Except for July and August, the house is always cold. But no matter the season, and this is a cold one, she is the first to rise in the frosty damp, pushing out of bed with knees tender and a stiff spine. She shuffles into the kitchen to light the stove, sets the water to boil and sits in the wooden chair as close as possible to the fire. She doesn’t move, conserving her energy, her thoughts. This stillness gives her the semblance of warmth.

He will not wake for another hour and a half, maybe two. His still form beneath the blankets. What a surprise this is for her. To see him sleeping in their bed, a solid shape. No longer just a ghost, stealing away then stealing home while the family slept.

Only on certain mornings, when she wasn’t overtired from the washing and the children and the garden, she could hear him rise and leave their bed in the dark. The whisper of his arms and legs slipping out of his pajamas and into his overalls. Sometimes, not able to fall back to sleep, she pictured him riding his bicycle to the foundry, imagined him at his work. The tasks that brought home such dust on his clothing. But too soon the noises of the day would erase his whispers. Always, he came home after she was asleep, to eat his lonely, cold supper she had positioned with care on the table.

Those days she caught herself wondering, did he know the names of the children? He never saw them but Sunday. Each of them conceived on a Saturday night, when his ghost stepped into the light of the dinner table and then the dark of their bed. Other whispers.

Now those many children have gone, denying the house its original purpose. Empty, these old stones.

The noises of his waking reach her at the stove. She starts, moves toward the bedroom but does not enter. The day begins and will conform exactly to the day before, and to tomorrow. His presence, her attendance. Small tasks and silent communion.

His continued strength is a revelation to her; he can chop their wood, carry items she cannot, open the jars she has sealed with boiling water. She prides herself on keeping up. But his lungs are filled with sand, his eyes cloudy. Soon, he will haunt her anew.

And then what will she do in this great, cold stone house? With its four floors and west-facing windows. Its rickety shutters and patchy roof. Which of her children will send for her from the city? From their modern apartments and small houses, from their convenient lives. Who will find time to unearth her from beneath this crumble of rock and shadow? Usher her through the final, silent scrambling of her long, lonely existence.

***
Michelle Bailat-Jones is a translator and writer living in Switzerland. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ascent, The Kenyon Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Necessary Fiction, Fogged Clarity, Cerise Press, and The Quarterly Conversation. She is also the reviews editor for Necessary Fiction.

Photo by Cavin