February by Lisa Moore

she paused to listen, and the man turning into the dark hallway. Why Cal? Why her husband? Why Cal? Then Dave spoke again.
    I don’t think we’re going to get over this one, he said. This one is a hard one. Meg is in there in the bedroom. She went in to lie down.
    It doesn’t sound foolish, Helen said. Holding his hand and saying goodbye. That doesn’t sound foolish. A giggle escaped her. She was so far outside of everything. Some half-hysterical sound came out and she covered her mouth with the back of her hand.
    The light went off in the kitchen across the yard. The garden was dark now and Helen could see snowflakes. It was still snowing.
    Dave kept talking and didn’t know he was talking, but it was also an effort to talk; Helen could tell. Dave sucked in air through his teeth the way someone does when he is lifting something heavy. He kept saying the same things. He kept saying about holding Cal’s hand. Not to worry about the ring. She would get the ring, he’d make sure. That Cal’s glasses were in his pocket. That Cal had on a plaid flannel shirt. The receiver felt sweaty and it was dark early in the afternoon because it was February, and it would be dark for a long time. It was silent out in the dark except for the wind knocking the tree branches together.
    Helen hadn’t ever believed that Cal had survived, but the news of his body was a blow. She had wanted the body. She had needed the body and she could not say why. But the news of the body was awful.
    There were people who went on hoping for months. They said there must be some island out there, and that’s where the survivors were. There was no island. Everybody knew there was no island. It was impossible. People who knew the coast like the back of their hand. But they thought an island might exist that they hadn’t noticed before. Some people said there might be. Those people were in shock. Some mothers kept setting the table for an empty seat.
    Someone on one of the supply boats had seen a lifeboat go under with all the men strapped into the seats, twenty men or more, with their seat belts on, going under.
    The morning of the fifteenth, Cal’s mother had phoned the Coast Guard and argued with them.
    She shouted, You’ve got the wrong information. The company would have informed the families if the men were dead. Meg hoped for the whole day and well into the next day. A great rage had blistered over the phone between Helen and her mother-in-law because Meg said there was hope and Helen didn’t say anything.
    I know he’s alive, Meg said.
    Helen had no hope at all, but like everybody else she had needed the body of her loved one. She had needed Cal’s body.
    She listened to her father-in-law talk about the bodies he’d seen, and her purse was on the counter and she picked it up and clutched it to her chest as if she were about to go out, but she just stood there listening. She thought about Meg lying down in the bedroom. Meg would not have bothered to take off her clothes. Maybe not even her shoes. The curtains would be drawn.
    Helen had wanted Cal’s body and now it had been found and she was afraid of it. She was afraid of how cold it would be. What kind of storage facility was it in? They must keep the temperature low. She was, for some reason, afraid of Cal’s being very, very cold. Her heart speeded up as if she’d just run down the street, but she was stuck to the kitchen floor.
    She wanted to ask someone what to do about the body and the person she wanted to ask was Cal. She was going over it with him in her head. Not thinking it out exactly, but telling him about the problem. She wanted to get off the phone so she could ask Cal what to do.
    You don’t want to remember him that way, Dave said. She heard a loud spank of water, a great gushing slap , and looked out into the hall. She had let the bath run over and the water had come through the ceiling. There was water everywhere. The children came out of the living room where they had been