Snow Sequel

Mallika Dhaliwal

The Snow

Zoe Tremaine had turned twenty-three the year she saw The Bells of Saint Mary’s in a dimly lit New York City cinema on Christmas Day. She was two years out of Barnard and hopeful, as many young women her age were, for her dashing, uniformed soldier to return home to her safely.

John Warren was a young Columbia pre-law student and she an idealistic undergraduate who wore flannel and trousers and smoked things that were not cigarettes. Some of the other girls politely referred to her as a Bohemian and most of the boys tried things with her that she would never repeat, but she remained the same. She took trips to Harlem to listen to jazz and dance the lindy hop with boys who spoke in rhythm and were alternatively hedonistic and acetic.

John was none of these things and that was probably why she’d liked him so much, she supposed. He was kind and soft-spoken and he never raised his voice at her or laid a hand on her. He blushed when she used an obscene word and smiled when she laughed. He was less a man than any man she’d ever met, not at all threatening or dominating. In fact, he always deferred to her.

But the qualities of John that she so admired were exactly the ones that got him killed. The New York skyline glowed gray that day. She thought it was unusual to have gone so many days without snow in the beginning of winter. She thought little of what a marriage or a future had meant to her. Of course, she was sad for John, but she was relieved to not have to break his heart. She wasn’t the same girl anymore. She didn’t care as much for adventures uptown or for the artistic disillusionment of her Beat friends. Zoe was tired. And perhaps Zoe didn’t want to live the rest of her life in the shadow of a man like her mother did. She’d ever able to protect herself whether he lived or died. She doubted she’d ever find a man as soft as John and she couldn’t afford one as hard as her stepfather.

So Zoe sat on a bench in Central Park and thought about what she would do going forward. Perhaps she could become a schoolteacher or a nurse, something respectable enough for an unmarried woman. Then she heard Ingrid Bergman’s voice in her head, “You must be strong!” She wondered if she could be that strong. To give her body and her heart to God and never regret it for a single day. She recalled her college-level literature class in which she studied Hamlet. He told his Ophelia, “Get the to a nunnery!” to protect her or insult her. The nun’s would protect her even though she had a sinner’s soul. She could devote her life to good, to children, to God in Heaven. Perhaps, somewhere along the way she would be saved herself.

And then the grey clouds finally burst and snow fell upon her like holy water.