As the Snow Drifts: A Cozy Winter Anthology
Sunbeam
Before you left for Vietnam, I proffered up a wax-paper Archie’s comic strip tucked inside my bubblegum wrapper that smelled like pink dust.
“Is it funny?” you said.
“Yeah.”
“Only want it if it’s funny.”
In the kitchen, you jimmied the back door open with a screwdriver. With the heel of your palm, you whacked the top and slid the flat-head down along the seam, chipping away at the winter’s ice set in from early November. Your head turned down, your face set in a practiced grimace, as you banked rafts of ice nestled on the rusted shovel out and away from the house. I felt the weight of each hunk of whiteness as it thudded to the side. Your hands turned red and rash while you slapped them against your pants popcorned in snow.
Ma warned over the electric hum of her mixer, “You need your gloves.”
“Nah”
The sound stopped as if it had gone for a distant walk only to tread softly backward. The scent of chocolate so strong I wanted to eat the air.
Once cleared, the screen door opened onto a backyard knee-deep in a sea of snow.
Finished, you stomped in. Both of you, face to face. Ma wiped her hands down along the front of her housecoat, patterned with red-nosed reindeer and cigarette burns. Then, a pocket of silence before Ma’s chin started to quiver, before she grabbed you by the coat collar and sobbed.