Deborah Rosenblum

D e b o r a h   R o s e n b l u m

Dancing in Gray Snow

They still wear their uniforms. She and her old man sit at the kitchen table after a swing shift and compare war stories. “Two skells at the zoo. One crack pipe. A fight ensues. Insert bear. Equals big mess.”

‘One skell, one subway platform. My nightstick. I’m holding one end; the skell’s got the other.”

“All right, you win.”

His eyes cut to the front door, then shift to the hall that terminates at their son’s bedroom.

“Speaking of skells. Where’s the boy?”

“Norman, don’t.”

She notes the streaks of grey salting his hair. The angle of his head hides his face and he makes no sound. When he looks at her she sees the tears. She reaches for his arm and touches his hand,

“Don’t.”

His eyes lock in on her face then shift to the window. “If we had another baby now, would we do better? Or would we do it again?”

She wants to say that Danny’s still her baby. It doesn’t matter that his feet stick off the end of the child’s bed they never replaced. Or that the room at the end of the hall has the flat smell of sidewalks, and the stink of alcohol and crack lingers in his sheets. She doesn’t say it because she doesn’t have words, and because Danny is his baby too. She feels that he should know.

Norman says, “I’d like a baby girl. I’d like to take her to the zoo and buy her every balloon. Show her bears. But not the junkies or the bums. Not the broken vials.”

Then he says, “Maybe there was nothing we could have done.”

She looks out the window and watches the snow twirl in the streetlight’s glow. The scene makes her think of dancers turning to the sound of a piano. She wishes she were young and lithe. She wants to go out and spin in the snow. Snow ices the streets like sugar until the traffic stains it with dirt. Then she doesn’t want to eat it any more. She’s seen this city both ways: beautiful and ruined. She sees it that way every day.

“Sometimes I try to think of another job. So, I could be home more. But what would I do? And he’s never home any more. I’d be home alone. I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either, Lucy.”

She looks again at the white street, the snow still intact and perfect. “Let’s not go to work today. Let’s stay home. Let’s make a big meal, maybe bake something. We could dance to the radio.”

“All right. And maybe Danny’ll even show up.”

“He loves pie.”

Later, at the doorway of their bedroom he takes her hand, the gesture tentative. He pauses before he asks, “Pray with me?” 

Awkward at first, they kneel like children beside their bed. He prays for the strength to go on. She gives thanks that they’ve broken the silence which is cold but comfortable for them. She prays they’ll keep talking.

In bed with his head pressed against hers she watches the snow fall from a sky that’s turning from black to silver. She thinks she’s wasted too many years and now she’s too old for another baby, another chance to fail. She wonders if today maybe some policeman will bring her Danny home.

next