The garden spreads down to the lake and curves around a band of birch trees that yawn their white trunks, reflecting off the dark surface of the water.  There's a sunset beyond the woods where once my father took me to watch the dying sun split the clouds.  We'd sit quietly and then he'd talk of things I was too young to understand.  I remember his deep, booming voice trying to whisper.  He said, your mother is not coming back.  Then he touched my shoulder, his hand so heavy I thought I'd break under the weight.

The woods were wide-open fields of green, and I, I didn't say anything.

The sun was half gone by the time we stood to go back.  I don't remember walking back to the lake, but I recall the garden with its pink tomatoes trembling from the breezes off the water.  It reminded me of my mother's frail, thin arms the last time she hugged me.

I held his hand.

The garden is dusty now with leaves and dead branches.  The birch trees are still there much older than I ever want to be.

Mother used to pick us up one by one.  We were three boys, smiling up to her from below her waist.  She'd say, my angels.

I stared into her eyes, big, bright, and green.  And when she hugged me, I could hear the slow ticking of her heart.  It was like listening to the insects in the grass at night from my window, where the North star sat in the sky so bright, like my mother's face when she held us.

Her hands were firm, reassuring, as if they had a voice of their own, and with each touch a word, and with each embrace a phrase we could only guess the meaning of.

I remember the smell of her hair.  Not like the strawberry or the lemon drop shampoo she used.  It was new, and we were blind to its blush.

This was before she left and Daddy would use the old station wagon my mother had picked out, to take us for a ride.  The three of us would sit in the back with our hands on our knees and pray, daddy wouldn't go so fast anymore.

Winter, when white heavy clouds pressed the sky closer to the earth, I saw my mother framed at an open window, blowing into cold red hands, pulling in my frozen-solid jeans from the clothes line, and standing them against the radiator.  The jeans looked as if at any moment they'd protest and walk stiff-legged into another room, and my mother would laugh and say, watch them honey, they may try to escape.

My mother's eyes were green, like the grass under the snow; when summer was a place to hold onto.

Her lips were always cool then when she brushed them against my cheeks.

Mornings, I'd hold my breath just long enough to hear them kiss, just long enough to hear the kettle hiss, and then I'd sit back and dream of blue jeans escaping into another room, into another place, far from here.

Sometimes at night my father would recite a long poem he had memorized.  A poem he had brought with him from the old country.  We'd sit on the floor, my brothers and I, listening to his voice, the deep resounding tenor of words of gallant knights and fairy queens.  We'd listen, wrapped in our blankets against the cold and the wind rattling the windows.  I'd look out at the dark faces of the houses asleep in the shadows of the moon, and the branches of the maple tree scratching on the glass, as if it too wanted to come inside and listen to my father, his baritone voice so loud we would weep if he stopped, and when he paused to catch his breath, I'd think of my mother and I'd beg him to go on, to go on.  And he'd say, that's enough for tonight.

When the snow fell and large flakes gleamed under the street lamps, I'd lie in my bed awake listening to the wind shivering up through the clapboards, and my brothers in the next room fast asleep, and my father in his large bed made for two, alone.

Some nights when the wind was loud, threatening me with its high pitch screams, and the snow fell fast into a long white landscape, like the end of the world, I would get up and run to my father's room.

There were times when I'd climb into the empty space and close my eyes, pretend my mother was there holding me safe.  And sometimes I'd just stand and watch the rise and fall of my father's chest.  It was then that I knew the world wouldn't end, not like this, on a night when starlight fell lightly on the trees, on the ground, on my house, in my hand.

The cold came early that year.  It clung to the trees until Thanksgiving.  My mother was there with her brilliant smile so sure she'd be with us until the end of the year.  The streets then were long dark fingers of crushed leaves, and the street lamps spread cold yellow light, and like magic wands they lit up the night.

My mother left before Christmas.  She made us laugh about her skinny arms and skinny legs, and thin hands, and thin face.  We laughed so hard she cried.

My father packed one suitcase.  He said, "It'll only be for a short while."

But she never did come back and my father didn't say much about it.

On the day of her funeral, I remember the dusting of snow on the windshield of the big black sedan and the man all in black like a crow perched on the church steps.  The sky was white as if the moon had flattened its face against the windshield of my aunt Carrie's car.  I sat in the front listening to my brothers in the back seat asking stupid questions about my mother and aunt Carrie talking to the radio.  I wished I were with my father then.  I wanted to hear his rumbling voice and that thunderous whisper; the one he used when we were alone, just the two of us.  I wanted him to tell me everything would be like before.  Before the moon's face fell on aunt Carrie's car.

On Valentine's Day, my father took all three of us to my mother's grave.  I shoved the big cardboard card we'd made into my father's new car.  It was cold that day.  The wind turned our noses red, like the four roses my father held in his hand as we walked through the cemetery, bundled up in our winter coats, and blowing white wisps of smoke, like we were smoking real cigarettes.

My father stood for a long time staring at the gray-blue headstone.  He turned once to look at me.  I saw his lips move, but only a plume of white breath escaped the shivering.

There was no thunder in his voice, only the sound of the wind flapping his long overcoat, the one my mother gave him.

My father dug a little hole and placed the flowers in.  Then he walked back.  We followed him to the car.  It was a long time before he found the keys in his pocket.  As we drove away, my brothers turned and waved.  I looked back and saw the flowers pulling and pulling at the hole, as if they wanted to follow us, all the way home.  

Author Bio

Joseph M. Faria was born on the island of Sao Miguel, in the Azores.  He studied Creative Writing at Roger Williams University.  He published his first poem when he was twenty-three:   "The Black Crow Symphony:  4th Movement", Ishmael, Spring 1973.  His short story "Threshold" won 2nd Prize in the 1997 CWA National Writing Competition.  His first book of short stories, From a Distance, was published in the Azores in June 1998 by Nova Grafica, Lda.  Joe is also the Contributing Editor of the web quarterly, Linnaean Street.