Orla glanced around the living room, with its recently painted gray walls and white trim, on her way to Shaw’s studio. They’d thought the paint would mask or absorb the aroma of wood smoke. They hadn’t used the wood-burning stove yet—squat and animalistic, its territory a corner of the room upon a bed of bricks. But the decades of its use lingered in the hardwood floors, the ceilings. Their sleeper-sofa and ugly-but-comfy plaid chair, end tables, lamps, and bookcase were in place, along with the currently lifeless smart TV. But a large percentage of their unopened boxes were stacked against the interior wall, filled with books, framed pictures, knickknacks, random clothing, and most of the kitchen stuff. Her eyes appraised it all, seeking among the boxes one long enough to hold the guns.
Shaw’s door was wide open and she found him at the front-facing window, gazing outward. Though Eleanor Queen might physically resemble her mother, in other ways—her sensitivity—she was very much her father’s daughter. The look on Shaw’s face was like Eleanor Queen’s that afternoon, trying to decode their new surroundings.
“Did you hear me?” she asked softly, hesitant to startle him from his trance.
“Yes, no…” He blinked and turned to her.
“The guns.” Orla couldn’t quite decide if she was being paranoid. But a practical part of her knew the search had a valid purpose. “We don’t have the locker yet.”
“No, no, don’t worry. They’re in here.” Shaw nodded toward the studio closet and reached out to take her hand. “I figured the kids wouldn’t be in here anyway, so they’re up on the shelf for now. I can get one in Plattsburgh in a few days, or order one next week.”
Orla nodded, not relieved. She couldn’t really imagine either of her children dragging over a step stool to root around for a weapon in their father’s personal space. But how many families had made similar assumptions and been proved wrong? Another part of her didn’t want the guns hidden at all but stashed on hooks above the front door—wasn’t that how they did it in Westerns? So the hero could grab one when the bad guys rode up?
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Shaw placed a hand on one of her cheeks and kissed the other, his body pressed like a shadow against hers.
“I don’t feel…completely safe,” she admitted.
“What do you think’s gonna happen?” He asked the question with gentle concern.
She shrugged. “Bears?”
They stepped back, arms around each other’s waist, and stood facing his studio. Orla’s eyes wandered around, taking in the progress of his unpacking. Maybe it was all the extra space, but the new place was already having one positive effect on him: everything was so tidy and well organized. His guitars, an acoustic and a hollow-body electric, sentenced to a life of confinement in their apartment, now stood on display in one corner beside his small amp. He’d set his easel next to the front-facing window and a blank canvas stood at the ready. His paintings were leaning behind the door, their images toward the wall. His petite, once-cluttered desk sat by the smaller window, and set atop it were his laptop and a half-empty box marked PAINTING STUFF. On the floor, still sealed, was a box labeled PHOTOS ’N’ STUFF and two liquor boxes that she knew held his CDs.
Back in their old apartment, his “stuff” had been crammed into every available space in the living room, which, true to its name, was where they’d done all their living—eating, watching, reading, creating, playing, sleeping. Here, his things didn’t need to be stashed on top of bookcases or stacked in a corner like a Jenga game. Orla gasped, seeing something for the first time: No wonder he’d struggled to stick with things; their home had been the opposite of inspiring. It had been a mess.
“This is great,” she said. A tiny bit jealous, she wanted to put a portable barre on her online-shopping list. Maybe they could set it up in the living room and she’d have a place to do pliés, ronds de jambe, développés. While he developed his craft, she didn’t want to lose her finely tuned body. “I can see it. The light will be great during the day…this is the room—the space—you’ve needed.”
“It is.” He grinned, then grew serious again as he looked at her. “Are you really worried about bears?”
“Maybe. I saw that list. On Julie and Walker’s fridge. All the animals and their hunting seasons. Bears. Bobcats. Coyotes.”
“Well, I’ve got my license; I can shoot them if they get too close. And there are lots of harmless animals too. Deer. Geese. Frogs.” He gave her a little squeeze. A grin. Another peck on the cheek. But his efforts to relieve her worries didn’t work. Orla’s gaze remained fixed on the front window, on the dark mysteries lurking beyond the thin membrane. What had he sensed out there? The same thing their daughter had? “You’re really worried,” he said.
He stepped into her line of sight, and she returned to the present, the room.
“I just don’t…this is all foreign to me. Am I going to walk out the door and find a bear in the yard? Are people going to be hunting on our property? Is it safe for the kids to play outside?”
“Whoa, whoa, hold up. This is the place where it’s safe. This is where no one gets mugged. Pedestrians don’t get run over by asshole drivers. Construction cranes don’t fall over and crush people; buildings don’t collapse. And Homeland Security isn’t crawling everywhere with armed guards. I know you’re not used to it, but this—this isn’t what’s frightening about the world. Okay?” He was so lovingly sincere.
“I know. I mean, a part of me knows.” She wrapped her arms around his neck.
He swayed with her, the two of them moving from foot to foot as they often did when they embraced.
“It’s a big change,” he said, his lips tingling against her ear. “But I wouldn’t have suggested this if I didn’t think you, the kids, would thrive here. Bean might come out of her shell a little. And Tycho—I loved having this as my backyard when I was growing up. And you.” He pulled away a little to look her in the eye. “It wasn’t just a selfish suggestion on my part—”
“I didn’t think that.”
“Not even a teeny-tiny—”
“Okay, well, there were moments, but not in a bad way, truly—”
“I know.” His smile reminded her that sometimes he could read her mind. “I was hoping…I thought it might be hard for you to be in the city, which has always been about ballet—why you went there, why you stayed. I thought it might be harder to be retired and still there. Everything would be a reminder. I didn’t want you to feel…a loss. This is a completely new chapter. You can be a new person; no one’s going to ask you every time they see you if you miss it.”
She hugged him tight. He’d always had the capacity to astonish her. “Thank you. I guess, with the flurry of preparations, I haven’t really figured out what I’m going to do. Next.” She leaned back a little, fingered his paint-streaked hair. “I mean, be with the kids more. Help Eleanor Queen with her schooling this year. Maybe, if you strike it big, I can be your personal assistant.”
“I like that!” His fiddly hands tapped a rhythm on her hips as he bellowed an impromptu aria: “My canvases you’ll stretch, and my brushes you will fetch—”
“I was thinking more of scheduling your interviews and answering your fan mail.”
“Now you’re talking.” He gave her a loud smack of a kiss on the lips.
Orla released him, watching as he went to his desk, scooped more tubes of paint from the box, seemingly without a worry in the world.
“But just in case,” she said, downplaying how important it felt, “could you teach me how to shoot?”
Up early the next morning, bothered by the downstairs mess, Orla stacked glassware and mugs in an upper cabinet, enjoying the challenge of making little or no noise. She smiled as she put away her favorite mug. Covered with crooked hearts, Eleanor Queen had painted it as a six-year-old for a Mother’s Day gift. It was extra-special for the memories it evoked: Shaw arranging furtive trips to the Paint-a-Pottery shop in the days when he took baby Tycho everywhere in a kangaroo carrier. Some of her “memories” were things described to her by Shaw, moments she’d missed when the children were little. Now she wouldn’t miss any more of those moments.
The kitchen, though fully functional and with lots of counter space, had no appliances younger than thirty years old. But the linoleum floor had recently been replaced with tile, and the rustic cabinets were hickory with antique door pulls that she rather liked. The real estate agent had told her the original kitchen had been half the size and with a much lower ceiling, as if the fact that it had been worse fifty years ago made its current state a selling point. Once they got a proper table and matching chairs, it would be a homey place to prepare and eat their meals. Though first they needed to get something to stop the draft that was leaking in under the back door. The cold air swirled around her ankles, made her feel like something mischievous was grinning as it tickled her.
Upstairs, a door squeaked open, the sound followed by a shriek. “Papa! Mama! We got ten feet of snow!”
Orla chuckled. Another door squealed on its hinges—probably Tycho expecting to find her in bed beside Shaw. She imagined Shaw with the pillow folded over his ear, his preferred position for sleeping.
“Ten feet, Papa! Ten feet!”
She heard a rumbly, deep voice but couldn’t decipher Shaw’s reply. A moment later, Tycho came galloping down the stairs. “Mama!”
“In here, love.”
He raced into the kitchen. “We got ten feet of snow!”
Orla scooped her little boy into her arms. She carried him on her hip and went to look out the living room’s front window, where she could get a better sense of the accumulation. Snow covered the first two of the four steps leading up to the porch.
“I think maybe…ten inches? Twelve? Maybe a little deeper where it drifted?” she said.
Shaw lurched down the stairs in sleepy thuds, pulling on his raggedy tartan bathrobe. “Please, tell me we didn’t get ten feet—that wasn’t in the forecast.”
“Inches, not feet,” Orla assured him.
Eleanor Queen came down next, nimble as a sprite. She sprang on her toes toward the window, rested her fingertips on the glass.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“Beautiful, huh?” Shaw asked, untangling the sleep nests from his daughter’s hair.
The previous day’s clouds of doom, depleted of their heavy burden, had dissipated. Orla couldn’t explain it, but the house felt more solid in the sunshine with a blue sky above. The snow, now that it wasn’t whipping through the air, looked less menacing. It struck her that the place was welcoming them, laying out its blanket of white wonder, enfolding them in its charm.
“What do you say I make us a nice hearty breakfast,” she said, “then we go play in the snow!”
Both of the children cheered. Shaw gave his toothy grin.
The children had played in snow before, of course, in the trampled communal spaces of the city’s parks. But never in their own yard. They’d never been able to build something that would last unmolested until they went to play again.
“We can make a snowman,” Tycho said.
“A snow woman,” said Eleanor Queen.
“A snow dragon!” Shaw roared. Tycho hopped down from Orla’s arms so he could join his sister as their father chased them around the room, roaring.
Orla caught that flicker again of a moment from the past. The family home. Her father making her little brother laugh. Though none of them ever chased delicate Otto, lest he stumble and break.