The Center of Winter: A Novel

by Marya Hornbacher

  Before I could stop myself, I cried, “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

  It was gauche. It was wrong. People stared and tried not to stare, but it was either stare at us or stare at the hole, wasn’t it? Donna wrapped her arm around my shoulder and held me up. We were falling. Kate and I were falling and there was a hole and I needed to keep my child away from the hole.

  I backed away from the edge of the grave, turning to look at Donna. “It’s sunny,” I whispered, panicked.

  “You have your sunglasses on, honey. It’s almost over.” She squeezed my arms, staring straight into my face. “Almost done.”

  I nodded at her because she was nodding at me.

  The minister started talking. I kept an eye on the clouds that had gathered themselves up, thick clouds, snow clouds. Snow tonight, I thought.

  The minister stopped talking. In the void his voice left, there was only the deep breathing of the pallbearers as they bent—on three?— and lifted the casket. Kate’s head swiveled slowly.

  “Are they putting him in the ground?” she whispered.

  I nodded against her neck.

  “He’s in the box.”

  I nodded again. “He’s in heaven.”

  She turned suddenly, a wild look in her eyes.

  “Is he in the box?”

  “Yes, and his spirit is in heaven.” I needed her to stop asking. I was trembling and wanted to run and get her away from the hole.

  “But what’s in the box?” Her tiny, shrill voice soared above the silence. The pallbearers paused.

  “Sweetheart, Daddy’s in the box.” I forced the words out and heard the hysteria in them. “Stop, now.”

  She pushed away from me violently, scrambled down as if I was a tree she had climbed that was bending under her weight. She took my skirt in her fists and twisted it, yanking with all her strength. Her head thrown back to look up at me, she screamed, “Where is he? Is he going in the ground? You said they would put him in the ground!”

  “Darling, stop,” I pleaded. I bent, reaching for her, but she flung herself away, kicking. I lurched toward her where she lay sobbing in the snow, her hair dangling into the grave. I leaned toward her, reaching, sick at the thought of all those eyes on our rawest parts. I felt the furor behind us, Oma and Opa and Donna, voices rising, and I wanted to turn and lash out, but I could not take my eyes off Kate, who choked and howled, her small hands reaching for something to cling to, finding only the edge of the hole. Look away, I wanted to scream at all of them, look away, let us alone.

  I grabbed Kate’s foot. She kicked and sobbed herself out. When she spoke, it was another voice, not hers, an old and angry voice, betrayed.

  “What’s in the box?” she said, her eyes closed. “Daddy’s body.” “Where’s the Daddy of him?” She lay there in the snow, utterly still. “Sweetheart, he’s gone.” I took my hand off her foot and put my palm to her wet face. A flood of heat.

  She stared up at me, lost.

  I bathed Kate slowly, with scented bubbles. She was very serious as she played with the soap. She held still and did not complain. She stood shivering in her giant bath towel while I helped her get dry. I put her into her flannel nightgown. She wanted to wear socks to bed, so I put socks on her feet. For a minute I sat on the bed next to her. Then I got up, put on my own flannel nightgown and socks, got into bed, and turned out the light.

  Together we lay there in the dark, listening to the funeral party.

  Suddenly she said, “Do you ever think about what if the roof flew off?”

  We stared at the ceiling.

  “Of course,” I said. “Everybody thinks about that, don’t they?”

  She giggled. “Yeah. I bet.”

  She put her socked foot on my knee and rubbed it. “I like socks on in bed, don’t you?”

  “Very warm.”

  “Yeah. Safe.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes I feel like my feet are flying away.”

  This took me a minute. “How do you figure?”

  “I don’t know. Like they’re escaping.”

  “What do you do then?”

  “Sit on ’em.” She giggled again. “What do you see when the roof flies off?”

  “A thunderstorm. A big one, with lots of lightning. And trees waving their arms.” I stretched my arms toward the ceiling to show her.

  “Oooh, yeah! Except we don’t get wet.”

  “Right.”

  She was quiet. I turned my head on the pillow to look at her. “What do you see?”

  “Daddy,” she said tentatively, almost asking the question.

  “Yes.”

  “Up in heaven.” More certain this time.

  I realized I was holding my breath, and let it out slowly. Out in the living room, the funeral party was in full swing; something broke and there was a roar of laughter and a bluster of men.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

  “Not telling.” In the dark I saw her grin.

  “Pretty please?”

  “Sneaking a nip.”

  “What?”

  “Sneaking a nip before dinner. He’s looking to make sure you can’t see. He’s making funny faces at me.”

  I laughed so hard I worried the funeral party would hear. “Oh, lordy. You’re right. That’s exactly what he’s up to, isn’t it?”

  “Yes!” she crowed, rubbing her feet madly on my knees.

  I tickled her until she begged me to stop.

  “He likes heaven,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Doesn’t he?” Her voice was anxious.

  “Well, sure. What’s not to like? It’s heaven!”

  “Right!” She sighed with relief. “And he can go fishing.”

  Okay. “All kinds of fish in heaven.”

  “That’s what Esau says.”

  I looked at her. “Is that so?”

  She nodded. Apparently they’d discussed it between themselves.

  She took my hand. I squeezed. We took a long breath. I said, “We’re going to be fine.”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said solemnly. “Me and Davey think we’re going to be sad for a long time.” She looked at me.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  She looked back up at the ceiling. “Yeah.”

  I stood in the kitchen with the light from the refrigerator shining on my socked feet. It seemed necessary to eat. I couldn’t tell whether I was hungry or about to throw up again, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I peeled the aluminum foil back from a casserole dish and found sweet potatoes.

  Then Oma was prying my fingers off a spoon. I was sitting on the front porch. The sweet potatoes were mostly gone. I felt as if I’d swallowed something warm and huge, like a child. I was starving and freezing. My teeth were chattering, and I had a hard time getting the words out.

  I looked up into her face, partly hidden in shadow. “I’m hungry,” I said.

  “I know. Give me the dish.”

  I let it go.

  “Come inside.”

  I followed her in and sat at the table. She stood before me, a curious look on her face. “What are you hungry for? Salty? Sweet?”

  I stared at her. “I don’t know. Food.”

  She shook her head. “Answer my question. Salty or sweet?”

  “Salty, I suppose.”

  “One or the other. Yes or no. Salty? Yes? Now, do you want smooth like silk or do you want to break a glass?”

  I thought about it, my head pounding with sugar and lack of sleep. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, putting my head in my hands.

  “Answer me!” She clapped her hands twice.

  “A glass.”

  “What? Which is it?”

  My head snapped up. “A glass!” I yelled. “A fucking glass! I want to break a glass!”

  I clapped my hand over my mouth, unable to believe what I’d just said.

  We stared at each other in the dark.

  “Very good.�
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  She turned her back to me. I sat slumped in my chair, looking confusedly at the wall. I wanted to break a glass with my teeth.

  I listened to her washing something at the sink.

  “There,” she said, setting an overflowing bowl of radishes and a salt shaker in front of me. “Eat!”

  I picked up a radish and was about to bite into it.

  “Salt,” she commanded.

  I salted and ate it.

  I don’t know when she went to bed. I sat crunching in the dark, licking the salt off my fingers, eating the radishes, chewing with my molars, staring down into the bowl to see where the next one would come from, until suddenly I was full, and I got up and fell asleep on the guest-room floor next to Kate, who had fallen off the bed.

  “I want to go home.”

  Kate was bouncing up and down in her red boots, looking out the back door at the lake. She’d spoken casually, as if it mattered very little to her when, specifically, we went home, as long as we did.

  “You will,” Oma assured her, not looking up from her letter desk.

  “Quick as you please,” Opa seconded idly from behind the paper.

  “Now,” Kate said, still bouncing on her toes.

  Oma raised her head slightly. “Not good enough for you here, ah? You’re tired of me and Opa?”

  “Opa and I,” Opa said.

  “No, Mr. Schiller, it is ‘me and Opa,’ thank you and good night.” She licked her pen and wrote.

  Kate turned to me. “Can we go?”

  I opened my mouth as if I expected words to form themselves. “Okay,” I said.

  She and I looked at each other.

  “I can go get my stuff?” she asked.

  I nodded, stunned.

  She left the room. Oma and Opa stared at me. I avoided their eyes.

  “We have to leave sometime,” I said, sounding like a sullen teenager. “Don’t we?”

  “Claire, now. Stop and think this through.” Opa leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

  “There’s nothing to think through,” I said. Kate walked back into the room, staggering under a pile of clothes.

  “What should I do with them?”

  “Leave them,” Oma snapped. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Yes we are. Mom said.” She shifted her arms, and a tiny sock fell on the floor. She looked at it, trying to decide whether she should attempt its retrieval.

  “Katerina, your mother is tired and she needs to stay here and rest.” “No she doesn’t. No you don’t, Mom.” She looked at me, pleading. “You can rest at home. Right?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll take care of you,” she said firmly, and bent down to get the sock, and dropped the entire pile of clothes. Scowling, she set about picking them all back up.

  “No!” Oma nearly shouted. “You are not to go home and that is all.”

  “Now, Oma,” Opa said, soothing.

  “No, no, no.” She shook her head. “I won’t have it. First one thing, and then another thing.” She slammed her pen down on the desk. “Up last night dying of starvation, she is. Crazy she is with lonely. No sleeping for days. Sitting there with the radishes.”

  She took her reading glasses off and put her hands to her eyes. Kate sank down slowly, a head above a pile of clothes.

  Opa said, “Now, Oma. It isn’t so bad. We’ll see them in a few days.”

  “Oh, that is it? No, that is not it! Not us, them! How are they going to do with it? I think they will starve to death!”

  “Well, dammit, Mother, I guess they’ll muddle through.” Opa was irritated now. “They’ll just do what they do and none of our business, is it?”

  “Yeah,” said Kate sullenly.

  “Katerina, you mind,” Opa snapped.

  Kate put her face in the clothes and started to bawl. Oma sniffled, furious. Opa gave me a look, stood up, and said grimly, “Well, get your things.”

  I felt like I was falling backward. Opa went out to start the car.

  Opa and I stared over the dash at the black ribbon of road that spooled toward us from the south. Kate sat by herself in the backseat, bouncing from one side of the car to the other, quietly singing, “Home again, home again, higglety pig.”

  She burst in the door and ran through the house, calling gleefully, “We’re home! We’re home!”

  I stood in the hall, watching her, listening to the hysteria rise in her voice. Opa carried our things inside. He came back to where I was, frozen, put his arm around me, and squeezed. He led me into the living room, past the closed bedroom door. I could have sworn I smelled bleach.

  Together we watched Kate run, her voice strangled and hoarse.

  Eventually she stopped yelling. A claustrophobic quiet settled in. Dust motes floated down the sunbeams. The stale air bore the scent of us, the unmistakable smell of our bodies and meals.

  My face was suddenly clammy. It felt like there were hands around my throat.

  Kate was standing in the middle of the room, still wearing her coat. She looked very small. She glanced up at me with no sign of life in her face. Then she crossed over to his chair, curled her entire body into its wide seat, and fell instantly asleep. Opa hugged me and left.

  I sat down on the couch and looked out the window at the split tree. Have to get that sucker removed, I heard a voice say.

  You son of a bitch, I replied. Don’t talk to me.

  Kate’s coat rose and fell. Blessedly, the sun began to set. I looked up at the clock and watched the hand tick toward five.

  “You hungry?”

  I screamed, dropped my glass on the floor, and stood paralyzed among the shards.

  “For Chrissakes,” I said. “You scared the bejeezus out of me.”

  “Sorry,” Donna said from behind me. “Stay still.”

  “I’ll do that, thanks.”

  I was standing in the living room in my stocking feet, staring down the tunnel of the hallway at the closed bedroom door. I swept the glass out of my way with my toe and went over to the table.

  “Thought I told you to stay still,” Donna said, emerging with a broom and a towel. The sight of her comforted me. She wore a plaid flannel shirt, purple and red. I wanted to sit on her lap. I was drunk.

  “I’m drunk,” I said.

  “You don’t say.” She crouched and cleaned up the mess.

  “Is it late?”

  “Round ten.” She stood up, pulled out a chair at the table. “Siddown.”

  I did, and she went into the kitchen. “You want a beer?” she called.

  “No. I want the drink you made me drop.”

  “Suit yourself. I’m having one.”

  “All right.”

  She came in with a beer and sat down.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You could have brought one for me.”

  “You said you didn’t want one!”

  “But then I said I did.”

  “Oh, for—” She heaved herself up, disappeared, reappeared, and set a beer down in front of me. “May I get herself anything else?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  I laughed and waved my hand. “New house? New life?”

  She sat down. “No can do. I was thinking more along the lines of a sandwich.”

  “Ugh.”

  “You got enough food in that fridge, you could feed the whole town for a week.”

  “Why then, let’s call ’em up, honey!” I said grandly. “Invite ’em all over! I got nothing better to do, now do I? We can have a little church-basement social.”

  “Your accent always get this thick when you’re drunk?” she said, smiling.

  “Why, it sure does,” I drawled, and glared at her, and took a swallow of beer.

  “Yep. Claire, how long you been drinking?”

  I waved away the thought. “Not long. A couple of hours?”

  She nodded and sipped her beer. “Well, no point getting you sober now.�
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  “No, I don’t think so,” I agreed.

  “Kate asleep?”

  “The minute we walked in the door.” I nodded over at the chair. “Sat her little self down and fell asleep right there.”

  We stared at the chair for a while.

  “What the hell you doing home this soon, anyhow?” Donna asked.

  “Well,” I said, plunking my empty bottle down on the table and picking at the Grain Belt label. “I’ll tell you, honey. I don’t have the faintest fucking idea, pardon me.” I giggled, shocked at my own audacity. “What I’m doing home.”

  She nodded. “Right. Well, how’d you get home?”

  “Elton drove us. Kate said she wanted to come home, so we came home.”

  “What’s she want to come home for? I never seen a child so spoiled.”

  “Oh, tell me. Don’t I know. And now she’s stuck with me.” I laughed. “Poor thing.”

  “Well, you’re stuck with her too.”

  “True enough.” I shredded the label, feeling guilty. “She’s no trouble.”

  “Hell, you say. She’s a child. Course she’s trouble. Even Davey’s trouble.”

  “No.”

  “Yes he is. If I wanted to sit around, get a proper drunk on, feel sorry for myself, sure.”

  I considered that. “All right.”

  “You want another beer?”

  I nodded.

  We clicked the necks of the bottles and drank. “To Arnold,” I said. “May we drink all his beer.”

  “This his beer?”

  “Not anymore, it isn’t. He’s dead, ain’t you heard?”

  “Oughtta get your own beer.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  She stood up, untucked her shirttails, and unbuttoned her shirt, revealing the men’s white undershirt she wore beneath. She fanned herself with the side of the shirt.

  “Claire, honey,” she said, sounding apologetic, “it’s a goddamned oven in here.”

  I was surprised. “I’m cold.”