The Center of Winter: A Novel

by Marya Hornbacher

  I said, “You’re not.”

  “It doesn’t look good,” he said firmly.

  “Who’s looking?” I knew perfectly well who was.

  “Minute we walk in that door, the whole town will be. All I’m saying. That’s all right. That’s all right,” he repeated, talking to either himself or the dash. “All I’m saying is, well, Jesus, Claire, this is difficult. I tell you, I feel like a grave robber. I feel like I’m stealing another man’s wife.” He looked out at the supper club, agonized. “Which is not to say I am making any assumptions, either.”

  I studied his profile from the corner of my eye.

  “I think I am not technically another man’s wife. Anymore,” I said hesitantly.

  “Still.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Still, I swear to God, Claire, I feel like he’s sitting here in the car between us. Just sitting here, I swear to God.”

  “I know.”

  He looked at me finally. I smiled. Before I knew I was going to do it, I smoothed out his eyebrow. He stared at me.

  “And see,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “that’s just it. That is just it.”

  I nodded.

  “Because the hell of it is, I can’t do a damn thing about it now, anyway, now, can I? I can’t stop it now anymore than I can jump in front of a damn train.” He pounded the steering wheel once with the heel of his hand. “That is the hell of it, Claire.” He looked at me. “So we’d best go in and have dinner.”

  At the wide red door of the supper club, he straightened his tie. “Ready?” he said.

  “They’re looking.”

  We were dancing.

  “Of course they are. They’re looking at you,” Frank said.

  “They might just as easily be looking at you. That is a particularly fine tie.”

  “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. Maybe that’s it, then. My tie.”

  “Is it late?”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “What should I think about, then?” I’d had a bit of wine, it seemed.

  “Me.” He looked shocked at himself, put his cheek closer to mine, not terribly close, nothing obvious. Just enough that his ear was near my mouth.

  “Pretty light on your feet,” he said, as if he were complimenting my begonias. I giggled.

  “For an old girl, I guess I’m not too bad,” I said.

  “Heh!” he scowled, disapproving. He drew his face back to look at me. And he put his rough hand out on my face and his thumb against the corner of my eye. “Not hardly,” he said gruffly, and the Motley-Staples Big Band played us a Viennese waltz.

  As ten approached, I said I had to get home. It was raining again. He held his coat over my head and we ran to the car. The tires whooshed through the water on the road, and it ran in sheets over the windshield, wipers slapping. I hummed.

  “Whatcha singin’?” he asked.

  I laughed. “Lullaby.”

  He smiled. “You got the luckiest kids in the world,” he said. He pulled into the driveway and let the car idle.

  “Damnation, she let them stay up,” I said, looking at the living-room light, glowing through the needles of rain. We sat there for a moment. Then I said, “I should get in.”

  He was looking at me. I could see him from the corner of my eye. “Too soon to kiss you,” he said.

  I wanted desperately for him to kiss me. I nodded.

  “Thought so. You’re right, a’course.” He was embarrassed.

  I laughed. He scowled.

  “Well, how about I call you, then.”

  “That’d be all right.”

  He got out of the car and came around to my side and we ran up to the front door. I opened it and knocked over Kate, Esau, Davey, and Donna.

  “Did he kiss you?” Kate shrieked, then saw Frank. “Did you kiss her?” she shrieked again.

  “That is so gross.” Davey stood there with his arms crossed, disgusted.

  “Go,” Donna yelled, shooing the kids, “scoot!” She followed them like a hen.

  Esau popped back around the corner and whispered loudly, “Invite him in!”

  I turned to Frank, only to find him leaning in the doorway, laughing. He straightened up.

  “I have to go kill them now,” I said, grimly.

  He nodded. “Right. Good night, Claire.”

  “Thank you for a lovely evening,” I called as he went down the steps. He lifted his arm to wave. I shut and locked the door, then leaned back against it. I listened to my blood pound in my ears awhile. It matched the ticking of the grandfather clock, shadowed in the dark room, its brass gong reflecting the light from the moon outside.

  I walked through the house, turning off lights, and sat down in the living room, imagining that I could hear my children breathe.

  This is too soon, I thought, shaking my head. Too soon.

  The heat.

  I’d never slept well. The heat made it harder. Northern heat is just as fierce as the cold. They’re the same thing turned inside out. They are a pressing, changeless, mute and brutal thing. You endure them. That’s what they’re for. No matter how long you live in the north, each time the mercury plummets or soars past livable points— points where you can, say, breathe without freezing your lungs or drowning—you’re shocked. Your face snaps to the side with the force of an invisible hand.

  I fed Esau and Kate, and they wanted to watch television, but when I went in to join them after I did the dishes, they’d fallen asleep on the couch. I woke them and they stumbled to bed.

  The rain let up and ushered in a waiting silence, a pause before the rain began again. I went outside.

  Though it wasn’t the beating heat of morning and high noon, or the wet, sucking heat of the later day, the night’s heat was thick and damp and all-encompassing because there was no such thing as shade. The night and the heat became the same thing.

  In the summer, when I was a girl in the south, I’d lie naked on top of the covers, all the windows open, and listen to the night. The trick was to arrange my limbs on all the quilt’s coolest places. If you turned the pillow carefully, you could always find a cold spot. I wondered at the lack of shyness. Where does that go? I dressed for bed even now, with no one to see me. And the idea of sleeping without a blanket, without at least a sheet, was somehow threatening. It seemed so uncovered.

  I laughed out loud.

  I stepped off the porch and made my way carefully through the dark, wet garden, feeling the plants for dead leaves and plucking them off. I ran my thumb over the serrated edge of a rose leaf, and touched the tip of my finger to a new bud still encased in green. Esau would know what the name of that is, I thought. That green. He would have a word.

  We had named it Kate’s Rosebush Jane.

  “Wouldn’t you rather have a more… interesting name?” I’d asked.

  She’d shaken her head firmly. “No. Kate’s Rosebush Jane. That’s her name,” she said.

  The girl did know her mind.

  I picked two roses in bloom and went back inside. I put them in juice glasses with water and went first to Kate’s door. She had made it only as far as the side of the bed and seemed to have flung herself down any which way when she got there. She was asleep on her belly, still dressed, her feet in their white sandals dangling off the edge. I set the rose on her nightstand, took her shoes off, and turned her. She muttered. I tiptoed out and closed the door.

  Esau was asleep with his blankets folded in a flag fold at the foot of his bed. He’d learned it at State. It was of critical importance. Every morning, he unfolded them and remade his bed. Every night, he folded them back up. He never used them. If he was feeling jittery, he’d go out and get the afghan and roll himself up like a sausage and fall asleep on the floor of his closet. Tonight he was on the bed. Hands folded on his stomach. He was too still. I went over to his side and leaned down to listen to his breath.

  His eyes snapped open. “Hello,” he said, startling the hell out of me.

  “S
hh!” I was never really sure he slept.

  “Why?” he whispered.

  “It’s night.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Bringing you a rose.”

  He turned his head on the pillow to look. “Thanks!” he hissed, pleased.

  “You’re welcome.” I set it on his nightstand. “Go back to sleep.”

  “All right.” He shut his eyes. “Love you!”

  “Love you too.”

  Kate thumped the wall. “Some people are trying to sleep,” she hollered.

  “Sorry,” we whispered loudly.

  I shut the door and began to cross the room. And then my eye caught on the dark hollow at the other end of the house.

  The hallway was the same as it always was, and my bedroom was the same. But tonight it was a hollow again, the way it had seemed when he’d first died.

  I continued to the bar for a glass of wine. I went to stand in the hallway. I leaned against the wall and studied my bedroom doorway.

  They’re mine now, I said to it softly.

  I took a sip.

  Thank you, I said, feeling cordial. For them.

  I turned my back on it and sat down in the living room. I looked at the chair. I did love you, I said. Terribly. All that time. It just didn’t work.

  I stood up and went out to the porch. The fingernail moon sent out an arc of bright-white haze. I drank my wine slowly and realized I wasn’t quite finished talking. I turned and went back in.

  Because you weren’t you anymore. Because you left me here, with all of this, years before you left. That’s why. I gestured with my glass. I might have left, I said. I might have left you. But you left them.

  Then I had a little bit of a cry, and it didn’t feel half bad.

  I took a breath when I was done, and drank the last of my wine, and set the glass on the coffee table.

  Good-bye.

  I stood and went into the kitchen. In the junk drawer I found a hammer and a nail. I took down the large, framed photograph of Kate and Esau that hung in the front hall, walked into the bedroom, and turned on all the lights. I lay the photograph on the bed, went over to the wide, unnaturally white spot on the wall, steadied the nail, and started hammering.

  At which of course Kate and Esau shot out of their rooms and across the house, awake for the first time all day.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It’s night!”

  “We’re sleeping!”

  “Why are you hanging a painting?”

  “Let’s put the map there,” Esau said. I yanked out the nail. Kate ran to get the map off the fridge. “Get tape!” I called. Esau ran to get a level. He came back with a footstool, a mechanical pencil, and a tape measure, along with the level, and now we were having a production. For the next half hour we hung the map of the garden, and then we needed a snack.

  Sleepily, we sat on the bed and studied our work, eating peanut-butter toast.

  “I like it there,” Kate said thoughtfully.

  “It looks good,” I agreed.

  “Crooked,” Esau fretted.

  “Don’t touch it,” I warned.

  “It’s okay?”

  “I think it’s perfect.”

  “I don’t have to be perfect.”

  “Nope,” I said. “You don’t.” I stood up and put my hand out for their plates. “Bed!”

  For the first time in seven months, I closed my bedroom door.

  Since he died, I’d taken an extreme interest in my skin. My bathroom sink was cluttered with bottles and soaps and pots of creams. I told myself it was a waste not to use my discount at the store. Really, I just liked the way I smelled. I washed up, put on my nightgown, and lay down, throwing the covers off and pulling the sheet up to my waist.

  Then I lit a cigarette and smoked it.

  It was my bed. I could smoke in it if I liked. I finished the cigarette, reached up to turn out the light, and lay there listening to the thick northern night, the chirr of crickets pouring into my ears.

  “Mom!” Kate called. I was in the basement doing laundry. Three days had passed since the date, and I had been ignoring the ringing phone as if I was afraid of bad news or bill collectors. “What?” I called up.

  “Frank’s here. Should I let him in?”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, Katie! Yes!” The child had no manners. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. I clipped the last of the whites to the line, straightened my skirt, took a deep breath, and went upstairs.

  I found Kate in the kitchen. She was wearing a red silk nightgown of mine, several strands of beads, and a pair of my shoes. She also had Frank’s cap on her head. She was pouring him apple juice. She peered out from under the cap and said to me, “I told him to sit in the living room.”

  And there he was, discussing the day’s goings-on with Davey, whose boots stuck out from under my green silk dress. Esau was reading the newspaper to the baby, who lay on her back with a bottle in her mouth, listening attentively.

  It was a gorgeous day. Frank stood up when I came into the room, surrounded by the September sunshine that flooded in. Kate clopped in and handed Frank his juice. He thanked her graciously. I had a hard time looking at him and smiled at my feet.

  “Frank wants to know if we can go for a drive,” Kate said, climbing up next to Davey on the couch. “He says we can stop for lunch in Brainard. I said we had to discuss it.”

  Frank was looking pretty pleased with himself, in his yellow short-sleeved shirt and combed hair.

  “So we’re discussing it,” Kate went on. “I think it would be okay.”

  “It’s okay with me,” Davey said.

  “Esau? Do you want to go?” Kate asked.

  Esau stood up and folded the newspaper carefully. He brought over the desk chair and sat down, studying Frank.

  “I have concerns.” He gnawed lightly on his wrist, then caught me looking at him and stopped. “Concerns,” he repeated, nodding. “For example, will you have us home before dark?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Yes. All right. And how old are you?”

  “Esau,” I said. Frank laughed.

  “Thirty-six,” he said.

  Esau narrowed his eyes. “That’s how old our dad was. When he died.”

  Frank looked at him seriously. “I know. Your dad was a friend of mine.”

  Esau’s eyebrows shot up. “I did not know that,” he said.

  “Yep,” Frank said. “We knew each other since we were your age.”

  “Oh.” This was a major development.

  “You’re sitting in his chair,” Kate said. One of my shoes fell off her foot and she scrambled down to retrieve it. Frank looked down appreciatively.

  “Am I?” he asked. “It’s a heck of a chair, that’s certain.”

  “It is a very fine chair,” Esau agreed. “He liked it very much.”

  “Can’t blame him. Fellow’s got to have a chair.”

  “Do you have a chair?” Kate asked.

  “That I do. I have a chair in my library.”

  “Is it a La-Z-Boy?” Kate asked.

  “You have a library?” Esau breathed. He pulled his knees up to his chest.

  “No, it’s not a La-Z-Boy, I’m sorry to say, and yes, I have a library. You know, it’s funny,” Frank said to Esau, “your mother and I were just discussing my library a few days ago, when she was kind enough to join me for dinner at the Elk’s Club.”

  “She was gone for exactly three hours,” Esau said into his knees. His eyes were wide.

  “Well, yes,” Frank said. “She had a curfew, didn’t she?”

  Esau nodded and gnawed on his knee. “I want to go for a drive. A drive is fine. I’ll wear the special coat. What about the library?” Esau asked, wiggling his toes.

  I watched Frank blink. “Well. Your mother was just telling me you were running a little low on books, is all. That so?”

  “Yes. I have read all the ones at school, and Miss Kipp says pretty soon we’re going to
have to call Detroit Lakes and get them to borrow us some more because I am done with science and almost done with history, except for the Second World War.”

  “What’s your opinion of the Moors?”

  Esau stared at him. “I have no opinion of the Moors. What are the Moors?”

  “Hup! What’s this? They didn’t give you anything on the Moors?”

  “No,” Esau said, looking worried. “What are they?”

  “Well, you see,” Frank said. “That settles it. We’re going to have to raid my library.”

  “Yes please. That would be fine. All right, yes. Oh. I have to go now,” he said, and stood up and walked stiffly into his room.

  “That just means he’s happy,” Kate said to Frank. “He’ll be right back. Watch this!” she said, and hopped off the couch and yanked the La-Z-Boy handle with all her strength, flinging Frank backward in his seat. “Isn’t that great?”

  “That’s fantastic!” Frank said, horizontal. Kate shrieked with glee.

  She climbed in next to him. “Davey, come over here,” she commanded. Obligingly, Davey gathered his skirt, stepped carefully in a pair of my pumps over to where Kate and Frank lay, and climbed up.

  Esau ran back into the room with a piece of paper and a pen. “How do you spell ‘Moors’?” he asked, sitting down and sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth.

  “M-o-o-r-s.” Frank, Kate, and Davey stared up at the ceiling.

  “We don’t like you yet,” Kate said cheerfully. “Right, Davey?”

  Davey lifted his head to look at her. “You don’t like him. I like him fine.”

  “Esau doesn’t like him, either,” Kate said. Frank lay there with his hands folded on his stomach, listening to this discussion with a grin on his face.

  “That is not entirely accurate,” Esau said. “It is not that we don’t like you, Frank.”

  “Well, thank you,” Frank said.

  “You’re welcome. We simply have concerns.”

  “I see.”

  Kate said. “Are you going to steal her? Because you can’t have her.”

  “No, ma’am,” Frank said seriously. “She’s not mine to steal.”

  Kate sat up. “Whose is she?” She turned around. “Mom, whose are you?”