The Center of Winter: A Novel

by Marya Hornbacher

  When you get married, you think it would kill you to lose him. Because that’s the worst thing you can imagine. But then you have children, and you know you were wrong. You find out that the worst thing that could happen is that your children could be hurt.

  And then they are hurt, and you are destroyed, over, and over, and over, forever.

  “It’s true,” I said. My voice sounded flat and far away. “That’s what did it.”

  Her hand paused on my back. She snapped the bottle of lotion closed and crawled over to sit next to me.

  “I told him I was leaving.”

  “That night?”

  I nodded. “I told him—well, he asked me. I said I was thinking about it. It was Christmas, the damn tree all lit up.”

  “Christ.”

  “But it was like—like he knew. Like he just wanted me to say it. Just wanted to make me admit it.” I shook my head. “And damned if I didn’t do it out of pure spite. I just—” I paused, searching. “I just wanted him to be quiet.”

  “Well, hell. He wanted you to give him a reason,” Donna said.

  I laughed shortly. “I did.”

  “Hell you did. Gave him an excuse, maybe.”

  I looked at her.

  “Not a reason,” she said, looking at the lake. “No reason good enough for what he did.”

  On the way home, the kids fell asleep in a wet, sandy, sunburned pile in the backseat. Sun stunned, they dozed while I hosed them off and Donna unloaded the car, then they staggered into the house, not to be heard from again until the sounds of dinner roused them from their dazed naps. The light wouldn’t fall until late. Donna and I sat on the porch with a couple of beers.

  “And another thing,” she went on, “is the money. I get stuck on the money.”

  It took me a minute, since we hadn’t been talking about anything in particular. She took a swig. “Garden looks good,” she said. “I’m jealous.”

  “Thanks. What money?”

  She looked at me. “If I left. Where the hell am I gonna get the money?”

  I shrugged. “Get a job?”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Yeah, thanks. I know. That isn’t enough. Two kids and a house payment on—what do you make?”

  “Enough.”

  “Enough with Arnold’s life insurance, you mean.”

  I looked at the garden. That rosebush needed pruning. It was so heavy with roses you could have decorated a funeral with it. “No, I mean enough. I haven’t touched the insurance money.”

  “Why not?”

  “I haven’t needed to yet. If Esau gets sick, I’ll need it. I don’t want to use it up.”

  “Still,” she said, setting her bottle down on the picnic table and putting her feet up. “That house.”

  “You owe a lot on it?”

  She snorted. “Bank’s about to take it back. That a lot?”

  “You could say that.” I laughed.

  She sighed and shook her head. “We been in debt since the day we got married. Always something. Always some damn new thing he had to have. Had to have that big house. Had to have that silly-ass truck.”

  “That’s about the ugliest truck I ever saw.”

  “Don’t talk to me about it. I can’t even stand to think about it. And what’s he need with a house that size? Who cleans that house? And he’s in the basement all the damn time anyway, what’s he want it for?”

  “Leave him there in the basement, then. If you don’t stay in the house, you won’t have to pay for the house.”

  She picked up her beer and took a swallow. “It’s my house too,” she said, looking sullen. “I been cleaning it every damn day since 1959.”

  “Honey, you been married that long?”

  “Since fifty-eight.” She smacked her lips.

  “How old were you, twelve?”

  “A ripe old nineteen, thank you very much. And terribly, terribly grown up. Jesus, what a mess. You want another beer?” she asked, standing up and going inside without waiting for me to answer. She came back out with two more bottles and handed one to me. She plunked down, kicked off her flip-flops, and put her feet across my knees.

  “Got married in fifty-eight, had Davey in sixty-three. Dale got stationed in September. Came back in sixty-eight.” She shook her head. “Married one man, and a few years later another one showed up at my door. Shrapnel in his leg and demons in his brain. He’s never been the same.” She stared at the ground. “Jesus, those nightmares. I can’t even imagine. I can’t imagine what he goes through, and the hell of it is,” she looked at me, “I don’t want to. I don’t want to see that ugliness. I keep waiting to see something in his eyes besides hate, besides this huge need, and I don’t. I don’t see anything else, and I don’t want to look.” She looked out at the garden. “He didn’t used to be like this. He didn’t. And God, I tell you, Claire, I miss who he was.”

  The sadness in her eyes made me wince. “I know that feeling,” I said, and took a swallow of beer.

  “Had Sarah nine months after he came home,” she said. “Couldn’t get him to hold her for the longest time.” She picked at the label on her beer bottle. “Like he didn’t want to break her, or ruin her, or something. Shied away from Davey too, poor little thing. Tell me something,” she said, looking up. “If you could say one reason you got married, what would you say?”

  I smiled, thinking about it. There were a million reasons. Because he was arrogant, and asked me to dance that night even though I was tall and wore daring pants. Because his name was Arnold, of all the damn things: I picked up the letter on his kitchen table while he slept in the other room. Because I was tired of buying one lamb chop from the butcher every night on my way home from work, and tired of eating it alone in my fifth-floor walk-up. Because he touched me right. A million reasons that were nothing and everything and added up now to only the space in my bed.

  “Love?” I finally said. “I suppose. That’s what I’d say.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me and wiggled her coral-nailed toes. “You sound pretty sure, there.”

  “I loved him, for sure. Why I got married? To be completely honest,” I laughed, “we got married on a whim.”

  “No kidding. Just thought, what the hell? One day, out of nowhere?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You weren’t knocked up or nothing?”

  “Sure I was. But I don’t think that would’ve done it if it wasn’t Arnold.”

  She whistled. “What was so special about him?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Oh. What wasn’t. He was something else. He was quite the ladies’ man, back then. He could talk you into anything. Before I knew what hit me, my last name was Schiller and I lived in Motley, Minnesota. Honey, I thought Minneapolis was the name of a state.”

  Donna threw her head back and roared. “I swear,” she said, shaking her head. “City people don’t know shit.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “Tell ’em to drive north and they ask you is that left or right. Shoot.” She shook her head, still laughing. “You know why I got married?” She lit a cigarette and handed me the pack. She shook her cigarette at me. “I can top your whim. I wanted a dress.”

  “You got married for a dress? You married Dale so you could have a dress?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Well, I liked him plenty. Like I said, he was different back then. But really I wanted a party. At the Elk’s Club.”

  We hooted. “Yep,” she said, pleased with herself, “wanted to show up Little Miss Better-Than-Anybody Patty Swanson. That’s Mrs. Joel Lillenthal to you,” she said pointedly, and I gasped. “Patty and I had it in for each other ever since she stole my boyfriend in the second grade and I wasn’t going to rest until I saw her dead or miserable, and by God”—she smacked the table—“she is miserable. And that Joel Lillenthal’s a piece of work, let me tell you, so when I went waltzing down the aisle and she was already a fat dropout with a snot-nosed kid, it didn’t matter one damn bit to me just who was at
the other end of that aisle. You should have seen the look on her face. The flowers. The dancing. And that dress.” She busted up laughing. “Eight underskirts of dotted Swiss. Swear to God, I must’ve looked like a chicken exploded. Still, it was the fanciest wedding anyone around here had seen in a long time. I’ll always thank my father for that. Poor guy practically had to sell the farm.”

  “I always wanted a wedding,” I said.

  “Everybody does,” she said, shrugging. “Yeah. It almost made it worth it.”

  She looked at me and smiled. “Almost.” She set her bottle down and put her hands on her knees. “I’m gonna grab my little man and head home.”

  “You don’t have to go.” I didn’t want her to.

  “I know that. Thanks, though. I told Dale I’d make supper.”

  “Tell Dale to go to hell.”

  She stood up and sighed. She ruffled my hair. “Oh, what would I do without you, Claire. You’re sweet. Quit talking about it like I’m serious. You know I’m just making noise.”

  She left.

  It had to happen sometime. It was just too damn hot.

  The sky broke open on us like some biblical thing, a flood after weeks of drought. The kids came running in from the yard, drenched and yelling. Faster than we could get the windows closed, the sky went black and the rain slanted in, a hard rain pounding at the panes and the dirt-brown ground. Dust spat up from the parched grass, and the street hissed and steamed.

  One day, and the garden had grown over the fence and was heading for the Andersons’ house.

  Two days, and the lakes had swollen up and overrun their banks.

  Three days, and the crops unbent themselves and turned a surreal green. Talk in the bar was of rising ag stocks, low seed prices, pork and beef, soybeans and corn. Sugar-beet farmers bought drinks all around. Salvation came.

  The kids baked chocolate-chip cookies and played Monopoly in the endless bottle-green light. I cleaned and cleaned, elated, half wishing I could rip the roof right off and let the rain wash the whole house clean. The world smelled new.

  Four days, and the phone lines went down. Donna came over with the baby. The electricity went out. We ate tuna sandwiches and played another round of Monopoly.

  “You guys gonna be all right?” Donna asked them, pulling Arnold’s old raincoat around her and stepping into his mud shoes. I stood there in my own red raincoat. We’d wind up drenched anyway, it hardly mattered what we wore.

  “Of course. Do you want us to feed the baby?” Esau asked. He could not be separated from that child. She sat on his lap, held firmly upright by his left arm, and chewed on Park Avenue.

  “Fed her already. She gets fussy, give her the teething ring.”

  “Where ya goin’?” Davey asked.

  “To Frank’s. We’re getting stir-crazy. Mrs. Anderson’s coming from next door to watch you.”

  “I like Mrs. Anderson,” Kate said thoughtfully. She looked at Esau. “She gets to play on our team,” she said, and turned to me, adding, “We have to beat Esau.” Esau looked up apologetically.

  “So far we have figured out a way to handicap me, but I keep winning anyway,” he explained.

  “Ah,” Donna said. “Well, there’s food in the cooler and you know where to find us if you want to say good night. Tell Mrs. Anderson and she’ll dial for you. We left the number on the counter.”

  “Phone doesn’t work,” Davey said.

  “Oh, hell. You’re right. I forgot. All right, anyway, here comes Mrs. Anderson across the yard. We’re going.”

  We thanked Cookie Anderson as we met at the door, and stepped through the wall of water that poured off the eaves of the house. The sky was army-coat green. We walked in companionable silence for a while, just listening to the rain, and then Donna said, “I love those little guys.”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “They make it all worthwhile, don’t they.”

  I nodded. “They sure do.”

  “Didn’t want ’em,” she said. “First time I got pregnant, I thought I’d die. Locked myself in the bathroom at the doctor’s office and cried for an hour until the nurse came in and talked me into lying down.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded. “I thought maybe I’d get lucky and never get pregnant. Hell, I hadn’t the first six years. It took me damn near three months to figure out why I was so sick. But now. Man, I wouldn’t trade it for nothing.” She pushed back the hood of her raincoat and let the water stream down her face. She looked at me. “You want kids?”

  I shrugged. “It didn’t matter much to me one way or the other. To tell you the truth, I’d gotten pretty used to the idea that I’d never get married. I was getting too old, I thought. And of course,” I said, grinning, “you can’t have kids if you aren’t married.”

  “Right,” she laughed. “Course not.”

  “But it’s funny you mention it. I knew I was pregnant almost right away. I couldn’t have known that moment, but I almost had myself convinced I did. And I walked around awhile with that, you know, keeping it to myself. I liked knowing something nobody else knew.”

  “When did Arnold figure it out?”

  “Pretty quick.” I smiled. “He was so excited he did a little dance in the doctor’s office. All these nurses laughing at him. He picked me up and swung me around and then panicked, like it was going to break me. I think he would’ve put me on bed rest himself, if he’d had his way.” I laughed. “He took me out to dinner that night, and the next day he comes home with a stack of books yea high on pregnancy. Followed me around the house for the next nine months reading out loud. Snatching my cigarettes away every time I tried to light up. I swear to you, all I wanted when I finally got that baby born was a glass of wine and a cigarette.”

  She laughed. “See, that’s how it ought to be done. Dale was like that the first time, with Davey. But when he came home from the service, it was a whole different thing. Aside from the fact that he’d started sleeping downstairs.” She shivered. “He’d come in at night, not say a word. Leave. Then, surprise, I got pregnant. I don’t think we even talked about it until I was six months.”

  “How in the hell?”

  “Just never mentioned it. I got bigger and bigger, and then one day me and him and Davey are sitting there at supper, and he says to me, ‘Well, what do you plan to do with it?’”

  “He did not.”

  “Oh yes he did. And I was so pissed I didn’t say a thing. So he says, like he does, ‘Donna. See you got yourself all swole up again.’”

  I snorted. “All by yourself, I guess.”

  “Guess so. Neat trick, huh? So I said, ‘Looks that way, don’t it?’ And he says, ‘Well, how you plan to feed another mouth?’”

  “Good Lord. That man has a way with words.”

  “Doesn’t he? Mr. Romance. After that was when I moved into the spare room for good.”

  “He say anything?”

  “Nah. What’s he want with some swole-up woman anyway?” She laughed shortly. “Now, he wants some, he just barges on in.”

  I didn’t say anything. I thought about the way, when I was pregnant with both Esau and Kate, Arnold and I had laughed our heads off in bed, trying to figure out what to do with my belly, which was somehow everywhere. I’d never felt so pretty in all my life.

  “Now I just tell him if he wants another mouth to feed, go right ahead,” she said. “That usually puts a damper on his business.”

  We laughed. We walked across the flooded parking lot at Frank’s, the neon sign wavering in the thick rain. There weren’t even raindrops. It was just water, pouring down.

  We swung open the double doors and stepped into the crowded, steamy, smoky room, shaking our hair out. I saw Donna’s eyes scan the room and her face light up like a little girl’s. She turned toward the wall, hung my jacket and hers on hooks, and pushed her hair behind her ears.

  She turned back to the room, tall and pretty and alive, now that all eyes were on us. She could have a few hours of her own
now before she had to go home and play dead.

  We threaded our way to the bar and took the stools vacated for us by a couple of men who tapped the brims of their wet hats. Frank poured us a couple of old-fashioneds and waved an irritable hand at my pocketbook. He whipped his cloth out of a back pocket. “Dripping on my nice clean bar,” he muttered, wiping it off and grinning his upside-down grin.

  I looked up at the Coca-Cola clock. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock. Somebody put Johnny Cash on the jukebox. Jamie appeared, throwing his arms around my shoulders and Donna’s, and said, “Game of pool?”

  “All yours,” I said, lifting my glass to Donna. I watched Jamie’s hand hover near the small of her back as he cleared their path toward one of the two tables.

  The thump and fall of the balls, the crack of the rack and the break, and Johnny Cash. The clatter of glasses and bottles, the rumble of voices, the barks of laughter and the shouts.

  First time we went to the bar after Arnold died, the room went still. The few last voices were suddenly loud in the gathering silence and got shushed. I froze by the door and Donna shoved me forward, sticking close by my back as we made our way to the bar.

  “Well, what in the hell’s the matter with you fellas,” Frank shouted, angrier than I’d ever seen him. For that matter, I’d never seen him angry. “Take your damn fool hats off. Act like you never seen a lady in your life.”

  Frank was such an odd one. He was a powerfully handsome man, that was the first thing you noticed. You couldn’t help but notice. I, for one, had often found myself wanting to stare at him for longer than was right. He was tall, not as tall as Arnold, but tall enough, and built more solidly than Arnold had been at the end. Arnold had shrunk to half his size, and as I sat here now at the bar, watching Frank pour me a drink, I noticed the veins in his arms, and his habit of clenching his jaw; a little tic near his temple, pulsing, as if he had something he might just say, but then again, might keep to himself. He was a quiet man. Not a lot of words, just a few, carefully chosen, here and there. It was said he was an eccentric, and private, both strange things in this town where you knew everyone and everything about them, for better or for worse. He ran the bar but rarely drank. He listened to every man in town, all day, every day and late into the night. Everyone trusted him, almost; his privacy alone was suspicious. An upright sort of fellow, like a bookish old man trapped in the body of a youngish bartender. He reminded me of Esau.