It's all grey and cold

Sarah hears the back door slam and walks over to the window that looks out on the driveway. Tiny flakes spew forth from the sky, the cars already completely covered with snow. Small snow, big snow, Ellis always says. These tiny flakes would stick and they would build and they would turn their town into a big wintery mess. Sarah sighs as she watches Ellis load his gear into his truck. She can see the anger in his movements, the jerky way he throws his buckets and poles into the truck bed. He’s normally so careful with his fishing gear, he spends hours poring over message boards and watching YouTube videos with bearded men reviewing the latest and best ice shanties on the market. Sarah was always mildly jealous that Ellis has a hobby he is so passionate about, while she spends hours just wandering around the oversized Victorian that his Great-Aunt Valarie left him. Now Sarah watches him get into the truck, slamming that door too. He hits the gas hard and peels out of the driveway, the back end of the vehicle swinging back and forth recklessly in the freshly fallen snow. Sarah wonders if she should be nervous about Ellis driving in this weather, but she’s glad he’s out of the house. She’s not angry like he is, she doesn’t want to bang around and slam doors. No, she exists in quiet desperation and needs room to pace about the drafty, old house like a specter. She wants privacy to replay their conversation until it feels okay and she’s no longer the villain. 

Sarah had been sitting at the kitchen table, scooping juicy sections out of a grapefruit half and complaining about the chill that had settled over the house, like a thick fog that never lifted. Ellis stood at the counter, filling a French press with coffee and educating her on the correct way to dress. “So put a sweater on, you’ve lived here for over a year and you still dress like a Californian.” Sarah rolled her eyes at this, ‘throw a sweater on’ was his solution to everything it seemed. “I’m just not used to it yet, I spent my whole life knowing only warmth and now I’ve been plunged into a dark and cold world.” 

“Well that’s overly dramatic, don’t you think?” Ellis had just finished pouring hot water over the coffee and was using a spoon to stir them together. Sarah didn’t think it was dramatic at all, he could be so oblivious. “No,” Sarah replied, “I think ‘dark’ and ‘cold’ pretty aptly describes this place you’ve brought me to”. She licks grapefruit juice off her finger and stares at Ellis to see his reaction to this statement. He was in the middle of slowly pushing the plunger of the French press down and paused to look at her. “You wanted to move here with me.” Ellis never showed much emotion and Sarah was continuously making guesses at what he was feeling. But at this moment, though his hands are still going through the motions of fixing a cup of coffee, she saw a flicker of emotion on his face. That slight slip in the mask, that hint of something deeper, was something that Sarah ached for. She was forced to say hurtful things to extract small reactions from him and she collected these small emotional exhibits like pieces of expensive art. Ellis now had a beautifully pained expression on his face and Sarah wished it really were a painting. She looked him in the eyes and said, “I didn’t know it would be like this, there’s never any sun and this house has started to feel like a prison. I’m really starting to hate it here.” Ellis swallowed hard and looked at the ground for a few moments, then turned his back to her and continued with the French press. The hurt he was feeling barely touched his face anymore, he slipped effortlessly back into a hardened mountain man, but Sarah saw it in the way he moved. He seemed to have forgotten he was making coffee, he just fiddled with the plunger and cleared his throat loudly. Then he put the clean, unused mug into the dishwasher and walked out of the kitchen with heavy footsteps. 

Sarah sat for a while after Ellis left the room, wondering if she should feel guilty but knowing she felt satisfied. Eventually, she got up from the kitchen table, leaving the partially eaten grapefruit behind, and went in search of Ellis. As she passed the large living room window she saw nothing outside but the overwhelming grayness that had seeped into every facet of her life. The snow had just started to fall, covering the gray in white. Everything was different here, the people strange and the stubborn sky insisted on staying that same oppressive hue. Seeing Ellis here, in this place, had changed Sarah’s perception of him. She had followed him out here, to this small town in Vermont, after they graduated from college. They had met in their second year and he had charmed her with his rugged aesthetics. Even in the California heat, he sported thick facial hair and long-sleeved shirts. He spoke in slow, deliberate sentences, edged with a northern twang, and regaled Sarah with stories of his childhood. It was a stark contrast to the image-obsessed boys that Sarah had grown up with. He was studying Wildlife Biology, they had long discussions about the future of the planet and the various ways humanity might plunge into an apocalypse. When Ellis asked her to come back to Vermont with him after graduation, she hadn’t anticipated how mundane the cold and snow would be and how she would be unable to separate him from the rest of the bleakness. Sarah couldn’t reconcile the old Ellis, so inquisitive and colorful, with how he appeared here in his natural habitat. The man she had fallen in love with was blending in with the dreary backdrop and she was losing sight of him entirely. It was all the same now. 

Sarah stood in the doorway and watched him rifle through the top drawer of his dresser. He pulled out a pair of socks and sat on the bed to put them on, without so much as a glance at her. “So that’s it then, conversations over?” Sarah meant this as a question, although it came out as more of a statement. “I guess so, I mean I’m not sure what to say to you,” he replied flatly. Sarah felt exasperated, she knew she had hurt his feelings but he remained stoic. “Say anything, tell me to fuck off, call me names. You’re like a computer, all you’re responses generated to create the least amount of conflict." 

“What you meant to say is that you hate me.”

“What?”

“In the kitchen, you said you hate this place. You meant that you hate me.”

“Now who’s being dramatic?” Sarah hated her childish response as soon as it was out of her mouth. Ellis finally looked appropriately dejected, in fact, it looked as if he might cry.  

“You think I don’t notice the way you started looking at me? Like I disgust you. And you talk to me like I’m the most boring person you’ve ever met.” Sarah felt the sudden surge of guilt that always came after squeezing out an emotional response from Ellis. His eyes were wet now and she felt the urge to cradle him in her arms. She sat down beside him and started to put her arm around his shoulders. Ellis quickly pulled away from her and stood up. “And you only touch me when you feel bad for me,” he says in a tired sort of way. Sarah doesn’t respond, she knows it’s all true and doesn’t have the time to formulate an answer that will placate him while also staying true to her feelings.“You can’t even deny it!” Ellis yelled, beginning to grow angry. “If you hate me so much, why are you still here?” His shoulders are no longer hunched over but pulled tight and his voice suddenly cold. His sadness seemed to have dissipated, leaving stony anger in its wake. This was the price Sarah had to pay for playing her little games. Once she broke his walls down with snide remarks, the anger came seeping out over the wreckage and rushed to rebuild the fortress, before any other emotions could escape. He audibly huffed and stormed out of the bedroom, headed toward the swirling mess outdoors and leaving Sarah alone with her own frigidity to deal with. 

Now Sarah stares out the window, at the empty spot where his truck was just parked. The snow is already starting to cover his tire tracks. She lets go of an exaggerated sigh as if the louder she sighs the more poison she can release. She still isn’t sure if she feels guilty or if her verbal ambush on him was justified. She likes it when Ellis shows he cares, she wants to know that there is still passion between them. This morning she was annoyed with his very existence and the existence of this place…of course, both are scapegoats for her own self-hatred. She blames this town, she blames Ellis for encouraging her to move here, but what Sarah is starting to realize is that the problem is really her. 

 She finds her phone and sends him a text:

 You are understandably angry, I’m sorry. I’m coming to find you. 

She starts getting dressed, anxiously checking her phone. When he answers it’s one word: 

ok. 

She interprets this response as something positive. 

She pulls on her jacket and a pair of clunky snow boots that were ugly but practical, ‘dyke boots’ is what the rednecks here call them. Sarah couldn’t stand these men that Ellis grew up with, so politically incorrect and brash. She trudges through the snow that has piled up in the past hour and clumsily opens her car door. A flurry of snow falls into the driver’s seat and she needs to brush it off with her jacket sleeve pulled over her hand. To her great annoyance, she ends up getting snow down her sleeve. The cold slush sliding down her arm is almost too much to bear, she all but snarls as she grabs the snow brush from the passenger's seat. 

Sarah drives past the only gas station in town and sees their neighbor walking out with a case of beer. He sees her and lifts one hand in greeting, a smile on his face. This small interaction leaves her feeling strangely content like she’s in a movie that’s about to have a happy ending. There’s a sad but hopeful song playing on the radio, which only intensifies this feeling. After parking next to Ellis’s truck at the boat launch, she turns the car off and is abruptly thrown into silence. Now that she’s here, she feels unsure of herself. 

She looks out over the wide expanse of uninterrupted ice, smooth and reflective, a giant mirror. The sun has started to peek out from behind the very clouds that Sarah despises so much, throwing rays that are refracted across the surface of the lake. Temporarily blinded, she looks away and then closes her eyes and removes her hand, letting the sun warm her face. When she becomes acclimated to the brightness, she scans the ice for Ellis and his red shanty. She finds him, his dark figure silhouetted against the brilliant light. He must see her too because he pauses whatever task he was in the middle of and begins to walk towards her. He appears mountainous against the flat, white landscape, his large body disrupting the horizontal lines and cutting through the horizon. Sarah thought he looked beautiful and decidedly did feel ashamed of the words she spoke to him earlier. He kept moving toward her, never pausing, so sure of his relationship to her. She wanted to feel that same confidence in him, needed to. She took a deep breath and lifted one foot, placing it firmly onto the ice.