She’s seven months pregnant when the lights go out. And they curse whoever’s decision it was to have the main heat in their house sourced from electricity. The blackout is city wide, and the authorities on Jim’s battered portable radio suggest they stay in doors and not try to drive in the thick, thick snow that doesn’t stop falling.
It’s strange, this silent world. Just them and their house and their backyard and the hours and hours under all their thickest blankets, staying warm from their own heat. She lays beside him, wearing his Sixers hoodie over her big bump, a baggy woollen hat she’d tried to knit barely warming her ears, and she sketches while he reads. For months she’s had visions that need to be settled onto paper before the baby is here and she’s no longer herself anymore.
It’s the Holidays and normally the street outside would be lit with the power of the national grid, in bright reds and greens, forming shadows in cohorts with Santa, but when she looks out the window at dusk there’s nothing, and she muses that it’s Jesus’ revenge.
Every hour or so, one of them makes the trip downstairs, for food or hot tea, and at 4:30 she goes to see if she can find some more candles for tonight. She can feel him watching her go (like he has the thirty times she’s gone to the bathroom in the last few hours) with that sly gaze that’s proud and in awe and horny, at the same time. And as she feels her way through the dim downstairs of their house, she hears the mother of the kids down the street calling them in from the snow.
The place is a mess, nothing too chaotic, but enough to make the journey from the bottom of the stairs an obstacle course. Her mom and her sister had thrown her a baby shower the weekend before. It had felt like an early Christmas, though none of the presents were hers. But there was still stuff, so many things in their hallway waiting for a place; tiny clothes, florescent toys and plastic books and how did babies ever survive before all of this stuff?
The silence has made her think; truly imagine what life is about to become. Not since their swiftly planned honeymoon has there been time to sit and picture it, to quietly worry about how this big change, the biggest, will transform them, make them parents instead of people.
It's almost completely black in the kitchen, the last of the sunlight creeping reluctantly through the small windows, making patterns on the cabinets. She searches for candles in draws, finding gum and matches, but nothing much else.
She hears his footsteps on the wooden stairs and the hiss as he inevitably stubs his toe and his breathing is a little faster as he joins her. He’s put his winter coat over his sweater, the hood pulled up, thick woollen socks on his feet. More than 2 days worth of stubble forces him into potential caveman territory.
“Did you find anything?’
"Not really.”
“Shit.”
“Maybe we should light the fire?”
“We haven’t got much wood left.”
They pause.
“This is so old-timey, I feel like I’m inside Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”
He smiles and she giggles, “Well let’s hold off on the barn raising for now.”
He pulls her close, which is pretty impossible now, and she slides her hands inside the warmth of his jacket. They stand there until the baby chooses this moment to kick, and he feigns abdominal pain and he falls to the floor.
“That kid is already possessive”, he mumbles, kneeling he at belly level, admonishing the baby while hoping for more of a show. But it looks like that’s it, so he picks himself up, pulls the matches from the countertop and walks to the living room. She hears him shuffling around with the fireplace, while she boils water on their, thankfully gas, stove and resigns them to another night of pasta.
When he’s got the fire going, the heat spreads immediately and it’s a blessed relief. He’s pulled the couch close the flames and they sit quietly and eat while they melt. The flames dance and it’s a strange form of television, but they watch intently just like they’ve been trained, waiting for the cliff-hanger.
“I haven’t done this little since college” he comments. “Its so…awesome”.
“Its not so bad,” she rests her head on his lap and he strokes her hair.
“Next year…” she starts. They play this game a lot, in the summer they were predicting the next company picnic, him with a 4 month old strapped to his chest and her with a diaper bag. In the fall they’d considered a first Halloween costume, his two suggestions: three-hole-punch baby and Dwight, were vetoed. Now, at Christmas, their second in this house, sitting next to the tree with its silvery ornaments reflecting the hearth, she sees them in a year. They are much more tired than they are now, wrapping presents for a child that won’t know how to unwrap them but doing it anyway because the is the first Christmas, the one where they set all the traditions for the rest of their lives.
“If the power goes out this time next year, we’ll build an igloo.”
“Deal.”
The fire is burning low, and they’ve used all their logs, so they make the most the heat while they can. He turns the volume on his iPod up to the max and places the headphones on top of her stomach. He insists his child will know and love The Shins before birth, because that way they will be more quirky and offbeat, and at peace. ‘The Past and the Pending’ fills the room and they both notice that the movement under her sweater increases. And despite the fact that this is a nightly ritual it’s still weird and exciting.
“Lets go outside.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Pam, its like minus forty outside, you’ll get sick… what if you fall?”
“Come on, for like 5 minutes, it’s stopped snowing, I bet the sky is clear tonight.”
He sighs, because this is strictly against his policy on letting her doing anything he deems ‘out of her range’ right now. But she’s determined and a little stir crazy so he helps her tug on her snow boots and make sure there is at least 3 layers on all but her face.
At least 2 feet of snow have fallen since they’ve last left the house, so he slowly digs them out through the back entrance. When they finally make it, standing hand in hand in the only spot he can make space for them to stand, under an old oak tree, it’s the silence that amazes them. No traffic, no voices, no wind rustling past the bare tree trunks or houses.
And she’s right, the sky is clearer than she ever remembers, she can spot actual clusters of stars and the familiar ones are piercingly bright. If she focuses long enough its like the opening credits to Star Trek and despite the disorientation it’s oddly reassuring.
“Wow”
“Crazy huh, that we’ve never seen it like this?” he adds. She wonders if their son or daughter ever will, the way the world is going.
“Its such a shame,” she mumbles.
But that’s when her teeth start to chatter and he quickly ushers his charge back inside.
Their bedroom has cooled completely in their absence and even after they’ve warmed under the covers its still unbearable. So he tells her to sit in the chair by their bed, under their thickest quilt and she waits, hearing him traipsing back and forth from their bedroom to somewhere downstairs. It must be half and hour later when he carefully guides her into the kitchen, where the lit stove is filling the warm room with a brilliant blue glow. He’s forced their mattress onto the floor, (though its rising up at the sides) and pegged sheets into a makeshift tent to contain the heat.
And when they settle for the night she’s achingly tired, despite the fact they’ve done nothing at all. But it’s been cold and she’s growing a freakin’ baby, so she guesses that’s okay. She wonders if he’ll sleep, knowing there is running gas in such close proximity to her sleeping form…probably not. He’s spooning her, supporting her back the only way it’s comfortable, his hands wrapped around her burgeoning circumference. Through a gap in the sheets and out the window, she can see the stars and it’s beautiful; him and her and him or her, stargazing in a homemade igloo, just waiting for the lights to turn on again.
