The River at Night(4)

Alissa cocked her head and doled me out a real smile. “Pretty cool.”

For a second I almost felt hip, pitiful as that sounds. I shuffled the proofs into piles, sat back, and regarded her. Hell, maybe she had something to teach me. “So, have you ever been white-water rafting?”

Her eyes grew wide, and for a moment I thought I detected life there. “Oh my God, no, I would never do that.”

I felt validated, terrified. “Why not?”

“I just think it’s stupid. It’s so dangerous.”

“But—you’ve never been?”

“No. And I don’t hang glide either, or go skydiving.” She recoiled a bit. “Why, you’re not going, are you?”

“Actually, yes,” I said. “I’m afraid I am.”

? ? ?

I was brain-deep in an ad for oatmeal raisin cookies around three that afternoon when a rush of mortality flooded over me. I felt my face flush as a vague nausea suffused my body. It felt almost like embarrassment, as if I were caught deleting raisins as I was waiting, at age thirty-nine, for my life to begin. I’d tasted whiffs of this particular despair in the past, but never like that day. Maybe it was the swimmer and his dead daughter, maybe it was Alissa’s horrid youth freshly in my face.

All I could bring myself to do was gaze out the window, marvel at how a few flakes earlier in the day had gathered forces into an early-spring blizzard of stunning beauty. I tried to recall—couldn’t—the last time I’d taken up a paintbrush with any joy, or for how long I’d forced the square of my creativity into the round hole of graphic design. The day Richard left, I’d stuffed my paintings--in-progress, sketchbooks, easels—every last brush and tube of paint—in the back of my closet. I wanted no more to do with that part of myself.

So I forgot about beauty—not only what bloomed in my head and wanted to be on canvas, but the wild, flawed kind all around me. In fact I’d been whoring up the imperfect for a paycheck for so long I couldn’t face the real anymore: my aging body, the crash and burn of my marriage, the unfathomable loss of my brother, Marcus.

I gathered my things, made some noises about not feeling well, and left the building.

Snow swirled around me, making magic every detail of the city. No cornice, streetlamp, awning, or tree branch had been left unadorned. Packed trains rumbled by as I trudged along Beacon Street, but I had no interest in climbing aboard—even in my office clothes and heels—to arrive at my lonely apartment sooner than absolutely necessary. Block after block, all I could think about was Marcus and how much he had loved the snow.

One winter night, when Marcus was five and I was eleven, we built a snowman together in our front yard in Lee, Massachusetts, by the light of a full moon. I picked him up in his snowsuit and held him—his face flushed with excitement—as he popped in buttons for eyes, poked in a carrot for a nose, and with profound concentration arranged pebbles in a crooked smile.

I set him down and we stood back, admiring our work. He signed, red gloves moving quick, “Is snowman alive?”

Snowflakes melted on his cheeks, stuck to his long black eyelashes. I said and signed, “No.”

Brow furrowed, he signed, “Is it dead?”

“No.” I shook my head slowly, wondering.

“It’s alive!” he signed, then smiled and clapped and ran off into the yard. Snowsuit swishing, he pelted me with snowballs.

That night I tucked him in. It was something I did a lot since Mom slept most of the time and Dad worked constantly. Marcus signed with a hopeful smile, “No school tomorrow?”

I looked out at the driving snow and wind. “Probably not. But don’t get too excited. Just go to sleep.” I smoothed his hair and kissed him on the head. He was asleep in seconds.

In the morning, Marcus thundered down the stairs and leapt on the couch to look out the window. He made a small, agonized cry and sprinted to the door. Before I could stop him, he flew outside in his Bugs Bunny pajamas, barefoot. The world of white was gone and our yard had turned muddy and green again. The temperature had risen in the night as a rainstorm blew past; our snowman had melted into a gray lump, eyeless, carrot nose drooping into the dirt.

“Snowman dead!” he signed again and again, his face contorted with panic. He tore off to the far corners of the yard, frantically gathering the pitiful lumps of snow that remained. Suddenly he stopped, overwhelmed by the futility of it all.

I ran outside and caught his arm as he raised it to hit himself in the forehead, already bruised from some earlier disappointment. I wrapped my arms around him, straitjacketing in all his little-boy rage and pain, feeling his hitting energy ripple through him in cycles until he had worn himself out. Shirtless, Dad stood in the doorway, a hulking shadow. “He okay?”

“It’s all right, Dad. He’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

Marcus smelled like warm milk and Lucky Charms. With hot, sticky fingers he signed into my chest, “Want snowman alive. Sad, sad.”

I tucked his body tight into mine, my knees wedged in the cold, muddy ground. He felt like part of my body, the part that cried and laughed and let myself be silly. “It’ll snow again, Marcus,” I whispered. “And we’ll make an even better one.” I held him as long as I could, knowing that sooner than I wanted to, I’d have to let him go.