Dead of Winter (9 page)
He turned shivering, teeth chattering
so violently they must surely break. And his breath caught in his
throat.
The woman standing there wore an
ill-fitting expression of love that faded and changed to cold blue
rage while he watched, stricken, paralyzed by utter, unbridled
horror.
The hush deepened.
“
I’m…s-s-sorry. I swear I
am,” he sobbed and sensed, rather than felt them all descend upon
him as one hissing mass.
It began to snow.
"Did you guys already have dinner?" I
ask the two little girls in the rearview mirror. The green
dashboard lights lend my face a ghoulish cast.
Isabelle continues to stare out the
window at the late Christmas shoppers dashing through the snow. Her
arms are folded. She's not done sulking.
Kara, a year younger than her sibling,
so perhaps not yet mature enough to completely absorb the full
potency of her mother's hatred of their father, joins her sister in
watching the snowy streets and stores blazing with multicolored
lights, but shakes her head.
"Well then I'm glad I put a turkey in
the oven!" I tell them. It's a microwave meal, but they don't need
to know that, though I'm sure the taste will give it away.
"Everyone hungry?"
No response. Isabelle has tears in her
eyes.
In the mirror, my smile looks
desperate, and frail.
I return my gaze to the road. I
shouldn't be driving in this. The snow makes the windshield look
like a TV screen with bad reception. Half-glimpsed figures rush
through the lights, heads bowed, as unaware of me as I am of them.
My attention is focused on my daughters, who have brought the cold
of this Christmas Eve into the car with them.
"You excited about your
presents?"
Again, Isabelle says nothing. Kara
only blinks.
Somehow I manage to guide the car out
of the shopping district without incident. The festive lights and
their associated—if alien—cheer vanish, replaced by whirling
dervishes of snow turned red by the brake lights as I turn into
our—into my—neighborhood.
Here the houses are vague, dispirited,
dark-eyed shapes hunkered against the cold. The wheels of the car
slide a little in the slush, but I keep my small, battered Toyota
from hitting the curb and offer the girls a reassuring smile
neither of them sees.
Then my home, which looks no less
unwelcoming than any of the others, and I kill the engine. Listen
for a moment to the ticking of the snow against the windshield as
it tries to erase the outside world. Listen for a moment to the
hitching breath from Isabelle's mouth as she struggles not to cry.
Listen to the sniffling as Kara bravely fights with a
cold.
"All right girls...we're
here!"
And I listen to the erratic thumping
of my own heartbeat as I swallow and open the door.
* * *
"Makes yourselves at home. Go on. Take
your coats and boots off," I tell the girls as I hang my coat on
the rack by the front door.
They look inclined to do no such
thing. They just stand there, looking small and miserable, and
lost. Isabelle is still pouting, but as frustrating as it is, I
know better than to chastise her for it. It's one of the many
privileges I lost with custody, and one that would only exacerbate
things now. Kara is shivering despite the cloying heat in the
apartment. It's always warm in here, but today I set the thermostat
higher knowing the kids would be coming back with me. I guess I
didn't think getting them here would take as long as it
did.
I stamp snow from my shoes and offer
them reassuring smiles though it hurts my heart to see them
standing close together as if seeking solace from some terrible
threat. Nightly I relive the warm cherished memories of their faces
lighting up at the sight of me coming home from work, especially on
Christmas Eve, my arms laden with gifts I made a show of pretending
were not for them. I remember the clean scent of them as they
wrapped their arms around me, the softness of their lips against my
cheek, the laughter, the joy.
The love.
"Right then," I say, rubbing my hands
briskly together and moving past them to the kitchen. "Off with
those coats or you'll be more roasted than the turkey. I'll get
dinner on the table and we can eat. And after that, we can exchange
gifts."
As I tug open the fridge, I wince.
Using the word "exchange" was a force of habit. Of course they have
no presents for me, nor should I have expected any. I promised them
gifts last Christmas and on their birthdays and forgot on each
occasion thanks to self-pity and a bottle with a man's name on the
label. So I expected wariness and doubt. I expected awkwardness. I
didn't, however, expect fear, distrust, and coldness.
"What I mean is," I tell
them, yanking three microwave dinners from the fridge and nudging
the door shut with my knee. "You guys can unwrap the gifts
I
got for
you
." The chill from the
boxes feels like Heaven on my calloused fingers. I set the meals
down beside the microwave and turn to look at the girls. "Come on
in here! Sit down! I won't bite."
They don't move. They just keep
staring at me, their eyes moist. I notice they've moved closer
together though. Kara's hand has found its way into the crook of
her sister's arm. Isabelle has her gloved hands shoved into her
pockets. Both of them have their hoods still up.
I turn back to the meals. Maybe the
smell of food will entice them to join me.
"Not quite as fancy as the dinners
your Mom makes," I explain as I set the timer. "But I think you'll
like it. The secret is lots of gravy." I chuckle to myself to keep
from sobbing.
It's been over a year since I've seen
my children. A year is a long time to be misrepresented by an
ex-wife who hates you. And she has every right to hate me. I was a
drunk, and a violent one, and yes, I hurt her more than once.
Sometimes, physically. Often, emotionally. But I never hurt our
children. Never did anything but love them, and it angers me to see
what she has done to them.
I turn back again to face my girls.
Still standing there, still watching.
"Girls, I want you to come in here. I
want you to come in here and sit down."
They don't.
I try to measure my tone, but it's
getting more difficult. They're looking at me like I'm some kind of
a monster. Maybe I was, once, but never to them. Never. She has no
right to make them think of me that way, and they have no right to
believe it.
"Isabelle...Kara...I'm not going to
ask again. Please come in and sit down so I can talk to you. You're
not being very nice to me right now, treating me like
this."
Kara's lower lips trembles.
A tear spills down Isabelle's
cheek.
I begin to tremble. "Isabelle...why
are you crying? I haven't done anything to you, have I? I thought
we were just going to spend a little time together for Christmas. I
thought we were going to have a nice Christmas Eve dinner
and—"
"I want Mommy," Kara whimpers, and now
she is crying too.
"What?" I heard what she said, but I
don't want to have heard it. It's a cold finger against my heart, a
clenched fist in my throat. I don't want them to want their mother.
Just once, just for a little while, I want them to want
me.
Snow patters against the windows. The
wind moans in the eaves. A symphony of loneliness that will never
have a reason to change.
"Ok, ok." I say, and throw up my
hands. Force a smile. "Gifts first, then dinner, and then I'll take
you home, how does that sound?" I head into the living room,
resisting the urge to grab my children as I pass them and throttle
the sense their mother has contaminated back into them.
"We don't want gifts," Isabelle sobs.
"We want to go back to Mommy."
At the wretched looking tree, which I
surreptitiously salvaged from the reject pile at the back of
Carson's Christmas Tree Lot, I feel my muscles tense and swallow to
clear my throat. "You're being silly. Every kid loves gifts. Just
wait until you see what I got y—"
"We want Mommy now. Bring us home,"
Isabelle says. "You weren't supposed to bring us here. You weren't
supposed to take us away."
Bathed by the sulfuric glow of the
cheap lights I have strung chaotically around the palsied limbs of
the tree, I bite my lip and drop to my knees. There are only two
presents there, but they represent three weeks worth of overtime
and worse, three months of sobriety.
"Just wait until you
see..."
"We don't
want
your stupid
presents," Isabelle yells, and stamps her foot on the floor,
startling me. "We want to go home to Mommy,
now
."
I can't move. I'm on my knees with my
hands poised over her present, and I can't move. I feel as if my
insides have turned to solid ice, my brain to fire. The trembling
worsens. God help me I want to slap my little girl across the face
and tell her to never speak to me like that again. That if she
understood what life in this shithole little apartment has been
like without her, without Kara, without her mother and the
affection with which they used to treat me, that she would forgive
me my trespasses and rush into my arms. She would gladly accept the
gift I bought her then. She would gladly accept me as part of her
life again. She would care.
I weep, silently, as I unwrap the
gift. I'm blocking it from her view, so she can't see what it is.
But that hardly matters now, does it? It could be a pony, a car, a
million dollars, and it wouldn't matter. She only wants her
mother.
"It's a cell phone," I whisper,
running a finger over the small rectangular box. "An expensive one.
I bought it..." My throat closes, trapping a sob. I wait. Try
again. "...I bought it and programmed my number into it so that,
even if you didn't want to talk...you could send me a text now and
then." The sobs come, wave after wave of them rippling through me
as I push the gift aside and reach for Kara's. I can barely see it
through the ugly orange and dazzling white kaleidoscope the tears
have made of my eyes. Blinking furiously, I tear open the wrapping
paper and roughly fling it aside.
"For you, Kara, honey." I raise the
box to show it to her. I am heartened to hear her give the
slightest gasp. "A Sassy Sarah doll. The clerk at the store told me
they're the coolest thing out there right now." I continue to hold
it up for a moment, waiting, wanting her to take it. When she
doesn't, I let it fall to the floor and stand, my knees cracking
painfully.
We are a tableau of pain and misery
and fear.
I watch them, searching their small
faces for the slightest hint of love.
And find none.
"Okay," I tell them. "Let's get you
home. You can still take the gifts if you want them."
They don't, of course.
* * *
They say nothing on the ride back to
their mother, even when I tell them I'm sorry for scaring them,
even when I tell them the words I've rehearsed in my gloomy
apartment every night for over a year. Even when I open the car
door for them and tell them I hope we can try again some
time.
They have nothing to say, and that
says enough.
Lit by the car's headlights, our
passage up the snowy cross-studded hill is a somber one.
"Happy Christmas," I whisper to
Isabelle, as I lay her body back into her grave. The wind freezes
my tears.
"Happy Christmas," I whisper to Kara,
as I lay her down in the hole, which is not as deep as I dug it
thanks to the endless snow.
I return to the car and retrieve the
shovel, grimacing as the handle chafes against my calloused
hands.
And as I fill my children's graves
back in, my eyes stray to the headstone next to theirs, to my
wife's grave, and I wonder if she will ever forgive me, if maybe
that's where a wiser man would have started. If maybe, just maybe,
some day she might give me another chance.
Hope is a dangerous thing, but without
it, what else is there?
I allow myself a small
smile.
We'll see.
Valentine's Day is not so far
away.
# # #
Kealan Patrick Burke is the
Bram Stoker Award-winning author of
The
Turtle Boy
,
The
Hides
,
Vessels
, Kin,
Midlisters
, Master of the
Moors,
Ravenous Ghosts
, The Number
121 to Pennsylvania & Others, Currency of Souls,
Seldom Seen in August
, and
Jack & Jill.