Peter Geye - Wintering

Gus came in through the sliding door. “Hello, hello,” he said, stomping his boots on the rug. He unzipped his coat and after he’d hung it on the coatrack he, too, cocked his ear. “Good grief, Sarah, are you playing that CD?”

She looked at me and winked.

Gus walked over to the stereo and hit a button, and the music stopped.

“Party pooper,” Sarah said.

“Miss Lovig has heard more than enough of me lately.” He stopped at the counter and picked up his toddy before he went over and kissed Sarah on the top of her head. “Berit,” he said, and smiled. He admired the fire, which was burning beautifully, then looked again at me. He sat down beside Sarah and put his hand on her knee.

“I’m happy to see you, Gus,” I said. “I’ve missed you this week.”

“Thank you for coming. Sarah has cooked us up a right feast, you can be sure of that.”

“It smells scrumptious.”

She gave his hand a squeeze. “I’d hate to ruin it,” she said as she stood up. “Excuse me while I tend to the food. Gus, keep the fire burning.”

He stood and watched her straighten her skirt and walk across the great room to the kitchen before he sat back in the brown chair. He put his feet up on the ottoman and raised his mug. “To you, Berit.”

I raised my own mug. “And you.”

“The new snow’ll melt before this time tomorrow,” he said. “Why I went out there to shovel I do not know.”

“Your father was the same. As soon as it started to fall he started shoveling.” I felt the blush rise in my cheeks. “Of course, you know how your father was.”

“I never saw him shovel once. At least not that I remember.” He smiled. “That was my job.” He took another long sip of his drink. “Do I owe you an explanation, Berit?”

“Whatever for?”

“For not being in touch.”

“Heavens, no,” I said. And I meant it. I admit it had been strange to see him once or twice a week for so many weeks running, then not at all. But certainly he owed me neither explanation nor apology.

He nodded and tried to smile and then glanced at Sarah in the kitchen. “It was those damn letters,” he said, speaking into the mug more than to me. He pointed at the counter, where the letters were sitting.

“Should I have kept them from you?”

“No. Of course not. I’m grateful you gave them to me.”

“Have you figured out who can make sense of them?”

“Signe will be home next month. For the opening of the historical society. She’s offered to have a look at them. I guess there’s no hurry.” He looked at me. “Right?”

“They’ve sat there these hundred years.”

He smiled.

“For what it’s worth, they haunt me, too. I’ve thought an awful lot about them since they turned up. But I imagine it’s a bit harder for you.”

He studied them one more time, stood to put a log on the fire, but then saw it didn’t need one. “I wish I could say why they’re so distracting. I just can’t put my finger on it.” He sat now on the raised hearth and leaned back against the fieldstones. His eyes caught the fire’s flare and shined, and in that instant I saw Harry’s eyes and my breath caught. I had to put my fingers to my lips. “Is it strange being here again?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He nodded at the far side of the house, into the dark hallway that led to the room where Harry’s last days were spent. “I believe it,” he said. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to come. But Sarah—” His voice trailed off and he merely raised his mug in her direction.

“She knows best,” I said.

He smiled again.

“I wonder if those letters are bothering you because they make the story even longer, and you might’ve thought you were nearing the end.”

Now his smile faded, even as his face kept a kind aspect. “I guess I figured out some time this winter that the story was never going to end. I didn’t want to tell you for fear you’d quit listening.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’d known this truth from the first word he uttered. I just hoped he didn’t notice I was looking down the dark hallway again.

—

Sarah called us to the table and ladled three bowls of soup. She offered wine and water and bread, and butter she’d salted herself. Two candles were guttering above the table. She raised her glass and toasted family and friends and the end of winter, and we ate.

The soup tasted even better than it smelled, and the freshly baked bread was still warm. There wasn’t a hair on her head out of place, and if she’d been anyone else I might have resented how effortlessly she managed everything. Instead, I listened to her stories and questions and marveled at how truly good she was.

When we finished the soup she cleared our bowls and plated the main course, baked steelhead trout she’d caught herself. Parsnips mashed with chives. Brussels sprouts sautéed with bacon and garlic. A ramekin of drawn butter on the edge of each plate. More bread. More wine.

The conversation turned to Greta and Tom and the accomplishments of their young lives. I knew them to be outstanding kids. Kind and smart and clever about all the right things. It was no surprise to hear they were doing well, Tom in graduate school in New Hampshire and Greta working as a cub reporter for a weekly newspaper in Minneapolis. It was odd to watch Gus talk about his kids, the expression playing across his face so different from the one I’d grown accustomed to. He was happy, I could see that.

“What was the lucky chance that brought the two of you together?” I asked, surprised, in fact, that I had no idea.

I swear I saw his eyes well up. He took her hand. “Sarah was a ski bunny,” he said.

She pushed his hand away but smiled. Almost blushed.

“I swept her off the slopes down in Misquah one winter day.”

“ ‘Swept’? That’s the word you’d use?”

He laughed. A hearty and full laugh I don’t know that I’d ever heard before. “Okay, okay,” he said, lifting his hands in defense. “Maybe it was less of a sweep than a crash.”

“He ran right into me,” she said, her hand coming up to stifle a laugh. “He had no idea where he was going.”

He smiled and said, “Oh, I knew exactly where I was going.”

She turned to me. “It was his best move: crashing into a poor girl her first day on skis.”

He held his hands up wide to encompass their home, their lives together, that single, splendid evening. “Your Honor,” he said, “I rest my case.”

She served dessert in front of the fire, a wild-berry cobbler with fresh whipped cream. Gus poured coffee and added a splash of bourbon to his. I declined, though frankly I could have used it. The night was having a cumulative effect on me. All this talk of their lives, their wonderful children, in their warm home. All of it with the dark hallway leading to Harry’s last resting place right behind me, and my own past just out the door and up and down the road. I even thought to ask for that whiskey after all.

But Sarah stoked the fire and asked about the historical society, and the whiskey was forgotten.

“It’s hard to imagine it being open this time next month,” she said.

“Bonnie and Lenora have been working so hard. This town owes them a real debt of gratitude.”

Gus said, “Come, now, Berit. This was your idea from the start.”

“It was Signe’s idea,” I said.

“You gave it to her,” he told me.

“There’s enough thanks to go around,” Sarah added.

“Indeed,” Gus said.

“I’m glad this came up, actually.” I turned to Gus. “Bonnie and I were hoping you’d say a few words at the ribbon cutting.”

“A speech?” he said.

“If you’d like to call it that, then, yes, a speech. Anything, really.”