Just under six feet, Tony had always been a little overweight. After years of eating on the road—conference dinners, whiling away lonely evenings in restaurants—he had put on more pounds then his frame could hide. He grew tired of seeing himself in the mirror with a double chin that was getting more prominent every day. The pounds had accumulated to the point where Tony decided to do something drastic. In February he’d joined a Weight Watchers group, and lost fifty-three pounds in nine months. On Tuesday nights, he’d even started playing basketball with a group of guys and running a bit to get in better shape and to keep his weight down. The suit worn to his interview with Deanco was too tight for him at the time, but now it was too loose.
Dodie had begun to change Tony’s ideas about food when they lived in Atlanta in the mid-1980s. After Dodie was afflicted with breast cancer, she made changes in the family’s diet, cutting down on fatty foods and serving more fresh fruits and vegetables. The crisis brought on a sudden urgency to be serious about a healthy lifestyle. Tony stopped smoking and tried to eat more chicken, but being a meat and potatoes man, he found it hard to stick to the lighter fare. It was not until he tried Weight Watchers that he found a plan to which he could stick and with which he’d found success.
In six days Tony would turn forty—he felt it the demarcation line between being young and middle-aged—but except for a slight hair loss in the front and a few age lines on his face, he could still pass for a man in his thirties. A family ski trip to Greek Peak, a popular ski area thirty miles north of Ithaca, was planned for the following Thursday to celebrate his birthday.
Tony liked the early morning, even these cold winter ones when he looked out over the white fields and the hills to the south in back of the dream house that Dodie’s father had built for them three and a half years before. When they moved to Ithaca in 1985 from Marietta, Georgia, where he was branch manager for Deanco, they searched for enough land to build a large house, and an antique and country gift store that Dodie had wanted for a long time. They needed enough space for children and animals; their long-range plans included raising geese and maybe a horse or two.
Ellis Hollow fit their priorities. The location offered an independent country life in a community that held traditional family values. The Harris’s could enjoy their privacy, yet join in community activities when they chose. Seeing the empty pond a few hundred yards to the east of the house reminded Tony of one project that had failed. It was to be a farm pond, verv common on the rural landscape, used for fishing, perhaps swimming, and during the winter when it froze over Marc and his friends would practice skating. Ice hockey was Marc’s passion. But the pond did not fill up, apparently due to the rocky soil. Tony and Dodie laughed about it with friends and neighbors, but he felt sorry for Marc’s sake.
It was a lively breakfast scene in the Harrises’ kitchen that morning. Marc’s dog Annie, a German shepherd and collie mix, barked loudly at the newcomer, a six-month-old tabby cat named Shadow, sending her running out of the room. Annie was a stray they had found while living in Marietta. She was a peaceful family fixture who slept with Marc and followed Dodie around all day, even riding in the van when she went shopping.
“Calm your dog down, Marc, for gosh sakes, the poor cat is scared to death,’’ yelled Shelby, as she wrapped up the cookies she had baked the night before to take to her friends at school.
“Mom, remember about going over to Jim’s house tonight at seven, okay?”
Shelby knew her mother never forgot anything. Why did she ask? But the reminder just popped out of Shelby’s mouth as she sat down to eat a toasted raisin bagel and drink a mug of hot cocoa at the kitchen table. Her mother was a near-perfect mother, and Shelby loved her deeply. They had become even closer during Dodie’s bout with cancer. After the first mastectomy the doctor said he had gotten it all, but a few months later found a malignant tumor on Dodie’s other breast. Shaken by these threats to her life and convinced she might have limited time to live, Dodie decided she had to return to New York to be closer to her family in Syracuse. The Harris’s planned their move back north even though Tony didn’t know if Deanco had anything open for him in the Syracuse area. He rejected Dodie’s desperate suggestion that in order to keep his job he might have to live in a condo in Atlanta and commute to New York on the weekends. He was willing to resign from the company in order to keep the family together.
“Shelby, I’ll drop you at Jim’s tonight around seven. I have a few things to pick up at the mall, so I’ll do that and come back for you in an hour or so. All right?” Dodie said to her daughter as she poured her a small glass of orange juice.
Jim Ciolek was Shelby’s first serious boyfriend. They’d known each other since DeWitt Middle School, but started going out in the fall after finding themselves in the same tenth-grade English class.
Ithaca High School was intimidating to many students, but not to Shelby. She thought the school with twelve hundred students was exciting; she liked the range of activities she could try and opportunities to make new friends. Most of the kids Shelby ran around with were active in school sports and ski club and were tracked either in the honors program or regents classes.
Shelby played second doubles on the girls’ tennis team and planned to go out for lacrosse in the spring. She didn’t like the high school cliques that jammed everybody into rigid categories: athletes, nerds, the popular crowd, and so forth. She chose friends on her own terms.
Those around Shelby were attracted to her easygoing, friendly nature, but her outward appearance could be misleading. Underneath a frivolous teenager veneer lay a serious streak not usually associated with a fifteen-year-old. She shared her simple faith without hesitation in a Catholic confirmation class, saying that belief in God meant that you were sure that if you died at that moment, you would go to heaven. Her close friends appreciated the sound advice she gave them about boyfriends, getting along with their parents, and what social choices to make, such as laying off drugs and alcohol. She was active in the high school’s Students Against Drunk Driving group.
Despite her serious side, like most teenagers, Shelby loved clothes and spent plenty of time in front of tine mirror getting her hair and makeup on just right and talking endlessly on the phone. She and her mother loved to shop. She usually liked her mother’s taste in clothes but also had her own ideas. One school day a week before the winter formal, they drove to Syracuse to pick out a dress for the occasion. Shelby persuaded her mother to buy her a long, strapless taffeta gown in emerald green, modeling it for Dodie at the store. Shelby was physically well developed for her age and popular with boys, which made Dodie uneasy at times. It was such a grown-up kind of dress that Dodie hesitated, not sure the strapless part wasn’t a bit too much, but Shelby’s enthusiasm won her over.
Unfortunately a snowstorm canceled the formal, but her dad’s Deanco dinner dance went on as scheduled; so Shelby and Jim’s plans were not completely scrapped. Seeing the grown-up Shelby dressed in a formal was a lovely family moment, one Dodie wanted to look back upon. Jim in his tuxedo and Shelby in her taffeta gown stood in front of the Christmas tree as Dodie clicked photographs of the couple before they all left for Deanco’s party at the Ramada Inn.
Tony and Dodie Harris had the kind of rapport with their two children that many admired and some envied. Shelby, now almost sixteen, hadn’t shown signs of the kind of rebellion endemic to teenagers. But Dodie thought she was growing up too fast, and she hated the idea of letting her go. Dodie was very emotional, especially when it came to her children. She couldn’t imagine living without them.
Even though her physical looks were maturing Shelby still had the easygoing, affectionate ways of her childhood. She hugged and kissed her parents in front of friends, and it pleased her that Dodie watched every tennis match she played for the high school team. Her mother was the kind of person who cheered for everyone, made sure they had team sweatshirts, and brought cookies for the players after matches.
The Harrises believed that staying involved