Whiteout

Part I
Henry woke to white sunlight burning through curtain-less windows. His bed was like a fever, but the air beyond it, icy. He sat up and pressed his bare feet flat against the floor and concentrated on breathing.
In his tiny kitchen he put on a pot of water for tea. A four day old newspaper lay on the table. The short plump man with a crooked smile had let him have it for free at the newsstand. Sometimes the news made him feel like a piece of something bigger.
At his table, Henry opened the unread paper and drew mustaches on the faces: politicians, actresses, convicted murderers. He made each mustache unique. The people in the newspaper, Henry thought, were not like the people in life. He imagined them, picketing wordlessly outside his door, waving black-and-white paper fists, complaining about taxes and new mustaches.
Henry was interrupted by a soft thumping on a door. He walked to the front door and opened it. On the other side of the door, waiting on his haunches, was a polar bear.
“Good morning,” the bear said, sniffing the air. He gestured to the day with a prominent nose.
“Good morning.”
The polar bear waited. His expression was one of mild curiosity tinged with what Henry thought to be sympathy, but he couldn’t be sure. Polar bears were hard to read.
“Would you like to come in?” Henry offered, sensing it was the right thing to do.
“I would like to very much,” the bear said.
Outside the tiny apartment, snow continued to fall lightly. Inside, the polar bear’s yellowy fur glistened with the melting flakes. His black nose, satisfyingly contrasting with the rest of him, was wet. The bear sat down before the small, kitchen table, hands folded in front of him.

The smell of the snow made Henry think of Danica, under the patched quilt at her apartment. When her skin would melt into his like hot wax. Outside the snow had been falling, like it was falling now. It made the world quiet, and muffled, under a pillow and sleeping, and somehow warm.
“Do you think other people really love each other?” Danica had asked.
“Maybe,” Henry said. “But not like this.”
Kisses followed, soft and isolated.
“Would you do anything for me?” she asked.
“Anything,” Henry asked, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, “but nothing illegal.”
“What if I had to go to jail unless you helped me?” Danica asked, holding small tufts of his hair between her fingers.
“What do I have to do?”
“Drive me over the border.”
“What did you do?” He rested a hand below her neck.
“Drug sniffling.”
“What?”
“I mean smuggling.” Her leg rubbed his, like a cricket.

Henry realized he wasn’t being very polite at all. But the bear had remained patient, his expression dripping on Henry‘s table.
“Some tea?” Henry asked.
“That would be fine,” the bear said.
They sipped in silence. Henry lit a cigarette and smoked. He felt the deep pulling sensation from the pit of his stomach. Cigarettes allowed Henry to be sure he was breathing, evidential smoke curling around his head like angel hair. For people who were not sure, Henry decided, this way was best.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” the polar bear asked.
Outside, a bicycle bell chimed twice. The sound of it gave Henry chills. He wondered how the bicyclist managed through the snow. He imagined huge round tires, light and bloated, like balloons. He imagined flying bicycles and in a movie where an alien made that happen. Who thought of that? Henry wondered. Why did he think of it? The bicyclist rung the bell two more times. Henry was distracted.
Henry felt the crease between his eyebrows deepening, and forced himself to be aware of it, and to iron it flat again. Ironing, Henry knew, was an action you did because other people did it too, and all the while, with the iron in your hand, you wondered how necessary it really was.
“Would you like to play a game of Scrabble?” Henry asked the bear.
The bear nodded and continued to sip his tea patiently while Henry found the board and brought it to the kitchen table. The bear was particularly good at the game, and Henry watched, impressed, as he came up with words like “peril” and “duration.” Henry found it difficult to form words from the letters, but enjoyed the way the little squares grew and formed a visually satisfying web of pipelines.
At the end of the game, the bear smiled. “Did you have fun?”
Henry thought about this for a moment. “You can never be too sure, with Scrabble.”

He remembered playing scrabble with Danica on the floor. He was always sure, with Danica.
“Don’t peek at my letters!” she screamed, pointing an accusatory finger.
“I’m not,” Henry replied, smiling.
Danica smiled back. It was her turn. She held four squares tightly in her fist, pinching her eyes shut in concentration. Slowly, deliberately, she put her letters down: P, L, O, N, E.
“Plone?” Henry asked, an eyebrow raised.
“Absolutely plone!” Danica remarked, eyes darting around the room as if looking for support from a shirt or a crumpled tissue.
“What does it mean, then?” Henry asked, feeling giddy. His smile widened.
“I wont say! Do you want to challenge me?”
Henry didn’t say anything but began to giggle. The giggle started in his stomach like a rumbling, slowly coursing through his center, dripping from his mouth like hot lava. He felt happy.
“No, I’m too lazy to get the thing.”
“I’m too lazy too,” she said, letting her head loll about her neck, and stretching out her feet beside the board.
After Henry took his turn, Danica exploded with laughter, the sound shooting out of her, hot and fresh, like a geyser.
“You should’ve challenged me!” she screamed, “plone is not a word.” Danica’s laughter was without reservation, without self-awareness, just a wild thing. Her whole body shook and trembled.
Henry threw the board in mock surprise and outrage, sending little squares flying. He jumped on Danica and held her down, her back pressing flatly against the carpet.
“You’re hurting me!” she screamed, her body vibrating, her geyser laugh rising higher.
“Don’t care,” Henry said. He began to lick her eye.
“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” she began to whimper, but Henry felt her body submit beneath his tongue, and he stayed on top of her, licking her face and holding her.

Henry snapped into the present, and tried to think about what people did when a guest arrived. A few minutes went by and something finally came to him: offering a delicious snack.
Henry rose from his chair and opened the refrigerator, the contents of which included a container of milk, a bottle of mustard, a half pound of cheese. On the bottom shelf, silver in the refrigerator’s light, was a fish, grey and glossy through wax paper.
The lake was a place that reminded Henry of being young, and of Christmas. Henry sometimes decided to go there and pretend that when he turned around, he’d see his mother in the purple hat with the poof ball on top. He’d pretend that he could smell that familiar smell of her skin: the soothing smell of cigarette smoke, carrots, and body lotion.
When he was at the lake, Henry would wait until the last rays of white winter-sun had set, before he’d turn around to leave, eyes on the slushy ground. If he could make it back to his apartment without looking up, Henry could pretend he had past his mother on his way to Danica’s.
Henry had learned that people felt much more comfortable with people who had goals and reasons. They believed that standing quietly before a lake was what murderers and Satanists did. Just existing was for bad people.
Not wanting to cause any trouble, Henry had decided that if he wanted to go there, he would pretend to fish. He had found an old pole, attached a piece of cheese to the end, and sat in a small boat. Not expecting to catch anything, Henry was surprised to feel a gentle tug on his line.
Surprise is a good feeling, Henry had thought at the time. A feeling with physical components: a rush of blood, a thump of the heart, a swirl in the stomach. Surprise means you’re alive.
But as he unwrapped the fish in his kitchen, the sight of its vacant expression and the stillness of its glassy body made Henry take a deep remorseful breath. He lifted the cold, lifeless figure in his hand. It felt depressingly light.
“Could I interest you in a lovely fish?” Henry asked the bear.
The bear looked intently into Henry’s eyes. “No thanks, friend. I can’t say I’m very hungry at the moment.”

Danica was always hungry. She would sit on the tiled floor in her parents’ huge kitchen, in her underwear, looking up at him with huge eyes.
“Make me lots of food!” she had commanded, barely able to mask the laughter seeping out of her voice.
“But you’re such a small girl,” Henry said.
“No, I’m Jagga the Hud. Feed me!” She let her tiny pink tongue roll around the corners of her mouth.
“You mean Jabba the Hut?”
Henry kissed the tip of her tongue.
Henry made omelettes, toast, bacon, and tea. They ate their meal on the kitchen floor.
“Feed me kisses,” Danica commanded, trying to sound like the slug-like space monster.
“Am I Princess Leia in this scenario?”
Danica’s maniacal laughter filled the room, her body shaking with the force of it. Henry had decided he had never heard a more beautiful sound.

Danica sat at her typewriter. She looked at Henry, who sat watching her, and smiled hugely. Then she turned to face the keyboard. Her smiled melted away, and a crease appeared between her eyebrows.
“Do I look serious?” she asked, her voice low.
“You look beautiful,” he responded, his stare weighing heavy on her face.
“But do I look serious. Like I’m going to write a very important piece of literature.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Um.”
“You’re not listening,” she moaned. She hit the space bar twice to express annoyance. The machine let out two dusty clunk-clunks.
“You are going to write a very important piece of literature.” Henry smiled.
Danica bit her lower lip. “I don’t know how to write.”
“Sure you do.”
She banged her head against her palm. “How do I start?”
“Start with that.”
“With what?”
“Write How do I start.”
Obediently, the typewriter thudded as Danica clunk-clunked her first sentence.
“I think I know the end of the story,” she said.
“Do you?”
“Always.”

“I must apologize,” Henry told the bear. “I’m not sure what I can do for you.”
The bear looked thoughtful for a moment. He chose his words carefully.
“Henry,” he began slowly, “they’re worried about you.”
Henry felt the crease between his eyebrows deepen.
“They?”
“Everyone.”
Danica had often helped Henry forget that other people existed. Instead of walking on sidewalks, Henry walked through other mazes. Only when she mentioned “the others,” did he remember they were out there.
“They’ve ruined music for me,” she had said one afternoon, as she paced barefoot through frost-stained grass. The sky behind her was white with thick clouds pressing down on them.
“They?”
Were there people still out there? Henry wasn’t sure.
“The bands. Musicians. It’s all about trends. They ruined everything about it that I loved.”
“Don’t you like some bands?”
“I hate all music now.”
Though Danica’s feet were a bruised bluish color, her bottom lip maintained a childlike stubbornness. She refused to shiver.
“But some music is okay, right?”
Henry was bundled up, donning a winter cap, woolen socks, his brown boots and a scarf. He noticed Danica’s pale, slender knees beneath the hem of her skirt.
“It smells like beer now.”
Danica pressed her toes down into the dirt. It looked dry and soft beneath her.
“Aren’t you cold?”
She began to laugh, but covered her mouth with long white fingers. Coldness, she thought, made her tickle. She began to scratch her body all over.
“What a strange little doll,” Henry said, in a British accent.
Danica burst out laughing, and Henry scooped her tiny body up in his arms. He carried her a few steps toward her parents house, and looked down into her face.
Her eyes sparkled.

“Henry?” the bear asked, a concerned expression in his jet-black eyes.
For a color so dark, Henry thought, they looked warm.
“Where is she, Henry?”
Henry’s entire body grew so still, he thought for a moment that his heart had stopped beating. The room filled with so huge a silence, Henry could hear the snow falling outside, each individual flake crunching thickly. The snow was piling up on either side of the house, packing them in, a much needed pillow over the face.
Where is she, Henry replayed the question. His own voice in his head sounded distant, and third-partyish. Where? Henry wondered.
“Some people have big spirits,” Henry told the bear. “I thought about it once, a long time ago. About people with big spirits.”
The bear didn’t move, his black eyes focused on Henry’s face.
“I thought about how some people have small spirits.”
He paused to take a cigarette out of a back pocket. He pinched it between his thumb and forefinger. A moment went by and he let it fall to the ground.
“People with big spirits, they don’t die. Their veins pump blood to their hearts and they love. Their eyes blink and they see. Without their hearts pumping, there is no love. Without their eyes, there’s nothing to see.”
The bear lowered his eyes to the table in front of him stared dully at his used teabag: cold and heavy, and now totally useless.
“I thought her not being here would create an alternate universe.”
The bear nodded. He thought he knew how the teabag felt.
“That would’ve made it easier. Waking up to a different world, where grass was purple and people walked on their heads. But everything’s exactly the same,” Henry said, his shoulders sagging under the weight of reality. “Everything seems the same except emptier.”

Danica had worn an apron over her favorite yellow dress, something wooden in her hand, as she paced on her parents living room rug.
“What the hell is that?” Henry asked, walking into the room. He shook his coat off, raindrops flying off in all directions.
“A wooden cooking spool.”
“Are you cooking?”
“Well, I’m wearing an apron. I’m holding this spool.”
“Where’s the food?”
“What’s the difference?” she asked, smiling a little. “I must be cooking. People would think I’m cooking. If they saw me.”
“But no one can see you. It’s just me .”
She suddenly stopped smiling and sat on the carpet. She rested her chin on her knees, her palms face down on either side of her.
“I’m sad.”
“I know,” Henry told her, sitting down beside her. He placed a hand on her cheek.
“I’m sad.”
“I want to swallow your sadness,” Henry said.
Danica smiled.

When Henry arrived at Danica’s house, it was already dark outside. He let himself into the always silent, three-story house that was Danica’s parents’. The front door to the beautiful, expensively furnished home was always unlocked: Danica’s private rebellion. He never called her when he arrived, he would find her: hide-and-go-seek. She would hear the door close, and assuming it was him, would find a corner to hide in, so he could find her.
When he finally caught her, she was in front of her father’s huge fish tank, the water as clear as a mountain spring. Danica was silent, transfixed, her eyes wide as the fish basked lazily in white florescence.
Henry sat down next to her, on a large floor pillow. He settled in and let a sigh of relief, like someone who had been running all day, and finally realized that there was no where else to go.
“It’s so balmy in here,” Henry said, breaking the silence.
Danica didn’t move.
“It’s already dark out. It’s like a different world when it gets so dark so early.”
Danica blinked, but didn’t answer.
Henry got up from his pillow and stood behind Danica, and laid his hands on her head. Slowly, he petted her.
Finally, he heard her let the air out of her lungs.
“Those fish are very nice,” Henry said, placing a finger on the tank. “I like the little red one. His name should be Buddha. He’s chubby, and very peaceful.”
Danica smiled. She watched the little red Buddha-fish.
“Danica?” Henry asked, still petting her head. “Ask me the question that you have in your head.”
She turned to face him. “Okay,” she said.
“My question is this: are we looking in at them, or are they looking out at us?”
“Which would be better?”
Danica thought about this. “I don’t know,” she decided. “Both scare me a little.”
“I think they’re looking at me,” Henry said thoughtfully. “And I’m looking at you. And you’re looking at them. And,” he paused, thinking. “I think that I’m the luckiest one of all of us.”

When they walked around outside, Henry walked with his face turned completely toward hers, looking owl-like and expectant. Sometimes he would trip a little on something small in front of him. When that happened, Danica would smile and take his hand. She would talk animatedly about many things.
“What would you do if you had one week to live?”
“That’s a silly question,” Henry answered, his eyes on hers. Someone waved at them from across the street, but Henry didn’t see.
“Why is it silly?”
“Well, what would you do?”
“Well,” Danica said thoughtfully, “I’d go to the airport and do standby on the first available flight to anywhere. Then I’d get on.”
“You wouldn’t want to pick, if you only had a week to live?” Henry asked.
“How could I? It’d be the last place I’d be able to visit, no place would seem good enough.”
“No place is good enough.”
Danica’s cheeks paled. Her eyes looked watery, and slowly unfocused.
Danica was restless, Henry knew, and searching for something she never seemed to find. She often went into lapses when she felt like there was no place worth going, nothing worth doing. Those seemed to Henry, to be dangerous times.
“No,” Henry said. “That’s not what I meant. I meant…”
But Danica wasn’t listening.
“All I meant,” Henry said to himself, his eyes now on the sidewalk.
He sighed.
“If I had a week to live,” he said, quietly. “I’d do…”
The back of his throat got soft and wet, and he felt a sob break somewhere deep inside of him.
“I’d do this.”

The bear closed his eyes, and saw in his mind the familiar image of two people, walking around in their own world, immune to everything beyond the sound of their whispers and the scent of their skin.
The bear opened his eyes and saw one man. A man who didn’t eat. A man with skin tinted yellow, and purple under his eyes. A man who thought he had a small spirit.
“There was something beautiful about her,” the bear said. He paused and looked deeply at Henry. “And you,” he continued. “Something beautiful about you.”
Henry was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. He walked sleepily toward the bear, his eyes closed even before he fell into the bears large, strong arms.

When Henry awoke hours later, his head was resting on the bears chest. Henry looked up at the bear and noticed that the fur beneath his eyes were wet.
“There was a note,” Henry told the bear, sitting upright. He thought of Danica, and felt himself smile.
“It said: ‘Let’s see what all the fuss is about.’”












Part II
A girl with brown hair and green eyes walked down the block very nicely. She wore her hair nicely, in neat a neat ponytail held together with a very nice barrette. Rose followed her, keeping her distance. It wasn’t fear she felt toward the little girl, no of course not that. Something else, Rose felt, something she couldn’t hold in her hands or put into the washing machine. Something elusive and, yes, she could admit it, a little scary.
The little girl suddenly stopped short, and spun around very nicely, very poetically, like a tiny ballerina. It was as if every movement this girl made, made sense, not just movement. It had a point.
Rose stopped short, seven steps behind the girl. Rose was eighteen but looked about thirty. She had a round face, and round eyes. Danica didn’t mind looking at her.
“Rose?”
“Yes?”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to the park.”
Danica paused, her bright green eyes like fire. Finally, “Why?”
Rose bit her lip. “To…” her voice trailed off. She never had to explain to a child why they were going to the park. How to begin, she wondered. To play? To have fun?
Danica saw Rose’s expression, shrugged her shoulders and walked on. She didn’t shrug in a confused way, thought Rose, but in a way that said, that’s okay, don’t you worry.
But Rose did worry. She did.

The next day was Sunday, and that was the day that Mauve and Dayton would spend time with their daughter. Their home was already two months old, yet Mauve felt she hadn’t gotten much of a chance to see it. She worked as an agent with a very successful modeling agency, and the job took her to many exotic places. She always brought back a little present for her daughter, something inexpensive but with the mark of the place on it: a blue and white candle with ATHENS written across it, chopsticks that read TOKYO, a red hat that said nothing, but that her daughter knew was from Berlin.
Dayton didn’t travel much with the firm, but worked long hours at his office in the city. He seldom bought things for his daughter. Once, he brought home a box of chocolate chip cookies. His daughter, five years old at the time, had seen them, and very suddenly, but silently, began to cry, water spilling from her eyes, not in tears, but streams. Dayton didn’t scoop his daughter up with hugs or “why’s” or “what’s wrongs” but rather, backed out of the room, literally backwards, like a child who has just broken a lamp, and plan to forget about his impending punishment until absolutely necessary.
But Sunday, Rose would be in anyway, in case the parents needed any assistance with their daughter, who was prone to that unnamable quality that made Rose so uncomfortable. Despite the x-factor, Rose liked the little girl a lot. Liked everything about her. She was, Rose had been proud of own creativity to notice, like a moving painting. Made not of substance but color and movement, something otherworldly.

Mauve was already sitting at the newly furnished mahogany dining room table, when her husband came downstairs. He was wearing a pair of pajama pants, his hair sticking up in all directions. Mauve glanced embarrassedly through the door into the kitchen at Rose, who had her back to them.
“Do you really have to come downstairs looking like that Dayton?”
“But I live here,” he answered gruffly, sitting down. The button fly to the pants were open, and he wasn’t wearing any underwear.
“Jesus, Dayton!”
“For goodness sake, what?”
“Look down, your crotch is showing!” Mauve herself, looked away.
Dayton smiled. “Afraid of giving Rose a little thrill?”
Mauve rolled her eyes and scoffed, as if the idea of her very successful and good-looking husband giving anyone a thrill was preposterous. In truth, Mauve didn’t like the idea. Not at all.