The Cranberry Hush: A Novel

THE CRANBERRY HUSH

a novel

Ben Monopoli

THE CRANBERRY HUSH: A
NOVEL. Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Ben Monopoli. All rights reserved.

Paperback:

ISBN: 1468189557
ISBN-13: 978-1468189551

No part of this book
may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means
without the express written permission of the author.

This is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover photography and
design by the author.

This book is also
available in paperback.

Excerpt from
The Painting of Porcupine City: A Novel
copyright © 2011 by Ben Monopoli. All rights reserved.

ALSO BY BEN MONOPOLI

The Painting of Porcupine City: A Novel

THE CRANBERRY HUSH

For Josh and Ethan

F R I D A Y

February 4, 2005

I had a feeling when I looked outside that morning
that something cool was going to happen. Maybe it was the snow, so clean and
blank and ready for anything—and still coming down. Through the night the
wind howled and slammed against my windows and the clanking storm door in the
garage. Now it was windless and quiet—flakes came straight down, thick
and heavy, making the backyard sparkle in the weak morning sun. Judging by the
vague white hump I knew to be the picnic table, there was well over a foot
already, maybe even closer to two.

Something cool was definitely going to happen. How could it
not? Maybe today was the day I’d tell Zane I loved him. Maybe I’d just get a
snow-day.

I heard a voice mumbling out of the phone so I put it back
to my ear.

“—ince. You there?” The voice belonged to Simon, my
boss at Golden Age Comics. He’d scrambled away mid-conversation to let in his
new wife’s yipping dog.

“Get her?” I said.

“I had to go way the hell out. She sunk in a drift.” He
chuckled, or maybe he was huffing a bit. “I swear—that dog.”

“Pretty deep, huh?”

“I’ll say. You don’t have a yardstick nearby, do you?”

“A yardstick? Out in the garage, I think. Why?”

“Would you do me a favor, Vince, and measure it so we can
get something official? I like to have accurate information before I make any
decisions.”

“Oh, sure. Hold on. I’ll go get it.”

“Thanks.”

I put the phone down on the kitchen counter, rinsed and
filled the kettle, put it on the stove and turned on the burner. After making
some door sounds with the cupboards I picked up the phone. “OK, Simon.”

“How much are we looking at?”

I looked through the sliding door at the buried deck, at the
covered shrubs, at tree limbs bent under the weight of the snow. “Hold on,” I
said. “It’s really cold. I’m just in my pajamas.” In a patch of fog growing on
the glass I drew a Superman
S
symbol.
“Jeez Simon, I’m showing eighteen inches so far.”

“Wow!”

“Uh. But there’s some drifting on my deck, so it could be a
little less?”

“That’s fine, that’s fine. Get back inside, Vince. I don’t
want you to freeze. I could never run the store without you.”

“Whew, my hands are all tingly now.” The water was starting
to boil; I took it off the burner before it had a chance to whistle. “So what
do you think, Simon? Eighteen inches. I could probably make it in...”

“Hmm.” From the other end came pensive breathing, as though
Simon was savoring having to make this executive decision. “Stay home,” he said
finally. “People can live without their comics for a day—never thought
I’d say that! Don’t you think?”

“I totally agree.” I held the phone with my shoulder and
dumped some coffee into the French press. “Has Golden Age ever closed before?”

“I’m sure we have. Well. Who’s on the schedule with you
today? Zane?”

“Marissa.”

“I’ll give her a call, let her know. Go make a snowman!” He
hung up.

“Oh yeah,” I said to myself. I knew today was going to be
cool.

My coffee wasn’t quite hot enough but I carried it down the
hall. I stepped up onto my bed, walked across the mattress in my boxer shorts
and thick blue socks and put the coffee on the nightstand. I stood there a
minute, my buzzed hair grazing the ceiling, pulling absentmindedly at the waistband
of my boxers, and then I said “Ha!” and collapsed into the warm, disheveled
sheets.

The thing about snow days is that they’re blissful in theory
but always kind of intimidating when they actually happen. The day loomed as
blank and white as my backyard. I pulled the blankets up to my chin and rubbed
the sateen hem against my lips. I figured I’d just sleep through a few more of
the daylight hours ahead—no reason to call Zane just yet. There was
plenty of time on a day like today. I pulled my legs up into a ball to stay
warm on my usual side of the double bed, rubbed my face into the pillow.

When I was a kid, like elementary school age, I used to tape
notes to the headboard of my bed on the nights before forecasted storms. In
block letters I’d write SNOW DAY or NO SCHOOL TOMORROW—little
affirmations, little prayers to the weather gods and the superintendent. Now
that I was twenty-four there was still something romantic about snow. The
excitement of snow-days never really went away—in college, in the hands
of hundreds of teenagers faced with unexpected idleness, they’d even grown more
magical. When I remembered this I had the sudden desire to be out in it, to be
buried in it, to feel it all around me. Maybe even, as Simon recommended, to
build a snowman.

A small wall of snow collapsed into my living room
when I pulled open the door. I went out and breathed in the cold air. Drifts
rolled like white sand dunes across my front yard and climbed high against the sand-colored
siding of my little Cape Cod house. I quickly kicked clear the steps just
enough to sit down. The rest of it—the walk, the driveway—all that
could wait.

I took a sip of coffee, touched the warm mug to my chin, my
cheeks. In the sky, lines of blue looked sketched among gray clouds like an
unfinished Van Gogh, and from somewhere not too far away I could hear the
beep-beep of a plow backing up. A single car crept up my street, its wipers
knocking back and forth fast-fast like hummingbird wings. I pushed the mug into
the snow by my knee and doodled a spiral around it with one gloved finger. It
was just after nine o’clock in the morning, and the neighborhood was quiet. It
was easy to imagine this as an icy, isolated Fortress of Solitude.

From outside the house, the Billie Holiday record I’d put on
sounded sweetly distant, like a memory of a song stuck in my head. Zane liked
to play music quiet like this. He said it made him focus on the song more than
if the volume hit him hard.

I would shovel, I decided, just enough for him to get his
car in my driveway, and then I’d call him. I pulled my peacoat’s floppy collar
up around my neck and my hat down to my eyebrows. If he wanted to come over we
could listen to records and look through the yellow, dog-eared comics in that
cardboard box in my spare bedroom, the ones Simon had loaded into the Dumpster
because they weren’t worth anything. The ones Zane and I, months ago when
things were easier, snuck out as treasure. I’d make us hot chocolate.

Across the street my neighbor opened her front door and took
a surprised look at her buried front steps. She had white hair and wore a navy
blue housecoat. She bent down slowly and dipped a wrinkled hand into the snow.

I put my hands against my mouth and shouted, “I’ll come over
and shovel you later, Mrs. Bradford!”

She waved and held out her arms, as if to catch a schoolyard
ball.

I took another sip of coffee, watched my breath mix with the
steam. If I made hot chocolate for Zane, I wondered, would that make it seem
too much like a date? Would floating marshmallows, white and shiny in halos of
melting, suggest an eroticism I’d be better off avoiding? Maybe. Maybe I’d swap
the hot chocolate for beer, or apple juice, or Coke. Or something. Or maybe hot
chocolate
without
marshmallows. If he
even wanted to come over at all. Shit—if I even called him.

He probably shouldn’t drive in this snow, anyway. And
shoveling would be hard.

Mrs. Bradford held her hand out in the air and then put it
to her lips, pulled back inside her house and closed the door.

Suddenly my knee was warm and I noticed my mug had lurched in
its melting cupholder and sloshed coffee on my leg and into the spirals of snow.
It hissed and a circle of brown slush sprang outward from the mug. I lifted it
out of the snow, rescuing an inch of coffee, and leaned back against the step.

That’s when I saw the figure walking up the narrow street. The
puffy red vest he wore over a hooded sweatshirt stood out like an explosion
against all the white, and he carried a backpack, the kind with the frame and
the waist strap; there was a layer of snow on top. The snow was starting to
pile up on my own outstretched legs, and the coffee spot was getting cold. I
thought of going back inside to Billie, to the fire I built before coming out,
but I decided to wait to see where this snow-covered stranger was headed. I
took another sip of coffee.

He made his way slowly up the street, each step a search for
a foothold in the slushy ruts left by plows. He was looking at each
white-covered house as he passed it. When he came to the front of mine he
stopped and stomped his boots and lifted the edge of his hood away from his
eyes. Was he looking at me? Was he trying to make out the snow-dusted brass
63
on my door? I stood up, brushed off
my legs and shoulders. The man on the street, though I could only see the small
circle of face his scarf and pulled-tight hood revealed, was looking for
someone.

Was it me? I was not expecting a visitor.

“Vince!” the stranger called. I started at the sound of my
name, unexpected and booming through the muffled neighborhood. He laughed a
laugh that sounded full of relief and waved. My pulse quickened. I wanted to
think this was Zane but I knew it wasn’t.

“Who is it?” I called, and began to wade out into my yard
with clumsy, teetering steps. Snow went down my boots and bit my ankles through
my socks. The stranger looked back and forth along the piles of snow along the
street that formed a barrier between him and my yard. He threw up his hands in
mock desperation and waved again.

Part of me knew who it was by then—a part that could
tell just by the way he moved his hands, by the tone of his scarf-dampened
voice. In fact, what I doubted now more than the person’s identity was whether
I was really awake at all, and not still in bed dreaming all this up. But when
I got closer I was able to see his eyes through the opening between his hood and
his scarf. They were green and bright. They belonged to the person in the
photos on my living room wall.

The last inch of coffee slipped from the mug as it left my
fingers and disappeared in a poof of white.

“Griffin?” It came out of me as a whisper. There was an
inclination to run away, to dive beneath the snow and burrow away. I stepped
hesitantly at first, not bothering to look for the mug, and then walked faster,
stumbling, like I was running along the beach, overcome now, amazed, amazed. “Is
that you?”

“It’s me! I must look like a snowman.”

“What’re you— You do! Frosty!”

“I know! Haha!”

I was shivering, not just because my boots were full of
snow. “What are you doing here?” I said, wading closer. “How the hell
are
you?”

He hugged himself. “I’m cold!” He pulled aside his scarf and
put his gloved finger to his unshaven chin, as though trying to determine the
best way to reach me. Then he started climbing up one side of the snow bank
that divided us. I climbed up the other. We met at the top, overlooking the
street and my yard, steadying ourselves in the loose snow with the same motion
used to stomp grapes.

I opened my mouth to speak again but only white breath came
out. My heart was pounding, my mind spinning. I started to lean in to give him
a hug and we did that hesitant, shaky dance while a hug worked itself out. When
he finally had his arms around me, though, he hugged me really hard, hard
enough to make me slip.

“Whoa-ho, careful,” he said, grabbing my sleeve. “Look at
all this, huh?”

Was this really him? Could it be? What the
fuck
? I felt like rubbing my eyes like a
surprised cartoon character.
Weeker-weeker-week.

“This sure is a surprise,” I said. “How the heck did you get
here? I’m guessing you didn’t walk the whole way.”

“Bus,” he said. His lips were chapped, his nose
windburn-red. “I took the bus.”

“Wait a second— From where? I guess it’s been so
long...”

“From Boston. I was living with Beth. Beth O’Shea. Do you
remember—?”

“Of course I remember Beth. So you’re together then?”

“Well— No. Not really, no. Not anymore.”

“Oh. That sucks. I’m sorry.”

“Eh, you know.” He lifted his arms and let them fall against
the padded waist strap at his hips. Snow, disturbed, tumbled off his hood and
shoulders and backpack in tiny avalanches. “Not everything works out. Story of
my fucking life, right? I know it’s been a while, Vince, but some things never
change.”

“I guess. ...So you came here?”

He shrugged his shoulders as best he could beneath the
straps and nodded.

“But what made you? It’s been so long.”

“Figured you’d take me in,” he said. His scarf, which had risen
back to the position it froze in, bunched against his cheeks, conveying a
nervous smile beneath.

A car went by below us. Its exhaust puffed white behind it.
Little snowballs danced and crumbled with the vibration of the tires. My eyes
traveled up the snow pile. Snow caked Griff’s pant legs. This was too detailed.
This was no dream.

“I wasn’t wrong, was I?” he added, the corners of his eyes
revealing a subtle wince.

“Well no— I mean, of course you’re welcome. I’m
just— This is a surprise.”

“Bad one? Good one?”

“Good one, sure.”

“So that’s your house?” he said, gesturing to it.

“Yup.”

“Looks warm.”

“Jesus, yeah. Come in. Come in, I’m sorry. You must be
freezing.” I began to climb down off our mountain.

“Thanks. I am.” He sat down and shimmied on his butt down to
the yard. “The snow was already coming down pretty hard when I got into town
last night so I slept in the bus place. Well, maybe not slept. Dozed. I got the
first cab I saw—it got stuck a mile or so back.” He pointed down the
street.

“A mile’s not bad,” I said.

“Mm.”

We waded back across the front yard along the path I had
made.