A Knock at the Door

The day was a chill winter one, with snow coming down in the steady way that covers a city street in a thick comforter of childhood memory. There were few people outside, with most shoveling or running some errand that couldn’t wait for the storm to clear. I, like most sensible people, preferred to stay inside. 

There’s something about the cold that always made me happy as a child; it might have been the holidays or the way the cold air allowed a person to swaddle themselves like a baby. I used to think it made one feel more alive, and I suppose that was true, up to a point, because the cold has a way of laying your own warm heartbeat in stark relief against the leeching wind. But as the years have gone by, I’ve been less inclined to seek out reminders of my own mortality, and preferred the comfort of a heated living room to a snow covered field. 

I’d been in the middle of a putting together a presentation for a client on the quickest way to build market share in the biomedical industry when I heard a knock on the door. Immediately, my body tensed; I knew the weather would keep people from visiting and almost nobody visited me on a good day. My mother and father were the most frequent visitors before they passed, and now a couple friends were all that was left to disturb me.

“Who’s there?” I called out, and received another knock at the door in reply. “What do you want?” I tried again as I moved closer to the door.

“To talk.” The voice was young, much younger than anyone I normally associated with, and sounded muffled. I crept closer to the door and waited for more signs of who it might be. All I heard was snow crunching as little feet shuffled in the accumulation on my step. When I opened the door, the sight that greeted me was a boy, no more than twelve, bundled into a yellow coat that touched a vague memory in my mind. He looked up at me with pale blue eyes that mirrored my own. A scarf and hat hid most of his face, and the coat, his boots, and gloves obscured the rest of him, but the eyes held me in a way I couldn’t explain. I’d never met someone with the same shade as me, complete with the tiny flecks of pale green that the summer light could easily catch and change the look of the iris completely when the season came.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Yes,” the boy said, his voice not yet cracked. “Follow me.” He turned and began to walk down the path that led to my front door. Halfway to the curb he turned back to me, then beckoned for me to follow him. He waited, and after a moment, I grabbed my coat off the rack by the door and went out to follow him. 

He led me along the street to a park that was completely empty. The ground was too flat for sledders, and the park itself was too small for any good snowball fight. The only defining feature in the snow was the presence of a swing set that had held on to its accumulation over the evening, and looked like a great frosted cake. The boy went right into the middle and began rolling a snowball around, the ball growing larger the longer the boy rolled it along around in the grass.

“What are you doing?” I asked after a few minutes of watching the boy.

“Building a snowman,” the boy said.

“Why?”

“Because I want to see what it looks like,” he said simply.

“Haven’t you seen a photo of one?” I asked.

“Yes.” 

“Then why make one?”

“Because I want to.” The boy had finished rolling the base of the snowman and began working on the middle section.

“But…why?” I asked. The boy stopped and turned to me.

“I already told you: because I want to.” 

“But what’s the reason you want to?” I asked. The boy cocked his head to the side, his blue eyes studying me from over his scarf.

“Adults are so boring,” he said at last.

“Why?

“Because they’re always asking that question, even when I tell them the answer. They don’t know how to let something be.” The boy turned back to the snowman’s torso he was making. I continued to watch him for a moment longer before going to help lift the torso onto the base, as the boy struggled with the weight of the ball.

We made the head together, searching for twigs and stones to make up the face and arms. When we were finished, the boy admired our work in the light of the setting sun. For the first time, I checked my watch and realized just how much time I’d spent. I looked at the boy a moment, and saw he was trying to warm his hands by blowing on them. “Shouldn’t you be getting home?”

“No. Not yet.” The hours of daylight were fading quickly.

“Won’t your parents worry? It’s not safe for children to wander alone.”

“They know where I am. They wanted me to be here anyway.”

“Why?” I asked. The boy turned to study me again with his blue eyes flecked with green.

“I’m cold,” he said, and began blowing on his hands again. I waited to see if there was any further information forthcoming, and eventually said:

“Come one.” The boy followed without a word, and we made our way along the street. We entered my house through the back door which opened onto the kitchen. I immediately began to prepare some hot cocoa for the boy while he tried unpacking himself from his coat. When I turned around, though, he was simply standing there, looking around the kitchen which I’d had custom designed by a firm out in San Francisco. “Do you need help taking your coat off?”

“No,” the boy said, continuing to look everywhere but at me. “I like your kitchen.”

“Thanks,” I said, leaning against the marble counter top, watching the boy take everything in. 

“Is the rest of your home like this?”

“Like what?” I asked. The boy just held out his arms, indicating the whole of the room.

“Like…this. Beautiful.”

“I…think so,” I said, looking around the room and unsure what exactly I should say. The room had become a part of the house, another common area that I barely thought about anymore. “If you want to take your coat and boots off, I can show you around.”

“No, that’s ok,” the boy said, shaking his head. “I trust you.” After a moment, he turned his eyes to me, and despite being muffled behind a scarf, I swore he smiled. “It seems we did alright, didn’t we?” he said at last. I looked at the boy, unsure how to respond. Then, the kettle began to sing. I turned to shut the burner off and when I returned my attention to the boy, he’d disappeared, leaving nothing save a damp puddle where he’d been standing a moment before.