by Naima Coster
“Is it? Then where’s Samantha now?”
Penelope stood and snatched Marcus’s glass from him, took a long, slow drink.
“The snow,” he said.
“I never believed any of that stuff—the primal bond, mothers and daughters. It sounds like a convenient excuse, a way for a mother to always defend herself—But I gave you life. As if that matters. As if I care.”
Marcus stared at her, eyes wide, as if he could finally detect the slow whir of anger in her, louder tonight than usual. She held up the glass to his lips.
“One more sip and then I’m cutting you off,” she said, and he was distracted by the drink before him, the way Penelope kept her eyes on his while he drank. She drained what he left. She could feel the liquor now, the way it blurred nearly everything in the room, except for his face. She latched onto it for clarity, to stay grounded while her head swam, the insides of her mouth burned. She was finally ready to win him.
“Do you ever think that maybe Samantha isn’t here because she’s fucking someone else?”
“Of course not,” Marcus said, his expression newly grim. “I might be somewhat of a loser lately, but that isn’t Sam. She just didn’t want to see me tonight.”
“Do you ever think that maybe you could be fucking someone else?”
Marcus looked stunned, as if he hadn’t been playing along all night. He stared at her intently, trying to read her, although she had done her best to make it all very plain. She placed her hands on his shoulders and drew nearer to him. They stood close enough that their socked feet touched. Marcus was breathing hard, silent.
“You don’t always have to be so careful, Marcus.”
She leaned back to look into his face and so that he would have to be the one to pull her closer, the one to begin.
He kissed her with his eyes open. She stared back at him, skated into the sea green. He slid his hands into her hair, pulled the curls back from the crown of her head. She squeezed fistfuls of his hair in her sweating palms. They found the bed and lay down, Marcus lifting the RISD sweatshirt over her head, and then the gray tank top, splattered with paint. She felt the hot skin under his T-shirt, yanked at the drawstring of his flannel pants.
She knew better than to say she loved the way he was with Grace, that the two of them were the best things about being back in Brooklyn, so she muttered that he was beautiful, that she had wanted him since she first saw him. Marcus didn’t say anything, but he ran his tongue along her collarbone, squeezed her hip bones hard between his fingers. She pressed herself against him and they both moaned, and it was obvious—for months, they had both been after exactly this.
The wind beat down on the yellow house, and the snow began to cake on the windowpane, whiting out the lavender night. Neither of them thought of the storm, as they sank into each other on the narrow bed. They didn’t shut the door and they weren’t quiet, as if the whole house was theirs.
9
WINTER
In the morning, Marcus kissed her awake. There was a familiar ring in her ears, and a pressure at her temples, but they dissolved when he reached for her hair, her breasts, and climbed onto her again. Now that they were soberer, the sex was tender, less brusque. They took their time. They slept again for a while until he murmured something about waking Grace. Penelope stayed in bed while he pulled on his pajama pants, his T-shirt. His lips skimmed her nose when he kissed her good-bye. He padded out of the attic softly.
It was still snowing outside, although the light was no longer lavender, but the cold blue of early day. With Marcus gone, the clanging returned to her head. She spread her hand over the side of the bed where he had slept and bundled up his forgotten underwear in her fist.
The phone woke her twice. Once, it was Principal Pine announcing the school would be closed today, which was good news because Penelope was badly hungover, even though she was still thick in the afterglow of sex; her limbs hummed, and the center of her was pudding, silky and sweet. The second call was Miss Beckett admonishing her for not calling the night before. She wanted to know whether Penelope had plans to bring her father breakfast, to shovel the sidewalk before the snow got too high.
“I’d like to come and see him, too, but I can’t get there by myself, not with snow halfway to my neck—”
Penelope mumbled that she would go by and collect the woman in a while. She needed to stay in bed for just a while longer, replaying the night, but only the hours after she had returned from Sheckley’s. The two of them going over all her canvases, Marcus’s praise, the grapefruit rinds, the long pours of gin, then the fucking, Marcus fucking. It was the perfect memory.
Eventually, she smelled waffle batter and chocolaty coffee rising up to the attic. Marcus and Grace were making breakfast together. How she wanted to join them. She couldn’t hear Samantha’s voice, so the landlady was probably still in the city, held up in the snow. The thought buoyed her: a frozen bridge and a river were keeping her away. Penelope got up and dressed, still damp and aching.
Bread, she thought. He’ll need bread. She waltzed down the stairs and onto the avenue in search of a bodega still open in the snow. She bought a can of coffee and a loaf of French bread down the block, then forded the large hills of snow across the blocks to Halsey Street.
She spent the day outside shoveling snow, first in front of their mud-brown house, then all along the block. It was better than being stuck inside with Ralph and Miss Beckett. The old woman was fawning over Ralph, serving him cup after cup of coffee, patting down his hair, and nestling closer to him on the couch so that their thighs touched. Ralph didn’t reciprocate, but he didn’t stop her either. He was back to making speeches, pretending he had not snuck out to the bar and wept in public over Mirella, as if the postcard had never arrived. He used the night before as material for his sermonizing: Watch and see how quickly the city trucks arrive to plow now that Bed-Stuy is full of white people! And not a soul in that bar had been a day over thirty—he hoped the bartender was checking IDs.
It was better to shovel than to fume, to think about how her months in New York hadn’t made any difference. She had left Pittsburgh, and he was no better—still living on the second floor, still drinking. He hadn’t phoned a physical therapist, or started to do the exercises Dr. Elias had given to him. When her back ached and she couldn’t stand it anymore, she brought the shovel inside, washed out the coffeepot, and turned out all the lights. Miss Beckett and Ralph had fallen asleep on the couch. She left to find the snow was already deeper. She let herself into the yellow house, cold and emptied out. Marcus was waiting for her again in the attic.
They started earlier this time, so they had several hours, between when Grace was put to bed and when they expected Samantha to arrive. She had phoned about spending a second night in the city—the weather was bad, she had so much work. They fucked two times, three times, Penelope lost count, long pours of gin in between. They sat up in bed, naked, the door to the attic open so they could hear Grace if she woke, but they didn’t expect her to. They talked, Penelope prostrate between his legs, Marcus’s hands on her shoulders.
It had hardly been twenty-four hours, but it felt like much longer, as if they had been holed up in the attic for days. It was quiet and dark enough in the house that it felt to Penelope that they were very far away, in a cabin of their own. The snow had started to slow. This would likely be the last night they could share this easily. It would be harder when the landlady returned. They would have to plan around her, shut the door. Penelope said so.
“Let’s not think about that,” Marcus said. “Not when I have you here.” He kissed her ear. “And to think it all started with your art and ended up with—” He made a nasty joke, and Penelope laughed, tossing her hair. She was certain that she looked gorgeous—she could tell by the way he looked at her. Penelope asked about his writing.
He had wanted to be a travel journalist, but a serious one, who wrote about history and culture, current events, like a pop anthropologist, but not as dry
. But since they had Grace, it made sense to stay local and write whatever he could get paid to write, usually reviews and profiles. He had written a few things about Brooklyn—essays about its renaissance were in high demand.
“I want to read something of yours,” Penelope said. “I want to be walking around and see your name on the cover of some magazine—Marcus Middle Name Harper.”
“Anthony. My middle name is Anthony.” He laughed and that was all they needed to start up again. Penelope sat atop him and began to turn her hips. He covered her eyes with his hands and tilted her head back. He slipped his finger in her mouth, his lips on her throat. For all of those minutes, she didn’t hate where she was. She thought of nothing but Marcus, and she murmured his name, until he covered her mouth, gently.
Penelope woke to the sound of a tiny gasp, a whimper. She sat up in the bed and strained to hear. It was Grace. She was calling for her father.
Penelope slipped from the bed and surveyed the mess in the attic. Clothes were flung everywhere—on the back of the chair at the breakfast table, over the windowsill, underneath the bed. Her drawing of the mountains was still clipped to the easel, the floor littered with the mugs they had used to drink when she ran out of glasses. The odor of sex and sweat. Penelope opened the window to let in the night and dissipate the evidence of what they had done. Marcus was dead asleep, and she didn’t want to wake him. She liked the sight of him, naked in her bed, his arms tucked close to his chest as if he were trying to rock himself. Was this what marriage was like? Night after night, the same man, his bare ass up, his drool on your pillow?
When they were together, it didn’t matter that he was white or that she had accomplished nothing with her life. Their lives were far, but they wanted each other. It was enough.
Penelope dressed quickly, her body still aching and damp. She followed the sound of crying down to Grace’s door and knocked once before pushing it open. Grace was upright in her bed, her back unnaturally straight, knees clutched to her chest. She was making a great effort to keep quiet, her breaths ragged, snot spilling onto her pajamas. Her red hair, woven into a bedtime braid, was coming undone around her shoulders.
“Did you hear it, Penelope? The crash? Something happened outside.”
Penelope hadn’t heard anything, and she said so. She doubted it could have been a gunshot—not in this weather. Everyone was inside.
“It was terrible,” Grace said. “Like bones breaking.”
“It was probably just the storm.”
She asked whether Grace wanted to look out the window to see what had made the sound, but the girl shook her head.
“Please, could you just sit with me?”
Penelope sat on the edge of the bed while the little girl sobbed. She wiped her cheeks with a handkerchief on the nightstand.
“My little brother died in this house. Did you know that? He died inside my mother in the middle of the night, but we didn’t know it. We all had to go out onto the street to try and flag down a cab, but we couldn’t find one for a long time. It was snowing then, too.” Grace shuddered. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Penelope?”
“I don’t know,” Penelope said. The only person she had loved who had died was her grandmother, but she liked the idea of Ramona haunting her, disembodied, but somehow still close.
“If your little brother is a ghost, I don’t think he’d haunt you. He’d probably just want to be near you. Keep you safe.” Perhaps that would comfort her. She petted the girl’s head.
“That’s impossible,” Grace said, sniffing. “I know there’s no such thing as ghosts—I’m just being superstitious because of the sound I heard. That’s why I was calling Daddy, but he didn’t come. And he forgot to leave the light on for me in the hall.”
Penelope felt a flash of guilt that the girl had been left alone. She smoothed the hair back from Grace’s forehead, gathering up the loose strands in her hand. She unwound the braid and began to twist the hair again, more tightly this time.
“Did you play in the snow today?”
Grace shook her head.
“Maybe tomorrow. You can meet some other kids on the block, make some friends. It’s not good to stay inside all the time.”
“I already have friends, Penelope. I just live too far away now to have any playdates.” She started to explain the cliques in her elementary school, the way they had formed in kindergarten, based on neighborhood. “There’s the Gramercy girls, and the West End girls, the Prospect Park girls . . . I used to be a Hudson Street girl.”
Penelope wasn’t sure how to comfort her. There likely wouldn’t be any Orchard School playdates in Bed-Stuy at least for a while longer. Grace blew her nose in the handkerchief.
“It could be worse,” she said. “One girl in my grade just moved to Queens. No one’s ever going to visit her.”
Penelope couldn’t help but laugh. Grace looked at her, puzzled, and then she smiled too, although it was obvious she wasn’t quite sure what she had done to amuse Penelope.
Grace switched on the light and lifted a mealy paperback off the nightstand. On the cover, a white child in a long dress sat on a bench on a platform of a railroad station. She carried a large carpetbag on her lap and wore ribbons in her hair.
“It’s about a girl with no place to go,” Grace said, and she asked whether she could read to Penelope. It was what she did with her father, sometimes with her mother, to help her fall asleep. Penelope agreed.
They read until the girl drifted off, and Penelope covered her with blankets, swept aside the curtains to peer out onto the street. The girl was right. The storm had brought down a tree, a massive London plane. It had snapped cleanly in two: the trunk along the edge of the sidewalk, the branches spreading like arms into the street. Penelope returned to Marcus. She would tell him about the tree in the morning, point it out to him from her window.
Samantha arrived before the sun. They were naked under Penelope’s sheets when they heard the front door unlock, the landlady making her way up the stairs. Marcus cursed and flew out of the bed, rummaging for his pants. He ran shirtless out of the attic, and Penelope opened her eyes to the sight of him fleeing. Soon, she heard their voices on one of the landings below, husband and wife greeting each other. It took all her strength to stand and close the door. She tried to return to sleep as the house stirred to life below her. She heard gurgling in the coffeepot, Grace’s voice joining her parents, the three of them resuming their routine.
The phone rang and Principal Pine announced Penelope would be needed that morning at PS 23. One day off for snow was more than enough, the principal said, as if she were the one who had decided the public schools would open today. Penelope dragged herself from the bed and started to brush her teeth at the china sink.
A crowd had gathered below, the block congregating around the little disaster, marked off with orange caution tape. There were a few black couples, younger than Ralph but not by much, outside in snow boots and coats, shaking their heads and glancing up and down the street, as if assessing the sturdiness of the trees in front of their homes. There were a few yuppies, too, shivering in robes and pajama pants. Nearly everyone was a couple: the units of life on their block. There were other streets with more single people, four or five hipsters to a floor of a house, but this stretch of Greene wasn’t one of them. Penelope spotted Samantha outside in a parka and riding boots, running her fingers through her pale hair, crumpled like crepe paper. Marcus stood beside her, holding a silver thermos that steamed in the cold. He had his other arm wrapped firmly around her shoulders.
The children at PS 23 were wild after the day out of school. At the start of every period, they stormed into the art room, chattering and whining, and all the noise made it harder for Penelope to tolerate their usual accidents: spilled paint, a student falling out of a chair, glitter in the eye. The things she liked about teaching—the boundaries, control, their need for her help and approval—were all gone, as if the blizzard had swept it all away.
&nb
sp; She didn’t want to be an art teacher today. She wanted to be back in the attic with Marcus. She made her rounds among the children, but she was replaying their twenty-four hours in her mind. She conjured up his lavender skin in the storm light, the quickness of his breath, the way he had laughed when they sat up talking, halfway sober.
“Miss Grand, Miss Grand! Hello, Miss Grand!”
A child was shouting at her, a mixed girl named Camille. She had bushy hair and a tea-and-milk complexion, a handkerchief tied around her head, little plastic skulls for earrings. Her parents were both artists; her mother was some kind of designer, and her father built mobiles. They had asked Penelope more than once about their daughter’s prospects as an artist. Camille had all the accessories of a miniature artist—her beaded bracelets stacked nearly to her elbows—and none of the talent or focus.
She waved her little hand violently over her head, let out a big sigh when Penelope reached her table.
“Miss Grand, I’m done.” She dropped her hand on the table as if she had been holding it up for hours. “I been done.”
Out of ideas, Penelope had given the third graders a break from their long-term projects so they could work on pieces inspired by their snow day, and they were allowed to work in any medium they had already learned. Giving them so much freedom had been a mistake—she could see that now. For every kid working with colored pencils, there was a kid making a snowball out of papier-mâché or constructing a shoe-box diorama of a street covered in cotton-ball snow. They were running out of time. They were using all the supplies. They were making a mess.
Camille held up an expressionless snowman taking up half of the sheet of construction paper. He had a stub of carrot for a nose, a pipe rammed into his face, a dimensionless hat flat across his round head.
“Do you think this is finished?”
“Yup, Miss Grand. It’s definitely finished, and I don’t know what to do now, can I be excused?”
“Did you make a snowman yesterday?”