Wordlessly, in the dark of the library, he lights a candle by the bed. The music has already undressed her, so that the removal of the sweater and skirt, the brassiere and slip, the girdle and her stockings, seems unremarkable. When she is naked, he gazes at her in the low light, and she isn’t ashamed. He drapes the sheets back, and she slides into the bed, the sheets silky and smooth. She does what she has wanted to do for so long, she bares her neck as she drapes herself across his body, and he kisses her there, allowing her to kiss his skin. He touches her everywhere, sliding his hand down her calf to her foot; running his hand from her breast down her flank. Neither says a word.
Inside her head, the music is still playing, or perhaps this is an entirely new piece, one with more urgency, the beat faster, the fingers flying. He pauses to protect himself, to protect her, and he slides into her with ease. As he raises himself up by his arms, his eyes scan her face. She shifts her hips and arches her back to take him in. She grips his back. Another man might say that he loved her, but Grace doesn’t need that. Aidan is slow, holding back, and she experiences the buildup of a different kind of crescendo. She feels it rise up through her toes to the insides of her thighs, a crescendo with many more notes in it than any piece of music, one than continues to climb, and she knows that he can see the moment of her intense pleasure, which feels like liquid flooding through her veins. She’s certain she said something, an ecstatic word in a language all her own, a word that causes him to focus on his own crescendo. His eyes fix on hers. He makes his own sound and bends his head.
He pulls her toward him, so that her head rests in the crook of his arm. She floats—placid and perfect. His breathing changes, and she knows the moment he loses consciousness. She thinks it lovely to have him sleeping beside her, as if they were indeed a couple, as if they had all the time in the world. She will leave him before he wakes so that there will be no need to say goodbye.
For the first time in a week, Grace sleeps so deeply that when she opens her eyes, the children are already up. She puts on her robe and runs downstairs.
“He’s gone,” her mother says.
Grace is silent.
“He took his suitcase.”
Again, she doesn’t speak.
“He stripped his bed,” her mother adds.
Snow
Against the windows, the snow falls in dry sheets. The wind thumps at the front of the house, and from some of the rooms Grace can hear it howl. She prepares a fire, but won’t light it until the power goes out, nearly inevitable in a nor’easter. Her mother collects all the candles she can find and sets them in holders or sticks them to dessert plates by lighting the wicks and letting hot wax drip to the dishes. Grace checks the cupboards and refrigerator for food and supplies and decides that Aidan has done a good job of provisioning the house. They can live on what they have for at least five days.
Aidan. She puts her forehead to the cold glass of the window. She wants to howl like the wind.
She won’t wash Aidan’s sheets until the storm is over. If she did, and the machine stopped mid-wash, the linens would be coated with soap for days. Alone, in a darkened corner, she lifts the bundle to her face. She can smell Aidan on them. Would she be able to smell herself? She is tempted to look for evidence of their time together, but she drops the sheets to the floor.
She pictures the train he was on moving away from the storm as it made its way toward Boston. There, she imagines, he will walk to his audition if he can’t find a taxi. She glances at her watch: 11:20. How many hours since he made love to her? Thirteen?
By two o’clock in the afternoon, two feet of snow has fallen. When the sun sets, three feet push against the sides of the house. All day, Grace has been shoveling to keep the steps and a short path clear, though what good it will do them, she can’t imagine. It’s a path to nowhere—not to a car, not to the street. She supposes she ought to have shoveled to the barn, but for what purpose?
She has a wild and desperate urge to put on her coat and hat and gloves and slide down to the street and walk south in hopes of catching a ride to Boston. Can it be done?
The snow is too deep and she wouldn’t be able to tell the road from the beach. She might wander into the sea. She might lose her balance in the blizzard and fall into a snowbank and die there.
She has children.
The onset of evening begins well enough—the snow has been steady—but by seven o’clock, the wind picks up again, and shortly after that, the electricity stops. A tree, perhaps weakened by the fire, has fallen onto an electric wire.
“We’re in it now,” her mother says.
Grace tucks Claire into a soft armchair and sees apprehension in her daughter’s face. “Mommy, stay next to me.” Grace kneels on the floor to rub her daughter’s back until she falls asleep. Grace has made a nest for Tom and herself with a pile of rugs on the floor in front of the fire screen. She makes up a bed for her mother on the sofa. The high upholstered back will help to capture the heat.
“There’s a fair amount of wood on the back porch,” her mother says. “I hope it outlasts the power outage.”
“It has to.”
Grace then remembers the water pipes. In the kitchen, she turns on the tap at the sink, running as little water as possible, but keeping the flow steady. She doesn’t want the pipes to burst in what will shortly become a frozen house. She does a similar thing with all the faucets in the bathrooms, making sure there are no stoppers in the sinks and tubs, and when she ventures down into the basement, candle in hand, she discovers a large sink with a faucet.
“We have the stove for warmth when we need it,” Grace says to her mother. “Refrigeration won’t be a problem—at least not yet.”
“Wish we’d listened to the radio before the power went out. Then we might know how long it will snow for.”
What good would that have done? Grace asks herself. It’s not as though they have somewhere else to go. She remembers the families in the tin houses. Electricity only, and when that went…She hopes the people were evacuated before the storm got rough.
Despite exhaustion, Grace periodically untangles herself from the nest, lights a candle, and brings a pile of wood into the sitting room via a red wagon her mother found in the nursery. Because the journey is cold, she works fast to build up a good fire. When she’s done, she holds the top blanket close to the fire screen and then lays it over Tom and herself.
The four eat in the kitchen, their hats and jackets on, the warmth from the stove saving the room from being intolerably cold. Marjorie prepares oatmeal, determined to get a hot breakfast into them. She warms the maple syrup, which is as thick as sludge from the cold, and pours it over the cereal. Marjorie urges Grace to eat an entire bowl. “This is no time to be fussy about food.”
Grace wants to tell her mother that her lack of appetite has nothing to do with fussiness.
“I have an idea,” Marjorie announces to Grace. “The sitting room is massive, and the heat dissipates. We could move into the library instead, which is smaller. There’s a fireplace and a bed. You could sleep there with both the children, and we could bring in the sofa and put it against the wall, and I’ll sleep there. If we shut the door, we’ll be fine.”
Grace experiences her mother’s proposition as a gift. To sleep in Aidan’s bed is to stay connected to him, if only for a few more days.
“I’ll find some clean sheets,” her mother burbles happily, “and we have plenty of blankets. We’d better bring in toys for the children and books to read by candlelight.”