January 13th Holden Massachusetts

Soundlessly, with all the roar of a dog whistle, settling on the thin green pines, threading needle through snowflake like ornaments eleven months too soon. Steadily, purposely, falling falling, drifting from snowman cookie frosting clouds, sprinkling frosted blades and frozen needles. Gathering and waiting on swollen pines and sleeping windowsills, where creeping eyelids rest to widen and then smile and cheer at the brown ice slush filled roads and pristine playgrounds twinkling in morning joy. Playtime rapiers hanging from rooftops, snow filled arena, and racetrack ample canvas for morning imaginations, while snowplows struggle and snowballs battle and every father lover child thinks snow day.

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It’s still dark and the vaguely morning sky flashbulbs with swirling storms of snowflakes swept up in the steady beam of dual halogen bulbs. Heaving fiercely beneath their glow, the curved yellow plow growling in search of asphalt and the icy slush and browning snow that resists its passage.

The front windshield wipers squeak and fidget beneath the whitewashing weight of the sky and Sean McLaughlin slows with every turn and squints through the glass, trying to separate the pavement from the sidewalk. He’s been out since ten the night before, and his cab is littered with empty styrofoam dunkin donuts cups and some hand warmers, plus a large metal thermos from Christine on Christmas two weeks before. The heater works only sometimes and so he keeps a seasoned wool blanket stretched tight over his lap that fills the cab with the smell of dog hair and salt from the winters before when Sammy would ride with him. Back before the arthritis and dysplasia had resigned her to the rug by the stove, back when it was for both of them younger days.

Yesterday was Christine’s birthday and they had spent the night at home in front of the TV watching the snow. When his phone had rung just before the late night news she had turned to him and said, “Go. You need the overtime.”

Storms had always been too early or too late for Sean. Either they did not know how to keep time or they plain did not care.

Now he is alone in the dark of his cab with the thermos from her and a broken heater, an old smelly blanket, and a wish for spring and the overtime check. And all the while the flakes all surrounding and falling dispassionately around him.

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Laying in bed still, the comforter down around my knees, a glass of water on the bedside table, and the clock blinking noontime.

“You car is completely snowed in. I don’t think you’re going to make that meeting.”

Water running in the kitchen down the stairs, cupboards swinging and clacking shut, and porcelain on the countertop.

“How do you like your coffee?” she calls again.

Lifting the shade the window is half covered in frost and peering over the top I can see only snow and snow everywhere. It covers my car up past the license plate and hides the mailbox post in what seems to me as marshmallow fluff. The road is indistinguishable from the lawn and I know that I’m going anywhere.

First snow day of the New Year, I think, and I call back, “A little bit of sugar, thanks.”

I don’t actually have a meeting but I hadn’t been planning on dinner and breakfast. The room smells like last night, like alcohol and flesh and frosty mornings. But at least the sheets are soft and warm, as white as the fluff outside the window and I think now about the coffee brewing in the kitchen and the woman I barely know behind it.

Now she comes back to the bedroom and places two snow-white mugs on the bedside table. She squints at the brightness beyond the window and climbs in beside me, smiling more brilliantly than anything I’ve seen in a long time. Snow day, I think again.

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I’m awake now but I don’t move in my blanket like a caterpillar in a cocoon is what they’re called like I’m hibernating and I keep my eyes pressed tight together. I feel the cold shape of the spoon under my pillow and squeeze it tightly its supposed to bring the snow day I can’t hear the news downstairs maybe they already know its cancelled they said they would call us to say for sure I hope they did I hope they did. I open one eye and my room is too bright for the morning maybe its lunch time already maybe mom let me sleep because no school today! I can’t wait any more I jump out of bed run to the window tear the blinds and my heart explodes. Winter wonderland its like that Rudolph movie we watched on Christmas at Auntie Chris’s and there’s even more coming down right now and they look like the flakes we make in art class with white tissue paper and scissors and no ones are the same because they’re all unique like us Mrs. Stangle says. After I have breakfast I can go sledding once I have my snow pants and boots on Mom said I could yesterday and a snow fort to keep the girls out and hot cocoa for lunch and I’m smiling with ears it’s a snow day!

Yesterday

First story for comp class. Expect weekly additions...

When you are lonely everything makes sense. There is no confusion, and you can look at the winter’s sky and find the little dipper as if it were the only grouping between the earth and the moon. There are of course other ways to be sure, but none of them are as easy as being lonely.

So when I woke early and found that I was alone in my roommate’s bed and that my own bed across the room was empty also, I knew immediately that I was in love with her. There were scattered papers and empty PBR cans on the desks by the radiator and cool white sunlight sliding in through the open window and I was in love again. Only that, and the hole in my head.

I was still naked except for my boxers so I kept my roommate’s comforter wrapped around my shoulders as I searched for more clothes. It was very cold with the window open and the splintered floorboards felt like icy sandpaper on my bare feet and I didn’t want to stay in the room just then. I wanted to catch her before she left so I grabbed my jacket and headed for the stairs. My head was still splitting besides and I felt like some fresh air.

It was just after eight then and her train was leaving at eleven I thought so I could probably see her still. She had to go to the city this morning and that was why she was gone when I woke up. And I didn’t know what I was going to do or where I was walking to really but it didn’t bother me then. When you love someone sometimes you just need to do things and that’s all.

Her dorm was across the campus from mine and I was glad I had my jacket. It was even colder outside than it had been in my beer-stained room. Apparently it had snowed last night. The criss-crossing walkways were all sloppy with ice and slush so I made my way diagonally through the quad and snowy grass. The snow was fresh and forgiving and it was fun to walk without thinking and to know there were tracks to follow. I continued along, watching my feet sink into the snow so that I didn’t hear her at first when I came to one of the plowed paths again and she called out my name.

She was walking along the walkway opposite to the one I had just come to. I waited for her as she finished walking its length, then down another connecting our two paths and then finally over to where I was standing. Her ivory-gold skin looked strangely pale against the snowy backdrop and her long brown hair was completely hidden beneath a ribbed grey hat. A long woolen scarf that she had knitted herself covered her neck and chin and she smiled at me from beneath her layers. She looked older than I remembered but that may have been the cold.

“What time do you leave?” I asked her.

“I’m on my way to the station now,” she said. “Last night was fun.”

“I enjoyed myself.”

“Me too.”

“And Dan gets in today,” I said. “I’ll wash his sheets for him. You get back on Monday?”

“Yes. In the afternoon sometime.” There was a pause, and then she added “I’ll give you a call when I’m back.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“Good.”

After a moment I looked at my phone and she said she had better be going. We hugged goodbye then and I watched her follow the walkways back to where she had been going before and off towards the temporary parking lot, where I knew her cab would be waiting. Another person leaving another building as she passed by called and caught up with her, and I could hear their laughter echoing as I turned to walk back home.

The way back to my dorm was easier the second time through, and I didn’t feel the headache so much or even the cold of the empty quad anymore. The world outside seemed stunning with freshly fallen flakes and it reminded me now of a snow globe breaking open in the street where you can’t tell the unique from the plastic. It was still close to freezing but yesterday’s grey had been blown away during the night, and the spidery cloud of my breath and the sharp blue air were refreshing and clear.

The weather seemed to me then like winter’s answer to those warm sun showers on sticky summer days. Where no one really minds that it’s raining, even if they pretend to.

When I got back to my room I shut the door and took off my clothes again. I moved over to the bed and lay back down and closed my eyes. I wasn’t finished with last night yet.