The slush splattered under her boots as she trudged down the road. She hated the snow and everything about it. Icy roads, roadblocks, numb fingers, wet socks, and that chill inside every bone that refused to subside no matter how hot the fireplace got.
It had taken a little over a month, but she became remarkably good at getting to the bus stop within two minutes of the bus arriving. Too soon and she would have to wait in the dreadful cold, too late and she might miss the ride altogether.
But like everything else in her life, she had put too much faith in the bus schedule, and it had severely let her down today.
She tried to silently march in place for a minute, then resigned herself to walking around in circles. Four minutes, four-and-a-half minutes, five minutes, eight minutes… Everything in her wanted to scream. She had traded shifts with a coworker so she could be there today. She had to see her daughter’s dance recital, especially since she missed the last one because she had to work, and she was determined to not let her girl down again.
The dark-haired man near her gave her a peripheral, curious look, slightly moving his eyes so he didn’t have to turn his face toward her.
She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she put her hands in her pockets and looked down at the brown snow that had been there for three days and never seemed to melt.
It was bad enough that her marriage had imploded a couple weeks before that first recital. For two months straight, she heard her daughter cry herself to sleep every night, waiting for her daddy to come home again – the daddy who had abandoned them both for the 24-year-old, very well endowed, blonde waitress, who now had all her expenses covered.
She pushed her teeth together hard to keep any noise from escaping. She was a 41-year-old single mother with a good job and her own apartment in the lettered streets. Immature was not a description anyone would usually use about her, but she was afraid they just might, if she yelled the obscenities racing through her head right now.
Thirteen minutes, fourteen minutes, and she spotted the bus stopped at the light down the street.
It was six stops to the community center and a half-block walk after that. She would be cutting it close, at best.
Her lips moved across her teeth without separating as she ground her teeth together and swallowed. Come on, come on, come on…
The bus pulled up and she finally boarded, quickly swiping her pass without even a small pause.
It was crowded today, and she sat down in the only seat near her. She could feel the dark-haired man eye her as he sat down a few seats away, across the aisle. He probably thought she was crazy for pacing back there. Or for shaking from the frustration, which she hoped the brisk cold would help disguise.
Sometimes she felt crazy – for letting herself be manipulated, for having believed her husband in the first place, and giving him a second chance after he cheated on her before they were married. They weren’t even an official couple yet, he said, or he never would have done anything like that. He had no idea how much she cared about him, but he loved her. That was the first time he told her, and she fell for it.
She never dreamed she would become just another cliche – the faithful wife left behind because she had become too old, too boring, too domestic. All the broken promises he made had come crashing down on her and their daughter. The only contact he had now with their seven-year-old girl was a stuffed bear he sent her for her birthday. He probably asked his receptionist to just pick something out and send it.
The next stop was Tenth and Main. She was already standing when the bus stopped, and she was the first one out the door when it opened.
The cold smacked her in the face and she almost slipped on the step, but quickly recovered. Grabbing the rail to steady herself, she stepped onto the ground and shuffled as fast as she could down the sidewalk, careful not lose her footing, her boots squeaking and scrunching through the slush.
Her lungs burned from the icy air as she approached the already full parking lot. She was definitely late.
She cut across the lot in the straightest line possible between cars and swung the front door open toward her. No longer worried about ice, she practically ran down the hallway and pushed her small frame into the double doors in the back of the main room.
There was no music as the girls gathered onto the makeshift stage, and she could feel her face getting red as a few dozen heads turned toward her. She gulped and then slowly made her way toward the side wall. Her daughter spotted her immediately when she walked in, and broke form to wave at her, with a wide grin stretching across her entire face.
Covering her mouth for a second as she breathed in, she kissed her fist, then opened it toward the stage as she waved back, her lip curling underneath the teeth on the right side of her mouth while she tried to keep the tears from pouring out the sides of her eyes.
She had to feel for the wall behind her with her left hand as her daughter knelt down again and the lights went down. The first few notes of the song drowned out the noise of her quiet sniffles.
The screeching bus woke her from her reverie as it pulled up. Her mouth was pursed and her eyebrows pointed down in the center. The dreamy grin was definitely absent as she climbed up the stairs behind the dark-haired man. The bus was 34 minutes late and there was no way she would make it now.
Five stops passed and the next one was hers. Failure covered her like an oversized, heavy coat as she stepped firmly off the bus, careful not to slip, and made her way toward the community center. She hardly even noticed the cold as it stung her cheeks.
Cars were already leaving the parking lot. As she got closer, she could see proud parents walking their kids out the door, telling the girls, yes, they did have to put their jackets on over their costumes; it was too cold not to.
She turned sideways to get through the door as a family walked out. The little girl looked up at her with a puzzled expression, her head tilted to the left.
The auditorium was almost empty, except for her daughter on the side steps of the makeshift stage, sitting next to her teacher. There were tears streaming down her face, and she had dark pink, damp spots on the chest and neck of her pale pink leotard.
The teacher made split second eye contact with her as she walked toward the front of the room and then looked down at the floor. She was pretty sure she saw the woman’s head shake slightly back and forth.
She knelt down in front of her daughter and reached around to hug her as the teacher snuck away. “I’m so sorry, Baby,” she whispered, and gulped loudly, almost choking.
Her daughter pulled back a bit with a pronounced frown on her face, and she went to wipe the tears from the girl's eyes with her thumbs, but the girl swiftly turned her head to the side. Attempting to hold back her own tears, she tried a different approach. “Can you tell me about it?”
The girl sniffed loudly while still frowning intensely, wiped the back of her hand across her eyes and mumbled, “Okay.”
Starting slowly and wiping her face with her hand again, she slightly blubbered as she talked, but it became less frequent as the girl continued and her enunciation improved.
She couldn’t help but smile as she saw the sparkle start to return to her daughter’s eyes as she told her story. How quickly that girl could forgive.
Stopping her only long enough to stretch her jacket over her costume, they made their way across the parking lot and down the street as the girl talked excitedly about the performance and the other kids. Her daughter sat down on the bench, and she reached down and straightened out the collar of her jacket for her, kissing her on the forehead. As her daughter continued, she sat down next to her, wrapping her arm tightly around the girl, and listened closely to the story while they waited for the bus home.
*Fiction
