Chilly Scenes of Winter Read Free Page A

that girl? If you criticized her all the time, that’s probably why she left you.”
    “Stop talking about her. It’s depressing me.”
    “What did she look like? Then I’ll stop talking about her.”
    “She was pretty tall. Maybe five-nine. She had long brown hair. Blond. Brownish-blond. She was the librarian in the building I work in.”
    They go up the steps to the hospital, across the circular drive, and through the revolving door. There are brown plastic sofas everywhere. Charles puts his hand on Susan’s shoulder and guides her to the left, where several women in white uniforms sit behind a desk. He asks his mother’s room number, thanks the woman, and guides Susan toward the elevators. To the right, down a short corridor, is a chapel. There is no one in it.
    “You meant it, huh? You really aren’t going to ask anything else.”
    They get in the elevator. He stands to one side, pushing floor numbers for the people who enter. It’s a slow day—only one man in a gray overcoat, one man in a brown jacket, a teen-age girl with a yellow ski-jacket and hiking boots, and a fat oriental nurse.
    Their mother’s room is the first to the left when they get off the elevator. She shares it with another woman, who is white-haired and fat, a little older than their mother. Both women are asleep. Charles and Susan look at each other, then back out the door.
    “I’ll talk to a nurse,” Charles whispers. Susan follows him. At the nurses’ station, Charles asks how his mother is. The nurse says that a doctor will talk to him about what she calls “her condition.” He asks to see the doctor. The doctor isn’t in yet. When will he be in? The nurse thinks two o’clock. She calls it “ P.M .” She has square, shiny fingernails and a perfectly round, auburn bun. She looks down at sheets of paper. All Charles can see is her neck. She has a long neck, fairly thin, skin quite pale. He asks if the doctor will call him. He will. He leaves his number. They do not go back to the room.
    “If we stick around, Pete will show up. She looked okay. As long as she’s not hooked up to anything she’s okay.”
    Susan walks beside him silently. They push the “down” button for the elevator and wait a long time. A woman in a wheelchair rides past. She has on a flowered bathrobe and pink slippers with embroidered flowers on them. A flowered scarf holds her hair back.
    “Let’s do something today,” Charles says.
    “What do you want to do? What about Elise?”
    “Elise. Hell. I forgot Elise.”
    “Couldn’t she come?”
    “Sure. Sure she could come. I just forgot about her.”
    “You don’t like her, do you?”
    “Not much. Do you?”
    “She lives on my floor. She came here because her mother’s an alcoholic.”
    “ Your mother’s an alcoholic.”
    He opens the car door for Susan. He unlocks his own door, sits down, and laughs.
    “I can’t think of anything nice to do today,” he says.
    Susan rubs the moisture off the side window with her hand, looks out at the slush.
    “In answer to your question,” she says, “I don’t like her very much. One of the guys I used to go with lived with her when they were freshmen.”
    “So what’s she doing here?”
    “She asked if she could come.”
    “Maybe we’ll like Elise better if we can think of something to do with her.”
    “Do you think Mom would ever really kill herself?” Susan asks.
    “I don’t think so. She always says that.”
    “She looked like Esther Williams when she was younger,” Susan says. “She’s been old for so long.”
    “She’ll get a lot older. She won’t kill herself.”
    “We should have awakened her.”
    “We can go back tonight.”
    “Maybe we should have called Pete in Chicago.”
    “What should we have done? Called every hotel in Chicago? I should say every whorehouse.”
    “I don’t think he does that.”
    “I don’t care if he does it or not. I don’t know why I said it.”
    Charles turns on the radio. Janis Joplin is