Free The Elegant Gathering of White Snows by Kris Radish Page B

if she had discovered a pile of gold. “This is only for us, it's our walk.”
    “No, it's not.” Lenny spoke softly, moving her fingers around the edges of her plate. “Look at me. Apparently you have no idea how many women in the world would love to say, ‘Piss off,' and take off hiking.”
    Sandy smiled, watching Lenny turn her head and lift her eyebrows and lean forward close to the center of the table, and then breathe. She watched Lenny breathe.
    “But . . . ,” stammered Gail. “It still has to be about us. Don't you think? Don't you all think?”
    Chris couldn't believe they had come this far in so few miles. While her friends debated the ins and outs of what they were doing, why they were doing it, and what would happen next, she could only remember how she saw them at first. Alice sad and old; J.J. mousy and equally as sad; Janice alternately quiet and startling, always second-guessing herself; Sandy, wild and bold, and crazy and ready for something, someone, anything new; Gail, always holding something back, afraid of losing something; Susan, in desperate need of a kick in the ass, so beautiful, so in need of a push in the direction that will honor who she truly is. And Mary, just wonderful, happy Mary who is content with the confines society has set, with tradition, with staying safe inside those boundaries.
    “What the hell are you smiling about?” Sandy finally asked Chris.
    “Look at us,” said Chris, moving her eyes across every face at the table. “It wasn't that long ago we were talking about Christmas cookies and what deal there was on lettuce at the grocery store and what the hell are we going to do about Monica Lewinsky?” She laughed mockingly at the ceiling. “How far we have come!”
    “Oh God!” Susan suddenly pushed herself from the table, cupping a hand over her mouth and running toward the laundry tub behind the kitchen.
    “Oh piss,” moaned Sandy. “It's the baby!”
    Alice helped Susan while Sandy told Lenny about the pregnancy and the broken glass and them on the floor and then walking. The women, all of them, even Lenny, grew somber, thinking of things horrible and cruel.
    Susan recovered quickly, determined not to let a brief puking session keep her from talking and claiming a spot where she could sleep before they began walking again. She has been pregnant before, so she knows she can eat again in a few hours and the food will stay where it belongs. “What a damn nuisance,” she told Alice, who was leaning over to wipe the corners of her mouth. “Alice, do you hate me for not wanting to have this baby?”
    Alice really only hates the parts of herself that she has never been able to forgive, and although she could never in a million years consider having an abortion herself, she understands why Susan would not want to see this pregnancy through.
    Alice dabbed softly around Susan's mouth and then rested her hands on Susan's soft face. “No, sweetie, no, I could never hate you. I can see this would be a mistake for you. A costly one, huh?”
    Susan nodded and then rested against Alice, who looked as if she could be blown clear to Chicago on a windy day, but is in fact as solid as the whitewashed barn in Lenny's yard. Susan cried again, and the two women stood by the laundry tub, each of them thinking at the same moment how lucky they were to know each other, to be in Lenny's kitchen, to be walking through a season wild with possibilities.
    Lenny's house was littered with beds—bunk beds in her son's room, two double beds in her daughter's room, the Grand Canyon bed in her own room, two couches, and a basement filled with an assortment of sleeping bags and cots and two very funky mattresses for the long-since-ended family gatherings that stopped abruptly the last time Jackson forgot to show up for Thanksgiving dinner.
    Near midnight, everyone but Chris and Sandy went to lie down after dinner. Chris escaped to the kitchen to call Mary, Sandy followed Lenny from room to