The Year It Rained by Crescent Dragonwagon

Author:Crescent Dragonwagon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: coming of age, young adult, literary fiction, selfawareness, family relationships
Publisher: Crescent Dragonwagon

Chapter Six: Ice

SATURDAY MORNING Dorothy Fiori drives my mother and me to the A&P, since my mother can’t drive. Walking across the porch, down the steps, on the path to the curb toward the car, my mother and I take tiny, carefully balanced steps, clinging to the handrail where there is one. Yesterday’s predicted snow turned to icy rain in the night, and there is a solid sheet of dangerous invisible ice over everything.

It occurs to me that even inside the house, my mother and I tread with equal care: The atmosphere is equally treacherous. If one of us slipped, the other might go down too.

Dorothy is waiting in the warm white car, drawn up next to the sidewalk, exhaust pluming into the cold, moist air.

There are chains on the tires and the roads have been salted and sanded. Safe: but the sky is overcast and ominous. Anything could happen.

My mother and I have still not talked in the way I think we must, or at least, thought so last night. Today the idea of such talk, honest talk, seems as foolish to me as jogging on that invisible ice would be. I feel as though the ice is climbing vertically, slowly encasing us individually. Though we fight it, we’re being iced over, isolated, cold, visibility from within poor: alone.

But oh we are so cheerful. At breakfast I ask her what you get when you cross a rooster with an owl; and when she gives up I am happy to say, “A cock that stays up all night,” and happy to hear her laugh appreciatively.

“Now that’s a nice children’s book joke,” she says. “Animals . . . just right for the children’s book department.”

“Speaking of which,” I say, “what’s happening at the children’s book department?”

She sighs. This is what I read as the I - can’t - possibly- communicate - to - you - all - the - terrible - things - that - are - happening sigh. “Too much, too much, too much,” she says, looking away from me.

“Well, what’s one specific thing?” I say doggedly.

“Oh, Elizabeth.” Sigh. “It’s all interconnected. I can’t tell you one thing without explaining something else which requires explaining something else.”

“Well, try.”

Sigh.

“Oh! Well, here’s a story I’ve been meaning to tell you. I meant to tell you Thursday, but you weren’t home. Wednesday, I was going over the new Tania Shavelson picture-book manuscript, which is quite charming and funny and dear, about a little old man, a kind of hermit who sometimes scrounges in the city dump but mostly lives self-sufficiently by himself in a little shack in the woods. He hates people, but he’s friendly with everything in the woods. He knows all the trees and plants and wildflowers; he’s on a social basis with several deer, a chipmunk, a squirrel, two fieldmice, two owls, a number of robins, a stray cat, a snake, and so on. Well, in one part of the story one of the owls is arguing with one of the fieldmice, and the owl gets angry and swallows the fieldmouse whole.

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