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There had been the one. A tiny thing, born still and silent.
There were guns in the house, and she had thought of them before.
She slid her boot soles onto the surface and nearly laughed at her own absurdity—to be careful not to slip even as she prayed to fall through.
Suddenly Jack grabbed her about the waist from behind, swung her around to face him, and for a second lifted her off her feet. “I did it, love. I got our moose!” He kissed her quick and hard on the neck, like he was a much younger man, and she a younger woman.
I love when Jack shows Mabel affection!
More than that, talk of the child seemed to upset Mabel. She had some spirit these days and a brightness in her eyes that eased Jack’s heart.
The truth awed her. Not only was the child a miracle, but she was their creation. One does not create a life and then abandon it to the wilderness.
my heart!
They were like children pretending to be mother and father, and Mabel was happy.
“There once was an old man and woman who loved each other very much and were content with their lot in life except for one great sadness—they had no children of their own.”
Her capacity for grief frightened him. He’d wondered more than once if she had ventured onto the river ice in November knowing full well the danger.
“Don’t you see? This was to be ours together, the successes and the failures,” Mabel said, and as she spoke she gestured grandly as if to encompass everything, the plucked chickens, the wet feathers. “All of this?” he said, and couldn’t help a smile. “Yes, all of this.” Then she too smiled. “Every blasted feather. Mine and yours.” Jack leaned over and kissed her on the tip of her nose, then stuck a chicken feather behind her ear.
As she began to peel potatoes, he stood behind her and touched the tendrils of hair that had fallen from their clips and curled at the nape of her neck. Then he reached around her waist and leaned into her. All these years and still he was drawn to the smell of her skin, of sweet soap and fresh air. He whispered against her ear, “Dance with me.”
How romantic!
And then they were beside the woodstove and Mabel kissed him with her mouth open and soft. Jack pulled her closer, pressed their bodies together and kissed the side of her face and down her bare neck and, as she let her head gently lean away, down to her collarbone. Then he scooped an arm beneath her knees and picked her up.
He rubbed his beard against her cheek. She shrieked and laughed, and he carried her into the bedroom, though they had not yet eaten dinner.
They laughed and danced and made love.
She was alone. The strong husband who had cared for her was a crumpled man who sobbed in the night and begged her to leave him, to go back home and find a new life without him.
She didn’t hear Jack come to the door. When she looked up he was watching her silently, and then he turned away, uncomfortable, embarrassed by her unharnessed grief. He didn’t put his hand on her shoulder. Didn’t hold her. Didn’t say a word. Even these many years later, she was unable to forgive him that.
He rolled on his side to face Mabel, reached to her, and ran his hand down her unbraided hair, again and again, without speaking. Mabel saw tears in the corners of his eyes, and she propped herself on an elbow. She leaned to him and kissed him on his closed wet eyelids. “We will, Jack. We will be all right,” and she cradled his head in the crook of her arm and let him cry.
“It’s about an old man and an old woman. More than anything they want a child of their own, but they can’t have one. Then, one winter night, they make a little girl out of snow, and she comes to life.”
“I know it sounds implausible, but don’t you see?” she said. “We wished for her, we made her in love and hope, and she came to us. She’s our little girl, and I don’t know how exactly, but she’s made from this place, from this snow, from this cold. Can’t you believe that?”
“Jack. I know it’s been so long. My God, ten years now. But tell me that you said a proper goodbye. Tell me you said a prayer over its grave. Please tell me that.” “His.” “What?” “His grave. It was a little boy. And before I laid him in the ground, I named him Joseph Maurice.”
*sobbing
“Try it on, Mabel,” Jack said quietly. He wasn’t ready for the effect. As Mabel pulled it down and tied the strings beneath her chin, the dense black fur, tipped brilliantly in silver, framed her face, and her eyes shone gray-soft and her skin looked like warm cream. She was stunning. Neither he nor the boy said a word but only stared.
Don’t you see? She was reborn that night… reborn out of snow and suffering and love.”
“We never know what is going to happen, do we? Life is always throwing us this way and that. That’s where the adventure is. Not knowing where you’ll end up or how you’ll fare. It’s all a mystery, and when we say any different, we’re just lying to ourselves. Tell me, when have you felt most alive?”
Then he returned to Mabel and put his mouth to her ear. I’d never let anything happen to you. You know that, don’t you?
Jack skated faster, while Faina merely held on and let herself be pulled. Mabel joined them, and the three held hands and slowly skated in a circle. The riverbed echoed with the sound of their whoops and laughter and their blades carving into the ice.
She was in love. Eight years she’d lived here, and at last the land had taken hold of her, and she could comprehend some small part of Faina’s wildness.
He lay in his bed and thought of her blue eyes and the delicate features of her face, but they were always veiled by falling snow or covered in the fall of her blond hair, and he could not re-create them clearly in his mind. He tried to remember the shape of her lips. He wondered what it would be like to touch them. And more than anything, he wanted to remember her scent, vague and so familiar.
Faina! Faina! I just want to talk with you. Won’t you let me?
She leaned out from the sparkling branches and gazed at Garrett with a look he did not understand. Then she leaned closer, and he felt her breath cool on his skin. Like a startled snowshoe hare, Garrett didn’t move, not until her lips touched his.
You are warm, she whispered against his lips. Garrett let his mouth follow her jawline down to her neck and back to her ear and he knew he could lose himself in the place where her blond hair met her soft skin. He could lose himself in her pale smoothness, in her gentle fingers, in her wide blue eyes.
There they would huddle together and taste each other’s lips and eyes and hearts. And when they were apart, he felt as if he were dying of thirst.
Where else in life, Mabel wondered, could a woman love so openly and with such abandon?
They had hidden their love affair and created a child out of wedlock,
expecting Jack to go out the door and leave her alone. But he knelt at her feet, put his head in her lap, and they held each other and shared the sorrow of an old man and an old woman who have lost their only child.
He took hold of Mabel’s hand, and when she turned to him, he saw in her eyes the joy and sorrow of a lifetime. “It’s snowing,” she said.
