Free Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace by David Adams Richards

unfroze it, coming back in, his ears raw, and smiling. Thelma, though she remembered this, still pretended she did not.
    This pretence persisted when he came in. She pretended she didn’t know who he was, and then lookedseverely at Adele, not for any particular reason except that she had an opportunity to.
    “Dontcha member the time I come for the weddin,” Ivan said, smiling.
    But Thelma, though her eyes registered that she remembered this incident very well, had gone too far in her testament of denial to back down.
    “No,” she said, smiling the exact same way Adele saw her smile at her when others were present.
    Ivan nodded at her in the dark hallway. Then he looked quickly at Adele to show that he knew exactly where he stood.
    “Come in, come in,” Adele said grouchily, almost as if to protect him by grouchiness. They went into the den, and Thelma, with her back to them, set up her ironing board in the hallway.
    The den window faced the southeast and overlooked a field of tangled bushes on the far side of the street. Ralphie and his sister Vera called that the “gully” and they had made a fort there when they were children.
    Although the night before Ivan had been very determined to see Adele, he now had nothing to say because Thelma was standing five feet away. He didn’t seem to know why he had come, or care about the outcome of it.
    And Adele did not want him to talk about Cindi at all because she felt Thelma would get into an argument with him. So every time he mentioned something about it, she would mention something else and then look towards the hallway.
    This left Ivan with nothing much to say.
    Though Ivan was small of stature, his hands were large and he rested them clumsily on his knees. Hehad worn his spring jacket and his new pants and shirt. He sat very stiffly on the brick ledge that ran along one side of the den, while Adele sat in the chair with her back to the window – so it looked as if this huge halo had circled her head. And there was something about his tea and how cautiously he tried to drink it. Adele then decided to admonish him to let him know that friendship had limits, and so whenever he said something she found herself disagreeing with it, and looking angrily at him, for the first time in her life. (She, too, knew how he had protected her husband but had suddenly forgotten this.) She was not as skinny as she was as a teenager, but all her movements were the same, which made Ivan look extremely delighted at one moment, and then suddenly frown because she was determined to undercut what he said.
    And Adele realized this also. She realized this but couldn’t stop – not until he left. After he drove away she became very glum. She walked about the house believing she had betrayed someone, and was not certain who.
    After Ivan’s visit, Thelma did not speak to her for a month.
    “Why is she seeing people like that?” Thelma would ask Vera.
    Vera would explain to her the crisis Cindi was now engaged in, which Thelma pretended suddenly not to know anything about.
    “Oh my God – oh my God.”
    Vera would nod in silence.
    Thelma, like many of us, often drifted between posture of knowledge or posture of ignorance.
    “Those people – drunks and dope addicts – coming into my house and slurping tea.”
    She told Vera she did not want Adele to have anything to do with that “epileptic” girl. Other reasons could be perceived in her as well, however, by Ralphie who had to listen to a lecture every time he came home. Thelma held him personally responsible for even knowing a man like Ivan.
    “Well, we’ve seen your friends, Ralphie, haven’t we – swear words cut into his hands – fine. And Adele likes him, does she – fine. And his wife is having a baby – that retarded girl – just the type to populate the world. Fine, Ralphie. That’s the type of people to get to know – of all the good, decent, hardworking, law-abiding people on the river – you drift into the gutter.