into the woods too late in the day, letting the battery run down on the car, letting the heat out of the house. She’d just add that to the list when she found them.
In the back of the truck she kept, among other emergency items, snowshoes and a small pack. Will had drummed preparation into her. She wasn’t supposed to take any trail, summer or winter, without that little pack with its plastic bags of gorp, water bottle, dry socks, and a little first-aid kit whose contents were probably reduced to dust by now. She went into the house to fill the bottle of water. She tied the snowshoes to a loop on the pack, then entered the woods, following their footprints. They were mostly Eddie’s, only occasionally the little pointed triangular ones. In one place, the snow was freshly roiled. In another there were long troughs where something had been dragged. It all continued clearly enough, and Carole followed them. What were they doing? Where were they going? They couldn’t have gone too far, certainly not with Naomi in those stupid boots.
The snow had softened in the midday sun, then firmed to ice. In minutes, the hem of her skirt was waterlogged from dragging in the snow, and salty sweat stung in her eyes. The trail flattened out for a good distance and then turned down again through the forest. She scanned the thickly wooded terrain, called Naomi’s name, waited, then continued. She must be on a snowmobile trail because the footing was so solid. In the distance was the sound of running water. She decided to keep going a bit more. If she couldn’t see them soon, then to hell with it, she’d go back and wait for them at the house.
She went carefully down the incline, calling out as she went, stopping at a junction where another snowmobile trail came in from the left. They could have gone either way, she thought, and she was about to turn back when a little fleck of black in the distance caught her eye. It moved, stopped, moved again. She stopped to watch, lost it, found it again. A person, she was sure.
The sun was falling behind the mountains now, casting everything in shadow. As she headed down, holding on to trees for support, crouching to keep herself from falling, she could feel moisture seep through her skirt and her gloves. Will had taught her to turn and look behind her periodically, making a mental note of landmarks so she would know what to look for when she doubled back. But the light in the woods was already too dim to get a good fix on any rocks or trees, so she concentrated on the sound of the water, which was ahead now and much closer.
She kept going, testing her weight with each step. Then Eddie came full into view perhaps twenty yards away, a thick, dark shadow standing with his back to her. Beyond him, Naomi swayed on hands and knees, her head lolling as though it was too heavy to raise. Carole watched as Eddie took Naomi under the arms and lifted her like some limp little doll, then toppled her on purpose and left her sitting in the snow, her head drooping. He lit a cigarette. The smell hit Carole and she stood up.
Naomi saw her at once and made a sound that caused Eddie to spin around and look. He was massive in all his winter gear. Carole didn’t have time to move before he spotted her. “Oh, Christ,” he said.
“What’s going on? What’s wrong with Naomi?”
“She’s drunk,” Eddie said with a laugh. “As usual.”
Carole approached Naomi. Up close she could see that Eddie had on a new down parka, a new ski hat. Naomi had only her thin jacket. Even from several yards away, Carole could tell that she was dripping wet. Naomi tried to stand again but fell and broke into a giggle.
“Give me a hand,” Eddie said.
Carole approached warily. Something was way off. “How did she get so wet? That’s really dangerous. We have to—” she said, forgetting her anger.
“She fell in,” Eddie said. “Get over here, okay?”
Carole held back, afraid of what Eddie might do if she got too close to him. She stalled for time, removing her pack, dumping it at her feet. “I might have dry clothes in here. Something.” She rummaged around but caught a glimpse of Eddie at the same time holding up Naomi’s hair. He seemed to be trying to tell how wet it was.
“Help me.” Naomi was looking at Carole, her eyes wide and frightened. “Please.”
“Relax, will you?” Eddie said to her. “Bring that pack of yours over here,” he said to Carole. He was beckoning, snapping his fingers with impatience, a gesture she remembered from that night in the motel when he’d been so agitated. She edged closer. Maybe Naomi was drunk, and maybe Eddie was trying to help. But when she drew close, Naomi said, “Look out,” and Carole stopped.
He looked from Carole to Naomi and back, then laughed. “My wife pulled some very stupid shit,” he said. “Back there at your place, she wanted to go for the free lunch. Fill in the blanks down there at your place. She thought it would be fun for people to hear who actually did it. She’s waving her hand around for your friend to come over so she could give him a blow-by-blow, and I had to manhandle her a little to get her out of there. It was extremely stupid what you did with that picture. Extremely.”
“You lied to me,” Carole said. “I never killed her. You did. She died of asphyxiation, not a broken neck.”
He stared at her, took a long drag on his cigarette.
“What’s the difference?” he said. “It was an accident.”
“But it was your accident, Eddie, not mine.”
“We got away with it, okay? You should have left it alone.”
She moved in closer to him, all her fury back. “You said it was my fault, you son of a bitch. You said you were covering up for me when all the time I was covering up for you.”
He was standing before her, legs slightly apart, arms taut. All black except for his pale, round face. “And you believed it,” he said. “A smart girl like you. I wondered when you’d figure it out.”
“I was sixteen.”
“You were a kid. I knew that. There was no telling what you’d do. You were in a shitload of trouble no matter whose fault it was. You should have thanked me a million times over. Instead you make a federal case of it. She”—he pointed to Naomi—“she was ready to tell the world today. Shit. She thought it was funny.”
“Tell them what? That I did it or that you did it, Eddie? That’s what she wanted to shout out today, isn’t it? That it was you and not me?”
A long moan came from Naomi.
“We’ve got to get her warm, Eddie. This is serious.”
Eddie took a step toward Carole. “When we got back from town, she jumped out of the car and ran for the woods, drunk as a skunk. I came after her, and when she stopped, she was in this creek. All I was trying to do was settle her down so I could get her home and get her dry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
He was lying, and Carole knew it. Naomi’s purse had been on the floor, which meant she had gone into the house first. She hadn’t bolted from the car to the woods like he said. Naomi rolled herself around and sat on the snow, her legs straight out in front of her like a doll. She began tugging at the zipper on her jacket and finally got it down, then she pulled open her shirt, exposing her neck. “Hot in here,” she said.
In that instant it all made sense. Eddie had brought Naomi out here. He might even have carried her, dragged her. It explained the troughs she’d seen in the snow. In a sudden fury, Carole ran at Eddie, ramming him with her body, and felt him give, massive and soft. She felt him fall beneath her and grappled for his face. Will had taught her how once, made her show him the claw her hand could make, the index and middle fingers crooked to plunge into the eyes. But Eddie was powerful. He rolled away, loomed over her, and pinned her to the snow. They lay panting and gasping.
“You stupid bitch.” He pulled himself up and planted a knee hard on Carole’s shoulder. He took a few more breaths, rolled her over, and pushed her arms painfully up. She tried to pull away, but he had her tight. “You’re not as strong as you think you are.” He dragged her a few feet to the stream. She struggled and tried to kick, but he had her too firmly, and she was facedown, her arms pinned. He plunged her down into the icy water. It was everywhere at once. In her mouth and her nose and ears. It rushed under her clothing at the neck of her parka, her wrists and ankles and waist, searing her skin all over. He pushed her down farther, so far under the water now that the cold attacked her back and her legs, it soaked her hair, burned her scalp. She couldn’t breathe. She had to fight against taking in a great sucking breath from the shock of the cold, but if she did, she would drown. She shook her head, clamped her lips shut against it, writhed like an eel until he let go, and burst through the surface of the water, dragging the cold night air into her lungs like fire. He flung her back onto the snow and planted his knee in the small of her back.
“You girls are a couple of losers. Always were.” Still holding her down, he rummaged through her pack, came up with the flashlight, and shone it into her face. The light was so weak she could see its filaments, the shape of the bulb. It would never last. “I can use this.” He took out the socks and a windbreaker, then threw the pack down.
“I’m hot.” Naomi was sitting cross-legged a few feet from where Eddie had Carole pinned.
“You’re gone.” Eddie raised himself up, putting more weight on his knee, digging it deeply into Carole’s shoulder. He took a handful of snow and shoved it into Naomi’s face, down her neck. “Better?” he said.
Carole tried to pull away but couldn’t. “Let me lay it down for you,” he said. “Now that I have your attention.” He laughed. “I’ve been reading your boyfriend’s column in the newspaper,” he said. “What’s his name?”
Keep him calm, keep him talking, Carole thought, but her body was starting to convulse with shivers. Don’t let him get a rise out of you. He laughed again. “Will,” she said.
“That’s right. Will. It occurred to me that all I needed to do is wet her down and leave her here like she slipped and fell in the brook and was trying to crawl out. Hypothermia. I didn’t believe it at first, but I asked around, and it’s true. You girls are just going to cool down to nothing.”
“What did she ever do to you?”
“It’s not what she did to me. It’s what she might do with that mouth of hers. And it’s what she can do for me. I’ll be the grieving widower. Need I say more?”
“She would give it to you,” Carole said. “She was giving away money all the time.”
“Exactly,” Eddie said. “She’s very careless.”
“You’re despicable,” Carole said.
Eddie sighed. “And fast too,” he said. “The hypothermia, I mean. That’s the interesting thing. It happens fast. Well, not death itself, but the disorientation, and he said once a person is disoriented they’re dead, because they do all the wrong things. They can’t help themselves. It’s irreversible at some point. Oh, skinny and wet speed things up even more.” He paused. “I’ll be leaving once you girls are ready. I’ll go back to the house, my house now, for a bowl of hot soup or something. In a few hours I’ll call the police about my missing wife.” He paused and then laughed. “When they find you, they’ll just think it’s a couple of dumb broads, which it is.” He laughed. “That’s got possibilities.” His knee dug deeper into her back, pressing her abdomen harder into the snow. “I wish you could thank Will for me,” he said.
By now Naomi was whimpering rhythmically. Eddie straddled Carole’s back, keeping her down. She didn’t know how long they stayed like that, and in spite of trying not to, she slipped in and out of sleep. She began to shiver violently, picturing her wet clothing welding to the icy ground beneath her. She shut her eyes and must have dozed because when she opened them again, the woods had darkened. Eddie switched on the light. Its thin yellow beam flickered. “Come on,” he said. “Time to get up and go home to a nice warm bed, okay?”
She tried to pull herself up but felt a tug and realized her clothing had begun to freeze to the ground. She lay back down again and felt his bare hand under her clothes. His face came close to hers, and she could feel his breath. He raised her eyelid with his finger and she stared into his face, training her eye on the bridge of his nose so it wouldn’t flicker. “That boyfriend gives you a couple of hours, maybe,” he said to her. “A lot less for my wife here.”
He let go of her, rolled over, and got to his feet.
Eddie laughed. “Just like Will said.” Carole shivered again, a racking spasm that made her teeth rattle. “‘The body shivers to create heat and by that very act depletes itself more quickly.’ I remember that line. A genius, that boy of yours. I’ll be going now before I start to get hypothermia myself. I’ve been here much too long.” He jiggled her foot. “I got wet, too. My cuffs.” He got to his feet, and she saw him shine the light into her pack, take out the food, start to walk away, and then stop again. “One more for good measure,” he said, and she felt more liquid sluicing over her hair and the back of her neck. He must have found the water bottle in her pack.
She listened as his footsteps retreated and stopped. “Think I’ll take these snowshoes too,” he said. “If neither of you ladies mind.” He sat down to put them on, cursing and muttering about the straps. They were beavertail snowshoes, old bentwood ones, three feet long including the tail. They had makeshift rawhide laces you had to wrap around your ankles several times to secure them. She wished he’d hurry up. She didn’t have too long now before she started to lose it for real, before she was so disoriented she’d do something suicidal. She watched Eddie stand and lose his balance. He righted himself, then headed out slowly, knowing enough to keep his feet wide apart as he walked.
As soon as he was gone, Carole rose to her knees and brushed off the bits of ice clinging to her. The moon was rising, casting just enough light to see Naomi lying with her arms outstretched.
Carole got to her feet. The air was very cold now and her skin stung everywhere. “Nay?”
Silence.
She could see Eddie lumbering up the snowmobile trail. It took only seconds to decide to follow him out. She didn’t dare stay. Her judgment would start to go. Maybe it already had. That was the trouble. You didn’t know. Eddie had been right about that much. She opened her pack as wide as it would go and spread it over Naomi. It was all she had. “I’ll come back,” she whispered.
He was struggling upward, and she followed at a distance. He would fight up a ways, stop, turn, and look back, as though to check his progress. She would stop and wait for him to turn again and to keep going. She was shivering violently. She crept behind, adjusting to his speed. When they reached the house, she would wait until he went inside, then run for her truck and get help.
They kept going, Eddie ahead and Carole far enough behind that he wouldn’t see her. It seemed so much longer than it had taken to come in. After a time she realized they were still struggling up the slope, when it should have leveled out by now. The flat part had been the longest. The slope had been short. She looked for landmarks, but it was too dark to see. The water. She remembered now. She’d used the water as the trail marker. She listened for it, and yes, there it was, but wait. It was close by, and the sound was coming from the right. She had to stop and think, to orient herself, knowing her mind was going fuzzy. If the water had been ahead coming in, it should be behind her coming out. So how could it be to the right? Then she remembered the trail junction. Oh, God, they’d taken the wrong fork. They were deeper in the woods. They were moving farther from the house.
She picked out Eddie’s thick, dark form from the sound of his footsteps. He stopped, waited for several beats, catching his breath, then continued on. She tried to think what she needed to do but couldn’t. Her indecision was so confusing. If only she could decide, then she would know. In that state, she kept walking, but the cold air had hardened the path to slippery ice beneath her. The sound of her own boots seemed to echo everywhere, and she was afraid he’d hear her. She stepped to the edge of the path where the snow was soft and quiet and continued along that way.
When she looked up again, Eddie was startlingly clear in a wide snowfield broken only by small clumps of evergreens. Where were they? He wasn’t on the trail anymore. He’d headed off into the deep snow where his snowshoes had purchase. He was going away from her, across the snow, unsteadily, sinking to his knees and losing his balance.
The way the snow lay on the land was trying to tell her something. It was all wrong, lumpy and uneven in a way that suggested forms underneath. Here and there, dense clumps of new evergreens peeked through, like a Christmas tree farm. Then she remembered. Those small trees weren’t new growth at all but the tips of mature spruce trees. The actual trees were fifteen or twenty feet tall, and these were their tops. Over time, the drifting snow had accumulated on the branches. Under the branches, all the way down, were dozens of air pockets.
Instinctively, she stepped back onto the hard-packed snowmobile trail, where the footing was safe, while up ahead, Eddie stopped. He turned this way and that, his body language that of somebody lost, somebody about to panic.
“Eddie,” she called to him. She was feeling very calm. She knew what she was about to do.
The faltering little beam of flashlight jiggled crazily, trying to find the source of the sound. “Who’s out there?” he yelled.
“Carole.” The sound of her name rang out in the quiet evening.
The beam of his light clicked off. She felt a flutter of sympathy for the pathetic gesture. He thought she wouldn’t know where he was if he turned off the flashlight. He was scared.
“Come and get me,” she said.
He began to move toward her. She could hear the thumpf thumpf, a sound made more distinctive by the hollows beneath him. She pictured what it looked like under the snow, fragile as a spiderweb, airy as a honeycomb. A person’s weight could never be supported by that. It was like ocean foam.
He must have felt the snow give way, felt the way his weight sank oddly down because he made a sudden, clumsy motion to recover, his arms spiraling. The effect was to drop him farther. Even in that dim light, she could see the thrust of his arms reaching out. She heard the quick suck of breath, the snap of branches deep underneath as his weight broke them and he fell. A dark shadow widened at the spot he’d gone down. It’s like quicksand, Will had said of a spruce trap. Like being buried alive. The more you struggle, the worse you become ensnared.
She stood listening to his muffled screams, and she made no move to help him. He would be twisting among the branches. He would be grabbing for them, trying to climb back out, but the more he tried, the more snow would cascade down on him. The horror of it. Snow would be filling his mouth and his nose. It would be finding every opening in his clothing.
“Help me,” he shouted. The whole dark gash began to quiver. He would understand now that to survive, he had to remove his snowshoes. He would try to undo them, but they would be tangled up with the branches. He would reach down first one way and then another, trying to snake his hands through the branches to his feet. With every effort, and she could almost see it happen, he would panic more, realizing that he could never reach his feet. The panic would sink him farther, cause him to sweat, soak his clothing from the inside out.
She remembered Rita right then, dead on a cold night like this, her naked body deep under snow. She remembered looking down, how she had tried to keep Naomi and Eddie from pushing the snow in on top of her. How she had tried to say something to the dead woman that night. “Rita Boudreau,” Carole called out. “Her name was Rita Boudreau.”
The shaking stopped. “Carole,” he screamed at her, his voice rising from the pit, bouncing off the mountains. The awareness would be dawning in full. Of the cold and of the fact that he could not get out. He could not remove the snowshoes, could not rid himself of those big paddles anchoring him to the trap, and she would not come to his aid. He called out again. “Please.”
She looked around. It was so much darker. She’d stayed too long. The movement, the rustling where Eddie had gone down, stopped. Suddenly it was quiet. “Marie,” she shouted. “Her name was Rita Marie Boudreau.”
Who’s the most important person in a rescue? Will’s mantra, that one. The rescuer was the answer. The person with the strength and the wherewithal. Not the victim. Never the victim. If somebody has to die, it’s got to be the victim, not you. Because if you die, the victim is going to die. Two instead of one. Simple arithmetic.
Those were the words circulating through Carole’s mind as she felt her way back along the trail, testing each step to make sure she was still on hard pack and not on the edges. She had to fight to keep remembering, fight to focus on what she knew she had to do. She was thinking victim and rescuer, that she had to find the house now and get help. She had to stay on that path. Back to the house. Test, step. Test, step. It was all she thought about. Have to stay out of the deep snow. Have to stay on solid snow. Not until she stumbled, hearing the stream right there before her, did she realize her mistake. She’d forgotten about the trail back to the house. Again. The other path, the same one Eddie had missed. She was losing it. Focus, she told herself.
Naomi lay with her hands crossed over her breasts and her wet hair hanging like tree vines, soaking wet. She’d sloughed off the pack and taken off her shirt. Her silver rings were loose on her fingers and her nails black, no gloves on. Carole touched her hair, which had begun to form ice crystals.
“I need to get you out of here,” Carole said. But Naomi made no effort to stand, and Carole had to help her. She pulled gently at first and then with more force until she felt the give as Naomi let herself be lifted. Carole stood slowly, Naomi’s slight body resting against her own, the incredibly fragile bones. When Carole let go, Naomi fell like stone to the ground. Carole wasn’t sure Naomi even knew if she was there. Do not let the victim of hypothermia go to sleep. She shook Naomi. Her mind groped the whole disaster lexicon. Advanced confusion, feeling hot, stripping off clothing. Will had been so expansive. She pulled Naomi’s clothing back up to cover her, but Naomi clawed it off.
She felt along the ground, hands raking under the snow for dead leaves, but the leaves were wet. She worked her way up the hill on her hands and knees, feeling the snow deepen quickly, unable to feel anything. Her skin was numb everywhere. She dug with her hands. Under the crust, the snow was mercifully soft and yielding, and she was able to move armfuls of it aside, to get into the hole and press it down, enlarging it. She took Naomi under the arms and inched up the rise to the hole.
The torso. The heart. Will’s words again. Those were the important parts now. Arms and legs didn’t matter.
She fingered her own frozen clothing, feeling for something dry, but there was nothing. Everything was soaked through. She felt Naomi’s icy wet sweater. Fumbling, shivering. All she wanted was to lie beside Naomi, to warm her and to sleep.
Worst thing you can do, Will had said. They’d been in the car, and he’d talked about it. The transfer works against you. Your heat going into the victim. The victim’s cold coming into you. Irreversible. You slip from sleep into death. Just like that. He’d snapped his fingers to show how fast. Need to get out of here. But she didn’t want to. She felt so tired.
Who’s the most important person in a rescue? She wanted to stay there, to close her eyes and sleep, but Will’s words kept intruding. If you die, the victim will surely die. She was feeling so drowsy, far off and strange, but at least she wasn’t feeling the cold anymore. Against her chest, Naomi’s heart pounded like a jackhammer.
“Don’t go to sleep.” She slapped Naomi’s arm, then her face lightly. “Say something.”
But there was only silence. Carole watched the light of the moon on the stream. Cries sounded in the distance. Eddie. One degree of body temperature is lost for every five minutes on uninsulated frozen ground. If you’re wet, the cooling process is twenty-five times faster. At 90 degrees of body heat, the direction is irreversible.
As if someone had wound her up, she rose to her knees and began to crawl back up the path. She felt nothing. She had to get there, back to the house, to a telephone. The most important person in any rescue. But she was so sleepy. So intoxicatingly sleepy. Take the left path, she told herself. Look for the left path.