The Ice Queen (8 page)

The faucet in the sink dripped; the sound overpowered the clicking in my head. I watched as the paper ignited. The flame was so hot it was blue. When it rose too high and his fingers were being singed, Lazarus let the burning paper fall into the bowl of cereal, where it burned to ash. I’d never known fire had a sound, like a gasp, a sigh, something alive.

“Do you have anything that can beat that?” he said.

I could make a wish and turn it into blood and bones. What was that worth? I had ice in my veins; I was colder and more distant than a dark, sunless planet. If that’s what he wanted, then I might just be the perfect woman for him. I went to the table and took the glass of ice water. I filled my mouth with ice. A woman who stood in one place, who forever looked at the sky, motionless, frozen solid. If that’s what he wanted, that’s what he’d get. I kissed him, mouth open. I could feel the heat from inside him melting through, but I kept at it. It was why I was here, I knew that now. I couldn’t stop kissing him. I heard myself, my desire, and I couldn’t believe it was me. I was moaning. I sounded like the fire had, a gasp, a sigh. The riddle inside me: How do you melt ice? How can you move when you’re frozen inside?

When the ice cubes inside my mouth had turned to water, and the water was nearly boiling, I pulled away. I went to the sink to spit out before I burned myself. Quite suddenly I knew what the myth of people struck by lightning becoming more sexual was made of. It was simply this: We knew we could be gone at any time. Standing by the window, up on the roof, playing golf, on the phone. The possibility of being blown out like a match made us burn.

“Well.” Lazarus looked surprised at what he’d wound up with. “You do have some tricks.”

I was drawn to him, a sparrow to a hawk, a hawk to a sparrow. There was no logic when I followed him down the hall to the bathroom. There was no reason for me to do the things I did. Except that I felt something. I didn’t think that was possible for me anymore. Not now, not ever. That I did seemed enough to excuse almost anything.

He filled the tub with water. All I could hear was the sound of the tap. I understood that it was the only way we could be together — the elements most drawn to each other are the ones that destroy each other. I leaned down and put one hand in the tub, splashed back and forth. The water felt like ice. I could feel it down my spine. Lazarus said it was nothing compared with the bath of ice they’d put him in at the hospital, when he was burning up alive and they needed to lower his temperature, keep his heart going. It had probably kept him alive. Pure ice. Now he craved it. A cold woman like me. I think he’d been dreaming of me and then I was there, in my red dress.

The day was humid and now it started to rain. We could hear the rain hitting against the roof. There was thunder. I could be anywhere. I couldn’t leave.

“I need it to be dark,” Lazarus told me.

I didn’t care. I wanted whatever he did. He drew the blinds over the window, shut off the light above the sink. We could barely see each other. Then the last light. That one out, too. We were in the dark, groping, following our hands, hearts, skin. In truth, I was grateful for the dark. I wasn’t beautiful. I couldn’t forget that I was ten years older than he. I slipped off my clothes, stepped into the tub, shuddered in the cold water. He got in right after me, desperate, I think, wanting me; it must have been that. I could feel the edges of heat in the water. I held on to the smooth sides of the bathtub. I thought of fish in a bucket. Death standing at the foot of a bed. When he pulled himself on top of me, I imagined I might drown. Maybe I was supposed to. For all I knew, this was the other half of my death wish — half fire, half water. He drew me under and kissed me, deep, underwater, unending. By the time we came up for air, I was burning. I turned on the cold tap and let it run. Over my shoulders, over my chest, in the dark that I was grateful for. I could have been anywhere, but I was there. I could have driven west or east, but I had driven here to him. I closed my eyes.
Burn me. Drown me. Do anything.
When he moved inside, I pulled him deeper.

When I got out of the bathtub my legs were shaking. Water had spilled onto the floor. Every step was slippery, dangerous, cold. “I have to do something,” I said.

I wrapped a towel around me, then went to the kitchen to open the freezer. My hands were shaking. This was really crazy. I got a piece of ice and pushed it up inside me, where I was burning. I didn’t care. It was worth it. I wasn’t sure I had ever felt anything before.

“I hurt you,” Lazarus said.

He had pulled on his clothes and come up behind me. Nothing had hurt me since that night on the porch; nothing had even come close. I was shaking, still wet, so he put his arms around me. I could feel the heat through his clothes. I could hear his heart beating, the strong heart that had defied death, that had stopped and come back to life. Nothing could have made me want him more.

I wasn’t much different than that greedy, selfish girl I’d been years ago. Only now I didn’t want the universe, not the whole wide world. Just this and nothing more:
Make me feel something, anything, in cold water, on a bed of ice, on a night so dark it’s impossible to tell the difference between the earth and the sky. Let it happen again and again, time after time. Hurt me so I know I’m still alive.

II

Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside? At the library I couldn’t help but notice which patrons checked out the same books. They appeared to have nothing in common, but who could tell what a person was truly made of? The unknown, the riddle, the deepest truth. I noticed them all: the ones who’d lost their way, the ones who’d lived their lives in ashes, the ones who had to prove themselves, the ones who, like me, had lost the ability to feel.

I kept going out to the orange grove. It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t have to. It was as though I had one map inside my head and it led to the man who was waiting for me. Someone who was as alone — maybe even more alone — than I was; someone whose story dovetailed with mine — burned alive, trapped in ice. I thought about Jack Lyons — I might have learned how to be human with him, but what good would that have done? There was so much more to learn from Lazarus. After the first few times we were together, I had gotten up the courage to ask what it had been like to be dead. I’d pleaded to know, but he wouldn’t tell me. All the same, I wouldn’t let it go. I nagged and begged. Did it hurt, was it heavenly, was there white light or the darkest agony? Lazarus refused to say. He had a beautiful smile, one that made me want him even more. Want, I had discovered, was a country of its own. Everything else drops off the map: oceans, continents, friends, family, the
before,
the
after
— all of it gone.

Throughout the summer the only thing I could think about was the road to Lazarus’s. I’d dream about it: the stop signs, the white line, the turnoff, the front porch, the door. My brother phoned and left a few messages, but I didn’t bother calling back.

“Are you alive?” Ned’s familiar voice asked one day when I played my phone-message tape.

Actually, yes, I wanted to tell him. Amazingly, incredibly enough, I seemed to be. But he wouldn’t understand. How could I explain that on rainy nights Lazarus and I sat out on his porch in the dark, drawn there by whatever was inside us, some external weather trapped and mirrored inside our blood and bones. I felt addicted, to the danger, the rush of being alive, taking chances. We had sex outside, in the dark, with the rain coming down. We went down to the pond, turned away from each other, took off our clothes. We didn’t have to see each other to know what we wanted. It was a story that no one else knew.

Now when I went to the survivor group I felt nothing, no kinship. I wanted to run away from their sorrowful tales of lives gone wrong. I came late, left early, avoided the girl with the mismatched socks when I saw her on the street. We were nearing hurricane season, a time when lightning-strike survivors feel more stress than usual. Anything can happen at any time. In group, we were told safety tips. Stay away from windows; have a hurricane cellar. And there I was on the porch on nights when the wind nearly carried us away. I wasn’t thinking of safety at all.

“Where’ve you been?” Renny asked me at the snack table after one survivor meeting. There were oatmeal cookies and cream cheese brownies and some gray thing I supposed was red velvet cake, allegedly a specialty around here.

Lately, I’d been more selfish than ever. I had a secret dark world and it suited me. In my greed, I had forgotten about Renny. I was that sort of friend, I suppose, the bad sort, and I was embarrassed by my own self-involvement. Renny looked nervous and underfed. Not that he was my responsibility.

“Here and there,” I said.

“You’re fucking him?” Renny said. Just like that. As though he could read my mind. Did it show? Surely, I had no expression on my face. I never did.

“Good Lord, you are suspicious.” I took a cookie, though I hated oatmeal. “And nasty.”

Renny wasn’t so easily fooled. “You mean smart.”

“I actually did mean that.”

We both laughed.

“You, on the other hand,” he said. “Very stupid.”

“And your romantic life is something to boast about?”

Iris McGinnis. The girl who didn’t know he was alive.

“Good one,” Renny said. “You got me.”

The basis for my friendship with Renny was our shared chapter on pain. It was an inclusive chapter, the guiding principle of all that was to follow: Careful what you feel. Better yet, feel nothing at all. With his gloves, Renny could not feel enough and had difficulty picking up a straw or a stone. Barehanded, there was too much sensation, dizzying, all-encompassing. Because I’d seen him less once I began to go out to the orchard, I didn’t understand how bad his pain had become until that night at group. He looked more anxious than usual; the summer semester was ending and Renny had very little faith in himself.

I was at the library the next day when Renny called on me. I had to show up for work occasionally, but I took my time, slowly, lazily replacing books on their proper shelves, in the dream state I entered whenever I thought about Lazarus. I was the Ice Queen who wanted to be burned alive. I wanted to take the path full of stones that led through the forest of ashes. At the end of that path I would find what every fairy-tale creature yearned for. Not pearls, not kingdoms, not gold. I was looking for something better than that. Real treasure. Real truth.

“You’ve got to help me,” Renny pleaded.

“Is this about Iris again?” Iris McGinnis, nymph of sorrow, so far away she might as well have been living on the moon. Renny loved to talk about her. I usually just tuned him out and let him drone on, but my patience was wearing thin.

“Not Iris. Not this time.”

He was failing his architecture course; his end-of-the-summer term project was due and he couldn’t work on it himself because of the pain in his hands. He was taking Demerol, along with Tegretol for the tremors. I could feel guilt rise up inside me like a living being. I wanted to tell him no. After work I planned to get in my car and drive to the secret country where oranges were white. I wanted to walk into the cold pond where Lazarus and I went swimming on clear nights, after all the workers had left, after the trucks had been loaded up and driven away, after it was dark. The mud between my toes under a black and starless sky. I’d been thinking about it all day as I shelved books. I wanted to be dragged under, forget there was anything else in the universe.

But how could I deny Renny, my friend, Renny the sorrowful? How could I tell him what I really wanted?
Go away, go away. I’m in a different country now, one where no one can find me, one where there’s no difference between fire and water.

I should have advised him to pick a new major. But no. Always the volunteer, I offered to do the work if he would instruct me. Renny came over that night. I could tell he was desperate. We were that much alike. His tremor was worse. His hair was long, knotted. He hadn’t bathed. All the signs of despair. It was my clicking that kicked in when I felt that way. Sometimes I couldn’t hear the TV over the sounds in my own head.

“You’re sure you’re up for this?” I asked.

Had he been drinking, smoking weed? His eyes were red. And then I thought,
Oh, no.
He’d been crying.

Renny gazed at his gloves; from his expression he might have been looking down at cloven hooves or a lion’s paws. “Maybe it’s time for me to give up architecture.”

Like drawn to like, story to story. I should have said,
Yes, give it up; study literature or art history
— any discipline he might have a chance at rather than a field of study that would surely lead to failure. But that wasn’t the way it was going to happen. Jump down the well, sleep for a hundred years, tie yourself to a tree at the base of the mountain, the one where snow falls every day and the ice is ten feet thick.

“Don’t be silly.” Here I went, pushing him down the well. “Architects don’t actually do the building. They inspire and create. Carpenters do all the work.”

“I should give it all up. Architecture and Iris. Ridiculous dreams.”

“Give up and it will never happen.”

I sounded like a character out of an Andersen story, on the side of reason and goodness. I was his cheerleader, his friend, his familiar, his liar. Step up and make the leap. Don’t bother with a helmet or a life preserver. You can do it if you really try! Walk on glass, pull the sliver of ice from your heart, face up to it. Overcome.

I sounded so false to myself, but Renny grinned, won over. I suppose people needed stories like Andersen’s sometimes. The should-be story, the could-be tale. Renny ran a gloved hand through his messy hair. “I don’t have a chance,” he said, but I could hear it in his voice — he was being coerced into believing.

“Let’s do it.” I always got in too deep. I didn’t even want to be here, now I was committing to a major project. “First the temple, then Iris. Inspire me. Boss me around. Treat me like a carpenter.”

Renny had brought over glue, sticks, balsa wood, bamboo, Plexiglas, paper. He unfurled the blueprints on the countertop. Truthfully, now that it was before me, the task terrified me. I had never built anything. Destruction was my game. Renny took note of my expression.

“Fuck it all,” he said. “Maybe I’m supposed to fail.”

I cleared off my kitchen table and set out a large sheet of clear plastic Renny had brought along for the base of the project. We were to construct a Doric temple, if we could ever get the cat out of the room, something we finally managed by setting an opened can of tuna on the porch. I was directed to begin with thin sticks of bamboo. Renny instructed me, but the anxiety of ruining the project made me sweat. I never did anything right, why had I assumed I could help him?

“Terrific,” Renny kept telling me whenever I was able to connect the bamboo with thin wire. “Excellent.”

All the same, it looked like a temple of bones when I’d finished what was supposed to be the framework. “Are you sure this is right?” I peered at the blueprints. Sixty percent of Renny’s grade would be based on this project.

“It’s just the skeleton,” he assured me. “We’ll do the rest next time.”

We ordered a pizza delivered, then locked the kitchen to keep Giselle from knocking over the temple. I had the fan on, but with it or without it, the clicking inside my head had grown quieter.

“When it’s done, I’m giving the temple to Iris,” Renny told me. “I planned it out at the beginning of the summer.”

“Really,” I said. I had the shivers; this could lead someplace dark. Did Iris even know he existed?

Renny opened his wallet and shook out a small gold charm imprinted with the shape of Iris’s namesake. It was sad and beautiful and tiny in his huge gloved hand.

“I had this made up by the jeweler at the Smithfield Mall. We’ll hang it over the doorway. I’ll bet no one ever made something like this for her.”

“Renny.” Obsession or love, or both? He could read my pity and my doubt.

“You think I’m an idiot. You think I have no chance at all.”

“I’m not sure I think anyone has a chance,” I admitted.

When the pizza was delivered, Renny paid, treating me to dinner as a thank-you for all my handiwork. When he handed over the cash, the delivery guy stared at Renny’s gloves — wary, I suppose, that Renny had some communicable disease.

“He’s an idiot,” I said of the deliveryman when he had gone. “Pay no attention.”

Renny put the gold charm back into his wallet; it took him a long time to do so, he was clumsy and careful both. Usually, I didn’t notice Renny’s gloves any more than I noticed Giselle’s paws. I noticed now. I thought of Iris McGinnis, without a care, leading the life of a college student, not thinking of dark love, gold tokens, Doric temples.

I could feel a change in the air pressure; I leaned out the door and called for the cat. Giselle raced inside and trotted to a corner. She ignored our dinner on the coffee table. Not typical. She had caught something again. Little feet. Gray shadow.

“Is that thing alive?” Renny asked.

“She kills whatever she can get her fangs into.” I apologized for Giselle. “It’s her nature.”

Renny went to the corner and battled the cat for this second mole. She sank her teeth into his glove. “God, she’s vicious. Drop it!” he commanded.

The cat wasn’t about to take orders, so Renny grabbed her by the neck and gave her a little shake. I suppose Giselle was mortified — I treated her like an equal — she growled and let go, then stalked away, hissing. “Murderess,” I called after her. My pet, my dear. I was getting attached to her. I worried when she wouldn’t come in at night; I waited anxiously in the yard until she sauntered up in her own good time. She’d stare me down. Then rub herself against my legs. I’d begun to buy cream for her. Bad sign. No attachments, that was my motto. None at all.

“He’s got teeth marks in him.” Renny had picked up the mole.

“Is he dead?”

Our pizza was getting cold, but I came to examine the mole. It wasn’t moving.

“I’ve got another one out on the porch.”

“Seriously? Another mole?”

I brought Renny out to where I’d left the shoebox. I lifted the cover. “This one’s definitely dead.”

“Are you collecting them?”

We laughed, but it wasn’t funny. There in the shoebox was the little fallen-leaf mole, curled up, not much more than skin and bones. Could it be that I’d even become attached to this poor little thing? It smelled like dust and earth, a sad, bitter scent.