XXI

A few particularly nasty snow days followed, or what the news described as a “historic blizzard.” At least two feet of snow were scheduled to fall, closing schools, disrupting electricity in some areas, and severely hampering travel. All over the Northeast families stocked up on groceries as they prepared for a momentary lockdown.

Throughout the first night a whisper of snowflakes fell quietly—almost disappointing in their gentleness after the panic-stricken forecasts. But the snow proved constant, relentless, and soon it was no longer picturesque but draining in its persistence, burying the city and trapping them in their apartment alone, just the three of them.

By morning, the snow had swallowed parked cars and continued to fall slowly, thoughtfully. They went down to the lobby. The doorman had not been able to make it to work, and so it was chilly and quiet, the lights over the concierge desk switched off. They looked out at the street, at the bleached landscape enveloping them, like the glare of an atom bomb. The nearby trees were barely discernible against the white, branches pointing at them like fingers.

Jonathan’s school had closed and so the Christmas play was canceled, which sent him into a sulk. It frustrated Mrs. March, too, that the costume she had worked so hard to get the seamstress to finish on time would never be seen by the other children’s mothers, who surely hadn’t made their sons’ and daughters’ costumes from three yards of the finest merino wool (Jonathan was to play a bear in an original play written by his ambitious English teacher about forest animals attempting to bolster the spirits of an insecure fir tree).

Christmas dinners were called off, and theirs was no exception. Mrs. March’s sister called from the airport—all the flights from Washington were canceled—and promised to make it for New Year’s Eve instead. George’s mother, afraid to brave the storm, refused to attempt the trip from Park Slope.

The situation was further exacerbated by Martha’s absence. Mrs. March tried coaxing her over the phone but Martha firmly insisted there was no way she could even make it to the nearest subway station. In an alarming bout of joviality, George offered to prepare Christmas Eve dinner for them. “There’s a whole chicken in the fridge,” he said cheerfully, as if this solved everything.

The chicken dripped pink into the sink as George held it by the drumsticks so that it looked like a headless baby dangling from its arms. Mrs. March watched her husband’s fingers stroke the edges of the cavity, watched them tugging at the folds. He bent over the chicken greedily, almost intoxicated, biting his lower lip with something akin to arousal as his glasses reflected his fisted hand pushing its way into the cavity and wrenching out the purplish liver, the heart. Slick and bloated like leeches.

The three of them sat through a quiet Christmas Eve dinner, during which Mrs. March spit out half-chewed chicken discreetly into her napkin as she wiped her mouth with each bite. Afterwards she threw the soiled cloth into the trash.

Christmas Day came and went. Jonathan seemed happy enough with his train set, and George gave Mrs. March a very expensive-looking camel scarf. Vicuna wool, said George. As he handed it to her, their fingers brushed. She beamed at him while making a mental note to scour his book for any mention of Johanna wearing a camel vicuna wool scarf.

TO MAKE LIGHT of their predicament, they pretended that they were prisoners, ambling on all fours through the living room and hiding behind furniture from their mysterious captor (played by George). As the hours rolled on, like unabating waves, Mrs. March began to really consider herself a prisoner and a rash as red as watermelon pulp sprouted across her neck. There was no need for them to attempt to leave the building as they had all the provisions they could possibly need, and the blizzard was scheduled to clear in a couple of days, and yet with every passing hour she found it harder to believe that their confinement would end, that she would return to her reassuring routines—to the street, to the dry cleaner’s, to buy olive bread.

She began to look forward to any event, no matter how small, to serve as a minor disruption in the monotony. Preparing afternoon tea was now one of the most exhilarating moments of the day. Sometimes she thought she saw spiders rustling inside the teabags—once she inspected a hairy leg poking through the muslin, which turned out to be a green tea leaf.

Jonathan periodically went up to the Millers’ to play with Alec, or Alec came down to their apartment. Their giggles seeped under the closed door of Jonathan’s bedroom, sometimes sounding like there were more people in there.

Meanwhile George spent hours alone in his study or watching television—Jimmy Stewart’s bumbling words resonating across the apartment as he unraveled in black and white.

She recalled having read—in a curious little library book abandoned in one of the bathroom stalls of her dorm—about the Peggy, a sailboat stranded in the Atlantic in the eighteenth century. Drifting aimlessly at sea, all their provisions exhausted, eating buttons and leather, the men decided to draw lots. The “custom of the sea.” She pictured the hunger, the claustrophobia, the hopelessness of it all. The truth dawning on the men that they were slowly going crazy, and there was nothing they could do to keep it at bay, their vision registering nothing but an endless sea and the same haunted, hollow faces of the remaining crew in the wooden bowels of the ship.

Mrs. March wondered, if it came to that, whether she and George would be capable of eating their own child in order to survive, or whether George and Jonathan would turn on her.

SHE WAS SITTING on the edge of the bathtub one evening, swatting at an irritating fly she kept hearing but could never see. The buzzing was constant, the fly blowing raspberries at her failed attempts to find it.

She reached over to the faucet, paused. There was something in the tub. Unmoving. She blinked. A dead pigeon. Wings outstretched, its scaled, metallic-green neck twisted. Its eyes bright amber. She wanted to touch them. She didn’t think she’d ever seen one this close before. Tenderly, she cooed at it.

Thrilled at the thought of this new, exciting thing, she scampered to the living room to inform George. “I’m afraid there’s a dead pigeon in our bathtub, dear,” she said, whispering in George’s ear, for Jonathan was sprawled on the floor watching television, and she did not want him to overhear and tamper with the carcass.

“Really?” said George, closing his newspaper.

“Do you think you could get rid of it?” she asked. “I can’t bear to touch it.”

And so George rolled up his sleeves and headed toward their bedroom to take care of the bird.

“What are you watching, Jonathan?” Mrs. March asked. Jonathan shrugged, not even turning to look at her.

Mrs. March picked up the newspaper George had been reading and, folding it, saw it was dated the day before the snowstorm. “Honey,” George called to her from their bedroom, “come here for a moment.”

She found George standing, hands on his hips, over the bathtub. He turned to her. “There’s nothing here.”

Mrs. March stepped over and looked down. The tub was pristine white, clean, completely unblemished—not a drop of blood or a hint of feather remained. She looked up at the small window above the tub. It was closed. She tried to remember whether it had been open before.

She brought her hands to her face. “It . . . it was here just seconds ago.”

“Maybe it flew back out.”

“No, no—” She wanted to explain how that couldn’t possibly be, how this all rather frightened her, but she stopped herself and looked over at George, who was scrutinizing her, his eyes beady behind his glasses, his hands in his pockets. She chewed her thumb.

“Maybe you’re just tired,” George said, with a hint of caution, “cooped up in here all this time.”

She stared blankly at George. He stared back.

“Yes,” she said. “Probably.”

SHE CONSIDERED the possibility that George was torturing her. Having his sick fun with her. Or maybe the pigeon had been a warning to her to back off.

On the last evening of their confinement, as she was making her way to the bedroom for the night, she heard a brusque laugh coming from the living room. She walked in cautiously to find George sitting by himself in his favorite armchair, drinking a glass of whisky.

“What’s so funny?” she said, clenching in case he had been laughing at her.

“I was just remembering something my father used to say . . .”

“What did he used to say?”

He looked at her, shaking his whisky, the ice cubes rolling around, clinking against the glass. “I forgot,” he said, smirking. “Oops.”

She turned to leave, when George said, “He wasn’t a very funny man, my father.”

Relieved that this didn’t seem to concern her, Mrs. March loosened the belt of her robe and, exhaling, decided to engage. “Well,” she said. “Didn’t he struggle with diabetes most of his life?”

“Yes. It was horrible. He didn’t take care of it. Couldn’t feel the gangrene setting in. His skin was like graphite. The infection spread to the bone. It came to a point where they just started cutting away at him, little by little. You know, the first story I ever wrote was about his first amputation. ‘Handful of Toes.’ ” He chuckled, then his features darkened. “Sometimes I find inspiration in the most horrible things. Do you think that makes me a bad person?”

Mrs. March looked down at George, at his searching, unreadable eyes, at his ambiguous smile that always seemed to mock her intelligence. “No . . .” she said softly.

He took her hand, rubbing her wedding band.

“You always see the best in me,” he said. He fiddled with a hangnail on her finger, then brought her hand to his lips and nibbled it off, gently.