The Shape of Rain

JANUARY

Bellweather's January was an entirely different beast from December. December had been gentle and forgiving. The snow, Christmas lights, and hot cider had brought about a feeling of permission, permission to feel, to be close, and to let the warmth of a room matter. January took away all of that. The decorations were taken down. The lights were taken down from the shopfronts. All that was left was the bare town. Cold, gray, and honest, it was asking nothing of her but to face it head-on.

It seems Mira was quite fond of January for that reason.

Mira was awake most mornings before six o'clock. The radiator complained in its usual way, and she would lie in the darkness and listen to it and the rain, always the rain, and she would feel the particular awareness of one who has changed her life recently and is still getting used to her new edges.

She was staying. She said it aloud. Ruth nodded her head, and now it was true in the way that only spoken truths are true, in the way that a decision becomes concrete once there is witness to it.

She redid the entire ordering procedure for the bookstore during the first week of January.

Not in an impressive way, of course. She didn't discard anything. However, while David's procedure was cherished and incomprehensible and organized in a way lost with him, it was gradually failing to work for Ruth; Ruth did not want to admit it. Some books were disappearing when they were not supposed to; others were ordered again even though they were not selling. Mira devoted three days to reorganizing it in such a way that Ruth would be able to handle it herself if necessary.

Ruth observed her without commenting for two whole days.

On the third day, Ruth said: "David would have opposed you regarding that."

"I know," Mira replied.

"And he would have been wrong."

Mira raised her head, but Ruth returned to reading her book. Nothing else was said, but it was sufficient. More than enough.

Elliot texted on January 4th.

Text read: Happy New Year. Sorry. I meant to do it earlier.

She smiled at the screen and typed in response: I bet you were saving lives.

No, it was, he responded. Delivering a baby. Twins. Both okay.

It still counts, she replied.

Is it considered a new year if you’re spending it in scrubs?

She pondered this question for a second. No, I spent New Year's Eve reorganizing the inventory of a bookstore. I think we’ve both won. After a brief pause, it sounds strangely perfect.

She placed the phone aside and went back to the Excel file without wondering about the strange expressions on her face.

He arrived on a Saturday morning in early January, which was quickly becoming a habit between both of them, but not enough to admit. Saturday mornings. The shop before the rush. The green chair. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they just sat together silently in a warm environment with the cold pressing against the windows.

On that Saturday, he had brought with him coffee from the river café. Two coffees, no conversation, just passed one of them to her when she walked down from the apartment, still fixing her hair and surprised to see that he was already there and chatting with Ruth about a broken rib that he had seen last week that really wasn't what it appeared to be.

"You have a key?" asked Mira, looking at him.

"Ruth let me in," he said.

She looked at Ruth.

"He knocked," said Ruth, defensive in the non-defensive sort of way. "I was already awake."

Mira drank the coffee; it was just right. She never specified her preferences to him, but obviously, he listened. She thought better off leaving it unnoticed. Some things were best accepted in silence.

They were sitting by the window. Rain in January rather than snow; the magic of December was gone. The street was deserted, except for an old man walking a small dog, who, regardless of the weather, passed on the same Saturday each week at the same hour, and Mira found that strangely soothing.

"How has your year been?" she asked.

"Really?"

"Always."

He glanced at the street. "I've been thinking of certain things."

"What certain things?"

He twirled his cup in circles on the table. The same gesture he made a few weeks ago in the river café, when he wasn't sure what to say.

"There's a fellowship," he said. "Seattle. Pediatric research. My advisor mentioned it around Christmas and ever since I've been…"

She looked at him. “What kind of fellowship?”

“Eighteen months. Great program. The kind that could change the whole course of your career.” He paused. “I haven’t applied. I’m not sure if I am going to.”

"Why not?”

He looked at her then. Straight on, with his grey eyes that no longer felt like a distance from her, but rather something else entirely.

“I like where I am,” he told her.

The statement hung between them: simple and huge and trying to talk about anything but the actual subject matter at hand.

Mira looked down into her cup of coffee.

“When do you have to make up your mind?” she asked.

“March.”

“That gives you time.”

“It does.” He paused again. “I don’t mean to ask you for your opinion or for you to tell me what to do. It’s just that I don’t have many people that I can talk to about this without hearing an opinion on how to choose.”

She knew exactly what this meant: that when you love someone, they immediately start managing your choices the second you start making them known.

"I don't have an opinion on this," she said. "Well, I do. But I won't give it to you."

He gave her that look again, one she couldn't quite decipher, maybe appreciation or recognition.

"Thank you," he said.

"You can talk out loud," she said. "Maybe that will help. I'm really good at listening without making conclusions."

He almost smiled. "That's true, I've noticed it."

He was there for two hours.

They talked about the fellowship program for maybe twenty minutes and spent the other time talking about other things: a patient he saw last week, a book she had just finished reading and handed to him, Ruth's increasing tendency of putting the poetry books back in order when she wasn't looking, a situation that escalated into an unspoken argument for both of them.

Ruth made them both lunch without even asking if they wanted it. More soup, because this was what Ruth served for most things, and Mira stopped finding it amusing and began seeing it as one of the comforting things in her everyday routine.

When Elliot had put his coat on, Ruth had said, "Take care in Seattle."

He stopped. "Seattle?"

"Mira has a face," Ruth replied, turning her attention back to her book.

Mira opened her mouth and closed it again.

Elliot gave Mira a look of utter failure not to be amused. Mira gazed at the ceiling. Elliot said goodbye to Ruth and to Mira, and she saw him to the door like she always did, and they stood in the January chill for a few moments.

"I have a face," Mira said.

"So apparently," Elliot replied.

"I didn't say anything," she told him.

"I know. That is it about you, Mira. You don't need to."

He went out into the rain.

She stood in the doorway watching him turn the corner; and then she stood for another moment just because she could, because sometimes January in Bell weather in the rain was beautiful in its own right when you waited for no other season.

Cold. Real. Unembellished.

Definitely worth standing in.

She went into the house.

Ruth did not even lift her head from the book.

"No," Mira said.

"I am reading," Ruth said.

But she was smiling, and she was not reading at all.

Later that evening, Mira opened her document titled What This Could Be and filled it with three pages of notes about the small press. Titles she might want to submit. Submission guidelines, design sensibility. The sort of books that Finch and Fern Press, which she was now calling silently in her head, only to feel how it sounded like those kinds of books it should print. Small stories. Local authors. The sort of writing that does not belong anywhere but exactly fits those particular readers who did not even know it yet.

She kept working until midnight.

It was raining outside, and the river was high, and somewhere on those six blocks of wet streets of Bell weather there was probably a tired doctor sitting in his apartment thinking about Seattle, and Mira was there thinking about him, thinking about it, and both of them did not yet say the thing they knew. But January is very long. And it will continue to rain.

And sometimes you have to wait for the right thing.