October Snow

by Jenna Brooks

  “You nodded, Sammy…You mean…?”

  “Yes. I’ll marry you.”

  He was motionless for several seconds, then he let out a whoop that started the neighborhood dogs barking. “She said ‘yes!’” he shouted, picking her up as she wrapped her arms around his neck, swinging her in a circle.

  “Congratulations, Delaney!” they heard a neighbor shout. “Tell her she’ll be sorry!”

  “Oh my gosh, Dave, the neighbors…”

  Dave was pulling the ring from the sleeve that held their picture. “Here.” He took her left hand, and slipped the ring onto her finger. Pulling her close, he stared into her eyes for a few seconds before he kissed her.

  They didn’t notice Tyler, standing at the door to the porch, holding his Red Sox bear and smiling.

  Mother’s Day dawned cloudy and cool at Bow Lake, and the comparative darkness helped the women sleep much later than usual. Jo woke up to her cell phone beeping with a message. Bleary-eyed, she struggled to focus on the time: it was almost ten o’clock.

  “Oh, man…” Only partly awake, it took her a moment to remember that The Berry Crate no longer existed in her life, and that she was living in one of the most beautiful places on earth. She smiled as she stretched, deciding to check the message later. The missed call was from John’s phone, and she didn’t want to fall into her routine, muted depression so early in the day.

  Daisy breathed softly beside her; Jo rolled onto her side, putting her arm over her as she did every morning.

  “Morning, Daisy.”

  The dog moaned softly, her tail thumping once. Jo could feel Daisy’s ribs, pressing up under her arm–she was losing weight. She held her a little closer.

  This is the worst, she thought, the knowing and the waiting. “The knowing you’ll be gone soon, baby. That’s the worst thing.” She kissed her ear. “But I want you to have the best days of your life right here. Okay? Hang on a little longer. We can do that, right?” She rubbed Daisy’s shoulders for a minute, then got out of bed, reaching for her sweats.

  She stood at the picture window, which was strangely placed on the narrow wall of the spacious bedroom, but perfectly situated for gazing at the lake. As she did every morning, Jo studied the dwarf pine on the little island, thinking it may be leaning a bit. She considered again the idea that the legend of the woman who drowned in the lake could be true. It seemed more likely than not.

  She recalled a movie she had seen years earlier, a remake of some disaster flick, where a man drowned at the end. The depiction of his death was graphic. It had reaffirmed her fear of water, and of drowning. Or being buried alive. In the papers she’d had drawn up after the divorce, she dictated that she be cremated. Terrified by the thought of waking up in a coffin, struggling for air, dying by inches–and fully knowing it was coming–she made certain that she couldn’t wind up there.

  A few days before leaving for the lake, Jo called the lawyer who crafted her will for her, and they had engaged in a few minutes of small talk.

  “I thought it was interesting, how insistent you were that you be cremated,” Alison said. “Did you always have that buried-alive phobia?”

  “Pretty much,” Jo lied. It had started about six months into her marriage to Keith, along with an ever-worsening fear of driving–a phobia which had taken all of her will to conquer. She discovered, in the years after the divorce, that driving was a common fear among battered women.

  She reached for her phone. “May as well get it done.” She winced as she listened to the Mother’s Day message from her sons.

  Max was making the coffee as Jo padded into the kitchen. “Good morning, Bim.”

  Max grunted. “Coffee.”

  “Yeah. How’d you sleep?”

  “Coffee first.”

  They finished a cup in silence before Jo said, “Got my Mother’s Day greetings and salutations from the boys.”

  Max looked interested, but didn’t answer.

  “They said, ‘Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.’”

  Max raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

  “Yup.” She refilled the mugs. “Lasted about five seconds, then they hung up.”

  “Screw ‘em.”

  Jo gave a startled laugh, feeling a twinge of guilt at Max’s expression of the thoughts she kept hidden. “I’m supposed to say that about my own kids?”

  “Absolutely. Whatever the hell their childhood ‘issues’ are, they’re too old to use that excuse and besides, they owe you better than that. You just know that Keith and what’s-her-name…Shelly…”

  “‘Mrs. Andleman’, as of yesterday.”

  “Whatever. You know they’re slamming you every chance they get.”

  “I know.”

  “If Matt and John are weak enough to get sucked in, then I say screw ‘em. You were a great mother. Still are.”

  She studied Max for a moment before she answered. “It’s pretty much what happens to kids who grow up like they did.”

  “Why–how–do you manage to be civil with Keith, anyway? It doesn’t seem like you hate him, and I would. I barely know him, and I can’t stand him.”

  “Actually, the biggest mistake I ever made was in thinking I had to pretend to get along with him, to try to give the boys some peace finally. I wouldn’t do it again.” She checked her mug, then grabbed the coffeepot again. “Need a warmup?”

  Max shook her head. “You wouldn’t try to get along with him?”

  “No way. I should have gone to war. Instead,” she paused, pretending she was looking for a spoon while she decided how much she wanted to reveal, “I did what the ‘experts’ always recommend: ‘Love your kids more than you hate your ex,’” she mimicked. “What a colossal blunder that was.”

  “That’s a perspective I haven’t heard before.”

  “All I taught them was that I had no sense of self-worth. And that there’s no justice. That someone like Keith can do whatever he chooses, and then pay it down in the end. No repercussions. No consequences at all.” She laughed bitterly. “He terrorized us, he almost killed me a few times, then he paid a hired gun to blackmail me into keeping him around for a few more years–but hey, no hard feelings. Life goes on. That sound right to you?” She slammed the drawer shut. “Where’s the lighter?”

  Max pointed to the shelf beside the deck door. “I’ve wondered about that. From what I know, and granted, I don’t know that much about it, I can’t imagine not hating the guy’s guts.”

  “It’s what they tell you to do.” She smirked. “The family court system is a huge machine, and the truth is, most family lawyers are completely sexist. They have a lot of contempt for battered women. And I mean, a lot. They just don’t like us. Most of the judges don’t, either, and we’re easier to deal with–more malleable–if we bend over and make nice.” She lit a cigarette, rolling it between her fingers, thinking. “There’s not a scintilla of difference between your garden-variety battering male and the FC system. On both ends, it’s all about the comfort level of people who want to use you. None of them have a clue about the reality of abuse.”

  “What about the women?”

  “Oh, please–the women are the worst. Especially the lawyers. They’re just the high-end version of the guy’s first post-abuse girlfriend, the kind who feeds her superiority complex on the back of a bleeding woman.” She caught the confusion on Max’s face. “What?”

  “I’m just trying to understand the dynamics. Can I ask you something about Keith?”

  Jo shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Why did he want to keep you around anyway? He hated you.”

  “Took me a long time to figure that out.” She opened the deck door to vent the smoke. “Initially, I thought it was because he was not going to be told to move out. And that was, actually, a part of it…” She seemed deep in thought for a moment, then she turned to look at Max, who was listening intently. “The real reason? He needed me. I was his mirror.”

  “As in…” She frowned. “Not getting it.”
<
br />   “All abusers do it. I swear they do. It’s like this: if he can define me as stupid, then he can define himself as intelligent. If I’m weak, he’s strong. If I’m gullible, he’s clever.”

  “If you’re evil, he’s good.”

  “Exactly. So you see, if I had gotten away, he would have had no way of defining himself.” She crushed the cigarette in the ash tray on the counter, her face hard. “I was his self-image. I was the thing he used to create himself.” She looked pained then, rubbing the back of her neck. “That’s why these guys go insane when they think their ‘mirror’is getting away. It’s like they’ll lose themselves. It’s a real life-and-death struggle for them.” She folded her arms as she returned to the table. “Know what the hell of it is? Realizing, in the end, that I–just me–I never even truly existed in his mind. I was like I said, a thing for his use. All the arguing, and manipulating, and surviving…and going crazy…I would have gotten the same response dealing with an inanimate object.”

  Max pursed her lips, exhaling with a whooshing sound. “Wow.” She considered what Jo had just said. It made sense to her, so much so that she felt a little jittery. “You know, you just explained my parents to me.”

  She nodded. “And I’ve wondered about that.”

  Surprised, Max mumbled, “You have?”

  “No functioning mother throws her child under the bus just for funsies. I’m actually pretty sure she was a battered woman, to tell you the truth.”

  “Yeah…Well, she had a situation there.” In reality, Max had few memories of her mother, except that she was never there for her. Most of her childhood memories had to do with her father. And church, and Bible verses. Glancing outside, she said, “Doesn’t look like rain yet. Grab a jacket and we’ll finish our coffee on the deck.”

  After they settled in at the patio table, Max said, “My dad was quite the little dictator.”

  Jo seemed to be waiting for her to continue, so she took a deep breath and went on. “Mom and I couldn’t do much of anything without his supervision…And then, of course, his merciful forgiveness when we messed up–which, according to him, we did incessantly.” The breeze intensified, and she drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around her legs. “One of my enduring memories of him is a really strange one.”

  “What is it?”

  “My mom was vacuuming the living room. Dad came in and started telling her she wasn’t doing it right.”

  “Oh. Please to explain, how did she screw up the vacuuming?”

  “He wanted her to leave perfectly parallel–what would you call them, lines? You know, the grooves a sweeper leaves behind?”

  Jo rolled her eyes. “And here, I thought I’d heard it all.”

  “She didn’t obey, not immediately. And he started screaming at her about her contentious nature, and how it would be better to live in the corner of the roof than with her.”

  “Ah. That’s Proverbs, right?”

  Max nodded. “I think…Chapter twenty-one.”

  “Ooh, you’re good.”

  “Yeah, well he drilled that stuff into us.”

  “I’ve rarely heard any Christians talk about the guy’s obligations in a marriage.”

  “Me neither.”

  Jo thought of the photo Max kept on her desk, back in her apartment: a picture of her with her parents, standing at the grill at a church picnic. Pastor Allen, holding a spatula and beaming, looked every bit the happy family man; Catharine gazed at him adoringly. Maxine, looking off into the distance, seemed removed from the moment. “Why do you keep that picture of the three of you around? The one taken at the barbeque?”

  “It reminds me where I was. And that I may not be my parents’ idea of a good Christian, but that doesn’t mean I’m not God’s idea of one. In spite of all my flaws, at least I’m not a liar.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I know I am.”

  “You know,” Jo reached for another cigarette, handing the pack to Max, “there was this fight I had, years ago, with an assistant pastor at a church I used to go to. He was the interim pastor after the main guy left.” She shook her head sadly. “Pastor Seth, he was okay. I loved that man. He was the only churchy-type Christian who ever thought I was worth anything. We used to have these hour-long debates on free will, and sanctification, and on and on…” She smiled wistfully.

  “But you digress.”

  “But I digress. Anyway, the interim guy–Tony, I think? Hard to remember…Yeah, Tony Toddson. He came right out and said that with my rebellious spirit, and my refusal to be led, that I wasn’t a very good Christian.”

  “Oh, really? Sounds like my dad. What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Hey, you know the Pharisees thought that Jesus Christ wasn’t a very good Jew, either.’” She looked slightly embarrassed as Max burst into laughter. “I know I crossed a line there, but geez–the guy was just so rigid, like any new idea, any movement beyond the walls of the church was somehow a show of rebellion.”

  “What did you do that was so awful?”

  “Pastor Seth, before he left, was endorsing my plan to have a domestic violence ministry at the church. The elders voted it down.”

  “Surprised?”

  “Truly. Had to go lay down after that one.” Jo gave her a sarcastic look. “Uh, no, not exactly. Then, a few months later, I suggested that the men of the church go have a talk with the husband of a member. He was one of the elders, too. His wife came to me, asked for my help after he broke her arm.”

  “Did she try the courts?”

  “Eventually, but not at first.”

  “And what happened with the guys at the church?”

  “They said they wouldn’t interfere, that we are all given trials in life, and that her mission was to be Christlike. I should help her learn to be submissive, like Sarah.”

  “Ow.”

  “And they said, ‘Besides, according to Matthew Eighteen, he needs to be confronted by one member first–and that would be you, Josie.’ They thought I’d be too intimidated to go talk to the guy. Probably because they were.”

  “Did you go confront him then?”

  “I already had.”

  Max lifted her mug to salute her. “Bet they were glad to know that.”

  “Yeah. Her husband stood in my kitchen screaming at me, with the kids right there. I told him to get out or I’d have him arrested, and the elders told me to pray on it.”

  “Holy crap.”

  “That pretty much defines it, Bim. Absolutely.”

  Max burst into laughter. “No pun intended.”

  Jo sat grinning at her. After a few moments, she said, “Talk about a black comedy.”

  Max composed herself, wiping at her eyes. “I keep thinking about…What’s it called? ‘The Law of Unintended Consequences’. Seems to fit, but I’m not sure how.”

  “Let me know if you figure it out. So where are your folks now?”

  “Last I knew, still in the house I grew up in. Elmira, New York. Dad retired about ten years ago, I think.”

  “How did we hang out for this long, and know so little about each other?”

  “I was just thinking the same thing. I think people tend to bond in strange ways, under the kind of pressure we were under at work.”

  “Yeah. Know what? Elmira is less than an hour from my hometown.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Wellsboro, Pennsylvania.”

  “That little town just over the border? Down Route Fifteen?”

  “Yup. Tioga County.”

  She whistled softly. “Beautiful place. I’ve been there. And to Potter County, too.”

  “God’s Country.”

  “Sure is. Ever go to Cherry Springs?”

  Jo smiled, remembering. “My mom and dad had a camp we shared with another family, right off of a little dirt road on the way to Lyman Run Lake. Ewing Trail. Oh, gosh…” Her voice trailed off. “The entrance was lined with wild blackberry bushes. I spent most of my summers there, about ten
minutes from Cherry Springs State Park.”

  “Lucky.”

  “Yeah, I was. It was like growing up in Eden. The natural beauty of it, and the good, decent people…” She chuckled, but there was no amusement behind it. “The real world was quite the shock.”

  Max thought that was likely the deepest insight she’d ever gotten into her friend.

  “People call so many places ‘God’s Country.’” Jo’s smile was distant, with a longing that made Max ache for her. “They have no idea what that is, if they haven’t seen that area. Ever go see the unpolluted starlight at the Springs?”

  “No. Never got to do that.”

  “Do it someday. If you lay on your back and stare at the stars, they seem to come closer and closer the longer you lay there. No light pollution, so there are nights you can almost read by the moon and the stars.” She stretched, rolling her shoulders. “I haven’t been home in…Geez…over twenty-five years?”

  Max watched her, thinking she sounded like a very old woman, reminiscing with the disappointment of a lifetime of promises not kept. “So, plan a trip home.”

  Jo was staring into the distance. “I may. I do get tired of being here.” She nodded absently, as though she was talking to herself, or to someone who wasn’t there. “That idea that you can’t go home again–I never bought that.”

  “That would make for another good discussion.”

  Daisy wandered onto the deck, nosing Jo’s leg. “What say you, Daize? Wanna go home?”

  chapter 12

  TYLER DELANEY WASN’T too upset that the Yankees beat his beloved Red Sox. His mom and dad were taking him to a grownup restaurant for their post-game dinner, and they had said they needed to tell him something important. Good news, they said, but he already knew what it was.

  Watching them hold hands and laugh together, and cheer for the Sox and boo the umpire together, and Dad’s arm around Mom, and feeling Mom’s hand on his shoulder–the world made sense to him now. As the hostess led them to their table, Tyler noticed the ring that sparkled on his mother’s left hand.

  His dad held the chair for her, and then pushed Tyler’s chair closer to the table for him. “Dad?” Tyler asked, unfolding his napkin and arranging it carefully on his lap. He wanted very much to be on “BB” tonight, Dad’s code for “Best Behavior”.