Summer Soft

The sky and the earth had melted into an endless expanse…still and cold and white as far as the eye could see. Patricia sighed…not because it wasn’t what she had expected but indeed because it was exactly what she had expected. She tugged at her overcoat and fussed with her fuzzy scarf and then, with another heavy sigh that took misty form in the frigid morning air, she pushed through the doorway and out into the snow. Winter, you son of a bitch…

Patricia Allen was a woman of substance…full-bodied, sharp-minded, a good neighbor and a skilled business owner that everyone in town either admired graciously or hated enviously (though there were, on balance, far more of the former than the latter)…but that wasn’t something that you could really get her to agree with on this day. The cold that cut through the layers of clothing that she was wearing meant nothing to her…she didn’t feel it at all. The cold outside was no match for the coldness she felt in her being. Wandering, seemingly aimless but in fact not, along the outskirts of town and into the woods she moved like a ghost…the snow settling into her footprints and softly starting to obliterate them before they were even fully formed…lost in a haze of unfocused thoughts and unsettled emotions.

At one point, one sharply focused thought cut through that haze…if the damn thing was “broken” again, she thought of her weary heart, why didn’t it just stop hurting and leave me alone…and then she shook it off, laughing at her hubris and succumbing to that same haze once more. Jack, you son of a bitch…

Patricia took the hill. The slight, gently-sloping hill that would be covered in a blanket of verdant grass and bright wildflowers come spring. Walking slow and steady…never losing her footing despite the snow and the slush…not really paying attention to where she was going because it was a path she knew all too well. The haze cleared a bit when she reached the top of the hill and she grunted a bitter laugh and unceremoniously sat down in the snow. She looked down on the town…the small, closeted community that had been the center of her existence for as far back as she could remember…finding equal measures of affection and resentment in its importance to her life.

But that melted away…as did the town itself…covered in a frigid sheath of snow, the only signs of life being plumes of fragrant smoke billowing from chimneys up and down the way. Patricia felt a familiar tug at her tear ducts and she closed her eyes. She laughed bitterly again when she realized that there were no more tears to fall just then. There would be more tears, of this she had no doubt…but in that moment there were none…all of them were back in her house, soaking deep into one of the plump down pillows her grandmother had made especially for her birthday two years ago.

Jack, you…she sighed yet again, it wasn’t his fault…he was just a man and sometime men can’t help what they do. Of course, too often they don’t even try…

Blaming a man for being a man is like blaming winter for being winter, she thought…realizing the foolishness of the thought instantly but clinging to it just the same. Patricia hadn’t made it through so many years…so many men…so many tear-soaked pillows…without having come to some small epiphanies (right or wrong, they were hers and she would hold tight to them because they were keeping her from drowning.)

Patricia laid back in the snow on top of the hill and looked up into the trackless sky…all gray and white and unrelenting…wishing she could flat away into the void and never have feel numb or achy or heartbroken or anything ever again. Winter, you son of a…

She closed her eyes and looked within…finding space she was all too familiar with…the spaces where her heart kept zealously-guarded mementos of every man she had let into her heart…the spaces where the children she never had would have been kept safe forever…the spaces where the game the woman and the child she was free reign to dance…to gleefully curse winter and embrace summer…all of the myriad, endless spaces that soothed and satisfied her soul (that were in fact part and parcel of her soul)…all of the spaces.

She wondered…fleetingly…why part of her still longed for his touch…longed even to hear his lies and evasions; she wondered why she was so smart about almost everything else but so stupid at the “game” of love. And, again, she found herself laughing…bitterly, softly, tenderly, ruefully…hubris was something best laughed at when all was said and done.

Pretty lady, where have you been all my life?...

Baby, you know I love you…but I’m not ready to get married…yet…

Honey, it didn’t mean anything…she didn’t mean anything…I’m…I’m sorry…

It’s not you, Tricia…it’s me…I just don’t know what I want…I’m an asshole…

She needs me, Tricia…she’s not as strong as you are…I…I’ll send for my other things…

Patricia shook her head, forcing the ghosts who spoke the words of the man out of her head. Jack, you son of a bitch…

For an eternal instant, it seemed like there were indeed a few more tears ready to be shed…but the feeling passed. And then, just as suddenly, there was something on her face…something warm and soothing…war and soft as a midsummer’s breeze. Patricia opened her eyes and recoiled from the glare. When she looked up again, she found there a radiant crack in the sky…a sliver of space in the clouds through which a golden shaft of sunlight was blazing through. The light tracked gently across the outskirts of town…a quiet herald of things to come…and up the hill to where she lay. Spring wouldn’t be too very long in coming she realized…and then summer after that…cursing winter was a fool’s game, a game best played quickly and then just as quickly forgotten.

Patricia sat up, feeling the sun on her face for a scant few moment before winter reasserted itself and sealed the rift in the clouds. But it was okay. She stood up and shook the snow off as best she could. Patricia looked down over the sleepy, blanketed town and shook her head. She took a deep breath and then let it billow out…tangible wisps dancing like angels in the cold winter's air…before she stood up and started back down the hill. She had work to do…pillows to dry out…”other things” to stuff into boxes…spaces to be embraced and cried over…mending to be done. Spring was coming…and summer after that…and there was so much to do.