It All Falls Down

By the time the snow stops falling, no one will ever talk to Marley Alfred again. But for now, she will watch as the sky weeps ice dust and the children dance in the cold ash. And she will smile.

All plans for the winter Thursday were off as soon as it became clear that a blizzard was coming. Who can focus on arithmetic and copying out documents when the world is turning soft and white and new? There is something about the arrival of new snow that resets everything. Nothing is real during snow fall. The clocks still strike upon the hour but no one listens. The day darkens early and yet all you can see is the tender light of the snow, reflecting the moon back to the stars. It is a limbo, an oh so cold waiting room. Life may continue tomorrow, when the ground has been yellowed like teeth after coffee and what was once velvet has frozen into blades. For now, just breathe in the freshest air imaginable, and taste manna upon an outstretched tongue. Remember how it felt to be young.

Of course there are those who defy the natural order of things, insisting upon regimented routine and order. Knuckles pearly white, clenching around shovel handles; determined footsteps punched through the frost on the grass; salt strewn from trembling fingers, vanishing in flurries of the very thing it is here to halt. Marley Alfred is not one of these people. She will walk through the glistening wonderland and delight at the joy it brings to people. Will drink in the amber glow of candlelight in misty windows, and then swallow the liquid warmth of mulled cider, ladled out by the principal of the shuttered school. Marley indulges in solitary jubilation over a day to herself, a day of choice. She can choose to lark about with her students, can choose which carrot makes up the snowman's nose, can choose how many scarves to layer herself up with, can choose if she stays or goes. It is on snow fall days that she is reminded of how little she chooses upon every other day. And so she has created her ritual. When it snows, she moves like the drifting flakes, pirouetting in the wind. No one can touch her. She just melts away. She is safe, shrouded in cold and cloud. Unseen, unknown, unlimited. But only once she has walked through her front garden, down a path that is spiced with salt, and walled by snow banks, neatly carved into place. Her husband took the handle of the shovel in his before the sun had even tried to rise. She waited to rise herself until he had accomplished his self imposed task. It is best to meet that man in sunlight, in success. When she found snow packed into all of her shoes, so tightly that when she dislodged it, she could see the shoelace eyelets stamped into the compacted ice; she didn't say anything.

She made him his breakfast, handed him his thermos and lunch, promised him dinner, and kissed him as he left the house. He took both sets of keys with him and locked the door behind. When she went to look under the stairs for her old boots, hidden from his knowledge, she found her snow coat wrapped around what could only be a lump of excrement. From the water damage, and spread of the mess, she determined it must have been frozen once. She hoped that meant it wasn't human. Scooped up after the last time she enjoyed a snow day, and wrapped in the coat she dared warm herself with. Waiting all that time in the dull heat. The smell was still rich and meaty, even after a month of congealing. She discovered one of his spare coats packed under a box of her old books. She forgot he had her put these here. The box, the spare coat and the boots- which she does find- are all yanked from the shadows, and laid out in the light. The coat didn't smell of him, more of mildew and mice, and she was glad to reek. Her books had been subject to the same however, and she was less pleased to see the nibbling of the spines, the freckling upon the pages.

But it is not too late for them. There is time now.

Marley left the books to enjoy the residual heat of a small fire she let burn down to embers, and then left herself, wrapped in his jacket and her boots. She left by taking the front door off it's hinges, using the tool kit he never presumed to hide from her. But children of school age are very prone to getting themselves stuck in cupboards or cubicles. She has always known how to wield a drill to free someone. When she was on the other side, the outside, she taped the locking mechanism so it would not release, and re-hung the door. It took her twenty minutes. And then she was out.

She remembered how the world had looks the day before, a Wednesday. Still two days left to work, then a weekend to spend working in a different way. The ground churned to slush; mud and ice melted together into a golem of a landscape, threatening to lurk and trip and bite. No thawing in sight, but nothing new coming in either. The same old risk, the same old cold, the same old hurt. The children, made dismal by dark days and a fridge in which to chant times tables and verbiage. She always tries to make things sweeter. They make lanterns in art hour, using them to illuminate the room. She teaches them to make salt dough, brings in a small cooker on which they can fry it and try it with jam. Teaches them about the wonder of the weather, the good the chill can bring; the animals that live in it, the beautiful sights created by cold air and wind, the love radiating from home built fires and fragrant stews. She wants them to feel safe with her, at the school. She cannot assume to know the secrets they reside in outside of those walls, although people here pretend there are none. Knowing as she does, that this is a naive and unhelpful state of blindness to live in self imposed, she salts the earth of her classroom with her care, and the children find a safe bed there, without clause or stipulation to rest in it. She rests there also. But she too must go home to a real bed at the end of the day. Or sometimes the floor. She knows many things, but she never knows how she will find him, and how he will find her.

But it was Thursday now, and the brackish waters had cleared, rippling and flowing into this new duvet of pristine star-fall, laying hushed upon the streets. Street lamps still hummed, despite the early hour, and they burned their little false fires bright against the noir expanse of grey and white. She let their light fall upon her face, the same way the snow does. It all melted into her skin, gilding her in shining apricot glow.

She heard her first laughter of the day, disrupting her from contemplation, and twisting her face into a grin. When the giggler sprints past her, somehow so at ease on the new earth upon which they gallop, she recognises him quickly. He is the best in class at cutting out paper snowflakes, and sings the harmony in her little lunchtime choir. Almost every day she must ice a bruise on his knee or wash out a graze on the elbow, the result of a body that act like marionette limbs on fraying string. But here, in this special, silver day, this day where he may run where he wants, not where he should, he looked like he was flying.

So she started to run also. Bundled up in trailing scarves, a coat that is too large and boots that rubbed at her toes, Marley ran. The boy did not recognise her under the hood, but he did know a fellow galavanting human when he saw one, and he let out a little whoop, before veering toward the park, where she knew the hills would be thick with sledders and sliders. Something in her longed to roll down that snow iced slant on a sheet of cardboard, or a borrowed toboggan, but she refrained. That was the children's domain today and she was loathe to subject them to a reminder of where they would likely be, once more, tomorrow.

Snow fall is precious, it only warrants a singular day off from life. They are all used to the cold, the ice, the dark. They can move around it, this obelisk of winter. New snow is the one time it vanishes into the fog. The cold can be fun. The cold can set you free.

Marley wondered, as she moved through her day- smiling at each neighbour she passed, tossing snowballs at nothing at all, accepting hot drinks from sheltered doorways- if she would have done what she has done, if it had not snowed today. She had been living the way she had for a long while now. It was her normal. She never said anything. Why talk about normal. Why bring up hurt? Could she have done it, if she had been running out the door to work as normal? If he had not been distracted by his self imposed rules regarding front garden order and the chance to trap his wife in his house for an entire day. This snow day was exciting for him also, in many ways, in different ways. It is an excuse. To be even colder, meaner, harsher. No one can see very well in small towns anyway, so a bruise after a storm won't melt even a single snowflake. Perhaps it was the not knowing what would happen when he returned home that finally freed her.

Two snow days ago he came back from work late and went to sleep on the sofa. The one before that he put her clothes in the snow and let them freeze solid enough to cut down to each knob on her spine when slapped against her bare back. And the last time snow fell and closed down usual life, he brought back frozen flowers from his journey and made dumplings for dinner.

Marley loves dumplings and the idea of blossom encrusted with gems of ice. Marley hates being afraid. Marley is a teacher, she wants to know. What is coming. What to expect. What to fear. What to do.

She has always known what to say to her students. Her co-workers. Her neighbours. Known what they want to hear, or need to hear. Not things she always wanted to say, never the things she should say. But it is hard to know what is right, when she has only ever been wrong in her own home. That all changes now.

It hits her as she stands near the struggling stream, atop the arcing bridge, looking down the lane. Everything is different now. Because of her. And because it snowed. When it snows, she can make choices. When it snowed today, she still didn't say anything. She did it instead.

Marley is closing out her day- her peaceful, moonlight in the morning day- at the lake, when she sees them coming for her. She wonders how long suspicion will take to settle in. How filthy will the carpet of snow have become, how many classes will she have taught, how many nights spent alone in bed? She thinks it won't be long, won't be many. They might already know.

There was no art to what she did. There had been no plan. Marley is a strong and wise woman and she had been expecting to keep on living in his house without an exit date in sight. It was her life. It was normal. This here and now, her free and outside, is not. Surrounded by townspeople, wrapped in home knitted hats and gloves, cradling jars of wax and wick and warmth, bags of sticky sweets, bowls of steaming soup. Singing, dancing, resting, watching. All soaking up the final hours of the snow fall, the stars at last out to dance with their fleeting mirrors. This is how it could have been everyday if only he hadn't turned out the way he chose to.

When she chose him, she hadn't known. It had been a snow fall day then also. Two people, free in the drifts, filled with the hope of the new, open to anything. Only, he closed her doors. And he locked them with keys he cut himself. And today, for the first time, she has removed them. With snow came their beginning and with snow has come his end.

She wonders if he tasted it; the chemicals from under the sink that she infused into his already liquor laced coffee, the rat powder she stirred into his stew. There had been part of her that had feared he might give the meal away, getting something rimmed with fat and crusted with salt or sugar instead. But there was also the part of her that knew he would enjoy too much, eating the food she prepared for him without choice, without delay. The fruits of his labor perfectly ripe, well away from the orchard, without him having to raise a finger. Wasps die to create figs and people still eat them. Apples are gathered from the rot on the ground all the time. Cupboards under the sink contains all kinds of spices normally used to flavour the toilet or crumb gummed corners of the kitchen floor.

You never know what you are consuming unless you create it yourself. She never knew what was coming in her marriage, so carefully curated by his hands and mind and tongue. It was a balanced end, in that regard.

Snow is falling, new and wet as tears. But Marley is not crying. She thinks it will be a long while before she has to again. She hopes. They are getting nearer, and they do not look pleased. But she has had such a lovely day. Her students are free, they are flying like the snow they delight in. And so is she. Free to watch, free to choose, free to smile. Everything else will fall as it must, melting into the earth and nourishing the seeds below. It's only a little storm. It happens all the time.