Winter Rain
Shannon Gueresso
(May, 2013)
January fifteenth and still no snow. The front yard bushes, barren for months, sprout technicolor buds. The birds, in their confusion, fly north. Life, in the middle of winter.
I’m lying on the couch of my parents’ home. I still refer to it this way, though my father hasn’t lived here in over a decade. It is the middle of the day but the Christmas tree is on; I close my eyes periodically, see the blinking angel on top of the tree turn my eyelids from white to red to green, a refreshing kaleidoscope of colors compared to the dismal grey outside. Flipping onto my stomach, I gaze out the window. Dirty, I think, then immediately berate myself. But when was the last time anyone washed it? I tried talking my mother into replacing the blinds, the dust-caked salmon-colored eyesores, pulling out the “crucial conversation” tools I had gleaned from the corporate playbook. Make it safe, assume positive intent, don’t badger. I think they’re nice, she had said, crestfallen, glancing forlornly at the 1980s verticals. How did I argue with that?
I hear the telltale whir of wheels as my mother rolls into the room. A burnt toast aroma pervades the shoebox home; crumbs settle comfortably into the folds of her black velvet pants. The carpet crunches.
“Don’t you think it’s time to replace the carpet in here?” I say, because I’ve been laid off twice in five years and things are starting to get to me. “And maybe take down the tree?”
“What’s wrong with the carpet?” The whirring halts, the chair beeps off.
“It’s electric blue. Worn down to the floorboards in some spots. It’s so thin I could scrape it off with a knife blade.”
“You do what you like, but I’m not getting new carpet. I can’t stand the air. All of those fibers floating around, that nauseating chemical smell.” I sense her wrinkling her nose.
“Between the wood paneled walls of the basement and this,” I begin, gesturing one arm grandly towards the floor, “the place is primed and ready for a 1970s sitcom shoot.”
“Don’t patronize me, dear,” says a small exasperated voice. I crane my neck to face her. At some point, between the carpet and the blinds and whatever else I was gearing up to complain about, my mother lost control of her neck muscles. Her chin lolls on her chest, tufts of salt-and-pepper hair ruffling slightly with each labored exhale.
Chewing the inside of my cheek I kick off the afghan, an alternating pattern of beige, burnt orange and mahogany my mother knitted a lifetime ago. It is warmer here than my old apartment; one perk, however arbitrary, of moving back home at age twenty-nine. Music wafts in from the black kitchen radio that has operated near continuously – impossibly – since my mother slid her allowance across the counter of Sears some forty years ago.
“Bob Seger,” I volunteer, nonchalantly flopping onto my back as if I hadn’t just insulted her. “Travelin’ Man.”
A long exhale followed by a cold wall of silence. I push myself up to sitting, hands sinking into the woven plaid fabric of the couch. My ears perk up like a deer who knows it has placed itself into a precarious situation but doesn’t know whether to wait it out or flee. My heart pounds in my ears several minutes, until it gives up and sinks to my stomach. What was so wrong with enjoying the Christmas tree, anyways?
“Bob Seger ‘and’?” She challenges, jutting her small clawed hand in my direction. Her fingernails, long and jagged, are in need of a trim.
“The Silver Bullet Band!” I proclaim, a warm serum spreading through my veins. “Remember when I was a kid and you and Dad used to ask me where I wanted to go for vacation?”
“You always said Disneyworld or ‘Cat-man-doo’.” She says this dismissively, as if she’s grown tired of retelling it, but I detect a hint of amusement in her voice. She attempts to lift her head to see me and I crouch in front of her, sweeping the soft thinning hair from her face. I slip a ponytail holder from my wrist, loosely securing her hair at the nape of her neck. She shakes her head.
“My neck will get cold,” she whispers, because it’s what she always says. Her body stiffens, as if bracing itself against my impending rebuttal, my automatic response towards her futile, heartbreaking attempts at retaining control.
“I know,” I say, surprising us both. I gently push the hunch of her shoulders back towards her chair so her head can lift up. “But I like to see your pretty face once in a while.”
The chocolate centers of her eyes regard me warmly as I slide her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. I catch myself in the reflection and avert my eyes in shame. I don’t deserve this reverence; I’m doing what any daughter in my situation should do, and I’m floundering. I retrieve the afghan from the floor, pausing at the pristine white soles of her tennis shoes. I drape the blanket over still, swollen legs, over arms clamped unnaturally across her body, as if trapped inside an invisible straight jacket. I stop just below the knobs of her excruciating shoulders, taking great care to ensure it doesn’t touch her neck. It itches, she’ll say; the fabric gives me hives.
“Water, please,” she says and I shuffle to the kitchen, hopping from one foot to the other on the cold marble tile. I know that in the fridge sit four tall Kelly green cups with striped bendy straws. Water is poured from purified gallons, the only water her body can tolerate. I gaze at the sink, contemplating filling a cup with tap water. Would she really notice the difference?
A song fades in and she is there, standing over the sink, dishes clanking as she sponges them off and places them in the rubber drying rack on the counter. Her voice, clear as Sunday morning, rings out over the rush of water. Steam fogs the window to the backyard blackness, concealing her reflection. She removes her glasses, swipes the back of her hand across permed bangs frizzy with condensation. I stand on a red vinyl chair next to her, shoulder level with the counter, drying dishes with a small yellow washcloth. My little helper, she says over the noise, smiling down at me.
“Mom!” I squeal, racing into the living room, careful not to spill the cup. Squatting down, I hold the straw to her mouth, angling my head towards the kitchen radio.
Her mouth tenses around the plastic cylinder, the effort to extract the water forcing warm puffs of air from her nose down onto my hand. After a few moments she releases the straw; it circles the cup lazily before resting against its rim.
“’These Eyes’,” she ekes out mid-cough. “I’ll never forget that Guess Who concert, tenth row, can you believe it?” She shakes her head excitedly, her cheeks flush with life. “But was it seventy-one or two? I know I camped out all night for that one, with Nance and Maggie and Johnny P.”
“An incendiary piece by Jeff Lynne,” I say, in an effort to impress her.
“Burton Cummings, my dear,” she chuckles. “But you got the time period correct.”
Something about the music, the air, my mother’s remarkable forgiveness of my sour demeanor has sparked a flame inside of me. I want to be the daughter she needs me to be. Emboldened, I refill the cup from the purified jug and place it back in the fridge, exactly in line with the others.
“All right,” I clap, returning to the living room. “What’s next on the agenda?”
At my mother’s instruction I wriggle beneath the Christmas tree, long hair catching between the fake pine branches. I am surprisingly soothed by the musty cardboard scent. Wedged in the corner, between the edge of the blinds and the wall, is a tall, old mahogany armoire chock full of porcelain Precious Moment dolls, a glowing miniature village set atop a cottony white snow drift, and, inside the lower cabinets, rows and rows of VHS tapes.
I poke my head through the clearing in the corner, the fuzzy yarn of a spider web brushing my cheek. I yank at the bottom doors until I remember you have to push them in for them to pop out. One by one they click open, sending a stale cloud of dust my way, Peering in, I am belatedly thankful for my mother’s organization project of 1995. I remember her toiling for months, sprawled across the living room floor cataloguing movies, home videos, television series, labeling each tape with a letter and numbers corresponding to the list she typed up on the old Apple computer. She had recently been diagnosed, which sent her into a long-running tailspin of solidifying order wherever possible. I run my finger down the yellowed paper list until I reach the T’s: T-2-1, Television Series – The Wonder Years (Season 1).
I click the cabinets shut and reverse army crawl from the space. The tape feels light and boxy in my hand; hollow, familiar. I ease the tape into the VCR slot of the combo VCR/DVD player, a piece of equipment I’d ridiculed her for purchasing about ten years back, when the rest of the world had fully committed to DVDs. “It’s like you’re resigned to live in the past!” I’d exclaimed, throwing up my hands in defeat.
“Yes, well, I guess I am then,” she’d said quietly, tinkering with the device on top of the entertainment center, leaning unsteadily on her shiny black cane.
The old film reel of the opening credits kicks on, frenetic ink splotches dancing across the screen like misshapen birds. Joe Cocker’s raspy croon works at the bolts in my heart, the ones I worked so fervently to tighten against any unnecessary seepage of emotion. Three tiny characters I had once considered my friends, in glasses and braids, hug, argue, wave furiously from the curbs and sidewalks bordering their black ribbon of suburbia so much like my own, moon-faced smiles so guileless my throat instantly closes. I look down to see my own toothpick legs, feet barely reaching past the edge of the cushion. It is dark but for the indigo glow of the screen. My mother sits next to me, sniffling into a crinkled up tissue, which prompts my little sister and me to poke each other and roll our eyes. What I don’t let on beneath my bravado is how dependent I am on this routine, how protected I feel in knowing each week, same time same day, the three of us will be on this couch, safe and static, despite everything changing out there in the world.
At the concluding instrumental reprise of the theme song, my father materializes, a shadowy figure discernible only by the glowing whites of his eyes, the shining horseshoe of his bald spot. There’s my girls, he says lovingly, white teeth dancing through the vases and knick knacks lining the shelves between living room and foyer. Just wait, when you’re old enough to understand, you girls will blubber just like your mother here, at the end of every show.
It’s four-thirty and already dusk is falling; in fifteen minutes we will be shrouded in darkness. Only then, illuminated by the ethereal glow of our gang, will my mother see the sheen across my eyes, the tears glistening down my cheeks, falling slow and steady like the rain now streaming the window. It is the warmest January on record, the first rain in history to grace the month, and I’m finding that for all of the wonder and excitement this novelty brings, part of me already misses the snow.
Shannon Guerreso is a writer and former Human Resources professional native to Detroit and currently residing in Nagoya, Japan. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Prick of the Spindle and wesaidgotravel.com. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and a variety of narrative nonfiction. She blogs about her life in Japan and other travel experiences at sashimiandthecity.blogspot.com