by Keziah Frost
I wish they were here. I wish they were here. I wish they were here. If it weren’t for me, they would be here.
I never got to reconcile. They died worried about me, probably angry with me, maybe confused about what kind of person I would turn out to be, I don’t know. I never got to apologize, or show them that I did turn out to be a decent adult. They would have been proud of me, and I’m sad for them that they didn’t get to have that. I would have gone to them for encouragement and wisdom, and I’m sad for myself that I don’t get to have that.
Summer’s head began to nod. She shook herself awake and stood, and stepped out on the porch with the blanket still wrapped around her. The cold air woke her up and brought her back to life. She stood still. Listening. Allowing. Receiving.
She heard the hoot of an owl and the rustling breeze in her ears. At last, she heard her parents’ voices, calm and peaceful, carried to her on the wind.
“We gave you life. Live it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
King of Clubs:
A courageous man, capable of heroism.
It was early afternoon when Norbert stepped off onto the ice bridge. Edith had scampered back into the Center for Deeper Understanding to facilitate her new Tai Chi class, after advising him to take a boat rather than try walking across the harbor. The sun was shining brightly, giving Norbert a bad case of snow blindness. As Edith had said, it was early in the winter for people to begin using the ice bridge. Had the water frozen deeply enough to bear the weight of a person crossing? Norbert, normally cautious, let these thoughts go.
It was his fault that Summer was missing; it was his responsibility to get her back to safety. Now that he was about to take action, his anxiety was abating. Values that he had learned as a boy and believed in all his life told him that when you do something wrong, you must try to make amends.
He breathed in the cold air that was heavy with the fragrance of wood fires. The din of dozens of bird species filled his ears. Even in winter, there were so many birds: the snowy owl, the chickadee, the cardinal and many more whose songs he couldn’t identify. Most of the cottages across the harbor looked uninhabited. His heart leaped when he saw smoke snaking up from the chimney of one. Summer was there, he knew it.
He walked with intention across the ice. As he walked, he sensed that the ice might not be quite as thick as he had hoped when he began. That guiding voice within him, the one he had learned to listen to at last, encouraged him to go forward, to find Summer. Was this the Daimon that Birdie had spoken of that day in the art gallery? That Inner Voice that tells you: “Go here,” “Do this,” the voice that Socrates spoke of?
Some spots were slippery, and he had to take it slow.
Warm spells in winter are the most dangerous times to venture out onto the ice, Norbert remembered from his days in Eagle Scouts and from his dedicated study of Reader’s Digest articles over the years. Lakes freeze in patches, he recalled, as his feet took him forward. Thinner in some spots than others. How deep was this ice? Sudden immersion in ice water can cause cardiac arrest even before drowning, he knew. An Eagle Scout, he thought, would not try this without ice picks to pull himself out of a hole in the ice. If he didn’t fall through, he was still apt to slip and twist his ankle. At least he had his cell phone, to call for help. He pulled it out of his pocket.
Under his feet, he sensed a barely perceptible wobble, a slight rocking of the ice. His heart accelerated with fear, as he realized the folly he was committing. He was now past the middle of the harbor, closer to the island than the mainland. He could go forward toward the shoreline of the island—or back toward the mainland. He wasn’t going back.
When it happened, it was as if Norbert had expected it all along.
There was a loud Crack! Boom! Norbert felt a jolt of pain as his body was engulfed by the frigidity of the lake. He gasped, reflexively covering his nose and mouth against the entry of the icy water. Step One. Norbert seemed to hear the instructions from an article read long ago. Grab for a shelf of ice, and bring yourself over to it.
He was hyperventilating, and working to slow his gasps.
Step Two. You are in cold shock. Your one and only task right now is to calm your mind. In cold shock, your breathing, heart rate and blood pressure increase. Do not panic; slow your breathing as much as you can. The gasping will stop in a couple of minutes. Then you can act.
Norbert felt a burning agony through his feet, legs and torso, which was immediately followed with numbness.
“The cold shock will pass,” he panted into the unfeeling winter scene, and his voice sounded thin and feeble to him. A snowshoe hare hesitated on the shore and seemed to take in the calamity in the harbor, but offered him no encouragement before leaping off into the thickness of the pine trees.
Norbert’s clothing, now soaked, had become heavy, and was sucking his weight down toward the depths of the lake, but he kept his arms firmly on the ice shelf.
Nine minutes. Nine minutes to get out, or go unconscious and then drown. He could let his sleeves freeze to the ice shelf, so that even if he went unconscious, he would hang propped there above water and could possibly be rescued. But, no, Norbert was going to rescue himself. He remembered how.
“Do not try to pull yourself up on the ice,” he said out loud. He knew that if he did, the thin ice all around would break under his weight, and he would not be able to pull himself out.
Keeping his arms up on the ice, Norbert began to kick his feet. Later, he could not say how he was able to kick feet and legs that were numb, but all his forces came to his assistance, and he kicked faster, faster and faster, until he made himself horizontal in the ice water, his body parallel with the ice. Then, with just a few really strong kicks, he pushed himself forward on the ice shelf.
“Do not stand up,” he instructed himself. He wanted to stand and run from the danger he had just escaped, but he knew that the ice here, being thin, would break if he stood.
Norbert rolled, distributing his weight, and then crawled. Miraculously, there on the surface of the ice was his cell phone, about twenty feet from the ice hole. He had thrown it into the air when he fell in. He grabbed his phone and continued to crawl awhile before he dared stand up and stumble to shore.
Once in the thickness of the pine trees and out of the wind, Norbert, shivering violently, took off all his clothes. He was trembling all over, and his coordination was poor now, and the clothes came off slowly.
“All of them, all of them, you have to,” he urged himself. The cold wet clothes would have driven him deeper into hypothermia. Everything must come off immediately, and then he must get indoors to warmth within a few minutes, or perish.
He was beyond cold, beyond pain and beyond numbness. His only focus was on survival now.
As if he were a bird with an aerial view of the scene, Norbert saw the pile of soaked and iced clothes lying strewn on the forest floor, and a skinny, nude Norbert, clutching a cell phone and dashing through the trees.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Ten of Clubs:
A period of healing, which may be physical, spiritual or emotional.
By Sunday afternoon, Summer had already run through Lindsay’s scant provisions. The island appeared to be deserted. Before the fire in the living room, she sat considering how to get herself home. She wouldn’t dare to try the ice bridge again.
Suddenly there was a fierce rattling at the door.
Through the window, Summer saw a naked old man in distress.
It was the fortune-teller.
* * *
Norbert sat wrapped in Lindsay Prescott’s white chenille bathrobe with his feet plunged into her fluffy rabbit slippers. He was trembling violently, and Summer was frightened for him, but through chattering teeth, Norbert was able to tell her that these physiological reactions were normal and would subside within an hour. In the meantime, a swee
t hot drink would be helpful, and no, thank you, it would not be wise for him to sit too near the fire yet—it could cause his blood vessels to constrict too fast.
“Gee, Mr. Zelenka, how do you know so much about hypothermia?”
“R-R-Reader’s-s-s D-D-D-igest,” Norbert answered.
As Norbert’s temperature began to approach normal, and Summer was persuaded that he was out of danger, she realized what he had risked to find her.
“Why have you done this?” She was angry. She had not asked anyone to look for her. It was not even any of his business that she was here. He had very nearly died to find her.
“I had to, Summer. It would have been my fault if something had happened to you.”
“Your fault if something happened to me?”
“The reading. I gave you a reading that upset you.”
“Oh.” Summer wrinkled her brow, trying to see it from the fortune-teller’s perspective. “But it wasn’t the reading that upset me. It was the clarity that I got. It was like—truth—edging in to where I hadn’t allowed it before. The truth is what upset me. I saw it all at once.”
“Ah, yes. That seems to happen for a lot of people, somehow,” Norbert said, humbly. “Knowing the truth about yourself can be upsetting. But it is also empowering. Knowing the truth may not solve all your problems. But it gives you a place to start. That’s what the truth can do for you. That is a great thing.”
“I think I’d been shutting out the truth—in favor of wallowing in my own guilt. I didn’t do it on purpose. I just didn’t see any other way. I’d built up this huge wall of blame against myself, for years and years. It seemed reasonable to do it. It seemed fair. I never saw that by doing that, I was only doing more harm than when I committed my original crime.”
“Crime?”
“I’ve always thought of it as a crime. The night my parents died in the accident, they were coming to pick me up, and there was a terrible ice storm. Gramma and everyone in town already knows that. But the part she doesn’t know—no one knows—is that it didn’t need to happen that way.”
Summer hesitated. She could tell this kind man about her guilt. He wouldn’t judge her. No one could judge her as harshly as she had judged herself. For the first time, Summer spoke aloud what she had done the night her parents died. As she spoke, the memory returned to her vividly, and it was as if she were living it all again.
“You’re not going anywhere with anyone tonight.” Dad was trying to sound all authority-like.
“Oh, Summer! There’s a winter storm coming in. Stay home with us,” Mom was pleading, trying to convince me to stay, as if she didn’t realize she was the mom and could stop me. Well, then, she couldn’t.
It was four o’clock. I looked out the window, waiting for Rory’s old red Dodge Omni to pull in the driveway. The sun was setting dimly in an overcast sky, and ice was beginning to fall in splinters against the house.
“It’s just three blocks to the bowling alley. I’ll be fine.” They always seemed to believe the bowling alley.
Rory honked from the driveway, and my heart leaped.
Dad said, “Don’t you go running out there at the honk of a horn. Make him come to the door and shake hands with your father.” Dad peered out through the blinds to where Rory’s car sat loudly idling. “Hey,” he added, “how old is that guy? He looks too old for you.”
“Yeah, Dad,” I said, trying out my new sarcasm. “He’s a senior citizen.” I was zipping my jacket and pulling my cap down over my head.
“Don’t be smart with me, young lady. Where’d you meet this character? What’s his name?”
“The mall,” I said as I pushed past my dad, who stood with his hands on his hips, elbows out, legs spread. He was a small and skinny guy, and I thought, “He looks so silly right now.” I felt sorry for him. But not sorry enough to stay. Not sorry enough to miss out on Rory.
I stepped out, slammed the door, and ran, slipping and sliding, to the exotic new world of Rory and his car. I thought how easy it was now to defy them. I’d never done it in such a major way before. I felt triumphant and guilty at the same time.
It was warm in Rory’s car and he had the music up loud. He gave me a knowing look and a smile that made me feel grown up and delicious and just the right amount edgy. He pulled out of the driveway and started cruising. Suddenly I felt shy. As he drove, I looked at him and thought he was better than any of the crushes I had at school. I thought of my dad exclaiming, How old is that guy? And I smiled. It was cool to be with an older guy for once. I didn’t know how old he was. Twenty-four? Thirty-five? I wasn’t so good at judging ages. But he had long black hair that hung to his shoulders, and dark eyes. He wore an earring. Like Johnny Depp. A pirate.
He was a good driver, I thought, as the ice and snow made patterns on his windshield and he straightened the car out of skids and slides.
From under his seat, he pulled a paper bag and drank from the bottle inside it, and handed it to me with a smile. He had a nice smile. Even, white teeth.
I took a drink and sputtered, and he laughed a friendly laugh, pushing my hair back from my face.
“Aw, you’re not used to that, are you?”
And I thought he was so sweet. So I tried again, more slowly this time, just the tiniest sips. It went down burning in my chest, but it wasn’t such a bad feeling. It made me think of a cough syrup my mom used to give me when I was little. The effect of the alcohol began to work on me almost at once. So far in my lifetime, I’d barely tasted any.
“What is this—rum?” I asked. I thought, pirates drink rum.
“Whiskey,” he said. “It’s good for you.”
He parked by the beach. We made out while the ice pelted the windows and the wind shook the car. It was different from making out with Noah, a boy my age—my very first boyfriend—who had just dumped me. But Rory kept looking around for cop cars, and when he spotted one rolling down the street, he put his car in Drive and we were moving again. He stashed the whiskey back under the seat until the cop car stopped following.
“I know where I’ll take you,” he said, as if he had a sudden inspiration, and he turned the car onto Highway 4, toward Edwards Cove.
By that point, I thought I was feeling happier than I’d ever felt, but also strangely divided from myself. It was as if I were at the same time two people: one was a sober witness to all that was happening, and the other was drunk. My face felt numb. I raised my hand to try to feel my cheek and poked myself in the eye. That made me giggle. I felt Rory looking at me, and I hoped I wasn’t making a fool of myself. Probably the other girls that he knew were used to drinking.
He pulled into the parking lot of the Fox Point apartment buildings. This was where the Gibbons Corner kids came to buy drugs. Did Rory live here?
Moments skipped, and I was out in the ice storm, holding Rory’s hand, and walking unsteadily through the door of a first-floor apartment. I had expected he was taking me to where he lived so we could be alone, but when I entered, I found myself in a threadbare living room where nine or ten listless men were sitting in a smoky haze, as if in a group trance. There was a cloying odor of pot and rancid beer. They all looked up. As they saw me standing in my short boots and leggings, my long blond hair hanging down to my waist, interest began to ignite on their faces.
I stood unsteadily, trying not to lean.
“Whoa, Rory, what did you bring us?”
“Shut up,” said Rory, moving into the room to grab the joint that was going around.
I reached behind me for the doorknob, and worked on turning myself around to face the door. “I’m going. I gotta go now.”
I heard Rory’s voice saying, gently, “Baby, it’s cold outside. Come on in and warm up. No one’s gonna hurt you here. What are you gonna do, walk back to Gibbons Corner?”
I heard him moving toward me.
Again, minutes disa
ppeared, and I was running down an icy road, the hail pelting my face. Behind me, I could hear Rory call and then laugh, but I didn’t hear the words. I hit the ground hard a few times, and picked myself back up again and again, running on until I got to a gas station. I had run only two blocks, but by the time I burst into the tiny convenience store and woke up the dozing service-station attendant, I felt almost sober.
The name sewn on his shirtfront said “Billy,” and he watched me dial my cell phone.
“Mommy? Mommy, come and pick me up, please?” What made me call her “Mommy” that night? That’s what I used to call her when I was little. I always said “Mom” now. But I felt little again. Little and scared and wanting my mother to come quick and take me home.
She didn’t ask any questions; she just took the address and I heard her calling my dad to get his coat.
As the hours ticked by and my parents didn’t come, and they didn’t answer my calls, Billy finally spoke up.
“I hate to say it, but something mighta happened. It’s a bad night out there, eh? I’ll just call the police and check if anything’s happened, yeah?”
Summer became aware of the old man, focusing his kind attention on her story. She had been right to trust him. He wasn’t judging her. He was holding her in his compassionate heart. She could feel it.
“I shouldn’t have been out that night in the first place. I pushed past my parents and went out with some creepy older guy because I liked his long hair and his earring or some stupid thing. I was fifteen. Clueless. They tried to stop me, and I disrespected them. Of course, once I was with the creepy guy, I got in trouble.” Summer was picking at the blanket that was wrapped around her legs. “My parents had always said, if I didn’t feel right in any situation, just call them and they’d come pick me up.”
