Snowblower

I love the way she looks, Mary is very pretty. No matter if she just comes out of the shower, her hair wrapped in a towel, an old t-shirt, and the PJ pants I made her in 2021. I love her like that and want to kiss her but she pushes me away. Or she gives me a quick second kiss and says, “Okay that’s enough”,

To which I say: “You look so yummy”. 

“No, I don’t, moron.” 

In the grocery store, people look at her. Men in particular. She doesn’t notice, but I do. And I know why: it’s her not-so-average way of dressing. It’s not offensive or over the top; just different. She doesn’t notice because she tests the celery before sliding it in a plastic baggie. The tomatoes need a gentle squeeze as well as the avocados before she puts them in our cart. 

It is mid-January and it snowed. Last week and over the weekend. Yesterday and the day before. We keep up the driveway, we go out in the evening and shovel most of it. Then often go back in the morning. 

“Get your snowblower out,” she always says when we dress in warm coats and snow boots. 

But I know if I want to do that, I need to get into the barn. The path to the barn is covered in a blanket of snow and it will take me half an hour to clear it.

Historically, Mary and I divide clearing the driveway into two parts.  

“I’ll do the part on the side of the road first. By the time I have the snowblower out and ready to go, we could already be done,” I always answer. 

And so we work in silence, pushing the snow with the old Toolskyn snow shovels in front of us. We slide it to the side until we reach the road. 

We live halfway up a dead-end street, and the town snowplow dumps snow on our driveway, speeding by, creating sometimes a small, but often quite a big wall that freezes over if we don’t get it out of the way quick enough. 

This morning we are too late. 

“Do it with the snowblower, it’s frozen!” she calls to me. She stares at me from under her woolen knitted hat. She has the middle part of the driveway done, where the car is parked, a black patch on the driveway, loose snow is pushed to the side. I wonder if our son is coming out to help; he might be able to make up for the lost time of getting the snowblower out.

“I’ll get started on it and have it done in no time!” I gasp for air as the wind blows from the North. She nods, lips pressed together. 

“We spent over $1000 on that machine!” 

The next morning I wake up at 8. The curtains are dark but the daylight throws sparkles through the fabric. My bed is nice and warm. 

She looks at me, says “good morning”. I look at her breasts, they create a nice little canyon between them, the skin wrinkled. My index finger slides down the slope of her bust and she smiles. 

“I love your breasts,” I answer. I want to make love to her. 

“They’re old and wrinkly.”

“But still full of fun,” my hand slides under her shirt and I have free reign to play with the warm soft boobs of my spouse. 

It is Saturday. It snowed more. I am sitting in my lazy chair, I need to write out that idea I’ve had in my head for days but want to finish my oatmeal first. 

My neighbor, Peter, has parked his car at the top of his driveway. Their driveway slopes down the hill to the house below and with the current weather they won’t make it up the driveway should they park next to their house.

The town plow dumped another wall of snow on all of the driveways on our street and from my lazy chair I see Peter pushing the snowblower in the thick frozen snow. But with the machine at its capacity, it won’t eat any more snow. Frustrated, he drops his hands beside his body. There is still so much more he needs to plow. And he needs to get to work. 

“We need to get out there,” she says. 

I look at the tights she is wearing, she likes to wear them under her jeans when we head out in the cold to shovel the snow. I do too.

“I need to write this first and then we’ll go out,” I say, hoping it sounds like a stern decision. But I know that if she says ‘I’ll get started then’ I will follow her. Today, however, she doesn’t. She sits down and reads a magazine on her phone, stretching out her legs, putting her feet on the table. I love it when she wears leggings. Or tights. 

“Only with a long shirt. Or a tunic. I don’t want them to see my butt. Or camel toe.”

But I love her butt. And she doesn’t have a camel toe. 

After I have finished my 1000 words, the house comes to life. My son wakes up, we can hear his radio, and then the shower. My daughter walks around, she has her piano class in an hour and maybe we might as well get started at pushing the snow around -once again. 

The wall on the side of the street is frozen. Just like yesterday. I hack away at it with my Toolskyn and a chunk breaks off, I slide it to the side and get going on another piece. 

“It’s too much! Get the damn snowblower out and you’ll have it done in no time!”

But I shake my head. “We’ll have it done quicker this way, Peter across the street has been out plowing for an hour and hardly got anything done!” I shout back, hoping that the wind will carry my argument strong enough but she rebuts with something I can’t hear. Something about Peter’s snowblower having only half the capacity that ours has and something about a thousand dollars.

I break through the wall on the third attempt and I quickly do the math. 

I divide the whole snow wall into seven pieces with three attempts on each section. I could be done in 15 minutes. I can’t get the snowblower out in 15 minutes. 

Maybe my son can dig a path to the barn and get it out snowblower out so we can tidy up the sides of the driveway. 

I push the heavy snow forward, wave to neighbors in their cars, who had started digging out their cars earlier. They have high snow hoods on the roofs of their trucks or sedans; most of them just got in their car and drove out. Without cleaning their driveway. 

We did that once. 

I bought the snowblower three years ago and yes, it cost more than a thousand dollars. It has tracks that will push the snowblower in the snow and it will reverse on my command. 

I got my children about ten years ago and it didn’t cost me a cent. They have legs and arms and I gave them snow shovels, $19.95 each. They don’t come out of their bed on my command. Only when I sound annoyed, then they come out of their holes.

We watched a movie with Nicolas Cage. The stove is on, cinders glow and I have two large blocks of wood I can put in before we go to bed. 

“We could sell the snowblower, it’s still new. Then buy a new TV set. Or something for the kitchen.”

I turn off the TV and think about the movie. 

“We don’t need another TV. And what do we need for the kitchen? Don’t we have everything we need?” I ask. The wine tastes good. I think about getting a bit more but decide against it. I’m tired. 

She sits straight and pulls the towel from her head. I can smell the shampoo. She dries parts of her hair and I watch her breasts moving along with her drying motion. I love her like that. 

“I was so glad when you purchased that snowblower. You had saved up and we got a good deal on it. It’s like the Rolls Royce of the snowblowers, I thought you’d be happy with it?”

And I was. 

“Well then,” she continues now looking straight in the eyes so I can’t watch her anymore, “let’s get rid of it.”

I frown.

“Or start using it.”

“What’s your obsession with this snowblower?” I take the bottle from the table and pour a centimeter of wine into my glass. “We can get it done quicker with all of us helping. Besides, the year we bought it we had a lot more snow, but with these once-and-a-while-snowstorms, well it’s hardly worth the effort of pulling it out.”

She scoffs. “Peter was out there all morning!”

I don’t understand what she means, “You like a Rolls Royce so much, go get it out yourself.” I try to sound casual. 

Her name is Bernadette. She is married to Peter and always has the latest news of what is happening on the street, flaunting it in never-ending conversations. I wonder how she does it. On our street, there are only eight families. I wonder if she has installed cameras. Or spy microphones. Bernadette knows every detail, presenting it with nonverbal expressions such as blowing up her cheeks, pulling wide eyes while shifting from one leg to another and wrapping her arms across her chest, pointing at me or Mary or in the direction of the person who is currently the subject of her Sherlock Holmes conversation. 

We meet in the street when we are done for the morning. 

“Aren’t you fed up with the snow?” she asks. 

“Yeah, pretty much,” I say. It’s almost lunchtime and my oldest has baked fresh crescents. I don’t want to miss them coming out of the oven. 

Mary comes over and greets Bernadette. They discuss the snow. Bernadette talks about their snowblower. And about the one from the neighbors, because their neighbors’ is bigger and better, “Peter could have the job done in an hour with that one, but no-o-o-o!”. Bernadette puts a disgruntled look on her face, “we don’t have the money for that, Peter says, he rather stays pushing that thing into the snow, when he can be done with a better machine!” Bernadette dramatically stomps her feet while making her statement. 

Triumphantly, Mary looks at her, knowing I am watching her. 

“But you guys are lucky!”

“Why is that?” Mary asks, surprised.

“We see you guys out here doing the whole thing in 20 minutes. No machine beats that!”

Time for lunch.