The Ice Cradle

by Mary Ann Winkowski

  The ghost, who bore no resemblance whatsoever to Abraham Lincoln, was sitting in a bentwood rocker by the window. I should have played dumb at that point and pretended not to see him, as I pretended not to see every other ghost I didn’t feel like getting involved with, but politeness kicked in. I slipped quietly into the room and closed the door behind me.

  The phantom paused in his rocking and stood up. He was less than six feet tall, probably five ten or eleven, and he wore a sack coat over a matching vest and a dotted necktie with a starched, formal collar. Everything seemed too big on him, as though even before he’d been taken in death, he had shrunken away from the robust outlines of the man who’d been measured for the suit.

  “Who are you?” I whispered.

  He registered a look of surprise and appeared to struggle for words. Ghosts are so used to coexisting with humans who can neither see nor hear them that they’re often shocked into silence when I speak to them directly.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “You are able to see me?” he whispered. “Hear my words?”

  I nodded. I detected a slight accent.

  “But how?”

  “Search me.” I shrugged and smiled. “My name is Anza. Anza O’Malley.”

  “But I have never met anyone who—”

  “I know. There aren’t too many of us around. Are you a family member?”

  “I am,” he answered quietly.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Baden. Baden Riegler.”

  “So you’re Mark’s—”

  “Alby was my brother. This was his home.” Baden’s accent transformed the sentence into: “Dis vas iss home.”

  “Mark’s great-grandfather.”

  “Yes.”

  I had to think a minute. I wasn’t quick at sorting out family trees, once it got to branches of in-laws and cousins first removed, but this genealogical line was direct enough. Baden had been Mark’s great-great-uncle.

  “It’s a beautiful place,” I said.

  “It was after the style of our family’s summer home on Lake Attersee, in the Salzkammergut, Austrian Alps. My grandfather built that home. Perhaps you have seen paintings by Klimt.”

  “Gustav Klimt?”

  “He spent his summers there. Made many paintings. And Mahler, Gustav Mahler, the famous Austrian composer. It was a wonderful retreat for the artists in summer. This paper—”

  Baden gestured toward the luscious evergreen print of the wallpaper, which looked like some kind of historical pattern, expensively reproduced. “Like Alpine spruce, just as in the Alps. Here, I feel almost at home.”

  I would have been happy to sit right down in the club chair by the window and have a long conversation about the Alps in summertime and the music of Mahler, not that I know very much about Romantic music. But I didn’t want Lauren to walk in on us. I’d have to tell her soon about my paranormal abilities, but I didn’t want to do it with the ghost of Baden in the room.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered. “What happened to you? I’m here for the week, but we can’t talk too long, not right now.”

  He paid no attention to my caution about time. It had been a long time since he’d talked to anyone who could hear him, and he seemed anxious to get his story out.

  “It was a difficult time for the bank, for all banks. There were many, many pressures from the war between Russia and Japan, from the earthquake in San Francisco, the railroad expansion, the fall crops coming in so late. We were a small private bank, very exposed, and so Alby and I, we thought that perhaps I should go to Providence and talk to Mr. Webster, Theodore Webster. He was the president of the Mutual Building and Loan, and a good man, an honest man. We had met him in New York and we thought that, possibly, we might bring our banks together.”

  I nodded. “When was this?” I asked.

  “End of January, 1907.”

  It was as though a breeze all the way from the Austrian Alps had blown right into the room.

  “How long did you stay?” I asked the ghost.

  “I stayed for a week. I was a guest of Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich. Mr. Aldrich’s brother was a member of the Union Club, my club in New York.”

  “Were you on the Larchmont?”

  Baden looked puzzled.

  “Did you board a boat to go back to New York? A steamer? At night?”

  “Yes, yes. The weather was very poor. I nearly asked the driver to turn around and take me back to the Aldrich home. But I had been their guest for a week. I didn’t want to put them to any more trouble.”

  “Then that’s what probably happened. You died on the Larchmont and somehow ended up here.”

  “I don’t know,” he said sadly. “I only know that I have been here for a very long time.”

  “Why didn’t you cross over? What kept you from going into the light?”

  The ghost shook his head, as though the truth was too private to impart. He sank back down into the chair, and I held my tongue, trying to allow him some time to absorb what I had just said.

  A doorway of light had certainly opened for Baden at the moment of his death, as it does for every person who dies. If you have ever spoken to someone who has nearly died in an accident or during surgery, or read any accounts of that experience, you’ll usually hear mention of a tunnel, which leads to a doorway of bright, white light.

  Many people experience extraordinary bliss when their spirits leave their bodies at the time of death. They surrender easily and joyfully to the powerful force drawing them toward the light beyond the doorway. With every fiber of their beings, they resist being pulled back to life through medical heroics or a turn of the wheel of fate. Explaining later, they often utter the words, “I didn’t want to come back.”

  This light burns brightly for two or three days, during which time a spirit who is lingering on earth can remain among the people they love, visit the places they long to revisit, and even attend their own funeral, which every ghost I have ever encountered has done. Shortly thereafter, though, the brilliant white light begins to fade, and then it goes out completely. If the earthbound spirit has not yet passed through the doorway to whatever is on the other side—and I have no idea what that is, none at all—he or she is trapped in a no-man’s-land between this life and whatever comes next.

  If there is a next. I, personally, believe that there is. Maybe not the heaven of my First Communion catechism, but something sublime and mysterious. I’ve never forgotten an essay I read long ago, in which a scientist, a biologist whose name I cannot recall, talked about the curious fact that his faith wouldn’t go away, even though he had devoted his entire life to science. What it came down to for him—and I found myself agreeing with him—was the fact that he couldn’t quite believe that a pool of primordial muck could eventually evolve to the point at which it had the ability to compose the Mozart Requiem. Not without a little extra help.

  I suddenly felt a sneeze coming on and wondered, irrationally, if sympathy for the victims of the disaster at sea was causing me to develop a cold. That’s completely ridiculous, I thought as I closed my eyes and sneezed once, twice, three times.

  When I opened them, the ghost was gone.

  Chapter Six

  LAUREN BAKED THE bass with a topping of bread crumbs, spring onions, and chives, and she served the flavorful fillets on a pile of creamy mashed potatoes. I immediately resolved to make potatoes more often, for the first bite took me right back to the suppers of my childhood: the torn vinyl seats of our kitchen chairs, scratchy against the backs of my thighs when I wore shorts; the basket-weave pattern of the enamel tabletop that chilled my forearms in winter and summer. I tend to cook pasta as our starch, because it was Nona who taught me my way around a kitchen. Dad’s repertoire isn’t extensive, but he sure knows how to make mashed potatoes. When Joe and Jay and I were small, he often served them with thick chunks of kielbasa, coiled inside out from having burst in the boiling.

  Henry had surprised me by nearly finishing the f
ood on his plate. He would never have eaten this much fish at home, but I’d witnessed the satisfaction with which he carried the dressed fillets in from the back barn, where he and Mark had done the skinning and gutting, and presented them to Lauren in the kitchen. I noticed that he looked a little pale, but it was good for him to be reminded that fish didn’t come from the counter at the Fishmonger. To be squeamish about consuming their haul, after all of his and Mark’s work, might have elicited a little good-natured teasing, so for tonight at least, Henry managed to be a guy who ate fish. Enthusiastically.

  Now he was a guy who was lying on his stomach on the floor in front of a crackling woodstove, feeding tidbits of bass to one of the most corpulent cats I had ever seen, a languid orange tabby named Frances. Frances was eighteen and not above entertaining herself by taking a gratuitous swipe at your ankle as you walked by—assuming that this didn’t require her to move her unwieldy body.

  She spent most of her time on a pillow near the woodstove. All that was missing was a crown. But like any good queen, Frances was gracious to subjects who bowed and scraped and offered her the fruits of their labors. As Henry was presently playing that role, Frances was at her imperial best.

  And then she appeared, the little ghost girl. She sat down cross-legged on the floor beside Henry, and I noticed Frances pull her plump self to attention. Many animals are aware of ghosts, and Frances appeared to be among them. She began to sweep her tail back and forth across the floor, and for a moment, I feared she might be gearing up to release her anxiety by taking a swipe at my son’s cheek.

  “Don’t get your face too close,” I warned him.

  But Frances wasn’t interested in Henry. She had even lost interest in the fish, which, given the looks of her, had to have been a first. She arose, daintily for her size. She fluffed up her fur and hackles and padded cautiously over to where the ghost girl was sitting, grinning gaily. The cat pulled her ears back and produced the most alarming sound, like that of a partially blocked faucet being turned on at full force.

  Henry sat back on his heels and glanced at me, eyes wide, gleefully anticipating drama.

  “Frances!” said Lauren. “What’s gotten into you?”

  Mark stood up and began to clear the plates.

  Frances hissed again, lifted her paw, and swiped right through the little ghost girl, which sent both kids into a cascade of giggling. The girl made a face and swiped back. Frances emitted a guttural growl that sounded like something right out of Night of the Living Dead. Forget ghosts. You want scary sounds? Just make a large feline murderously angry.

  I felt sorry for the poor cat, but it was nice to see the little ghost girl smiling and laughing and behaving like a normal child. I just hoped that Henry wouldn’t start talking to her. The ghost lunged toward Frances, and the cat pulled away, then shocked us all by attempting to rise up onto her hind paws, growling and hissing and scratching the air.

  “What the heck?” asked Mark, glancing over from the sink. “All right, that’s enough.” Mark swooped down, caught the stunned Frances over his forearm, opened the back door, and tossed the baffled feline out onto the porch. “You,” he said, “are sleeping in the barn.”

  “She’s getting a little dotty,” he explained, sitting back down.

  “She’s psychotic, is what she is. I think she needs some—” Lauren broke off, glancing at Henry. “Kitty medicine.”

  “No,” said Henry, “she just—”

  “How about the Stooges?” I said quickly, cutting him off. Henry popped his mouth open in an expression of exaggerated surprise, because he’s not allowed to watch TV during the school week.

  “It’s vacation,” I said.

  “Yay!” said Henry, hopping to his feet.

  The little ghost floated up to his side.

  “Tea? Decaf?” Lauren asked.

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  Henry and the girl followed me into the den, where I fired up the DVD player and read the back of the case. Good! There were three episodes left: Cuckoo Cavaliers, Squareheads of the Round Table, and Disorder in the Court. At twenty-five minutes each, they’d take us right up to bath time. Henry clambered onto the couch, belatedly removing his shoes. The little ghost sat down at the other end, more interested in Henry than in the television. He ignored her, but that was normal. In a contest between the Three Stooges and a girl about his age, the girl didn’t have a prayer.

  It would remain to be seen whether she was still there when I came back; she might drift away out of boredom, as Silas, Henry’s other “imaginary playmate,” had often done. In the meantime, I could explain away any laughter or chattering coming from the room as evidence of Henry’s getting overinvolved with the on-screen hijinks.

  “Don’t go anywhere without telling me,” I warned him.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I’ll be right in the kitchen.”

  “I know,” he responded, flashing me a look that meant, And now would you please leave?

  Back in the kitchen, the talk was still of Frances. I had assumed that she was Lauren’s cat, and her story the classic tale of a doted-upon feline being supplanted by her owner’s boyfriend and eventual husband. But Frances belonged to Mark, or more accurately, to the house. She had wandered into the kitchen almost two decades ago, a stray kitten, and proceeded to make the place her home. She had earned the family’s affection by being a first-rate mouser, and had been sheltered and fed during the colder months by neighbors who stored their snow removal equipment in the Rieglers’ back barn. Every spring, though, when Mark’s family returned to the island, Frances took up residence again in the kitchen.

  “Does she still catch mice?” I asked.

  Mark grinned. “Look at her! What do you think?”

  “Oh, she’ll give it a go,” Lauren said, “once in a while, just for old times’ sake. But she’s just too slow. Poor thing.”

  Mark shot his wife a look I couldn’t interpret.

  “This is not about Frances,” she said cryptically. “I’m just nervous.”

  “Lauren believes all the old wives’ tales,” Mark explained.

  “They wouldn’t have lasted for all these centuries if there wasn’t some truth to them!”

  “Oh, come on,” Mark said. “Cats climbing into cradles and sucking the breath out of babies?”

  “Maybe they suffocate them! Who knows?”

  “She’d have to get into the crib first, and that ain’t happenin’,” Mark teased. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll build a little crib top—a crib canopy! And we’ll rig the whole thing up with bells!”

  “What if she gets through the bars of the crib?” Lauren insisted.

  “Fat chance,” said Mark.

  Lauren, who had been experimenting with dessert recipes, offered me a choice: lemon pudding cake, a brownie with or without ice cream, or what she called a “pot de crème.”

  “Or all three!” she said. “I need feedback, I really do. I’m trying to figure out what to put on the menu.”

  I love brownies—I suppose everyone does—but you can get a good brownie any time. I chose the pot de crème, having absolutely no idea what it was, only to be delighted when Lauren produced an antique English teacup in its saucer. It looked like something from which Miss Marple might have taken her afternoon cuppa. In the teacup had been baked an individual serving of a fragrant vanilla custard.

  “Oh my gosh!” I said after the first bite. “This is wonderful!”

  “Thanks,” Lauren said. “In season, we’ll have berries on top. But we’re trying to stay seasonal. And local. I mean, pretty local, given that we live in New England. On an island.”

  “All the more reason,” said Mark. “It’s here and along the shorelines that you can really see the damage.”

  I was so intoxicated by my custard that I must have shot Mark a dumb glance. Berries? Damage?

  “From erosion,” he clarified. “Parts of Nantucket are losing fifty feet a year. Beaches, houses, just—gone. Som
e of it’s natural, but not this rate of loss. The land’s just washing away.”

  “Because the polar ice cap’s melting,” I guessed, hoping to redeem myself in Mark’s eyes. I wasn’t a complete moron when it came to global warming. I was familiar with the concept of carbon footprints and with the true costs of flying raspberries halfway around the planet.

  “That and the nature of the storms we’re getting now, which is also a result of the warming,” Mark went on.

  I’d always assumed that the storms we were getting now were no different from the storms we had always gotten. But I grew up in Ohio and have only lived around Boston for a few years. I have no real feel for what’s “normal” in New England.

  “What kind of storms are we getting?” I asked.

  “Not as many hurricanes and nor’easters, but lots more storms that are moderately severe. Add to that the way our beaches are shaped—they’re long and broad and kind of flat—and well, let’s just say it’s not a good combination. If erosion keeps happening at the rate it’s happening now, Nantucket will be under water in a few hundred years.”

  “You’re kidding!” I said. “The whole island?”

  “Yup. They’ve already lost twenty-five buildings. Expect to lose fifty or sixty more in the next ten years.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “And we’re not immune here. They already moved the Southeast Lighthouse once, back in 1993. The edge of the cliff was wearing away, so they had to pull the whole building back a few hundred feet. Took them ten years to raise two million dollars to finance it, but if they hadn’t done it, the lighthouse would have fallen right into the ocean. The Bluffs are still taking a beating.”

  Lauren wore a patient, indulgent expression.

  “This is Mark’s passion,” she explained, “in case you haven’t figured it out.”

  I smiled. “You’re preaching to the choir. I even recycle those little wire twisties from the bread bags.”

  Mark was apparently relieved to discover that I was a kindred spirit, environmentally. “Our entire renovation was green,” he said, “though it did end up costing us more than we’d hoped.”