Black Heart, Ivory Bones

You, Little Match-girl JOYCE CAROL OATES

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prolific and respected writers in the United States. She has written fiction in almost every genre and medium. Her keen interest in the Gothic and psychological horror has spurred her to write dark suspense novels under the name Rosamond Smith, with enough stories in the genre to have published four collections of dark fiction, the most recent being The Collector of Hearts, and to edit American Gothic Tales. Oates’s short novel Zombie won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in the Novel, and she has been honored with a Life Achievement Award given by the Horror Writers Association. Oates’s short fiction has often been reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her most recent novel is My Heart Laid Bare.

She was a lonely girl but her loneliness was hidden by her pride in her accomplishments, as a gnarled thicket can hide even the blazing sun. So she became a young woman without comprehending the depth of her aloneness. At crucial times she warned herself in a calm, reasonable voice, If I love no one I am free. So long as I love no one, I can travel where I wish. I can become anyone I wish.

And so it was, and so it came to be.

Already as a bright, secretive child thinking her own thoughts as her parents smiled at her, kissed and hugged her, took pride in her (for even as a very small child she was obviously intelligent, sharp-eyed, talented), as her grandmother cuddled and sang to her, she understood that she could become anyone she wished. You have only to shut your eyes, hurry down a shadowy corridor to a doorway shimmering with light — and cross the threshold. It was Grandma who sang Mother Goose songs to her, “The Fairy Ship,” “Jack and Jill,” “Three Blind Mice,” “Humpty Dumpty”—she laughed at the comical illustration of the bland, bald, egg-faced Humpty Dumpty teetering on his wall — and, when she was very sleepy, and couldn’t keep her eyes open (though trying! she’d been eager to emulate grown-ups from the cradle onward) “Rock-a-Bye Baby.” It was Grandma who read to her from her favorite book, tales beginning Once upon a time … which excited and enthralled her, the stories of “Snow White,” “The Frog Prince,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Little Match-Girl,” “Cinderella.” One day she would learn that the tales in this book were not the original, harsh tales but tales with happy endings: Once upon a time would lead eventually, reassuringly, to And they lived happily ever after. The illustrations were vividly colored and fascinating, her favorites were Little Red Riding Hood with bouncy chestnut curls and bright red cloak, and the brave woodsman with his red shirt, bristly black beard, and upraised ax hurrying to kill the wolf and save Little Red Riding Hood; and Cinderella in her dazzling white gown, the fairest of all the land, a glittering glass slipper on her upraised foot; and the Twelve Dancing Princesses who were so secretive and obstinate, even their father the King couldn’t tell them what to do. She did not like the Frog Prince, who too much resembled a comic-strip frog with bulging eyes, nor did she like the Little Match-Girl, who was so ragged, hunched over, sad. You can make yourself anyone you wish, why then make yourself sad? Shut your eyes, run down the secret corridor, step over the threshold and you can be a princess, a queen, Puss-in-Boots, Jack climbing the beanstalk, Goldilocks who dares to enter the house of the Three Bears but wins their love and admiration anyway. You can imagine yourself anywhere, in any remote kingdom by the sea or in the mountains. Many centuries ago, or centuries into the future dwelling among a race of beings like angels. My choice! Mine.

Then abruptly, overnight it seemed to her family, she lost all interest in fairy tales and childish things. She began school, she discovered school books and the excitement of pleasing her teachers, no longer her parents, or Grandma. Of course she loved her parents, and she loved Grandma, who was so nice to her, but it was her teachers she admired, respected, wished to emulate. And how she succeeded! — it was like a fairy tale, how she became a “star”—and the other children, even the prettier girls, even the boys, were made to envy her. And so, one day, when she was in sixth grade, in a burst of energy she cleared out her shelves of her oldest books, most of them gifts from Grandma she hadn’t glanced into in years — out went battered Mother Goose, out went Favorite Fairy Tales with the stained, warped cover that had once slipped into the bath, out went Tales of Hans Christian Andersen—out! Grandma was surprised and hurt, but she decided not to care. For she was on her way to growing up. Becoming who I really am.

Even before her twentieth birthday she’d begun to travel, to England, to Europe, to Northern Africa, to Turkey. By the age of thirty she’d traveled to the Far East, including Tibet and Afghanistan. Sometimes she traveled with companions, students like herself, but more often she went alone; or, starting out in the company of others, splitting off on her own. She was a photojournalist: her province was what was real. She had no patience for fantasy, for wishful thinking in any guise — political, religious, literary. She was an attractive woman, but an air of impatience and something vaguely sneering in her manner rebuffed men, and discouraged women from befriending her. If I love no one, I am free. So long as I love no one. Looking back upon her childhood, she felt a stab of embarrassment, and scorn. No one in her family had been educated beyond high school; not one of her relatives, including her cousins, had ventured much beyond the territory (rural Maine, west of Skowhegan) of their childhoods. She recalled the old fairy tales her grandmother had read to her, tales of people so strangely fated. Yet, in real life, only fools are fated.

By the age of thirty-five she’d realized her dream of establishing an international reputation as a photojournalist of the highest integrity and professional skill, and she liked it very much, though she was never boastful, that her work commanded the highest fees as well. She was known for her remarkable reliability: alone among her competitors, whose personal lives were often stormy, she seemed never to allow personal problems (if she had any, these were kept secret even from friends) to interfere with her work. She’d been out of contact with relatives, photographing Tibetan monks, when her grandmother had died; when her father died unexpectedly, she’d been traveling in Lebanon, and hadn’t even known of his death until twelve days later; but when her mother became gravely ill, she was in Berlin as a fellow of the Berlin Institute, and easily accessible, so when she received a telegram from one of her mother’s sisters she had no choice but to fly home. What a time for this to happen. What bad luck. Her emotions were confused — anger, fear, even a touch of panic. As if she were a high-flying bird enthralled by her natural element the sky, oblivious of Earth, caught suddenly in a net and hauled back to the ground. Her German colleagues believed that Maine must be a romantic place, like America of the nineteenth century, and she told them flatly that it was not romantic at all—“Except at a distance of thousands of miles.” Yet when she arrived at the Skowhegan airport with its single runway, and was met by relatives she hadn’t seen in years, and taken to the hospital to see her mother, whom she hadn’t seen in years, she was astonished at the rawness of her emotion. Her mother so aged, so frail, so exhausted by her long ordeal of surgery — it was as if her heart were wrenched from her. “Mother! — Mommy.” She burst into childlike tears and had to be consoled by her relatives, and even by her mother.

After her mother’s death she took upon herself the task of shutting up the old house. Which she insisted upon doing alone. The farmhouse and five-acre property were hers but she wanted to prepare the furniture for storage since she intended to sell the house, and hoped to put things as much in order as possible before returning to Berlin. To my own life. My life. Her relatives were advising her not to sell so quickly, maybe one day she’d want to return, perhaps to spend part of a summer, but she was emphatically against this, no it wasn’t a good idea, returning to Maine had no part in her plans for the future. I will travel where I wish. Become anyone I wish. In truth she’d been deeply moved by the experience of returning. Deeply shaken by her mother’s death. And by the realization that she’d missed her father’s death, and her grandmother’s death, as if a strange spell had been cast over her, she’d been asleep for most of her life. What had she been thinking of? The familiar refrain taunted her, If I love no one. So long as I love no one. Never before had she detected its flat jeering tone, like struck tin.

She was desperate to be gone. Her emotions were too raw here. She couldn’t trust herself. Her mother had been hospitalized in mid-November, had died in early December as the days rapidly shortened and the hours of darkness lengthened like shadows pushing out of the snow-encrusted earth. And it was cold, bitter cold. She’d forgotten how cold. Almost, she felt panic at being snowed-in — stranded in the country. As if there weren’t snowplows! As if this weren’t a civilized place. As if she hadn’t lived through many winters here, along with everyone else. Yet she was eager to be back in Berlin by Christmas if not earlier. The house and property would be managed by an agent. She’d agreed to sell for any reasonable price. She refused to listen to her relatives. No! I have no plans to return. In truth she was shocked at how distraught she’d been by her mother’s death, and memories of the past that flooded upon her, she who’d told herself and others since college that she hadn’t been close to anyone in her family, she’d been intellectually “estranged” from them. Yet seeing her relatives again, particularly her cousins, had been quite moving. Driving Cuttler’s Mill Road into Skowhegan, those nine miles of countryside she would not have known she’d memorized, was hypnotic. As if somewhere along the way I might encounter Daddy driving our old Plymouth, with Mommy beside him, Grandma and me in the backseat. That child-face peering from a rear window.

How strange, whether wonderful or ominous she didn’t know, that the countryside west of Skowhegan hadn’t changed much in the past fifteen years. Names on farmers’ mailboxes were familiar—Cosgrove, Thorndike, Ward, Proctor. (She’d imagined herself in love, in her covert, distant way, with one of the Proctor boys, her senior by two or three years.) An older generation had passed away, her own generation had inherited and come into maturity.

But she was desperate to be gone. She wasn’t a superstitious person like a surprising number of her fellow photojournalists, but she believed she must leave Maine by December 21, the winter solstice. She made flight arrangements to leave on the twentieth. She’d nearly completed packing cartons, shutting up the old house. She’d been sleeping in her old room, no other room felt quite comfortable to her, and by the morning of the twentieth she was in a state of nerves for there was a traveler’s advisory against driving in central and northern Maine for the next twelve hours, the first severe blizzard of the winter was expected. Her flight didn’t leave Skowhegan until four P.M. but she decided to lock up the house, throw her things into her car (her mother’s car, which she would be leaving with her aunt in town) and drive out before noon. Already it had begun to snow — light, feathery snowflakes. There were patches, still, of pale blue sky. The winter sun had shone coldly and thinly that morning. Yet as she drove, she glanced anxiously upward to see clouds massed and ominous as malignancies; she felt her car rock in sporadic gusts of wind; snow by the roadside was lifted in coils and skeins, flung snakelike into the path of her car, and onto her windshield; there were few other cars on the road, their headlights looming up ghostly in the deepening dusk. Not yet midday, and already it was dusk. If I can make it to the edge of Skowhegan at least. To that Sunoco station. Then I will be safe. Snow burst out of the air in a delirium of faded white, if white can be faded. Even in her headlights this white looked discolored, like old ivory. She understood that her flight to Bangor in a twin-prop plane would be cancelled, but at least she’d be in town and could stay the night at a motel near the airport and fly out tomorrow. Or the next day. From Bangor she would be flying to Kennedy, and from Kennedy direct to Berlin, she’d made such careful plans, always she made such careful plans, she was a woman who’d planned her life with care, and she had made for herself a success in the vast world beyond her childhood. That world is there, awaiting me. I’m coming! Though the narrow road was icy in patches, and the wind had grown stronger, snow rushing thicker and more blinding into the feeble path of her headlights, she pressed her foot down harder on the gas pedal; gripped the steering wheel until her fingers seemed frozen to it. As if by such force she might hold the speeding, suddenly skidding car on the road.

She heard a cry—“No! No!” A child’s hurt, incredulous voice.

For it was so unfair.

Waking in a haze of muted white, a delirium of swirling white, pain wracking her upper chest, a terrible roaring in her ears — for some dazed minutes she didn’t know where she was.

Then she remembered. Her mother’s car. On the way to Skowhegan.

Without the safety belt I would have been killed! My neck broken. Skull broken. Flung against the windshield. Through the windshield. As in the old days before such safety features — people must have been injured, killed, in such accidents all the time. Shaken, crushed and broken like silly dolls. This was the tale she would tell others, the tone of the tale. If you’re disinclined to self-pity and feel uncomfortable speaking of a car accident in which you’d nearly died (but wasn’t that an exaggeration? she hadn’t nearly died), you can speak elliptically, with a dry, detached humor. For she’d broken her collarbone with her desperate driving, and her head ached so she was nearly blind, nose and mouth dripping blood that wasn’t red (for it was dark inside the car, overturned in a snowdrift in a ditch) but oddly black, greasy to the touch. Her thoughts came in a blur that roared like the wind. Oh! oh! oh. My God. What have I done? Groping panicked in the glove compartment where the flashlight was kept, her father’s old, rusted flashlight — yes, she found it, and yes, there came a beam of light when she forced the switch.

How frugal Daddy had been, they’d teased him, reluctant to part with old things like this flashlight — decades old.

She would climb out of the capsized car, get help on the road. Yet in the next instant she was overcome by drowsiness, sleep — there was some confusion about time, between the moment when she’d realized the car was skidding out of control on a curve (but it hadn’t been her fault, she would insist to the insurance company it had been the wind, gale-force winds, that seemed to lift her car and fling it off the road as a vengeful giant might have done) and the moment she forced her eyelids open, in a stab of panic realizing I will die if I sleep here: I will freeze to death.

Maybe she was in a state of shock. Things came to her oddly, in broken pieces. Comprehending the cold, for instance. The car’s motor had died, the heater was dead. Already her breath steamed, thinly. Her body temperature was dropping — was it? Before leaving her parents’ house she’d walked guiltily through the downstairs rooms a final time and paused to stare out the kitchen window at the rusted thermometer beside the wild bird feeder. Seeing with a shudder that it was –12° F. And now with the ferocious wind it might have been as cold as –30° F.

So unfair! She could have wept with hurt, disappointment, rage, except she had no time. She was grunting, struggling to get the car door open. A wedge of snow, obscuring most of the window, surprisingly heavy for newly fallen powdery snow. Her chest throbbed with pain, a network of flashing pain, her heartbeat was quickened and erratic, yet by desperate force she managed to get the door open a few inches, push herself through the narrow space, and out — into more snow, swirling snow, icy stinging particles of snow like buckshot. She was gripping the flashlight. It was all she could carry from the car, her belongings would have to be left behind temporarily, even her expensive Japanese camera, her handbag with numerous airline tickets.

At least it was good luck: her mother’s lightweight, compact car had listed toward its right side, leaving the driver’s side relatively clear of snow. Otherwise she might have perished in the freezing dark.

But she was safe. Stumbling in the snow like a drunken woman, limping, waving the flashlight and calling, “Help? Help me?”—though there were no headlights in sight, no lights of any kind. The beam of light was stronger than she’d dared hope. With luck it would penetrate the near-opaque wall of falling snow. If there’s anyone to see it. Anyone for miles. She seemed to know she wasn’t behaving altogether rationally but she wasn’t sure what was wrong. Cupping a hand to her mouth, calling, “Help! I’m here! I’ve been injured!” But where exactly was the road? Her mother’s car had skidded, slid into a drainage ditch that must have been four feet deep at least, when not drifted with snow, but which direction had it come from? She blinked, wiped at her eyes — all was white, faded white, a white of shadows, drifting driving snow like sand. She was in the Sahara during a sandstorm. She was lost in the Himalayas, in a sudden unexpected blizzard. But no: she was on the Cuttler’s Mill Road only a few miles from the shut-up house. There was a farm not far away — in which direction? The Cosgroves’ farm. Or was it the Proctors’? If she tried to walk to it she might get lost, wander in circles, become desperate, panic. For she had no seed to drop in her wake, to mark her path, and if she had, falling snow would cover it within minutes. She would collapse, perish in the bitter cold. Every winter in Maine there were such tales of motorists freezing to death in fields, wandered from their cars; or fallen within a few yards of a house, their frozen corpses discovered beneath drifts of snow.

She was very cold. Shivering. Trembling. Her teeth chattering. The blood on her face had frozen, like a mask. She was wearing a black wool coat, a scarf wound around her head, not a very warm coat by Maine standards. Why hadn’t she taken her mother’s quilted goose-down coat, which had a hood, newly purchased before her mother had taken ill, her mother had given it to her, or tried to—Wear it. It’s warm. It’s no use to me now, dear. But she hadn’t wanted such a coat. A coat from Sears. Though her father’s old Goodyear flashlight, purchased probably at Sears as well, was precious to her, it would save her life. She held it at chest-level as headlights appeared at last in the near distance, moving with maddening slowness. Someone was coming! “Here! Help me—” She waved the flashlight wildly but the vehicle veered off to the left, and was gone. Dim red taillights that vanished too, within seconds. She’d stumbled toward the headlights, fell heavily, flailing in the snow, pushed herself with difficulty to her feet, panting, sobbing. “Come back! I’m here! I’ve had an accident! Help me!”—I’m alone, I’m injured. Don’t leave me here to die. But now at least she had a clearer sense of where the road was, and it wasn’t where she’d have thought, perpendicular to her and then veering away. She switched off the flashlight, to save the battery. There was sure to be another vehicle along soon, if she was lucky a snowplow, a tow truck. She was only about five miles from Skowhegan, though not on a highway. Still she wanted to believe that Cuttler’s Mill Road was important enough to plow out in the midst of a blizzard that had only just begun. Stamping her feet which were going numb, bringing her fists together. In a sudden panic she realized that her eyelashes would freeze together, she’d be blinded if she didn’t stop crying. God help me. God, please forgive me. Why did I stay away so long? She had the uneasy feeling that she was being punished, there was a plan to this, as in a children’s story of punishment out of all proportion to blame. Once upon a time … A woman cousin had invited her to spend the night at her house in Skowhegan, near the airport, but she’d declined for she wanted to be alone on her last night in the old house, she’d had more work, more packing, more thinking to do, and possibly that had been a mistake for her cousin had wished to befriend her, and now of course she’d be in Skowhegan and safe except how could her decision have been a mistake unless her entire life had been a mistake and this possibility I refuse to accept.

She waited. She would be patient. For impatience, fear, panic would not save her. Standing in what she believed to be the road, waiting. How long, she could not gauge. It was too much of an effort for her to push back her coat sleeve and check her wristwatch for the time. Or perhaps she was fearful of knowing the time. How long she’d been stranded here on the Cuttler’s Mill Road. Minutes were passing, the wind tore at her face, her thin wool scarf, snow encrusted her hair, eyelashes, she must resemble a snow-sculpture by this time, it was such effort to keep moving, stamping her feet, shaking her head, how sleepy she was, how powerful the urge to lie down in the snow blanketing the earth, how sweet, her eyelids heavy, closing — and just at that instant she saw, or seemed to see, another pair of headlights. This time she’d be rescued! She knew. She fumbled to switch on the flashlight. At first nothing happened, there was no light, she shook the flashlight and the light came on, though in a reduced, feeble beam. But she was stumbling toward the headlights anyway, really she didn’t need the flashlight, she was crying, “Here! Help! I had an accident!” This time the vehicle came to a stop. A man’s voice called, in surprise, “Hello? Is someone there?” and she was sobbing with relief, waving desperately in the blinding headlights, “Yes! Here! Help me.”

She must have collapsed. Though with no memory of falling to the ground. A man was stooping over her, his breath steaming. His face was familiar but she didn’t know his name. She could not have spoken his name. That creased adult face like a mask upon a boy’s face, subtly disfiguring it. Yet she recognized the eyes. Her rescuer was talking to her, comforting her, his voice booming yet difficult to decipher. Yet it was her own language he spoke — the flattened nasal accent of inland Maine. He was calling her by name: he knew her! For he, too, lived on the Cuttler’s Mill Road. He would drive her to Skowhegan, to the hospital. He stooped to shove his arms beneath her, lifting her with care, like a man accustomed to such emergencies, the sensation of being lifted, carried, like a child, was unnerving to her, yet wonderful — she was whimpering, sobbing with relief, gratitude. “Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, you’ve saved my life.” Inside the cab of his pickup truck it was warm, astonishingly warm, she’d forgotten what warmth was, the heater was on full blast. Deftly, explaining he’d had some paramedic training, he was a volunteer fireman, he yanked off her tight stylish leather boots and rubbed her numb toes, until sensation, sharp stabs of pain that made her wince, returned. He rubbed her hands, too, briskly, and laid the flat of his warm, broad palms against her cheeks which had begun to freeze. In her weakened condition she didn’t even feel embarrassment or self-consciousness as always she felt when a man touched her for the first time.

Driving to Skowhegan, through the swirling snow, at no more than ten miles an hour, her rescuer identified himself as Burt Proctor — did she remember him? Feebly she nodded, yes. Yes, she did. He told her that he was living on his father’s farm, though not farming, working in Skowhegan, he had a small construction firm, they’d gone to school together, he was two or three years ahead of her, he was sorry to hear of her mother’s death, he’d heard in fact that she was back visiting, dealing with her mother’s estate, he’d drive her to the Skowhegan hospital, she’d be all right. Maybe she’d broken something? Her collarbone, ribs. Fingers. And her face — her face was lacerated, a little. They’d fix her up in emergency just fine. She tried to respond, would have liked to laugh with relief, instead of crying with relief, she wasn’t a weak woman, and how grateful she was, and what did it mean that Burt Proctor of all people had rescued her, saved her from death on the Cuttler’s Mill Road where their families had long lived, only a few miles apart. Burt Proctor was bearded now, his coarse black beard short-trimmed and threaded with gray; his eyebrows too were coarse, nearly meeting at the bridge of his nose in a way she didn’t remember from when he’d been a boy; there was a distracting, hooklike scar on his upper lip. He wore a practical winter hat, not very clean, with prominent ear flaps and a strap that buckled beneath his chin, and a dull-red sheepskin jacket. His face that was no longer a boy’s smooth good-looking face but the face of an adult man who’d suffered losses. For the elder Proctors, too, had surely passed away, she believed she’d heard this, so much time had passed in her absence. Burt Proctor was telling her he’d been making improvements on the old place since moving back, he’d lived in town while married, had two kids, teenagers now, but his family was broke-up and he didn’t get to see the boys very often now, they were living with their mother and stepfather in Portland. The odd words broke-up were poignant in her ears, she blinked back tears, felt a trickle of moisture running down her face, and Burt Proctor smiled at her and wiped her face with the back of his hand, gently, as you might wipe a child’s runny nose, and now she was embarrassed for it was blood he’d wiped away, blood smeared on his right hand, this was an intimacy she hadn’t been prepared for, and didn’t know how to assess.

In Skowhegan there was the Sunoco station: bright-lit, busy, a tow truck steaming exhaust near the road. And there were vehicles on Main Street, not many, slow-moving and ponderous as ancient beasts, and a county snowplow spewing snow at the curb, red light winking on top of the cab. What relief: here in Skowhegan things were under control, the storm had been expected, emergency vehicles were in readiness, no one would perish in the cold, in drifting snow. She was in pain by now, considerable pain, now the numbness had passed from her, but she drew breath in relief seeing so much activity, lighted buildings and houses and the Skowhegan hospital (where her mother had died at 4:20 A.M. when she’d been out at the house, unable to be with her) lighted and bustling with activity. As Burt Proctor in his red sheepskin jacket like a tall huntsman carried her in his strong arms into the emergency room yet strangely asking her what had become of her pony? that beautiful little Shetland? and she smiled in confusion for she hadn’t owned a pony — had she? She’d yearned for one, she’d begged her parents for years, but nothing had come of it; yet now Burt Proctor seemed to be remembering her pony fondly, describing it as pebble-gray with a finespun silver mane and flowing silver tail; a prancing Shetland upon which she’d ridden proudly as Little Snow-Drop in one of the books her grandmother had given her. If I had no pony in my life it’s only fair that I be given my pony now. For it turned out that she’d been injured more seriously in the accident on the Cuttler’s Mill Road than she would have liked to think. Lifted by emergency room attendants from her rescuer’s arms, she looked back at him seeing to her horror a mask-sized imprint of blood soaked into the man’s sheepskin jacket. And his bare hands, too, were bloody. He called after her words of encouragement and affection as they bore her away to save her life.

Because he waited for her, never ceased thinking of her, through the next several hours, her life was saved. She would tell him, “Somehow, I knew this. I knew you were there, and would have been at my side if they’d allowed it.”

There was the confusion of the emergency room that was so brightly lit, frantic with activity, not quiet as you’d expect a hospital; winking lights like swirling, furious snowflakes cascading out of the sky. Yet the snowflakes had been so strangely faded. Like the discolored, faintly cracked keys of Grandma’s upright piano. Grandma had paid for her piano lessons when her father didn’t think they could afford it, and it was at Grandma’s house, of course, she’d practiced her pieces: “Three Blind Mice,” “A Fox Went Out,” “Hey Diddle-Diddle,” a showy Czerny exercise in which the second and third fingers of both hands buzzed up and down the keyboard as rapidly as you could make them go—”The Two Bees.” She’d loved Grandma’s piano and she’d inherited Grandma’s piano but — where was it now?

At the old house. In the country. In the snow. With the rest of your things.

Her rescuer waited for her at the hospital and at last she was discharged, leaning on his arm, walking with difficulty, tight bands of gauze and adhesive wrapped around her upper chest so that she could scarcely breathe, and flesh-colored bandages on her lacerated face. “Please don’t look at me, I look like a savage,” she said, but Burt Proctor said, “No. You’re beautiful. Come on.” Through the now lightly falling snow they walked. He brought her to a restaurant for a late meal, for they were both famished. She would not have believed she could eat in her exhausted state yet she did eat, trembling with hunger, and happiness. They sat close together on the same side of the booth, nudging shoulders. On the table was a small vase of bright red carnations that, inspected, turned out to be plastic. Dim funky-sweet rock music played, out of the shadows as out of the past. She understood that this was her past, of which she’d been cheated. Burt Proctor was saying, “I didn’t seem to realize how much I loved my parents, while they were alive,” and she was saying, “I didn’t seem to realize how much I loved my parents and my grandmother while I was alive,” then, realizing her mistake, quickly adding, “—I mean, while they were alive.” Burt Proctor laughed at her misspoken words. She saw the love for her in his eyes, and was stricken to the heart and could not speak. Her hair spilled down her back. It had come undone in the emergency room. She hadn’t had the opportunity to brush it and fasten it back up in a crownlike braid around her head like the beautiful golden-haired princess in the tower. And her hair wasn’t golden but merely dark brown. Yet Burt Proctor touched it gently with his roughened fingers. Burt Proctor touched her cheek gently. Never had she been so close to a man with a beard like Burt Proctor’s: wirelike, bristly, a coarse black threaded with coarser gray hairs. And that hooklike scar on his upper lip. He was saying, “I didn’t seem to realize how I loved you, when we were young,” quickly adding, “—I mean, younger.” She was saying, “I didn’t seem to realize, either — how much I loved you. I mean — love you.” It must have been the codeine they’d given her at the hospital — for her to be speaking in such a way. Yet it was the truth, she was a woman who spoke the truth, and Burt Proctor was clearly a man who spoke the truth and would not abide anything less in others. That was the way of men in Maine, men and women both, and she meant to be worthy of that heritage. Burt Proctor framed her face in his hands and kissed her, she wanted only to kiss that scar as if she might heal it, heal any hurt in this good, decent man’s life as she sensed he would wish to heal any hurt in hers. They were breathless, trembling. It was all happening so quickly. Yes, it’s absurd. My heart will be lacerated. There are no fairy tales. He will hurt me simply by touching me. If I love him, I will never be free again. Yet she was laughing like a young girl, and Burt Proctor was laughing, elated and excited, a little frightened at what was happening to them, that seemed to rush at them blurred with speed. When he asked her to come with him, to stay the night with him at a Skowhegan hotel, she said yes, and kissed him again, and walking in the clear, freezing, starlit night, leaning on his arm, she began to cry with happiness, for happiness is so simple, so obvious.

How swiftly it was decided. What my life would be!

By late morning of the next day most of Skowhegan was plowed out and reasonably navigable. There was that festive communal air she recalled from her childhood, a sense of holiday. The partly clouded sky was laced with thin cold sunshine drawing the eye upward in the childlike hope. Burt Proctor, a practical-minded man, had arranged for a tow truck from the Sunoco station to haul her car into Skowhegan and repair it. She wasn’t going to fly to Bangor after all — wasn’t going to fly to Berlin — impulsively she’d decided she would stay in Maine for the next several weeks at least, for Burt Proctor had begged her, Burt Proctor had opened his heart to her as no other man had done in her life, and in a haze of happiness she’d said Yes, yes of course, my life is yours, you saved it. This would be the tale they would tell each other through the years of their love.

She’d said yes to each of Burt Proctor’s requests except one: she would have to drive back to her parents’ old house one final time, alone. Burt Proctor was astonished. “What? Why? In all this snow?” She said, “Because I’ve left something behind. Something I must have if we’re to be — married.” “But what is it?” “I can’t say. I’ll show you.” “All right. But I’ll drive you, you aren’t going alone.” “Yes. I must go alone.” “You’re not thinking clearly, you’re still upset from yesterday. You’re in no condition to drive anywhere by yourself.” “I’m fine. You can see I’m fine.” She dared to kiss Burt Proctor, though he was becoming impatient, upset. He asked, “What did you leave behind, that’s so damned important? That won’t wait for another few days?” She smiled evasively, and did not answer.

For in truth she wasn’t certain exactly what the left-behind item was, but believed she would recognize it when she saw it. Again she kissed the man who was her rescuer, and her lover, holding him in her arms so tightly her slender body throbbed with pain. Stubbornly she repeated, “I must go alone.”

And so she drove back to the Cuttler’s Mill Road which had been plowed out, though not very cleanly, a single icy-rutted lane between heaped banks of snow. And she returned to the old farmhouse, which she’d locked up only yesterday, with no reason to believe she would ever return. Snow had drifted across the driveway to a height of several feet in spots, she had to leave the car out on the road, stumbling and staggering to the front door. In the wan sunshine the house’s tall narrow windows reflected light as if lights were burning within but in fact the interior of the house was unnaturally dark for midday, snow heaped against downstairs windows on three sides. She was both eager and hesitant to enter. “Hello? Hello? Hello?”—she spoke brightly, simply to hear her own voice. And the silence that followed, like a subtly mocking echo. How strange this house of her childhood seemed to her now, emptied of most of the old, familiar furniture, curtains removed, floorboards bare and exposed, the floral wallpaper her mother had loved, which she’d always thought attractive, stained with time as with smudged fingerprints. She was embarrassed to think that outsiders would enter this house, examine it critically, when it seemed so diminished now, so very ordinary. The dank, melancholy odor of neglect made her nostrils pinch.

Abandoned to darkness. To oblivion. Why?

She searched the downstairs rooms, finding nothing, then upstairs in her old room, of course it would be in her old room, she saw it—Favorite Fairy Tales. The book Grandma had given her. It was lying on the floor, as if discarded. The familiar cover was warped from having slipped into her bathwater but the illustration was surprisingly vivid, a golden-haired princess astride a prancing silver-maned horse. He was right. He knew! Her heart filled with joy. She smiled, ignoring the bitter cold as she leafed through the book’s mildewed pages, recognizing the illustrations, tears and stains on certain of the pages, crayon scribblings. On the last blank page she’d scribbled her name in orange crayon.

When she glanced up, she saw to her surprise that the windows of her old room, though curtainless, gave little light. She went to investigate. Had the sky darkened so quickly? Was it already dusk? There couldn’t be a second snowstorm already — could there?

Again, snowflakes were being blown out of a pewter-gray sky.

By the time she left the house, stumbling through the snowdrifts to her car, the wind was ferocious. Snow was being blown in a frenzy, yesterday’s drifts were being reshaped. She tried not to succumb to panic. He knows you’re here. He’s waiting for you, this time. At least she had the forgotten item she’d returned for, safe in her possession. She had not failed in her reckless quest.

There was an unnerving moment when her car motor didn’t start. But then, to her relief, it did start. She managed to turn the car in the road, maneuvering back and forth in a narrow space, and, at first, she was able to drive fairly steadily through the swirling snow, determined not to make the same mistake, skidding off the road a second time. For what are the odds that any event in time might repeat precisely itself at another point in time? — such odds must be astronomical. She and Burt Proctor would laugh together over this episode, this folly of hers, such a stubborn, obstinate woman she was, when convinced she was right. Today, after the ravages of yesterday’s storm, there appeared to be no other vehicles on the Cuttler’s Mill Road. Snowdrifts were re-forming in the road as if alive, sinuous snaky coils lunging into the path of her car, which was now barely moving, inching forward at five miles an hour. Her windshield wipers began to slow, defeated by the snow’s weight. For today the snowfall was damp. She began to talk to herself, reassure herself. As, a child, she’d sometimes talked to herself, waking alone in the night disoriented by sleep and not knowing at first where she was or, what frightened most, who she was. Anyone I wish. I can become. If I love no one. But that was the chill wisdom of an older child, a more calculating child. That was not the child she recalled now.

The storm was worsening. Visibility was reduced to a few feet. In her feeble headlights falling clumps of snow were discolored as old ivory. The snowplow had done a rushed, careless job on this back-country road, as usual. Stretches of ice had been left untouched. If I can make it to the edge of Skowhegan. To the Sunoco station. She didn’t want to concede that she should have allowed Burt Proctor to drive her back, for his pickup had four-wheel drive and was far better equipped to deal with such conditions; she didn’t want to concede what a mistake she’d made. Yet suddenly she began to sob and curse, in frustration, in fury, pressing her foot down on the gas pedal in her impatience to get to town, gripping the steering wheel until her fingers were frozen to it. As if by force she might hold the speeding, suddenly skidding car on the road.

She heard a cry—”No! No!” A child’s hurt, incredulous voice.

For it was so unfair.

Waking in a haze of muted white, a delirium of swirling white, pain wracking her upper chest, a terrible roaring in her ears — for some dazed minutes she didn’t know where she was.

Then she remembered. This time, I will know what to do.

It was crucial to have her father’s flashlight firmly in hand. She would have to leave her grandmother’s book behind, the keys in the ignition. Managing to squeeze herself out of the car, nearly fainting with pain, her bloodied face beginning to freeze into an ice-mask as soon as the wind struck it. She stumbled through snow, in the direction of the road, crying, “Help! I’m here! I’ve been injured!”—though she knew there was no one to hear, no headlights in sight. She understood that she wasn’t behaving rationally, her strength was being exhausted, but she didn’t know what else to do. There was a neighbor’s farm close by — in which direction? If only the snowfall wasn’t so thick. The air so dark. It was hard to breathe, in such wind. She would collapse, perish in the bitter cold. But no: this time she was wearing her mother’s coat, the bulky quilted goose-down coat with the hood to protect her head. Wear it. It’s warm. So very attractive on you, dear. And it’s no use to me. She set off, this time, on what she believed to be the road, in the direction of Skowhegan, or what she believed to be that direction. She was limping badly, dragging her left leg. There was the danger of wandering into a field, of wandering in circles. She was panicked, perspiring inside her clothes even as the exterior of her body was going numb with cold. Her toes were losing all sensation. Her nose, cheeks, mouth were turning to ice. Someone was waiting for her ahead — wasn’t he? Someone was coming to rescue her — wasn’t he? She could not recall his name but she knew he was coming if only he knew where she was. She waved the flashlight in eager, darting circles. The battery was weak, the amber light feeble. “Help! I’m here! I’ve had an accident.” It hadn’t been her fault: the wind had blown her mother’s compact car off the road, into the ditch. But where exactly was the road? And where — somewhere behind her? — was the abandoned car? She fell, her left leg buckling beneath her, but managed to get to her feet. Confused, she saw only snow, dunes, and declivities of snow, through cascading falls of snow, as if earth and sky were being shaken violently together. There was no road. Yet, a short distance away, vague lights appeared — headlights? They moved with maddening slowness. She stared, wiping snow from her eyes. “Here! I’m here!” It would be the man in the sheepskin jacket, the tall man with the bristling black beard, the hook-scar in his upper lip. She was stumbling forward, waving the flashlight desperately, but, oblivious to her effort, the vehicle must have veered away to the left, and was gone. She stared after it, stunned. “Come back! Please! Don’t leave me here to—” She tried to follow the vanished vehicle, not wanting to think that it might be headed in the wrong direction, away from Skowhegan, and perhaps it hadn’t been a vehicle at all but a hallucination or optical illusion caused by the flashlight’s beam reflected in falling snow. She could not recall her lover’s name but she would know him when she saw him. She felt the strength of his arms, the warmth and kindness of his hands, a man’s big-boned, roughened hands, he’d removed his gloves to caress her feet, to revive circulation in her toes which had turned to ice, how grateful she’d been, how she’d wept with gratitude and love for him, but where was he now? She shook the flashlight to strengthen the failing light. She dared not switch it off, to save the battery, for fear it would never switch on again. The cold had gotten inside her, her throat and mouth were coated in frost, her nasal passages were blocked in ice, ice-needles had penetrated her ears, inching toward her brain. Her tongue was ice. Suddenly the thought came to her, I have dreamt him: I have dreamt my life. God help me. She stamped her feet, shook her head, how sleepy she was, how powerful and sweet the urge to lie down in the snow, soft blanketing snow, her eyelids heavy as if stones were pressing upon them, but she held the flashlight at the level of her chest, shining its feeble beam into the night. I have dreamed my life — is that it? And in the next instant, mercifully, she forgot these terrible words, even as you and I.

“This story evokes what is for me perhaps the greatest possible horror, that our happiness is but an illusion, a dream generated by deprivation. The young woman of the story has invented herself as one who doesn’t need love; in fact, her soul is languishing for love, as her body is languishing for warmth. Her dream of being saved and being loved is so vivid, it’s difficult not to believe it isn’t real (even for the author). Maybe our lives are no more than a match girl’s flaring matches; we live so long as they burn, and then are gone. In the meantime, the solace of art.”