Loom: A Novel

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55 Th e r ing jolts h er bac k to t h e pr esen t. Standing up from a sitting position is an effort now, both hands propping her up, her knees straightening slowly as she pauses, not quite upright, to get her bearings. Josephine beats her to the phone before she’s halfway across the room. Emilie can tell her daughter is straining to sound cheerful. Easy, child, she tells her silently. Then, before she knows it, she is the one with the receiver to her ear. Eva sounds happy. She has never seen so much snow before and has a mind to go outside. Emilie tells her to hurry up and get here. They’ll build a snowman. A fat one like Mr. Abu-Khayr, the janitor in Emilie’s building . Every Saturday at ten o’clock on the dot, he would stand guard at the bottom of their building to forbid anyone from stepping on the floors he had just finished mopping. Offenders were ordered back into their apartments . Only when all six floors were thoroughly dry was the permission to come out granted with quick buzzes on the intercom, at which they quickly came out of their apartments, tearing down the stairs like children finally let out for recess. “My frisky aunt.” “The cold is a good preservative.” “It is so beautiful here, Khalti. From my window I can see the tall buildings. It is all so clean and spacious.” “I will see you soon, inshallah,” Emilie ends. She puts the receiver back in its cradle. She looks outside the window. She likes the snow, the silence and slowness its casts over the land. In her mountains, they joked how they were hibernating with the bears, their holes sweet with the 56 roasted food. Snow is an old story of hers, interrupted when she married and moved to Beirut and resumed here, in a small New England town. She examines the neighbor’s progress. The mound looks like a dome, a bubble of white shoring up the creamy house. With all her heart, she wishes him luck. Later, she will bring him food. ...