Summer Snow (34 page)

I fixed him with a disbelieving stare. “Seriously.” I let the clipped word hang in the air for a moment. “So why aren't you staying? If Value Foods is so great …”

Michael shrugged. “I think I could. I think I could be perfectly happy working here, settling down not far from home, starting a family. …” He trailed off and then realized what he had said. Though it was obvious that he wasn't proposing a single thing, Michael had just uncovered something that was intended for his mind, his heart, alone. I quickly looked away as a flush began to creep up his neck. “But I have no reason to stay. And I've always wanted to be a doctor. Always.”

“I wondered what you were going for.”

“Internal medicine,” Michael said with a definitive edge in his voice.

“Why that?”

I could tell that he was wrestling with exactly how much to share. Dreams, no matter how old, are sacred things, and whatever prodded Michael into a future of internal medicine meant a lot to him. It struck me that I had been nosy, and I rushed to retract the question.

But Michael was already answering it. “My dad died when I was really young. It was a car accident. We were all in the vehicle—my mom, my dad, my brothers, and me—but he was the only one who died.” He looked like he was about to say more, but he stopped, ate more of his sandwich.

I didn't quite know what to say. At first I almost told him that I had lost my dad too. But that seemed manipulative somehow, like a game of one-up. Maybe he wanted to talk about it more—I could ask him for more details. But that seemed wrong too. I waffled and hesitated and finally said the only thing I could get past my lips: “I'm sorry.”

“Oh—” Michael brushed away my condolence with a smile—“it was a long,
long
time ago. I was only three. Besides, my mom got remarried when I was nine, and my stepdad is a great guy. It's not like my life has been entirely fatherless.”

I smiled back, because it was not like my life had been entirely fatherless either. Fifteen years was nowhere near enough, but it was better than nothing.

We ate in silence for a while, considering the field, the clouds that were gathering on the horizon as if a storm was welling up in the distance. The towering spires of white were hedged in by hues of blue and black, and they were being whipped into different shapes and configurations as cream stiffens when beat. I wondered how long it would take for them to sweep across the expanse of sky and drop a thunderstorm on Mason. And then, like a bolt of lightning leaves an incandescent inscription across a dark sky, it hit me. I suddenly knew why Michael was so nice to me, why he continued to reach out to me in ways that were both baffling and almost painfully sweet.

“Your mother was a single mom for six years,” I said almost to myself.

“Huh?” Michael replied, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Oh yeah, I guess she was. So what?”

I didn't mean to seem irascible, but my mind was putting two and two together faster than I could keep up. “That's why you are always so kind to me. You remember what it was like when she was a single mom, and somehow that makes you feel sorry for me.” The moment the words were out of my mouth, I wished I could snatch them out of the thick air and swallow them as quickly as I had said them. But it was too late, and I found that I couldn't even look at Michael as I waited for his reaction, for his anger. I deserved it. His kindness was irreproachable; the reasons behind it were his and his alone. I had no right to diminish his consideration with my own insecurities.

But though I waited for a reprimand, a furious exit, and a slammed door, none came. Michael sat quietly. I stole an impulsive peek at him.

He was watching me. “I guess you're probably right. My mom was an amazing woman, and I know that it must have been very hard for her to make it all those years on her own. I suppose I have a bit of a soft spot for single moms.”

I didn't know what to say. It all came down to pity? Michael's thoughtfulness, the way he treated me like an equal, his offering the afternoon he showed me a summer snow? This was worse than his anger. This was far, far worse than watching him go and spending the rest of my life wondering what was behind the tiny seed of our purported friendship. At least then I could dream that maybe it could have been more if the timing were different. It crushed me.

My fingers felt unattached to my body as I reached for my bag, the remnants of food I had sampled and discarded. Without looking again at Michael, I placed my hands beside me to push myself off the peeling bench.

But he grabbed my wrist.

Surprised, I spun to glance at his hand. He held me fast; his tanned, calloused fingers wrapped clean around the narrow bones of my pale arm. Michael's arm was browned by the sun, and flecks of dark hair peeked from beneath the white long-sleeved shirt that he had casually cuffed twice. He just held me, waiting, as I watched the inexplicable embrace of his fingers. I slowly, bit by bit, dared myself to look at his face.

Michael was smiling tentatively at me. “Hey, don't think that's the only reason I'm kind to you. I don't like you because I have some deep down desire to reach out to unwed mothers. I'm not running a charity house here.” He laughed a little at his own attempt at a joke but abandoned his mirth when he saw the look on my face.

“I don't understand,” I said quietly.

Michael sighed. “Julia, I like you because I like you. Can't it be that simple? I think you're funny and intelligent. I admire you for your gentleness. I like your easy smile, even when it looks like the last thing you want to do is smile.” He paused, and I could see the dispute unravel across his face as he decided whether or not to say one last thing. He gave in. “
And
I think you're incredibly brave for doing what you're doing. But that has nothing to do with my mother.”

I stared at him for what felt like a full minute. Michael stared back, holding my hesitant eyes in his own warm gaze and bidding me with his open smile to believe the uncomplicated truth he offered. It was that simple. He liked me for me. Why was that so hard to believe?

“But I'm …”

“Pregnant?” Michael asked. “So what? You think that changes who you are?”

We sat in silence, listening to the rush of the wind through the alfalfa and what I believed to be the distant rumblings of the storm on the edge of the horizon. I wanted to argue with Michael, to inform him that he was acting in a manner completely counter-cultural and beyond my own comprehension. I didn't know how to deal with his offer of friendship, his easy acceptance of who I was, or his apparent ability to see me for who I someday could be. Would be? He saw things in me that I didn't see in myself.

I didn't know what to say. But finally, because I couldn't stand to look at him for another moment and because something
had
to be said, I choked out, “Thank you.”

Michael appeared to think that I could have said nothing finer. “You're welcome,” he said back. And then with a subtle, unassuming gesture that asked for nothing in return, he pulled my wrist toward him and held my hand lightly in his own. He considered it for a moment, turning it over so that the back of my hand rested in his, my palm exposed to the air. I watched the intersecting lines of my translucent skin, wondering what Michael was looking for and hoping he would find it.

He did. In one unhurried movement, Michael brought my hand to his face and brushed his lips against the thin, blue vein that pulsed in the inside of my wrist, just beneath the skin.

Surprises

I
T WASN'T A ROMANTIC KISS
. Nor was it merely friendly. It was an affirmation, a tender acknowledgment of Julia Anne DeSmit as a person. A woman. Valuable. Significant. Maybe even lovely. But it was also not enough.

In the moment that Michael released my hand and led me back  into the chill air of Value Foods, I knew that there was nothing he could do to be enough of what I needed. He could have swept me into his arms, kissed my mouth in a fit of passion, and begged me to be his bride, and whatever deep thirst I had hidden in the heart of me still would not be slaked. Amazing, unfathomable man that he was, I had hoped that he could breathe life into me. It took the touch of his lips to convince me that he was only a man.

True, he stirred something in me—sweetly, tenderly, even graciously— but when his kindness brushed up against my soul, it did not begin to ease the ache of the seemingly bottomless fissure that still gaped. The realization leveled me.

What then? Oh, God, what then?

Did my peace rest in making a decision about the baby? Should I keep him? let him go?

Or maybe satisfaction could be found in Janice. Maybe, like Grandma had said so long ago, it was all a matter of forgiveness. Of love? What if I called Janice “Mother” and pleaded with her to put Ben out of her mind, to start over?

But then again, what could I build with the strength of my own wounded hands?

I was no more aware of what I should do than I was sure of Michael's motives. But though I wanted to bury my head in my arms and cry, retreat from the world and the imminent decisions that crept closer with every day, immobility had never been an option. I gathered up Michael's words, his almost brotherly kiss, and tucked them somewhere that they would never be forgotten. I moved on.

And time was gracious to me. Though my due date tiptoed ever nearer, nothing happened. Though I caught Janice in the middle of yet another furtive telephone call, she stayed. I tutored Simon, went to work, talked with Grandma, allowed myself to dream a little about Michael. Life went on as it had all summer long, and if we were on the brink of falling apart, we kept our composure admirably.

As if verifying the solidarity of our unspoken pact to exist and be happy, Grandma celebrated her seventy-eighth birthday a few days after Michael's enigmatic gesture.

Simon helped me bake a golden yellow cake with chocolate fudge frosting, from a box and a jar respectively, and we decorated the house with pink and white streamers. I even let him use a chair to climb on the countertop and affix numerous ends of the gauzy paper to the tops of the oak cupboards, in spite of the fact that it was against my better judgment.

“I won't fall,” Simon chided me, as if I was the one who had suggested something ridiculous. He had the handle of a cupboard door in one hand and was pushing pink strands of paper out of his face with the other.

“Make sure you don't,” I retorted. Although my heart clenched to see him so high, so vulnerable and unwitting when he turned his back, I stood directly behind him, ready to catch him should he stumble.

We had gone earlier to pick out a birthday present and some cards, and Simon insisted on scrutinizing every single possibility in the birthday section before settling on what he considered to be good enough for Grandma Nellie. He had a very particular idea of what he wanted the card to look like and say, and nothing but his carefully imagined perfection would do. A rosy card with pale yellow flowers came close, and because I was more than ready to call it a day, I snatched it out of Simon's hands and tried to hurry him down the aisle before he could be distracted by more sappy couplets and doe-eyed birds.

But just before we rounded the corner, he saw it: the one. It was a pale green card with a cluster of intricate birdhouses along the left edge. They were bordered by an abundant flower garden that sprawled roses, gladiolas, and wispy ivy with purple flowers across the bottom and up the opposite side. The paper was laser cut so the flowers cast a looping shadow on the blue interior beneath.

“‘Happy birthday,'” Simon read. He flipped the card open with an almost peculiar intensity and continued very slowly, precisely: “‘I hope your birthday is as love … love-lee'?”

I peered over his shoulder. “You got it right: lovely.”

“‘I hope your birthday is as lovely as you are.'” Simon wrinkled his nose. “What does
lovely
mean?”

“Pretty,” I said. “Beautiful.” But somehow that didn't quite encompass it. “I don't know, soft somehow and gentle.… The word
lovely
makes me think of a lady. And love, I suppose. There's something lovable in it.”

“Grandma's a lady,” Simon breathed. “And I love her. It's perfect. Look, it even has a garden—and birdhouses!”

“It is perfect,” I agreed, thinking of the birdhouse we had bought only an hour ago. One of our neighbors, a retired farmer who should have been a woodworker, had recently begun setting his little projects by the road with a For Sale sign stuck in the ground nearby. There was a pair of Adirondack chairs, a painted lighthouse, a long, low planter's bench, and three tall, white birdhouses on beveled poles. Simon chose the smallest one because it was the most detailed: the birdhouse was fashioned to look like a white, two-story Victorian complete with a wraparound porch and turreted tower. There was even a tiny painted sign affixed to the right of the circular door: The Wild Rose Inn.

But the card made me think of other things too. Of Graham's sweet praise and Michael's chaste kiss. Of seeing things in myself that I hadn't previously seen. I took Simon's hand, holding his card in the other, and hoped that I would find whatever it was inside me that made them think me lovely.

Grandma acted surprised when she came home from delivering Meals on Wheels, though we knew that she knew we were planning a party. She stepped through the door, taking in the streamers, the layered cake swathed in folds of chocolate, and her haphazard family blowing absurdly on children's noisemakers. They had been Simon's idea. I thought they made us look a bit silly, but from the other side of the room it seemed as though Grandma's eyes misted over a little.

“Happy birthday!” Simon yelled. He gave his noisemaker one last, triumphant wheeze, then skittered across the kitchen floor to hug my grandmother around the middle. She was radiant in her joy.