On the day Camille is supposed to go, it snows again. She receives an email that morning, her name in all caps. CAMILLE, it seems we are cursed! The author of the advertisement signs all her emails Widow Mary, as if her husband’s death has legally changed her name. So frustrating! I need this done ASAP!  They have had to reschedule twice already, once because of a blizzard and, the first time, because Tyler was in the hospital. 
       Camille writes back and apologizes. She does not feel responsible for the weather, but an apology is what Widow Mary expects. She continues about her day. The boys still have school, too many days have been cancelled already due to snow. She fixes her sons’ breakfasts and shovels the driveway. Henry Jr. is late waking up—he is fifteen and some days all he does is sleep—but Tyler is nine and up with the sun. With twenty minutes still before they need to leave for school, Tyler is dressed with his backpack on and his cast in a sling. He announces he will wait in the car. She warns him to be careful. The ice is as thick as a tortoise shell. After Henry Jr. is at the high school and Tyler at the elementary school, Camille delivers packages for two hours and cleans houses for three. She gives a sponge bath to an old man who relieves himself in the warm water while his daughter smokes cigarettes in the hallway. She walks a gang of labradoodles around the golf course. When she picks up Tyler from school, she is handed a note. The school’s social worker is asking her to call him in the morning. Henry makes his own way home and, that evening, they eat pizza while standing at the kitchen island. 
       The boys retreat to their rooms with their iPads while Camille attends her court-ordered therapy on zoom. She sits on the closed toilet in her bathroom. She whispers. Her therapist asks if Camille feels safe in her home and Camille tells a story of herself at five-years-old watching a ballerina, how the dancer’s legs formed a straight line like the stalk of a flower—one foot rooted and the other endlessly reaching toward the sky. After the session, Camille mops the dining room and checks that the windows are locked. Before bed, she has an email waiting from Widow Mary. 
       I INSIST you come tomorrow morning. Otherwise, I WILL find someone else.
       But Camille knows if Widow Mary could find someone else—anyone else—she would. 

​

—

​

The next morning, the school social worker explains that Tyler is wetting himself at school. He is in fourth grade, too old to be having accidents. She didn’t notice he came home yesterday in different pants, but the social worker tells her that he did. She thanks the voice on the phone. She hangs up. Before she leaves for Widow Mary’s, she drops off a bag of clean pants and underwear at Tyler’s school. 
       The day is unseasonably warm and sheets of snow slide off the roof and land in thunder claps. Dirt peeks through in slicks of gray. She arrives at the address Widow Mary has given her. It is a ranch house. Camille knows the type. It was built in the 1950s and will have the living room and kitchen on one side and three bedrooms on another. Half of the houses are this way, each a different color but otherwise they are as uniform as Tyler’s Legos. 
       WANTED: HUMAN DEBRIS CLEAN-UP.  Widow Mary’s Craigslist ad was in all caps, the majority of it devoted to describing the land. She owns five acres of woodland, “ancestral wetlands” she calls them, and argues they should be protected. WHEN I DIE, THEY’LL CUT IT ALL DOWN. HOOLIGANS.
       Camille carries ladybug dishwashing gloves and a trash bag toward the house. Widow Mary’s front door is painted the muted pink color of a rash. Camille presses the bell, but the door opens before it has a chance to ring, and Widow Mary appears in the doorway wearing an oversized cardigan with her arms crossed. Her shoulders round into a frown. She is gray-haired with a spike of red dye gelled upright at the center of her forehead. 
       “You’re late,” she says. 
       “I emailed to let you know.”
       “I read it,” she says, “but still.”
       She steps aside and Camille enters a room that smells of lemon and soap. The carpet is creamy yellow and the walls are the same plague pink of the front door. Display cases are tucked into the corners, full of figurines, outdated CDs, and tee-peed greeting cards. The house has the feeling of a museum, a shrine to a life already mostly lived. She hears a clock somewhere in the house, the passing seconds a steady drip in the air. Widow Mary walks to the kitchen at the back of the house and Camille hesitates, unsure if she is expected to remove her shoes. She has not been able to shake the chill of winter from her feet, her toes still cold when she sleeps. She decides to follow in her shoes and leaves damp impressions on the carpet. In the kitchen, she places the bag and gloves on the dining table. Widow Mary pours herself a cup of tea and returns the teapot to the stove. 
       “You only brought one bag?”
       Camille holds her hands in her lap and watches Widow Mary sip her tea. 
       “Well,” Widow Mary says. “You better get started.”
       She slips on a pair of winter boots waiting by the back door—red, like the stripe in her hair. The color clashes with the rashy pink of her home. She takes up two walking poles and exits the house, leaving the door open behind her. Camille follows behind. 
       The ground is a wet sponge and Camille must lift at her knees as she walks. They enter the tree line and Camille feels the stretch of the pines surrounding her. Their trunks straight arrows to the sun, the trees ascents unburdened. Stepping through them, Widow Mary and Camille inhabit their hush. It is just their steps that disturb the forest’s peace, the two of them tracking in the day. 
       They have traveled at least two hundred yards from the house when Camille spies the first colors of the encampment—the purple of the tent, the yellow of the hammock. She passes a flattened Cheerio box half anchored in snow. Camille thinks about picking it up—that is why she is here—but walks past it. 
       It is only later that she will recall the unburdened snow, the forest floor thick and even with white, and the absence of any recent human footsteps other than her own. 
       Widow Mary is talking as Camille arrives. “My bin only takes two bags,” she is saying. 
       The tent is purple at the bottom with a blue tarp duct taped over its top. A pile of colors—orange cooler, black butane stove, and several hills of silver, green, and brown trash—sit tucked into the tent’s side. The zipper is ripped and the entrance hangs open like a mouth. The order of the interior mocks the exterior’s chaos. A red sleeping bag lays flat beneath an aquamarine pillow. Beside the bed sits a black tray with small, spindled gold-leaf handles. She can see a roll of toilet paper, a green bottle of hairspray, an amber bottle of perfume, and a figurine of a dog still in its packaging. A Funkopop, Camille thinks. The absurdity of the name strikes her. They were all the rage when Henry Jr. was in middle school. Grotesquely large heads atop unmoving silicone bodies. On top of the package is a white bow covered in red hearts. 
       “You’ll need to carry the rest with you. There’s a dump the next town over,” Widow Mary is saying.
       Homeless. The word infects Camille’s thoughts. Unhoused might be the correct term. Not homeless, Camille thinks. Because how can someone be homeless when she is staring at their home? 
       “You confused about anything?” Widow Mary says. 
       Camille’s silence settles thickly over the pines. 
       “Don’t get hysterical,” Widow Mary says, shaking her head. “So judgmental. These snow storms this winter. What was I supposed to do? It’s been freezing, absolutely in—” 
       She stops herself mid-word, but Camille finishes it in her mind, inhuman. 
       “I can’t do anything about it now. She’s gone. Am I supposed to live with this on my property forever?”
       One of her poles has fallen but Widow Mary doesn’t seem to notice. Camille watches it sink into the snow.
       “It’s not my fault. What’s done is done. I didn’t do it to her.”
       “Her?” Camille asks. It is an accusation dressed in a question. For a moment Camille tastes anger on her tongue, like heat, like blood. Camille knows this place belongs to a woman. There are the bottles of perfume and hairspray, and a womanly order. But Camille wants to incite some feminine feeling in Widow Mary, for her to feel a spike of guilt. 
       “Tell me. What would you have me do?”
       “What happened to her?” Camille asks
       Widow Mary looks over her shoulder and Camille watches the bottom of her jaw shift side to side. Camille reminds herself that Widow Mary is a woman, an old woman, and so there is no reason to be afraid. 
       “My fee has doubled,” Camille says. 
       Widow Mary gasps. “That’s outrageous!” 
       Camille marches out of the woods. 

 

—

That night, she feeds the boys chicken nuggets and roasted broccoli. After dinner, she plays a game of war with Tyler. He left that morning in brown pants and now they are blue. He tells her about a kitten he has seen on their front porch and asks to leave a bowl of milk outside. Henry Jr. sits down to play a round and the game goes silent. 
       She cannot speak her fear. Henry Jr. carries his father’s pronounced jawline, the same bushy eyebrows. When he holds the cards, his knuckles are so big they seem on the verge of splitting through the skin. She wonders if Tyler sees it, too. Each time Henry Jr. loses a war, she scans his eyes for a shadow hiding beneath his expression, something of his father lurking. He has always been a kind, sweet boy. She knows it’s not right to search him. He has done nothing to deserve it. 
       That night, her therapist asks her about the last time her husband hit her and Camille tells the story of Tyler’s cat, how her son described it as an orange creamsicle, white and orange. “If it’s alone, it’ll never survive out there,” she says. The therapist lets her talk and the story takes up the entire session. Afterward, Camille mops the dining room and checks the locks on the windows. 
       Before bed, she receives an email from Widow Mary. FINE.

 

—

The next morning it is five degrees and Camille writes to Widow Mary that she will not come today. On the front porch, the bowl of milk is frozen solid. She delivers packages and cleans homes. People call her to walk their dogs, which she does. She and the dogs suffer in the cold. 
       That evening she feeds the boys pizza rolls and apple slices. Tyler is wearing camo pants when that morning she had laid out brown. The boys get into an argument about space—Tyler insists that if black holes exist then surely white holes do, too—and Henry Jr. calls him an idiot. She sends them to their rooms without their iPads. She mops the dining room and checks the locks on the windows. She wants a drink. She cannot remember the last time she had one. Her memory does not seem to extend beyond the last seven days. Or maybe it is ten or even thirty. Time slips and rushes without warning. She does not remember the police arriving to the house or sitting beside Tyler in the hospital, although she understands these things happened. It doesn’t matter. There is no longer any alcohol in the house. 
       “How’s Tyler’s arm?” her therapist asks her and Camille tells a made-up story of a mother with country-music hair who goes to extraordinary lengths to find a rare Funkopop for her son’s birthday. On zoom, her therapist places her hand on her forehead and drags it down her face. Camille stops. If she continues talking, she will say something wrong and be punished for her poor phrasing. Her therapist begins to speak and her tone is one of frustration, her words a lecture. Camille studies the wooden planks of her dining room floor. It is an old floor with holes and cracks and crevices where blood could hide.
       At midnight, Camille is still awake. When she closes her eyes, she sees red and blue flashes and hears Tyler’s screams. She gets out of bed and walks the length of the house in her robe, stopping at Henry Jr.’s door. She tries the knob, but it is locked. In the kitchen, she finds a pin and soon she is tip toeing inside his room. Henry Jr. is a lump under the blankets. So quiet, her son. She cannot decide if this is a change in him or if all fifteen-year-olds eventually stop speaking to their mothers. Maybe he is harming himself. Maybe he carries big booming emotions he cannot get out any other way. He is too old for her to check his body like she wants to, so instead she searches the room for scissors and knives. She finds a pencil sharpener, a small razor hidden inside, and tucks it into her pocket. 
       Tyler’s room is unlocked but he is not in his bed. She searches underneath, but he is not there either. Finally, she finds him in the closet curled into a ball. His cast lays across his middle like a shield. 

 

—

The next morning Camille rises and wades through the house as if it were water. She did not sleep and it appears that neither did Widow Mary. She receives an email from her at 3:32am, Please.
       The day is temperate by this winter’s standards. That morning is a few degrees above freezing and forecast promises a day of false spring. Tyler checks the bowl of milk on the front porch and finds it half gone. “Look!” he yells and Camille stands beside him with a hand on his shoulder. Henry Jr. arrives and she fixes him with a meaningful look. Don’t spoil this for your brother, her eyes say. She knows a squirrel or rabbit or even a possum has drunk this milk, but she does not want to darken the look on Tyler’s face.
       She can hardly speak but she drinks up the delight reviving her son’s features, his hope a fragile anchor thrown into the future. Standing there with her two sons, a feeling has entered her body that will not speak but sits hot and savage inside her, and soon a weight has come loose. It swirls and crashes around her gut unable to escape. Her body tells her to turn away from this new, unsettling danger and so she does. 
       She arrives to Widow Mary’s home with ten garbage bags. Widow Mary opens the front door before Camille has finished getting out of her car. A robe hangs over a pair of charcoal pajamas, the belt untied. The red streak of hair lays sideways across her scalp. As Camille walks up her porch steps, Widow Mary recedes into her home, leaving her front door open. 
       She walks through Widow Mary’s living room, noting a disorder to the place, something felt more than seen. The pillows sit crumpled on the couch. A throw spills onto the floor. The steady tock, tock, tock marks her steps. 
       In her kitchen, Widow Mary pours them each a cup of tea. 
       “It’s not my fault she had no one,” Widow Mary says. “It’s been a frigid winter. Record breaking! I didn’t invite her into my woods. I don’t know what happened to her or why she was homeless. I don’t know why she didn’t just go to a shelter. It’s not my business. What do you want from me? I’m an old woman. I just want a peaceful life.”
       Camille sips her tea. 
       “It’s not my fault she died,” Widow Mary says. 
       “She’s dead,” Camille says. “But she still needed help.” 
       Widow Mary looks at her and Camille is aware this is the first time their eyes have met. Her eyes are an icy gray with a pure blue core, the whites pink from crying. Camille hears what the eyes want to say. I need help, they say. Please. Camille wants to hate her but can’t. Widow Mary simply wants to return to pretending her life was everything she needed it to be. Camille understands there are some truths that need to be sacrificed in order to survive.
       And it is now the weight finds her again—the heavy blistering of her son’s hope—cracking something open inside. The tea warms her belly and from it her therapist’s lecture rises like a dormant plant hellbent on the sun. “He’s in jail, Camille. He’s gone. You’ll begin to trust this, eventually. Your body will begin to understand it’s safe. And then, they’ll be a kind of thaw. You’ll start to feel again, all at once. It’ll hurt. Think of it like an attack of kindness. You’ll feel grief, of course, but it’s the joy that will feel the most painful. We must be ready.” 
       Camille walks into the woods. Widow Mary offers to help but Camille tells her to stay inside. She follows her steps from a few days ago, the snow now grayed to ash. Camille fills up the ten trash bags and must return to Widow Mary for more. She folds up the tent with care. There is a smell of sweat and unwashed living inside of it, but Camille thinks it is in good enough shape to pass on. The rest is put in the trash, all except the Funkopop, which she buries in its packaging, leaving the bow as a marker. The ground is too hard for her to dig deeper than a few inches—the spring rains will bring it quickly back to the surface—but for the moment it stays hidden in the snow.