Aiden, whose parents have separated, lives with his grandmother while his mother recovers from a stay in a psychiatric hospital. On a snowy Sunday his father picks him up for a visit. In the car the talk is small, about school, Dickens and bad drivers, until his father tells him that he is moving to Arizona with another woman. At the end, the father drives him home.
When we were in front of my grandmother’s house, Dad said, “Are you okay?”
I opened the door and stepped onto the curb. “You’re irresponsible. You don’t give a shit about us and you just want to hurry away.”
“You’re pissed, Aiden. I still love you. We’ll talk about this again when you’re not so upset. I planned to tell you and Martin over dinner. I was gonna take you out to a nice restaurant. Sorry it happened like this.”
My grandmother and mother, on a scheduled visit, were shoveling the front steps. They stopped and looked up.
Mom shouted, “You’re home so soon. What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said.
My father waved to her, then whispered, “Please don’t tell them, Aiden. Your mom’s not ready to hear the news.”
“Dad, I’m sure she already knows. That’s the difference between you and her. You think she’s crazy, but she’s not. Mom has the ability to see things you can’t. You’ll never understand. I think you’re a sad guy, like that Ghost of Christmas Past.” I kicked some snow. “Maybe I just expect too much, or maybe I’ll understand someday like you said.”
“You won’t say anything, right?” He looked like a child and an old man at the same time.
“I won’t say anything, Dad.” I shut the door and walked towards the steps.
“What the hell happened?” My grandmother wrapped her arm around me. Mom kissed my cheek. I heard my father drive away.
“The streets were getting icy. The snow was falling harder. Dad wanted me home before the roads got bad.”
My mother stared at me. “They already are.”
Nanna said, “My ma used to say, ‘Never dread the winter ’til the snow is on the blanket.’ Let’s get inside.”
We leaned the shovels against the side of the house and walked up the steps. I felt the beating of my heart and the passing of air into my lungs. The smoke of my breath rose, and dissolved like eddies in a careless sky.
My father drove onward, streets glistening, snow like piled linen, and Arizona far, far away.
From The Weight of Small Mercies.
The boy keeps his promise and offers an excuse about the roads. His mother answers, “They already are,” and the story does not say what she means or how she knows. The hope was that the reader would hear both the weather and the marriage in her answer, and that the last sentences, a breath dissolving and Arizona “far, far away,” would carry what nobody in the scene says aloud.
A suggestion. If a scene in your draft ends with a character explaining what has happened, you might try giving the last word to a line that answers something else, and see whether the reader still understands.