Snow

As we walked down the street, I remember feeling a pervading sense of calm. Even though there had been a part of me that was afraid to go for a walk, afraid the eye of the storm would close and we would find ourselves in the middle of a blizzard, I let that fear heighten the excitement of going out into the snow.

There was no one else outside. There were no dogs, no kids, no snowmen, no sounds. It was just the two of us, our boots not even crunching in the powder. I did feel a little guilty as we walked—I was ruining the pristine snow cover—but I also felt lucky that I got to be the one to do it. I never went for a walk this late. And never in the middle of a storm.

I think that was one of the first moments where I felt something approaching love for Marsha. She had invited me to do this with her. Not Dad. I was too young to understand quite yet why she wouldn't have asked dad, that it had taken enough courage to call him up and ask to bring the baby to his apartment, afraid to be alone with him in the middle of a blizzard, afraid, I'd imagine, of the big old house that Dad owned before the marriage and that neither would own after it.

Still, she didn't just go out by herself. Nor did she hole up in the bedroom away from us. She noticed the break in the storm and asked me to go with her for a walk in the storm. I knew that meant something. I believe that walk meant something for her, too. I think it solidified her decision to do what she did.

She called my mother.

"Arthur and I are separating. We have decided to divorce."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

I wonder if Marsha smiled at that. Here were two women who knew, intimately, the kind of man my father was.

"I know she will still get to see the baby. We're going to time his visits to match hers as much as possible, so it won't affect their relationship."

"She will like that."

I don't know where she found the courage to say this, except, I suppose, I didn't know her to lack much courage, even then. "I don't want to lose her. I want her to continue to be a part of my life."

At that point in my life, I'd never known her to cry. But I have to believe she was at least choked up, enough to make my mother, who is fairly unsentimental, prophesize: "Marsha, you will sit beside me at her wedding."

She was in the row behind my mom, but they were both there.

They kept it fairly simple, but consistent at first. Marsha would pick me up, eventually me and a friend, and bring us to an Italian restaurant a twenty minute drive away. Oftentimes, we met up with Barb, a friend of Marsha's, who would tell us stories about when she was younger, and worked in a club. A man once complained about how long it took her to bring his drink, so she made him a bet. "I told him, 'Let's see who can make it up to the bar and back here with a drink faster. If you beat me, the drink's on me.' Well, of course I beat him, by a full minute, and with a tray of drinks in one hand and rather high heels on my feet. He gave me a very good tip."

Sometimes Barb would bring her kids. They were nice, but the boy was too close to my age for me to ever feel fully comfortable. Parents had a way of insinuating, and the ones with boring, painfully shy, or unattractive boys seemed to be the worst. Instead I'd play Ms. Pacman until the food was ready and then we'd sit and eat. I didn't take the time to process what the dinners meant. I just thought it was nice of Marsha to take me out, and that she was more relaxed than she used to be. More fun.

Every summer, I could still count on being invited to the house on Cape Cod, and we'd spend a week together. I'd babysit Rick with a friend and I'd even get paid for it. While the teenager in me resented spending the week as a babysitter, I still knew that Marsha was being more than generous, welcoming me into her life, and treating me to bike rentals, ice cream, good food, and a week on the beach. She bought me a t-shirt or sweatshirt every year. I wish I can say I always appreciated it, but I didn't. I took it for granted most of the time, but I never lost sight of Cape Cod as a special place, even when I lost sight of the people around me; I still haven't quite recovered from the selling of that house.

That big old house was beautifully lived-in. I know now that it was somewhat run down, but it was perfect. 10 bedrooms, sinks and mirrors in every one of them. Clawfooted tubs. A caged elevator that didn't work most of the time we owned the place. A kitchen with two refrigerators and a big, open pantry. A dining room that could seat and serve nearly twenty. A small table with a chess/checkboard built right into the tabletop set beside huge bay windows. Patterned floors that tempted my mild OCD and set me tearing around, leaping from black square to black square, navy ring of rug to the fuchsia throw that slid a little when you landed on it after jumping from the top of the three-stair landing. I got yelled at a few times, but I never fell.

I didn't care that the chairs were mismatched, and a few had springs that you could feel through the threadbare cushions. I didn't care that the rugs were unraveling and worn. I didn't mind sand absolutely everywhere, despite the strict rinsing-off rules. I loved it.

One of the first summers there, Marsha's mother taught me how to dip sheets of paper below the surface of the ocean, float a piece of delicate seaweed over it just so, and lift it gently, so the weed is captured mid-flow. Let the paper dry in the sun, and you have it captured forever. I went home telling my mom that I made paper.

Marsha's mother was really fond of me. She crocheted little hearts and other shapes, and taught me how to sew, using yarn and plastic netting with patterns painted on it. We cut out fabric shapes and glued felt and magnets on the back. We made little hooks of yarn for ornaments. She made me a pink sundress with white hearts that hangs in the back of my closet for my niece. There was nothing she couldn't make.

Marsha's father loved me, too. That was harder for her. He was silly and encouraging. He led me around the grounds of their house in East Hampton, tossed me into the pool, and let me almost drive their tractor into the lake by their house (which terrified me deeper than I realized, until I tried to learn to drive and the nightmares started) and he sang old songs to me and seemed to live to make me laugh. I didn't know until I was much older and he was dead that he had been a terrible father.

When they were both fading, only in their sixties, of the tumors that were sapping away their lives, I didn't understand what had changed. I knew they were sick, but it took me a long time to realize that it wasn't the kind of sick you get better from. One somber Christmas, Grandma unwrapped a knit hat I picked out for Grandpa, smiled, and put it on. I whispered to Marsha that it was for Grandpa, and Grandma re-read the card and said "Oh! Sorry! He'll love this." And then she left the room to go to his sick room and put it on him. I don't remember being allowed to see him, just a sick room off to the side with the lights off and a strange scent in the air.

I remember her, though. When she was in hospice. We brought her rice pudding, and Marsha fed it to her. Across the hall, a man was turning 100 years old, and I was fascinated. It must've been harder than I could've appreciated for Marsha to hear me in awe of a man who had already outlived her mother, dying in her sixties of a brain tumor, smiling with a grain of rice stuck to her lip. I didn't know what to do. I just wanted to wipe her mouth and go home.

But before the hospital and the sick room, before any more summers at the Cape, before the dinners and the phone call, Marsha helped me put on my gloves and led me down the stairs of the artist's loft my Dad was renting, just alongside the Connecticut River.

"What if it starts again?"

She crouched down and tugged my hat over my ears. "It won't, not for quite a while, but, if it does, we won't go far."

I nodded.

"Do you want to go back?"

"No."

She opened the door and we stood just inside, admiring the fresh powder, untrodden and almost golden in the streetlamp's glare.