FICTION
A Blanket of Snow
by Matt Maxwell
The sallow walls reflected subdued light. Paintings of meadows cut by streams attempted to add idyllic serenity, but they were overshadowed by lanky, blinking and beeping machines surrounding her bed. The light blue love seat and two matching recliners, empty, without indentations, faced her.
Yuko watched The Weather Channel, hoping they would show the white mountains of her native Sapporo. Seeing recognized snow, she could wrap herself in its comfort. The white blankets atop her were no substitute.
In the halls, nurses bustled, their footsteps rubbing on the carpet. They talked at the desk, chattering about their families and patients and petulant doctors. To Yuko, the sentences were like drum beats. She picked up rudimentary words – I, was, is, am, she, he, we, talk, eat. She listened only to hear if they spoke of her.
She heard her name, then realized the speaker said you go.
Her fingers skimmed along her bare stomach; they felt alien to each other. The miscarriage erased what had been there. She remembered snow that had frozen and developed a crust, her finger puncturing, feeling nothing for what felt inches, then unexpectedly grazing the soft and familiar beneath the surface.
With every footstep that paused outside her room, she tensed. A visitor would bear well-intentioned sunshine but evoke only an awkward drizzle. She wanted a blizzard to bury her in an amniotic igloo.
Her Japanese friends – here because their husbands' companies sent them to this barren and humid Midwestern town for two years – would not visit. Yuko's situation was not spoken about. It did not exist. Even in a society saturated in politeness, there were no ritualized comments; even away from home, staunch propriety kept them away. No phone calls, cards, visits. She asked her American translator how to respond to the nurses who offered condolences, hinted that she might explain to them the Japanese reticence. Tadahito, her husband, returned to work hours earlier in the afternoon, seeking surroundings to ameliorate him, then a bar after work before coming to Yuko again. She thought he blamed her; even if he didn't, his anachronistic father would.
Should someone visit, what would Yuko want said? How would she respond? Would she allow them to touch her? Tadahito didn't, not even a soft hand on her shoulder. She wished she could prohibit him from touching her again.
Her solitude compounded the emptiness. She wanted her mom in the room, who would brush Yuko's ebon hair, dab away the tears that become raindrops on the pillow. She would hold Yuko's hand and absorb her pain.
Would she say anything about the earrings? Yuko almost smiled, picturing her reaction. Dame.dame.dame, her mother would whisper, eyes closed, and remind Yuko of the altered destiny her piercings wrought. She would rub the hole with her fingertips and shake her head and say that Yuko never outgrew her affinity to challenge superstitions.
She closed her eyes and imagined an exhausting trek through deep snow, the Hokkaido mountain trees the only thing not white beneath a milk sky. She splashes onto a drift, and like a cloud it cradles her, conforms to her shape and weight. Billowy flakes, large and light as petals, effervescent like soap bubbles, snake and spiral and twist and loop above her, falling stars and comets, and tap her clothes, nestling in creases, or alight on her face like angel motes and soak into her skin. They cling to eyelashes and then melt, become tears. They kiss her lips. Content and warm, she watches her breath filter into crisp air to be pushed and pulled by the mountain currents. She is insulated in her bed of snow. She closes her eyes and listens to the wind peeling over the mountains, the snow plopping lightly around her.
She nearly slipped into sleep, had the people not stopped outside her doorway. She couldn't see them, but their tones exuded elation. Multiple voices echoed in her room. A newborn cried, and Yuko drowned under the tsunami song.
Suddenly, they quieted – except for the baby – and someone shut the door. She heard them scamper away, the voices muffled static.
She rang for a nurse. She asked for blankets, enough to fill her room.
Matt Maxwell freelances whenever possible, having in the past worked for a local entertainment magazine, a low-income housing corporation, and the city's newspaper. Currently, he writes a column for a business magazine and contributes to an outdoor lifestyles publication. He has had fiction appear at eyeshot.net, scrivenerspen.org, stickyourneckout.com, thievesjargon.com, ululation.com, skivemagazine.com, and uber.nu.
He has recently been added as an editor with madhattersreview.com.