I woke early the next morning. Over Davey’s shoulder, I watched the sun rise, all red and orange.
Let me try again and then I swear I will begin.
Memory is a story. It is a story from a long time ago. It is a movie one recalls having seen. It is seen in frames and images, out of sequence, disorderly, without reason or plot.
And now this. The shocking tumble of children who are somehow my own. Esau, his papers, his orderly walk to the library and back. The strangely elegant dream of his days. My mother and Frank, their shoveled front steps, the fragile invention of their life. The calendar, the clock, the graveyard, the pastor, the grocer, the town to which we are chained. The man whose heavy sleep gives this all a center, who has mass and holds down the bed.
I am always afraid that he will step just slightly to the side. That the crucial joint will slip and the floors fall askew, leaving me skidding, sliding backward, arms reaching out for the toppling walls.
But he won’t. He can’t. He was there. We put up the storm windows and brace the house for cold.
Our house is very clean and everything matches. He is untidy and easy in his bulk, and throws his coat on the sofa, and swings the children in the air. He holds my waist when he kisses me hello, I hang up the coat, trailing behind him, picking up the pieces of paper and mail he drops as he goes, the scarves, the hat and gloves, the tangle of words he tosses over his shoulder like a pinch of salt, scattering all over the floor. I pick these things up and put them in their place.
This is how I love him. I love him. He knows this as well as he knows the beat of his own heart, without question or notice or need. This is how he loves me. This is as it should be.
I sip my tea and start up the creaking stairs, my limbs cracking with cold. He shifts in bed, turns onto his back. A thin wind spins helixes of sharp snow from the eaves.
Soft as a sigh in sleep, the center of winter implodes.
Sometimes, when I crawl into bed with him, I confuse my breath for his breath. He flings his arm over my side, as he’s always done, since we were small.
“Dave,” I whisper.
He smiles. “Hmm.”
Now I will begin.
My name is Kate.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is a love letter to the people who surrounded me while I wrote it, waiting patiently, encouraging, supporting, and believing in what would ultimately become.
I thank the readers who read and critiqued this novel in countless drafts, including Ruth Berger, David Batcher, Lora Kolodny, Marlee MacLeod, Patrick Whalen, Megan Rye, William Swanson, and many others. There is no way to either name them all or thank them enough for their intelligence and insight.
I thank Joy Johanessonn for her invaluable editorial insight and work on the book in its latter drafts. The book would not have come to completion without her, and I am indebted to her astonishing gifts in coaxing the story to light.
To say I thank Sydelle Kramer, my agent, and the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, is an understatement. Your absurd faith in me and in this book made it possible. There is too much for which to thank you, so I shall leave it at that.
Thanks to Terry Karten for her astonishing loyalty, kindness, and faith during this process. I have finally written the book I wanted to write for you, and I am deeply grateful for your patience as I learned to write a novel we both could love.
Finally, thanks beyond words to my family and my friends. As for Jeff, my husband, closest editor, and most faithful fan, all my love.
About the Author
MARYA HORNBACHER is a journalist as well as a writer of fiction and memoir. Her first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, has become a classic. The Center of Winter is her first novel. She lives in Minneapolis.
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ALSO BY MARYA HORNBACHER
Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
Credits
Jacket design by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich
Jacket illustration by John Lewis
Copyright
THE CENTER OF WINTER. Copyright © 2005 by Marya Hornbacher. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books™.
ePub edition January 2005 ISBN 9780061740367
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hornbacher, Marya.
The center of winter : a novel / Marya Hornbacher.—1st ed.
p. cm.
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Marya Hornbacher, The Center of Winter: A Novel
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