The Dark Beneath the Ice

by Amelinda Bérubé

  It was like some sort of alchemy. I got to the conservatory and felt the magic leaching away, leaving me heavy and sluggish, bowing my shoulders, pulling my arms across my chest. Some poison crept through me and planted the certainty of eyes on me. Watchers who knew I didn’t belong there, from my battered secondhand shoes to my hair pulled into the highest bun I could manage to add a few more inches of height. I could almost hear their whispers about my stiff, scared face, my flat, stupid breasts, the line of underwear under my leotard.

  The daily adage, slow and flowing, was the worst. I trembled and wavered and fought for every pose. Stage presence was no help there, nor quick feet. Not even focus. Only control.

  Miss Giselle stopped us over and over again, offering corrections, exhorting us to move together as one, like a flock of birds or particles in a magnet, not one of us standing out. She called Jessica Ye out in front to demonstrate: she made all the slow extensions and retractions look effortless, an ebb and flow as natural as breathing, like a butterfly’s wings folding and unfolding. I couldn’t look away from the long swell of her extended calf, the arabesque arch of her back.

  “Look what musicality she has,” Miss Giselle said. “How centered she is. There’s softness and strength here. That’s what you’re aiming for.”

  I take the remote from Mom and stab the Stop button. She doesn’t object, though her lips go thin.

  Jessica Ye was perfect. There were so many perfect girls at the conservatory. Rising stars, glittering snowflakes. They barely touched the ground.

  I was never one of them.

  Mom ends up picking the movie. Pride and Prejudice. Ordinarily I might have protested; Mrs. Bennet is so cringeworthy I end up anxious and embarrassed by proxy. But it’s Mom’s equivalent of comfort food, so I settle into the couch beside her without complaint. She snuggles me in close against her shoulder, rests her cheek on the top of my head. We sit mostly in silence, crunching mechanically through the popcorn.

  “I missed you,” she murmurs over Elizabeth being snippy to Mr. Darcy. I reach an arm across her lap to hug her in response, and then wriggle down into the cushions a little bit to make sure she won’t see me tearing up.

  • • •

  When I open my eyes again the first thing I see is the glowing green numbers on the DVD player flashing 12:00.

  Mom is gone. I must have fallen asleep. I drag myself out of the cushions, feel my way around the couch, reach for the doorjamb in the dark. The quiet makes me think it’s still far from morning, but I can’t really tell; without the clock the night feels unmoored from time, changeless.

  I scurry upstairs to my room, into the cold blankets of my bed. My alarm clock blinks at me. 12:00. The windows are blank, orange-tinged oblongs. I lie there listening to my heartbeat in my ears. I can’t even hear the rain anymore. The silence is so complete the fear congeals around it: I’m afraid to make a sound, afraid to find that I can’t.

  “Mom,” I whisper, finally. The word rasps in my ears, and I let out the rest of my breath, pulling the pillow over my head. But the relief doesn’t last long. I peer out from under the pillow; the numbers on the clock blink on and off. A conviction is rising in my mind like a tide.

  It’s here. Something has happened.

  I reach out and snap the light on. Nothing’s out of place. I run my hands over my braided hair, even steal a glance in the mirror. Nothing, nothing.

  I hunker down in bed, watching the room. I can’t keep my eyes on everything at once.

  Then: movement. The door swinging open with the faintest sound, the knob bumping gently against the wall. I scramble backward into the corner of the bed, but the door shivers into stillness, and that’s all. The silence crouches, waiting.

  “Mom,” I croak. No sound, no response. I’ve never wanted anything like I want to run down the hall to her room, crawl into her bed like I did when I was little. But I can’t, I can’t. What will happen if it does something where she can see?

  I’m not going out there. Whatever stupid game it’s playing with me, I’m not rising to the bait. When I stumble across the room, it’s to push the door closed again, and I slide to the floor to sit leaning against it. Barricading myself in.

  I spend the rest of the night there, dozing fitfully, until morning seeps in to steal the edge from the darkness. I watch the windows brighten, willing the dread away. At first I’m resolved not to move until Mom comes to get me, but I can’t let her walk into whatever’s waiting out there. Whatever it left for me to see.

  Its handiwork is facing me as soon as I open the door. The spare silver picture frames on the opposite wall haven’t been disarranged from their usual spots, they’re all intact, untouched, hanging straight and level as ever. But every one of them has been wiped blank. Empty, except for the white cardboard backing. And as I stare up at them, I notice the faint trickle of water echoing through the house.

  I hurry toward it before I lose my nerve, thumping down the stairs to the kitchen. The vast ceramic square of the sink is overflowing, a steady stream of water dribbling down the face of the cabinet and pooling on the floor. I snatch a handful of dish towels from the drawer and go to mop it up.

  In the sink, spiraling in a slow circle, are the pictures. A watery kaleidoscope of our three smiling faces, atop layers and layers of colorful copies of me: the recital photos.

  There’s no salvaging them; they’ve turned into a sticky, soggy mess. I try to fish one out and it shreds apart in my hands.

  “Happy now?” I say under my breath, yanking the silver bar of the faucet around to shut off the water. There’s no response; of course there isn’t. But in one of the floating pictures, one of me and Mom—the one where I’m usually smiling over her shoulder as she clasps my hands in hers over her chest—I could swear my image is glaring back at me, its arms tightening possessively around my mother’s shoulders.

  • • •

  Mom silences her alarm several times before I finally hear the shower running. By then I’ve cleaned the water from the kitchen floor, buried the sodden, shredded photographs in the trash, taken down the empty silver frames and hidden them under my bed. I even make some scrambled eggs for breakfast. One of the eggs manages to lurch from the container to splatter on the floor, and I set my jaw and mop that up too. I start out thinking I’ll make coffee, but whatever’s following me waits until the floor is clean again before it knocks the milk carton over, and by the time I’ve stemmed the river on the floor the eggs are about to burn.

  “You made breakfast?” Mom arrives as I’m dividing the browned eggs onto plates. The catch in her voice snags into me like hooks. “Thank you, sweetie. Thank you. I…I really needed that today.”

  “It’s just eggs,” I mumble. She hugs me anyway, not noticing—or pretending not to—that I’m wound so tight I’m shaking. She slides into a seat at the peninsula with her plate. Instead of joining her, I eat hurriedly where I am, standing up.

  She takes a few bites, pokes at the rest. I can feel her question coming like a storm, the tension prickling against my skin.

  “What is it,” I say, more sharply than I meant to, when she finally opens her mouth to speak.

  “Did you…notice that the pictures are gone?” she says carefully. “Upstairs?”

  I force down my last forkful of eggs.

  “That was me.” The words are small and tight. “I took them down.”

  “Marianne—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it!”

  She folds her hands against her lips. Tears slide down her cheeks. I set my dishes carefully in the sink.

  “I’m fine, Mom. I’m fine. I just didn’t get much sleep last night, okay?”

  She sniffs, wipes her face. Rakes her hair back, stabs a barrette through it. “So who’s this doctor you’re seeing?” she asks.

  “His name is Dr. Fortin.” I watch her warily, not sure if thi
s is a safe subject or not.

  “And you feel like you can talk to him?”

  I shrug. “He has a nice voice.”

  She looks at me, starts to say something, then pinches her mouth shut and shakes her head.

  “Mom. What is it?”

  “I just hope this isn’t your father trying to get information from you. Ammunition.”

  I lean against the sink. “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.”

  “He’ll try to get custody,” she insists. “I know it.”

  “Mom, please—”

  “Fine.” She throws her hands in the air, her voice gone hurt and huffy. “Fine! It doesn’t matter. It’s not like I have a choice.”

  “I’m going to go get dressed,” I mutter desperately, before she can say anything else, and hurry from the room.

  • • •

  In Dr. Fortin’s office, after shaking my head in response to his first two questions—no more sleepwalking, no more missing time—I sit in antsy silence for a long minute. He asks me if I’m having trouble with any side effects from the quetiapine; asks me how it’s going, being back at home. I keep my answers to a shrug. After that he just watches me, unhurried. Waiting for me to crack.

  “Do I really have to keep coming here?” I ask finally.

  “You don’t want to?”

  “I don’t see how it’s helping,” I say truthfully. Talk therapy isn’t going to erase what’s on that tape at home. I look up at him. “Mom thinks Dad’s using you to gather ammunition. For custody.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  I look away again. “I don’t know.”

  “Well. It’s true that I can be subpoenaed in court. But actually, at your age, most of the custody decision is yours.”

  “It is?” Funny how nobody’s told me that.

  “If they really can’t sort something out between them, it would be your wishes the judge would use to make a ruling.”

  “So if I told you I’m possessed by the devil or something,” I say recklessly, “you couldn’t tell my dad?”

  He smiles. “Why, do you have any demonic possession to report?”

  I show my teeth, hoping it looks like I’m smiling back. Like I’m joking.

  “Like I said,” he continues, “if you sound likely to hurt yourself, or someone else, then I have to report it. At that point, you need more help than I can give. But otherwise, anything goes.”

  “And if I need more help than you can give,” I shoot back, “that means ‘go directly to psych ward, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.’ Doesn’t it.”

  He’s not fazed. “Does that scare you? The idea of being hospitalized?”

  “My mom’s been in the hospital before. A long time ago, when I was a baby.” I study the carpet. “She said it was horrible.”

  “In what way?”

  “She said they treat you like you’re less than human. Like you’re a…broken thing they’re stuck with.”

  “Do you think that’s accurate?”

  I shrug.

  “I’m sorry to hear she had a bad experience,” he says. “But I promise you that the children’s hospital is not some horror movie scenario. Okay? It’s a place where you’re safe. A place to get better. Until you can cope again. And inpatient treatment isn’t the first step anyway. You might find their day program helpful.”

  I look at him warily. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a more intensive course of treatment. You’d spend the morning and part of the afternoon there, do therapy in groups and one on one. But you’d still be an outpatient. You’d go home every day.”

  “Are you saying you’re signing me up?”

  He shrugs. “Your call. At this point, it’s just an idea. But I think you might consider it.”

  I bet something like “I think I’m possessed” would have him backtracking on that pretty fast. Or “a ghost is after me.” Hallucinations. Paranoia. I’d sound just like Mom must have. Except that Mom thought it wasn’t real. I’d sound worse.

  And what if they locked me up in there and it followed me?

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  He blinks, rests an ankle over one knee.

  “That’s an interesting question,” he says neutrally. “Do you?”

  Giving me enough room to say something incriminating. Something delusional. I chicken out.

  “I just…keep thinking about what my mom saw.”

  “You’re still looking for an explanation,” he interprets. I shrug. “Your mom is someone you trust a lot, it sounds like.”

  I study the sun-catcher twisting slowly this way and that in the tall arched window.

  “Usually. Yeah.”

  “Usually. This whole thing must have shaken that up pretty hard.” I don’t answer. “How did you feel about staying at your aunt’s the last little while?”

  Niobe’s card flashes through my mind: the blindfolded woman in the water, the tall swords standing around her like bars.

  “Trapped,” I say eventually. Dr. Fortin nods, but doesn’t say anything, waiting. Outside a bus roars down Bank Street. A horn honks. Someone laughs and yells something in the street below. Inside it’s quiet, an old-house quiet that fills the room. Except for a tiny sound, on the edge of hearing, so quiet I’m not sure what I’m hearing at first: the faintest scratching. A slow, deliberate noise. Like fingernails on wood.

  “What’s wrong?” Dr. Fortin asks. I’m clutching the arm of the couch. I swallow and force myself to let go, to sit back. I don’t know what to say. What if he doesn’t hear it? Auditory hallucinations. For a dizzy, awful moment the whole week is splintering to pieces beneath me like rotten ice. What if none of it was real? Could I have imagined the tape, even? Maybe I should tell him. Maybe I’m drowning and I can’t even tell.

  “I thought I heard… I mean, do you hear something scratching? That little noise?”

  “This is an old building,” he says, unconcerned. “They keep setting traps, but the place is full of mice. I should get an office cat.”

  That means he hears it too. Breathe in. Breathe out. Keep it together. If that sound was anything unusual, he’d know. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. Not necessarily.

  “Are you angry at your parents?” Dr. Fortin asks. “I think I would be. Your dad leaves, your mom’s upset—”

  “Why would I be mad at Mom?” I interrupt. “This isn’t her fault.”

  “Is it your dad’s?”

  “He’s the one who took off.”

  “So you’re angry with him, then. Have you talked to him about that?”

  “What would be the point? It’s not like he’d listen.”

  “You don’t think you can go to him with your feelings.”

  “What, so I should explode at him or something? That’s why he left in the first place. He said he was tired of picking up the pieces.”

  “Are you? Tired of picking up the pieces, I mean.”

  I stare at him. The scraping, scrabbling noise is still there. Steadily, without moving, without changing. I wish it would stop. I can almost feel it, like little claws at the nape of my neck.

  “I guess I’m surprised that you’re not mad at your mom at all, after everything that’s happened in the last few weeks. You don’t feel even a little bit resentful?”

  “What was she supposed to do?” I demand. “Just smile and accept it? Of course I don’t like picking up the pieces. But she did that for me. That’s what you’re supposed to do for your family, right? Support each other? And I’m the only one left.”

  Dr. Fortin sits forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “What would happen if you got mad at your mom, Marianne?”

  “I don’t know.” I won’t look at him. I’m not going to confess that I’m afraid she’d break, that she’d hurt
herself, that she’d never forgive me. I can’t be a family by myself.

  “When was the last time you got good and mad at her, then?”

  “I don’t know.” I pause, smooth the edge off my voice, try to explain. “We were never like that. We get along.” Or we did, anyway.

  “What about when you quit dance?”

  “What about it?” I snap, and then press my lips together. He waits for me to speak. Eventually I come out with a passably cool sentence. “I don’t want to talk about dance. Seriously. It’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “Okay,” he says mildly, “that’s fine.”

  He’ll circle back to it eventually, I bet. My one freak-out and he’s determined to hear about it. I’m not giving him the satisfaction.

  There’s a sudden thunk and rattle right behind me, and I jump halfway to my feet, twisting around to find the source of the noise. It takes me a second to figure out what’s different: the sun-catcher is gone.

  “It just fell behind the couch,” Dr. Fortin says. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll get it later. Really, it’s okay, please sit down.”

  I obey, trying to slow my breathing without being too obvious, fixing my gaze at a point over Dr. Fortin’s shoulder to keep from looking frantically around the room. Go ahead, I think. Go ahead. Do something he can’t explain away. Give me something objective. Make him believe me.

  But everything is still. Even the rustling, scratching sounds have fallen silent.

  “You seem tense,” Dr. Fortin observes. “Is something bothering you?”

  I shake my head. He doesn’t look convinced.

  “Why don’t you tell me about your morning,” he suggests.

  “There’s nothing to tell. It was normal. Boring. I had scrambled eggs for breakfast.”

  He studies me. “Do you feel safe at home?”

  “Safe,” I snort. “Safe from what?”

  “Well, physically safe, for a start.”

  “What, are you asking if I’m afraid of my mom? No! She’s just upset. Anyone would be!”

  “All right, how about psychological safety? Is home a safe space for you?”