Cold Enough for Snow

I wanted to walk in the woods and among the trees. I wanted not to speak to anyone, only to see and hear, to feel lonely.

It was a gesture that, in his mind, moved us along together, progressed us to some higher state, like a broom pushing two stones forward along a path.

My boyfriend often joked that I was the kind of person who would be happy in a mountain temple, told only to sweep the dust from the floor each day, to contemplate the nature of time and labor, and the difference, or absolute sameness, between a dirty surface and a clean one.

But of course, despite their caution, everyone knew about the romance. The girl had told her friends at school, and my uncle’s boss had seen her waiting outside the shop for him. Neighbors and friends spotted them riding their bikes together down toward the bay or sharing Western food at the local drinking house. It was an open secret.

In one of my first classes, we had pushed back the desks and put our chairs in a rough semicircle and listened as the lecturer spoke about the Trojan War. I said that compared to the strictness of the Catholic school we had gone to, the one she had striven so hard for us to attend, where you could not so much as have one button on your shirt undone or your hair shorter than your chin, this gesture in itself seemed revolutionary.

It was strange at once to be so familiar and yet so separated. I wondered how I could feel so at home in a place that was not mine.

The fabrics were hanging in a long room, such that you could look at all of them at once or each on its own. Some were small but some were so large that their tails draped and ran over the floor like frozen water and it was impossible to imagine them being worn or hanging in any room but this one. Their patterns were at once primitive and graceful, and as beautiful as the garments in a folktale. Looking at the translucency of the overlapping dyes reminded me of looking upward through a canopy of leaves. They reminded me of the seasons and, in their bare, visible threads, of something lovely and honest that had now been forgotten, a thing we could only look at but no longer live. I felt at the same time mesmerized by their beauty and saddened at this vague thought.

We did not live in the same city anymore, and had never really been away together as adults, but I was beginning to feel that it was important, for reasons I could not yet name.

Sometimes, I poured myself a glass of wine and dimmed the lights, or else played a record, turning the volume up so that the music filled the whole house. If it was warm, I opened the windows and on those nights the scent of the lilacs that grew near the fence would drift in from the garden, blending with the music and with my solitary meal.

I had said that Laurie and I were wondering about whether or not to have children. My mother said that we should, that children were a good thing. At the time, I had agreed. But what I really wanted to say was that we talked about it often, while cooking dinner or walking to the shops or making coffee. We talked about every aspect over and over, each of us adding tiny lifelike details, or going over hundreds of different possibilities, like physicists in endless conjecture. How hurtful would we be when we were both exhausted and sleep-deprived? Would there be enough money? How would we stay fulfilled while at the same time caring so completely for another? We asked our friends, all of whom were frank and honest. Some of them said that it was possible to find a way, especially as their children got older. Others said that all the weakest points of our relationship would be laid bare. Others still said that it was a euphoric experience, if only you surrendered yourself to it. And yet really, these thoughtful offerings meant nothing, because it was impossible, ultimately, to compare one life to another, and we always ended up essentially in the same place where we had begun.