I.
I squinted up and out over the Toyota four-runner’s hood as it wound up the snowy roadway. The snow had begun as merely a picturesque stippling on the windshield at the base of the mountain. As we began to climb, however, the flurries became increasingly fat and wet, beginning to fall more rapidly. I once more fingered the windshield wipers, checking to make sure they were on “full blast.”
Though the cabin was near, nearer still was the steep drop off on the left side of the road. I turned to see if Sasha was imagining the view the way I was now. She sat curled against the window, gazing fixedly at the fog which pulsed with life, growing and shrinking at her every breath.
“You’re quiet” I said.
No answer.
“You always loved this cabin Sash” I began.
“How much longer Bill? I gotta pee.” Sasha said.
I knew she was feeling antsy, I needn’t point it out. Sometimes I couldn’t understand why I said the things I said. Feigning stupidity, I guess. The next was another such instance:
“Pick a tree” I said, motioning towards the tundra-like landscape whisking by.
Silence again. It was her own favorite crutch. She stared out sullenly, apparently interested in the ice wall. There was nothing to see, and even if there were, it would be barred from view, hardly visible beyond the foggy windows.
“This is winter in Boone Sash, I’m not sure what you expected. People live here year-round; I think we can survive a few days at a vacation ski-lodge,” I said.
“The people that live here know better than to go out on days like this,” she replied. “And this isn’t Boone, it’s Valle Crucis.”
She was cold, I knew. It didn’t matter how high I turned up the heat, my hands felt cold. It was more than a physical sensation, driving through the curtains of snow filled one with the very essence of cold. I began to get down good again. All was white, frozen over, hard on top of hard, an impenetrable fortress of cold that surrounded us, that seeped into every corner of our vision, growing colder-still by the moment. I’m cold too, I let myself admit. But she’s always been cold. Maybe we will always be cold.
It was more than the weather. I allowed my mind to wander again in the silence, going back, away from the frigid now and back to that perfectly sunny day in July, nearly 4 years ago, when everything had seemed perfect. That’s when he first saw that she had the look, the coldness which took hold of her now. They had been invited to a baby shower for one of Sasha’s childhood friends, Claire. Upon receiving the invitation, Sasha was over the roof. She called Claire then and there to congratulate her and confirm that of course she would be at the shower.
“The card is so cute!” She squeaked.
I first observed the change when it came time to go shopping for the baby shower gift, something Sasha had talked about all week. I heard an odd monotony in Sasha’s voice for the first time, though in days prior she had expressed nothing but enthusiasm, chatting endlessly about what she was going to wear, what kind of gifts the baby would need, and when we might be able to leave to see her friends again. Once we entered the “baby store” however, she meandered in apparent disinterest; occasionally fingering a pacifier or onesie, reminding me of an adult at the children’s museum being forced to touch things she knows millions of snotty kids have touched before her. I can remember seeing her even now, reaching out hesitantly, as though reminding herself to wash her hands afterward. She touched the garments, binkies, and bottles for only the briefest of moments, doing so with only the smallest possible part of her pointer finger.
“What do you think we should get them?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know” she replied.
I had begun to walk down another aisle filled with jumping chairs, or some such thing, for some time before I realized I had lost sight of Sasha. I backtracked, going back an aisle until I found her, apparently transfixed, staring at a small object I could not make out from afar. I walked up to her slowly, sensing in her stillness a certain reverence. It felt as though I had come upon her in prayer, as though I were intruding on some monastic ceremony. As I drew closer, I could see it was a small, stuffed plush rabbit.
II.
The rabbit’s fur was a soft, mottled grey. Its small, pointed face was stitched into a permanent grin. The rabbit clutched a carrot which had a cartoonishly-shaped bite taken out of one end. In the place where the leafy green felt of the carrot’s mock foliage met the orange hide of the carrot itself, there resulted a dull brown slurry which gave the carrot the appearance of being slightly rotten. I could not tell how long the rabbit had sat there, but it was clear it had been sitting for quite some time. The price tag underneath it had several layers of markdowns piled on top of one another. The effect it had on Sasha was apparent.
“Is this what you want to get for Claire?” I asked.
“What…oh, no. I was just thinking about how I had one just like it as a child,” said Sasha.
She wanted the toy for herself, I realized.
“Sash, we need to get something for Claire, not you. If you like it so much get it for the baby, elsewise let’s move on. We’ve been here too long already,” I said, and that was the end of it. We eventually bought them a bouncing chair thing. I’m still not sure what it was for.
Later in the evening at Claire’s party, we floated from couple to couple to congratulate this and the other on various accomplishments, as one does. There was something changed in Sasha however, and I did not realize then that the change would be permanent. I thought perhaps she had drunk too much, too quickly. I could not place it then, but it was as though she had floated, attached to me as though by a string. I pulled her along, showing her balloonishly grinning face first here, then there.
When we returned home, it was apparent that she had changed. The change that had begun in the baby store but now took full shape; Sasha was down good. It took a solid two months for things to begin to feel regular again, and I still wasn’t sure what had caused it all to begin with; I thought she was excited for the baby shower. Months later, while rifling through our drawers, I came upon the mottled grey rabbit. She had gone back to the store, I realized, and purchased it on her own so I would not know. Despite my finding it, I never brought it up. In the coming years Sasha would get closer to normal but was never quite the same. She was more quiet, more pensive, and always staring into the distance.
A sudden lurch in the four-runner’s wheels yanked me back into the present. Sasha’s tone, her look on the day of the baby shower stayed with me all those years, returning to me strongly now. Something was amiss, had been amiss for some time. I realized now that it had transformed from merely a look into her very personage, the person which sat before me now, moping even as I tried to get her to a vacation spot. We needed more than a vacation; we needed to go back, back to the way things had been. I wondered then if I was yearning for a time which had only ever existed in my recollecting it, but of which I was utterly bereft.
The truck’s headlights clicked on automatically. Darkness was fast approaching. I could see Sasha squirming in her seat, the discomfort obvious on her face. She was unhappy as usual, and she wanted me to know it. I put my foot down on the brakes harder than I meant to, screeching the truck to a stop. We were enveloped in the silent stillness at last, though I figured we must be at least another 30 minutes from the cabin. In place of the constant hum of the engine which had filled the silence thus far was the still serenity of twilight in the Appalachian Mountains. It was as though the whole of Earth had stopped to see what might become of the situation.
III.
“Pee now or forever hold your peace” I said. “I’m tired of your moping.”
Wordlessly, and without so much as a look in my direction, she shouldered the door open and walked into a sweeping white landscape which enveloped her person entirely. One moment she was there: a clear outline of my Sasha, the girl I loved and hoped to marry, backdropped by the trees which reached up, seemingly reaching into the mountain. Her hair blew manically in the wind, standing straight on end and giving her the appearance of a mad scientist, or someone being electrocuted. The snow curled and whipped around her, lashing at her ankles hungrily, threatening to engulf her entirely. I immediately felt bad. I needed to get down real good tonight.
And then she was gone. I blinked my eyes, and the next moment she disappeared.
The spot where she was standing not moments before was replaced by an impenetrable white wall of whipping snow. She disappeared into the maelstrom of snow and sleet. She’s just showing off I thought. It struck me that her walking off a bit from the road was quite performative, since the likelihood of someone passing us in the storm was about the same as her running into the abominable snowman, let alone the likelihood of someone passing and being able to see. Despite my incredulity, I caught myself looking out for other cars on the road behind us.
Time is a fickle friend if you should ever have a chance to meet him. Over the course of the next minutes or hours, what seemed to me days, years even – I experienced something which I am sure many of you have, but which if you have not, I pray never befalls you. It is a singularly penetrating anxiety, one which taps into your base-most fears, reverting you back into the child you so desperately pretend to have outgrown. It is the feeling of being lost. It is the feeling you had as a child when you were left alone too long in a strange place, when you began to cry but it was into an unwitting abyss, a cityscape of figures towering dangerously above you, their movement an ocean of nausea as you realized with slow certainty that no one was going to find you, and that you would live the rest of your life alone, on the streets perhaps, begging for scraps of compassion. As adults, we busy ourselves finding people to cling onto; we even make people we can cling onto, desperately attempting to disprove the truth we learned when we were left alone in that strange place all those years ago: if we become well-enough lost, no one will be able to find us. Ever. Much like a child, my fleeting anxiety quickly grew into an uproarious clamor. But it was not I who was lost, it was Sasha. I began to feel with utter conviction that I would never see her again. I began to feel, with utmost certainty, that she was lost.
Time passed. I waited. I waited far longer than I thought was humanly possible. I waited too long. I waited because I knew that when I stepped out of the truck it would make things permanent, un-take-back-able, terrifyingly real. I didn’t know how much time passed, but I know that it was too long. It had been far too long. I honked once, then twice. Then I honked many, many times. More times than I thought were humanly possible. I laid on her good, I put my elbows and my chest and my whole being into it. I beat the steering wheel until the car shook, and breathed heavily, and beat some more. I beat the living piss out of that horn for a good, long time. Nothing. I needed to step out of the truck, there was no other option. I kept getting hung up on whether to keep the truck on or off. If I kept the truck on and she came back she could warm up, she must be cold by now. What the hell was she doing out there? Then again, I didn’t know how long it would take to find her if she had wandered off, and I certainly didn’t want to get myself stuck.
By the time I resolved to step out into what could now only be described as a blizzard, the sun had gone completely down and the truck’s headlights were the only source of light remaining. I considered rifling through our bags in hopes of finding a flashlight but thought better of it; who was I kidding? I was no Bear Grylls. I pulled out my iPhone 15, turned off the truck’s lights and braced myself for the cold. Pulling open the truck door was like unsealing a vacuum chamber. Snowflakes flooded in, ricocheting violently in front of my face. Closing my eyes, I stepped out into the blistering night.
IV.
About two years into the relationship, Sasha started bringing up the idea of having children. At first it was playful, like when we’d see a particularly cute baby, or when we would go watch our friends’ children for a few hours while they were on a date. I played along at first because during the moments we would joke about it, I could see for a moment a glimmer of the old fire in her eyes. Then she came right out and said she wanted to try, which meant at first she simply stopped taking birth control. We figured if it happened, it happened. And when it didn’t, I began to accept that maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. The desire did not waver for Sasha however, as I figured it would; as it had, I knew all too well, with all her other passion projects until now. I figured this would be much the same, but Sasha clung to the idea with increasing fervor. She began researching endlessly, scheduling sex to increase the chances of getting pregnant. We began eating differently, sleeping differently, we even fucked in different positions. It’s for the baby she’d say, as though it was already born.
The day the doctors told Sasha she would never have children will never be lost on me. We sat for a long while, in silence as we often were, looking out over the parking lot filled with cars which would take people home to their husbands, wives, and most importantly – children. We sat and we looked, and we cried. Mostly she cried, and I held her shaking body, and I consoled her and said things like it’s okay, you’re okay, and we can adopt kids Sash, and this must be God’s plan. I said those things, but I wasn’t sure if I believed them. I’m not sure even now, as I think back on it. I didn’t know that it would be okay, and I wasn’t sure she would ever be okay again.
When search and rescue did find her, she was not alone. Clutched to her breast, childlike, was a small stuffed animal, a rabbit. When they took me to see it, to see her, I found it hard to look. The hair was matted grey, the body disheveled and deformed, bulging in some places and concaved in others, places where the stuffing had become clotted by the cold, clumping into abscess, leaving deep craters in the flesh where once there was substance, comfort, equilibrium. Perhaps worst of all were the rakes, the deep tears in the felty-flesh which clearly signaled panic. I wanted to believe that she had drifted off, as of a slumber. These chasms served as testaments to the improbability of such thoughts.
They asked me later if I had known her to carry stuffed animals. I did not miss the look which passed between them as they asked me; they thought she was crazy, and probably thought the same of me as well. If I was being honest with myself, I couldn’t speak to her sanity that day or the days prior. She had seem disconnected for months, perhaps years. I hadn’t asked any questions, I did not want to know. I told them the truth: I had never seen the stuffed rabbit before. I knew it likely wouldn’t do me any favors, but I told them anyway. I had no idea she liked stuffed animals, I’d never seen it, and I didn’t want to look at it any longer.
- In retrospect, I realize Sasha walked away from me because she knew that I would never walk away from her. I needed her and she knew it; she needed to leave, and I wouldn’t let her. No matter what she did or what she said, I would always love her because I needed someone to love me back. She blamed the troubles we had the past few years on her fertility issues, but I realize now that she only needed to leave. I told her we could love each other without children, but it was only because I needed her to stay. I wonder sometimes if all those times I looked over to find her sullen, what I saw was a reflection of my own face scowling back at me.