The Heart of Winter

by Jonathan Evison

The thought had occurred to Abe more than once, in the past five decades, that maybe Maddie wasn’t ready to be born into a world she seemed to take so personally—every social injustice or inequity, every heartbreak, defeat, or failure, and yes, every stray puppy.

Time did not march on methodically, minute by minute, day by day; it sprinted away from us in mad bursts, a thief in flight.

Now the house was quiet at last. But for all the stillness, there lingered a palpable life force, as if the house itself were alive by extension of all that had come to pass under its roof.

It was not even Christmas, and yet already it seemed the heart of winter was upon them.

My sophistication is not native. If it was native, I’d be drinking canned beer in the back of a pickup truck at the end of a dirt road somewhere right now. I’d be pushing paper at the mill, or waiting tables at Jolly Judy’s. I worked for my sophistication, I studied, and read, and buckled down, while my friends were out drinking milkshakes and eating burgers. My own parents teased me for my efforts. So, no, Mr. Winter, nothing about me is native. What you see, I invented myself.”

What had become of the possibilities of the wide world? Where was the poetry or the song?

“What is it?” he said. “I’m just tired,” she said.

“I came to the city because there was culture, museums and bookstores and architecture…”

The God stuff is more personal for me. I don’t need all the theatrics.”

Life was a relentless war of attrition, to love was torturous, for love ravaged you and brought you to your knees; it broke your will, over and over, until death seemed like a merciful conclusion.

At what point did survival become a law of diminishing returns?

Like so many women before her and after her, she’d downsized her dreams long ago.

To live fully was to observe like a poet,

she was still—as she had always been—a poet at heart,

To live fully was to recognize and acknowledge the tiniest of beauties, those ever-present, immutable though often elusive truths, pure and simple as a raindrop on a daisy.

Could she still recognize all that was holy when she could barely recognize herself?

“There’s only two things you can do to get a man’s attention after fifteen years of marriage. The first is dent the car. And the second takes about four minutes.

“Real poetry is to live a beautiful life,”

For what shepherd led his lambs to slaughter?

“Abe is a rock. My rock. And I’ve been crashing against that rock like a monsoon for fifty years.”