stairs, taking the porter’s hand in the billowing steam, and moved shyly and gracefully onto the platform to meet Ralph Truitt.
CHAPTER THREE
She stepped into snow, a swirling, blowing blizzard that blinded her, yet dazzled her at the same time. It both darkened and illuminated the air of the platform, surrounding her with an aura of moving light. Strangers darted back and forth, greeting, kissing, hurling trunks and suitcases onto shoulders, sheltering babies from the storm. The snow moved horizontally, spiking in giddying whirls around the hastening figures, flying swiftly upward into dark nothingness. There seemed to be no end to it.
She had thought she would not know him, not until he was the last man left, but of course she did. His was the unrequited face, his the disconnection from the eddying sea of people around him. She knew him at once. He looked so rich and so alone.
All of a sudden, she was afraid. It had never occurred to her that they would have to talk; they would say hello, of course, but she hadn’t gotten much farther than that. Now it seemed to stretch into infinity, the endless small talk she imagined as the daily life of married people, the details, the getting and grabbing, the parrying and accommodating, the doing of whatever it was that married people did.
Because she would marry him, of course. She had said she would and she would. But then what? How to fill the days, the endless round of meals, of chores, the endless hours in this brilliant blindness which seemed to suck out of her all possibility of speech.
The beginnings were so enchanting usually, and yet she could only stand in frozen dread at all the small complacencies that filled the middle. If she got sick, he would nurse her, she supposed. They would discuss the price of things. He would be tight with money, although he looked expensively dressed. She would ask him for money and he would give it and then she would pay for the things they needed, and then she would tell him what she had bought. They would discuss that at dinner, food she had made for him. They would discuss the weather, noting every change, or read together in the long howling evenings, by some fire or stove. She supposed they would do or say whatever it was people in their situation normally did and said but she realized now she didn’t know what that was.
In the train car, on the slow ride from Chicago, the edges of things were clear and everything stood out in sharp focus. Here in the snow, in the sharp weather, everything blurred, the edges disappeared leaving only vague unknowable shapes, and she was afraid.
Still, there was nothing for them, the two of them or anybody else, nothing for them to do except go on, huddle together, wait for spring. She would do what she had to do.
She stepped toward him, his hands in the pockets of a long black coat, its black fur collar sparkling with snow. She could barely make out his face as he turned toward her, unknowing. He seemed… what? Sad? Nice? He seemed alone.
She felt ridiculous, with her cheap black wool clothes and her cheap gray cardboard suitcase. Just begin, she thought. Just move forward to say hello; the rest, somehow, will take care of itself.
“Mr. Truitt. I’m Catherine Land.”
“You’re not her. I have a photograph.”
“It’s of someone else. It’s my cousin India.”
He could feel the eyes of the townspeople watching them, the eyes taking it all in, this deception. It was too much to bear.
“You need a proper coat. This is the country.”
“It’s what I have. I’m sorry. The picture. I’m sorry, but I can explain.”
This deceit in front of the whole town, this being made a fool of, again, in front of everybody. His heart raced and his legs felt bloodless.
“We can’t stand here all night. Whoever you are. Give me your case.”
She handed it to him as he took his hand from his pocket. Briefly, she felt its warmth.
“This is all. This is everything?”
“I can explain. I don’t have much. I thought…”
“We can’t stand here in a blizzard, with everybody… we can’t stay here.” He looked at her without warmth or welcome. “This begins in a lie. I want you to know I know that.”
He took the picture from his pocket, her picture, and showed it to her, as though bringing it out from his pocket would somehow make her become the shy, homely woman caught there. She looked at it.
“Whoever you are, you’re not this woman.”
“I will explain, Mr. Truitt. I’m not here to make a fool of you.”
“No. You won’t. Whatever else, you’re a liar.”
He turned, and she followed him across the deserted platform to a carriage tied up at the side. The nervous horses stamped and blew great jets of steam from their nostrils while Ralph Truitt put her suitcase in the back and strapped it on with thick leather straps. Without a word, he handed her into her seat.
He vanished in the hurling snow, reappeared and climbed into his seat. He looked at her, full in the face for the first time. “Maybe you thought I was a fool. You were wrong.”
He snapped the reins, and the horses trotted smartly into the white void. They rode in silence. The lights from the windows of the houses glowed softly, as though at a great distance. She couldn’t tell how near or far anything was from the carriage, in the snow. She couldn’t tell how many stores or houses there were. She never saw the turnings until they made them. He knew. The horses knew. She was a stranger here.
The snow silenced the wagon wheels. There was no conversation. She was floating in a soundless void in the middle of nowhere.
“Are there many people?”
“Where?”
“In town.”
“Two thousand. About. More or less every year. Depending.”
“On what?”
“On whether more die than are born.”
They said nothing else. They floated through the snow, the glow of houses in the distance, each one a family, each a series of entwined lives, while they sat entirely separate and alone.
Ralph had nothing to say. He had expected things, and now she was here, whoever she was, and suddenly everything was different. In every house they passed, there were lives that were wholly known to him. In these houses, the people knew one another; they knew him as well. He had held their babies, been to their weddings, been shocked by their sudden flights into madness and rage. He was and he wasn’t a part of their lives. He was there and he had done what was required of him, what was expected.
They went crazy in the cold; they went deep into the heart of their religion and emerged as lunatics. But even this was familiar. Sane, they wanted to believe that they were the sort of people whose babies had been held and cuddled by Ralph Truitt, and he found it easy enough to foster the illusion that these things mattered to him. Still, their glowing lives, their families, were intertwined in ways that he couldn’t even imagine.
But this woman was not expected. He was angry. He was confused. He had read her letter until it fell apart in his hands. He had looked at her picture a thousand times. Now it was clear she wasn’t the woman in the photograph, and he had no idea who she might be. His relation to every person in the town rested on the fact that he had complete control over everything that happened to him. Now this wild thing. The train late. The blinding snow. This woman.
It was a mistake. He felt it in the pit of his stomach, everything wrong, the letter, the picture, his foolish hope. It was a mistake to have wanted, to have felt desire, but he had, he had wanted something for himself. Now the object of his desire was here, and it was all, none of it, what he had wanted.
He had wanted a simple, honest woman. A quiet life. A life in which everything could be saved and nobody went insane.
He couldn’t turn her away, couldn’t leave her in a blizzard. He couldn’t be seen leaving her. There would be
