WINTER ' FOURTEEN
in my head. When I looked up, I saw Nicky standing on the other side of the table. He had a wild look
in his eyes, which were bloodshot. He inhaled deeply, like a beast.
“Shit,” he said. “Okay. It’s okay. Shit.”
He squeezed his fists. Sylvia just stood there staring, a dull look in her eyes. It was like she was
incapable of moving, as though there were some force within her that wouldn’t allow it.
“Mother,” I cried. “Sylvia.”
“You asshole,” Nicky said, glancing around. “You foolish asshole.”
I don’t even think Nicky was talking to me. He was just saying whatever occurred to him then.
“Nick,” Sylvia said, still looking down at me. “He’s hurt. He’s goddamned hurt.”
“Goddamn it,” a man in a beige suit shouted, pointing a finger at Nicky. “Look what you’ve gone
and done.”
I began to look at life differently at that point, to define my life in terms of that day, and even now
I remember thinking this: Choices can seem avoidable long after they’ve been made, but in the heat of
the moment, you’re confronted with a thousand paths and no clear way out. You can start out on the
periphery, and end up old man trouble’s first victim.
In a moment, a woman helped me and Sylvia out to our car, with a crowd gathering outside,
muttering unintelligibly to themselves, shadows in the snow. I can only imagine those thoughts exchanged
between them. We were not a boy and his mother, but two helpless creatures. Helpless and unwittingly
selfish. Unable to love, or to even go through the motions of comfort, the motions that they’d grown
accustomed to.
I noticed Nicky, still standing by the coffee table, gazing out, and in that moment, we exchanged
a glance. It was as though we’d seen something in ourselves we didn’t like, and were oddly brought
together by it. We hated and respected each other. I hoped Sylvia hadn’t noticed this, and given her
state, I didn’t think so.
It was late when we got home. The drive had seemed like a nightmare that you know isn’t real, but
that you can’t escape nevertheless. Sylvia just stared straight ahead, keeping the radio silent. Riding past
the lit homes and darkened apartment buildings and warehouses, I wondered if Sylvia would forgive
Nicky, and what this whole night had meant to him. I wondered if there was any family of his own to
explain this night to, and how he would piece it all together, or if he would go about life trying to deny
it. Even if he might realize that these things can get out of hand at any point, and recalculate his way of
living.
Sylvia unlocked the door, turning on the lights. The beige hi-fi sat in the corner of the living room,
a stack of papers strewn across it, marked with pen-marks and soda stains. She stared at the photograph
of her father on the makeshift coffee table. He wore a forced smile, a bristling mustache complimenting
his bulbous head.
“People are strangers,” she said. “I didn’t speak to my own father for five years after I got married.
I went for a visit once, when you were little. For two hours we couldn’t think of a single thing to talk
about, except for the weather and finance. It seems funny now.”
She shook her head, sweeping the papers off the radio into the briefcase. She adjusted her glasses,
glancing at the picture again, which she brushed aside.
“You’d love it in San Francisco,” she said. “People talking ideas. Writers, actors, even a few
Communists. Wouldn’t you like that?”
The Linnet's Wings