It Was Almost Spring - Ariana Speyer

It was almost spring but there was no grass or anything coming up. Everything was still brown and black, mostly, but there was a softness in the air that made me hopeful. A feeling that you didn’t have to hold your guts in when you went outside to keep the world at bay. I remember the day exactly because she was wearing a hat, as if she knew spring was still just a mirage. She was sensible that way.

The hat was furry, what you’d wear if you were out trapping animals or something. Lewis and Clark style. It was big, didn’t fit her small frame at all, and it stood out. She looked a little like an animal underneath it, sniffing out her next move. First it was on the street by the post office and then in the deli there she was again, ordering a sandwich, but not a normal sandwich. Something with chutney and alfalfa sprouts.

The kid behind the counter didn’t seem to mind, he was hopping to. She can do that to strangers, make them want to please her. We had a moment by the register when I let her go ahead of me. I had actually dawdled a bit by the chips and magazines till her sandwich was done, then let her just make it in behind me. Funny to think I would do something like that. Doesn’t sound like me. And of course she was what I knew she would be, so grateful, and pleasantly happy to be in a little square dance with me, each of us holding our lunches.

Finally, she and her hat went in front of me and paid, but she kept looking back at me like I was the best thing she’d seen in a while, and you can’t help but get caught up in that. You can’t help it. I felt like a dog who had found a new master, I wanted to slavishly follow her out of the store and wherever else she might be going. I managed to pay for my things and catch up to her on the porch outside, where she was standing in a little patch of sunlight with her eyes closed. Just standing.

So I stood with her, feeling the new warmth in the air, and the warmth between us. It was something. Then she opened her eyes and turned to me as if she knew I’d be there and said something like, “Maybe we should eat together, since we seem to be on the same schedule,” and I put out my hand and told her my name and she told me hers. Emily. And then it really felt like spring, it felt like there was green everywhere, even inside me.