The Center of Winter: A Novel

by Marya Hornbacher

  I was mortified. “Oh, now. You don’t have to—”

  “Now, dammit, Claire!” He stood up and I snapped my mouth shut. He held his hand out for my glass and I gave it to him, thinking wildly, What the hell, we’ll be sober by breakfast, when the biddies come. Pouring two more drinks, he said, “Don’t you start any of that ladylike bullshit, excuse me, right now. It’s not the time for it and it’s not like you anyhow.”

  I was tipsy enough to take a certain amount of pride in that.

  He took a swallow and sighed hard. “What do you think, I’m blind? I haven’t been planning for this for a while? Now, that’s not to say I wished the man ill or I didn’t love him, because Lord knows I did, but at the end of the day, I’ll tell you something, Claire. You’ve got to cut your losses and plan for what lasts, not just what you love.”

  We both held still, hearing a thump from Katie’s bedroom.

  “She fall out of bed?”

  I nodded. “She likes to sleep right at the edge. With the sheet tucked in, you know, tight under the mattress.” I gestured with my hands to indicate the elaborate tucking ritual I went through with her nightly, listening to her complain, “It’s not tight enough yet!” until she finally snuggled in, leaning her whole small weight against the tense sheets.

  “She all right?”

  “Happens every night.”

  “Heh.” Opa smiled, which was good to see. He shook his head as if clearing his thoughts and moved back to the subject at hand.

  “All I mean is, while I didn’t plan for the man to die, this family is what lasts, so I planned for that. Those kids, they’ve got a nice savings for them set aside, and that’ll grow. They can go to college, they want to, or buy a house when the time comes. And you, there’s plenty of money for the house and Esau’s medical and whatnot. Summer camp for Katie, whatnot like that. And everything that would’ve gone to Arnold when his mother and I pass, that goes to you, even when you marry again.”

  I stared at him. I meant to say something, but nothing came. He took my silence as insult and gentled his voice.

  “You’re a young woman yet, Claire, and those kids’ll need a father in their lives. Don’t get yourself all tied in a knot about it, and I don’t mean to disrespect the dead. I don’t mean tomorrow. But for God’s sake. We’re your family now. You’re our daughter and that’s that, we’re not going to let anything happen.”

  Horribly, I laughed. It startled him, but he laughed his heh-heh-heh laugh.

  “I don’t mean to laugh,” I said.

  “I know you don’t. I gone and got you a little tipsy, is all. Oma’d have my head, she saw either of us right now.”

  “I wasn’t laughing. I mean, I was. Just the idea of nothing happening. Well, what else is going to happen?” I waved my hand vaguely about. “Hell, my husband’s dead and my son doesn’t even know it. What’s next?” I started to cry.

  Opa nodded. “You have yourself a point there. Oh,” he sighed. “Hell and damn, Claire. I’m sorry he’s gone.”

  Somehow, the light of day was coming up. In winter, it looks less like there’s a rising sun and more like the snow itself begins to glow, a surreal, icy light.

  “He’s gone,” I repeated after Opa. I’d meant to say, Me too.

  Opa looked steadily at me. “Yes he is.” He watched me while the light came up, making sure I knew.

  We were still sitting like that, drinking extremely strong coffee, when down the hall the door opened and out came Kate.

  “Is today the funeral?” she called from the kitchen. There was a clatter of plates and the sound of one hitting the floor. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Mom!”

  “Katie! Watch your mouth!”

  “You all right in there, Little Bit?” Opa called, grinning. “You wearing shoes?”

  “No.”

  “Hold still, then. Is the plate broke?”

  “Yes.” She sounded so plaintive I almost laughed. I set my coffee cup on the end table and went in. She looked up at me sorrowfully.

  “It’s only in two pieces,” she said.

  “I see that. It’s all right.”

  “I’m sorry I broke it.”

  “We can glue it. There’s plenty of plates.”

  “I only wanted a toast.”

  “I’ll make you some toast.”

  She wandered out to the living room. I made toast for the three of us, listening to her and Opa talk.

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Okay.” She laughed. “You didn’t shave.”

  “Nope. I didn’t yet.”

  “Scritchy kisses!” she shrieked. I could see them without even looking, rubbing their cheeks together, lips pursed, like a pair of fish. “Sandpaper kisses!” she shrieked again.

  “They’re the best,” Opa concurred.

  “Except for butterfly kisses,” Kate said. This was their routine. Now they were putting their long lashes together, Kate’s pale blond, the same color as mine, Opa’s thick and black, like Esau’s and Arnold’s.

  I put the toast on plates and just made it to the bathroom to throw up a night’s worth of booze in a slosh. Unladylike, I thought. My mother would never approve.

  Washing my hands, I was relieved that my mother was dead and did not need to see me this way, whatever way this was, or know Arnold was dead, or say anything awful about who my husband was or why he was dead and what would become of me now.

  I buttered the toast.

  The three of us settled into our chairs to eat. Kate wiped her fingers on the upholstery, and I didn’t have the energy to tell her not to. Opa pretended not to see.

  “Can I go visit Davey today?”

  “We’re a ways away,” I said.

  “Can Davey come here?”

  “Same story,” I said. “He’s a ways away too.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Opa said, looking at me thoughtfully, his mouth full of toast. “Little Bit might be getting a little squirrelly today, what with all the people coming in and out.”

  “Who’s coming in and out?” Kate demanded.

  “Oh, folks.”

  “Which folks?”

  “Just folks coming to say hello.”

  “What for?”

  Yes, I thought. What for? I looked at my daughter, who had a rat’s nest in her hair the size of her head. A busy night of dreams.

  “To be neighborly.”

  “But why?”

  “Well, buster, because your dad died.”

  Kate looked at her plate and sighed. She asked Opa, “You want my crusts?”

  “Sure.” He leaned over and took them off her plate.

  “So are we having a funeral party?”

  “A what?”

  “A funeral party. With ham sandwiches.”

  “Oh,” Opa said, not missing a beat, “and Lutheran buns.”

  “Yes! And pickled beets.”

  “We are, but not until tomorrow. Today people are just coming to bring food and pay their respects.”

  “Are they going to bury him in the ground?”

  We looked at her. She licked jam off her fingers slowly. When we didn’t answer, she looked from one of us to the other. “Are they?”

  “Well, yes, ma’am, they are.”

  She nodded and scootched to the edge of her large armchair, hopped down, and took her plate into the kitchen. She returned and climbed into her chair again.

  “I was just wondering,” she said.

  “Well, all right, then.” Opa looked at me. “All right.”

  Down the hall, Oma’s bedroom door opened, and then we heard her pour a cup of coffee in the kitchen. She crossed in front of us and sat down in her chair, her knees together, blowing on her coffee. She wore a smart navy blue suit with square white buttons and had tied on an apron printed with blowsy blue flowers.

  “Katerina, you have not dressed,” she observed.

  “It’s early.”

  “Yes, but we are all awake.”

  “Mom isn’t dressed.”
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  “Your mother can get dressed when she likes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she is a grown-up and doesn’t need any help.”

  Actually, I do, I thought.

  “Neither do I,” Kate protested.

  “Then go get dressed.” Oma sipped her coffee. Kate, realizing she’d been tricked, shrieked and stalked off into the bedroom.

  Opa and I stared at Oma.

  “Well, Mr. Schiller, what for you’re staring at me? You have no manners, is what?” She raised her eyebrow at him and he looked away. “Your paper is sitting there on the step, heavens only knows how sogged by now.”

  Opa heaved himself out of his chair and went off down the hall.

  Oma stood up and looked out the window. “For Christmas sakes, more snow.” She sighed. “How did you sleep, dear?”

  I hesitated, mouth open.

  “Never mind,” she said mildly, and went on without raising her voice or turning her head, “Katerina, you get back in there right now and put on a suitable dress.”

  I swiveled around to look and saw the back of Kate’s red sweater disappearing through the door. Opa came in, shaking the paper out, and offered me a section.

  “Mr. Schiller, you smell disgraceful.”

  Opa froze mid-sit, then eased himself the rest of the way into his chair, hoping she’d leave it at that.

  “I hope you didn’t get poor Claire drunk too.”

  “No, Mother, I most certainly did not,” Opa boomed, snapping open the paper.

  “I am extremely glad to hear that. It is quite enough without, I should say. Though I suppose you kept her up all night.”

  “I am ashamed to say I did.” He met her ferocious gaze with the most pathetic hangdog look I have ever seen, and she promptly forgave him. A tiny bow-shaped smile lifted her lips, almost flirtatious. “Well, then,” she said, and smoothed her apron, and held out her hand for his coffee cup. He lifted it, his head still bent in apology, and she went out of the room. “Claire? More coffee?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I called, idly wondering if I was still drunk or perhaps my head was now spinning from an overdose of Folgers.

  She returned with the pot and put her hand over mine to steady the cup as she poured. Her sharp blue eyes met mine, as if she were looking for something. Without warning, my eyes welled up, though I wouldn’t call it crying, more like morning sickness, just as she turned her back. I hurried out of the room.

  Shutting the bathroom door, I saw Kate lying on the shag in the guest room, trying to wriggle into a pair of white tights with both feet in the legs and her shoes already on.

  “Mom?” she said.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I tilted my face over the sink, feeling oddly as if I needed to drain my head of saltwater. I watched myself drip. There was a knock. I reached behind my back and turned the doorknob. Kate came in and saw me like that, and seemed to think it called for an elaborate quiet. She shut the door very slowly and stood next to me at the sink.

  “Are you crying?” she whispered loudly.

  “No,” I whispered back.

  “It sort of looks like you’re crying.”

  “I know. It’s weird, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Do your eyes hurt?”

  “No.” I grabbed a tissue and soaked up the last of the tears in the wells of my eyes. “See?” I said. “It’s fine.”

  She looked wildly relieved. “I can’t get into my tights.”

  I looked down and started to laugh. She giggled uncertainly. I joined her on the floor and pulled off her shoes and tights. “There,” I said, once they were back on, and smacked her lightly on the butt. “Run out and have Oma brush your hair.”

  When she left, I reached up and locked the door. I sat there with my back against it, tracing the pattern of the porcelain tile with a finger until my eyes burned and spilled over again.

  Kate was suspiciously good all day. It turned out that Opa had promised her that if she was, he would go get Davey so she could have a friend for the funeral party. Thus, she sat in an unnatural state of absolute stillness in the center of the couch with her white patent-leather shoes sticking off the edge, her hands folded, for what seemed like hours at a time. Periodically she’d get a desperate look on her face and I’d tell her to go to the bathroom. The hours trolled over the house in rolls of excruciating white sunlight through the southern windows. The women came and went, trailing the occasional husband. The husbands immediately shook Opa’s hand and stepped into the living room to stand shoulder to shoulder at the window, hands in their pockets, looking out at the utter lack of movement on the frozen lake, while Oma and the women stood in the kitchen, discussing anything but death. Everyone who was pregnant, in or out of wedlock, was discussed, as was everyone whose house, ranch, or farm was threatened with foreclosure, and the weather, and the incessant snow, and God help us, what was February going to be like if it was already this deep in December, and how the children and grandchildren were doing in school, and wasn’t Kate turning into a beautiful girl, but did she get enough to eat?, which made me quietly, insanely rageful, as if I was denying her enough to eat, why did they have to say it that way? Did she get enough to eat? Why not, Did she eat enough? Why not that instead? No, she did not get enough to eat, and I did not take good care of my husband! I wanted to scream, or my son, because now that Arnold was dead, there was no one but me to blame for all this, was there? Because troubles couldn’t just come, could they? It couldn’t just all fall apart completely, could it? It couldn’t just happen to anyone, no, that would be too awful, wouldn’t it? It had to be the strange woman, from somewhere else, who wasn’t like us, who brought this on herself. Did something to bring this on herself.

  At some point between visits, Oma sat down at the kitchen table. “Sit, Claire,” she said. I did. She surveyed her crowded kitchen, the refrigerator and freezer having long since run out of space and spilled over with covered dishes that took up every inch of counter space. “Oh,” she sighed. “How are we ever going to eat all this? Funeral food for weeks to remind us, ja?” She laughed. “Oh, they mean well,” she said, still looking at the casseroles. “They do, the ladies. You do well to say nothing. A smart woman knows when to keep her mouth shut. I tell you, I would not have the patience. But they don’t mean anything by it, you know.” She looked at me. I nodded.

  “I know,” I said. “They’re being very kind.”

  “No they’re not,” she snapped. “They gossip. Old bunch of magpies. Come in here and kiss your cheek, no business doing that. They haven’t said a thing to you in what, all these years? No business. Whether Kate’s a skinny little bird or what.”

  She stared at me with her sharp little eyes. I had always loved Oma, but now I loved her hopelessly. I felt as if I could just stay here in the kitchen forever while she said all the right things. She patted my hand.

  “She just came that way, is all,” Oma assured me, standing up and busying herself with a dish towel. “She’ll be a tall, lovely thing, just like you. All in good time. Some of those ladies would do well to be a little not-so-plump themselves, no? Now,” she proclaimed, skimming over the compliment. “You need to eat something.” She made me a sandwich and perched on the edge of her chair to watch me eat it. She had cut the crusts off.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I have to do something.”

  She looked at me, her back very straight. “I have to, yes, like you have to take care of Kate? That is who I am. And you will have to get Esau now, and bring him home.”

  “When he’s well enough,” I said, nodding.

  “He was always well enough. It was Arnold made it hard to care for him. Too many sad men,” she said. “You cannot love everybody at once.”

  Horrified, I pressed the pads of my fingers into the crumbs on my plate. I wanted another sandwich. I wanted to eat all the casseroles.

  “You think I’m unkind?” she asked. “He was my son. I know who he was.”
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  The percolator sighed with relief, having at last finished a new pot. She stood up to pour us a cup. “He was a man who wanted all your love and did not want any of your love. He would give you all of himself and then could not give you any. You cannot dance like that always and forever. There are other dances to be doing.”

  She sat. “Esau is not his father,” she said abruptly. “He is all love.” She sipped her coffee. Thoughtful, she added, “He does not want to die.”

  “Sometimes he thinks he does.”

  “No, but he doesn’t. That is his biggest word for a thing. He doesn’t have a big enough word. When he has a word, it will be better. He will say, I don’t know, awful or horrible or something. He will say— what is it—desperate. But it will be all right, because he will have you. He will have us. It is like when I was learning English, yes?” She laughed suddenly. “Opa was making us speak only just English in the house. I hated him. For two years I hated him. He would pick fights, just to make me practice fast English. Because I have a temper and he has no temper. So he would pick my temper. And I would get so mad.” She laughed and sighed, putting her hand on mine. “Oh, Claire, you can’t think how silly. I would be yelling, but I would run out of words and start yelling in Deutsch, and the children laughing because they didn’t know what I was saying and Elton holding his hands over his ears, saying, ‘Ohne Deutsch! English only, Mrs. Schiller!’ And with such a grin on his face, I can’t tell you. Oh, it was awful, I would just burst into tears.”

  The doorbell rang. “Oh, for Christmas sakes,” she said, taking one last swipe at the table with her dish towel. She stood and pointed a finger at me. “Now, no more laughing for us. It won’t do.” She pursed her lips, turned on her heel, and went down the hall.

  I was standing on the front porch in the late afternoon when Opa pulled up in the driveway. Donna Knutson stepped out of the passenger side. We waved to each other, and I tucked my hand back into my armpit to warm it. I realized I was standing there without my coat and it was snowing. I reached up. My hair was wet, so were my cheeks. I watched Davey plod up the long driveway in boots that were clearly not his own. From behind me, a shriek, and Kate exploded out the door, down the steps, and launched herself at her best friend, screaming, “Davey!” They toppled into a heap of snow and had to be extracted.