In the Bleak Midwinter

“I hate to disillusion you, but the only thing we make on that stove is hot water.” He unhooked a bottle of beer from the cardboard container and opened a paneled pine cabinet to get a couple of glasses.

“I thought your house was two hundred years old,” Clare said as Russ retrieved a liter bottle of soda from the fridge. “This kitchen looks kind of forties.” The floor was an old linoleum patterned with big flowers, the walls and floor-to-ceiling cupboards warm, glowing pine. The windows over the sink and in front of the table were hung with layer after layer of fruit and flower prints that reminded Clare of the old dish towels in her grandmother Avery’s kitchen. Matching fabric-covered balls hung from the evergreen ropes swagged along the cornice.

“You have a good eye,” Russ said, pouring their drinks. “The first modern kitchen was built here in the mid-forties. Before that, there was just the summer kitchen, which is on the other side of the mudroom, and a keeping room. I put in the brick wall and hearth for the wood stove, but other than that, we just peeled away the so-called improvements the last owners had made to get to this.” He handed her her beer. “You should have seen it. Vinyl flooring and all the woodwork painted in southwestern colors. Took me three months to get down to the pine.”

She sat at the round oak table and touched a finger to the tiny Christmas tree serving as a centerpiece. “I like it like this. It’s like a bright, warm quilt keeping out the cold.”

“Huh.” He sat opposite her. “I’ll pass that on to Linda. She does the decorating. I’m just the hired help.” He drank from a tall glass of soda. She propped her chin in her hand and studied him. He had a fit, outdoors look to him, still slightly tan from last summer, his dark brown hair picked out with gold and copper. She’d have to disagree with Lois, his nose was too big and his lips were too nonexistent to call him handsome. But he looked like a man who had lived comfortably within his skin for the past forty-odd years.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he agreed. His eyes were Fourth-of-July blue, high and bright with the snap of a flag in the wind. But behind them she could see something moving, like pages turning in a book no one was allowed to read.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

He took another sip of soda. “Fine. No one got hurt, and Ethan’s in jail. I count it as a victory for the good guys.”

“Have you called your wife yet? To let her know what happened?”

He shook his head emphatically. “No.”

“Don’t want to scare her?”

“No, it’s my mother who gets scared.” He smiled wryly. “I figured something might be on the news by tonight, so I called my sister Janet and asked her to talk to Mom. I’ll still have to face one of her ‘Why can’t you get into some other line of work’ lectures, but I can duck it for a few days until she’s cooled off.”

“Uh huh. And you didn’t talk to Linda because . . .”

He frowned. She kept her face open, waiting. He glanced around the kitchen, shifted in his chair, cleared his throat. She sat still, her hand lying palm up on the table. “So this is like PTSD counseling?” He laughed a little. She tilted her head a fraction of an inch. Listening. No threat. “Okay. Linda and I have been married sixteen years now. So she’s been with me through a lot of shit. Armed deployments, police work, bullets flying, the whole nine yards. And, I don’t know if she started out like this or if she cultivated it, but she thinks I’m invulnerable. I’ve learned that I can’t go to her and say, ‘I was frightened out of my wits today,’ because she won’t understand why. What I do, what I’ve done in the past, is like an action-adventure movie or a television show to her. Nothing’s quite real, so why should it bother me?” He flicked a tiny calico ornament on the tabletop tree, then looked at Clare and smiled slightly. “Did I just do an elaborate version of ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’?”

She smiled. “Uh huh. But you don’t have your shirt unbuttoned halfway down your chest to show off your gold chains, so it’s legitimate.”

“Oh, God save me from male menopause.” He laughed a little, shaking his head.

She leaned forward, crossing her arms on the table. “You know, it’s not unusual, being unable to share that kind of thing with your wife or your family. I used to see a lot of that, guys who had spent time in very intense, very dangerous situations, couldn’t talk about it with their wives. Couldn’t admit to being scared to their buddies, of course, except when it’s a joke. It builds up after a while, all that stuff inside and no way to let it out. I think that’s why there’s so much drinking and wild-ass behavior in some units.” She dropped her glance to his glass. “Are you an alcoholic?”

He choked on a mouthful of soda. “Holy shit! You don’t beat around the bush, do you? ’Scuse my French.”

She looked at him mildly. “You don’t need to be handled with kid gloves. Answer me.”