by Paula Guran
Balls and ovals of ice clung at the perimeter of the eaves, the edges of the windows as if whispers and open-mouthed cries had crusted over, hard ice expressions with hollow lament trapped inside . . .
The Still, Cold Air
Steve Rasnic Tem
Russell took possession of his parents’ old house on a cold Monday morning. The air was like a slap across his cheeks. The frost coating the bare dirt yard cracked so loudly under his boots he looked around to see if something else had made the sound. Nothing grew here but a few large trees. His parents had left behind an old washer, a scattering of junk-filled cans and buckets, the front grill of an old Chevrolet, and some moldy, unidentifiable bit of taxidermy. A set of rusted bulkhead doors probably led to the basement. He hadn’t wanted the property, and his sisters didn’t want him to have it.
“You don’t deserve their house, you know,” Angela had said, before handing him the keys. “You hated them, didn’t you? I mean what else could it be the way you treated them? You must have hated them.”
And of course he didn’t deserve it. He’d been estranged from them his entire adult life, but he didn’t have much choice. Winter was here, and he’d been living out of his car the last three months. Did he hate them? He actually had no idea. The bigger question was why they had willed him their house.
The key was giving him trouble—he examined it—worn thin and scratched up, the lock itself fairly chewed up as well. He eased the key in carefully, feeling for a fit, afraid he was going to snap it. Snow hadn’t actually started yet, but tiny bits of ice floated in the air, now and then landing with a sting. Not a good night to spend in the car, especially with his own house at hand, however shabby and worn down. He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky—it wasn’t just a snow sky, but a sky on the verge of imminent collapse. The roofline drooped directly above him, the eaves tipped back with the corners sagging even lower. From the street the gray roof looked like an old woman’s floppy, misshapen hat, with some fat animal hidden inside to make it bulge along one side. He recognized his father’s repair system in that—why replace a broken ceiling joist when you could wrap wire around it or nail on extra scraps of wood to strengthen it or tie it to a roof rafter? The result was that runaway warping as the other roof members generated torque around his amateur repairs. It was a wonder the whole thing hadn’t already come crashing down, or some passing inspector hadn’t stopped in alarm and condemned the place. The front door suddenly gave way and he stumbled inside.
It opened into the living room, which seemed to be not much warmer than the outside. He flipped on the light and looked around for the thermostat. He had no idea how he was going to pay for heat and electricity. But even if the utility company shut off the power it was still better than living out of his car. Maybe his sisters would help out. Unlikely, but possible.
He could see very little bare wall in the living room. Large bookcases with books jammed in vertically, horizontally, and all angles in between took up most of the area. Much of the remaining wall space was hung with large rugs and woven pieces, and battered overstuffed chairs had been pushed against them, with quilts and towels and blankets and even old clothes wadded behind and in every available space between the furniture. He pulled out a heavy chair and removed the miscellaneous cloth shoved behind it. There was a gap of about two inches between the wall and the floor with frigid air—he guessed from the basement—pouring out. He shoved this insulation back into place as quickly as he could and walked around the perimeter of the room, occasionally getting down on his hands and knees to inspect what his parents had done to block the drafts. In spots, wads of cloth had actually been taped or glued. He stood up and looked at the ceiling—the surface was uneven, dipping and rolling as he scanned from one side to the other, and two of the taller bookcases had been jammed into place to support it. He didn’t dare move anything for fear the entire jerry-rigged arrangement would collapse on him.
The wind groaned and whistled on the other side of the door, softly whining through unplugged passages. The walls appeared to shake. The cold found his spine, and brushed up his vertebrae, playing with his nerves.
He understood now why his sisters didn’t want the house. What he didn’t understand was why they’d been so displeased he’d gotten it. He would have thought they’d find it suitable punishment for his sins, but perhaps his parents hadn’t told them everything.
“We’re not asking for any money, son. Just some physical help so that I can fix a few things. That’s all.” His father had sounded frail on that first of numerous calls. Russell almost thought the old man was faking it. But that voice, it sounded—what was the word—shredded?
“No time, Dad,” he’d said, although most days it was a struggle just coming up with things to do. “Ask the girls. If not them, they have husbands.”
There was a long pause at the other end. “They’d worry too much. They live too far away and I know they’d drop everything, disrupt their lives . . . ” He stopped awhile, coughed uncontrollably. “It wouldn’t be fair. You live less than a hundred miles away.” His mother’s voice rose in the background, garbled, indistinct. “Wait a minute, okay?” When he came back he said, “We don’t have much, but we’d pay you for your time, feed you, whatever you need.”
“I’m pretty busy, Dad, like I said. Look, I’ll call you back.” He’d called back two days later. “Just can’t do it, Dad. What was that you used to say? ‘You’ll have to figure this one out for yourself.’ When I was in jail?” Russell couldn’t remember which particular jail term it had been, but that advice had been standard issue for the old man. He hung up, but before he did, he couldn’t be sure, but he thought the old guy had been crying.
One of the bookcases had a hole punched through the back to access the thermostat mounted on the wall behind it. He finally heard the furnace fan screech on. A tour of the rest of the house required but a few minutes.
One door went to a dull green bedroom large enough for a full bed and dresser. A square panel in the ceiling provided access to the attic. One day he would check to see how bad it was up there. A narrow path around the bedroom wall led to the house’s only bathroom, large enough for one person to stand in, use the toilet or bathe. The porcelain displayed a dull patina of rust stain. Another door off the living room took him into a tiny kitchen with a chipped yellow table.
This was what his parents had moved into after all their resources dried up. What happened to most of their belongings? Maybe they’d been stuffed into basement and attic for more homemade insulation.
He walked to the living room window, showering himself with enormous gray clots of dust as he pulled back the curtain. The new snow had filled the grassless yard quickly, catching in the limbs of the skinny bare trees until they overflowed and leaned. It tumbled out of the sky like rapidly disintegrating hospital linen. He hadn’t visited his parents in the hospital. Angela said they’d barely made it through the night after the train went through their car. He’d traveled over that crossing less than a block away to reach this shabby cul-de-sac.
The dense white air sparked with random headlight reflections. He pressed one cheek against the biting glass and looked up through the dark in order to see the edge of the elevated highway a few dozen yards distant. A large truck swung top-heavy and sideways perilously close to the edge of the floating ribbon of dirty concrete, wheels thundering beneath the panicked horn. He imagined he could feel the quieting snow attempt to absorb the sound. His cheek began to numb and his face to twitch before he peeled it away from the pane and pulled the curtain snugly over the night.
As Russell turned around a moment’s disorientation made him close his eyes. The effect of the frigid window lingered on his cheek. He raised his hand to rub his face and momentarily lost his balance, opening his eyes with a start. The living room seemed smaller than it had before, as if the intense cold had contracted the walls. That must be an effect of the unfamiliarity of the place. But a small place seemed even smalle
r if you’d lived in it a number of years as his parents had, as he had in his last apartment. He remembered thinking he’d do anything for just a couple of more square feet. Some days his apartment had felt like nothing more than a tight and clunky, smelly suit he’d been forced to wear. It had embarrassed him to live there.
A cold line glided across his wrist and lingered there, as if it were an absent finger seeking contact. He tensed, waiting for something more but it did not come. He held out his arm like a divining rod and walked helplessly in circles, seeking the source of the cold, feeling led and teased.
He hadn’t even noticed that the furnace fan had stopped whining after awhile. He walked over by the heat grate low in the wall. Air hot as flame shot out, carrying long spongy strands of dust like snake spirits. He watched entranced as they first hung up on the grate then spun loose and floated around the room. He’d have to change the filter soon.
He didn’t completely trust the already-made bed, but he no longer had sheets of his own. In the car he’d slept in layers of underwear, sweaters, bathrobe, and three coats. The sheets and blankets looked clean enough, but they had that old man smell. More cells dying, and the lungs working harder to push in and out the stale air. He supposed one day he would also smell that way.
He considered turning the heat down before bed, switching off the lights. But heat and lights were a luxury he wished to bathe in.
A sheet had been draped over the small bedside table. Removing it he discovered a small thirteen-inch TV; by maneuvering the coat hanger jammed into the broken aerial he acquired a fuzzy picture, but no sound. For a few minutes he watched a rolling image of a weatherman walking around outside against a sky filled with snow and static. Now and then the static would leak out of the sky and fill the entire frame. He assumed the broadcast was local, but on days like this it was easy to imagine the whole world snowing.
He flipped the set off and settled in. The bed was freezing, the bedroom heat vent broken or clogged. The pillow felt hard, cold and greasy against his neck, a refrigerated pig. He didn’t care. He closed his eyes, expecting fatigue and body heat to solve all his problems.
From his nights in his car he naturally fell into a kind of half-sleep. He was vaguely cognizant of a glow from the snow filling the world outside, pushing through the curtains, bathing the interior of the undersized house with its blue-white persistence. He needn’t go to a window or open a door to see the increasing accumulation; he could feel it coming down, out of the distant dark and through his half-sleep and covering the dirty, disappointing city, filling this cul-de-sac with swollen empty dreams and erasing the grimiest details. He suffered the weight of it; half hoping it would either kill him or put him unconscious, it scarcely mattered which. He heard the creaking overhead and, sleepily aware of the increasing mass on the malformed roof, he found himself smiling. But although the roof groaned and the walls trembled and sighed, the pitiful structure held, at least for now.
For now but wait but wait—the words dropped into his ears and stayed. They did not bring him fully awake but they made him consider. Two voices fighting for dominance, and vaguely familiar.
In the distant other side of sleep he heard wind gusts under the eaves, pushing against brittle siding. The house stirred but he did not. Waited and waited until there was no hope, whispered with bitter control; he considered he might be in a struggle with his shoulders, trying not to hear. He felt a memory of light warming his eyelids, trying to make him raise them, but he would not.
Then thunder in his head as he fought the suspect sheets that once enshrouded the old couple who’d raised him—And You Left Us Here Alone!
Russell tore the bed clothing from his chest and neck, desperate to breathe. He thought he might have called out—at least he was confident he’d heard a voice so like his own on either this side or the other of the heavy curtains. The bedclothes slid away and off the bed like a sudden failure of skin. He was now cold to his bones and scrambled frantically to drape himself again.
Sounds were muted. He felt curled into the center of a cocoon of hush. Outside the wind slipped off the roof and tumbled. He imagined he could hear the sound of noiseless footsteps creating a progression of holes through the snow and halting outside his window, the depressions filling with shadow.
He eased himself across the bed and pulled a bit of curtain off the window. Nothing peered in but an oval pattern of rime centered on the pane. Through the empty holes for eyes and mouth he could see the wobble of restless foliage. The wind coughed up billows of powdered snow, walked them across the drifted lawn and abandoned them to the ice-laden streets. In distant neighborhoods the yellow lights blinked and smeared.
The phone rang out jangled and upset. Russell hadn’t even known there was a phone, hadn’t seen it, and certainly hadn’t authorized its connection. But it called out from somewhere within the room. He crawled over the cluttered floor, brushing books, papers, clothes or rags away with the gross movement of hands and arms, swinging and batting in an urgency to kill the obnoxious sound. His fingers brushed the receiver and he jerked it up to his ear.
“Yes . . . ”he answered, as if about to be ordered to do something he wanted no part of.
“Russell?” He thought it was one of his sisters, but he didn’t know which one. “Are they there? If they are you must let them in. Do you appreciate . . . how cold . . . ” The connection filled with waves of static which washed through the receiver and across his chilled arm.
“Angela? Beth?” But there was no answer, and he didn’t bother calling out his other sisters’ names. Who was coming? And in this weather? He dropped the phone.
Something smacked against the window, flat and unpadded. Russell thought of the unlikely possibility of a bare hand, ungloved, unprotected. His sisters were foolish that way. A trip involving at least three of them, come here to complain or intervene (all under the guise of “helping”), had always been a prospect. Maybe there were things of value still hidden in the house, although he couldn’t imagine where, and they wanted their portion. It never paid to underestimate people’s greed, even family members’.
There was a chuffing sound outside, like someone struggling through the snow. Or it might have been a panting dog in the next room. Interrupted sleep caused a corruption of the senses, so he could trust his own perceptions no more than the good will of others. But there was that chuffing sound again, a mouth seeking oxygen perhaps, but all it got for its efforts was a throat full of cold. He grabbed for the phone again and dragged it to his ear. The line was still open, with a steady train of distant, oft-repeated soft explosions of air, like a life stuttering out of the world. He laid the receiver gently back into the cradle, not wanting to make a sound, not wanting to encourage any sort of response. Someone wept, either outside the house or inside these poor walls, or inside his head. But he couldn’t allow them to freeze, at least not here.
Russell climbed to his feet, feeling around on his body, attempting to bring it to life. He’d gone to bed in his clothes; he didn’t own pajamas. He was grateful, but after searching the room in the dim light leaking around the edge of curtain he couldn’t find his boots, and he was reluctant to turn on the light. The space under the bed was jammed with plastic bags. He put several over each foot, attempted to tie them into place.
The living room smelled of warm furnace dust and air breaking down into something darker and less useful. He opened the front door slowly and, closing his eyes briefly, let the cold air rush him into its embrace. Sighing, he looked around at the drifts, now a foot high and creeping taller against the house. It should stay this way, he thought, the downy white having transformed the grungy yard into a painting. He recognized a hulking phantom of snow and ice as his car. But the automobile seemed strangely past, a useless memory. One large tree appeared to have given up against the weight of snow and now leaned dangerously close. He saw no signs of his sisters, but he could see the holes they’d made in the snow, the wind not quite having erased their footp
rints. He heard them whispering, or whimpering around the side of the house. It served them right if they’d gotten themselves into trouble, but he couldn’t just leave them there.
The plastic bags kept the damp out, but the lack of boots made him unsteady on his feet. He teetered this way and that, rocking his body through the snow, his view skewed by imbalance. The snow smelled of air cleansed of human contact. The roof loomed, parts sagging with incompetent support. He found himself staring at the perimeter of the eaves, the edges of the windows. Balls and ovals of ice clung there, as if whispers and open-mouthed cries had crusted over, hard ice expressions with hollow lament trapped inside.
A sudden gust of wind picked up with rapid feminine tittering, blew it around the house until the voices became a glacial mist. He arrived too late, the only signs were the curved icicles clawing the edges of the metal basement hatch.
The stuck front door panicked him until he slammed it open with a thrust of shoulder and thigh. He staggered in, the moonlight gathering around him to illuminate the impoverished state of the room. His parents had left him everything, and nothing. He forced the door shut, hearing the splintering as the bottom pushed on the threshold covered with intruding snow. He was still able to latch it, but the effort made him weepy.
The phone was ringing in the bedroom. He stumbled in, sat down on the edge of the unsteady bed and picked it up. The line was dead, the receiver icy against his ear as he listened to the cold empty air. “With no signal, nothing comes across,” he thought he said aloud.
In the darkened room he felt the bitter air moving around him. The old house leaked, and he should never have accepted it. As he raised his head and stared at nothing, the shadows began to rearrange. All those years he had successfully kept his distance. He felt so frozen, and all he wanted was not to feel at all. The small house sighed, and then it trembled, and now it seemed no larger than the confines of his head.