beautiful ones? I reached out, intending to touch him, then quickly withdrew my hand, fearing that my small store of energy would flow out of me and through Morris and down into the bones of the dead child. Morris, you mustn’t come here like this, I said. It’s not good for you. It will onlymake you sadder. You have to forget about this baby boy. You’ve got to stay away from this place, do you hear me? I looked down at his bare neck and understood how imperfectly I’d loved him…
November 9
We’ve had a great slanting snowfall overnight and now the trees are dressed in heavy white robes, their branches, fattened with snow, etched against the peacock sky. This morning while I was getting dressed, I heard the sound of scraping and I looked out the kitchen window to see Harry Lang throwing snow, his new light aluminum shovel striking a soprano note on the drive in contrast to the bass tones of the old steel ones of days gone by. Still in my nightgown, I opened the front door and called out, “Take it slowly, Harry, your face is red as a tomato!”
He waved at me happily. “Just test the air, Morgan! It makes the lungs crackle!”
I thought of William looking out his hospital window and I wondered if the word
snow
was forming over and over in his head, with no way to get out, so that soon it would be banked, cold and deep, against his brain.
Up from the cellar, I brought my own thick-soled boots. Stepping into them, I pulled at the heavy zippers and shrugged into my Persian lamb coat. Over the years, its skins have become brittle and torn and hang now in strips inside the lining, like the hide of an old ravaged ewe. I went out into the cold, beautifully disguised streets. For days now, the city has seemed very dark without its coloured leaves and though I know that winter is the seasonof death, I appreciated how much brighter the world had now become, with its cloak of snow. It cheered me to travel soundlessly along the deep sidewalks and to turn and see behind me a trail of solitary footprints, without William’s size ten shoe beside mine, as though I was now a lone explorer in an undiscovered land.
The blanket of snow reminded me of William’s body beneath his wintry sheet, which in recent weeks has shown fewer and fewer hills and valleys. He’s sleeping a great deal now and must surely be dreaming of the prairies, because his form has grown flat as Saskatchewan. When he tries to swallow, the food often streams out his nostrils and I wouldn’t be surprised someday to see it come gushing out his ears.
“Haven’t you noticed,” I’ve asked the nurses on Second East, “that William’s tray is practically untouched when you take it away? How many pounds has he lost?”
“We can’t tell you that today. We weigh the patients only once a week.”
“Which day will that be, then?”
“Next week, Mrs. Hazzard,” they keep promising. “We’ll weigh him next week.”
Today, with the snow sticky underfoot and clinging to my boots, only the sound of my desiccated lambskins crackling like Harry’s winter-filled lungs accompanied me on my way through the deep streets. Already I sensed the white lawns sinking like a fallen cake and I knew that soon the air would warm and last night’s snowfall would begin to drop in great slabs from the ballgowned trees and the streets would turn to slush and rivers of cold clear water would run in the gutters. It will go like this, week after week. A fickle winter. Snowfalls — light or heavy — followed by quick thaws because the climate in this part of the world has changed. We no longer have the blistering summers or the bitter winters of my memory. From now untilMarch, I’ll be able on any given day to walk across the exposed grass in our yard and look at the two mounds covering William’s flower bulbs, which lie beneath the soil, dangerously exposed to the cooling earth, shedding their friable skins.
Dear girls,
…At night when I roll over in my dreams, I hear
November 9
We’ve had a great slanting snowfall overnight and now the trees are dressed in heavy white robes, their branches, fattened with snow, etched against the peacock sky. This morning while I was getting dressed, I heard the sound of scraping and I looked out the kitchen window to see Harry Lang throwing snow, his new light aluminum shovel striking a soprano note on the drive in contrast to the bass tones of the old steel ones of days gone by. Still in my nightgown, I opened the front door and called out, “Take it slowly, Harry, your face is red as a tomato!”
He waved at me happily. “Just test the air, Morgan! It makes the lungs crackle!”
I thought of William looking out his hospital window and I wondered if the word
snow
was forming over and over in his head, with no way to get out, so that soon it would be banked, cold and deep, against his brain.
Up from the cellar, I brought my own thick-soled boots. Stepping into them, I pulled at the heavy zippers and shrugged into my Persian lamb coat. Over the years, its skins have become brittle and torn and hang now in strips inside the lining, like the hide of an old ravaged ewe. I went out into the cold, beautifully disguised streets. For days now, the city has seemed very dark without its coloured leaves and though I know that winter is the seasonof death, I appreciated how much brighter the world had now become, with its cloak of snow. It cheered me to travel soundlessly along the deep sidewalks and to turn and see behind me a trail of solitary footprints, without William’s size ten shoe beside mine, as though I was now a lone explorer in an undiscovered land.
The blanket of snow reminded me of William’s body beneath his wintry sheet, which in recent weeks has shown fewer and fewer hills and valleys. He’s sleeping a great deal now and must surely be dreaming of the prairies, because his form has grown flat as Saskatchewan. When he tries to swallow, the food often streams out his nostrils and I wouldn’t be surprised someday to see it come gushing out his ears.
“Haven’t you noticed,” I’ve asked the nurses on Second East, “that William’s tray is practically untouched when you take it away? How many pounds has he lost?”
“We can’t tell you that today. We weigh the patients only once a week.”
“Which day will that be, then?”
“Next week, Mrs. Hazzard,” they keep promising. “We’ll weigh him next week.”
Today, with the snow sticky underfoot and clinging to my boots, only the sound of my desiccated lambskins crackling like Harry’s winter-filled lungs accompanied me on my way through the deep streets. Already I sensed the white lawns sinking like a fallen cake and I knew that soon the air would warm and last night’s snowfall would begin to drop in great slabs from the ballgowned trees and the streets would turn to slush and rivers of cold clear water would run in the gutters. It will go like this, week after week. A fickle winter. Snowfalls — light or heavy — followed by quick thaws because the climate in this part of the world has changed. We no longer have the blistering summers or the bitter winters of my memory. From now untilMarch, I’ll be able on any given day to walk across the exposed grass in our yard and look at the two mounds covering William’s flower bulbs, which lie beneath the soil, dangerously exposed to the cooling earth, shedding their friable skins.
Dear girls,
…At night when I roll over in my dreams, I hear
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