Free The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham Page A

schedule of services, and it hasn’t, until this morning, fully occurred to him that the church possesses an interior at all. It might as well have been solid brick, not a building but a monument, in the shape of a church, to centuries of Middle Eastern murmurings, to the recitation of prayers and the kissing of icons, to the imprecations and hopes, the baptizing of babies and the dispatch of the dead. It had not quite seemed plausible to Barrett that this stolidly deserted edifice might, at certain hours, have a life.
    This morning, though, eight o’clock mass is being celebrated. The heavy brown doors are open.
    Barrett walks up the short span of concrete steps that lead to the entrance, and stops at the threshold. There it is, strange in its way but also deeply familiar—the brackish semi-light with its small glintings of gold, the priest and the altar boys (hefty kids, placid and rote, neither grotesque nor heroic, just adolescent schlumps—his own pudgy descendants), administering the ritual before an altar upon which two vases full of white chrysanthemums wilt under an enormous crucifix suspended from the ceiling, this one bearing an unusually gaunt and tormented Christ, who bleeds garishly from the wound in his greenish-white rib cage.
    The scattering of parishioners, a dozen at most, and all, it appears, elderly women, kneel dutifully in the mocha-colored pews. The priest raises chalice and wafer. The faithful rise rather painfully to their feet (they must be subject to all manner of knee and hip complaints) and begin their trudge to the altar, to receive the host.
    Barrett stands at the threshold, studded with the falling snowflakes that linger for a moment on his coat before vanishing.

B eth says, “I think I want to go to work today.”
    The rite of early morning silence has been observed. Beth sits at the table, nibbling an edge of the toast Tyler has made for her.
    “You think?” Tyler asks. He’s never sure, lately, whether to encourage her to do more, or less.
    “Mmm-hmm,” she says. “I feel pretty good.”
    Her tiny white teeth negotiate, without visible appetite, a morsel of crust. She can seem, sometimes, like a small wild animal, suspiciously but hopefully testing something unfamiliar that’s been left on the ground
    “It’s really seriously snowing out there,” Tyler says.
    “That’s part of why I want to go. I’d like to get snowed on.”
    Tyler understands. She’s been especially eager, these past weeks, for whatever strong sensation she might be able to manage.
    “Barrett’s already there,” he says.
    “So early?”
    “He said he wanted to be there alone for a while. He wanted a dose of total quiet.”
    “And I want to go out into the weather and the noise,” she says. “We always want something else, don’t we?”
    “Well, yeah. We always want
something
.”
    Beth frowns at her crumb of toast. Tyler reaches across the tabletop, puts his hand on her pale forearm. He didn’t expect to feel quite so incompetent at tending to Beth, quite so unsure about almost everything he says and does. The best he can manage, usually, is trying simply to accompany her as the changes occur.
    He says, “Let’s get you cleaned up, then.”
    He’ll run a bath for her. He’ll soap her shoulders, trickle warm water down her knobbly back.
    “And when you’re ready, maybe I’ll walk you to the subway. Would you like me to do that?”
    “Yes,” she says, with an illegible smile. “I’d like that.”
    She’s touchy about being ministered to. Treat her too delicately, and she bridles (“
I can walk up a flight of stairs on my own, thank you
,” “
I’m talking to someone, I’m fine, I like this party, please don’t ask me if I want to lie down
”); treat her too casually, and she becomes indignant (“
I may need a little help with these last few steps
,” “
I’m exhausted by this party, I really need you to take me home now
”).
    “Eat your toast,” he says.
    She takes a