The Snowstorm

The snow started at 7:20 in the morning, when the nine-to-fivers were just waking up and the joggers who had gone early to beat the midday heat were coming home. People in the streets stopped and looked up at the sky, first at the clouds which came from nowhere and covered the sun in a great hurry and then at the snowflakes which floated down on the breeze, big fat ones you could catch on your tongue and chew with your molars. The storm accumulated quickly and by 10:00 had covered some twenty-five blocks, from Bleeker to Twenty-Third. 

By noon the streets were packed with people who didn’t live under the storm and were anxious to see the first July snowfall in New York history. They sat on each other’s shoulders and climbed up lampposts and on top of cars to get a better look at the sky, bright gray and expansive. Children caught the snow in their ungloved hands. A girl ballooned her t-shirt and waited patiently for as many flakes as it takes to make a snowball to land in her makeshift basket. Three inches had fallen since 8:20 that morning, all crushed, under feet and tires, into water. 

There was lots to say. Evangelists arrived and announced the Cleansing of the Earth. The Lord, they proclaimed, hath decided to freeze His children, not wash them away, so that they shall serve as an injunction to His future progeny. Climate activists declared Mother Earth had been so thoroughly and utterly kneecapped that the rules of meteorology had been obliterated. The Mayor gave a poorly attended press conference in which he implored New Yorkers to clear the streets between Bleeker and Twenty-Third and to remain calm; there was no present danger.

Most people couldn’t agree if the storm was good or bad. Children asked if Santa was coming. A man in flip flops stood awestruck on the sidewalk for three hours and had to have the two littlest toes on his right foot amputated. The streets became impassable, and the man’s ambulance (called after a teenager with a skateboard standing next to him noticed a blue discoloration spreading up to the ankle) had to drive fifteen blocks across town to get around the blockage and was delayed forty minutes. Couples danced the Bolero in the streets. A part-time DJ who lived in a third-floor apartment overlooking Washington Square Park flung open his windows and, from enormous speakers secured by bungee cords, blared a Euro-techno version of Let It Snow.

Later that night I made dinner for Elise. Swim practice had been canceled, and I made tomato soup to celebrate the flash of winter. She asked me, what did the storm mean? Would we all be frozen, like at Pompeye, so that God’s future progeny could see how we had sinned?

No, I said, the snow was slowing down, and it was pronounced Pompeii, though I was proud of her for remembering. 

Had humans messed up so bad that weather and seasons didn’t make sense anymore, and we would have snow in July and summer in Febarary (February) forever now? 

No, I said, that’s not how the ozone layer works.

What’s the ozone layer? she asked. 

I thought for a moment and said it was like a big blanket of air that covered the whole world.

She asked, kind of like the storm?

Yes, I said. Like the storm.

And the knock at my door came at eight, three crisp melodious raps; I opened the door and there you were. You were wearing loafers and had goosebumps on your arms, you’d been all over town, you said, you had a meeting in the 60s at 11 and practically had to part the Red Sea of pedestrians rushing to see the Second Coming of Jack Frost to get to the penthouse office where your meeting was, and they weren’t running the subway for half the day because of the snow, but you did get to see it and it was pretty surreal, you’d stood under the clouds and caught a snowflake on your tongue, big enough to chew with your molars. It was really quite ridiculous, everyone was in shorts, and did I see it? You’d just come for your coat. 

I asked if you wanted to stay for a little while. It was summer but I could make hot chocolate. You said you did, which you don’t often do. I looked you in the eyes and said I’d knitted a blanket, big and bright gray. You asked if the storm was mine; I said that it was. You looked at me exasperatedly. I told you that I had always liked weather, you said the snow had made your hair frizzy, and that I was very funny, though I didn't think I was and I didn't think you thought so either.

You asked why. I said that I was cold. So, you asked, we all had to be cold, too? 

Elise shuffled out of her room in her snow pants and her puffy jacket and a red beanie with a pom-pom and said that she wasn’t cold, see? You laughed and I got your coat from where you’d left it in March and you put it on. Somewhere far away (in the bedroom perhaps) a window blew open and you could hear the Evangelists shouting. Elise asked for hot chocolate and we huddled like penguins around the burner where the milk was simmering.

The snow stopped at 8:45. The clouds dissipated almost instantly, wiped away by the evening breeze, dissolved in the humid air. The National Weather Service took samples of the precipitation and drove away in white vans. Fourteen of the twenty samples melted along the way and arrived in Westchester as dirty water. July snow became a commodity. For months it sold for hundreds of dollars on eBay. I helped Elise freeze a snowball for the winter. I put a jar in the back of the icebox, in case you are ever gone for long, in case you ever forget your coat.