The Winter Box Read online

  It was Heather who had come up with the idea for the Winter Box. She’d found it at a flea market one weekend. Todd hadn’t been interested in antiques or nostalgia items. He was a practical person, an engineering student, far more interested in the future than the past. But Heather found old stuff fascinating. She loved to look at it, pick it up, turn it this way and that, and try to imagine who’d originally owned the item, what they had been like, how they’d lived and loved. There had been nothing special about the box to catch her attention. It was made of plain wood and possessed no decorative touches of any sort. It was 15 X 15 inches wide and four inches deep. No legs—it sat flat on the table—and its hinges were dingy and rusty. A round green sticker on the lid had the price written on it in pen: $5.00.

  She’d bought it without even looking inside.

  As they’d walked away from the table, Todd asked why—out of all the things for sale there today—she’d wanted such a plain, uninteresting object.

  I don’t know, she’d said, looking down at the box in her hands. Its sides were smooth, as if the box had been handled many times over the years. It just felt…right.

  She was a business major—eventually she’d end up working as a loan officer in a bank—but she had an intuitive side to her personality, and when it spoke up, she usually listened. That day it had chimed in loud and clear, urging her to buy that box, so she did. That had been at the end of January, but it wasn’t until Valentine’s Day that she came up with a use for it.

  Let’s each pick one object—something small—that represents our relationship. The other person will have to guess why he or she chose it, and then we’ll put them in the box and save them.

  Todd had frowned when she said this.

  What for?

  She thought it was kind of a stupid question, but she didn’t say so.

  So we can look back and remember.

  She’d almost added And every year we can add two new objects. She’d kept her mouth shut, not wanted to scare him off, but even at that point she knew they would spend the rest of their lives together. That first year she’d chosen a freshly sharpened pencil to represent the story that they would write together as their relationship grew and deepened. Todd chose a sticker with a cartoon sun on it, the kind of thing a child might receive after a visit to the doctor or dentist. It’s because you shine like the sun, he’d said, embarrassed. For a couple years they’d continued to add objects to the Winter Box, as Heather had dubbed it, on Valentine’s Day. But when they decided to get married, they picked a date in January—the same date as the Western Civ class had started—and the next year Heather decided they’d switch the Winter Box to their anniversary, and it had stayed there ever since. And every year they’d each added a new item to it. Except last year.

  “I don’t have anything to put in it,” Todd said.

  She tried not to take his comment for more than it was, but she couldn’t help thinking there was a deeper meaning, that he didn’t have any emotional energy left to put into their relationship.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I don’t either.”

  This was a lie. Last week she’d stopped at teacher supply store, and in the science section she’d found a display of rocks. She’d chosen one with quartz in it to represent the fact that while things might have been hard for them lately, there was plenty of good left in their relationship. She’d put the rock in her nightstand, intending to add it to the box when the time came. But now it would stay there. Better to leave it there than bring it out and make Todd feel bad that he hadn’t chosen anything. Or resent her for having done so.

  “But even if we don’t have anything to add this year,” she said, “it doesn’t mean we can’t take a stroll down memory lane, does it?”

  She tried to keep her tone light, not wishing to put any more pressure on the moment than there already was. Todd didn’t look happy about her suggestion, but he didn’t object, and she took that as an encouraging sign.

  She removed the lid from the box and set it aside.

  To anyone else, the contents would’ve looked like so much junk. But she remembered the significance of every item, both the ones she’d contributed and the ones Todd had. As much as she loved adding new items, she loved looking at the old ones—and remembering—even more.

  She selected an object at random, an empty thread spool, and lifted it out of the box.

  “Do you remember when you put this one in?” she asked.

  Todd glanced at the object without a hint of recognition in his eyes.

  “I really don’t think this is a good idea right now,” he said. “I don’t think we should force this.”

  She wanted to argue, to tell him that they should force it, that it had been too long since things had been right between them and it was high time they did something about it. But she nodded, returned the spool back in the box and replaced the lid.

  “Okay,” she said, although it wasn’t. Not even close.

  Thirty seconds later, the power went out, plunging them into darkness.

  * * *

  The power outage had no effect on the gas fireplace, and they ended up sitting in front of it, wrapped in blankets, keeping a foot of space between them. When the power had first gone, Todd had looked out the front window to see if everyone on the street had lost power as well. But the snowfall had intensified to the point where it was impossible to see more than a few feet, and the wind had become more intense, blasting the house and making the windows rattle. Todd knew the windows were sturdy—they were double-paned storm windows—but this storm might prove more than a match for them. He checked all the doors and windows in the house. Not because it was a necessary precaution, but to give himself something to do away from Heather.

  He turned on all the faucets in the house at a slow trickle and opened the cupboards doors below the sink to expose the pipes. He wasn’t sure how cold it would get in the house. It was cold as fuck outside, but they had the fireplace going. It wouldn’t make the entire house toasty, but it would hopefully help keep the pipes from freezing. When he’d finished with that chore, he couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he reluctantly rejoined Heather in front of the fire.

  They sat silently for a time, and Todd could feel Heather building up to something. She exuded a nervous energy when she was getting ready to bring up a difficult subject. There were periodic tremors in her body, and she would sigh softly from time to time, although she showed no sign of being aware of it. She thought she was able to mask her emotions from him with relative ease, and he’d never disavowed her of the notion. He sometimes thought that’s what love really was: helping to maintain your partner’s illusions.

  “What happened to us?” she finally asked.

  He did not want to get into this now. Not on their anniversary. But he knew Heather wouldn’t be put off. When she was ready to discuss a problem, she went after it like a starving dog with a bone.

  “You know what happened.”

  “I don’t mean all that. Yeah, it all put a hell of a strain on our marriage—on both of us. But I’m talking about something more important than that. Something deeper. We used to be so connected, Todd. I thought of us as soul mates. I thought nothing—absolutely nothing—could change that.”

  He wanted to tell her that there was no such thing as soul mates, that the idea was nothing more than a childish romantic fantasy. There were only people who entered into relationships. Sometimes those relationships worked and sometimes they didn’t. And it had become clear to him that their relationship was one that no longer worked, and it had been that way for some time now.

  Instead, he said, “I think all that, as you put it, is important. I don’t know if you’ve really forgiven me. I know you think you have,” he hurried to add. “But maybe subconsciously you’re still angry with me. I always feel a distance between us now. I feel like you’re trying too hard to pretend like everything’s okay, when it isn’t.”

  A year-and-a-half ago, he’d fall
en into an affair with a woman he’d met at a coffee shop. Tina Beckman, a dental hygienist who’d been divorced for six months. She’d come on to him first, asking to join him at his table, and he’d said yes. She’d been pretty enough, if not especially attractive to him. But she possessed a charming self-confidence that he’d found alluring, He still wasn’t sure why they’d ended up sleeping together. He hadn’t stopped loving Heather, and while they didn’t have sex as often as they’d used to, it was still good between them. The affair had just happened. It hadn’t lasted long, and he’d managed to keep it a secret from Heather, and he supposed he could have—and maybe should have—gone on like it had never happened. No harm, no foul. But he’d come to think of the affair as a sign that something was wrong in their relationship. A symptom of a deeper problem. Plus, every time he looked at Heather, he felt guilty, and he knew that if he didn’t tell her about the affair, the guilt would build and fester until it began affecting their relationship.

  So he’d told her. It went exactly like he thought it would. Tears, shouting, resentment, blame-throwing—on both their parts. There had been no talk of divorce, though, not from either of them. Even faced with the ultimate spousal betrayal, Heather was still dedicated to their marriage. Her attitude was mend it, don’t end it, for which Todd was deeply grateful, especially since he knew he didn’t deserve it. He was, however, not prepared for Heather’s suggestion for how to get past the problem. He thought she might suggest marriage counseling, something he’d be more than willing to do. Every marriage needed a tune-up now and again, right? But Heather had a different idea. Several days after his confession, when they were getting ready for bed, she’d started talking.

  “I’ve been thinking about Adam and Deana lately.”

  Adam and Deana were friends of theirs from college. They’d moved to Baltimore several years ago, and Todd and Heather saw them rarely, although they stayed in touch through email and Facebook.

  “What about them?” Todd had asked.

  Heather sat on the edge of their bed, wearing her favorite robe. Todd was under the covers, wearing only a pair of boxers. He felt too constrained at night if he tried to sleep in anything more.

  “Maybe we should try what they do.”

  It took him a moment to realize what she meant. Adam and Deana were married—happily so—but they were polyamorous. They had an open relationship in which lovers were not only tolerated but encouraged, as long as both partners knew what was happening and were okay with it. When Todd had first learned about the concept in college, he’d thought it was simply a way to have your cake and eat it too. That, or it was a sign of a relationship on the verge of falling apart. But Adam and Deana seemed to have made it work for them.

  It was foolish, considering that Todd had just had an affair, but the thought of Heather having sex with someone else made him feel jealous as hell.

  “Is this some kind of way to get back at me?” he asked.

  “Not at all. Every once and a while Deana sends me links to articles on polyamory. Stuff about how it’s not natural or healthy for humans to be completely monogamous.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s true. You still love me as much as ever, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you still had an affair. And you don’t know why.”

  It was true. He still had no idea why it had happened.

  She went on. “So maybe we should try it and see if it works for us.”

  By us, he really thought she meant him. It had taken him a few days to think about it. Could he really deal with Heather sleeping with other guys—or women—especially when he knew she was? He tried to convince himself that he possessed a typically male double-standard when it came to sex. It was okay for men to have more than one partner while in a relationship—as long as they didn’t go too overboard about it—but it wasn’t okay for women. He knew he was being a sexist jerk, but he couldn’t help it. But in the end, despite his reservations, he told Heather he was willing to give it a try.

  The “experiment,” as he came to think of it, lasted a little over four months. In that time he slept with only one other woman—a colleague at work—and it had ended up being a one-time thing. Heather had slept with two men and one woman, and she’d had a foursome with all of them a couple times. He found it difficult to separate his feelings for Heather from his feelings about having sex with other people, but it turned out that Heather had no such trouble. She loved Todd and was completely dedicated to their marriage. She viewed extra-marital sex as something completely separate from her relationship with Todd, something that had no impact on it. And when he told her that he was no longer comfortable with the two of them seeing other people, Heather was happy to stop, and they became a wholly monogamous couple again.

  But Todd had a hard time going back to the way things were. When they’d first started the “experiment,” he’d thought he’d be unable to get past his jealousy at Heather being with someone else. But while he wasn’t thrilled with that part, he found her casual acceptance of the lifestyle—coupled with her equally casual release of it—to be near maddening. He’d been wracked with guilt over his affair, and his one-night stand with the woman from work had been totally unsatisfying on every level. He’d gone through emotional torture during that time, but Heather seemed unaffected, as if she could take it or leave it. If she loved him as much as she claimed, wouldn’t she have been at least a little bothered with sleeping with other people?

  Evidently not.

  So, yeah. All of that was part—a big part—of what had happened to their marriage. But he understood what Heather was getting at. More was wrong, maybe a lot more, and neither of them seemed to be able to identify it.

  He gazed at the flames in the fireplace. They made no noise, aside from the hissing of gas. The “log” they danced around was artificial and didn’t burn. There were no pops or crackles, no sounds that made a fire feel homey and comfortable.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Todd said, his voice weary. “I really fucking don’t.”

  * * *

  Since they couldn’t turn on the TV to check the weather, Heather used her phone. The connection was slow, maybe because of the storm, although she’d never heard of snow interfering with cell signals. The weather report had been updated since the last time she’d checked. They were now officially in a state of emergency. Blizzard conditions. Three feet of snow expected, maybe as much as five. Travel was extremely hazardous. Only emergency vehicles were permitted to be on the road.

  While she checked the weather, Todd called the power company to check on the outage. He’d already called in to report it, but he could get impatient when something wasn’t fixed fast enough to suit him. As an engineer, he specialized in problem-solving, and he hated it when he had to rely on someone else to fix something for him. Almost as much as he hated being unable to fix a problem himself.

  They got off their phones almost at the same time.

  “Just another goddamned recording,” he said. “‘An outage has been reported in your area and crews are working to repair it.’”

  Heather told him about the weather report.

  “Great,” he said. “Just fucking great.”

  He shrugged off his blanket and rose from the carpet in front of the fireplace. Using his phone as a flashlight, he headed through the living room and into the foyer. Heather didn’t follow him. He opened the coat closet, and she heard a rustle of cloth and the sound of a plastic hanger clacking against the wooden rod. She heard more rustling, and then the door closed and he returned to the fireplace. He carried his heavy winter coat, a scarf, and a pair of boots. Heather watched as he put them all on and then pulled a beanie from his coat pocket and slipped it over his head. He then removed a pair a black gloves from his other pocket and put them on too.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked. She tried to make the question sound light, but it came out snarky.

  “I’m going out to clear the driveway,” he said. “And before you say an
ything, I know it’s still snowing. But if I wait until all the snow piles up, it’ll be that much harder to clear. Better to do it now, when it’ll be easier, and do it again later rather than wait.”

  She couldn’t argue with his logic. There’d been a time when she might’ve asked him to stay inside and cuddle by the fire with her, said cuddling perhaps leading to more pleasant physical interaction. But now all she did was nod and watch her husband go to the door to the garage, open it, step through, and close it again. She didn’t feel sad. She didn’t feel much of anything. She couldn’t decide which was worse.

  * * *

  They didn’t have any children. The subject had only come up a few times in their marriage, and they’d discussed it, but not for very long. Neither of them had any moral objections to having kids. No “Why bring new life into a world that’s already overpopulated?” They didn’t have any personal objections, either. At least, none they could put a name to. Heather wasn’t afraid of going through childbirth, and they weren’t worried about children cramping their lifestyle. For whatever reasons, they just didn’t take to the idea. Once, ten years ago, she was late for her period and stopped at the pharmacy after work, bought a home pregnancy test, peed on the stick, and discovered she wasn’t pregnant. She’d looked at the stick for a long time, trying to feel something, anything, but she didn’t. She’d thrown the stick and the box it had come in away, and she never told Todd about it.

  Now, sitting here alone in front of the fireplace in an otherwise dark house, listening to the sound of Todd lifting the garage door—the power was out so he had to open it manually—as he prepared to do battle with the snow, she wondered if their lack of feelings toward having children, whether positive or negative, wasn’t another symptom of whatever it was that was wrong with their relationship.