It was snowy and school was canceled. Somehow Jeff had managed to drive to work anyway. I knew he'd likely stay overnight in the studio, I didn't know whose house that was a euphemism for. It was a relief to have him gone and have time by myself. Things were strained again, I was sure it was the subtle shift in my mood and behavior. He'd always sensed those sort of things and caused a near paralyzing fear of rejection in him. That was one of the things that had always kept me within that small range of behavior around him. The other was my own fear of his darker side. We'd become a finely tuned machine.

I sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and picking at a piece of toast. I watched the heavy snowfall accumulate quickly as it can in Illinois. The forecast said it would snow for a few days, it was near blizzard conditions. It wouldn't be long before the phone lines were down and likely the electricity would go out too.

I stood and walked over to the phone. It was still the same old white phone we'd always had with its long chord that allowed me to move about the kitchen and living room while I conversed. How many conversations had I had with one of the kids or Joanie while cleaning the house, the receiver cradled on my shoulder. I looked at the clock. It was already nine thirty. I knew Jeff wasn't scheduled to teach until 11:00 and I was sure the classes at the art institute had been canceled too. I was sure the roads were nearly empty, the plows couldn't have made it through much and even if they had it was accumulating too quickly. I always had the fear that Jeff's sports car would swerve off the road in such icy conditions. No matter what the roads were like he navigated them as if he were on the autobahn. I called the studio but I didn't really expect him to pick up.

"This is Jeff."

"Hi. It's me."

"Hi." His tone was tender.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry for how I've been towards you. It's not you."

"I know it's not. Things have been hard for you since Christmas."

I twirled the chord in between my fingers. "Can you come home?"
There was a silence. "Eve. The roads are bad. I'm going to have to stay here tonight."

"Oh." I picked up the pack of cigarettes from the counter and lit one.

He filled the pause while I inhaled a drag. "It's not what you're thinking."

I let out a stream of smoke, "I know."

"Really it isn't. I'm not with anyone else here."

"I'm just afraid. I don't know why." I could make out his low breaths. He seemed so far way.

"You'll be back to work next week and we'll get back into our routines. Everything is fine, Eve. Honestly."

I took a drag and nodded.

"All right?"

"yes."

"you'll be ok. I promise."

I knew what I wanted to do, but I left it outside of my consciousness. I didn't want to look at it directly; it was buried there in the basement. Her words. Her. I'd kept a photograph of her in a small frame in the den. I'd done it for Clara and Jeffery. It was inconspicuous amongst the other pictures, hidden more and more each year by the pictures of our own family experiences. She was there, her image anyway behind all of us. Margaret still frail depicted with hardly a smile in a faded black and white photograph while our family snapshots accumulated. We seemed spirited in bright color photographs. Her two children with me as their mother. They were a part of my family, not hers. It was as though she'd never existed.

I walked into the den and looked on the shelf for Margaret's framed picture.. I knew where it was, in the back. I could see it was completely obscured. I'd selected a small photograph, maybe two by four inches. It was in a plain black frame. I reached back and retrieved it. It was the most normal looking one I could find. I remember how long it had taken me to select that one. I didn't know if Clara and Jeffery ever cared that I'd displayed a picture of their mother, but I'd like to think it meant something to them. There she was. It was at their house in Sellwood and seeing the northerly light of Oregon and the community house in the background gave me a sense of longing for my life before. Before Jeff. All of it, all the memories and everything I had was boxed up too, somewhere inside of me. I'd pushed everything down. The bad and the good. She was standing in front of the building as if it were a national landmark. It must have been when they first moved to Sellwood. Margaret was holding Clara. She looked into the camera and she looked pleasant but not happy. Her skin was pale and she was much smaller than me. I examined her and could see for the first time that she was very petite. She couldn't have been much taller than five foot two. Her hands were clasped in front of her. I couldn't imagine Jeff with her. I had the same smoldering jealousy I'd had the few times I'd seen her back in Sellwood, all those years ago when I was having an affair with her husband. Her husband. I put the picture back on the shelf.

Before I walked down to the basement I refilled my cup with coffee. I picked up my cigarettes too. I peered out the kitchen window, the snow had really accumulated. There would be no way for Jeff to get back even if he wanted to. I felt some relief knowing that he was safe. My station wagon had a tall mound of snow over it. A white thick blanket. I'd always loved the rounded contours of things covered in snow. I looked next door and could see my neighbor, Tom shoveling his drive way and sidewalk. I was able to lift the window frame and call out to him. "Tom!"

He waved a gloved hand and walked over close to my driveway, close enough to hear me. "The weather's terrible isn't it?" he called out.

"Yes. Jeff is stuck at the museum."

"I wouldn't venture out today. Just as I'm done shoveling a couple more inches have already piled up."

"I just wanted to say hello."

"Do you want me to shovel yours?" He asked. "It's no problem."

"No one of the neighborhood boys will be coming by soon I'm sure. I don't need to get out until morning. Thanks though. Do you and Ellen need anything?"

"No. We're fine. Call us if you need anything."

I closed the window and watched him turn back towards the end of his driveway and start pushing his snow shovel back through. I compared my driveway to his; mine had at least a foot of snow.

I carried my coffee and cigarettes down to the basement. I walked through the laundry area, I took note that I had a basket of clothes to throw in the washer. I thought better of it in case the electricity went out and then I'd be stuck with a tub full of water and clothes sitting wet. Who knew how long the electricity would be out?

The back room was dark and I had to wave my hand in the air until I located the string attached to the light bulb. Once I tugged on it and the light flicked on. The room was darker than usual because the snow had piled up higher than the single basement window. I felt like I was buried down therein some Edgar Allan Poe crypt. It was like a grave. Still, the yellow light was enough to see by. I knew exactly where the boxes were. I put my coffee down on the worktable against the wall. I pulled the boxes of our Christmas decorations out. Margaret's two boxes were behind those. I went straight to the one with the leather bound diaries. I opened it and pulled them out. They were thick. I imagined where her story would take me. It was cold down in the basement, already my hands felt tingly. At first I thought to bring them upstairs to the warmth of my home but I realized I wanted to keep her ghost contained, down in the basement. So instead, I ran upstairs and put on my winter coat, mittens and a scarf. It seemed silly but I went back down and immediately felt warmer.

I held the journal with my hands clenched tightly around it. It had moved into compulsion, I had to open them; a big part of me didn't want to read any more. It seemed that her story was intertwined with my own. It seemed that reading her fear of Jeff caused me to recognize that same fear in myself. Years ago, at times I'd been terrified of him. Terrified. Had he changed? I took a sip of coffee and waited. When I looked back years later, I could see I was waiting for her to make the first move. Of course she couldn't. She was dead.

Finally, I opened it. I went straight to the middle of the book, gingerly turning the yellowed pages with black ink in a perfect yet distinctive penmanship. If I'd never seen her image, I would have thought from the precision and beauty of her cursive that she had been a strong, beautiful and lovely women. I thought back to the days of written correspondences when a person might never have met the other. Emily Dickenson had been like that. Back then I was sure penmanship like Margaret's would have been coveted. It alone would have been enough to cause a man to fall in love. I stopped at a page in the middle of the book. The words jumped out at me. I hate the child. That caused me to stop and read that particular page.

I hate the child. He feels like a reptile in my arms. Worse, something primordial. A creature. His breath against my skin it seems is something evil. I hold the bottle for his greedy lips. As he eats he is depriving me of my own blood and strength. A physical depletion of my spirit.

I stopped. She was talking about Jeffery as a baby. I could see why Jeff had hated her. She was sick, but that particular kind of sickness was the most repugnant. I read on.

Mostly it's Clara. The way her eyes look at me. They are the same eyes as Jeff's own. Just by looking at me she tells him what I'm thinking. That's why he wants to kill me. She's the reason he'll take my life. He'll come into my room and put his hands around my neck again. But one of those times he won't stop. Certainly, he'll keep going until he kills me. He told me yesterday that he's going to put me away. I told him he can't do that. That he has no authority on such matters. His evil eyes were just the same as Clara's. I wonder if he tells her my thoughts too.

His sadistic eyes penetrate me "Oh but I can have you put away. I will if I want to." I shall underline it. For he is a master criminal without remorse.

Some of it certainly sounded like Jeff. I felt faint. I removed my knitted gloves and reached for a cigarette. I lit it and stared into the air at the smoke rising up. Reading her insane ramblings caused a fear in me that was akin to madness. A part of me felt as though the smoke from my cigarette was her soul moving from the basement, up higher into my home. Into my life. She was going to invade everything. But, I knew as mad as she was those were Jeff's words. I can...I will if I want to. I couldn't place when he'd said those words to me before, but he had. I recognized them. I shook my head. How was it that I could remember the events in my life with Jeff, but not the feelings?

Margaret's journal entry was dated 1949; that was around that same time—I was startled to realize—that he'd had me committed to an institution. I could see the events one after another. His coming to my home when Charlie was a baby. After I'd left him, refused to continue to see him. Once I started my own life he couldn't tolerate it. I'd re-written that story of his control over me. I'd turned it into something nostalgic and romantic. He loved me that much. Even remembering that look on his face. The sheer lack of feeling, hatred. I felt my body grow cold. How could he have come into my house and forced me into sexual relations. He had caused me to be so distraught -- just in time for the doctor's arrival. He'd called two men to come and see how deranged I'd become. He'd raped me then had me sent away. Margaret was telling the truth. That was something a master criminal would do without remorse.

How had I forgotten that? Even remembering it in that moment was tenuous. My mind played tricks on me. My feelings for him vacillated from terror to idealization. Even though I was above it somewhere seeing the truth, I descended back into the reality I'd constructed. I told myself I loved him. I whispered the words in my mind over and over. I love you. I was trying to drown out the other sounds and feelings. I love you. I could feel a burgeoning insanity rising up in me.

His evil eyes penetrate me. "Oh but I can and I will if I want to. I can do whatever I want, Margaret". He tells me he's tired of me. I ask him why he agreed to marry me in the first place. I'd never wanted him. I never wanted his little greedy children.

"Jesus Christ." He sneered, "what kind of woman are you?"

I hate him more than I can say. What kind of woman. What kind of man forces a 19 year old girl? I suppose I have to ask what kind of mother forces her daughter to marry such a man? It was a conspiracy contrived before I was born, hundreds of years ago. It was marriage of deceit and greed. Let me state for posterity: I hate you both.

The diary entry ends there. I shook my head. I realized I should read them in order. I picked up the first book, dated 1948. I started in the beginning.

I am writing this because Jeff is going to kill me. He's told me he doesn't want me. He doesn't want our children. When I told him never to touch me again, he struck me. I watch him leave and I pray God will strike him dead. I pray that when he is in that woman's arms his heart will fail. That she will have to manage explaining his cold corpse.

The heat is making me crazy. I asked the nurse if he's put something in my food. I heard the baby talk just yesterday. Of course it's impossible he's only two months old. But I saw his eyes grow dark, his face turned red. I asked him, "What's bothering you child?" Then, just as if he were a grown man, he started speaking to me. I knew it was a different language because I only made out a few of the words. The nurse was downstairs making breakfast and fixing a bottle for Jeffery so I carried him into Clara's room.

There she was looking like a perfect porcelain child, too much like a delicate doll if you asked me. The nurse had put calico ribbons in her red hair. The curls made perfect ringlets. Her complexion was pale white and her eyes—those eye they were Jeff's eyes. She was drawing with colored pencils, sitting at little child sized table that Jeff had purchased for her. In fact, most father's wouldn't but he'd told me that since I was no kind of mother, he'd buy things for the child.

She looked at me and smiled. "Mommy."

It caused a shudder. I wanted to travel into the past and pick her up, carry her in my arms away from this woman. It was a relief to know that Jeff was taking care of her.

I sat on the bed and told her to come over and tell me what the baby was saying. She stood and walked over to me. The room seemed as though it was moving. It had strange angles. I'd never seen a room like that before. There are certain kinds of measurements—I am well aware—that carpenters use in houses such as ours. I don't know the label for it, A kind of architecture I think.

"What is it?" she asked. She put her hand on the baby's arm and rubbed gently. "Isn't he sweet mommy?" she asked.

"What is he saying?"

Her eyes looked up at mine. "I don't hear anything."

It was plain as day. She was tricking me. Jeff had told her not to tell me what the baby was saying. I was certain he didn't want me to know, because the baby must have been too young to keep his secrets the way Clara did.

"Do you hear him?"

Finally she was loyal to me. "Yes, mommy I do hear him."

"Tell me what he's saying."

"He's singing."

"What is he singing Clara?"

"I've never heard that song before."

"What are the words?"

"Should I sing it for you mommy?"

"Yes. Sing the words."

"Springtime brings—all sorts of things. Little toys and little boys. Sunshine –" But then she stopped.

"Why have you stopped?"

"That's all there is."

She was lying. I put the baby on the bed and took her by the arm. She deserved a spanking for lying to me. She'd made up those words to protect her father. The nurse rushed in and picked the baby up. She asked me what I was doing. She took Clara by the arm and told me she'd bring me some tea. Of course this had happened before. I couldn't be alone with my own children for more than five minutes without accusations flying! She whisked them away and even before she'd brought my tea into the bedroom she'd called Jeff and he was standing before me.

I had had enough of all the tricks. I confronted him. I told him that Jeffery had told me everything. It was a lie of course, I hadn't heard all of it, but how could he know whether the baby had really betrayed him or not?

I was shaking but it was a relief somehow to know how insane she had been. It allowed me to move stealthily back into my own world. I could trust that Jeff was forced to do what he'd done, all of it. And, by proxy my own complicity was less abhorrent. I imagined little Clara. Thank God Jeff had hired the nurse. Thank God he'd kept such close watch over her. Still I imagined her a four-year-old little girl, her hair in calico ribbons. I heard her say "mommy." She always called me mommy. She'd never stopped; it always made me feel a little uncomfortable to have my grown daughter continue to call me mommy but it was never something I would ask her to change.

I didn't realize but I was crying. The thought of her as a small child brought me back to the day I'd met her. She was the same beautiful child Margaret had described. It was the day that Jeff and I had gone to the courthouse to be married. He'd had the nanny bring Clara and Jeffery in to meet me. I had been all dressed up, not in a wedding dress but in a pretty spring cocktail dress I'd made myself. I wore a strand of pearls. I had been made up and my hair styled. She was only 5 at the time and Jeffery two. I had been sitting on the bed in the unfamiliar room which was to become Jeff and my room. For the short time before she'd committed suicide, it had been his and Margaret's. That was the reason I wanted to find a house of our own so badly. I had been on the bed when the door opened, Clara had climbed up next to me then pulled her two year old brother up too. My son Charlie was on the bed as well, although he'd remained off to the side watching. Beautiful little Clara had sat right beside me and Jeffery immediately crawled into my arms. I remembered her tiny five year old hands smoothing back my hair. Her blue eyes had been full of wonder. She'd placed her cheek next to mine. "I love you already mommy."

I looked back down at the book in my hands. Did Clara remember any of that time spent with Margaret? It had been only a year before I took over as her mother. I woke up from the strange place I'd put myself in. I wanted to hear my daughter's voice. Know that she was all right.

It was instinctive. Once I got upstairs, I wasn't even aware that I was dialing Clara's number. It wasn't until I heard her voice that time and place caught up with me.

"Hello?" Relief set in.

"Darling, it's mom. How are you?"

"I'm good. Did daddy tell you we just finished talking on the phone?"

"No. He isn't here. He's at the studio."

"Oh. I thought he was at home."

"He isn't. What were you talking to dad about?" I untangled the long coiled telephone cord and walked over to the tea kettle and filled it with water. I put it on the stove and turned on the burner.

"He's coming to California. I'm going to meet him in San Francisco."

"Oh he didn't tell me yet."

"He's got an exhibition at the the Modern Art Museum. How could you not know? Then he's going to do a talk at Berkeley. I'm really excited to see him."

I lit a cigarette. "He hasn't told me a word of this."

"Why not? I've known for two weeks."

"Maybe he told me and I don't remember." I blew the smoke out. I realized as the kettle whistled that I'd forgotten the reason I'd called. Just moments before I had been terrified for her after reading Margaret's journals but being back in the present time with my adult daughter on the phone erased all of the anxiety. Things felt cheerful even. It was all over, in the past. I felt as if I'd surfaced after being pulled down and out by a voracious under toe. I cradled the phone between my cheek and shoulder and spooned out some instant coffee and then poured hot water into my cup. I carried it over to the table and sat down.

"I'm surprised he didn't tell you. I was hoping you'd come too. Can you?"

I felt my heart drop. My relationship with Clara had been strained for years. Somehow when she was a teenager she put the pieces together that her mother had committed suicide. It didn't take a mathematician to figure out that with Charlie's age, I'd been having an affair with her father while he was still married to her mother. It wasn't until just that past Christmas when we'd had it out and she seemed to have forgiven me.

"That's nice to hear sweetheart. I wish I could come but I have to teach. Daddy knows that. He should have told you."

"I didn't ask him. I'm asking you."

"Listen, can I call you tomorrow when I can talk more. I just wanted to say hello."

There was a moment. "Is everything all right? If you just wanted to say hello, I would think you have  time to talk. Otherwise, why would you call in the first place?"

"No. I was—"

"You were what?"

"I was looking at some old pictures and I missed you. That's all."

"If you want to call back, I won't be around until afternoon tomorrow."

"Maybe you should come back with dad and stay  for a little while, a week or so. When I get home from work we could do some things –just us."

"I have to work too mom."

"Oh. Of course." I flicked my cigarette on the edge of the glass ashtray. "Are you still at the bookstore?"

"No. I've moved in with someone. I'm her assistant."

"Her assistant?" I snuffed the cigarette our. "What does she do?"

"She's a psychology professor."

"Really? Weren't you seeing another—"

"English professor. Yes. Mom don't judge me."

"I wasn't."

"She's—Ariel—she's convinced me to go to graduate school. She's completely brilliant. Have you heard of Millgram's study?"

"No."

"Well, she's doing a different version of it. It's very important. You haven't heard of it?"

"No. Did you tell daddy?"

"Which?" I recognized the sound of a cigarette being lit. She inhaled deeply and then let it out slowly, "that I'm a lesbian or that I'm going to become a psychologist?"

"Jesus Clara."

"Jesus what?"

"Please don't always assume I'm judging you. I don't care if you're a lesbian or a psychologist. Dad would be interested in what you're doing. You know that."

"OK. I'm sorry."

"Maybe I can come to California soon. I'll check the school calendar and call you. I want to meet Ariel. And, I miss you."

I heard her inhale again and blow the smoke out.

"I'll read up on Millgram's study."

She let out a breath.

"Sweetheart?"

"Yes. I'd like that. I'd like to see you. I mis you."

"I'm so happy that we've put our differences aside. We have haven't we?"

There was a pause. "Mom. You never did anything. It wasn't your fault. I'm sorry I was so angry with you for so long. I needed to work some things out. The human psychology is not a box, it's more like a maze."

I shook my head. She was the most impressionable person I knew. "But we're all right now, aren't we?"

"Yes."

I let out a breath. "I love you so much."

"Mom?"

"Yes, darling?"

"Don't tell daddy about Ariel. I want to be the one to tell him."

"Of course. Should I say anything about graduate school?"

"If it comes up."