Looking Backward in Darkness. Kathryn Ptacek

never be back. She, not even eleven, had gone to her mother and put her arms around her, her head resting on the dark one below hers, and the others had come to them and held their mother as well. So long ago.

      Years before she had gone to the legislature, years before Raymond had bought his art gallery on Canyon Road, years before Anna had moved down to Albuquerque with her second husband.

      Years before they had grown apart.

      Tick, tick, ticking away....

      She shook her head, sighed, then started when she heard a sharp bang in another room. She hurried down the darkened hallway and into the end bedroom—one of the casement windows had blown open, and the lace curtains stood straight back from the wind gusting snow across the sill. She rushed over and locked the window, batted away the damp curtain as it slapped against her cheek, then fetched a towel from the bathroom to wipe the snow up before it melted.

      When she finished, she looked around the room, with its blue and white quilt on the wide bed, at the intricately carved pine chest set against one wall, at the painting of a Santa Fe church she had done when she was a teenager and had thought she wanted to be an artist. The room was so...bare...bare of furniture, of belongings, but not of memories.

      Again she could close her eyes and recall so easily those days when her mother had let them climb into bed with her, and the three children had piled up onto its softness, then burrowed under the quilt while their mother told them tales of talking rabbits and squirrels. How warm and cozy—how safe—it had all been.

      She forced herself to return to the front room, where she stood before the fireplace and held her hands out to the flames. She was so cold; maybe this would help.

      The ticking sounded louder now.

      Wind pounded against the door, and she stepped closer to the fire, as if seeking protection. Of course, that was nonsense, she thought when she realized what she’d done.

      She shouldn’t have come out here this time of the year, she told herself, not for the first time since her arrival. She should have waited for spring; but she couldn’t. She’d had to get away now, before the weeks grew into months, the months into years, into decades.

      Something white drifted across the floor, and she whirled around.

      A snowflake.

      It had sifted in through the crack under the door.

      Ice crystals had formed on the window, too, and she wondered how long the storm would last. Hours, perhaps; maybe even a day or two. She didn’t worry about being stuck here, though, because Jerry knew where she was. He would come for her, if she needed him, if she couldn’t get out in the morning.

      Jerry. She smiled at the thought of her husband, then sat on the bench again to read. Another page gone by slowly, then she looked up as more snow drifted into the room.

      The windows were not as tightly closed as they could be, she knew. Or rather, the old wood frames were warped from cold and heat and age; there was nothing to do but replace them, and perhaps she and Jerry could do that in the spring, when it was warm again.

      It hadn’t always been this cold, the house; once it had been warm and open. Mi casa, su casa, her mother had always proclaimed to friends and strangers alike. My house is your house. And their mother had never turned anyone away in all the years she had lived here.

      Not like Anita. Anita had turned her mother away.

      No, she told herself sharply as she bit back tears; she had not turned her mother away. Her brother and sister had done that; she at least had nursed her mother as best she could. And when it had grown too much, she had sought help. There was nothing wrong with that.

      Was there?

      Mi casa, su casa.

      Yes; she had told her mother that very thing when the old woman had come to live with them after the accident, the accident that had left her paralyzed along one side, and nearly speechless and her mind rambling, a wreck of the once smiling and pleasant woman who had raised three children by herself. But it was Jerry’s and her house, not her mother’s.

      And then, when the situation grew too inconvenient, she had turned the old woman away.

      No!

      She shook her head, denying.

      Mi casa—

      There was a deep roaring, like a dark train barreling a hundred miles an hour or more along a steel track—the wind had become a gale. The walls of the house seemed to reverberate from its power, and she wondered if they and the roof could withstand the escalating wind, this blizzard. Surely, yes, because they had withstood so much else before.

      Snow formed a powdery semi-circle inside the door, and the windowsill was white. A trickle of water from melted snow inched down the wall.

      The temperature in the room had dropped in the past few minutes, and she shivered, then rubbed her arms briskly with her hands, but nothing would warm her. Not now.

      The ticking of the clock dropped to a whisper, as if the clock were winding down. Slowing, slowing, slowing...as if it were more the beat of a heart than a clock now.

      Anita admitted it at last. She had turned her mother away. Had abandoned the woman when she needed her family most. She had.

      But coming here had been the right thing. This would make it all right. This waiting at the house. She knew it would.

      Slower...slowly...the ticking....

      She smiled. Nothing ever changed. The snow would come in, as it always did, and in a minute she would get another towel from the kitchen, and she would wipe up the snow, knowing even then that this small action was futile. And she would look once more out into the darkness, and behind her the fire would burn, and the wind would scream.

      The snow would continue falling, collecting slowly around the house in gigantic drifts.

      And she would sit down and read again.

      And she would listen as the wind screamed and the roof shook.

      She would.

      Just as she had every night for the past five years.

      She would wait. Wait until her mother joined her, and once more there would be warmth and laughter, the two of them together.

      My house.

      LITTLE CONTRASTS

      You really have never understood me, Randy. Not from the beginning of our relationship, not through twelve years of marriage, not even now.

      I think it’s more—much more—than the usual male-female misunderstandings, too, although that’s involved to some degree, of course. Everything we do or think or experience is tainted—if you want to call it that—with the nature of our sexuality. No matter how much “they” try to change it, it’ll still be the same. Men will be men, and women will be women. Maybe we can change a bit, but you can’t buck a million years of genetics.

      Excuse me while I reach across you and get into the glove box. I always keep the spare napkins there. Remember how we always used to go to the old drive-in on the other side of town when the kids were really little? They’d be in their jammies in the back—kind of like they are now—and we’d have all these little packets of mustard and ketchup in the glove compartment, along with straws and napkins and plastic forks. We were better stocked than the concession stand!

      I hope you don’t think I’m being real rude. I’d offer you a sip of my soda, but...well, you understand. My, that tastes so good. I just wish they wouldn’t put so much ice in these cups.

      It’s hot in here. It’s supposed to hit over a 100 today, maybe get as high as 105. I know I’m sweatin’ like a pig. My mother always said ladies never sweat, they perspire; shows you how much she knew.

      Maybe I should run the air conditioning for a while. All this heat makes everything kind of ripe, and it does smell in here. There’s nothing you can do about it,