I set him down and we stood back, admiring our work. He signed, red gloves moving quick, “Is snowman alive?”
Snowflakes melted on his cheeks, stuck to his long black eyelashes. I said and signed, “No.”
Brow furrowed, he signed, “Is it dead?”
“No.” I shook my head slowly, wondering.
“It’s alive!” he signed, then smiled and clapped and ran off into the yard. Snowsuit swishing, he pelted me with snowballs.
That night I tucked him in. It was something I did a lot since Mom slept most of the time and Dad worked constantly. Marcus signed with a hopeful smile, “No school tomorrow?”
I looked out at the driving snow and wind. “Probably not. But don’t get too excited. Just go to sleep.” I smoothed his hair and kissed him on the head. He was asleep in seconds.
In the morning, Marcus thundered down the stairs and leapt on the couch to look out the window. He made a small, agonized cry and sprinted to the door. Before I could stop him, he flew outside in his Bugs Bunny pajamas, barefoot. The world of white was gone and our yard had turned muddy and green again. The temperature had risen in the night as a rainstorm blew past; our snowman had melted into a gray lump, eyeless, carrot nose drooping into the dirt.
“Snowman dead!” he signed again and again, his face contorted with panic. He tore off to the far corners of the yard, frantically gathering the pitiful lumps of snow that remained. Suddenly he stopped, overwhelmed by the futility of it all.
I ran outside and caught his arm as he raised it to hit himself in the forehead, already bruised from some earlier disappointment. I wrapped my arms around him, straitjacketing in all his little-boy rage and pain, feeling his hitting energy ripple through him in cycles until he had worn himself out. Shirtless, Dad stood in the doorway, a hulking shadow. “He okay?”
“It’s all right, Dad. He’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
Marcus smelled like warm milk and Lucky Charms. With hot, sticky fingers he signed into my chest, “Want snowman alive. Sad, sad.”
I tucked his body tight into mine, my knees wedged in the cold, muddy ground. He felt like part of my body, the part that cried and laughed and let myself be silly. “It’ll snow again, Marcus,” I whispered. “And we’ll make an even better one.” I held him as long as I could, knowing that sooner than I wanted to, I’d have to let him go.
Thursday
June 21
3
I am usually the lightest of sleepers, but the night before we left for the river I sank so far down a black well of dreams that I had to claw my way to the surface to wake up. I dozed through the polite chirp of my alarm and would have gone on except for a windstorm that blew in just before dawn. Dry, cool gusts howled through my open window, shuddering the panes. I slept caged in a dream of violence with no narrative, like a scrap of old film with only a few frames still visible. On a clothesline, a torn linen dress twisted in the wind. A haggard face of a woman turned away again and again, always in shadow, an endless loop. I never got to see her eyes. I jerked awake in a sheen of sweat to the frantic clanging of a wind chime over my kitchen window, a set of bells inside an oblong pine box my mother had given me that only ferocious storms brought to life. It was as if she were trying to tell me something.
Through all this, my cat, Ziggy, snored on, all eighteen pounds of him slung across my feet like a sack of warm sand. As I slid out from under him, he gave me this look, a mix of How dare you and What the hell are you doing, it’s just past five and we usually sleep till at least six thirty. When I reached down to scratch his head, he gave my hand an uncharacteristic swat of his hefty paw, claws in evidence. I snapped my hand back and sat up, regarded him. Saw the lion in him clearly.
I spoke softly to him, cooed my eternal adoration; watched the lion fade and my kitty return. He thumped to the rug and swaggered toward the bathroom, resigned now to the early hour, then leapt to the counter for his morning brushing. Feeling the same tug of routine, I followed him there, but with a silvery jolt of joy down my spine, I let it go.
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