Snowstorm

Snowstorm
Part Three

The rest of the day passed in a blur. I spent most of my time either crying or trying to sleep. At least, when I was asleep I could drown in false euphoria. It was after dark when I had finally decided to venture out of the room. The need to use to the facilities once more and to eat something were the main reasons. That, and the noise of the storm without having roused me from my slumber.

With sleep in my eyes and the overly large socks Alan had loaned me falling off my feet, I tugged the sweatshirt down a bit and padded from the room. My hair was mussed again, but I didn't care. I reached up to shove it away from my eyes.

It took only a moment to finish in the bathroom. Something caught my attention as I rounded the corner, stepping onto a dark bordered reddish throw rug, (set over what seemed to be floors of a dark pine wood), that took up the entire space of the living area. Music. Softly playing. Something I vaguely recognized. As though from another lifetime.

I strained to hear the notes, the melody, to make sense of the floating lyrics. Its beauty was haunting in it's simple ness. The sound of the music was nearly enough to make me forget the blizzard raging outside. If I hadn't still been able to hear the howl of the wind and the shriek of branches being whipped about outside, I might have.

"Finally awake, are we?" I hadn't noticed him seated near the window, on the sofa, watching the snowfall. He was cast into the shadows of the room. The faint light from the shaded lamp set upon an oaken end table on the other side of the room did not reach quite all the way to where he sat. "How are you feeling?"

He had turned from the window to regard me silently. I sighed and walked the rest of the way across the room. I sat down at the other end of the sofa. My fingers traced the pattern of dark roses set into the material. It seemed like something a woman would have. Maybe it had belonged to a relative...or, I remember reading about his girlfriend. Rima. That was her name. I wondered, briefly, where she was.

"I'm sort of hungry," I said, finally, looking up through a length of hair that had fallen across my face again. He smiled kindly at me, the small wrinkles near the corners of his eyes deepening for a moment, and rose.

"The snow hasn't stopped yet," he said, and walked towards an adjoining room. I could see the archway that separated the kitchen from the living room, and began to rummage about beneath the cupboards, "I have...let's see...instant noodles or..." he pulled out some boxes and turned his head towards me, "How do you feel about...wait, no. I threw that out last week...."

"Noodles are fine," I said, and drew my legs up beneath me on the sofa, folding them under me. I noticed a bright orange and green openwork afghan draped across the back of the sofa. I grabbed it and, after wincing at the colors, drew it across my lap. "Thank you...What are you listening to...?"

I had noticed, now that I'd enter the room, the phonograph set up upon a shelf against the wall. It's speakers mounted on either side of the shelf, upon the wall. My eyes flicked passed the framed photograph betwixt them. Later, perhaps, I would step nearer for a closer inspection. A subtle, scratching was heard just beneath the notes as though a particle of dust marred the surface and had caught upon the needle as the record spun.

"Tom Waits," he replied, as I fingered the holes of the blanket and regarded the colors in silence, allowing the notes of the music to flow through and around me. There was something about this song. It almost seems that I've heard it before.

Yet, I could not recall ever having heard it before. Much like a dream one knows that they've dreamed, yet unable to recall any details should they be asked. Rather than brood on it more, I turned my eyes and my mind elsewhere, towards my growling stomach. I was about to remind him of my predicament when he noticed the aimless wanderings of my fingers through the loops of the afghan.

"Horrid colors, aren't they?" he poked his head out from the kitchen doorway, flicking his eyes towards the blanket and I nodded, "It was a gift from a fan...she gave it to me at a movie premiere."

"Why haven't you thrown it out?" I asked. I would have, rather than keep something so ugly in plain view. I suppose wanting to surround myself with only pretty things made me into somewhat of a shallow person. Life was hard enough without having to look at unpleasantness...

"Because it was from a fan," he said, simply, as if I should have known this, "As ugly as it is, I'd never get rid of it. She put a lot of love and effort into creating it for me."

"So, why are you here?" I asked, anything to keep from thinking about....well.... "…just needed to get away?"

"Something like that," he said and he turned his back to me to run the water for the noodles. Placing a pan on a burner, he used a match to light it and set the water to boiling, "I just finished wrapping up a movie and needed a few weeks to wind down...by myself."

"I wonder when the snow is going to end," I said, my eyes scanning the wood framed by the window, "It doesn't seem like it ever will...does it?"

"As soon as the phones are up, I'll call about..." he paused and I took a breath, not wanting him to finish his sentence. Instead I interrupted him, "I know...I..." I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, forcing the tears in check. I hated to lose it in front of people, especially people I didn't know and who'd shown me such consideration.

It didn't occur to me that I had every right to my grief and the expression of it. It just seemed that I should know better...That I should know how to behave like an adult. It didn't matter that I felt less than a child right now, though. "It's all right to cry, you know," he said, and I looked up. He'd come back into the room and was seated next to me once more. I couldn't meet his eyes. I knew if I did, I would erupt into sobs again, "There's no shame in it."

"I have to be strong," I said, my voice trembling, "I've cried too much all ready... I don't want to be...to be such...such a baby!" I believed that if I was strong enough, they wouldn't be dead. I know it was foolish, but that was how I felt. I think deep within my put-away heart I actually thought that they might still be alive. Trapped. Snowed upon. Still within the wreckage of that car. But, somehow...alive.

"They need me to be..." I drew my knees upwards and hid my face behind them, holding my head with my hands. My fingers balling my hair into fistfuls. I pulled to bring the ache in my heart some place else. Some place psychical. The pain my scalp was a welcome distraction. "Beth?" Alan's voice was soft, hesitant, a husky whisper. I knew he was wondering what he could do to help.

He knew, as well as I, that in such times mere words are lame...useless. Still...it was somehow comforting to listen to him. "Beth, listen to me," he said and I grew quiet, "They don't need you to be strong. You need to think of yourself now, Beth. It's not childish to greave for someone you loved."

I don't know how it happened, exactly, but suddenly, I was clinging to him and wetting his shirt with my tears. Great, gasping sobs left me as if blown away by a fierce wind and sagged against him, weakened as my cries subsided and I panted, my eyes hazed by my tears. I felt him stroking the back of my head and murmuring words that had no meaning against my ear. I was thankful for his presence. I don't know how or what I would have done had I been alone. I pulled away, a strangled laugh escaping my throat.

"I've soaked your shirt...I'm so sorry...I..." my face burned, I didn't know what to say... what to do... He reached up and touched his shoulder; where I'd rested my head as I'd cried, shrugged and said, with a half-smile, "Don't worry.

It'll dry...I think it's about time to eat..." I, too, had heard the water boiling and allowed my fingers to slacken on their grip upon his shirtsleeves so that he could finish mixing the noodles with the water. I rose too, and followed him into the small space. Finding the packet of dried noodles I took down two mugs from the cupboard. "No, no..." he began to protest as I reached for the pan of warmed water, "Go and sit back down...I'll bring it to you."

"Thanks," I said, not ceasing in my movements. I poured the steaming water over the noodles, which I had torn from their packages and placed within the ceramic containers I had set down upon the counter, "But, I'm still capable of pouring water...besides...I need to do this." I couldn't explain it in a way that would make it clear. Yet, he didn't question me further. This task... the stirring of hot water into a mug of dried ramen...adding the little packet of flavor...was something so simple....so mundane. I needed something mundane right now.

Something...normal. I shivered where I stood and Alan's brow hitched a moment before he commented, "It's really too chilly to go around in nothing but an old, oversized sweatshirt, Beth..." I shrugged and handed him the other mug of warm, instant noodles, stirring my own with a fork I'd found in the drawer next to the sink.

"There's wood out on the back porch," he went on, leaning against the counter, both hands wrapped about the mug as he lifted it to his lips and blew softly upon the broth, "I'll bring some in to start the fire. In the meantime, use the afghan to cover up with. I'll find you another blanket as well."

I watched him take a tentative sip from the mug and wince. "I was about to tell you it's hot," I said, my own mug set aside to cool, "And to be careful..."

"Yes, well..." he said, sniffing a bit over the mug in what could have been a chuckle, "I was able to figure out the obvious myself. Beth, I should try the phones soon... I'm sure your family wonders about you..."

I nodded, even though I disagreed. We probably wouldn't really be missed until tomorrow. Everyone would just assume we'd checked into a hotel and stayed the night there to weather the storm. I thought of my parents and the pain they'd have to endure. I sighed, and, taking my mug of hot instant noodles, I left Alan standing in the kitchen to walk back into the living room. I sat down upon the sofa once more, using one hand to hold the cup while I pulled that ugly, much-loved afghan up across my lap once more.

I watched Alan follow and place his own half-eaten mug of noodles down upon the oaken coffee table before heading towards the phone mounted upon the wall opposite the phonograph and it's speakers. The silence after the whirring of rotary and a few clicks told me that it was still dead...as dead as... I stunned that thought before it could fully form and sipped the broth, slurping a few noodles up as I did so.

"No connection," he said, needlessly, as he remounted the phone, "If I could tune the radio in, we might find out how much longer it is supposed to snow..."

"Mother Nature is never predictable," I offered, setting aside my cup next to his own and leaning my head back against the cushion behind me. "Even with all the science, she'll do what she wants." I closed my eyes and used the music to fight the images, memory and grief that threatened to overwhelm me. I heard Alan walk out of the room, his footfalls soft as he was wearing no shoes, just a pair of socks similar to the ones gracing my own feet.

Only, being as they were his own socks, they actually fit him! I recalled that he'd mentioned a fire and assumed he'd gone to fetch the wood from the back porch where he'd said it had been stacked. I hoped the back porch wasn't out of doors. In my own house, our back porch was merely a foyer lead to the back yard. A place for coats, boots and other items that had no place indoors and yet we could not leave outside for fear of the elements harming them.

The only thing issuing from the small hand-held radio Alan had dug up from somewhere nearby was a mess of static. A crackling fire blazed away in the deep-set hearth, warming the room with it's heat and ambience. I'd helped him bring the wood inside, feeling that I needed to do more than sit around being waited on as if I were an invalid, and stack it near the fireplace.

I had curled up on the floor with my back against the sofa, the eye-sore of an afghan pulled from the sofa to wrap about my shoulders and cover my legs, watching him shove the kindling and newspaper about with the poker until the flicker of a spark caught and spread.

"You're pretty good at that," I observed, as the heat flared up and caressed my face. I felt a tinge of guilt for enjoying something when I knew Katie and Tom would never enjoy anything as simple as the warmth of a fire again. I tried to push these feeling away, for the time being, and it felt as if someone were squeezing my heart within my chest. The pain was so acute. I closed my eyes again. A few deep breaths later and I was back to normal. Or, as normal as I could hope to be, for now.

"Well," he said, interrupting my thoughts. I'd almost forgotten that I'd spoken, "You don't get to be my age without learning a few tricks..."