FIRST CHILL, THEN STUPOR

I don’t remember much of the blizzard itself. There wasn’t much to remember if you were safe inside. Mostly we watched TV. There were three sets in our house, one in the family room, one in my parent’s room and one in the kitchen. My father was a large man, rarely cold. He passed the time lying on his side in his underwear watching re-runs on the TV in his bedroom, while my mother stayed close to the warmth of the kitchen, her eyes glued to a black and white nine-inch set with butter-slick knobs and a coat hanger antenna. My sister and I fought over the TV in the family room. Olive wanted cartoons. I wanted soaps. We compromised on game shows. Tacky garbage, my mother called them, but I loved how shiny with possibility they were. I’d imagine I was the one on stage screaming my head off, winning an all expense paid cruise to someplace warm, someplace that had never seen snow.

Every few hours my father would wander downstairs to watch TV upright in his recliner. “Vamoose,” he’d grumble, and flick his hand at whichever one of us was sitting in his chair. Then he’d switch on the news, settle in with a glass of bourbon, and watch the local weatherman at his radar map that showed a blossom of white where our city had once been.

The sound of three blaring sets could not drown out the constant onslaught of wind, great shuddering gusts that raged for four days. On the fifth day we woke to a blue sky and a landscape of undulating white mounds. I looked out the living room window to see a herd of antelope wandering the empty street. When I yelled for my family to come see, the herd turned their heads with one fluid motion toward my voice. They spooked and were gone, leaving behind delicate puncture marks in the snow with their slender legs. The morning news reported how drifts had piled up against the fences at the zoo, allowing some animals to simply walk out of their enclosures. Bison, polar bears and wildebeests were loose in our city, roaming the streets and peering in windows. We were advised to stay inside, and by no means should we try to feed the animals.

In school we had learned that snowflakes were made up of crystals that formed around a bit of dirt, like how a pearl forms in an oyster. Except unlike pearls, snow was worthless. We were buried under five feet of the stuff. The president declared us a disaster, and the National Guard was dispatched to dig us out. I was certain we would all go insane, like snowbound pioneers forced to eat our shoes, then belts, and then each other. Except food wasn’t our problem. My mother chain-smoked and baked an endless supply of casseroles, cakes and cookies that no one ate. My father barely moved from the TV anymore except to go to the bathroom or to open another bottle of bourbon. He sat in his recliner, spinning the ice in his drink like he was opening a vortex in the palm of his hand. My sister and I were at each other’s throats. We kicked, bit, and drew blood.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” my mother demanded, her hair on end, her face streaked with flour like war paint. Olive was only eight and got away with murder. I was fourteen, and supposed to know better.

“You’re what’s wrong with me,” I screamed. “This whole family is what’s wrong with me.”

I was banished to my room for the rest of our internment.

Later that night I woke to voices coming from outside. I peered out the window to see Doug and Dave Pike, the twins from next door, trying to navigate the drifts that had piled up in their yard. They were a year older than I was and hated me. When we were younger, I used to beat them up. They had been the kind of kids you couldn’t help wanting to hit, pale and slender as ballerinas, always eating popsicles so that their mouths were permanently sticky and stained red.

Then all of a sudden they had identical growth spurts, as if synchronized alarm clocks had gone off inside each of them. They grew four inches in a matter of months and their voices deepened. I could no longer play rough with them. I could barely even look at them. I was what my mother called a late bloomer, not exactly ugly, but flat-chested and awkward, and I wore braces with little tan rubber bands that sometimes shot out of my mouth if I opened it too wide. I had nothing that could interest these boys.

There was movement at the bottom of the Pike’s driveway. Two figures were standing in the glow of the streetlamp. One of them motioned for the twins to hurry. I couldn’t see their faces, but I knew it had to be Ian and Carl. Ian was the leader of their group, always with his black clothes, and dyed-black hair teased into a smoky nimbus about his head. Of all of them, I liked Carl best. He was shy and bookish, and wore horn-rimmed glasses that he was endlessly pushing up onto the bridge of his nose. The others were a cool, contained unit, but Carl lumbered along at his own pace, just outside their protective ring.

I slid from my bed and dressed in darkness. Downstairs my father was snoring in his recliner, his bare chest bathed in the blue glow of the TV. As I slipped outside, small cyclones of snow blew in around my feet and then settled like powdered sugar on the floor.

The boys were hatless and wore old man coats. They lurched along like giraffes, snow up to their knees, carrying bottles of they had stolen from their fathers’ liquor cabinets. The wind kicked up sheets of fine, gritty crystals that lashed at their faces. Snot froze as it ran from their noses and they wiped at it with their fingerless gloves. They ran down the street laughing, challenging the cold, letting it fill their mouths with the startling taste of winter.

I quickly lost sight of them, but from the direction of their tracks I knew they were headed for the park. I had followed them there before. In the summer they stole shopping carts from the local grocery store and raced them down the hills. Their lair was a cluster of maple trees. They were expert tree climbers and had strung lawn chairs up among the highest branches. Sometimes they spent the night up there, drinking and listening to grinding punk music on a cassette player. I was amazed that they never fell. In the morning, if you looked carefully, you could spot a foot or hand dangling high among the leaves like a ripe piece of fruit.

When I finally caught up with them, Ian was firing snowballs at the twins as they ran back and forth between two trees like shooting range ducks. Carl was standing off by himself. I hunched down and moved carefully from tree to tree, staying close to the shadows, just a dark smudge on the snow. I got near enough to Carl that I could hear him wheezing from the cold.

The other boys had stopped their game and were quietly building a stockpile of snowballs. Carl was too busy sipping from his bottle to notice.

“Hey Carl,” one of them called out, “come here.”

I wanted to warn him, but I didn’t dare. He swayed toward the sound of the voice and wandered right into their line of fire.

Doug and Dave attacked from behind, Ian from the front. A snowball struck Carl in the face. His head snapped back and his glasses flew off and sank into the deep snow. Blood poured from his nose. It looked black from where I stood.

He charged like a wounded bear, took a swing at Ian, missed, and tumbled facedown into a drift. When he tried to get up, one of the twins pushed him down while the other kicked snow over him until he vanished into the landscape. He lay there until they finally fell back, panting and swooning from their exertions. Then he rose up on his knees and shook the snow from his coat. Ian reached down to help him up, but Carl shoved him away and stood on his own. Without a word to any of them, he staggered toward the entrance of the park.

“Come on, don’t be such a pussy,” Ian called after him.

Carl gave him the finger and kept walking.

“Fuck him,” Ian said, and let out a crazy howl that echoed through the park. The twins walked up and stood beside him, but the mood had changed. They werestill and silent, gazing off in the direction their friend had gone.

By now I was frozen to the bone. I wanted to see if Carl would come back, but I didn’t think it was worth losing a finger or toe to frostbite. From where they stood, the boys had a perfect view of the path leading back to the park entrance. To avoid being spotted, I had to walk the long way around, and then up the hill that led out to the street.

The hill was a favorite spot for sledding, but no one had been there since the blizzard. It was smooth as milk. I ran up it as fast as I could go, kicking snow up around me. It felt good to ruin something so perfect. When I reached the top I heard someone cough. I turned to see Carl sitting on a bench, watching me. It looked like he had been crying. Blood still trickled from his nose. He sniffed and spat a bright red wad into the snow at his feet.

“I know you,” he said, squinting as I drew closer. Without his glasses his eyes looked small and vulnerable. “How do I know you?”

I was too surprised to speak. I didn’t think he had ever noticed me. He kept looking at me until his eyes drooped and then closed. His lashes were thick and black and dusted with frost. I took a deep breath and sat next to him. The air felt brittle, like it was made of tiny glass needles. I willed him to ask me my name, willed him to think I was pretty, willed him to fall in love with me.

Somehow he had managed to hold on to his bottle during the fight. He took a sip and then offered it to me. I had never tasted whiskey before. It was like drinking gasoline. It tore at my throat but I didn’t spit it out. I took another sip, and then another. I kept drinking until I felt my fingertips and toes come back to life.

Carl slumped against me and mumbled something I didn’t understand. His breath slipped around me like a silvery ghost. “What?” I whispered, leaning in close. His face was wide and pale as the moon. I touched his cheek with my mittened hand, and then I kissed him fast, like a boxer delivering a right hook. His head lolled back and then righted itself. I kissed him again. This time I let my mouth linger. His lips were chapped and his mouth tasted like pennies from the blood that had frozen beneath his nose. Our tongues touched. They were warm and shapeless. When we pulled apart a strand of saliva stretched between us, and then snapped and landed frozen on my chin.

For a moment he sat there with his mouth open, kissing cold air. When he realized I wasn’t kissing back anymore he let out a lazy, wooly laugh. I tried to hush him, afraid that his friends would hear, but he just kept laughing. I stood and backed away from him.

“Where are you going?” he called out.

I ran toward the entrance of the park. The sky was spinning above me and it was all I could do to keep from falling over. I could still hear him calling for me as I made my way down the street. He still didn’t know my name. He just kept calling, come back! Come back!

By the time I got home my father had given up on TV and gone to sleep. I crept through the dark house and crawled into bed. I had never kissed a boy before. I wanted to keep the moment alive, I could still feel his mouth on mine, but the alcohol had taken hold and was dragging me down into the deep, warm layers of sleep.

That night I dreamed our city was invaded by an army of snowmen. We stood outside in our pajamas and bare feet, with our arms raised over our heads as they led us off, single file, into the glittering darkness.

Morning arrived and my mother called us down to breakfast. My head ached and my mouth tasted rancid. I shuffled downstairs to a breakfast of waffles, scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. Too sick to eat, I pushed the food round and round on my plate. I wrote Carl’s name in syrup and then quickly erased it with a swipe of waffle before anyone could see.

My father gnawed at his bacon and eyed my mother in her robe. He surprised us all by offering to do the dishes. He sidled up next to my mother and let his hand rest on the gentle slope of her hip, and then squeezed. My mother slapped his hand away with a spatula, but she was smiling. He whispered something in her ear and she turned red.

“You girls have been cooped up long enough,” she suddenly announced. “Why don’t the two of you go sledding in the park? Wouldn’t that be fun?” She said it like it was some kind of reward. Olive squeaked and clapped her hands. I wasn’t that gullible.

“That’s a stupid idea,” I said. My adventures from the night before had left me bold. I had kissed a boy. Things were different now, and there was no way I was going to be seen dragging my sister around on a sled.

My mother swung around to face me, the spatula like a sword in her hand. “I’ve had enough out of you, young lady. You will take your sister sledding and I won’t hear another word about it.”

“I hate you,” I whispered to Olive. She smiled triumphantly and showed me a mouthful of chewed eggs.

We ventured into the cold morning on wobbly legs. Olive trotted along with the sled while I lagged behind, my eyes searching for boys in long coats who might be lurking in snowdrifts. People were shoveling their sidewalks and digging around cars that looked like cupcakes. Everyone was in a festive mood, smiling and waving to one another.

I expected to find the hill swarming with bundled children, but when we got there, the slope was empty. A crowd was gathering just inside the park entrance. They stood behind a barrier of flimsy yellow tape that fluttered and snapped in the wind. A Policeman was telling people to move along, that there was nothing to see, but everyone just stood where they were, whispering, craning to get a glimpse of a figure seated on one of the benches.

It was Carl. He was sitting in the same spot where I had left him the night before. My first thought was that he had been caught drinking, but as I drew closer I saw the blanket of snow that encased his legs, I saw how still he was, how his skin and hair sparkled in the harsh morning light.

“Come on!” Olive said, tugging at my coat. She was too small to see past all the onlookers and couldn’t understand what everyone was waiting for. She wanted to run ahead, to be the first one down the hill. I warned her to be quiet, but five days of being trapped inside had built up within her. She let out a joyful shriek and threw handfuls of snow into the air.

“Shut up!” I hissed, and slapped her hard across the face. She stumbled back and fell.

I had the urge to push through the crowd, to take hold of Carl and kiss him again. I thought that if I could give it back, that last warm moment, he would wake up, like in some stupid fairy tale. Instead I ran. I could hear Olive crying, calling out for me to wait, but I didn’t care. I was almost halfway home before I remembered his glasses.

I turned back and headed to the trees. When I reached the bottom of the hill, I gazed out over a pristine surface. The wind had taken the snow and shifted it into new, unrecognizable shapes. The footprints that had covered the ground the night before were gone, as if we had never been there. I picked a random spot and began to dig. The sun bounced off the snow, and it felt like tiny fingers were squeezing my eyes shut. The cold was seeping into my boots and through my clothes. I dug until I my hands were numb. I kept digging even though I knew I would never find them.

Olive had followed me and was watching from behind a tree, too frightened to come any closer. I could hear her sobbing and the crunch of snow beneath her feet as she moved about to keep warm. Above us the police were clearing a path to the street where an ambulance sat waiting. It took three men to lift him from the bench. They made a cradle of their arms and carried him as if he was something that would shatter into a thousand pieces if dropped.

“Come here,” I said softly to Olive. She stepped out from her hiding place and then walked slowly toward me. I held out my hand to her and she threw herself onto my lap and buried her face in my coat. She didn’t feel like my sister. She didn’t feel like anything I knew, but I held her tight.

It started to snow again. Big, soft flakes as fat and white as teeth. If we sat there long enough, it would cover us completely. We’d be lost until spring. I wondered how long it took to freeze. I thought of our bodies slowly growing rigid, no longer thinking, or dreaming. Our stubborn hearts beating on, trying to melt their way out. Until, like everything else, they finally stopped.

by Elizabeth Anderson