Once I’m all bundled up, I grab the keys to his Jeep and throw three different shovels into the back. Three shovels, because they’re different sizes and I’m ashamed to say I’ve never shoveled snow before so I don’t know which I’ll want to use. Nicholas does all our shoveling. I don’t think that’s a fact I’veappreciated until now: he always shoveled a pathway from our porch to my car when we lived at the old house. He never asked me to do it instead, not even once.
As a matter of fact, he scraped ice off my doors and windshields, too. He did it before he left for work, before I woke up.
Shame burns my face. When’s the last time I thanked him for that? When’s the last time I noticed he even did these little things for me and didn’t simply take them for granted? I’ve been so hung up on him doing this for his mom and dad that I kind of forgot he does it for us, too.
I drive very, very slowly to Mr. and Mrs. Rose’s house on Sycamore Lane. Only the main road has been visited by a salt truck, but the Jeep is a total champ and never slides. I am behind the wheel of Nicholas’s Jeep that he bought without telling me and have entirely too much time alone with the disturbing revelation that I’m an asshole.
The lights are on when I nose up the driveway, which means Deborah’s awake. Harold’s got at least until noon before he rolls face-first onto the floor.
The beautiful, untouched snow blanketing their driveway sets me off. They’ve got no problem hiring people to power-wash their house and prune their rosebushes and arrange rock structures in the flower beds. And yet for whatever arbitrary reason, they depend on Nicholas to make this particular problem go away. They expect it. They say he’s sogood, sokind, and that pressure is a ten-ton weight, making sure he’ll never stop doing it. If he does, they’ll withdraw all their approval. He won’t be the good, kind son anymore. He’s heard the way they talk about Heather and knows that with one misstep, they’ll be talking about him the same way.
I snarl at the snow, at the warm, glowing windows and Deborah’s silhouette peeking out. Her maternal pleasure radiates.
Nicky is here to take care of everything! He loves to help us and feel useful.
Not today, dickheads! Today you’re getting a substitute who’s incompetent at best when it comes to manual labor, and you can just deal.
Their driveway is personally cruel to me right away, a crust of ice eating one of my shovels. I dig back in, nose dripping like a faucet, face a frozen block of “Why, god, why” while the rest of my body melts like a candle in these coveralls. This is the pits. This is some goddamn bullshit. I call my present situation every curse word I can come up with. Sometimes Nicholas is over here well before he has to go to work, and I mentally run through that timeline. In order to shower and get to Rise and Smile at seven, that means he’s doing this in the dark. I’m so pissed on his behalf that I shovel faster.
It’s frankly amazing that he has any goodwill left in his heart toward his parents. I want to drag them outside and bury them with my shovel.
There’s so much snow to clear, I’m too daunted to be methodical about it and scoop at random, flinging it over my shoulder. Deborah and Harold aren’t getting neat borders of snow on either side of the drive. They’re getting carnage. It occurs to me that if I come back again next time it snows and do another piss-poor job, Nicholas will be off the hook. Mr. and Mrs. Rose will beg me to stop. They’ll hire a snowplow guy.
When I’m about halfway finished, the front door opens and Deborah trundles out in a fur coat that’s probably fashioned solely from baby animals, steaming mug in hand. She hustlesover, a big smile on her face, until she gets up close and realizes that the person in coveralls and a hideous hat is me.
“Oh!”
Her horror is invigorating. I want to have it made into perfume. Clothing. Bath bombs.
“Naomi,” she says gravely, like she’s just heard the most terrible news. “I wasn’t expecting...”
“Is that for me?” I reach for the mug. It’s hot chocolate. Before Deborah can reply, I take it from her and sip. There are mini marshmallows swimming at the top, and I’d stake my soul she put in thirty-two of them, one for each year of Nicholas’s life. This hot chocolate tastes better than the kind she supplies me with during winter visits, confirming my paranoid suspicions that Nicholas gets the good stuff while I’m offered store-brand.
Her mouth is a round O as she watches me drink. “Thanks,” I say when I’m finished, handing the mug back.
“Is Nicholas feeling well?”
I’m not subjecting him to a pop-in visit from Mommie Dearest and chicken soup cooked by “the woman.” “He’s terrific,” I tell her cheerfully. “Well, I better get back to it. Gotta lotta work to do!”
The rest of the driveway practically shovels itself as I zone out, thinking about Nicholas. Next time he comes over here to shovel, I should tag along to help out. We’ll get it done in half the time.
Whatever muscles aren’t numb are aching when I climb into the Jeep. I’ve been here for two hours. I’m positive it doesn’t take Nicholas longer than an hour to achieve the same, if not better, results. When I pull out of the driveway, I honk twice for good-bye because I imagine that’s what Nicholas probably does.
The journey back home is better than the journey out, since snowplows have cleared the roads. I can’t wait to get home and shower, but I think about Nicholas’s rough night. His coughing fit, and how he’ll wake up hungry and pitiful with no motivation to cook for himself.
Most food joints around here are closed on Sunday mornings, but Blue Tulip Café, the coffee shop Brandy’s sister owns, is thrilled when I pull up. None of the tables have patrons and there are no gaps between pastries in the display case, which means I’m the first customer of the day. This place is going to go the way of the Junk Yard and we all know it, so I buy extra. Breakfast sandwiches, soup, coffee. One of the workers helps me haul it all out to my car.
I make one more stop to restock on cold and flu medicine before heading home. For the first time since we moved, I visualize the house in the woods when I think the wordhomeinstead of the white rental on Cole Street.
When the Jeep shivers up the driveway, I can see Nicholas waiting for me behind the screen door. As I start to carry in the food and medicine, he runs out in his slippers.
“Get back inside!” I order.
“You need help.”
“You need to sit down. You’re sick.”
He takes the coffee and soup from me, anyway. I’m amused at the way he keeps gaping at me, completely boggled. Deborah must have called him already with a full report.Hills of snow all over the yard now, she just tossed it anywhere. And then she drank all your hot chocolate! The good kind!“You didn’t have to do that,” he tells me when we get inside. “Shovel my parents’ driveway. Why did you?”
