Two Sisters: A Novel (37 page)

But first, a coffee would be nice. Swinging her bare feet onto the floor, Muriel slid them into her waiting fuzzy slippers and stretched. She rolled her neck in a slow, lazy circle. A cinnamon bagel was cut and waiting in the freezer. She could nearly smell the warmth that would fill her apartment when she toasted it, taste the saltiness of the butter that would melt into the bagel hole, pooling onto her plate. On her way to the bathroom, she stopped by the window and pulled back the sheer curtain.

“Oh!” Muriel drew in a sharp breath. It was snowing. Soft, huge snowflakes lazily zigzagged down from the gray sky. They were as fluffy as cotton balls.
First
snow. The best snow. Obviously, it had stuck during the night. The city was covered in pristine frosting. No way was she going to stay in bed that day. Not when New York City was at its most magical.

Quickly, Muriel peed, splashed water on her face, and donned her long underwear. Breakfast could wait.

I
N THE SAME
way Maine’s fall foliage makes anyone who sees it hunger for a Norman Rockwellian style of life, first snow in New York is so heartbreakingly beautiful it explains why residents pay ridiculous rents for rabbit-hole spaces. First snow alters the city vibe itself. It’s so quiet you can
hear
silence. Even the crunching of snow beneath rubber boots and the occasional cab tires is muted. First snow in the city is a communal dose of Ecstasy—everyone is happy, everyone is a neighbor, everyone is a friend. The whole city reflects its light.

With her Sherpa-style hat on, ski pants, lined jacket, and new red mittens from T.J.Maxx, Muriel clomped down the stairs of her building in her snow boots. A shoreline of white had blown through the bottom crack in the exterior door. Obviously, it had been a windy night. But now, the outside air was a blanket of polka dots.

“Hurry up! C’mon!”

Like bits of graphite being sucked onto a magnet, New Yorkers took to the snowy streets on their way into Riverside Park. Kids, puffed up in down, waddled to the sledding hill. Their parents carried cross-country skis on the shoulders of their North Face parkas and dressed their dogs in fido fleece. Others carted garbage can lids to be used as sleds and wore layers of huge hooded sweatshirts. First snow in the city was an equal-opportunity joy. No one was unwelcome.

“Duck,
sucka
!” A snowball fight had erupted across the street.

In front of her building, Muriel tipped her head back and opened her mouth to catch the snowflakes on her tongue. They fell softly onto her face and eyelashes, turning into water the moment they touched the warmth of her skin. The sun was a fuzzy tennis ball; soon it would burn through the clouds, turn the sky a vibrant blue, and melt the top layer of snow into a shiny fondantlike crust. Until then, Muriel wanted to enjoy every moment of the morning. First snow was why she couldn’t imagine leaving New York. Without the airless humidity of August, the abrasive sounds of sirens and honking and swearing at slow pedestrians year-round, the stale human smells inside a cab, the rats skittering across the park’s promenade at dusk, the gray scummy water in a summer gutter, how could anyone properly appreciate the inclusive silence of a city’s first snow?

Muriel wandered into the street.

“Incoming!”

Deftly sidestepping a snowball, she bent down and fashioned a return throw from the perfect packing snow at her feet. In her best imitation of a relief pitcher she reached her arm back and hurled the snowball at the gaggle of shouting boys, hitting one squarely on the chest.

“Uh-oh.” Before he could retaliate, Muriel blended into the stream of neighbors on their way into the park, crunching her knee-high rubber boots across Riverside Drive and climbing the snow-carpeted stairs to the open square promontory in front of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.

“Garrett,
come!”

Ignoring his owner, a puppy, off leash, bounded over to Muriel. A blob of white snow teetered atop his wet black nose. Wriggling with puppy ebullience, he leaped up and planted two snowy paws on her torso, the chestnut hair on top of his head spiked with melted snow. Instantly besotted, Muriel bent down to rub her mittened hands behind his ears.

“Garrett,
down
!” With both arms flailing like a windmill, the owner yelled from across the square, clomping through the crowd in ankle-deep powder with white steam puffing from his mouth. Garrett took one look at his master before taking off, bobbing and weaving like a running back.

“Garrett,
heel!”

Clearly beyond control, the puppy circled around the square, chasing snowflakes, careening into snowmen, scooping snow clumps into his mouth, burrowing into a snowdrift only to leap back up the moment another dog passed by. He romped with canines, bit their ears, jumped up on children, behaved badly. Nobody cared. They tussled playfully with him, threw snowballs for him to catch and eat. His owner stood by helplessly as Garrett waggled his way back to Muriel, his pink tongue hanging sideways out of his mouth. Hiding behind her, she felt his long skinny tail softly whip the back of her legs.

“Garrett,
sit
.”

As soon as Garrett’s owner drew near, his puppy was off and running.

“A highly trained animal,” he said, steam shooting out from his mouth. “I’m thinking of showing her at Westminster.”

Muriel said, “Garrett is a
girl
?”

“I know. Crazy, right? I named her after my favorite popcorn.”

Her jaw dropped. “CaramelCrisp?”

The dog owner looked offended. “Not for the main course. Good heavens, I’m not
that
crazy. Usually I start with a CheeseCorn appetizer, then enjoy the basic pop with butter and salt. CaramelCrisp—with pecans—is dessert.”

Slapping her hand to her chest Muriel said, “Pecans? I didn’t dare dream.”

Garrett galumphed back, resting the full weight of her panting body against Muriel. “She’s grown accustomed to my leg,” Muriel sang to the tune of the
My Fair Lady
song. “Like breathing out and breathing in.” As she reached down to pet the dog’s wet head, Garrett snatched her mitten off her hand and bounded away.

“Oh no! Garrett. Come.
Now!”

Muriel just laughed. “Let her go. She’s having such fun I don’t have the heart to stop her.”

“If your mitten is ruined in any way, I will buy you a new one.” Then he stopped and added, “What am I saying? Your mitten will be ruined in every way. It’ll look like Einstein’s hair. You should see my shoes.”

When Garrett’s owner smiled, his entire face changed. Like Ewan McGregor’s. It was impossible not to smile back.

“I’m Muriel,” Muriel said, holding out her bare hand.

“I’m mortified.” He took off his glove and shook her hand. His bare palm felt warm and soft. Then he slid his steamy glove onto Muriel’s cold hand. Like Cinderella inserting her foot into the glass slipper, it felt thrillingly right. The intimacy of the body warmth inside that glove made Muriel blush. She looked down, wondered if she’d remembered to brush her teeth.

“When I’m not mortified, my name is John. And you don’t have to rub it in, Muriel, I know my parents had no imagination.”

Again Muriel laughed, though she covered her mouth with her hand. John scanned the crowd for his dog. Muriel, trained well by her mother, glanced down to see if his ring finger was bare. It was.

“What kind of dog is Garrett?”

“A mix of Portuguese water dog and Belgian sheepdog.”

“Well, there you go. She doesn’t speak English.”

Now John laughed. “Her English does seem to be limited to ‘goodie,’ ‘park,’ and ‘din-din.’ ”

As if on cue, Garrett bounded back. “See?” John bent down and grabbed her, attaching the leash to her collar. Muriel felt a twinge of sadness that they were about to walk away. But they didn’t. Instead, the three of them stood in the middle of the square taking in the joyful romping all around them. The snow had stopped its steady fall; flakes were drifting down here and there, blown to the ground by a mild breeze. Rays of sunlight broke through the blanket of clouds. The Hudson River beyond was filled with floating ice. It was gorgeous. The most beautiful day of the year. Muriel was so glad she hadn’t stayed in bed.

John’s cheeks were as red and round as pomegranates. He wore a navy blue knit Yankees cap. In his puffy jacket, he looked like a gingerbread man. Undefined limbs and a slightly startled expression. Thirtyish, he struck Muriel as more winded than he ought to be chasing a puppy, but running through thick snow could be exhausting. Normally she’d never insert her hand into a stranger’s used glove, but it was first snow. The rules were suspended. Feeling the warmth of John’s glove radiate through her body, she wondered what he looked like beneath his jacket and hat. Did he have hair? A potbelly? Was he the flannel-shirt type?

Surprising herself, Muriel really wanted to find out.

John asked, “Could you please hold Garrett’s leash for a moment?”

“Sure.”

Bending over, John scooped up a handful of soft snow and molded it into a ball. “You’re about to see why I went to college on a baseball scholarship.” Aiming for a crumbling snowman on top of a marble balustrade, he reached both arms overhead, lifted one leg, wound up, pitched, and missed the snowman entirely, only to hit the shoulder of a mother leaning down to button up her child.

“Oh my God,” John called out, rushing forward. “I’m
so
sorry. Are you okay? I was a poly sci major. My sport was chess.”

The mother was fine, if a bit confused, and Muriel was enchanted. When John returned for his dog, he said, “Using an innocent puppy and an athletic lie to flirt with you? What a cad!”

She couldn’t stop grinning, even as her nose ran. Attempting a seductive tone that was made more challenging with her frozen lips, Muriel looked John directly in the eyes and said, “I’ve always had a thing for cads who play chess.” The word “play” came out as “pway” but she didn’t relinquish John’s gaze. Not even when she reached into the pocket of her jacket to retrieve a wad of tissue and dab at her runny nose.

In an inspired moment, Muriel remembered a scene from the play
Contact.
In it, a mysterious woman in a yellow dress enters and exits the stage and drives the main character mad. Since Muriel seriously needed to blow her nose, she decided to channel the woman in the yellow dress and turn around to sexily walk home across the street, waving over her shoulder. Once in her apartment, she’d quickly blow her nose, brush her teeth, comb her hair, swipe a bit of mascara on her lashes, gloss her lips, then dash back to the park. Hopefully, John and Garrett would still be there.

Handing John his dog’s leash, she smiled alluringly before swiveling sexily in her firefighter-size rubber boots. Over her shoulder she waggled her fingers good-bye.

“Muriel!”

Her heart fluttered.

“Yes?” Muriel swung around like a model at the end of a runway, complete with hand seductively on hip.

“My glove.”

“Oh.”

Of course the hand on her hip was covered in John’s warm, huge glove! What an oaf. As she reached across her body to pull John’s glove off and return it to him, he said, “No, no, no. Wear it home. I just need to know where I can pick it up later.”

“Later?”

“I owe you mittens, too. So, um, after I shop at Mittens R Us.”

Muriel laughed. Then sniffed. “I’ll give you a pass on the mittens if you happen to have a Kleenex. Unused, preferably.”

John reached into the pocket of his puffy coat and retrieved a mini pack. “I was a Boy Scout,” he said, sheepishly. “Let me know if you need dry matches or a Swiss Army knife, too.”

While Muriel pulled her hands out of his glove and her mitten to blow her nose, John said, “Garrett and I are in the Eighty-seventh Street dog run every morning and night. I know she would love to see you again. I mean, if you bring that mitten with you. And bacon.”

For the hundredth time that morning Muriel erupted in laughter.
Why
, she wondered,
had she ever considered spending Sundays indoors?
Fresh air was fabulous. It felt delicious. It made you use words like “fabulous” and “delicious.” Somehow, with Pia’s passing and Logan’s reentry into her atmosphere and the exposure of Lidia’s lies and the sense that her life was finally jolted out of its rut, she felt an abundance of freedom. Perhaps she no longer had to plod through life’s rainy days with dripping hair. Maybe Muriel could finally successfully wear white and fill her life with sunshine.

As if Pia herself sent it from heaven, two clouds passed each other in the celestial blue sky and a sharp ray of sunlight darted down from between them. It hit the center of the snowy square in front of the monument near the spot where the two sisters had waited for the M5 bus. A lifetime ago.

“Which dog run?” Muriel asked John.

“Down those steps.” He pointed. “Follow the barking.”

She smiled and nodded and pivoted seductively in her rubber boots. Attempting a sashay, Muriel waved her frozen red fingers over her shoulders as she made her way across Riverside Drive toward home.

Chapter 37