Alice Hoffman

by The Ice Queen

  Because he’s madly in love with you, idiot, I wanted to say. I opened the screen door. She was very young. Nineteen, perhaps. I had a terrible sinking feeling.

  “He’s been making you something,” I said.

  “Me?” Iris laughed, and the sound was like water. Maybe that was what he’d fallen in love with, that sound.

  “But he’s not here.”

  “Okay, well, can you have him call me?”

  Iris wrote down her phone number on the back of a piece of notepaper.

  “I’ll be home all day. Studying. I’m not as smart as Renny is. He got an A in the class we took together and I was lucky to get a C. I’ll just wait for his call.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I can’t believe he has a present for me.” She had green eyes, I noticed. She was pretty in a pale, sweet way.

  When Iris left I phoned Renny’s dorm. Someone answered and, when I asked for him, said, “You haven’t heard?”

  I felt panic-stricken. I had the gloves on my bureau. My hair was sticking up as though I’d been shocked.

  “What did he do?” I asked. I knew it was something bad, something desperate, a monster’s attempt to tear off his skin, an angel’s attempt to rise.

  I pieced it together from that initial call and then a call to my brother. Everyone in the Science Center knew. Renny had walked into Acres’ Hardware Store and taken a hatchet from the wall. He’d been calm and cheerful; no one had even noticed him. Now there was so much blood on the floor of the hardware store that new oak planks would have to be installed. Renny would have surely bled to death if the manager of the paint department, the man who’d been attacked by the bulldog, hadn’t taken a lifesaving course. The manager was a quick thinker; he’d been so ever since his own attack. He jumped over the counter and made a tourniquet out of the strings of his Acres’ Hardware apron.

  Because of the incident, and the university’s liability, the lightning-strike study was to be disbanded. There hadn’t been enough psychological supervision, that’s what Renny’s parents were saying, and it was rumored that a lawsuit loomed. Orlon University had no vested interest in the study. Twelve years of research was to be poured down the drain; all those photographs of us, the charts of our poor health, would be shredded now.

  Everyone I spoke to wondered why on earth someone would commit such a horrible act, right there in the hardware store on a perfectly ordinary day. But I understood why Renny had tried to cut off his hand. I was sure that when he walked past the girls at the checkout counter and smiled at them, they hadn’t bothered to smile back; like all those students at Orlon who walked right past him, they most likely hadn’t even seen him. Renny walked through the store, the invisible man, with one thought in mind. I knew him well enough to know that. A single desire, his defining secret: he wanted to be human.

  I went immediately to the hospital, found the intensive care unit, and talked myself into the waiting area. I knew a few of the nurses, and I was clearly upset and involved. I wasn’t family, and therefore couldn’t see the patient, but they would allow me to wait. For what, I wasn’t certain. I sat down on one of the hard plastic chairs.

  I suppose I was easy to pick out if someone had heard about me: lightning-strike victim, distraught friend, fellow monster in disguise. A teenaged girl came to sit next to me. “You’re Renny’s friend,” she said. She introduced herself as his sister, Marina.

  “Will he recover?” I asked.

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds.” Marina had a soft voice, like Renny’s. She wore a black velvet headband that pushed back her hair. I suppose she was a redhead, but her hair looked white to me. A little old woman, concerned about her brother. He’d told me she was the smart one. The favorite. “They had to sew the hand back on, reattach all the nerves. He may not feel anything. Or maybe he’ll just feel less. But mostly he lost a lot of blood.”

  “I was supposed to help him with a project. That’s why this happened. I forgot all about it.”

  I felt that I should get down on my knees and beg Marina’s forgiveness. I should cut out my heart and place it on the vinyl tiles of the floor.

  “The Doric temple? It wasn’t for class. He was already failing when he asked you for help. He wanted to create something to give to some girl he’s in love with.”

  “Iris,” I said.

  “Is she worth it?” Marina asked.

  “I don’t know. I only met her today.”

  Renny’s parents had gone to collect his personal belongings from his dorm room. They were meeting with their lawyer as soon as they got back to Miami. They might not have appreciated someone from the lightning-strike study visiting Renny, but Marina took me to see him.

  “It’s not that my parents wouldn’t like you, it’s just that they’re protecting him from the world. Parents.” Marina shrugged. “They want the best and do the worst. I’m just holding my breath till I’m on my own.”

  When we reached Renny’s room, I peered in from the doorway. There he was. Under the sheets. Eyes closed. There was some machine that made a sound like snow falling.

  “Knock, knock,” Marina called. No reply. “Demerol,” she whispered to me. “He’s been out for a while.”

  She led me in to see him. The room was darkened and we could see the flecks of gold in his hands. He had no idea of how beautiful he was, none at all.

  We went to stand by the bed.

  “It’s okay,” Marina said. “You can talk to him.”

  “Hey.” My voice sounded faint. It echoed as though I were far away when I was right there. “It’s me.”

  Renny opened his eyes. He didn’t turn away from me the way I thought he would. That was something.

  I saw a line of red along his left arm — the line where they’d sewed him together. I saw it — that amazing, sharp, and painful red. It had been so long since I had seen the color that I was nearly blinded. I had forgotten its intensity.

  “I wanted to be normal,” Renny said. “I wanted to feel things.”

  “You’ve got a funny way of being normal,” I said.

  His parents would take him home, and Marina would bring him cups of tea and bowls of broth until he recovered. One day someone would see him for who he really was and fall in love with him.

  “What should I do with your project?” I asked.

  He smiled. He had a great smile. “Not much call for Doric temples. Throw the fucker out.”

  “Actually Iris came for it.”

  “Who?” he said.

  We both laughed at that. Girl of his dreams. Maybe it would be better now for her to stay there.

  “I was a lousy friend,” I said.

  Renny was a gentleman, even now, drugged-up and in pain. “There’s worse,” he said.

  “Who, a mass murderer?”

  “Me,” he said.

  I leaned down and kissed Renny’s forehead. “Thanks,” he said to me. I think that’s what he said. He was already falling back asleep.

  “He’s tired,” Marina said.

  Her hair was red, I could see that now. I blinked and was still stunned by how beautiful the color was. When I got my bearings, I wrote down my address. “Will you let me know how he’s doing?”

  I felt that I had dreamed him up — Renny was that honest and that true.

  “Do you think it’s possible for him to be happy?” she asked.

  She wasn’t much more than a girl.

  “I think anything is possible,” I said. It sounded as though I meant it.

  I left, back into the heat of the day. I was walking across the parking lot to my car, thinking about love and why it mattered. It was an idea, wasn’t it? Nothing real, nothing lasting, nothing to live or die for. In all the talks I’d had with Jack Lyons, I’d never once asked him what he thought about love. I hadn’t wanted to know.

  The clouds were moving quickly in the sky. There was so much blue and there was the color I’d missed the most moving across all that blue. So startling. So alive. It was a c
ardinal flying above the treetops. I stood there with a hand over my eyes. After so much time, even the smallest amount of that color hurt my retinas. I think I felt tears.

  I heard something. Renny’s sister running after me.

  “Hold on,” she called.

  I turned and waited for her to catch up.

  “Renny said you’d take care of this.”

  Marina held out her hands and I held out mine. She turned over the little mole Renny had rescued from the cat. It felt like a glove, a leaf, a wish.

  “What’s going to happen to him?” I said.

  “I’ll take care of Renny. When he’s better he’ll go to the University of Miami. Art history. Or did you mean the mole?”

  I hadn’t, but I supposed I should be interested in the poor thing; he was my responsibility now.

  “If you can’t find grubs or earthworms, Renny said to feed it American cheese and lettuce. Twice a day.”

  It was nothing I wanted. Nothing I cared about. But mine all the same. I held the mole up and looked into its blind face. And then I realized what love did. It changed your whole world. Even when you didn’t want it to.

  On the way to my brother’s house I saw flashes of red everywhere. I suppose I was recovering. Or maybe I was hallucinating, imagining what I wanted most to see. The sign on the mini-mart flashed so deeply crimson it took my breath away. Had such ridiculous things been beautiful before and I simply hadn’t noticed? I stopped, pulled into the lot, went inside the market, to the fruit aisle. Wrapped lettuce, cucumbers, peaches, lemons, and then, at last, a single pale apple, blushed on one side as if filled with life, with blood. I bought the apple and ate it in my car. It was delicious, all the more so because of its color. Sitting in my parked car, I felt absurdly alone without Renny. I’d gotten involved, even though I’d known it was always a mistake.

  I drove along idly until I was on my brother’s street. This was often where the story went in a fairy tale. Sun and moon, brother and sister, the guardian and the guarded, opposites who gave each other form, guided each other until they stumbled home. Ned was at the university; I knew an emergency meeting of the lightning-research group had been called. There was a great deal of worry about the lawsuit Renny’s family was threatening. None of the experts had offered him counseling, taken note that he might be unbalanced. Well, weren’t we all? It was true for all of the members of our study group. We’d been turned inside out, picked up and dropped down, flattened, wounded, torn apart. I’d seen the Naked Man several times, wandering through the park, stopping to throw tennis balls for other people’s retrievers and poodles. I’d seen the young girl with the mismatched socks at the coffee shop in town, her hand held over a tabletop, trying to make a spoon turn in a circle.

  Frankly, I thought if Renny’s family sued anyone, it should be me. Ignorant, selfish, greedy, blind, the friend who wasn’t there. Oh, definitely, it should be me, although what they might take in reparations was minimal: my cat, my car, my future, my past.

  I got out of the car onto my brother’s street, and tossed the apple core away. I suppose seeing Renny’s sister and her devotion had made me think of Ned. I’d been a terrible sister; I should have told him about Nina and A Hundred Ways to Die. Now, I knocked on the door. The car wasn’t in the driveway. Maybe Nina walked to her classes; the mathematics building wasn’t far. It was such a beautiful day. It was getting dark earlier. That was the only thing that was the same here as it was in New Jersey. By now the maples would have begun to turn red with the first rush of cooler weather. Here there was just a slow bluing of everything. Birds sang in the darkening sky, and a few palm fronds, ones that had turned dry with the heat, rattled and shook in the breeze.

  I made my way through the hedge of gardenia and peered into the window. A white sofa. A framed red heart on the wall. Nina opened the door and stood there. I think I’d woken her. Her hair was mussed. Her eyes were foggy. I wasn’t quite certain whether she recognized me. Even when she spoke, she wasn’t connecting in any way. I might have been the paperboy or a door-to-door salesman.

  “Your brother’s not here. He’s at the Science Center. There’s some sort of alleged crisis.”

  “Yeah, well, a friend of mine tried to cut off his hands. He was in the lightning study.”

  “Some people make their own grief.”

  Nina eyed me meaningfully. So it was true. She didn’t like me. She was wearing a smock with paint smeared over it. I noticed she didn’t invite me in.

  “Are you painting?”

  “Yes. Obviously.” The color was yellow. I could see that on her fingers, her blue jeans.

  “Do you have any American cheese?” I said.

  Nina laughed. A funny, broken sound, but light, like chimes. “You’re here for cheese?”

  I took the mole out of my pocket. Nina took a step back, stunned.

  “Jeez.” She nearly laughed.

  “I’m taking care of it for my friend.”

  Nina opened the door, and I followed her inside. We went through the living room, past the heart on the wall, into the kitchen. I could smell paint. I liked the smell: something covering up something, something brand-new.

  I sat down while Nina rummaged through the fridge. I put the mole down and stared at it. It didn’t move. I hoped it wasn’t going to die on me.

  “Please don’t put that thing on the table,” Nina said when she approached with a packet of orange cheese.

  I lifted the mole, set my backpack on the table, then placed the mole atop it.

  “Some things aren’t meant to be pets.” Nina sat down at the table. She gazed at the mole. “Fair creature who cannot see or hear or want or need.” She looked at me. “It doesn’t seem to like the cheese.”

  She went to the pantry for some of the food my brother left out for bats at their feeder in the yard. Fruit and veggies pureed and stored in a jar. I took a spoon of the mush and placed it in a little plate. The mole took a mouthful of what appeared to be smashed grape. I had the book in my backpack. A Hundred Ways to Die. The mole was probably sitting on it right now. I saw the pulse at Nina’s throat, delicate, pale pink.

  “What is it like to love someone?” I asked.

  Nina laughed. At any rate, she made a noise. “Ridiculous question. There are countless answers to that one.”

  “Then to you. What does it mean to you?”

  I could see into the yard from where I was sitting. The sky was salmon, then gray, then dark and deep, a bluish color, one I hadn’t seen before. Nothing like New Jersey. Something infinite, hot, faraway.

  Nina was gazing out at the yard.

  “I thought you loved him,” I said.

  Nina turned back to me, surprised.

  “Ned,” I said. “I thought you truly loved him.”

  Nina glared and went to the sink. She just stood there. Didn’t bother to turn on the water. Oh, she said. I think that’s what she said.

  “Look, I was there in the library,” I told her. “That’s why I’m saying this to you. You think I want to get involved? I didn’t want to see you, but I did. I know you withdrew A Hundred Ways to Die. If Ned knew what you were planning, it would destroy him.”

  Nina laughed, but the sound was dry. Nothing funny here.

  “I’m the one destroyed,” she said.

  “You’re planning to kill yourself.”

  “Oh, far worse.”

  Nina turned and left the room, so I followed her. I went down the dark hall. Nina was standing in the study, now cleared of furniture. She had painted one wall yellow. She hadn’t bothered to turn on the overhead light, but the room was glowing. Yellow did that. This yellow.

  “Nice color,” I said.

  Nina sat down on the floor, legs crossed. She’d covered the carpet with a drop cloth. I sat across from her and watched her cry. When she was done she wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands.

  “You want to know what love is? It’s the thing that ruins you.”

  Nina looked straight at me.
She reached out and for a second I thought she meant to hit me. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had. I was rude, asking too many questions, insinuating myself where I wasn’t wanted, spying on her. Instead, she took my hand and put it on her stomach. She was farther along than anyone would have guessed. She’d kept her secret well. I could feel the baby moving.

  “This isn’t ruin. This is wonderful. Why would you ever take out that book?” I said.

  I looked right into her, and I saw what love was to her.

  “The book was for him. In case it got too hard for him and he didn’t want to live through it. In case I couldn’t stand to watch his pain.”

  I didn’t want to understand what she was talking about. It was ruin; she was right. It was opening yourself to be destroyed. One minute you have everything. And then the next it’s all gone.

  This was that time.

  “He has pancreatic cancer. He wants to work as long as he can, which they say is less than a month. The baby will be here after the first of the year. The book was in case he wanted it. To go as he chose. It’s his right, after all. It’s his life. But then I couldn’t go through with it. Even a minute less time of him in the world would be too hard. I returned it.”

  Nina’s face was blotchy; the rims of her eyes were a pale red. Even I could see that color.

  “I can paint the room and you can watch me,” I said.

  “We can paint tomorrow,” Nina suggested. “At least there’s time for that.”

  We sat there in the dark, holding hands. And then I knew the answer to my question.

  This is what it was.

  II

  As soon as it was strong enough, I set the mole free in the yard at dusk. I put it on the grass near the hedge and it disappeared. One minute it was there, the next it was gone. I suppose this was familiar territory, the scent of the hibiscus, the feel of the dried grass. The mole didn’t leave any tracks; it just vanished.

  I thought about the way old blind women in stories found their lost loves and recognized them even though fifty or a hundred years had passed, even if their husbands or lovers had been turned into stags or monsters. I thought about how the familiar imprinted itself on you — a hedge, a scent, a touch. If someone had taken a photograph of Lazarus and me together and pinned it to a wall, anyone who’d seen it would have thought, They aren’t meant for each other. They don’t belong together. So we didn’t take any photographs. I had questioned how it was possible for this man to love me all along, but I had finally begun to understand the reason: I knew him. If he came to me as a bear or a deer, I would still know him. If I were blind, if it was at dusk, if a hundred years had passed, I’d still know.