“Special occasion?” he asked. “Celebrating your favorite son’s return.” He gave his mother a quick kiss. Against his forehead, her new perm felt cold and slimy.
“I might have done, if you’d let me know you were coming home.”
“Sorry about that, Mum. Every time I found a phone I didn’t have change.”
“So you say.” She looked up from chopping mint to go with the roast lamb. “I thought you were staying in Adelaide. That business you rang about, the audition and getting a job.”
“Things didn’t quite work out the way I thought they would; not quite like I planned.”
“Oh, yes.” If she was interested, her voice gave no hint. “When you’ve had a wash-up you can set the table. I was just getting around to it.”
“So what is the big occasion?”
“Gloria and Bruce are announcing their engagement. Just a small family celebration. His parents are coming over.”
“So he’s got her pregnant at last?”
“You’ve always had a dirty mind,” said his mother, maintaining the pretence that her daughter was still “just friendly” with the man she had been living with for three years.
“And you’ll make a lovely grandma.” He was rather proud of himself, full of jokes when he had so much on his mind, though he was pretty sure no one had seen him at Glenelg. “Well,” he said, “like you told me, I’d better go and wash up.”
A few minutes later, as the thirteenth dancer set the table in the dining room, his mother called from the kitchen, “Make sure you get out the good china, those nice floral plates and things I like to keep for best.”
“Okay, Mum.”
“The carving set, too — it’s in the top drawer. You’re the man of the house, Son, so put yourself at the head of the table. When there’s a roast and visitors, it’s nice if the man of the house carves at the table. Makes a real occasion of things. Don’t forget to sharpen the knife.”
“In a minute, Mum,” he said, going out to the car to collect his backpack.
“Where are you off to now?”
“Won’t be a tick. Just remembered something.”
Back in the dining room, he took the knife from the pack as his mother called out again. “You still haven’t really told me what happened about that job.”
“Not much to tell, Mum.”
“What about the audition you had? Wasn’t there a vacancy for you, after all? I’ve told you all along, till I’m blue in the face, there’s just too many of you boys wanting to be dancers and not enough jobs to go round. And all that smoking doesn’t help, if you want to be in shape.”
The thirteenth dancer waited patiently for her to finish. He thought how much he’d like a cigarette, the first since he’d left Adelaide. But she’d only be on at him if he lit up in the house.
“There was a vacancy, Mum,” he said, placing the knife beside the carving fork at the head of the table. “But it turned out to be for a girl.”
Events in a Snowstorm
by Raymond Steiber
© 1997 by Raymond Steiber
Raymond Steiber is as mysterious as his writings. When we asked him for some biographical notes he wrote: “I think ideally the author shouldn’t even exist for the reader — the story should just happen as if it came out of nowhere.” So we cannot tell you anything about him except that he also writes novels. (Interested? Try St. Martin s Press).
It was snowing when Sue Corwin turned out of the parking lot of the Grand Union and she felt her rear wheels break loose. A brief loss of traction — nothing more than that — but she tightened up anyway. Slick roads did that to her now. Slick roads summoned up the image of Ted’s Bronco, the front and side smashed in, the windshield gone, the steering wheel a twisted oval.
The snow came down harder. The wiper blades swept back and forth, barely able to keep up. She switched on her headlights, more to be seen than to see. It was going to be a big one, she decided. The first big snow of the winter. She’d always looked forward to the first snow. You threw an extra log in the woodstove. You brewed a cup of herbal tea. You snuggled up on the sofa with a good book, glancing up now and then to watch the progress of the storm. Winter was her quiet time. In the real-estate business you made your money in the spring, summer, and early fall. Then winter came and everything slowed to a crawl and you discovered other pleasures — rather guilty pleasures in this age. Tending the house, trying out new recipes on Ted, loafing. There was a lot to be said for loafing. It was the nifty little secret the housewives of the earlier part of the century had kept from their husbands.
But now — now winter felt different. It felt bleak and lonely, and as she turned into her driveway, the old frame house looked cheerless in the failing light.
She got the groceries out of the backseat and carried them up to the house. I ought to have a dog, she thought. Something warm and nonjudgmental to greet me when I open the door. But the spaniel had been with Ted that day and shared his fate. A state trooper had found her bloody and wimpering in the snow Reside the wreck. And the trooper had put her out of her misery, risking a dressing-down from his superior for drawing and firing his weapon.
She turned on the lights. Lights in the living room, lights in the kitchen. It didn’t help much. The basic fact was that she was alone.
She put on the tea kettle, then stood in front of the window while she waited for it to heat. The house wasn’t on the lake. It stood on a rise well back from it. But you could see the lake and the mountains beyond, too. Not just now, though. The swirling snow had made them do a disappearing act.
The phone rang, jolting her. It was the office phone, not the one in the living room. She went on through and picked it up without bothering to turn on the lights.
“Hi,” a voice said.
“Who is this?” But she already knew who it was. She knew from the reaction in her chest.
“It’s Ben. Ben Marciano. I had some business up in Albany and I thought I’d swing by and see you.”
She glanced out the window. “It’s not the best weather for it, Ben.”
“Don’t run me off now, I’m halfway there. We could have a meal at that place by the lake — Eddie’s. It’s not exactly the Four Seasons, but then I’ve never been in the Four Seasons.”
She hadn’t seen him since late in the fall. There’d been a snow that day, too, but then the sun had come out again and by late afternoon it was gone.
“Do you think you can make it in that car of yours?”
“It’s light. It rides right up over the snow. And it’s got frontwheel drive. And what the hell, if I end up in a ditch, I can always walk.”
She surprised herself by laughing. “We’d need a blowtorch to thaw you out.”
“Just stick me by the fire till a warm puddle forms. So is it all right to stop by?”
She hesitated a moment. She wasn’t going to say no, but she was like everybody else, she had to play the game.
“Well, I guess,” she said.
And wasn’t that well done — just the right amount of disinterest. She wondered at her guile. And she hadn’t had any practice in years. Maybe it came with the chromosomes.
“I figure six-thirty, seven o’clock,” he said.
She thought about Ted. She thought about the fatal slide. “Don’t force it, Ben.”
“Don’t worry. I’m indestructible. Don’t you know that?”
She put down the phone. Out in the kitchen the water was boiling briskly. She made her tea. Then she went upstairs and did something that made her blush in spite of her thirty-five years. She changed the sheets on the bed.