The Painting of Porcupine City (48 page)

A small wall of snow collapsed into my living room when I pulled open the door. I went out and breathed in the cold air. Drifts rolled like white sand dunes across my front yard and climbed high against the sand-colored siding of my little Cape Cod house. I quickly kicked clear the steps just enough to sit down. The rest of it—the walk, the driveway—all that could wait.

I took a sip of coffee, touched the warm mug to my chin, my cheeks. In the sky, lines of blue looked sketched among gray clouds like an unfinished Van Gogh, and from somewhere not too far away I could hear the beep-beep of a plow backing up. A single car crept up my street, its wipers knocking back and forth fast-fast like hummingbird wings. I pushed the mug into the snow by my knee and doodled a spiral around it with one gloved finger. It was just after nine o’clock in the morning, and the neighborhood was quiet. It was easy to imagine this as an icy, isolated Fortress of Solitude.

From outside the house, the Billie Holiday record I’d put on sounded sweetly distant, like a memory of a song stuck in my head. Zane liked to play music quiet like this. He said it made him focus on the song more than if the volume hit him hard.

I would shovel, I decided, just enough for him to get his car in my driveway, and then I’d call him. I pulled my peacoat’s floppy collar up around my neck and my hat down to my eyebrows. If he wanted to come over we could listen to records and look through the yellow, dog-eared comics in that cardboard box in my spare bedroom, the ones Simon had loaded into the Dumpster because they weren’t worth anything. The ones Zane and I, months ago when things were easier, snuck out as treasure. I’d make us hot chocolate.

Across the street my neighbor opened her front door and took a surprised look at her buried front steps. She had white hair and wore a navy blue housecoat. She bent down slowly and dipped a wrinkled hand into the snow.

I put my hands against my mouth and shouted, “I’ll come over and shovel you later, Mrs. Bradford!”

She waved and held out her arms, as if to catch a schoolyard ball.

I took another sip of coffee, watched my breath mix with the steam. If I made hot chocolate for Zane, I wondered, would that make it seem too much like a date? Would floating marshmallows, white and shiny in halos of melting, suggest an eroticism I’d be better off avoiding? Maybe. Maybe I’d swap the hot chocolate for beer, or for apple juice, or Coke. Or something. Or maybe hot chocolate
without
marshmallows. If he even wanted to come over at all. Shit—if I even called him.

He probably shouldn’t drive in this snow, anyway. And shoveling would be hard.

Mrs. Bradford held her hand out in the air and then put it to her lips, pulled back inside her house and closed the door.

Suddenly my knee was warm and I noticed my mug had lurched in its melting cupholder and sloshed coffee on my leg and into the spirals of snow. It hissed and a circle of brown slush sprang outward from the mug. I lifted it out of the snow, rescuing an inch of coffee, and leaned back against the step.

That’s when I saw the figure walking up the narrow street. The puffy red vest he wore over a hooded sweatshirt stood out like an explosion against all the white, and he carried a backpack, the kind with the frame and the waist strap; there was a layer of snow on top. The snow was starting to pile up on my own outstretched legs, and the coffee spot was getting cold. I thought of going back inside to Billie, to the fire I built before coming out, but I decided to wait to see where this snow-covered stranger was headed. I took another sip of coffee.

He made his way slowly up the street, each step a search for a foothold in the slushy ruts left by plows. He was looking at each white-covered house as he passed it. When he came to the front of mine he stopped and stomped his boots and lifted the edge of his hood away from his eyes. Was he looking at me? Was he trying to make out the snow-dusted brass
63
on my door? I stood up, brushed off my legs and shoulders. The man on the street, though I could only see the small circle of face his scarf and pulled-tight hood revealed, was looking for someone.

Was it me? I was not expecting a visitor.

“Vince!” the stranger called. I started at the sound of my name, unexpected and booming through the muffled neighborhood. He laughed a laugh that sounded full of relief and waved. My pulse quickened. I wanted to think this was Zane but I knew it wasn’t.

“Who is it?” I called and began to wade out into my yard with clumsy, teetering steps. Snow went down my boots and bit my ankles through my socks. The stranger looked back and forth along the piles of snow along the street that formed a barrier between him and my yard. He threw up his hands in mock desperation and waved again.

Part of me knew who it was by then—a part that could tell just by the way he moved his hands, by the tone of his scarf-dampened voice. In fact, what I now doubted more than the person’s identity was whether I was really awake at all, and not still in bed, dreaming all this up. But when I got closer I was able to see his eyes through the opening between his hood and his scarf. They were green and bright. They belonged to the person in the photos on my living room wall.

The last inch of coffee slipped from the mug as it left my fingers and disappeared in a poof of white.

“Griffin?” It came out of me as a whisper. There was an inclination to run away, to dive beneath the snow and burrow away. I stepped hesitantly at first, not bothering to look for the mug, and then walked faster, stumbling, like I was running along the beach, overcome now, amazed, amazed. “Is that you?”

“It’s me! I must look like a snowman.”

“What’re you— You do! Frosty!”

“I know! Haha!”

I was shivering, not just because my boots were full of snow. “What are you doing here?” I said, wading closer. “How the hell
are
you?”

He hugged himself. “I’m cold!” He pulled aside his scarf and put his gloved finger to his unshaven chin, as though trying to determine the best way to reach me. Then he started climbing up one side of the snow bank that divided us. I climbed up the other. We met at the top, overlooking the street and my yard, steadying ourselves in the loose snow with the same motion used to stomp grapes.

I opened my mouth to speak again but only white breath came out. My heart was pounding, my mind spinning. I started to lean in to give him a hug and we did that hesitant, shaky dance while a hug worked itself out. When he finally had his arms around me, though, he hugged me really hard, hard enough to make me slip.

“Whoa-ho, careful,” he said, grabbing my sleeve. “Look at all this, huh?”

Was this really him? Could it be? What the
fuck
? I felt like rubbing my eyes like a surprised cartoon character.
Weeker-weeker-week.

“This sure is a surprise,” I said. “How the heck did you get here? I’m guessing you didn’t walk the whole way.”

“Bus,” he said. His lips were chapped, his nose windburn-red. “I took the bus.”

“Wait a second— From where? I guess it’s been so long...”

“From Boston. I was living with Beth. Beth O’Shea. Do you remember—?”

“Of course I remember Beth. So you’re together then?”

“Well— No. Not really, no. Not anymore.”

“Oh. That sucks. I’m sorry.”

“Eh, you know.” He lifted his arms and let them fall against the padded waist strap at his hips. Snow, disturbed, tumbled off his hood and shoulders and backpack in tiny avalanches. “Not everything works out. Story of my fucking life, right? I know it’s been a while, Vince, but some things never change.”

“I guess. ...So you came here?”

He shrugged his shoulders as best he could beneath the straps and nodded.

“But what made you? It’s been so long.”

“Figured you’d take me in,” he said. His scarf, which had risen back to the position it froze in, bunched against his cheeks, conveying a nervous smile beneath.

A car went by below us. Its exhaust puffed white behind it. Little snowballs danced and crumbled with the vibration of the tires. My eyes traveled up the snow pile. Snow caked Griff’s pant legs. This was too detailed. This was no dream.

“I wasn’t wrong, was I?” he added, the corners of his eyes revealing a subtle wince.

“Well no— I mean, of course you’re welcome. I’m just— This is a surprise.”

“Bad one? Good one?”

“Good one, sure.”

“So that’s your house?” he said, gesturing to it.

“Yup.”

“Looks warm.”

“Jesus, yeah. Come in. Come in, I’m sorry. You must be freezing.” I began to climb down off our mountain.

“Thanks. I am.” He sat down and shimmied on his butt down to the yard. “The snow was already coming down pretty hard when I got into town last night so I slept in the bus place. Well, maybe not slept. Dozed. I got the first cab I saw—it got stuck a mile or so back.” He pointed down the street.

“A mile’s not bad,” I said.

“Mm.”

We waded back across the front yard along the path I had made.

“How deep do you think this is?” I said.

“The snow? I don’t know. Fourteen inches? Fifteen?”

“My boss wanted me to go out and measure and I was like,
Screw that, Simon
, so I took a guess and I said eighteen.”

“The drifts are probably eighteen.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told him.”

I stomped on the steps and smacked snow off my jeans with my gloves. Billie Holiday’s voice grew louder when I pushed open the door. The warm spicy smell of burning firewood greeted us.

“Oh, heat at last, thank god.” He yanked off his gloves and held his hands in the air like a hobo at a trashcan fire.

“You can kick off your stuff here,” I said, stepping out of my boots.

“Sounds good.” He wiggled out of his backpack and leaned it against the wall. He shook off his vest and sweatshirt before stepping inside and closing the door. “Nice place,” he said. He bent forward and rubbed the small of his back. “
Ooof
.”

In the picture glass that hung beside him I caught a reflection of me sporting a dumbfounded expression. No way was Griff really here in my house. I turned around. “Let me give you the grand tour,” I said. “I can pretty much do it right here, from the welcome mat. Ha.”

“Nah, it looks like a great house,” he said reassuringly as he untied his boots. I hadn’t meant to seem embarrassed; I liked my house. I appreciated its weird color schemes (the living room’s walls were burnt sienna, the kitchen’s teal blue), its faux-wood–paneled cabinets and its drafty windows. Rather than reflecting a mash of hand-me-downs and yard-sale items, each one making its mark, the house looked carefully designed. It flirted in places with dumpy or tacky but always pulled back into quaint. At least I thought so.

Still, if I’d known he was coming I would’ve taken days, maybe weeks, getting everything just-so.

“Well this is obviously the living room here,” I told him, gesturing like a game show model. “I believe in the olden days it was called a sitting room but I’m not quite that old-fashioned.”

“Corduroy, Vince? Really?” He smiled, pointing at my two corduroy armchairs, one brown, one dark blue, both faded in the seats. A long leather ottoman stood in front of them. In a cabinet in the corner, beside the glowing fireplace, was the record player. There was the small television. There was the picture window—dual-named, because on either side of it hung framed photos, some black and white, some color.

He pulled off his boots, hopping on one foot then the other, and followed me through the arched doorway into the kitchen. A half-wall capped in a bar-like countertop and tiled on both sides with glossy sea-green squares separated it from the living room.

“This is where I do my modest cooking,” I said. “Slightly more advanced than the dorm-room hot-pot ramen, but only slightly.” I laughed, but he didn’t seem to be hearing me; he was looking at the picture on the wall above the table.

“You still have the blue dog,” he said, smiling. “Hey boy, long time no see.” Yes, he was speaking to my art. It struck me as so cute I almost started crying. And I imagined the perpetually expectant look in the blue dog’s oil-on-canvas-on-posterboard eyes softened just a little at the sound of Griff’s voice.

I cleared my throat. “Come on,” I told him. I led him out of the kitchen and down the hall to the rest of my little house, wishing for the first time that it was bigger. When the tour ended we’d have to talk about something other than furnishings and blue dogs and snow, and I had no idea yet what that would be. It was easier to continue stating the obvious. “Bathroom,” I announced, pushing open the door and discreetly kicking a pair of underwear into the corner against the hamper.

“Bathroom,” he repeated, nodding. “All the amenities.”

“And this is basically a junk room,” I said about the second bedroom, which contained my desk, an overloaded bookcase and that box of Simon’s old comics (I realized, for the first time, they smelled). “And my bedroom.” I didn’t take him in, but rather just walked past it, and then I tapped the two remaining hallway doors. “Closet. Cellar. Cellar’s kind of gross, so we’ll leave that alone.”

And then it was done. We returned to the kitchen, kind of facing each other a few feet apart—on a map of us this space would be labeled Awkwardland. I turned and began wiping off the counter, just something to do, while he looked around taking in details. I wished again that I’d had a chance to clean up more. “So that’s, uh, pretty much—”

“I like it,” he said with a smile. “This place is exactly you.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.”

“The fireplace smells good,” he said.

“That’s my favorite part.”

“Can I stoke it?” he said. “Is that a word? Stoke?”

“I think so.” I looked over the half-wall. The glowing coals in the charred cradle were low and hungry. “Go for it. Stoke away.”

He went to the living room and moved a few pieces of split wood from the bin onto the embers. They snapped at the weight and he leaned away and touched his hair.

“You own this place?” he said. “Or rent?” He curled up in the brown chair, tucking his feet underneath him. He looked at home. He used to sit that way on his bed when he was doing homework, tapping his pen against the spine of a textbook, humming, swearing, asking me to come look at something real quick. Something about roommates, good roommates at least, is that once you live with someone, you always feel like whatever place they’re in now is a little bit yours. Same smell, same stuff—same trinkets and furniture—that once intermixed with your own. He reached over to the stereo and turned my music down, as he’d done so many times before. The familiarity of the action quieted my buzzing nerves.