Snow

       The ringing of the phone disrupted Kelly’s concentration. Usually, when work consumed her, she turned the ringer off and let the voicemail service record her callers’ messages. However, that night, she expected a phone call from her husband, Mark, and didn’t want to miss it.
       She’d spent the past few hours constructing a history mid-term for her grade school students. This daunting task required her to cover the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Old West, and all the other major American historical events that occurred before 1901, within the space of 5 pages of fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, true-or-false, and essay questions.
       After eight years of teaching, starting fresh out of college, she knew what she had to do to ensure success by the end of that cold January night.
       She put on a kettle for tea. She changed into comfortable attire consisting of a gray sweatshirt, black sweat pants, and wool socks. She pulled her auburn hair back into a ponytail. She placed her Bach CDs in the stereo.
       When Kelly felt centered and ready, she sat down at her computer desk, which rested at the front of the house near a set of bow windows.
       She pressed “Play” on the stereo remote. Classical music quickly filled her ears.
       She took a long sip of her tea and dove head first into test construction.
       She immersed herself in the task, typing at a feverish pace, scanning her history textbook for facts and suggestions, and playing around with format types on her Word program. The music fueled her mind and the tea warmed her body. She completely ignored the clock on the lower right of her monitor, since time didn’t matter anyway. Her students were visiting local high schools the next day, so she could stay up late without consequence.
       Kelly neared the end of the test when the ringing slightly startled her out of her working trance. She picked up the cordless phone off its cradle and looked at the tiny caller ID screen: A foreign number, obviously Mark.
       She hit the “On” button: “Hello?”
       “Hey, Kelly, what’s up?” Mark said.
       “Nothing much, just working on the kids’ midterm. How’s everything out there?”
       “Not bad. Things are running smoothly so far. I’ll probably only need to be here another week or so.”
       Kelly smiled. She always loved hearing Mark’s voice. Even though he’d been in Tokyo for the past two weeks, working at his financial company’s main Asian market office, hearing his voice made him seem not so far away.
       Funny how he had to go off to another continent, she thought, for me to truly miss him and desire him again.
       She had a hunch that he felt the same way, since to her, he sounded like he couldn’t wait to get home.
       However, she knew the routine that always followed when he returned from one of his business trips: They’d remain close and passionate for a brief period before lapsing back into a mode of life where they barely saw or talked to one another despite living under the same roof. The same cycle occurred every time without fail.
       She knew their current life situation caused it more than anything. Mark worked loads of overtime at his job in order to keep up with his mountainous workflow, not to mention his quarterly business trips to field offices, and Kelly contended with the daily demands of teaching elementary school plus a second job as a hospital file clerk on the weekends. The many hours they worked were necessary for making ends meet, but when they finally had free time alone, neither possessed much energy to do anything more than sit on the couch, watch TV, and fall asleep, with few words uttered between them.
       At one time, their passion for each other burned bright; now, it had become a small flame on a tiny taper.
       “So,” Mark said, “how bad is it out there?”
       “How bad?” Kelly said, not sure why he asked that.
       “The snow.”
       “What about it?” She knew it was supposed to snow but she hadn’t figured on it amounting to much.
       “Well, I was watching the streaming video of the Fox newscast from their website and they said that Philly’s getting pounded with snow, probably already up to eight inches.”
       “I’ll take a look.”
       Kelly stood up, walked to the front window, and opened the curtains. She gasped when she saw the fresh blanket of snow that covered everything in sight, including cars, lawns, and patio furniture. The sky had a dark purple hue. Myriad snowflakes danced through the air, catching a moment in the spotlight of the tall wooden street lamp. The wind roared fiercely, rattling against the window.
       “How’s it look?” Mark asked.
       Kelly pulled her chair over. She sat down and put her wool-socked feet up on the window ledge and stared out, transfixed by this serene winter sight.
       “Beautiful,” she said.
       “I’m surprised you didn’t look out before. I know how much you love snow.”
       “That’s only when it gets me a free day off from school.”
       “But even before you started teaching—I remember all the times we went sledding down Lincoln’s hill or had snowball fights or made snow angels.”
       Kelly closed her eyes and laughed as she remembered the silly things they did in their burgeoning days as a couple.
       “If you were here now,” she said, “I’d drag you outside and demand a sled ride.”
       “If I was there right now, I’d probably be asleep.”
       “And I’d probably still be too wrapped up in my school work to notice this.”
       Silence crept in. Kelly’s eyes continued staring outside, the snowflakes surfing along the air gusts, the street lamp’s light reflecting off the white coating on the ground.
       “Hey,” Mark said, “I was thinking, maybe, in the summer, I’ll take a few weeks off and we can go on a vacation some place nice. Just you and me.”
       “Where did you have in mind?”
       “The Caribbean. Cancun. Hawaii…”
       She winced. “I’d love to but you know I can’t. My jobs…” she said, thinking of the second extra job she worked at a law office in the summer when school was closed.
       “Hey, I have a huge bonus coming up when I get back. If I hold onto it, I’m sure it’ll square our debts enough for us to go away and have a good time.”
       “I don’t know…”
       “Come on,” he said, “you know we need this.”
       She thought about it.
       Tears slowly formed in her eyes, though from happiness or sadness, she couldn’t tell. Mark’s idea sounded great, since she knew they really needed to do something to bring them close together again, something that could take them far away from everyday stresses and concerns. However, she also feared that the divide between them had widened so far that not even a nice vacation together could bridge the gap.
       Kelly couldn’t figure out how she felt but knew that Mark anxiously awaited an answer, so she cleared her throat and said: “Okay. When you get back, let’s do it. Let’s book a trip.”
       She felt his affectionate smile over the long distance connection as he said, “Great. I can’t wait. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
       “Sure.”
       “I love you.”
       “Love you too.”
       His line clicked off.
       Kelly pressed the “Off” button, put the phone back on her desk, and watched the falling of the snow again. She wiped at her eyes and wrapped her arms around her body. She felt a sense of romantic warmth and hopefulness from the call, but the skeptical realist in her said that within a week, the vacation idea would either be reneged or forgotten entirely.
       She stayed at the window, her feet still on the ledge, for a short while longer. The romantic and the realist sides of her brain always fought for domination over her thoughts. The realist side won more times than not, since reality, as of late, fostered few romantic notions for her.
       However, she decided to give aid to the romantic side this time around. She wanted this vacation to happen. She wanted to be as close to her husband as she had been when they first met nearly ten years ago. She wanted their relationship to return to the purity of a world in white.
       She closed the curtains and shut down her computer, electing to finish the exam tomorrow. She walked upstairs, changed into pajamas, and slipped underneath the covers of the bed she shared with Mark. Even though he’d been gone for two weeks, his side of the bed still smelled like him. She deeply breathed in his lingering scent before closing her eyes.
       In her dreams, the romantic side of her brain always won. She hoped that one day, it could claim victory in reality as well.

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