I would be losing my mind over the weight were I at home, and not being told by Aiden that these curves are so beautiful, spoken low, into the nape of my neck. He sometimes comes over after work to visit—when Vivian’s nice enough to be out at the library or the lab.
It took us twenty minutes to move everything Vivian brought to The Ice into my room, where she claimed half the drawer space and sleeps on the second bed, and still we barely speak. Kate and I never had to try; we fell into each other’s lives and stayed. I am failing with Vivian. Charlotte’s hope of cultivating our lifelong friendship has ended before it began, it seems, though Aiden still holds fast to his own hopes and dreams for the situation; from day one he’s asked repeatedly if each night will be “Tickle Fight in Panties Night.”
“It’s been postponed for hair-braiding and ear-piercing time, but keep asking, perv,” Vivian snaps. When she is in the room, she’s reading, earbuds firmly in place.
But she’s very nice about my vow to keep the Christmas lights lit until the sun returns. So except for when we’re together in the dining hall, Aiden and I know each other’s faces only in dim, twinkling shadows. I may have cellulite. I can’t bear to check, even in the shower. If it’s there, good for it. Welcome to my ass, Fat.
Aiden still believes I’m mourning the loss of a horrible boyfriend. “ ‘We would rather be ruined than changed,’ ” he says, lying beside me (fully clothed, of course) against the threadbare cotton McMurdo pillowcases. “ ‘We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.’ ”
I smile in the dark against his shoulder. He’s sometimes a little Irish-Rover-over-the-top—this from a person who obsesses over poems about San Francisco—but sometimes I wonder if Aiden’s Googling poetry specific to my current situation? Does he get points for that, or is it charm in the place of sincerity?
“W. H. Auden,” he says.
I nod, as if I knew.
Would I rather be ruined than changed?
I still dream about ballet.
When I swing in the greenhouse hammock, Allison’s classical music takes me straight to rehearsal. Shackleton’s not been back—maybe I’m getting better? I close my eyes and feel my muscles stretch and lengthen, my feet arch, arms strong, pulling me up and around, pirouette after pirouette, jumps and turns….In the most secret part of my heart, do I think Simone is wrong? Are the directors of every company I auditioned for wrong?
The truth is really, really hard to admit. Hurts still.
I miss San Francisco. I miss the ocean and the bakery and Golden Gate Park. I miss Kate and class and rehearsal. I miss my babies in their leotards and skirts. I miss Simone. I do. I miss Willa. My parents. I miss Luke. I miss my hair sometimes.
I miss Owen.
I open the last of the video audition rejection emails from ballet companies in Oregon, Wyoming, and New Hampshire. The end. I don’t delete them. I put them in a folder marked T3.
And there is still the unread actual letter from Owen, hidden at the bottom of my unmentionables drawer. He’s unmentionable.
“Aren’t you too warm?” Aiden says. “Do you need three T-shirts?”
I’m not giving The Ice everything.
Amazingly, Aiden doesn’t seem to mind my ironclad limits. Each rebuked attempt to take just one more layer of clothing off me, off himself, let his hands wander the unexplored frozen continent of my new body, only seems to make him like me more.
“Hey. Sunday. Should we go to church?” he asks.
“Should you? Are you Catholic?”
“Cafeteria Catholic. My family picks and chooses the parts they like—mainly the celebrating holidays and drinking wine and judging people parts.”
“Super.”
“Do you have a church?” he asks.
In my mind, beams of foggy sunlight through the windows of Simone’s studio make patterns on the wood floor. Every day. Religiously.
“Not anymore” is all I offer.
“You are a mystery, Harper Scott,” Aiden says.
“Not really.” I kiss him and try hard to forget everything. Everyone. San Francisco. Home—Owen. All of it. For a little while.
- - -
“Winter is for hibernating,” Charlotte says, unhooking the top row of her button-fly jeans, “and for storing fat to survive in the cold.”
“Not when there’s central heat,” Vivian says.
We eat rolls and drink hot tea every morning, and most days Charlotte’s been adding whole milk to hers. She’s getting more intent each day on finding conclusive data to support her thesis about the effects of the pollution on the Adélies. She wants to start writing before midwinter and finish before she’s off The Ice in September, so we’ve been in the lab some weekends and a lot of late nights.
She looks up from her lab table one Friday, leans back, and pulls her head to the side, cracking the vertebrae in her neck.
“That’s horrible for you,” I scold her.
“How’re you feeling?” she asks, reaching for a handful of cheddar Goldfish from the bowl near her notes.
I shrug.
“I haven’t said anything about it, because people do things for all kinds of reasons and it’s none of my business and it was the least of my worries for you, but I feel like I can tell you now. I love your hair.”
I fidget with an Erlenmeyer flask. “Honestly?”
“Oh my God, yes. Viv, don’t you love it?”
Vivian looks up, her own head featuring basically the same cut. “Seems like a lateral move.”
“Vivian, good grief,” Charlotte says. “We’re used to how cute it is on you. This is brand-new for Harper!” She reaches to put her warm hands on my head and looks into my T3 eyes. “Seems better…little bit?”
“I think so.”
She smiles. “Well, the cut is gorgeous. If I had your eyes, I’d do it in a second.”
It is a little nuts how big my eyes suddenly became once the hair was gone. But Charlotte is crazy. Her meter is skewed; she herself is objectively gorgeous. She’s an Antarctic twenty, mainland ten. Ick, why am I even thinking that? Guys can be such pigs.
“I can’t feel your spine or your ribs when I hug you anymore. I like it.”
I nod. My phone alarm chimes. Greenhouse.
“That’s what’s done it!” She smiles. “I told you you’d love it.”
“I do,” I admit. It’s so warm, so clean—I sleep better there than in my bed sometimes. “You should come with. There’s always a free hammock. You would love it. Vivian, you too!” Earbuds. Vivian’s not going anywhere.
“You go soak it in for all of us.” Charlotte hugs me, taking care to squeeze the softness of my arms and put her hands on my less-gaunt cheeks.
“Feels weird,” I admit, halfway out the door. “Not sure I like it. The weight.”
“Babe, first of all, there’s no ‘weight’—you could easily use another ten pounds. I swear to God. You’re still just this side of bony. Please let it be for a while. See how it feels. Okay? Promise? Look, I’m way ahead of you. I’ve got my annual Winter Over muffin top, and I’m all, Welcome, friend! I’m not saying let’s get diabetic fat; I’m saying it’s cold out, settle in. Okay? Please?” She massages a soft curve of skin at her waistband. “Well. Maybe not those damn cinnamon rolls every day, but you know. Sometimes.”
She takes such good care of us.
I nod and jog to the greenhouse before the tears fall.
The cold is no match for the ache of missing Mom and Dad.
- - -
Allison’s got some Celtic pan flute something or other playing for the plants today, and her entire face is shining with a secret.
“Look,” she whispers as I lie back in my T3 hammock. “Don’t tell anyone.” She opens her hand above my open palm and a tiny cherry tomato rolls in a circle.
“Oh my gosh!” It is a testament to my All-in-Antarctica attitude that this wee little fruit gives me a thrill. There’s been no salad, no
fresh fruit, for weeks. Allison’s lettuce is being groomed for the Midwinter Formal, but tomatoes—those are precious. And unexpected.
“Go ahead,” she says.
I close my eyes and bite. It’s barely ripe but good enough. It floods my entire brain with sweetness. Tastes like the sun. She tucks a blanket around my feet.
“Allison?”
“Yes, sweet pea?”
“Have you been to the pole?”
“A few times, yes.”
“A few times?”
“For projects, work, sure. Why?”
“What was it like?”
She smiles. “It was beautiful. Life-changing. Freezing cold. Worse than here, if you can believe it.”
“Are you going back?”
“Any chance I get. Close your eyes now.”
She mists the lettuce with a spray bottle, takes notes on a clipboard, replaces bulbs, fills water containers. Every sound familiar and reassuring and hypnotic.
I give up trying to shut down the dancing my brain launches into the moment I lie back. This music is lending itself to some grand jetés across an endless ice field. No slipperier than coconut snow, probably. Leaps and turns. My legs twitch, and I wish I could think of something—anything—else. My breath is shallow from the stillness of my limbs, it’s been so long….
“That was unexpected,” Shackleton says. “The hair stunt.”
Oh jeez. Back on his dumb pile of snow, feet propped on a jagged block of ice.
“I thought you wouldn’t be here anymore,” I sigh.
“Why?”
“I feel better. Warmer.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
“I think so.”
“Are you dancing?”
I swing the hammock.
He clucks his tongue at me. Just sits there, radiating…what? Disappointment? “You most certainly are a Scott.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Aut moriere percipietis conantur.” He crosses his tall fur-lined boots and watches me swing. “Do you know about me?”
I close my eyes and settle in for what promises to be, based on his instructive tone, a great big, long monologue. “Some.”
“Okay, look. I’m going to nutshell this for you.”
“You’re going to…Why do you talk like me?”
He shrugs. “I am you. And I think we’ve established the larger part of your problem is that you lack much of an imagination lately.”
“Fine.”
“All right. So we brought the ship Endurance through the Ross Sea, intending to camp through winter, then make the first transantarctic crossing, but the ice moved in too quickly. We never made it to the continent—the ice crushed her. Our ship.”
I nod.
“So we regroup. We live on Endurance until she sinks. Then we float on ice floes, hoping to reach solid land. It never happens. When the weather turns, we sail small wooden lifeboats across the open sea to the nearest island.”
That sounds horrifying. But saying so might make this go on forever.
“Days being tossed around giant, freezing waves in these tiny wooden boats, but we finally reach Elephant Island, which is just rocks and dirt and penguins. And some seals. First solid land we’d stood on in over a year. Three hundred miles from where Endurance went down.”
“Did you eat penguins?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What kind?”
“Chinstrap, mostly.”
“Okay.” Thank God.
“So we rest there a couple of weeks, and then I take five men, my Endurance captain and the carpenter, and three of the stronger sailors. And we leave the rest of the crew on the rocks, twenty-two men alone on an island with no shelter beyond two overturned lifeboats. We sail the eight hundred nautical miles to South Georgia Island’s whaling station. Fifteen days and storms so bad we have to land on the south end of the island. The whaling station is on the north end, thirty-two miles of mountainous terrain away. I take the captain and the strongest sailors and fifty feet of rope, and we climb icy mountains for thirty-six hours to reach the whaling station.”
“Jeez.”
He nods. I swing and feel warm, and Shackleton’s voice makes me drowsy.
“But this is what I want to tell you; we set off for the whaling station, frozen, seasick, and starving, having not slept for days. I brought these men, I risked their lives, to climb through an entire night and day and night, never stopping.”
“That’s not possible.” I yawn.
“See?” he says. “No imagination. You must will the truth you intend.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
He sighs. “Near the summit, the men’s heads were dropping forward. They were nearly sleepwalking. So I told them, Rest now. Sleep. They lay in the snow, and I told them I would keep watch and wake them in two hours.”
“So they did sleep.”
“Yes.”
“And when you woke them, did they plow through to the whaling station?”
“Yes.”
“Sleep is everything.”
“Yes. Except they didn’t sleep for two hours. I woke them fifteen minutes after they’d put their heads down. I told them they’d slept for two hours, and they were renewed, determined, and strong.”
“You lied.”
“You will the truth you need to survive; you make it so.”
“Okay…wait, what do I…so do I lie to myself, convince myself I actually am a dancer and then everyone, all the company directors will believe me? Or have I already willed myself into believing I’m a dancer in the first place and I need to wake up from my fifteen-minute nap and face reality?”
“Oh, Harper Scott.” He shakes his head.
“Just tell me! Why are you here if you’re just going to make me pan for wisdom in the, you know, the river of your parables? I don’t get it. I can barely tie my shoes! You have to tell me—please. What am I supposed to do?”
“That was not a parable. That shit really happened!”
“Great.”
“If I tell you, you’re not learning. You’ll just reconcile your confusion to fit the situation you think you’re in based on whatever grandiose proclamation I come up with. Like that Irish kid.”
“Aiden?”
“I’m getting a little tired of all his poetry recitations. Look out for that one.”
“Says the guy running circles around a simple statement that would help me navigate the entire rest of my life! And PS, what are you—Santa Claus? Are you ever not watching?”
“I see what I see.”
“Boundaries. That’s not right.”
“Fine.”
“I thought maybe I’d see all three of you.”
“Three of who?”
“Scott. Amundsen. You. Everyone’s unique take on the failure of my life. Past, present, future…you know, Dickens?”
He stands and smiles down at me. “You know what, Harper Scott?”
I turn my head to face him. “What?”
“You’re close. You’re getting near.”
“Fantastic.”
“And the weight looks great on you. My wife, Emily, was never one to turn down a scone, and her dance card was never in want of a—”
“All right,” I groan. “I get it.”
“Just sayin’.”
I close my eyes. When I open them, there are only the plants, and the music, and Allison—smiling at all the rest I’ve gotten.
- - -
Back at the lab, there is a Post-it on my side of the table from Charlotte—she’s not feeling great and she’ll see us on Monday. Vivian’s already gone. I turn out the lights, and in the dining hall, Aiden, smiling, comes through the swinging door to sit beside me while I pry the lid off a little can of mushy fruit cocktail.
“Want to go somewhere?” he says.
“When?”
“Tonight. Outside.”
Look out for that one.
<
br /> I lick syrup from the metal can tab. “You’re high. It’s forty below.”
“Oh, come on!” he laughs. “Aren’t you sick of being cooped up?”
The worst part about canned fruit cocktail is the peeled grapes. They’ll always be Halloween eyeballs to me. Maybe T3’s not our biggest concern—maybe it’s scurvy.
“I think I need to sleep,” I tell him. “Tomorrow?”
“I will miss you beside me, but I shall forge on tonight.”
It’s like hanging out with Dylan Thomas.
Oh, really? Shackleton’s voice pipes up in my head. He’s mainlining annoying poets again? That’s interesting.
I tap on our door and find Vivian asleep beneath the twinkle lights, earbuds in. Quietly I pull on a sweater and one more pair of long Johns, and open Charlotte’s ancient laptop.
I can do this. I am a Scott.
You certainly are. That guy could procrastinate like nobody’s business. Look at this mess!
My in-box numbers procreate daily.
Maybe some organizing will minimize the intimidation. I divide and conquer. Folders for everyone.
Mom. Dad. Mom and Dad together. Luke. Kate. Willa. Simone (only two).
Which leaves a long row of Owen. Almost daily, then every other day, then every few, and most recently weekly. But there they are. Most of the subject lines are blank; a few read, Hello or Good Morning. It is nearly impossible to not open just one, read just a few lines.
Not even close to nearly.
>>>Dear Harper,
Today we spent the afternoon at the Legion of Honor. First Tuesday of the month is free admission day, so cheap date, but that just means more money for food. Which we’ll get to in a moment. But first we park near the part of the stone wall that faces the bridge into the courtyard, where the bronze cast of Rodin’s Thinker sits thinking, and we laugh about why he is thinking naked and he looks like he’s on the toilet—but then we stop being jerks and admit it is really amazing and how could a person sculpt something so lifelike from stone?
We go inside, to the paintings. A kid screeches, and that’s always nice because someone is taking a little kid to a museum, and that’s pretty cool, because some little kids love museums.
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