Elephant Winter Read Free Page A

against my thoughts, which had grown so crisp and clear in the solitude of these last weeks. I could feel Jo’s eyes on my back and a few steps further I turned, telling myself I wanted to see the elephants file through the yard into the barn. I searched the barnyard and the stony, snowy fields, but in the half light of winter dusk I could see little and hear only the distant roar of cars. Jo and all his elephants had disappeared traceless in the gloom, gone.
     

     
    Moore dove at my face and tried to get out the open door. I slipped through like a shadow and the ageing budgie flapped up behind the kitchen curtain in a huff. Other budgies, perched in hollow corners of the house, made a dash for the aviary when they heard me slam the back door. They wanted to be fed. My mother was listening to her beloved Arvo Pärt full blast. She had on the
Veni Sancte Spiritus
from his
Berliner Messe
. The throbbing, insistent strings of the rest of the piece fell away here into a slight melodic line, a lost echo of a folk melody. When the sopranos took over the repeating notes they recalled women who turned in woodlots, and the men chanted back:
Flecte quod est rigidum
    fove quod est frigidum
    rege quod est devium
    (Bend what is rigid
melt what is frozen
rule over what wanders)
    My mother didn’t make many accommodations for me. She played her music loud, saying it soothed her and she couldn’t hear all the low bits, the timpani and basses, if she didn’t turn it up. And so I grew to like it too, more for its immanence than for its song.
    The Grays were foraging in a pile of cereal they’d spilled on the kitchen floor.A tea bag lay drying in a spoon on the counter and the kettle was still warm. I had asked my mother often not to leave food out but she said the birds got into the cupboards anyway. She was pretending to draw when I went in. Her face was wan. I could read her pain in the papyrus colour of her skin and the depth of the crease between her eyebrows. The room smelled stale but she would never open the windows because of the birds.
    “How were your elephants?” she said, barely glancing up.
    “Fine, you hungry?”
    I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of asking how she knew, of saying I felt spied on. I didn’t like this return to us knowing everything about each other.
    “No, I’m not hungry.”
    She lifted her charcoal pencil and sketched, ignoring me. I looked at the table and saw an empty vial discarded carelessly. “Did you take an injection?”
    Her extra injections were for what the doctors calledbreakthrough pain. She wasn’t supposed to use them often. But she said, “What the hell, I’m dying. They’re all worried I’ll get addicted! Did you ever hear such inanity. They think like well people!”
    “How long ago?”
    “Don’t rag at me, Sophie!”
    I turned to go make us some supper, and staring at her charcoal she said, “Get me fresh ice.”
    I snapped back, “I’m not your slave.”
    “A glass of water! I’m thirsty.”
    Our house was always full of people coming and going, neighbours, students debating odd ideas, young women who fluttered around her, the kitchen busy with food other people prepared, big books of pictures spread out, excitement pulled through the rooms. When I first got back I didn’t understand its stillness. I thought bitterly that people were afraid of death but it was more that she wouldn’t tell people. She didn’t answer the phone and when they came by she’d say she was busy or fend them off with silence. She behaved the way she did when she was working on a new canvas, waiting without distraction. I hadn’t realized in these past years she’d become more and more solitary. She had a tart tongue and a critical agility of mind that I’d found difficult as a teenager. But after I left home and began visiting again, we talked about art and travel and men and our lives as two women connected by blood and love, we drank scotch together, her advice no longer law,