The Last Shindig

Outside, the first snow covers the yard. The arms of the elms have turned white and a northern wind seeps through the windows.

My husband slips across the ice to his Jeep. The engine starts, sputters, and dies. Finally, the ignition turns over and the Jeep pulls down the long driveway that leads to the street.

I walk slowly down the hall, the soles of my feet cold on the wooden floor. I slip off my robe. A bruise spreads over my abdomen, purple at the center and gray at the edges. In a day, it will turn yellow-green.

I stand beneath the shower and when I am done, I button my shirt carefully over my chest. I pull on a woolen skirt and a pair of loafers.

In the mornings, I drive into town to buy meat and greens. My husband likes fresh meats—“farm-to-table” veal and lamb chops.

As I drive, the trees bow low with snow. Each house looks like the next—white colonials surrounded by elms and oaks.

“Everything’s preserved here, just as it was centuries ago,” the real estate broker who sold us our house said. “We’re very fond of our traditions.”

“But what if someone paints a house red?” my husband asked.

 “We don’t allow that but I don’t think anyone has tried.”

“I think I’ll paint my house black," he said, the green veins rising on his skin as he tightened his hands.

When I reach downtown, I park outside the store. I walk to the shop, and when I pull the door open, the store smells of licorice and grain. Terry, the owner, is putting comic books on a rack at the side of the counter.

“Good morning, Mrs. Smith,” he says smiling. He has a flushed face with a white beard and sharp green eyes, a true emerald you hardly ever see. “Fine day, isn’t it? I’ve always loved the new snow, the way it washes away the sludge and dirt.”

I nod but feel a stab in my abdomen. I can’t dawdle. Once I put the pot roast on, I’ll have to clean the house before my husband comes home.

“What can I help you with today?” Terry asks.

“Three pounds of chuck roast, please.”

He makes a mock bow and then walks quickly, limbs spry as a teenager’s, to the meat counter, and ties an apron around his back.

He lifts a slab of meat onto the counter. He swings the knife at the meat and hacks off a piece with a thud.

“How are you settling in? Haven’t seen you around here much in the evenings—I mean not at the restaurants."

“We don’t get out much at night, so much to do with the house—fixing it up and everything.” Terry fixes me with those green eyes.

“Too bad,” he says, “Wally over at the pharmacy said he’d seen you a couple of weeks ago, said you might be sick since you were walking a little funny.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I say, a bit too quickly.

He wraps the meat in a piece of white paper and rings it up at the cash register.

“Wally told me you were a writer. Is that true?”

“I used to be a journalist.”

“A journalist, imagine that, a journalist and your husband a university professor. What a fine couple you make.”

I hand him a twenty for the meat. A poster for a winter festival in the Avery Barn near the river hangs on the wall behind him.

“You goin’?” Terry asks.

“I’d like to but I think we have plans for that night. My husband has a faculty party.”

“Sorry to hear that. It's the last big shindig before Christmas. We dress up the place, have a bonfire, country stuff, you know. Some people even wear costumes.”

He winks but there is something in his eyes, those cat eyes that settle too long on my own.

"Goodbye," I say but I feel him watching me as I walk to the door. Does he notice the stiffness?

As I drive home, I want to take the car far, far away. But where would I go?

My husband talked me into putting the colonial in both our names, the house I bought with my inheritance from my mother.

I have nothing except the house and, if I leave, I know that he will find me.

Two years ago, when I met him at a party in Boston, I noticed his dark eyes and black hair, and the way he leaned into me as I talked.

Other women gathered around him, flirting, and I wondered why he chose me, the wallflower.

After my mother died, we moved outside Burlington so my husband could work at the university. I’d given up my job at the Boston paper but I suggested I could work here—perhaps even at a retail store.

He wrapped his arms around me and said, “I won’t have my wife doing that.”

At first, he loved the house and the country, the way the leaves turned crimson and gold in the autumn. But a few months ago, he slapped my face when I suggested we replace the windows. “What do you think I am—made of money?” he asked.

The next day, he brought me a bouquet of white lilies.

I pull into the driveway of our little house. As soon as I am inside, I put the roast on the counter, peel the carrots, and chop the onions. Aspirin makes my body feel better now but, a voice whispers in my head: He’ll kill you one day.

I put the pot roast in the oven and look at the old-fashioned clock above the stove with its big and small hands. My mother used to say, “I don’t like those digital ones. I like to see time passing, the arms moving up and down as if they were marking our lives.”

I watch the large hand move to four o’clock and then to five. My husband rarely stays at the office past six o’clock. Will he be mad tonight? Or contrite, as he often is after one of

the “incidents?”

Outside, the wind rattles the windows, and moans low like a banshee. I rearrange my hair and put on a bit of lipstick. He doesn’t like red, he calls it “flashy,” so I use seashell pink instead.

At six-fifteen, the door blasts open. I run to the staircase and look down.

“There’s my beautiful wife,” he says, his cheeks pink from the wind, a bouquet of lilies in his hand.

#

At dinner, he says, “I’m sorry about hitting you. I got carried away, just lost my temper.”

“I know."

“Really?”

“I know you’re sorry.”

Later that night, he snores beside me. The smell of lilies drifts upstairs. I think perhaps I could go outside and lie down in the new snow. Just close my eyes and never wake up.

I don’t move, though, so I won’t disturb him. But a few times, I see lights on the ceiling as if someone is driving past outside. Probably teenagers, smoking weed in the storm, away from the eyes of their parents.

In the morning, I hear my husband opening drawers in the kitchen downstairs. He likes to be alone with his coffee so I lie in bed and listen to the wind on the glass. When I was a child, I found the sound soothing, as if it could wash all the bad things away.

I hear the kitchen door close and then the sound of my husband’s Jeep as he starts the engine.

I dress and then I clean the little house, running the vacuum over the floorboards until not even a speck of lint is left behind.

In the afternoon, I drive into town. We have a post office with old-fashioned brass boxes and a postmaster named Samuel Alden, “of the real Aldens,” he says referring to the pilgrim, John Alden.

“Hallo,” he calls out loudly as I walk in. “A real storm we had last night. I thought the house would blow down. Did you lose any trees?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, but I didn’t really look.

“Well, if you did lose any, we have a great tree removal guy around here. Just ask me.”

I tell him I will and then I take my mail from my box—two bills and a hand-addressed letter to my husband.

When I am about to leave, Samuel calls out, “Going to the festival tonight?”

“Is it tonight? I think my husband has a faculty party.”

“Can’t miss the festival. We always have something special planned for the new folks.”

“I’ll try to come,” I say, only because I know Samuel will keep badgering me but I know my husband would find the party “hokey.”

The wind shakes my Toyota from side to side as I drive home. As I pull the car into the driveway, a tree by the front walkway bends nearly double, branches splaying over the ground. I wonder what my husband will say when he sees it.

I walk up the stairs to the front door, flakes of snow falling across my nose. Inside the house, the air smells of my husband’s lilies.

Just before sunset, a doe passes outside the kitchen window. She stops for a moment as if she sees me and then turns and runs for the wood. My Irish mother used to say, “It’s Elen of the Ways come to protect you, darling.”

My mother was superstitious like that. She believed in the gods of nature. She had a picture of the deer goddess above her bed. My father used to say, “Kathleen, don’t you know that Christ alone is our Savior?” "Aye," she would say, "that's what you say."

At six-fifteen, my husband’s keys rustle in the lock. The door creaks open and he walks into the kitchen as I am frosting a chocolate cake. Without looking at me, he says, “I was stuck in traffic for almost an hour.”

He doesn’t glance up at me.

“And my fucking student, Jarrod, you know the one. He wanted to turn in his final paper late because his dog died. I told him we’re in farm country. An animal dies every second.”

I open the oven, pretend to check on dinner which is lasagna this evening, and he goes to hang up his coat. When I return to the dining room to fill the wine glasses, he is standing at his place at the table. “It’s freezing in here. Don’t you ever heat the place?”

I don’t mention that he complained last week about the heating bill. Instead, I watch him carefully while adjusting the position of the forks on the table, noticing the crease that forms between his eyebrows and the way his hands tighten around his wine glass as he brings it to his mouth.

Today he wears a maroon sweater and jeans. His hair, which is usually tousled, is slick from the sleet. I debate whether to ask him more about his day but think better of it. He turns to look at me, runs his eyes down my wool skirt, which he has told me makes me look dowdy.

He follows me to the kitchen, wine glass in his hand. I reach for a mitt and take the baking dish from the oven.

“Lasagna again?”

I don’t answer him, but I feel the white heat of his anger.

“The postmaster invited us to the festival tonight,” I say to fill the silence but I hear my voice rising at the end of the sentence.

“The festival,” he mutters to himself, “Probably a Christmas play or worse—a Renaissance fair with all their ridiculous knights and ye old shoppes.”

I concentrate on the whistle of the wind so my expression won’t betray my thoughts. He follows me back to the dining room and begins eating in silence.

He slashes his knife across the pasta and I know I have made a mistake: I should have served lamb or veal.

“I guess we’ve become Italian these days,” he says, reaching for the bottle of red wine I keep on the table. "Lasagna tonight, marinara last week. My grandfather said the only people who ought to eat pasta were those Sicilian dogs. What do you think of

that? Do you think it’s only for Sicilian dogs?”

What is the right answer? What can I say to calm him?

He reaches for the carafe and pours another glass of wine. He swirls it, looks at the wine and then gulps down half the glass.

“I asked what you think.” He baits me with his voice until I say something wrong. I can feel his fists already, pummeling his hatred away.

He takes another sip, finishing the glass.

“Cat got your tongue? What a poor helpless thing you are. Tell me why you cook for Sicilian dogs.”

I sit still, listening to the howl of the wind outside. I wonder if I can get to the door before he catches me. I left the keys under the car seat.

“We need more wine,” I say and try to stand.

“I’ll get it, Maeve, I know you have trouble opening the bottle.” He makes a motion as if he couldn’t open a bottle and then laughs. 

I stand and pretend to move the salt and pepper shakers but I am staring at the door. Only twenty feet and I could run for it.

But as if he can hear my thoughts, he calls from the kitchen. “Stormy outside. We wouldn’t want you to slip and fall.”

He walks back with the open bottle in his hand, his hair sticking out so that he reminds me of a hedgehog. He stares at me and laughs.

I sit back down and look at my plate, at the untouched lasagna and the peas pushed into little mounds. He brings the wine glass to his lips and then winks at me.

Outside, something crashes to the ground.

“What the hell was that?” he asks.

“Maybe it’s just a branch.”

I hear another sound.

I put a spoonful of peas into my mouth and then realize someone is knocking at the door and think perhaps the person might have gotten stranded in the storm.

“Goddammit,” my husband says.

The knocking is harder now, pounding.

My husband pushes the chair back from the table so hard it slams against the wall.

He will be polite to the person outside, that I know. He wants people to believe he’s a nice man, a family man.

He tugs his sweater down and straightens his hair.

Then he opens the door. A breeze sweeps through the room and I smell the lilies again.

Samuel Alden walks through the door. He looks from William to me and says, “Wild night.”

“Isn’t it?” my husband says and I hear his fake congeniality, can see the words slip through his white teeth.

“Wonder if I could ask a favor of you.”

“Of course,” William says.

“My battery died about a half mile down the road, and I was wondering if you could give me a lift to the gas station.”

I know William doesn’t want to go, but of course he will.

“Always glad to help a neighbor.”

Alden stands in the doorway and I want to beg him to take me with him instead. I look at him and he looks back at me and I wonder if he can read my face because his eyes hold mine for just a second too long.

William returns wearing his pea jacket and Alden says, “I was just on my way to the festival, last big shindig before Christmas. Thought you might want to drop by for a second before you give me a jump.”

William turns to me and I see the darkness in his eyes, but Alden has him by the arm.

“Have a very good night Mrs. Smith,” he yells to me and lifts his arm in a wave.

I walk to the door and see Alden walk my husband down the driveway, his hand clasped around the crook of his elbow. But William’s car is in the garage. Why are they walking down the path?

Perhaps it is my imagination but I think I see my husband struggling. But the night itself is so black, the snow slipping in clumps from the sky.

But then as they get to the headlamp at the end of the driveway, I see my husband and Samuel. Flanking them are creatures with animals’ heads—ten perhaps, if not more. I stare at them and think I see a deer, a sheep, a tiger, and maybe a pig. Yes, it’s certainly a pig but an immense one.

One of the animals turns back toward me and I know in an instant it’s not an animal but a man wearing a costume. It might be my imagination but I think I hear shouts in the storm.

“Char…ivari,” I think, but it's hard to tell with the shrieks from the wind.

My husband tries to turn back but the men are dancing and darting around him now. Some of them hold spears and clubs. I imagine William trying to drag himself back to the door.

The animal-people move as one mob toward the road, dancing under the shifting flakes of snow. I watch until I can see them no more.

I leave the dirty dishes on the table, walk upstairs to the bedroom window, and think I see the men, far down the road now. Is it my imagination but is one of them poking William with a spear?

I slip beneath the warm covers. Then I turn off the lights and close my eyes. In the blackness of my mind, I see the animal-people dancing in the new snow.

I will sleep soundly tonight.