The Center of Winter

by Marya Hornbacher

  “You can’t!” I shouted, spinning around to face him.

  “I could,” he snapped, “if you’d so much as let me.” We glared at each other.

  “You just want to pick a fight,” he said slowly, realizing it. “So you don’t have to think anymore about it, or feel guilty anymore about it, or torn or upset or anything a’tall about it. You just want it to be easy.”

  I looked at the dying fire and took a swallow of my drink.

  Frank turned to face the window. “So if you’re going to pick a fight, go on and do it, then. I’m not stopping you.”

  “You’re arrogant,” I said.

  “All right, I’m arrogant.”

  “You’re weak,” I said, furious. “Your kindness, your incessant kindness, you make me sick with how kind you are. Act like a goddamn saint,” I spat. I poured myself another shot of whiskey, face flaming. I turned to face his back. “You come around my house, act like those are your children. They’re mine. Mine. Telling me what to do. Telling Donna what to do. It isn’t your place, none of it. Telling me about my husband, who he was.” I heard my voice rising. “What do you know, who he was? What do you know about it? He was sick, is all, and he tried his best, and who in the hell are you to even think you have a right to talk about him? Spit on his grave? You’re right, you are a grave robber. How long you been thinking about another man’s wife? How long you been waiting for Arnold to die?” I found myself crying and wiped my nose on my sleeve.

  “Not waiting for him to die,” Frank said quietly, looking out into the night. “Never wanted him to die.” He turned his head slightly toward me. “Couldn’t help that I loved you.”

  That stopped me. He’d said it. I was overwhelmed with a rush of fury and damn near pitched my glass at his head.

  “Do you know how much I loved him?” I shouted, my head trembling. “Do you know that there is a hole in my life where he was? And you’ve got the gall to try and step in and fill it?”

  He shook his head and looked at the floor. “I’m not trying to fill it.”

  “Well, you can’t. You can’t fill it. It’s mine. You can’t fill it and you can’t make it go away and it will always be there.”

  We stood there in silence. Perhaps ten feet apart. I took a sip of my drink.

  “Always,” I repeated, staring at the fireplace.

  “’Spect that’s true,” Frank said, turning around. “You hang on to it hard enough.”

  I threw what was left of my drink in his face.

  “Well, I appreciate that, Claire. I do. We done here?”

  “No,” I said, surprising myself.

  He yanked his shirttail out of his pants and wiped his face. Finally, he said, “Are you waiting for me to agree with you? Say, ‘Oh, I know it must be hard. It must be just awful, your husband goes and shoots his head off, leaves you all alone.’ ’Cause I’m afraid that’s beyond me. Damnation, woman. Of course it’s hard. Life is hard. This is hard. Doesn’t mean I pity you.”

  “I don’t want your pity!” I shouted, turning to get another drink.

  “Hell you don’t! Siddown,” he snapped, taking my glass and setting it on the end table next to him. “Sit down,” he repeated. “I wanna see if you can have a goddamn conversation without a drink in your hand.”

  “Fuck off.”

  He stared steadily at me. “Jesus, you know what? You’re greedy as hell. You are one greedy woman. You want a word for what this is. You want pity. You want promises. And you are sitting there telling me you ain’t gonna stick around to find out what this is because that is just too damn hard. Hell, Claire, you know what this is. This is love. That’s all I can give you. That’s all I’ve got. And you don’t want no part of it.” He stared at me.

  “You think I’ve got something else you need,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, let me tell you, I don’t.” He laughed shortly and turned away, pacing across the room. “Arnold is dead and you think I know why. You think I can clear that up for you, maybe make it a little easier. Maybe tell you it wasn’t you. Is that why you’re here?” he shouted, turning back to me. His face was flushed. “It is. You don’t want nothing about me. You want something for you. You want me to tell you why, long as it ain’t your fault.” He shook his head. “All right, Claire, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know why a man takes his own life. I do not have the faintest goddamn idea. How you’d get that blind and sad. How you do that to the people around you. I don’t know. Maybe it was you. Maybe it wasn’t. I just watched it happen, and wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do.”

  I sat there, thinking.

  “Claire,” he said, suddenly calm. He shook his head and slumped into a chair. “Dammit, you know, you’re sitting here and what the hell am I supposed to do. I ain’t got what you want. I don’t pity you. I got more respect for you than that. I’m no better or wiser than anyone else, get that damn fool idea out your damn fool head. I got no better idea than you how to do this.”

  He put his head in his hands and rubbed his hair. His elbows on his knees, he stared straight ahead and said, “Well, we got two choices.”

  I waited.

  “Either you come upstairs, or you go home.”

  I sat stunned. “Now?”

  “Yeah, I think so. ’Cause if you’re going home, I can’t keep looking at you.”

  I panicked. Finally I said, “I don’t think I’m ready to go home yet.” “You sure?”

  I nodded.

  He stood up and offered me his hand.

  And I followed him into the next part of my life, peeking over his wide shoulder at the closed door at the top of the stairs.

  Later, when I had heard the unfamiliar, terrifying, beautiful sounds. His, and stranger still, mine.

  When he had undressed me, whispering, as if I were a book he was reading aloud, alone. Later, at the window, I cried.

  It woke him. I heard him wake up. His breathing hesitated, then began, shorter, the breath of children or men who are pretending to be asleep. He held too still. I wiped my nose on the sleeve of his green shirt. I was wearing it. It smelled like him.

  He let me cry.

  It snowed.

  When he was sure I was done, I heard the sheets shift. He came to stand behind me. He gathered my hair off my shoulders and wrapped his arms around my waist.

  “I like your shirt,” he said.

  I laughed damply and wiped my nose again.

  “There’s nothing I can say right now,” he said. It was a question.

  I shook my head.

  “Want to come to bed?”

  I took his hands and held them to myself. I turned and put my face in his chest. He was sweaty and salty and I listened to his heart. I took off the shirt and climbed into bed.

  His eyes glittered in the dark. “Why buttons?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, very seriously. I laughed.

  “I love your laugh,” he said.

  “Tell me more Shakespeare.”

  He laughed and rolled onto his elbows, looking down at me. “‘Indeed,’” he said, his voice tilting into its strange song, “‘the top of admiration, worth what’s dearest in the world!’” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “‘Full many a lady I have eyed with best regard, and many a time th’ harmony of their tongues hath into bondage brought my too diligent ear. For several virtues have I liked several women; never any with so full soul but some defect in her did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, and put it to the foil. But you, so perfect and so peerless, are created of every creature’s best.’”

  I laughed.

  “What, you don’t like it?” he asked, flopping down.

  “You just look so funny talking like that,” I giggled.

  “It’s old,” he said, grumpy. I hit him with a pillow. He rolled over and put his head on my stomach.

  “What’s it mean?” I asked.

  “It means,” he said, running his hand down my hip, “that you have the most delicious thighs.” He pulled the shee
ts over his head. I shrieked, scrambling and laughing, but he held me down, and eventually I wasn’t laughing anymore.

  He did know a thing or two.

  The room exploded and I crashed back into the bed. I yanked the sheet off his head and found him cheerfully lying with his chin in his hands, shamelessly staring.

  “Well, get out of there already,” I yelled. Slowly, he crawled up me, smiling.

  “What,” I said, suspicious. He just smiled. “What?” I demanded.

  And he entered me, hard, and I said Oh, and arched.

  “Claire.”

  “Umm.”

  He was pressed into my back. “I have to tell you something.”

  I smiled. “Mm-hmm.” I pushed further back into him.

  His mouth in my hair, he said gruffly, “You’re in love with me. Nothing you can do about it. Might as well stay.”

  I reached behind myself and felt around for his hand. I pulled it up to rest between my breasts. “Okay,” I said. Then I fell into a half sleep where nothing made sense, really, and I no longer cared.

  A phone rang. I woke with a start, terrified that something had happened to Esau. Frank handed it to me.

  “Mother?”

  “Sweetie, are you all right? What’s wrong?”

  “It is past your curfew,” Esau said severely. “You are a half hour late.” “I’m sorry. I’ll be right home.” I smiled, hugely relieved.

  “It’s all right. We aren’t home anyway. We went out,” he said.

  “What?” I nearly screamed. “You went out where? Where are you? Where’s Donna?” Frank flew out of bed and pulled on his jeans.

  “How am I supposed to know where Donna is? That man came by to get us. Dale. He let us all ride in the truck.”

  ESAU

  It’s not like it was anything very complicated.

  The first time we went over to Dale’s, we had been playing explorers in the marshland with the high reeds after school and we got hungry, so we stopped at Davey’s house because it was closer. This was back in the fall, a couple of months before Donna and Davey and Sarah came for good, I remember because there wasn’t snow yet, only frost. So we leaned our bikes on the back stoop and went up and Davey jiggled the lock and we went in.

  And then I have to say I immediately regretted it because the house stunk. It smelled like a rotten old man. And I should have turned us around and sent us straight out the door once I had the bad feeling because I was biggest and in charge, sort of. But I didn’t.

  All the yellow-and-white-checked curtains in the yellow daisy kitchen were drawn and the refrigerator door was open, blowing cold air. But that was probably also why it stunk so bad, because there was rotting stuff in the fridge, Kate and Davey looked.

  “It’s a dead steak,” she said flatly, her butt sticking out. “It’s got blue.”

  “It’s gray,” Davey added. He turned around and asked me, “Do you think it’s got maggots?”

  “Might,” I said, standing there.

  “What should we do with it? How do we make it not stink?” Kate asked, picking it up and slapping it with her hands. “Phew!” she shouted, and dropped it in the sink and turned the tap on full blast.

  I thought for a minute. “Dump Ajax on it. That might work.”

  Davey put his thumbs through his belt loops and looked around the kitchen. “Dark,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Well, are there cookies or not?” Kate demanded, standing on a footstool and scrubbing her entire arms with Ajax. “Because if there aren’t any, we’re leaving as soon as I’m done. This place gives me the sads.”

  Davey nodded. “It’s a sad house,” he said, dragging a chair away from the table and over to the cupboards. He opened one and a box of cereal fell out and spilled all over the floor. I chewed off my thumbnail and looked at it. I pressed it with my other thumb to stop the bleeding. I really wanted to leave.

  “Davey!” Kate said, exasperated. “You are such a klutz!”

  “Ten-four.” Davey stared down at the shallow sea of Cheerios.

  “Well, git down and clean it up! What am I, your maid? Sheesh!” She slapped her hands on her blue jeans to get them dry.

  Davey climbed carefully down from the chair and went over to the stairwell to get the broom.

  He came back and stared at us with his big eyes. “My dad’s down there,” he said.

  I looked at the stairwell. The house looked like nobody’d set foot in it for weeks.

  “What do you mean, he’s down there?” Kate said, after a startled pause.

  “I mean he’s down there, Kate! That’s what I mean!” he said, raising his voice.

  “We should go,” I said. “We should probably go right now.”

  “We have to say hi,” Davey said, scowling at the floor. He jammed his fists into the pockets of his tiny Levi’s. “He might feel bad if we don’t.”

  “What for?” Kate nearly shouted. “If he wanted to say hi, he would’ve come up already. He can hear us perfectly fine. If he’s down there, let him stay down there! I’m going,” she said, and stalked toward the door, where she stopped. Davey didn’t move and Kate wouldn’t go anywhere without him.

  Davey looked up at me, stubborn. “Go down and tell him we’re here,” he said. “So he can come up and say hi if he wants.”

  “Why should I do it?” I asked, chewing a hangnail. “He’s your dad.”

  “Because you’re biggest and in charge. Just go,” Davey said loudly.

  I turned and stalked over to the stairwell.

  The narrow stairs were built of raw wood, the walls lined with shelves of cleaning stuff and tape and batteries and cellophane and tinfoil. The stairway seemed to narrow at the bottom, like a cone, with a small black hole at the base.

  I took hold of the handrail and squeaked down the stairs. At the bottom, I stood still, gazing at the beam of light from the tiny ground-level window, waiting for my eyes to adjust. It smelled damp down here, a little like soil. Softly, the pipes clanged.

  “A visitor,” said a voice. The voice coughed. “Well, come in, then.”

  I took a few steps forward and the smoke from his cigarette came into view. It sat perched at the edge of an ashtray amid a crowd of beer bottles and a pile of girlie magazines. Gradually, in a shadow, I could make out Davey’s dad, sitting on a sagging sofa with his knees apart and a beer planted at his crotch.

  “Esau, isn’t it?” he said. I nodded. He hadn’t shaved in ages and his face looked like it was covered with gray mold. He was skinny, his chest and cheeks caved in. His army fatigues hung on his body like a scarecrow’s clothes. “Well, how’s by you, then? Come over and set awhile,” he said, patting the cushion next to him.

  “All right,” I said, edging closer and gingerly sinking on the edge of the couch. I stared at the magazines. No matter how hard I tried, I could not stop looking. Dale laughed, reached across me, and opened one. I gasped. A girl stared back at me, naked as a jaybird, smiling, her rump in the air.

  “Go on and look,” Dale said. “Ain’t nothing wrong.” He lifted his beer to his mouth and drained it, then launched himself up with a grunt and went over to a round-edged old fridge, pale green. He set a beer in front of me and sat down.

  I stared at it, then back at the magazine. I picked it up for a closer look. “Been well?” he asked.

  “Yessir.”

  “Glad to hear it. Looking forward to school?”

  “Yessir.”

  He nodded. “So as to the whereabouts of my wife,” he said, squinting up at the sun through the window. He looked at me. I took a sip of beer and turned the page to find another, completely different, naked girl, this one with small, tight breasts that I wanted to chew on, but not so’s it would hurt. Just a little.

  “She’s staying with us,” I breathed.

  Dale nodded. “I figured as much. Any idea she’s planning to come back? Or is she just about done with me?”

  I looked at him and shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. Som
ething behind me dripped. I took a couple swallows of beer.

  He nodded, narrowing his eyes at me thoughtfully. “That’s the thing. Man’s got to have a contingency plan. Got to be prepared for emergencies. That’s one thing you learn in the service, I’ll tell you. Got to have a plan.”

  I nodded. My head was starting to feel a little wobbly.

  “I’ll tell you, in the service, you’re trained for this sort of thing. When you’re up against an enemy that moves at night, a sneaky enemy that don’t play by any rules, you got to be prepared or you’re dead.”

  I nodded and put the magazine back on the low table so I would stop looking at it. I leaned back against the cushions and pulled my knees up, facing him. I was fascinated by his face. I wanted to draw him.

  He shook his head. “You’re dead, is what,” he repeated. “You got to look at the contingencies. You don’t, you’re liable to step on a land-mine, get snuck up on from behind, all sorts of things you ought to have thought of, and ain’t no one to blame but yourself.” He shook his head. “So you got to have the things you need. Like, say, it don’t matter none she’s gone,” he said, looking at me, “’cause I been stockpiling the things I need, food and suchlike. Ammunition.” He waved an arm at the basement. “I got a roof over my head, dry clothes on my back, plenty to eat, drink,” he lifted his beer, “and what in the hell do I care? Want to see something special?” he asked suddenly, and set his beer on the low table. He stood up and lifted the worn blue cushion on which he’d sat, exposing more girlie magazines, some papers, and a gun. He fished out a piece of paper softened with handling and folding, pushed the cushion in again, and sat back down.