by Zoje Stage
“I know. I mean, a part of me knows.” She wrapped her arms around his neck.
He swayed with her, the two of them moving from foot to foot as they often did when they embraced.
“It’s a big change,” he said, his lips tingling against her ear. “But I wouldn’t have suggested this if I didn’t think you, the kids, would thrive here. Bean might come out of her shell a little. And Tycho—I loved having this as my backyard when I was growing up. And you.” He pulled away a little to look her in the eye. “It wasn’t just a selfish suggestion on my part—”
“I didn’t think that.”
“Not even a teeny-tiny—”
“Okay, well, there were moments, but not in a bad way, truly—”
“I know.” His smile reminded her that sometimes he could read her mind. “I was hoping…I thought it might be hard for you to be in the city, which has always been about ballet—why you went there, why you stayed. I thought it might be harder to be retired and still there. Everything would be a reminder. I didn’t want you to feel…a loss. This is a completely new chapter. You can be a new person; no one’s going to ask you every time they see you if you miss it.”
She hugged him tight. He’d always had the capacity to astonish her. “Thank you. I guess, with the flurry of preparations, I haven’t really figured out what I’m going to do. Next.” She leaned back a little, fingered his paint-streaked hair. “I mean, be with the kids more. Help Eleanor Queen with her schooling this year. Maybe, if you strike it big, I can be your personal assistant.”
“I like that!” His fiddly hands tapped a rhythm on her hips as he bellowed an impromptu aria: “My canvases you’ll stretch, and my brushes you will fetch—”
“I was thinking more of scheduling your interviews and answering your fan mail.”
“Now you’re talking.” He gave her a loud smack of a kiss on the lips.
Orla released him, watching as he went to his desk, scooped more tubes of paint from the box, seemingly without a worry in the world.
“But just in case,” she said, downplaying how important it felt, “could you teach me how to shoot?”
Up early the next morning, bothered by the downstairs mess, Orla stacked glassware and mugs in an upper cabinet, enjoying the challenge of making little or no noise. She smiled as she put away her favorite mug. Covered with crooked hearts, Eleanor Queen had painted it as a six-year-old for a Mother’s Day gift. It was extra-special for the memories it evoked: Shaw arranging furtive trips to the Paint-a-Pottery shop in the days when he took baby Tycho everywhere in a kangaroo carrier. Some of her “memories” were things described to her by Shaw, moments she’d missed when the children were little. Now she wouldn’t miss any more of those moments.
The kitchen, though fully functional and with lots of counter space, had no appliances younger than thirty years old. But the linoleum floor had recently been replaced with tile, and the rustic cabinets were hickory with antique door pulls that she rather liked. The real estate agent had told her the original kitchen had been half the size and with a much lower ceiling, as if the fact that it had been worse fifty years ago made its current state a selling point. Once they got a proper table and matching chairs, it would be a homey place to prepare and eat their meals. Though first they needed to get something to stop the draft that was leaking in under the back door. The cold air swirled around her ankles, made her feel like something mischievous was grinning as it tickled her.
Upstairs, a door squeaked open, the sound followed by a shriek. “Papa! Mama! We got ten feet of snow!”
Orla chuckled. Another door squealed on its hinges—probably Tycho expecting to find her in bed beside Shaw. She imagined Shaw with the pillow folded over his ear, his preferred position for sleeping.
“Ten feet, Papa! Ten feet!”
She heard a rumbly, deep voice but couldn’t decipher Shaw’s reply. A moment later, Tycho came galloping down the stairs. “Mama!”
“In here, love.”
He raced into the kitchen. “We got ten feet of snow!”
Orla scooped her little boy into her arms. She carried him on her hip and went to look out the living room’s front window, where she could get a better sense of the accumulation. Snow covered the first two of the four steps leading up to the porch.
“I think maybe…ten inches? Twelve? Maybe a little deeper where it drifted?” she said.
Shaw lurched down the stairs in sleepy thuds, pulling on his raggedy tartan bathrobe. “Please, tell me we didn’t get ten feet—that wasn’t in the forecast.”
“Inches, not feet,” Orla assured him.
Eleanor Queen came down next, nimble as a sprite. She sprang on her toes toward the window, rested her fingertips on the glass.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“Beautiful, huh?” Shaw asked, untangling the sleep nests from his daughter’s hair.
The previous day’s clouds of doom, depleted of their heavy burden, had dissipated. Orla couldn’t explain it, but the house felt more solid in the sunshine with a blue sky above. The snow, now that it wasn’t whipping through the air, looked less menacing. It struck her that the place was welcoming them, laying out its blanket of white wonder, enfolding them in its charm.
“What do you say I make us a nice hearty breakfast,” she said, “then we go play in the snow!”
Both of the children cheered. Shaw gave his toothy grin.
The children had played in snow before, of course, in the trampled communal spaces of the city’s parks. But never in their own yard. They’d never been able to build something that would last unmolested until they went to play again.
“We can make a snowman,” Tycho said.
“A snow woman,” said Eleanor Queen.
“A snow dragon!” Shaw roared. Tycho hopped down from Orla’s arms so he could join his sister as their father chased them around the room, roaring.
Orla caught that flicker again of a moment from the past. The family home. Her father making her little brother laugh. Though none of them ever chased delicate Otto, lest he stumble and break.
6
Long underwear. Sweaters. Thin socks beneath thick socks. Tycho hopped on one foot and then the other as Orla helped him into his snow pants; Eleanor Queen shimmied into hers on her own. Orla was grateful she’d taken Julie’s advice and invested in a pair of proper—tall and warm—snow boots for herself. Tycho tried fastening his boots, then gave up and plopped onto the floor in front of the door to let Orla do it. Next came the coats, scarves, hats, mittens. Orla didn’t bundle up quite as well—she wasn’t planning on being fully immersed in the snow—and when they were all ready, she opened the front door and the kids went out, bounding off the porch.
“Shaw? We’re heading out.”
“Okay. I’ll be out in a minute.”
She didn’t know what he was doing in his studio—she’d expected him to join them on their first adventure in the snow—but she couldn’t keep the kids waiting after they were all suited up.
As soon as Orla stepped off the porch, she lifted a hand to her eyes to shield them from the blinding brightness of the sunlight on the white expanse. The kids, giggling with the pure joy of creatures at play, were already scooping the snow into mounds. They’d get up and stumble a few steps, then fall into the cushioning white, their hands touching every unblemished surface as if they couldn’t claim it quickly enough.
Orla strolled a few paces away from the house, enjoying the crunch beneath her boots. It warmed her heart to see Eleanor Queen so carefree, so lost in the moment that her active mind finally gave her a few seconds of peace.
“Is Papa gonna help us make the snow dragon?” she asked.
“I think so.” Orla looked back toward the house. Shaw was just inside, pulling on his coat.
“What’s that?” Tycho shrieked, excited. He pointed at something several feet away. Orla tramped over to take a look.
“Huh. Isn’t that interesting?” Her son had spotted what looked like a r
olled bundle of snow, like a Swiss roll, or the giant bales of hay she’d seen on rare drives in the country, although this was less than a foot across. “Eleanor Queen? Come look!” When her daughter was at her side, she pointed at the flat patch of snow behind the rolled-up part. “See? It’s like the wind blew it into that shape.”
“That’s so cool.”
“Is it gonna keep getting bigger bigger and bigger?” Tycho asked, holding his hands as far apart as they could go.
“I don’t know.” Orla took out her phone and snapped a picture of it. The kids, already losing interest, ran back to play. Orla dug around on Google, trying to figure out what search terms to put in. The signal was decent for once, maybe because of the cloudless day—or maybe this was the one spot in the yard where the mountains weren’t in the way. “I found it!” They ignored her, but Orla read through the listings, fascinated.
Shaw came out of the house carrying a pair of snowshoes and a map, a day pack slung over one shoulder. Wisely, he’d thought to put on sunglasses.
“Hey look!” Orla called. “We have a snow roller in our yard! That’s what they’re called…” She consulted her phone. “Also snow bales or wind snowballs. They’re a meteorological phenomenon. And yes, Tycho, they can get really big. Or many can form in the same place under the right conditions…”
No one was really paying attention to her. Tycho, catching sight of his father’s snowshoes, slogged over to the porch where he was putting them on. “Can I try?” he said, reaching out.
“Not this time, Tigger. These are too big for you.”
Orla kept her phone out as she waded back to the house. She’d always thought snowshoes were wooden and webbed, but the ones Shaw was fastening on were high-tech steel frames with strategically placed crampons. Julie had sent along some less expensive and smaller ones for the kids, hand-me-downs from Jamie and Derek. But evidently Shaw was planning a solo outing.
“No one cares about the phenomenon in our yard? Where are you going?” she asked. Behind her, she heard the whisk-whisk of Eleanor Queen’s snow pants as she strode over to join the rest of her family.
Shaw waved the topographical map. “Thought I’d survey the property—it’s all marked. And take some pictures. I’m psyched to start on my nature work. Mostly, I just wanted to walk around. Looking for inspiration, and the trees might tell me something.” He winked at Tycho.
“Do trees talk?” he asked his papa.
Orla caught the turn of Eleanor Queen’s head as she looked up toward the towering pine.
“Oh yes,” said Shaw. “But you have to listen very hard. See all these…” He gestured around them and both kids watched his hand sweep over the audience of attentive trees. “They speak their own language. They whisper it in their branches and send messages through their roots—they touch underground, rippling currents filled with all the news and gossip. Sometimes, when it’s very windy, they have a lot to talk about and you can hear them chatter and argue. But when the air is still, you have to concentrate.”
“What do they talk about?” Tycho asked.
“Oh, the things they’ve seen from way high up, and way down low. The animals and bugs who come to visit, the birds who build nests in their branches. In the city, we have the bustle of life in big apartment buildings. Here, we have the forest, busy in a different way.”
“Wow,” said Tycho, wide-eyed and enchanted.
Orla saw the effort Eleanor Queen was making to hear them, the community of trees, her utter faith that they were communicating with one another, or her, just beyond her range of comprehension.
“Papa doesn’t mean it literally,” Orla said to her daughter, tugging the left side of her hat back over her ear, trying to distract her.
“Oh, I do! I’ve learned amazing things from trees—why do you think I wanted to come here?” He winked again and Tycho knew his cue to join his father in a giggle. But Orla could’ve shoved snow down Shaw’s shirt. Couldn’t he see how impressionable his daughter was? Even if, at nine, she was better able to tell reality from fantasy than her brother, what did she know about the wilderness? It was dangerous to anthropomorphize things for the amusement of a sensitive child.
“Papa’s right,” said Eleanor Queen, her attention still on the trees. “I can almost hear them…”
Shaw grinned, but Orla gave him a see-what-you’ve-done glare—which seemed to prompt him to head off on his adventure. “Okay, my tribe, I will see you upon my return!”
Their property was officially just over six acres, but it was surrounded by heavily forested hills that looked endless. Only the flatter area immediately around the house had been cleared. Orla didn’t want to express her disappointment at his departure, not so soon after their awkward conversation the night before about not feeling safe. He’d seemed to take her concern seriously, but not so seriously that he considered her—them—in any real danger. Which was good, on the one hand, but he hadn’t even said anything over their oatmeal and bacon about going out on his own. She couldn’t decide if she was angry that he wasn’t sticking around to help the kids with their snow creature, or afraid of being left at the house alone for the first time. In the middle of nowhere. She wished they’d gotten the internet hooked up before they’d moved in. The rest of the world felt so far out of reach.
“Does your cell work out there?” She trailed behind him as he tramped toward the tree line behind their house, the snowshoes keeping him aloft. The signal on her own phone dropped to almost nothing as they neared the woods.
“Don’t know. I didn’t bring it.”
“What if something happens?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know…like you slide off a cliff and break your leg.” Things like that always happened in movies with mountains and snow.
He stopped before entering the forest. “I won’t go that far. And there are no cliffs out here. Don’t worry. Back soon!” She offered him her phone, but he waved it off. It was all so easy for him. Maybe it had taken those years in the city to make him realize this was where he belonged. He seemed to need no adjustment period and hadn’t once expressed a longing for the coffee places and delis that had so recently been a fixture of his routine. But she already longed for a twenty-four-hour diner with a menu as long as Moby-Dick and Spanish-speaking waiters who—such a cliché—knew what she liked to order.
“Papa?” Eleanor Queen ran over, the gloom of apprehension returning to her face. “What about the snow dragon?”
“Don’t worry, Bean, your mom can get you started. And I’ll help when I get back. Or—it’s not like the city—we can work on it a bit every day. This is all ours.” He spread out his arms. “The cold is staying. This snow’s not going anywhere.”
Shaw was good at making Eleanor Queen smile. Orla would always love him for that. Even if he did occasionally get sidetracked by his own impetuous ideas.
He tromped off into the trees, promising to report back on anything interesting he found or heard. The trunks looked so stark against the snow, like a thousand otherworldly doorways. A wind flittered in the branches, and Orla hoped the trees weren’t gossiping about her and her silly, urban, unprepared ways. At least Shaw looked like he knew what he was doing. Orla marched back to the children and, despite her original intentions, got on her knees and helped them build up their mounds of snow. “This can be the dragon’s back,” she said.
“And it has to have a very long tail,” said Eleanor Queen.
“And breathe fire!” said Tycho.
“No fire; the snow will melt.”
“Oh yeah.” Tycho never minded when his sister corrected him; he just laughed, realizing his goofy mistake.
They chattered about all the things their dragon would need—scales and teeth and ridges and wings. Orla pushed her hat up on her forehead, squinting, refreshed by the presence of the sun. On the branch of a nearby tree she spotted a cardinal, postcard-perfect, its red a merry greeting in the snowy landscape.
At some point they
started using the dragon’s spine as a wall and Tycho claimed one side of it and Eleanor Queen the other. They tossed loosely formed snowballs at each other. Orla excused herself then; her pants were wet, and even the children had lost interest in their sculptural task.
“I’ll just be right in the living room, okay? Unpacking the books.” They shouted okay without bothering to look at her. Orla slipped off her glove and snapped a quick picture to text to her parents, show them how well the kids were doing. When she reached the door, she stopped; she’d never just left them outside before. For the first time she appreciated the safety, the impossibility that anyone could drive up and snatch one of her children while she had her back turned. She didn’t have to worry about them falling and encountering concrete or broken glass. And no aggressive kids were going to push them away as they played.
She let herself in and took off her boots, brushed the snow off her jeans. They stuck to her legs, cold, and all she wanted were her soft, warm pajama bottoms. She threw off her coat and flung it onto a box, then hurried upstairs to change.
In her room, she stood in front of the window, peering down at the kids as she stripped out of her pants. They were fine. Not going anywhere. Twenty feet from the front door. She told herself to relax. It was new, the children playing alone and out of her presence. But that’s how she’d played when she was growing up. Roaming the neighborhood with gaggles of kids, staying for hours in someone else’s backyard. She’d loved being independent, trusted by her parents to return at their designated time. She knew she could count on Eleanor Queen to stay within view of the house and not let her little brother wander off. It was part of growing up, being entrusted with incremental responsibilities. So Orla assured herself. Still, she quickly slipped into her pajama pants and slippers and headed back downstairs.
