The Dark Beneath the Ice

by Amelinda Bérubé

  “Fine.” It’s the only possible answer, but the truth settles across my shoulders, weighing me down. “Where are you?”

  “I just got home.”

  From where? “Does that mean I can come home too?”

  There’s a long silence.

  “Not…not just yet, okay?”

  “But—”

  “Sweetie, you have to understand. I went to the hospital.” With an effort I can hear, she adds, “I was seeing things, Marianne.”

  I don’t say anything. The silence whispers between us. Seeing things. I’ve made it through Hurricane Laura before, but this… I don’t have a name for this.

  And yet an awful recognition is stealing over me. Was I seeing things last night, on the beach? What if something’s really wrong?

  “I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid I would hurt you.” Her voice breaks. “You’re my whole world. You’re all I’ve got now. I was afraid I would hurt you.”

  “Mom, listen,” I begin, but she forges on.

  “So. I went to the hospital. And they kept me overnight, and they gave me some medicine to take, and I’m supposed to go see this therapist today.” Good. Is it too much to hope that if she has someone else to talk to about it, I won’t have to stand in the howling gale of her grief anymore? “I’m okay now, so far. I think I’m okay. But I can’t risk having you here until I know for sure that it’s working. I can’t.” A pause. “Marianne? Are you okay, sweetie?”

  It’s a long moment before I can answer, and I’m fighting to keep my own voice steady.

  “I really want to come home.”

  “I know. Just a few more days. I have to be sure. Please.”

  “Mom?” I don’t want to know. I have to ask. “What did you see?”

  “I…I really don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t matter.”

  I clutch the phone in silence. It matters to me, I want to tell her. I’m afraid I’m the one who’s seeing things. I’m even more afraid that it’s neither of us. That something really happened. That it’s still happening.

  “I should go. My appointment’s in half an hour, and I want to make sure I don’t get lost.” I laugh dutifully. “I love you. So, so much.”

  “Love you too.”

  “Tell Jen to call me, okay? When she gets home.”

  “Sure.”

  “And, Marianne—” Mom’s voice wavers, almost disappears. When she continues I can barely hear her. “Ask your aunt about it. If you really want to know.”

  • • •

  When Aunt Jen finally shoulders through the front door with an armload of grocery bags, I’m coiled tense as a spring in a corner of the couch, waiting for her.

  “Don’t worry about that,” she protests as I take one of the bags, “I’ve got it. Really. How was—”

  “Mom called,” I interrupt. Aunt Jen’s smile slips.

  “Oh,” she says cautiously, setting the groceries down. I clench my fists around the plastic handles.

  “She was in the hospital.” I won’t yell. I won’t betray a ripple. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you knew, Mare-bear.” I’m not sure I believe her. “She didn’t tell you?”

  “No. She wouldn’t tell me what happened, even on the phone. She said to ask you.”

  “Well…are you sure you want to know? It’s okay if you don’t.”

  When I nod she sighs, takes the bag from me to put it with the rest, and leads me to sit down on the couch. She spends a long moment looking away, as if searching for a place to begin.

  “Well. On Wednesday, she had that meeting with her lawyer. You know. This thing with your dad…it’s going to cost an awful lot of money, and it’s going to be pretty ugly. She was upset.”

  That’s one word for it, I guess. I wonder if she told Aunt Jen about ripping the painting. I wonder if Dad’s seen it yet, the long gash in the canvas.

  “She said when she got out of the shower she couldn’t find you at first. You were on the terrace. On the roof. You had kind of a discussion about things.” She glances at me, watching for my reaction, and I nudge the coffee table with my toes, trying to keep my bewilderment from showing. I don’t remember a conversation on the roof. Shouldn’t I remember that? “She said that it got very dark and that you were floating. In thin air, over the garden.”

  When I don’t answer she says, very gently, “You see why she went to the hospital, don’t you?”

  But if it wasn’t real—it’s on the tip of my tongue to say it—why don’t I remember what really happened? What about the streetlights? If I close my eyes I can almost feel the cool black water from my dream stretching out in front of me, the silence roaring in my ears. I lean into Aunt Jen, afraid the world will slip out from underneath me again, afraid to find myself back there, stumbling helplessly forward in the grip of something I can’t see.

  “Are you okay, Mare-bear?” I nod, not looking at her. “This seems like a lot to burden you with. You know it isn’t your fault, right? This isn’t the first time your mom’s had trouble. She’s always been sensitive, and when you were born, she…well, she had a really rough time for a while. Right after your grandmother died.”

  “I know, I know.” She was afraid to let me out of her sight, even for the night; crying all the time, not sleeping, barely eating. They ended up admitting her for a couple of weeks. “Hurricane Laura.”

  “Now that’s unkind.” Aunt Jen frowns at me. “Would she call you that? If it was you?”

  “I just—” The words come out high; I have to stop and swallow them, change tack. “I don’t understand how he could just leave me alone with her. He knew she’d blow up like this. He knew it.”

  Aunt Jen shakes her head.

  “I think you have to ask your dad about that one. But this is not your fault. He did not leave because of you.” When I don’t respond, she cups my face in her hands, waits until I meet her eyes. The lily-of-the-valley smell of her hand lotion wafts around me. “Seriously. You didn’t do anything wrong. File that under G. For garbage. Okay?”

  “Yeah.” But there’s still the chalk. There’s still the mirror. The streetlights. It’s like pieces of a dream. What’s happening to me, what’s happened to Mom—I know they’re connected, it’s a certainty I can’t shake, visceral as nausea. But like a dream it makes no sense when I try to string it together in my mind. I don’t understand.

  “Have you talked to your dad yet?” The question is gentle. Cautious. “He said he’d been trying to reach you.” I set my jaw and pull away, shaking my head.

  “Well. That’s fine. You decide when you’re ready. But we’ve been talking, and we were thinking it…might be a good idea for you to be seeing someone. Your dad said he’s been asking around. He’s got a referral for you.”

  I sink forward a little, wishing I’d left my hair loose so it would hide my face. That’s the opening I needed, a step taken for me already. I don’t even have to say anything to my aunt. Not yet. But the dread flutters against my ribs, cramping my breath. Whatever’s happening to me, I’ve made it real, somehow, by talking about it. Like it’s pulling me forward, more implacable than any current. Out of control.

  “There’s nothing wrong with it. Really. It’d give you, you know, a neutral third party. To help you get through all this.”

  “It’s not that big a deal,” I mutter. I need to be alone. I need to calm down.

  “It hurts to see you trying to deal with this all by yourself, Mare-bear. Won’t you give it a try? Just to see?”

  A shrug is all I can manage in response to that, but it seems to be enough.

  “Come give me a hand with the groceries,” she says, squeezing my shoulder. “I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.”

  • • •

  There’s one bright spot in my evening, at least. The next time I poke at my
phone, two notifications are waiting for me. Not from Ingrid, though.

  Rhiannon Alexander followed you

  Found you! Hang in there ok??

  She looked me up.

  She saw me.

  Her feed is a stew of snarky memes, steampunk costumes, makeup tutorials, and arguments about Dr. Who. And selfies, dramatically posed. Filtered so her lips shine in vivid technicolor, parted in a pout or a snarl.

  I hit “like” on the mention after a long hesitation and sit there for a while, clutching the phone close to my chest. Clinging to a gleam of hope.

  Still, I go to bed with the light on again, chasing my thoughts in endless spirals, listening to the shushing of the rain. It’s falling like it will never stop.

  5

  Dr. Fortin is a tall, spare man with dark skin, a neatly trimmed beard, and close-cropped, tightly curled black hair peppered with gray. His smile is wide and even, his grip firm and warm when he shakes my hand.

  The office, at the top of a teetering, narrow staircase, is surprisingly inviting. The floorboards are creaky wooden planks the color of honey, and stained glass glows in the highest panes of a bank of windows. Everything else is white, from the moldings that border the high ceiling to the plushy rug in the middle of the room, where a couch and two armchairs sit in a cozy circle.

  “Have a seat,” Dr. Fortin suggests.

  “On the couch?” How’s that for a cliché.

  “Wherever you’re comfortable.”

  He settles into one of the armchairs; the couch is farthest away. I sink into the corner of it and pull my feet up into a defensive half curl, folding and refolding my hands in my lap. On the mantle of an old fireplace is a collection of cards and two framed paintings. One shows a girl huddled in a stark, coffin-like box too small for her, the background a wash of gray; the next shows the same girl flying through a rainbow sky, streamers of color falling like wings from her outstretched arms. Gifts from some grateful patient, I guess. Must be nice to be her, whoever she is. I wonder what secrets she had to spill to get there.

  Dr. Fortin recites the ground rules, a practiced script: This is a safe space, he tells me, and what I say in here stays in here. He can’t make me talk; he can’t make me stay; he can’t make me come back. He won’t talk to my parents unless I ask him to. Or unless I say something to make him think I’m a danger to myself, or to someone else. I nod my way through it, studying my hands. His voice is warm, professional, a little hypnotic, with the faintest lilt of an accent. Like light shining through amber, dark gold, unhurried. He should be on the radio.

  “So today,” he finishes, “we’re just going to start by talking about what’s brought you here, okay? You got the questionnaire, right?”

  I hand it to him, three pages that I pressed into a tight little square in the waiting room. I close my eyes and wait as he unfolds and unfolds them.

  “So,” he says after a moment, “you’ve checked a lot of boxes here.”

  Boxes like nightmares. Gaps in memory. Intrusive thoughts. Auditory hallucinations. I’d almost gone back and erased that last one, but what else was I going to call the terrible smothering roar that filled my ears in the park?

  Dr. Fortin watches me, waiting. Say it, I tell myself. Come on.

  “I think something might be wrong with me.” The words come out a whisper.

  His eyebrows go up, but all he says is “Why don’t you tell me about that.”

  I stumble through the evidence. The missing night. The mirror I didn’t break. My nightmare rising around me in the park, the sound I can’t describe drowning out everything else. Rhiannon’s story about what happened to the chalk. The water bottle I could swear I hadn’t put in the freezer.

  He sits back when I fall silent, tapping his pen against his lips. I breathe in; I breathe out.

  “Thank you for trusting me with that,” he says eventually. “It must have been very frightening.”

  I am not going to cry in front of a stranger. I turn away, leaning into my palm, and watch the fat crystal sun-catcher in the window twist gently back and forth.

  “You’re going through a huge amount of stress right now,” he says. “Let’s not minimize how hard that is. It’s perfectly understandable that you’d be dealing with some anxiety and sleep disruptions. This is an incredibly difficult time for your family. It’s okay to be affected by that.”

  The sun-catcher gleams in the dull gray light, casts no rainbows. When I don’t speak, he continues.

  “I think what I’m most concerned about here is the missing time. That sounds to me like it might be neurological.” He levels the pen at me, gives it an emphatic jab. “We need to get that checked out as soon as possible.”

  “Neurological?” I echo faintly.

  “I don’t want to speculate too much here. Not my specialty. But we definitely want to rule out something physical to make sure we don’t miss something like a stroke or an aneurysm.” He leans back. “So our first stop is probably a CAT scan. If that comes back clean, we’ll try some medication and see if it gives you some relief.”

  “But you don’t think anything happened?” I manage.

  He cocks his head. “Like what?”

  “Like…what my mom saw.”

  “Which was what, exactly?”

  “Me. Floating in midair.” The silence stretches. “I just thought…what if she’s not…what if something weird really happened?”

  “Let’s look for the simple explanation first,” he says firmly. “Right?”

  “I guess.”

  “So you haven’t told your parents about this. Or your aunt.”

  I shake my head.

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know. How could I? With Mom and everything. They’d think… I don’t know.” I lean into the cushions. “I didn’t want to be seeing things too.”

  “You must have been very worried.”

  I could wrap myself up in the warmth of his voice. It’s almost like he cares. I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to meet his gaze.

  “I can’t stop thinking about it.” I drag the words out one by one, forcing them into the light. “That dream I had. It’s like it’s always there waiting. I barely made it through my chemistry exam. I…haven’t really been sleeping.”

  “And when you’re thinking about that dream,” Dr. Fortin prompts, “what does that feel like?”

  “Like it’s happening all over again.” I smooth down the microsuede fabric of the couch; my fingers leave a trail. “Like I’m drowning.”

  He makes a sympathetic noise. “I see. Have you ever felt like that before?”

  “It…hasn’t been this bad in a long time.”

  “When was the last time, then? When you quit dance, maybe?”

  I do look up at him, at that, my heart stuttering.

  “I gather that was a rough time for you,” he says when I don’t speak.

  Right. They had Dad fill out one of those questionnaires too. I close my hands into fists around the cuffs of my sweater. That’s not something I would have offered up for analysis.

  “That was before.”

  “What brought it on then?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  He blinks. “You don’t want to talk about it.”

  I inhale carefully, moderate my tone. “I just don’t see how it’s relevant.”

  “I don’t want to push you,” he says gently, like I’m a kid balking at a needle. “I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. Sometimes previous experiences can shine some light on that.”

  There’s no reason for the tightness in my shoulders, my chest. I force myself to sit up straight. Be rational. Talk things out.

  “I wanted to quit dance. Drop out of the conservatory.” I speak to my hands, clasped whitely in my lap. “Mom wouldn’t let me.�
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  “What made you want to quit?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t very good.”

  “The conservatory’s pretty prestigious, isn’t it?”

  “So I wasn’t good enough,” I snap. “Do we have to talk about this? It was years ago!”

  He raises his hands in surrender. “Okay,” he says equably, “we don’t have to.” But he jots something down as he says it. My teeth are clenched. I have to relax.

  “Let’s talk about how you coped, then,” he says. “How did you deal with these feelings? Is there anything there that might help you now?”

  “There’s…a yoga thing I learned in a class with Mom.” He ought to like that.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. It helps me relax.”

  “Okay,” he says, nodding, “that’s a great start. Are you into yoga, then?”

  “Not really. It was just the few classes with Mom.”

  “Maybe you could try it again. Since you found it helpful. Physical activity can be really important, it’s a good way to kick your brain out of a spiral.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you find your appetite changes? When you get anxious?”

  I nod after a moment. That seems like an innocent enough question.

  “Try to make sure you’re getting some protein in. Nice, balanced meals. I know it sounds obvious, but low blood sugar never helps anything. And you’ll find it helps with the medication. It can be a little hard on the stomach.”

  Eat well and exercise? Seriously? But I nod again instead of saying anything.

  “Well. Listen.” He reaches for a notepad, scrawls something across it. “I’m going to give you this. Something to put the brakes on the ruminant thoughts. You know, the hamster wheel of anxiety. Just hold onto it for now, until after the scan. If there’s nothing organic going on, you can start with that. Try to do some of those relaxation exercises, and some of the yoga stuff too if you can. Whatever gets you moving. And let’s make another appointment for next week.”