The Ice Cradle

by Mary Ann Winkowski

  I ignored him. I didn’t have any choice. What was I supposed to do, with all the others sitting right there? If he’d shown a shred of sensitivity to my situation, I might have found a way to excuse myself for a moment and lead all six of them to an empty room upstairs, but the ruder and louder he got, and the harder they all tried to disrupt the conversation I was having, the more determined I became to act like every other live human being, blind and deaf to their urgent entreaties.

  I took no pleasure in this. It made me enormously nervous, and then—as they retreated one by one, followed, in the end, by the dejected Duffield, his posture slumped in defeat—just as enormously sad. I hoped I would see them tomorrow. I hoped I could help them, in the end. But I hoped just as hard that I wouldn’t see them again tonight.

  Henry, who had been wired beyond belief and stuffed to the gills with cake and cookies from the after party in the school cafeteria, had fallen asleep at six thirty and was still asleep upstairs. We were all around the kitchen table, about to tuck into a first course of lobster bisque that Aitana had contributed. Mark was fairly bursting with news he had saved until we had all sat down for our dinner. As Lauren ladled the soup into bowls and Aitana handed them around, Mark could hold out no longer.

  “Okay,” he said. “So I called up this buddy of mine who lives in Cambridge. He works at a think tank at MIT, but before he did that, he used to write for the Globe and the Times, mainly about energy issues.”

  “Oh my gosh!” I said excitedly. “I forgot to tell you guys something! But go on—you go first.”

  Mark nodded and resumed. “So I ask him about Rawlings. I mean, I know where the senator stands on all the big issues, but I have to tell you, this fierce opposition to the wind farm just doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “It makes perfect sense to me,” I said. “He doesn’t want the view from his beach house ruined.”

  “I don’t think it’s that,” Mark said. “I really don’t. Anyway, I ask Andy—my friend, Andy Fuller—what he knows about Rawlings’s background, if anything. He tells me he’ll do some checking around, call a few people and get back to me.”

  “And?” Bert said as Lauren hopped up to check on the potatoes.

  “And,” Mark continued, “he calls me back last night. Turns out Rawlings is the son of Hiram Rawlings, who founded Rawlings Enterprises in the early fifties.”

  “What’s that?” asked Aitana.

  “The R of RMI Partners: Rawlings, McKeene, Itzkoff—three huge companies in the energy sector that merged into a multinational conglomerate in the early seventies, at the time of the first energy crisis. They all brought different things to the table, but now they’ve got a hand in everything to do with fossil fuels: oil refining, coal, petroleum coke, composite pipe manufacturing. And …”

  Mark drew this out, increasing the suspense. “They haven’t announced it yet, not officially, but they’re getting into the business of wind power. They’ve been hiring guys from European universities—ETH Zürich, TU Munich—because like all the companies that make their money from fossil fuels, they see the writing on the wall. Maybe not this year, maybe not in ten years, but one of these days, the party is going to be over. If they don’t get on top of the new energy wave while they can, it’s going to wash right over them.”

  “So you think he’s blocking the wind farm,” Bert said, “hoping that one day, his family’s company can get the gig?”

  “I don’t know,” Mark replied. “Possibly. He had to sell off his shares a long time ago, to avoid a conflict of interest. He just got out of the business. But his brother and sister are still on the board, and you know darn well that he’s got some kind of arrangement in place so that in the end, he’ll get his share of the family fortune. These guys didn’t get rich by being Pollyannas. They know how to take care of business.”

  Lauren appeared with the first of the dinner plates, and I stood up to give her a hand. She’d produced yet another remarkable meal—a beef daube with buttered fingerling potatoes and whipped butternut squash. I set down a plate in front of Aitana, and when I put Bert’s down in front of him, he placed his hand on mine and held it there briefly.

  “You really think it’s that?” Lauren asked, sitting down to her own dinner and picking her napkin up from the floor.

  “No way of knowing, really. But the strategy makes a certain amount of sense: defeat the little start-ups who’ve gotten the ball rolling, practically force them into bankruptcy by throwing obstacle after obstacle in their paths, and then when they drop out of the fight, because they just don’t have the resources to keep fighting any longer, swoop in and get the contract.”

  Bert whistled. We all traded glances and sat silently for several moments, partaking of the dishes before us.

  “And that’s not all. Rawlings has had a lot of dealings with a nonprofit based in New York. They’re basically a group of lobbyists with an environmental agenda, and they do a lot of good work, no question. They sponsor a couple of events a year, one in the Hamptons in the summer and another on Lake Placid—a ski weekend fund-raiser that attracts a handful of movie stars and many, well, ladies who lunch. And look good in ski outfits. They raise a lot of money. And to give them their due, they do some good things with it.”

  “But …,” Lauren prompted.

  “But … you look a little closer, and who’s involved in all this ‘green’ crusading?”

  Mark held up his hand and ticked off fingers as he listed names. “Manya Itzkoff and her husband, Sam; Hillary McKeene; Helena McKeene; Billy McKeene; Susie Dean-Itzkoff, wife of Ben.”

  “The children of RMI’s founders?” I asked.

  “Grandchildren,” Mark clarified. “Their houses in New York and in the Hamptons were all bought with money made in the oil business, but for all the world to see, these people are champions of the environment.”

  “Wait!” I said. “Before I forget again, I have to tell you what I found out!”

  “From whom?” Bert asked.

  “I have my sources. No, it’s Henry’s dad. He’s a Boston cop—well, actually, he’s a detective. He turned up a history on the couple in the car. He’s calling Chief McGill.”

  “That’s fantastic!” Aitana said.

  Bert looked a little subdued, but maybe I was imagining things. Had I popped the bubble by mentioning the other man in my life? He wasn’t my boyfriend, after all—he was someone else’s husband. And it wasn’t as though Bert was without his own complicated history.

  We ate quietly for several moments.

  “Everything’s great, Lauren,” I said. “It really is.”

  “Beyond great,” Aitana echoed, sipping her wine.

  “What was the name of the nonprofit?” Lauren asked casually. “Berkshire something?”

  “The Lenox Consortium,” Mark replied.

  I felt a little drop in my stomach, realizing anew how I had been played. I wasn’t just an innocent bystander in this whole convoluted campaign to topple the wind farm initiative, I was right in the middle of it. There wasn’t a single angle they hadn’t exploited. They’d probably planned it all that weekend, while eating Aitana’s meals.

  If the islanders didn’t yet know that the wind farm would be built among the bones of the tragic dead, they’d know it soon. Rawlings and his crew would make sure of that when the Block Island Historical Society celebrated the unveiling of the Larchmont Collection.

  Bert seemed to notice the change in my mood, but here I drew the line. I couldn’t tell any of them that I had a check upstairs from this very organization, that I was on the payroll of the bad guys. I had to figure out what I was going to do, and I honestly hadn’t a clue.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “SO HERE’S MY problem,” I said.

  It was almost eleven on Saturday night. Henry and I were leaving tomorrow, and I wanted nothing more than to spend every remaining minute with Bert, who at the moment was sitting next to me on the living room couch. Aitana had gone home to Peter, who wa
s nursing a cold and had decided to stay home; the dishes were done; and Mark and Lauren had turned in for the night. Dayne and Gavin had gone off to a bar called the Pier, the only game in town. None of their equipment was working, and they were giving it until tomorrow to dry out before they declared the weekend a complete and unmitigated disaster. Henry had been asleep for close to two hours, until Vivi made an appearance at about ten thirty, and now he was wide awake again. They were upstairs in our bedroom.

  “I know,” Bert said. “It’s okay.”

  He didn’t really know. It wasn’t because of Henry that I couldn’t spend the rest of the evening with him. Well, it was, but not for the reasons he imagined. We had a long night ahead of us, Henry and Vivi and I. Tonight, if all went well, I was going to explain the white light to Henry for the very first time and try to persuade Emilia to accompany both Jamey and Vivi to the other side. Tomorrow, I’d open the door for the rest of the spirits.

  “I’ll probably go out for a beer or two.”

  “Where?” I asked. I was immediately determined to make this work, if there was any way I could do what I had to do, get Henry back here and into bed, and get to where Bert was going before he decided to call it a night.

  “The Pier. Same place I sent your pals.”

  “They’re not my pals. Where is it?”

  “Down on the water—out past Rawlings’s house, a mile or two down that road.”

  “How late are they open?”

  “Another hour or two. Depends.”

  “I wish I could come.”

  “Maybe you will,” he said, getting up. “Call me, if it works out. I’ll come get you.”

  “You will?”

  “Course I will! Where’s your cell phone? I’ll put the number in.”

  “You already did.”

  “Did I?” he teased.

  “I’ll try to make it work,” I said.

  He nodded. “But if it doesn’t, no problem. I’ll see you tomorrow. Okeydoke?”

  “Okeydoke,” I said, and then he kissed me. Not like someone who says okeydoke, either, like someone in a country where the air smells sweetly of jasmine and other flowers I have never even seen.

  Emilia and Jamey resided in an old carriage house, on a rolling piece of land at the center of the island. Vivi led us directly there, moving so fast that Henry and I could barely keep up, but tonight I was happy for her momentum. Anything that would move this along quickly was all right with me.

  The carriage house was locked. Triple locked, actually. The house on the property had been closed up for the winter, and it appeared that the owner had not yet been down to the island to open everything up.

  “Can you go in and get her?” I asked Vivi. “Tell her we’re out here?”

  Vivi now shook her head. “She doesn’t like me.”

  “She doesn’t have to like you. Just tell her that someone else is here to see her.”

  “No. You.”

  I sighed. I’d been hoping for a few moments alone with Henry, to prepare him a little for what was about to happen: he was going to have to say good-bye to Vivi. At least I hoped he was, for both their sakes. He was going to experience a real crossing over, and it might not be an unalloyed pleasure. I’d been terrified the first time I witnessed it, and Nona had been preparing me for a long, long time. She hadn’t just thrown me in at the deep end, which was exactly what I was doing to Henry.

  If I’d had a plan at all, it had been to divide and conquer, sweeping Vivi up in the excitement of taking Jamey to their parents, while not upsetting Henry any more than I had to. But things weren’t going according to plan. There was a very good chance that I might not be successful at what I hoped to do for Vivi, and it wasn’t in my power to change that. If she wouldn’t cooperate, or if Emilia refused to surrender herself and the child she believed to be hers to something she probably couldn’t even understand, well, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do.

  I had to do some straight talking here, right now. It was the only chance I had to make something happen.

  “Okay, you two. Sit down here for a sec.”

  They ignored me. Henry had picked up a stick and was turning over some rocks with it, exposing creepy crawlies in the damp black dirt.

  “Come on, guys. Come over here with me.”

  I sat down on a log that ran the length of the carriage house, separating where the summer grass was cut from plants and weeds allowed to grow wild. Henry plopped down on one side of me, and Vivi sat on the other.

  “I want you to listen to me, okay?”

  “Okay,” Henry said. Vivi didn’t speak, but she also didn’t move.

  “It’s time for Vivi to go and see her mommy and daddy.”

  “No!” she protested.

  “Calm down. You’re not going all alone; you’re going to take your little brother.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said.

  “I don’t want her to!” Henry chimed in, pouting.

  I turned to Vivi. “You don’t? You don’t want to see your mother and father? They’ve been waiting a long, long time for you. They would be so, so happy to see you.”

  I so, so hoped this was true.

  She shook her head, but not as vehemently, and her gaze found my eyes. She was lost, and scared, and little, and all but completely alone in a very big universe. I hated to say what I had to say next.

  “Vivi, if you don’t let me get you—and Jamey—back to your parents tonight, you may not get another chance.”

  “Ever?” she whispered, eyes wide.

  “I don’t know. In my whole life, I have only known one other person who could do what I can do, and that is my grandmother. There probably are other people out there—I’m sure there have to be—but I have never met one single one of them. And if they live in China or Russia or England—”

  “Or on the moon,” Henry offered helpfully.

  “Right, on the moon, what good is that to you? They won’t know you’re here. So I know it’s really hard and scary, but you’re going to have to decide right now, tonight, if you want me to help you. Henry and I are going back to Boston tomorrow. There’s not going to be another chance.”

  Tears were forming in her eyes.

  I turned to Henry. “What do you think you’d do, bear?” I asked him. “Would you want to try to go find me and Daddy?”

  “Yeah!” he said, without hesitation.

  “Even if you were scared?” I pressed. “Would you make a run for it?”

  He nodded. He was absolutely sure. Now my own eyes were filling with tears.

  Vivi remained silent.

  “How about we try to talk to Emilia? If you don’t want to go in and get her, I’ll just knock on the door and tell her we’re out here and that we want to talk to her.”

  “Okay,” I heard Vivi whisper.

  “Okay,” I said. I stood up, walked over to the door, and knocked.

  “Emilia?” I called. “I’m sorry it’s so late, but I need to talk to you. Can you come to the door?”

  There was no response.

  “Emilia?”

  I was listening hard, and then I remembered: I wasn’t going to be hearing any footsteps.

  “Emilia, please?”

  Almost in unison, Henry and Vivi shouted, “Emilia!” Vivi followed this up with, “Jamey! Jamey! It’s me!”

  Jamey appeared first, and I had a cruel thought, one I instantly suppressed—get him and Vivi out of here, and through the doorway of white light, before Emilia had a chance to object. But I couldn’t do that to the poor, deluded phantom. It would be like someone’s kidnapping Henry, a nightmare I’ve had on a number of occasions. Jamey might not actually be Emilia’s child, but she believed that he was and loved him as though he was. I couldn’t do that to another mother.

  While we were waiting, though, I decided to bring up the white light.

  “Henry,” I said, intending to draw his attention to what I was about to do.

  But he and Vivi had gotten Jamey i
nterested in the worms crawling around underneath the rock. I’d answer his questions later, if he had any.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on an image of the carriage house. I felt that moment, which is like a pilot light suddenly igniting into flames, and when I opened my eyes, there was a small, bright circle on the weathered wood, near where the foundation of fieldstones met the weathered shingles of the structure. The building was old, very old; it had seen hard use. Probably as a result of the fire the other night, I had an irrational fear that the light would set fire to the ancient shingles.

  Emilia still hadn’t appeared, so I made the light brighter, and whiter, and the entrance wider and taller. Vivi looked up, but for Henry, the worms were far more interesting. Jamey stared and blinked, but they all seemed to accept this sudden manifestation as just one of those things that happened in life, something a benevolent adult would explain in due time, like icicles, thunderstorms, and scabs.

  Emilia suddenly appeared.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hello.” She looked a little confused. Seeing Jamey happily occupied poking at bugs with Henry—Vivi had stepped out of sight, back behind the carriage house, where I could see her but Emilia could not—she turned her attention to me.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Emilia,” I said.

  “Was there a problem with the fabric?”

  “I didn’t come about that, Emilia.”

  “Because I can order more. Mr. Sampson’s very good. It wouldn’t take more than a week or ten days.”

  “I had plenty of fabric,” I said, biding my time. Because out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Vivi had emerged from the shadows and had taken Jamey by the hand. Slowly, ever so slowly, she was leading him toward the doorway of light. Henry barely noticed. He had dug a long worm out of the ground, and it now hung like a strand of spaghetti over the stick in his hand.

  “It’s lovely fabric,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.

  “It is, yes. I thought about a pattern, but one tires of patterns, doesn’t one? A pure, solid color is so much nicer.”