Winter

Benjamin took a rag and folded it neatly in half to wipe down the mirror which his shower had fogged up. This would be his third and final attempt to get his necktie just right. When he got the tie adjusted to his very particular liking, he stood back and looked at himself in the mirror. To any other observer, this man with marginally good looks had groomed himself for what could have been a job interview. He picked up the comb and carefully dragged it once down the right side of his head, then twice on the left. Sufficiently satisfied that every hair was perfectly in place he smiled at himself in the mirror. It was such a subtle curl of his lips that the smile was practically imperceptible to anyone but him. He shut the lights as he exited the bathroom.

The fireplace had been going for sometime leaving the rest of the house warm and smelling of a forest of beech trees. Benjamin walked over to the kitchen and checked on the food one more time to make sure all was in order. The roast was partly done, ready to be brought up to the perfect doneness at the perfect time. The sauce was heated to just the right temperature. Glasses and drinks were chilled and the desert was all but put together. Constructing the desert is going to be the most fun part of the meal, Benjamin told himself. Walking over to the dining table, he made miniscule adjustments to the flatware and silverware when he noticed a harsh glare coming off his dish.

Not wanting to have to go through the trouble of changing the dish, Benjamin turned off the lights over the dining table. It made it too dark to see anything on the plate come dinner time so he went digging in the pantry where he kept candles handy in the event of a power outage. He set two candles in candleholders and put them on the center of the table. He rummaged through one of the kitchen drawers and pulled out an old book of matches to light the candles. They had never been lit so it took some time to melt the thin layer of wax on the stiff wick before the flame found its balance atop each candle. The entire house was bathed in the warm, soft light of the candles and fireplace. Another smile briefly flashed on Benjamin’s face.

Though he wouldn’t consider himself much of a drinker, Benjamin believed that, in moderation, the occasional scotch would ease the anxiety that came with this particular time of year. Admittedly, he felt that the sparse drinking he did made him appreciate the flavor even more. He poured himself a drink and as he took a modest sip felt the gold liquid heat his gullet all the way down to his empty stomach. The clock indicated that it was early yet to make final preparations for dinner so he walked over to the window to admire the gentle snowfall. The only cars in the street outside were parked along the street allowing the entire area to be blanketed with snow. Then there was a rustle just out of his view.

It was the shouts of children running the quiet street. Maybe they yelled to be heard through the layers that protected their rosy cheeks from the cold or maybe because it was just fun, Benjamin would never know. A woman, presumably their mother, and the oldest of the children carried wrapped boxes in both hands. The mother could barely see over her parcels, the child could barely keep them from touching the ground. The other children, much younger, squatted to the ground on the lookout for one another as they packed the snow into uneven spheres to chuck at each other playfully until the mother scolded them for falling behind. They laughed and caught up with the rest of the family, still throwing the snowballs at each other.

Benjamin grew up on the west coast. There were no such things as snow days and white Christmases for any of the children of his neighborhood where most rites of passages were summertime rituals. But even then, young Benjamin (or “Ben” as he was known then) wasn’t usually found with other children. Most of the friends he made were either one of the many adults who helped raise him or one of the few children he had grown up with who had all moved away before Ben had started junior high. He never found them again but a piece of him wishes he had put just a little more effort into looking. Instead he nurses his drink and watches the small footprints retrace the steps of a childhood he had never known.

RING! The phone screeched jolting Benjamin out of his fit of nostalgia. He quickly made his way to the phone and laid the glass of scotch beside it as he picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” he answered, “Oh! Hello! Are you on your--”

Only Benjamin was able to hear the other half of the conversation.

“Oh… I see,” he responded. “I see.”

His words, along with his breath, slowed with each subsequent sentence.

“No, not at all! That’s entirely ok,” He seemed to lose gusto with each passing second he was on the phone. 

“Yeah, no… I didn’t… I didn’t go through any trouble at all.”

There was a beat followed by a hushed click on the other end of the phone. The receiver seemed to grow heavier in Benjamin’s hand as he finally hung up. He slowly took in a deep breath before drinking the rest of his scotch and clearing the table of unused dishes and silverware. Blowing out the candles he took them to the kitchen counter leaving a delicate trail of smoke behind him. The sauce was taken off the stovetop, the roast out of the oven and the fate of the desert was uncertain as he shut off the kitchen lights. His shoulders seemed to grow heavier than the receiver as he made his way to the fireplace to turn off the gas.

It wasn’t until he stepped away from the heat of the dying fire on the hearth that he realized how clammy his palms had become, how hard his heart was beating. He didn’t even know that he had loosened his tie in a messy knot hanging off his neck by several inches. His feet dragged the rest of him to the window. The streets were emptier than before with all their lonely corners filled with even more snow. All the children’s footprints were buried underneath it all, visible only to Benjamin if he really looked for it. Tired of trying to retrace that snowball fight, he pulled the curtains shut and meticulously tugged on them to ensure that the pleats were exactly where they were supposed to be.

“The scotch must be getting to me,” he thought to himself as he wandered into the bedroom. He took off his tie and folded it, laying it neatly on the dresser by his bed. The door shut behind him but no one would ever know that this year Benjamin would spend Christmas alone.

Some time passed and the wind howled for a bit before dying down leaving several inches of snow outside burying those children’s footprints for good. Had this been another moment of another day of another part of the year when the snow and ice encased the lonely outside in its pristine shell, it would have been easy for Benjamin to spend the rest of the night bundled up in bed, insulated by so many reasons to stay inside. But it was Christmas and he found himself feeling uncharacteristically spontaneous. Just outside his house, he built a snowman with the craftsmanship of a small child and he couldn’t be happier with it. He smiled his largest smile of the day, proud of the new friend he had built himself. Looking around to see if anyone was watching he squatted down to compact a bunch of snow into a ball and threw it up into air letting it hit him with great gusto. He brushed the flecks of ice off his hair as he walked back inside, admiring the patterns his footprints left in the snow.