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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
July 22, 2007
Published as fiction
in a WIP dated December 26, 2000.
© 2000 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Woman in Snow, 1977
© 1977 by Bud Grossmann
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MISSED KISSES
A week without women. I thought I’d get a lot accomplished. On the day after Christmas, Marcia and our three girls drove to Tahoe, to “The Snow,” and “allowed” me to stay alone, here at home, in Walnut Creek. Now here I sit in our bedroom, in the dark, in sweatshirt and boxers, at 3:22 a.m. on the last Friday of the year. I squint to see the glowing red numerals of the clock radio on the dresser beyond Marcia’s (vacant) side of the bed. Half my week of peace and quiet is gone.
I am not entirely awake. A fit of coughing found me in a delirium of dreams. I imagined myself to be taking a bite of pecan pie, when a fragment of nutmeat attempted to enter my trachea. I was choking, but I felt no panic, only a tranquil cough-cough-gag-cough and everything’s-going-to-be-okay. My coughing and wheezing, though, are real; they were my ticket to skip the ski trip. My wife and daughters love the slopes, while I prefer to minimize my risk of frostbite and fractured femurs.
As soon as I sat up, my coughing ceased. When I lay down again, it returned. I am sitting on the edge of the bed, facing the wall and the windows. My feet are on the carpet. Our cat, Pumpkin, has twice crossed in front of me, brushing my bare shins with her flanks. Her tail’s tip taps against my knees. She is not mewing, but I know what she’s asking for: a fresh serving of Meow Mix in her bowl down the hall.
A second dream is silly. Something about a flimsy and ill-fitting door, hollow-core, of a rented room. Concerned for my safety, I propose (to an unseen landlord) that I will install a deadbolt, a scratched and tarnished brass-finished Schlage lock, like one which, I know, rests right now, outside the dream, in a box on a shelf in my garage. What is so ridiculous, I perceive, is that the easily entered door is set in a wall that does not reach all the way to the ceiling. It is like a cubicle wall, free-standing. Any spry intruder or thief, with a little leap and a chin-up, could enter my room, good lock or no lock, regardless.
I let the door dream drift downstream, with the image of pecan pie. But something else intriguing floats at the edge of my awareness, and this third dream I am going to try to hold. Something about a snowy woods on a gray December day.
I cough again. I swallow. I see fir trees, I see pines. Come to me, oh, memory! Pines, pines, patches of snow. Somewhere is a woman I should know. I turn to look again at Marcia’s clock. 3:23. Time is turtling along.
I am chilly. I try lying back again; I pull the sheet and the feather-filled comforter up to my stubble-covered cheeks. Low in my belly is an ache from the strain of coughing. My lungs burn, but my heart is strong: a cardiologist said as much, despite my producing a strange blip on a recent EKG. I close my eyes. Now I lay me... I reach out sleepily to where Marcia would be, her back to me. She is not here, I am alone.
Wait for me, then, please come to me, oh, woman in the pine trees! And now I am gone, back to sleep, I think, and suddenly, wondrously, the lost dream unfolds again, and I am in the company of a woman in a red, hooded coat. I know I know her, but I cannot say her name. I cannot specify the forbidden pleasures she and I have shared.
The pines, in uniformly planted rows, are decades old. The rugged trunks of most are a foot or more across. By slouching a bit, my unnamed companion and I are able to walk beneath the lowest, snow-laden boughs.
We walk, we wander in the woods. Then, deep inside this silent stand of trees, we face each other, about a yard apart. I unzip my coat. I smile. I spread wide my arms to receive or bestow a hug. I expect the woman to do the same, but, instead, she frowns and speaks. Her mittened hands hang loosely at her sides. Her woolen scarf covers her thin-lipped mouth but accents her lovely eyes. In tones as flat and gray as that December day, the woman in red tells me her physician has prescribed for her an antidepressant pill that works wonders but diminishes her drives of love.
“Oh, my!” I say. “Oh, dear! How deliciously ironic, that, to elevate your mood, you’ve given up the one thing that once most raised your spirits!”
My dream then ends without an ending, and I cough myself awake. I check the clock and am not surprised: 3:24 on Friday morning. Minute by minute, without women and without willing it, I am skiing toward the New Year. ♦
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