WINTER ' FOURTEEN
friendly to Vera, soft and welcoming as a grandmother’s bosom on a tear-filled afternoon. Lacking a
grandmother, and now even a grandfather, she hugged her shadows close as substitute. The tread of
years tiptoed along until alone became lonely, and books and porcelain figurines lent chilly comfort
when her body yearned for the warmth of human embrace.
Summer meadows in Maine glow timeless with buttercups and paintbrush, framed edges welcoming
secrets in the black-green shadows of juniper and pine, places for lust and love and the cravings of youth
which are born and die on the whim of the wind from the harbor. Vera had met Darrell in such a field
on such a summer, and it was in such a dark place at the border of the light that she had first fallen in
love. He was her golden knight, her prince, her future. For him, she was. Only that. Only was.
Days mild as magic passed that year when she was in love. The lights of the bait shop on the wharf
twinkled with the romance of Broadway when Darrell came in from clamming. As he slid down her
jeans, Vera was enraptured by the symphony of the gulls and the perfume of stale fish, and no heaven
could ever have been sweeter. One Saturday he crewed on a tourist sailboat, hustled a bit extra in tips
and, in a generous mood, treated Vera to dinner at a railroad-car diner on the mainland. She ordered
hesitantly, prudently opting for meatloaf while Darrell sawed into the rib-eye, and there in the privacy
of the back corner booth, cradled in cracked vinyl, he presented her with a gold-plated chain bearing a
diamond-chip heart from the pawn shop, and declared it was time he moved in with her. She was the
luckiest girl in the world, and she traced another heart of her own in the spilled sugar on the faux-marble
formica. The neon diner sign winked erratic red bursts onto the sugar heart. She couldn’t read the words
the red letters spelled.
In whatever manner time is measured, Darrell replaced the books, the horses, the introspective
nights and the magical days, with noise and grease and the never-ending debris of his chainsaw mind.
Cartons stuffed with Vera’s former life soon overflowed the barn, their permanent extinction threatened
on a daily basis. With each encroachment she retreated farther and with each retreat his presence
expanded until her life was his, which was no life at all. Those warm embraces debased into drunken
grapplings, thence to hellfire bullyings and daily pummelings. She knew no refuge but the life inside
her, that of her family yet-to-be, that and the privacy of her imagination. Like the golden horse, the
whisper of her grandfather’s gentle kiss upon her forehead ghosted her dreams, reassuring her when
Darrell became violent.
On a stifling night in July she dream-raced with Pegasus through cool mountain air, yet the dream
warped into the surprise of nightmare as his swirling mane strangled her, and she awoke with Darrell
flattened atop her, twisting the belt of her bathrobe tight around her throat. She was gagging, struggling
for breath, flailing out, wrenching away from him, falling, struggling up, slapped back down, struggling
up again. A punch to her ear drove her reeling into the bureau, grabbing the embroidered scarf, sending
toiletries flying, scattering the floor with broken glass. She slid down and sat stunned amid the litter of
her life, blood seeping like tiny twinkling jewels from the glass shards in her flesh. He pulled her upright
and backhanded her, repeatedly, while she swayed in slow motion like a child’s weighted toy, unable to
fall, unable to flee. He said nothing. She made no cries. The only sound was the slapping, the hitting,
the breaking. Flesh to flesh, bone to bone. Tired from his efforts, Darrell dragged her into the hall and
kicked her down the stairs, where she lay curled in an impossibly small heap, and the twinkling red jewels
became a monstrous red ruby.
The staircase was not long in the old house, but it was steep in the way of old houses, and by the
time they found her she had hemorrhaged to the point of coma. The ferry was ponderously slow and
The Linnet's Wings