Helen pushed open the heavy door to the dirt cellar. Cold air rushed out to caress her face and arms, and she inhaled deeply, closing her eyes to savor the rich, musty scent of the earth’s belly. Switching on the flashlight, she stepped down to the soft dirt floor. Cobwebs stretched across the corners of the narrow room and between bottle-laden shelves where spiders had crocheted the empty spaces together, fortifying this unnatural hole in the earth with their sticky, steely threads.

The yellow beam of the flashlight filtered like liquid through the thick air of the cellar, a syrupy illumination of lumpy potato sacks, dusty, fruit-filled jars and low, bowed roof. Against the back wall lay Frank’s long-handled axe and grooved ash-bucket. The old bucket appeared flattened from lying on its side, a useless, forgotten relic.

Helen stood for a moment in the small cavity, five feet below ground level, as the weight of the earth strained toward her. She was the only human to know this space, to breathe this air. Her grandchildren refused to step through the crooked doorway, afraid to enter the kingdom of spiders and imaginary demons. Even Frank avoided the cellar now, though he’d dug the hole himself nearly thirty years ago.

But it wasn’t spiders Frank feared.

Helen sighed. The dank air seemed to have settled too heavily on her shoulders. She tucked a bottle of peaches under one arm and backed out, pulling the door closed with a solid thud. That last battle with pneumonia had turned her stalwart mate into a frightened old man.

Helen climbed the uneven steps from the cellar, shaking dust from her hair into the cool breeze. Sunlight winked from dewdrops on the currant bushes while sparrows chattered in the budding green branches of the cottonwood tree. The signs of spring filled her with acute relief.

Anyone could lose courage during the long winter days when snowdrifts hardened into walls of ice and wind tortured a small frame house. She quickened her step, assuring herself the worst was behind them now.

Helen wasn’t a fool. She figured she’d lose him someday, knew she’d already been blessed with more years of him than many wives had. She’d known he might lose his strength, his hearing, even his health. But not his nerve. She hadn’t prepared herself for that loss.

The screen door slapped shut behind her as she crossed the worn linoleum floor and rinsed the jar under running water. She no longer bottled her own fruit; now their neighbors, Marge and Sam, harvested the peaches from her trees. Marge always brought some of the peaches back in shining bottles, though Helen insisted she didn’t need to. She was happy to know the fruit wasn’t going to waste. She didn’t know what she’d do if she had to watch her beautiful round peaches fall to the ground and rot.

She set thick slices of bread on the table and poured the peaches into a bowl. They smelled tangy sweet, their soft round halves glowing with the dark, rich color that store-bought peaches would never have. Opening the small refrigerator, Helen looked thoughtfully at the butter. She could have butter on some bread before he came in for breakfast. But instead she took out the skim milk and firmly closed the refrigerator door. If she decided to eat butter, or salt too, for that matter, she’d do it right out in the open. She wasn’t about to start sneaking around in her own kitchen.

She turned on the hot plate to boil water for oatmeal, watching the coils change immediately from dull black to radiant orange. Until this winter the old wood-burning stove had cooked their meals and heated the small house, but when Frank took so sick, Charles, their oldest son, brought this electric plate for her to cook on and installed a propane heater in the living room.

"For Pete’s sake, Dad," he’d said, "it’s the twentieth century. It’s ridiculous for you and Mom to depend on chopped wood anymore."

Many times before their children had tried to convince them to convert to modern appliances, but Frank could be obstinate as an ox when it suited him, and he’d refused to allow such foolish extravagance. And though she’d like to have had the convenience of instant heat, Helen couldn’t imagine life without the comforting warmth of the old stove or the familiar smell of wood smoke, as central to their lives as family prayer.

But this time Charles had exhibited a stubbornness to match his father’s and had overridden Frank’s protests. He cleaned the old stove, promising to replace it in the spring with an electric one, and stored Frank’s axe and ash-bucket in the cellar. For three months now they’d had heat without effort, though it seemed to Helen a thin imitation of real warmth. The propane heater kept the house an even temperature, but sat cold and unfriendly against the wall when it wasn’t blowing. Meanwhile, her blackened old stove hunkered in the kitchen like an abandoned child. Still, she was glad Frank didn’t have to chop and carry wood anymore. It was such hard work.

"Where’s that blasted cat?" Frank growled as he stormed into the kitchen.

"Good morning to you, too," Helen said. Her husband’s blue eyes softened and he pecked her with a bristly kiss. Then he resumed his search for the cat. "She’s probably tearing up a rug somewhere. Damn mangy beast."

"I let her out already." Helen put bowls and spoons on the table. "Sit down and have some breakfast."

Frank filled the cat’s dish from the bag of dried cat food, then dropped heavily into his chair. He positioned his bowl precisely two inches from the table’s edge, straightened his knife and spoon, then bowed his head and pronounced a long, somber blessing on the food. Helen squirmed in her seat, her mind wandering. He’d become so serious in his invocations over their meals, she wondered if he thought she might be poisoning him. But solemnity shadowed all aspects of his manner anymore.

"I’m going shopping with Marge this afternoon," Helen said while Frank spooned oatmeal into a bowl.

He scowled at her. "Not if she’s driving. That woman’s a menace behind the wheel."

"Oh, honey, it was a simple mistake. She thought she was pushing on the brake."

"Any idiot who mistakes the gas pedal for the brake should be locked up. It took me two weeks to build that fence, and thirty seconds for her to tear it down."

Helen gave him a stern look. "Frank, Marge and Sam are coming over for dinner on Saturday, and you’d better not say a word about that fence."

"Humph." He chomped his unbuttered bread in belligerent silence.

While they ate, the old clock ticked loudly from its polished shelf. A wooden ship with billowing brass sails, it was the first purchase they’d made as newlyweds, and it required the entire amount they’d saved for a kitchen table. For six more months they ate meals on their laps, while the grand clock presided over them, ceremoniously marking the minutes of their newly joined lives. As she looked at the smooth, polished planes of the clock, Helen felt a silly rush of emotion toward the familiar object and a sense of wonder that it had endured the fifty years of their marriage.

"What are you fixing?" Frank said.

"What?"

"On Saturday. What’re we having for dinner?"

"Oh. Chicken and noodles."

"I’d rather have beef." Frank’s stubbled jaw jutted out as he lowered his head, locking her gaze.

Helen wadded her napkin into her fist. Homemade chicken and noodles had been his favorite dish, until Inside Edition ran a feature on raw poultry and salmonella poisoning in American homes. As if salmonella were something new and she a dimwit who didn’t know how to handle chicken properly.

"I am cooking chicken and noodles, " she said, giving each word quiet emphasis. She lifted her chin, daring him to tell her she didn’t know how to clean her own kitchen.

"Pass the peaches," he grumbled.

While Helen washed their dishes in lemon-scented suds, Frank counted out his medication. He leaned over the table, frowning in concentration, deep creases lining his face as he carefully filled each compartment in the weekly dispenser. Watching him, Helen was struck with fierce resentment toward the amber bottles. Their arrival in his life coincided with his decline, and Helen wondered if they hadn’t maybe caused it. She felt an overwhelming urge to throw all the sinister bottles into the garbage, to take her husband’s hands and pull him out of that chair and insist he stand up tall and strong again.

With effort, she curbed her emotions. The doctors had been so insistent about the prescriptions, putting the fear of God in him should he miss one or get off his schedule. Perhaps they were right. Feeling suddenly confined, Helen turned from the sink and blurted, "Let’s go for a walk."

Frank looked up in surprise. "Walk? Where? There’s no place I need to go."

"Just a walk. Fresh air. We could go over to Rosa’s." Helen’s excitement built as the idea took shape. "We haven’t seen Rosa in weeks."

Frank crossed his arms over his chest. "If you want to visit that crazy old bat, then get in the car and go visit her."

"Oh, come on. It’s a wonderful idea," she coaxed. "We could take her a loaf of my frozen banana bread. She might even have some baby kittens by now." Helen thought of Rosa’s warm, cluttered kitchen, her furry pair of Himalayan cats and the sweet down of the kittens Rosa raised to sell and felt almost feverish with the need to escape her own tiny kitchen, her narrow, enclosed life.

"I am not going for a walk in this godawful weather," Frank growled. "It’s likely to turn to rain any minute." He bent back over his pills, muttering half to himself, "Damn fool idea. Expose yourself to a chill, and all for nothing. For a damn fool walk."

Helen’s energy escaped from her chest like air released from a balloon. She watched Frank’s long, square-tipped fingers pushing pills into precise little piles on the worn table top, and she was engulfed by fear—and bittersweet tenderness: fear of the invisible specter that was dancing her beloved husband off into old age, and a protective desire to shield him from his own decline. Her Frank, the strong, proud cowboy who’d stolen her heart so many years ago would have scorned the pathetic old man who sat before her; he would have rather died than become him.

Helen went to him and put her arms around his neck, resting her cheek on his thick, white hair. "Do you know how much I love you?" she said, as she had so many times before.

Frank pushed his chair away from the table and drew her onto his lap. His legs felt alarmingly thin beneath her.

"I’m too heavy," she protested, and she struggled to rise. "I’ll break your bones." But he held her firm. "You’re just right," he said, and Helen thought he’d never once in all their years together, through four pregnancies and a steadily rounding figure, said she was anything but just right.

An image of her younger sister flashed into her mind—poor Estelle, with her too-black hair, penciled-on eyebrows and anxious, darting glances at her lout of a husband, always trying to please him but never measuring up—and Helen felt deep, quiet gratitude for the love that flowed so abundantly in her own marriage.

They’d had their problems; there’d been plenty of shouting matches and long, angry silences, but by some unspoken agreement they’d raged and torn only at the outer edges of their relationship, careful not to threaten the tender core of respect, no matter how angry they had felt, and despite the storms they endured, their love had steadily ripened into a full, rich harvest.

Frank lifted his hand to caress her cheek. Helen cupped it in her own, then kissed him and stood. He was sweet to deny it, but she knew he must be uncomfortable beneath her weight.

She removed her apron and ran her fingers through her hair, thinking of the chores that needed to be done.

Frank finished scooping pills into his container, then stood beside the kitchen window, looking out over the neglected wood pile. He moved aimlessly toward the living room. Then, changing his mind, he took his hat and sweater from the hook by the kitchen door and went outside.

Impulsively, Helen followed him. The wind flattened her shirt against her back, and she wished she had grabbed her sweater, too. But it was so good to be outside, she didn’t mind a bit of cold. She went through the gate to where Frank stood beside the woodpile. The ground was slightly elevated here, soft and springy from many years of accumulated bark and chips. From old habit Helen sniffed, but the clean, spicy scent of freshly cut wood was gone, abolished by months of propane heat.

"I guess I’d better haul out this mess, get it cleaned up, " Frank said, his voice flat.

"I could plant some raspberries here, " Helen suggested, but a knot had formed beneath her breastbone. "Wouldn’t it be nice to have our own raspberry bushes?"

Frank shrugged. "Whatever you’d like." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and gazed off toward the snow-covered mountains. For no reason Helen remembered the day Rhonda, their youngest, had packed her bags for college, eagerly flitting from room to room, deleting herself from their home while Helen followed her around feeling empty and useless.

Like the scarred, flattened ash-bucket in the cellar—empty and useless and old.

Helen looked at Frank’s stooped posture and the ache in her chest grew. She hesitated only briefly, then took a deep breath and, as glibly as if she were practiced in it, lied to her husband. "I think the hot-plate is broken," she said. "It took forever to heat up this morning. I’d hate to have to depend on it."

Frank remained silent, shoulders hunched in the wind.

"Would you mind too much if we fired up the wood stove again?" She took his hand. "I know it’s a lot of work for you to keep it going, but I really miss it."

Frank looked at her. "What about that electric oven Charles promised?"

"I wouldn’t know how to use such a thing."

He held her gaze. "Well, we’ve done without raspberry bushes for this long," he said, then squared his shoulders and put an arm around her waist. "We’ll have to go up to Henry’s Mountain and get a load of wood."

They stood quietly together, watching a robin hop across the ground, jerking its small head at odd angles as it searched for worms. Suddenly Frank turned and strode briskly down the path. After a few paces he looked back at Helen, his eyes gleaming.

"Aren’t you coming?"

She stared at him, confused. "Coming? Where?"

"I thought you wanted to go for a walk."

"Oh, of course." She caught up to him, resisting the urge to skip. Frank took off his sweater and wrapped it around her shoulders. A large, tiger-striped cat sidled toward them, brushing against the fence, its tail sticking up and curled at the end.

"There you are, you ragged piece of fur," Frank growled. He leaned down to pick up the animal, then continued along the path, cradling the cat in one arm and Helen’s hand in the other.

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