The Center of Winter

by Marya Hornbacher

  I thought of our conversation at the beach: He knew all the stories. He was the repository of everyone’s joy and boredom and grief.

  What did he know about me?

  He set my drink in front of me and smiled, his odd crooked smile lifting to the left. His fingernails were chewed down to the quick. His hands were rough. I watched him turn away to pour another drink, lifting his hand to smooth down his silvery hair.

  Donna called me to the pool table. I grabbed my drink and, feeling a little giddy, went over. I dropped the dime, bent down to rack, lifted the triangle, looked up, and damned if I didn’t see Jamie kiss Donna’s ear.

  I went to the wall to get a cue and chalked it. Over my shoulder, I said, “Somebody break.”

  I turned and Donna came over to my side. “We’re shooting doubles. Us against Jamie and Hank,” she said. I nodded and watched Hank break. I winced as two solids and a stripe went down.

  Donna played well when she was nervous, even better after a few drinks. She ticked the clustered stripes off one by one into the lower corner pockets, walking around the table, chalking between each shot, leaning down. I glanced up at Jamie. It was hard to tell whether he was watching her or her shots. She got cocky and tried to bank an easy shot into the side, missed by a mile, and sank the cue.

  “Damn!” she said. “You want anything?” I shook my head and she headed for the bar.

  By the time Donna got back, we were down to a stripe, two solids, and the eight. She took a sip, set down her drink on the high table by the wall. She chalked. She took the stripe out easily. Then she leaned down over the lower corner, looked up at Jamie, and smiled. She steadied her cue. And shot the eight into the corner pocket by his crotch so hard he jumped.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” I shouted. Hank and Jamie busted up. I went off to the bar to sulk and leaned there while Frank grinned and polished his bar.

  He opened the register and pushed a quarter across the bar to me. “Put something pretty on the jukebox,” he said. “If I hear another country song, I swear.” He smiled briefly at me, and turned away. I wanted him to turn back and smile again. It did something to my stomach that I hadn’t felt in years. I watched his back for a moment, broad in the shoulders and solid under his shirt.

  I thought suddenly of Arnold, bent here at the bar, a double scotch glowing gold between his palms, a pack of cigarettes and matches just to his left. A little trinity, his hands folded around the glass as if in prayer. I thought of him calling out to Frank, talking to Frank, telling him things he didn’t need to know. Telling him things that at this moment, watching his back, I didn’t want him to know.

  I slid off the bar stool, flushed.

  I flipped through the records and played my favorites. I leaned back against the wall, ate the cherry in my drink, and wondered if I’d ever go dancing again. I looked around the crowded room. Who would I want to dance with? I wondered. Idly, my gaze shifted from Jamie, to Hank, to Kittie’s husband, to Frank.

  Good Lord, I thought.

  It was my shot. I ran the table and put down my cue. “I’m done,” I said. “Table’s yours.” I crossed the room to sit down in one of the booths. Donna followed me.

  She was giddy, and she was drunk. “What’s with you?”

  “Nothing, thanks. Careful,” I said, moving my drink out of her way. She put her chin in her hands and heaved a great sigh, smiling. “You having fun?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, you’re not either. What’s the matter?” She turned and looked around the room. “All these nice fellows here, and you’re being a stick-in-the-mud.”

  I snorted. She looked at me. “That supposed to mean something?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m having fun.”

  “Honey, that’s plain as day.”

  “’Scuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  She eyed me over her drink. “You got something to say, say it.”

  “I don’t have a thing to say.”

  “You sure?”

  I nodded.

  “’Cause you look like you got something to say.”

  I shrugged.

  “Something about Jamie, maybe.”

  I looked at her and put an ice cube in my mouth.

  “Something about how maybe I should watch myself, maybe.”

  “Maybe so.”

  She nodded slowly, sat back in the booth, and ran her hand through her hair. “Maybe so,” she agreed. “Maybe I just should.”

  But you won’t, I thought.

  She smiled, reached across the table, and took my chin in her hand. “Such a worrywart,” she said. She smacked the table and stood up. “Come dance.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Come on,” she wheedled. “Or else I’ll be out there dancing with myself, and how silly is that?”

  Jamie and Hank showed up. “Ladies?” they said, holding their hands out. Donna dashed off to the dance floor. I stayed where I was.

  Hank and I chatted while the night ran on. A few rounds later and it was time for me to be getting home.

  Donna was gone.

  I went into the ladies’ room. She wasn’t there. I stood at the back of the room, scanning it with my eyes. The crowd had thinned out. I sat down at the bar.

  “They left.” Frank’s voice was low. He washed glasses in the sink below the bar. His eyes lifted for a second, then went down.

  The last dancers came off the polished floor, grabbed their raincoats and hats off the wall, and called out their good-byes. By ones and twos, the rest of the tables cleared. Still I sat there, watching the Coca-Cola clock. It was after twelve.

  “Want a cup of coffee?” Frank asked me.

  I hesitated, then nodded, and he set a mug down. The last jukebox record clicked and went silent.

  “Night, Frank. Claire.” The wooden door swung shut.

  I sipped my coffee, profoundly aware that I was alone with a man. The seconds on the clock ticked by as Frank came out from behind the bar with a broom. Suddenly, with no bar between us, I was conscious of how this would seem if anyone heard that I had lingered at the bar long after everyone had left. “Well,” I said, standing up and heading for the door. “I guess that’s that.”

  Frank turned his head. “Don’t go,” he said. “Here, just let me sweep up.”

  I stood there like a fool. “Well, all right.”

  While he swept, I put another dime in the jukebox and jumped back, startled, when the loud chords of the Beatles crashed into the quiet room. Frank laughed.

  “She thinks I disapprove,” I said, still staring at the jukebox, punching buttons aimlessly.

  “You want more coffee?” he asked. “You didn’t drive, did you?”

  “No. Yes, I’d love more coffee.”

  He poured two cups and nodded toward a booth. “Have a sit,” he said. He set a mug down in front of me and settled himself in. He stretched his head first one way and then the other, wincing. “Well,” he said finally. “Do you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you disapprove?”

  “Oh.” I thought about it. He was forthright enough to make me squirm. I shouldn’t have been discussing it with him one way or the other. It was just so easy to tell him what was on your mind. “Well, no,” I said. “That’s not it. I just worry.”

  He nodded. “I can see that.”

  “I mean, shit, excuse me, Frank. But she’s married to Dale.”

  “That she is.”

  “And I hate him.”

  Frank looked at me. He took a sip. “He’s not a happy man,” he said. He chose his words slowly, as if selecting them was a process requiring care and concentration, and their combination a matter of extreme importance.

  “I hate him something awful. I do. I wish I didn’t. But there it is.”

  “There it is.”

  “So, hell no, I don’t blame her. But I worry about what Dale’s capable of.”

  “Tell you,” Frank nod
ded. “I worry ’bout the same thing.”

  We sat there drinking for a minute and then he spoke. “Not a lot of times I think someone ought to just leave. Myself, I’m maybe old-fashioned that way. Not that I got any business, myself. But I figure, you get married and you make it work. But that one, I don’t know. I don’t think there’d be a way.”

  “It’s killing her.”

  He looked at me. His jaw moved slightly. I could see the shadow of his beard coming in. His eyes had a hooded intensity that reminded me of a hawk.

  “Living like that,” I explained, looking away.

  He nodded. “I know it is. It was the strangest thing, Claire. When I looked up tonight, saw them like that. You know.” He laughed. “You can always see it coming. Tend bar, you might as well call yourself a fortune-teller, you can see things coming so far off. Anyways,” he said, waving his words away, “I saw them like that, and I swear it made me happy. See her smile.”

  I studied my hands. “What’s it like, Frank?” I said. “Keeping all these secrets to yourself.”

  He laughed. “Don’t know. Everybody’s got their tales.” He shrugged. He squinted when he was thinking, and tilted his head back just a little, as if to read you.

  “Why’d you and your wife split up?” I asked, and regretted it, and felt like a fool. He laughed at the look on my face and said, “That’s all right. It was a long time ago.”

  “How long?”

  He looked at the ceiling, thinking. “Twelve years.” He looked back at me and shrugged. “Weren’t married but five.”

  “You must’ve been just kids.”

  “That’s the truth. I suppose that’s why we split up. Didn’t know my ass from my elbow, is what,” he laughed. “She deserved better.”

  “Than what?”

  “Than me. I wasn’t but nineteen. What’d I know about how to treat a woman?”

  “What do you know now?”

  He smiled, surprised, his grin tilting his face to the side. My face burned and I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet, holding my hands to my cheeks, trying to cool them off. What were you thinking? I thought. What on earth did you just say? I splashed water on my face and went back out.

  “I tell you,” I said hurriedly. “I don’t know how it’s got so late.”

  “Oh, it ain’t that late,” he said. “Don’t leave yet.” As I slid back into the booth, he said calmly, “I know a thing or two.” We glanced at each other, and smiled, and suddenly laughed, embarrassed and relieved. I waved my hand in front of my face to cool it off and shook my head at him.

  “You’re a funny man,” I said.

  “I’ve heard that’s so,” he said, smiling, looking me over. Looking me over very carefully, the way a man looks a woman over, as if he’s enjoying a good meal or a glass of wine.

  It reminded me of the way a young man had stared at me in a New York club, arrogantly, from across the room, his white teeth shining in a private smile as he stood up to ask me to dance. The way a young man had pressed his hand into my back firmly, the first time I ever felt I could lean into someone else and let them lead, if only for a minute or two.

  How wrong I was, I thought, and stared into my empty coffee cup.

  “You must miss him something awful,” Frank blurted, startling me. “He was a good man, Claire.”

  I stared at him. “I don’t.” The words fell out of my mouth, nakedly angry, and I didn’t know what to do with them. I found myself trying to wipe them off the table. “I mean, I do, of course. Of course I do, he was my husband. But not like you’re saying.”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying, Claire.” He looked mortified. “I’m sorry I said anything.”

  “It’s all right,” I said irritably. “Why does everyone apologize for talking around here? I do miss him and I don’t. It gets easier. I’ve got my kids.”

  We drank our coffee.

  “And he wasn’t such a good man in the end,” I said, shocking myself. I looked up at Frank. “Now was he.”

  He didn’t look away. With his strange, extreme care, he said, “I can’t say that he wasn’t. And no, I can’t rightly say that he was.”

  I got up to put another five songs on the jukebox. The Coca-Cola clock read 1:00. I decided I’d kill Donna when I got home. I’d wake her up no matter how drunk she was and wallop her a good one. It was her fault I was having this conversation.

  I sat back down.

  “Loved you something awful,” Frank said. “Arnold did.” He studied a point just northwest of my shoulder.

  After a minute, I said, “For a while, sure. But that doesn’t make it work.”

  He nodded. “Best not forget it, though. Not everybody has that.”

  I smiled. “That’s true.” I looked at him. “You ever been crazy in love?”

  He laughed. “Lordy. Sure have, Claire. Terrible stuff, ain’t it?” He turned his head to listen. “Great song.” He looked at me. “Dance?”

  “Now?” I sat there, stunned.

  “Sure, now. Nobody to bump into.”

  We stood at the center of the dance floor. He put his arms out and said, “Telling you, I got two left feet.” I laughed and gingerly folded my hand over his, put my hand on his left shoulder. It was solid under my hand, I wanted to squeeze it, to feel it resist. I wanted to grapple with him, simply to feel his strength. Instead, I cupped my hand over his shoulder, nearer his neck than I probably had any business going, and rested the pad of my thumb on his skin.

  We stared past each other and spun slowly in our stocking feet, as awkward as two kids in dancing class, around the floor.

  The song ended. I started to pull away. His hand pressed so lightly into mine he could have just been leading, and he led me into the next song. Out of the corner of my eye, I studied the salt-and-pepper curl behind his ear. I could hear him breathe.

  I can’t do this, I thought. It’s too soon.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in his smell of smoke and soap and a faint tang of sweat.

  I can’t stop.

  I don’t know how long we danced. The last record dropped. I froze. Then I pulled away and headed for my raincoat. “I have to go,” I called. “It’s so late.” I pulled my raincoat on and he ran after me into the parking lot, into the rain.

  “Claire,” he yelled.

  “Good night!”

  “Can I—”

  I ran.

  My front door was unlocked. I stepped in, shook myself off, and leaned back against the door.

  I looked over the dark, dusty parlor that we never used, my eyes bumping at the edges of shadows of antiques and heirlooms, Arnold’s and mine. We used to use this room, I thought. Arnold and I had company, and we used this room. The grandfather clock still ticks and gongs. I watched its brass bell swing from side to side in the dark, the only motion in the room. God knew how long it had been since I’d taken a dust rag to the piano, or how long it had been since anyone touched the keys.

  I missed him.

  I missed him such that it felt like a physical pain in the area below my ribs. I opened my mouth to accommodate it. I put my hand to it. A hollow, aching, piercing place. And I knew for the first time and with certainty that it would always be there a little, and I missed him, and I grasped the sides of my waist and bent over to wait out the mute hurt of this missing, and I wanted to say, very specifically, Husband, this is my husband, you are my husband, I am your wife.

  But that was no longer technically true.

  I went down the hall to my bedroom. I lay myself, carefully, facedown on the bed. And then I beat his pillow with my fist.

  A week or so later, rain drumming on the roof, I woke up with a splitting headache and a row of trolls peering at me from the edge of the bed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Kate asked.

  “Are you sick?” Davey asked.

  Esau stood there wringing his hands. “Are you sleeping all day?”

  I rolled onto my stomach and pulled the cord tha
t dropped the curtain to make the horrible light go away. I’d been drinking the night before.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?” Kate shrieked.

  “Enough!” I said. “No more questions until I have some coffee.”

  “Do you—”

  “No more!” I commanded. “I mean it.” I pulled the pillow over my head and said, “Go away.”

  There was silence. I lifted the pillow and they were still standing there, staring at me. “Oh, for Chrissakes,” I said, and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

  “We want a soft-boiled egg,” Kate said plaintively.

  “All right,” I said, steadying myself and following them into the kitchen. I poured myself a cup of cold coffee from the night before and gulped it down while the water came to a boil. I dropped three eggs in and the doorbell rang. “For pity’s sake,” I muttered. “Someone get the door,” I called, hunting for bread.

  “Mom!” came Kate’s voice. “There’s someone here to see you!”

  “Who is it?”

  There was a mumbling. I turned my head toward the sound of a man’s voice.

  “It’s Frank!” she yelled. “Can he come in?”

  I dashed down the hall, calling, “Tell him I’ll be right out. Get him something to drink.” I slammed my bedroom door and heard her say, “We have apple juice.”

  I jumped into the shower, scrubbing furiously. I smelled like a bar. Why didn’t Frank smell like a bar? I wondered, washing my hair. It was full of tangles. I gave up, rinsed, and told myself to calm down. I stood naked in front of my closet. There was nothing to wear. It was hot and steamy and still raining. I yanked an old sundress out and tugged it over my head, remembering just in time to put on my underwear before I opened the bedroom door.

  I tied my hair in a knot on my way down the hall. “Hi, Frank,” I called. “I’m just about to put some coffee on.”

  “Mother,” Esau said, pacing back and forth in the kitchen, rubbing his hands together. “I am feeling very anxious.”