Rick and Dee
The woman knelt on a mat and carefully wiped the linoleum with a sponge. She scooted in parallel with the counter, along the line marked in the linoleum pattern. She struggled a little to shift position, she was starting to feel her age in her knees. The air around her was uncomfortably polar, the space around the house quiet, muffled by snow. The woodstove's radius didn’t extend this far, nor did the occasional sound of passing cars. The kitchen was lit with faintly blue light from the skylight above, the loft quiet and empty. She reached the lip of the dining room floor where the narrow, polished slats left a small step up from the kitchen. Somewhere the old frame of the house creaked, expanding, contracting against the constant temperature gradient wrought by the fire. Dee pushed herself off the floor with a grunt, pulling herself up using the lathed columns separating the kitchen counter from the dining room. She waited a moment for her blood to stabilize before setting the sponge, which was immaculately clean, down by the sink. She picked up the mat and walked it into the adjoining laundry room.
“Ricky, we’re out of fabric softener, add it to the grocery list,” she called out.
Dee was hungry so she took a stoneware plate out and set it on the counter, opened the fridge, fished a few pickled jalapeños out of their jar. She cut a small slice of horseradish cheese with a paring knife and pulled a rye crisp out of its plastic shell on the shelf. She sat down at the kitchen island, cold, but there was no eating in the living room, so she ate quickly.
She put the dirty plate in the dishwasher and rinsed and dried her hands, then padded into the living room, relieved at the sudden warmth. From there she could see the mailbox, which had been left in the up position, its long rope buried in the snowbank. There were slushy tire tracks through the fresh snow, and the thermometer showed the temperature hovering just above freezing. She kicked off her slippers and sank her feet into the thick white carpet.
“So I was thinking about moving the t.v.,” she said. “I think it'd be better along the inside wall, so we don´t get the glare from the window,” she added. “Also I was going to ask you to pick up a loaf of that rosemary bread later, like what you brought last time, that was good. It would go good with dinner. I´m making a stew, with some of those canned tomatoes from the summer.”
Dee was quiet. “I'm thinking about going cross-country skiing tomorrow morning, before I go to Barbra's to do her cleaning,” she said. “But I should probably wait until then to see if it holds up, I don't want to go out if it's frozen over. I hate the crusty snow.” She picked a magazine out of the wicker basket by the chair and sat down, leafing through it for a few minutes before she tired of it. She walked over to the window and looked out to the road, which hadn't changed in the past few minutes. She could see the wooden barn catty-corner from the house, with its caving roof.
“Ricky, I'm tired, I think I'm gonna take a nap.”
Dee started climbing the stairs. They were built nearly 200 years ago and they groaned and squeaked, and they were made for smaller feet, so you could easily ram your toe into the riser while trying to find a place to put your heel, which would hang off into space. Dee climbed slowly and the phone rang. She hustled up the last couple stairs to grab the phone on the landing.
“Hello?”
It was her oldest. “Henry, I was just heading for a nap that´s all, sure.” She pronounced “Henry as 'Henrayy,' leaning hard into Long Island as she always did with her son, who also still retained his original nasal affect, even after years upstate. He said he wanted to say he knew it was a hard day.
“I know you're thinking about what you'd make for his birthday, I know you miss him,” he said.
She listened and responded and then, she went to bed.
