The Ice House

by Laura Lee Smith

  He shut the door behind him and put the food on the edge of the sink. Sharon closed the lid on the toilet and sat down, bending to swish her hand through the warm water and agitate the bubbles. Lucy banged her hands on the side of the tub in anticipation.

  “Corry, have ye bathed this child?” Sharon said.

  “Of course I have,” he said. He glanced quickly at Lucy, as if he thought she might betray him. “We do it different, though. We sponge-bathe.”

  Sharon raised one eyebrow at him. “The child needs a soak!” she said.

  “Pah,” Lucy said.

  “That’s right,” Sharon said. “You tell him, love.”

  “She’s clean,” Corran said defensively. He licked his thumb and then reached down and rubbed at a sticky-looking patch on Lucy’s cheek. Sharon sat Lucy in the warm bathwater and they both watched as the baby let out an elated squeal and set to splashing.

  “Look at that,” Corran said. “Look at that sweet thing.” He stuck his tongue out at Lucy, and she smiled.

  “Oh, she’s a dolly,” Sharon said. She leaned over the tub. “I’m going to eat you up, Lucy!” Lucy threw her arms in the air and doused Sharon’s face, then laughed. Again, this was the problem! Sharon couldn’t resent Lucy; she loved the little thing so much. She clicked the space heater up to a higher setting and turned to look at Corran.

  “It’s freezing in this house,” she said.

  “I’m not cold,” he said. She looked at her son. Had he ever been cold? Corran ran hot. His thermostat was different from most people’s.

  “Well?” Sharon said.

  “Well, what?” Corran said.

  “Well, aren’t you going to fuss at me for bringing your father up here?”

  He shrugged.

  “Don’t make a difference to me,” he said.

  Well, obviously it didn’t, because both her ex-husband and her son seemed to operate on the principle that if you pretended you didn’t care, then maybe eventually you wouldn’t care. Fake it till you make it right? Well, wrong. It didn’t work that way. Sharon knew what their row was about, of course—Princess Pauline’s wedding ring. It was quite awful, Sharon would concede, to have your ring stolen and gone forever. Terrible. No doubt about it. But what kind of cosseted dimwit would leave an expensive piece of jewelry in plain view when she had a heroin addict staying in her house? Corran claimed he couldn’t remember taking the ring, but then, what could he remember when he was wrecked with heroin?

  What Pauline and Johnny never quite seemed to understand was that when Corran was using, he wasn’t Corran at all. He became somebody else entirely—a person none of them recognized, someone capable of lying and stealing and worse, if he was in need of a hit. Sharon didn’t like to admit this about her own son, but it was true. The drugs took her boy away and replaced him with a thief and a liar. But Lucy, it seemed, was bringing Corran back. Watching him clean up over the past year had been miraculous. A rebirth. She gave thanks every day.

  And yet still he and Johnny were in a standoff over this damn ring! He needs to apologize, Johnny kept saying. He needs to stop accusing me, Corran kept saying. For shit’s sake. Sharon had seen the ring. Pauline had come over enough times that Sharon was well acquainted with the ring. Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, it was no doubt very expensive. Yes, it was no doubt very meaningful. But for God’s sake, Pauline, Sharon sometimes wanted to ask, if it was as irreplaceable as all that, then what did you take it off for? Sharon looked down at her own plain gold band, the line of it gone wavy now in Lucy’s shimmering bathwater. She never took her ring off. Some of us didn’t grow up with money, did we? Some of us know how to value our possessions, don’t we?

  Oh, stop. Take it easy on Pauline, she admonished herself. Really, she was a perfectly nice woman, and she’d certainly done a bang-up job of looking out for the Iceman—of whom Sharon was still exceedingly fond—for all these years. She was just—well—Pauline was just spoiled. That’s all there was to it. Sharon remembered something she heard in an election campaign once. One of the two leading candidates had come from a much more privileged background than the other. The less bankrolled of the two went around speechmaking to the working class and underprivileged, trying to capture votes. “It’s not that he doesn’t care about money struggles,” he would say of his opponent. “It’s that he doesn’t know about money struggles.” That was Johnny’s second wife. She just didn’t know.

  “Can you just make peace with him?” she said to Corran now. “He’s come all this way for you.”

  “He’s come all this way for him, Mum,” he said. “The grand gesture. Whatever. And anyway, I’ve got no issue with him. He can do whatever he wants.”

  Sharon edged off the toilet and knelt at the side of the tub. “Hand me that,” she said, motioning to the jar of baby food on the sink. “And the spoon.” Corran handed them to her, and she popped open the jar and started spooning fat dollops of pureed chicken and rice into Lucy’s mouth. This was a trick she’d learned when Corran was a baby. To hell with the high chair and the mess in the kitchen. Feed the baby in the bathtub, and kill two birds with one stone. Clean child, full belly. Voilà.

  “He’s sick, you know,” she said to Corran.

  “Sick how?”

  “Brain cyst. He’s having surgery.”

  “Cancer?”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “But you never know.”

  Corran looked at her for a moment, and she watched him arrange something inside himself. He didn’t think she could see it when he did that. But she could.

  He shrugged and looked away. “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” he said slowly. “He always is.”

  Corran had no fear of death. It was remarkable. When she considered the dangers he had put himself through: Oil rigs. HUET training. Heroin! His bullish bravado used to terrify her. She used to interpret it as an actual death wish, used to worry that he was suicidal. But she’d come to understand that it wasn’t that he wanted to die. It was just that he wasn’t going to limit himself in the normal human ways. By removing fear, Corran removed constraints. It was astounding, if a bit potty. And he was right, actually, not to fear death. After all these years as a hospice nurse, Sharon knew there were plenty of things that were worse than dying. Fear. Pain. Grief. Anger. Those things were worse. Regret was the big one. Regret was so much worse than dying.

  Another knock came on the door, and Johnny entered.

  “Close the door,” Sharon said. “Cold.”

  He edged farther into the tiny bathroom and closed the door behind him. Sharon scooted her knees to the left to allow him a space to stand. “I was going to ask Corran if we should do something about that bicycle,” Johnny said. He seemed to be speaking to Sharon. She looked pointedly at Corran, who was standing no more than an arm’s length from his father. Johnny turned to him.

  “Is that your only transport? No car?” he said.

  “Nope. Just the bike,” Corran said.

  “Do you want to fix it, then?”

  “I can fix it.”

  “I know you can. I was just wondering if you need help.”

  “I just need an inner tube.”

  “Well, we can drive you down to the shops, then,” Johnny said. He seemed relieved to have something to offer.

  “There are no shops. Nothing but pub and off-license in the village,” Corran said. “They don’t have tubes.”

  “Maybe up in Fort William?”

  “It’s getting late,” Corran said. “And it’s Sunday.”

  “Well then, tomorrow,” Johnny said, a tinge of exasperation in his voice. He edged backward, but before he could exit the bathroom, Chemal tapped on the door and stuck his head in.

  “Why are you all in here?” he said.

  “Close the door!” Sharon said. “The baby’s in the tub.”

  Chemal edged into the bathroom and closed the door, effectively barring Johnny’s exit. Now they were all five inside a steaming bathroom the size of a toolshed. “I was just wonderin
g if we were going to do anything about food,” Chemal said, directing his question to Sharon. “You know. To eat.” Sharon looked at each of them: Johnny stiff and rigid by the sink, Corran sulking by the bathtub, Chemal now leaning against the door, waggling his fingers and making faces at Lucy. Really! Didn’t a single one of these men have a bit of sense? All coming to her to make all the decisions? She looked at Lucy in the bathtub and shook her head.

  “You blokes,” she said. “Get out of this bathroom and go do something useful. Run down to the pub for some fish and chips, would you? And get some milk and tea while you’re at it. And could one of you please change the bedding in this poor child’s crib?” And don’t you know they all looked relieved to be told what to do? They opened the bathroom door and shuffled out. And all I want to see, Sharon nearly added, are arseholes and elbows!

  “Pah,” Lucy said.

  “Oh, sister,” Sharon said. “You don’t know the half.”

  She finished bathing the baby and pulled her from the tub. She dried her off and fastened a fresh diaper. She curled Lucy’s damp hair around a soft-bristled brush and pinned the curl down with the blue plastic barrette. There. Something, at least, was in order.

  She’d credit them with this: They could follow directions. Within thirty minutes, Johnny, Corran, and Chemal had managed to procure a few simple groceries, a fish-and-chips dinner, and a clean change of sheets for the crib. Sharon set Lucy up on the activity quilt in the living room. Then she joined them at the kitchen table and sat where she could keep an eye on Lucy. The pleasing aroma of battered cod and ale seemed to have loosened up a bit of conversation, albeit on a rather bizarre topic.

  “Hot steak,” Chemal was explaining, “that’s what they say.”

  “What?” Sharon said. She pulled a piece of fish onto a paper plate and doused it with lemon and vinegar. She shouldn’t be eating this. She’d been back on Weight Watchers online since summer but the scale hadn’t budged an ounce, and she knew it was due to all these fried fish dinners here in Port Readie every weekend with Corran. She glanced around the little kitchen. Well, it wasn’t as if there was anything else to eat in the house tonight, and it was either eat the fish or go hungry. Circumstances. Always conspiring against her. She dug in.

  “Outer space,” Chemal said. “I was reading this article. Astronauts have reported that space smells like seared steak.”

  “That’s wild,” Corran said. “But how can they smell inside their suits?”

  “Like, when they come back aboard the craft,” Chemal said. “They smell it on their suits and equipment.”

  “I never thought about what it would smell like,” Sharon said. She turned to Johnny. “Did you?”

  He shrugged. He seemed to have barely touched his food.

  “You feeling okay?” she said.

  “Yeh,” he said.

  “I always think about what stuff smells like,” Chemal said.

  “That’s weird,” Corran said.

  “It’s not weird,” Sharon said. “It’s inquisitive. I think it’s smart.”

  “It’s just a habit,” Chemal said.

  “Like talking too loudly,” Johnny said.

  “Exactly,” Chemal said.

  “Like you’re doing right now.”

  “Oh. Right.” Chemal lowered his voice and looked sheepish. “Anyway. I have this theory that smell is the most underutilized of our five senses. I think if we paid more attention to smells, we’d be so much more self-aware. You know, as a species.” He munched on a chip and then turned to Corran. “So what do oil rigs smell like?” he said.

  “Diesel. And sweat. But also salt water. And rain.”

  “And Miss Sharon? What does your job smell like?”

  “Oh, Chemal,” she said. “Most of the time you don’t want to know. Poop and throw-up. Not pleasant. But then sometimes there’s more. Sometimes it smells like peace.” They were all quiet, contemplating the smell of peace.

  “What does ice smell like?” Sharon said to Johnny.

  “Like money,” Corran said, before Johnny could answer. “Right, Da?”

  Johnny looked at Corran for a beat and then answered slowly. “It doesn’t really smell like anything,” he said to Chemal. “I think it just smells like work.”

  Corran chuckled.

  “That funny, Corran?” Johnny said.

  “Nah,” Corran said. He stood up and looked through the doorway to check on Lucy in the next room.

  “I can see her,” Sharon said. “She’s fine.” It was reassuring that it occurred to Corran quite frequently to check on Lucy’s welfare, that his parental instincts were strong enough to have ignited that sense of constant surveillance peculiar to parents (or, in her case, grandparents) of small children. There were times when Sharon lay awake at night, worrying herself sick about how her son—with the ghost of a heroin needle in his not-too-distant past—could possibly manage the demands of single fatherhood with a baby who hadn’t even taken her first steps yet. But clearly he’d mastered the craft of tender hovering. Cooking, cleaning, laundering, and bathing seemed rather beyond his reach, but the devotion, it appeared, was coming naturally.

  Corran sat back down and looked at Johnny.

  “So, did you get a second opinion?” he said. “On the brain thing?”

  “How did you know about that?” Johnny looked at Sharon, and she took a sip of her beer before answering.

  “I thought he should know, Johnny,” she said. “There’s no reason to keep it a secret.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Chemal said.

  “So, did you?” Corran said. “Get a second opinion?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Johnny said.

  “Don’t you think maybe you should?” Corran said.

  “I trust my doctor.”

  Corran looked at Sharon. “Don’t you think he should get a second opinion?”

  “I think he should do what he thinks is best, Corran.”

  Corran shook his head. “Seems a little risky to me.”

  Sharon regarded Johnny, who was gazing at Corran expressionlessly. Good boy, Johnny, she thought. Don’t take the bait. She knew exactly what was going through Johnny’s mind: Corran was going to deliver a lecture on risk?

  “I got a second opinion,” Johnny said. “And a third.” He stared at Corran across the table. Corran stared back. For God’s sake, these two!

  “Well, anyway,” Sharon said. “I’m sure it will work out just fine. Let’s not worry about it tonight. Your da’s on holiday.”

  “I love that,” Chemal said. “How you say ‘holiday.’ We say ‘vacation.’ Sounds like a pharmaceutical. ‘Holiday’ sounds like a party.”

  Sharon looked around the little cottage, where her son and her ex-husband were squaring off in silent opposition across the table, where her granddaughter was starting to fuss on the activity quilt in the other room, and where a wounded adolescent was inhaling the last of the overfried fish and chips. Yeh, she thought. Some party. She yawned. Well, here’s part of the issue, she decided. She was tired. They all were. They’d been out late last night and then on the road half the day today, tromping through sheep shit to boot.

  “Let’s get settled,” she said. “Your father and I can share the pullout,” she said to Corran, who looked at her, surprised. “What? It won’t be the first time I’ve slept with him. Just no funny business,” she said, waggling a finger at Johnny.

  “Don’t worry,” he grumbled. Really, what a crank he could be!

  “And Corran, if you have extra blankets we’ll make a spot for Chemal on the floor. We’ll use the couch cushions. That all right, love?” she said.

  “Fine by me, Miss Sharon. I can sleep anywhere,” Chemal said.

  Lucy started to cry in earnest. Sharon looked at Corran.

  “She needs her bottle,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m going.”

  She watched him rise from the table and fetch the bottle from the refrigerator, and s
he was struck by the slope of her son’s shoulders and the abject fatigue she could see in his limbs. Corran. Oh, my sweet boy Corran. Why have you made it all so hard? She got up and took the bottle from him.

  “Sit down, Corry,” she said. “Finish your dinner.”

  She took the bottle to Lucy and rocked her in the darkness of Corran’s tiny bedroom. It was chilly in here. She’d bring the space heater in for Lucy after the baby fell asleep. From the kitchen came the sounds of dishes and washing up. Chemal was talking loudly, something about the Hubble telescope. What a smart pisser, that kid. She heard Johnny tell him to lower his voice. And after that, silence.

  Lucy Locket lost her pocket, she sang to the baby, and Kitty Fisher found it. Not a penny was there in it, only ribbon round it.

  Later that night, Sharon was roused from a light sleep by the shifting of Johnny’s weight on the flimsy pullout mattress. He was awake, she could tell. She eased gently over to her side, turning her back to him, and stared at the wall, listening to the familiar but long-forgotten sounds of Johnny MacKinnon’s night breathing, something she hadn’t known since the old hard days of Easterhouse. She wondered what Toole would think of this, the two of them sharing a bed. Her phone was on the floor next to her and she considered texting him to tell him about it, have a little laugh, but she decided against it. There was a good chance Toole didn’t know where he’d last put down his cell phone, and she didn’t want to set him wandering about the house, trying to locate the beeping.

  Toole was getting foggy. A terrifying word—dementia—came creeping into her consciousness now and then, but she kicked it out and barred the door as best she could. For now. He wasn’t even sixty yet! It couldn’t be. Still, she’d heard of these early-onset cases. She pictured Toole at home tonight, propping his throbbing knees up on extra pillows and arranging on his bedside table the doses of pain meds he’d take at intervals to get through the night.

  That was another thing. She was getting a little concerned about the pain med situation, to tell the truth. Toole’s doctor had warned him that he was on his last prescription refill, and already Toole had intimated to Sharon that maybe she could “hook him up” with something from the hospital when she went to see her patients if his supply ran out before his pain tolerance returned. She’d been astonished he’d asked. They were both career health care professionals; they both knew the inviolate ethics of dispensing regulations. Did he really think she’d risk her job and criminal prosecution to “hook him up” with illegal pain meds? “Forget it,” she had snapped at him. “Just get off your ass and increase the PT. You of all people should know.”