A Late Hard Frost

by Stephanie Joyce Cole

  What could she say that would make sense to Sabrina? Stock phrases popped into her mind, but they were trite and meaningless. These things happen to a lot of people, it will get better, we’ll get through this together—those words wouldn’t help. To comfort Sabrina, Merry had to walk beside her in her world.

  Merry bit her lip, thinking. “Maybe this is like the hard frost, the one that comes late in the spring.”

  Merry moved closer to Sabrina, draping her arm over Sabrina’s bent shoulders as Sabrina whispered, “…a frost?”

  Sabrina leaned heavily into Merry’s side, her body shaking. Merry pitched her voice low and spoke slowly. “When spring comes, and everything’s going fine, the way it’s supposed to, out of nowhere can come a hard frost, a killer frost, and all the new spring growth dies. And at first it seems like the worst thing, that everything you worked for, everything you’ve planted, is gone.” She paused, searching for the right words.

  “It’s unpredictable, the frost, but…” She drew a deep breath and continued, piecing the words together, hoping they made some sense. “…sometimes a hard frost doesn’t kill off everything, and when it’s all over and gone, it’s made room for something wonderful to grow…” It sounded lame and scant comfort, but it was also true. In her own life, all the pain Michael had inflicted on her was still recent enough to sting deep when she remembered it, but losing her marriage led to finding Nick. But now of course Nick was lost to her too. She pushed those thoughts away. This was about Sabrina, helping Sabrina.

  Sabrina nestled her head under Merry’s arm. She was barely more than a child. Merry held her tight, feeling her sobs subside and her breath settle. “We need to make a plan, Sabrina. I will help you. But you need to tell Ren you know about this, and Antonia has to leave, and we all have to watch out for Willy. For the next few days, you and Willy may want to stay at the studio with me, while you sort out your thoughts. We can make room. This won’t be easy, but I’ll be here for you.”

  Chapter 19

  The king salmon’s tail waggled over her shoulder, knocking against her butt. Merry clutched its head against her stomach, its towering rhinestone crown flopping against her knees. Three more trips, she thought, just three more trips should do it.

  She heaved the costume into a growing stack of iridescent cloth in the middle of the large clearing, a pile of deflated, shiny fish awaiting their occupants. She groaned and bent backwards, her hands on her hips. The fish weren’t terribly heavy, but their rigid fins and interior boning made them awkward to carry, and she had to hunch over as she moved them from Scary’s car to the pile in front of the dance platform. She was almost finished, and just in time. The dancers were due right about now.

  As if on cue, a cheery hello rang out from the border of trees. Mabel was the first dancer to arrive, and she pranced and giggled as she made her way across the hillocky space, moving more like a plump, aging chicken than a spawning sockeye. Scary was right behind her, resplendent in a salmon-colored shirt and sky-blue shorts. He was wringing his hands, but it didn’t worry Merry. She’d been around him long enough by now to realize that he was a master of the dramatic entrance.

  Scary came to an abrupt halt at the edge of the pile of costumes, letting out an enormous sigh. He reached over to give Merry a brief one-armed hug.

  “Oh, Merry, I’m so nervous.” He picked up one of the fish and shook it loose, this one striped with lines of silver and gold musical notes. “What if no one comes?”

  Merry grinned and moved over to hug him properly. “You know that’s not going to happen. You’re already the talk of the town. And we have cheap beer. Everyone will be here.”

  Scary’s Dancing Salmon Festival was the latest of his famous experiments, part art installation, part theatre, part (he said) a way to bring rarified high art to the Homer community.

  Merry had pointed out that Homer already had the Shorebird festival and the Jackpot Halibut Derby, and suggested that maybe he could piggyback on one of those events, but Scary was adamant that an entirely new event was required. Those were fine, he said (with a bit of a highbrow sniff) but his festival was going to be completely different. He had spent weeks designing the costumes for the fish dancers, the most extravagant for the king salmon, and lesser but still spectacular costumes for the silvers and the sockeyes. Merry hadn’t been able to help with the costume production since she had never learned to sew beyond a simple button or hem, but Patsy in the Bait Shoppe was an excellent seamstress and was happy to take on the extra work. Merry had begun to wonder, too, if Scary’s many visits to the Bait Shoppe were purely costume-related. He seemed to linger there with Patsy a lot longer than seemed to be necessary, and Patsy’s wide, pretty eyes sparkled when she looked at him. Before Merry’s view of Scary’s life had taken a right turn, she wouldn’t have noticed, but now, well, maybe Scary was finding a new romance. She smiled. Scary would be a lot for a woman to take on, but their lives would definitely be lively.

  As Scary had worked up his festival designs, Merry wondered, and not for the first time, how he paid for implementing his wild ideas. Several times a year, a Scary event or installation would pop up in town, sometimes to acclaim in the local paper but never, as far as she could tell, creating any significant revenue. Scary might take pictures of an installation that would morph into postcards for sale in Moira’s gallery, but that couldn’t make much money. His paintings were wonderful, and they sold well, but she calculated that there just weren’t enough of them to bankroll his more bizarre creations, which was where his heart lay. She suspected that a trust fund lurked somewhere. He talked sometimes of growing up in New York, an only child of a doctor and a stockbroker, both dead now. Over glasses of red wine on the front porch one fine evening, he told her of arriving in Homer on a July night when the sun over Kachemak Bay was finally setting, the fading light turning the water a steely, glittering, brilliant gray and the glaciers on the mountains across the bay rose pink. He’d found his heart then, he told her, and just stayed. Just like that.

  They’d shared many glasses of wine since she arrived. She finally stopped worrying about moving out of the apartment above the studio. For the time being, it was enough. Scary was enjoying her company, and she had evolved into his intrepid assistant and advisor. He firmly rejected all her attempts to pay any rent, so she simply went ahead and bought groceries for them and took care of problems that Scary didn’t have the time or inclination to address. She found an Internet site for the handmade paper he just had to have for the hundred messages about sausage that he hung in long strips from the branches of the trees around the butcher shop. (Since he hadn’t asked the butcher for permission, it was fortunate that most of the messages were in favor of sausages.) She researched the best and most humane way to discourage the sea of voles that washed across the kitchen floor every night, leaving kernels of evidence to be discovered underfoot each morning. She managed to dissuade him from some of his more far-fetched projects, like the zipline for dogs.

  Finally, the financial arrangements in Florida were winding down, as much as they could in light of the complications from Michael’s legal situation and pending trial, and now she had more time. Now she occasionally helped Moira in the gallery as the mass of June tourists flooded through. And as the weeks passed, the pain in her heart became bearable. She tucked it away, and most of the time that worked. Scary sometimes looked over at her, stricken, when he accidentally mentioned Cassandra or Nick, but she waved away his concern. It did still hurt, no question about that, but she was moving through it. There were times her loss still caught her unawares and took her breath away. Just two days ago she had glimpsed Nick across the street, going into the hardware store, and the crushing longing for him welled up inside her chest and she’d had to stop short, leaning up against the splintery wood of the wall of the laundromat until the pounding in her ears stopped. It was inevitable, in such a small town, that she would see them both, Cassandra and Nick, from time to time. When the pain emerged, she tal
ked to herself, out loud sometimes if she was alone, telling herself that it would pass, that one day in the future she would be able to see them and walk by, head held high, meeting their eyes.

  Now more dancers were arriving and pawing through the pile to find their costumes. Scary was plucking at fins and tails as they donned their fish clothes, nattering about the needed synchronized movement for spawning and the appropriate level of shimmying. Merry eyed the swirl of colors with admiration. The golden outline of the Grand Canyon on the side of the king salmon was certainly odd, but nevertheless it was beautiful. She worried a bit about the stability of the sockeye heads sporting vintage television rabbit ears that were meant to waggle in sync during the chorus of the first dance. Donna and Katy from The Twins wrestled with the boards for the hot dog stand, while Mel the DJ set up his speakers on one corner of the makeshift stage. The opening number would combine sections from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring with Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA. She smiled to herself. Whatever her life had become, and was still becoming, it certainly was interesting.

  Sabrina was making her way across the meadow toward her, looking at her feet and picking her path carefully. Willy grinned and sucked his fist, swaying in his high backpack throne. Merry’s heart swelled as she watched her. Sabrina and Willy were still staying at the studio, and though it was a bit crowded and noisy at times, their presence also made it easy for Merry to help with Willy while Sabrina took some time to sort out her future.

  Only a few weeks had passed since Sabrina learned of Ren’s broken promises, but after the first few days of heart-wrenching grief when she wouldn’t see Ren, Merry was impressed to see Sabrina pull herself back up. Ren was desperate to have both Sabrina and Willy back home. He was deeply repentant and wise enough not to offer any excuses or justifications. Antonia had made a quick exit, without so much as a word of apology to Sabrina. As cruel and cold as that seemed to Merry, Sabrina didn’t seem to notice. She was focused on her life now, her life with Willy, and what was to come next. Sabrina and Ren were negotiating through the awkwardness of their sudden separation, logistically and emotionally. Merry knew from her personal experience how exhausting that experience was, on every level.

  “Do you think I should stay married?” Sabrina had suddenly asked one morning, in the middle of spooning oatmeal into Willy’s eager mouth. He had made it into a game, and as a result, cereal was landing everywhere. His happy gurgles filled the little kitchenette.

  Merry looked up from her coffee cup, surprised. It was a big question, and it had come out of the blue.

  “Well,” Merry said, carefully placing her cup back on the table. “Do you want to stay married?”

  Sabrina cocked her head to one side as she wiped oatmeal out of Willy’s hair.

  “I still love him, Merry. This has been terrible, more than terrible, but I think we can get past it. What he did was awful…” Her voice choked then, and she paused for a moment. Willy’s plump, little hands thumped against the tray of his high chair. “…and I don’t want to get hurt like that again, but I do, I really do love him.” She swallowed hard and stared across the table at Merry. “Do you think I’m being stupid?”

  Merry shook her head slowly. “No, no I don’t. I think you have to be careful and take it slow, Sabrina, but if you can forgive him, well, that’s a gift to both of you, and of course, to Willy.”

  Sabrina bit her lip and turned back to the task of mopping down Willy.

  If you can forgive him… It was a big order. Merry tipped her coffee cup back and forth, watching the liquid slip and slide from side to side. The scent of fresh coffee collided with the sudden onset of dirty diaper reek, and Sabrina pulled Willy from the high chair and headed to the bathroom, cooing at him as she carried him on her hip.

  Forgiveness. Merry leaned back in her chair, thinking about the searing pain of Michael’s adultery and its part in the destruction of her own marriage. She hadn’t exactly forgiven Michael, in fact part of her was still angry and raw, but now she felt sorry for him too. As he betrayed her, he had destroyed his own life. She couldn’t imagine him finding happiness any time in the future, because she couldn’t imagine him trying to change. He had become a hard, brutal man. She sighed and closed her eyes. Michael had made his choices, and she was grateful that they no longer bound her. She whispered part of the meditation that she recited every night, this time bringing Michael to mind: “May your life be filled with loving kindness…” She smiled. Her marriage to Michael was receding into her past, as it should.

  Snatches of a song Sabrina was singing to Willy drifted from the bathroom. Sabrina’s voice was thready but pure. “Mama’s going to buy you a diamond ring…” Merry grabbed the dirty dishes from the table and moved to the sink. Sabrina had a long way to go before the wound Ren had inflicted was put behind her, but Merry sensed she was on the right road. She was taking care of herself and Willy, and that was the most important thing.

  Now, across the meadow, Merry watched Sabrina wheel to the left to make a beeline for Scary, calling his name. He threw both his hands up in the air in a gesture of wild panic and ran towards her. Merry grinned and waved at them both. Since Sabrina and Willy relocated to the studio, Scary had happily integrated Sabrina into his madcap universe, and Merry thought it was good for both of them. Now she saw him pointing right and left and then holding his head, until Sabrina took his arm and led him back towards the stage. She too had learned how to handle Scary’s theatrics.

  Then, at the far ending of the clearing, she saw Cassandra. Cass, staring fixedly at her. Cass, walking slowly, moving towards her.

  ***

  Cassandra’s legs developed a will of their own. Step by step, she moved toward the meadow, toward the spot where Merry stood in the midst of a jumble of colors and shapes strewn on the ground around her. Her brain was a blank. She had no idea what she would say or do once she had crossed the meadow and stood in front of Merry.

  At this moment, the horrible mess that had crushed their friendship wasn’t standing between them. What Cass wanted, what Cass needed so very desperately, was to be enfolded in the quiet warmth that was Merry. So much was wrong, so much needed to be fixed, and Cass needed Merry to help her figure it all out, to help her fix it.

  Halfway across, she almost turned back but, trembling and short of breath, she put one foot in front of the other until she stood right in front of Merry. Merry stared at her, her face solemn and still, her arms at her sides. The last of the costumes had been picked up and carted away, and it was just the two of them, at the edge of the clearing. Some distance away, the bustle of the festival preparations continued, but the two stood as though they were enveloped in a bubble of a world all their own.

  “Merry.” Cassandra’s voice scraped.

  Merry nodded, her face impassive, her eyes holding Cass’ as if she were staring down a threatening dog, poised to lunge.

  “Merry, I want…I need to talk to you.”

  Merry swallowed but didn’t answer.

  “I really need to talk to you. I miss you. This whole thing…” She swept her arm in a wide loose open arc. “Everything that’s happened, and the ways things are, it’s just all wrong. So wrong. We have to talk.”

  Merry sighed and looked down at the trampled grass. “Cassandra…so much has happened. I don’t know…”

  They both jumped, startled, at an ear-splitting shriek from the sound system near the stage. A rowdy crowd was gathering, dropping blankets and opening folding chairs, claiming their territory in front of the platform. A huge black dog of uncertain lineage broke away from a small boy and careened across the ocean of blankets, to the accompaniment of screams and curses. At the edge of the stage, the dancers shuffled back and forth, lining up, getting ready for their opening number. Scary paced back and forth in front of the dancers, wringing his hands.

  “Look, I’ve got to go. I’m helping Scary and there’s still a lot left to do.” She shook her head slowly. “I’m not sure what there is to ta
lk about, but okay, we can talk later if you like. Probably not today, with all this going on. But sometime soon, maybe at The Twins.”

  “No, not The Twins.” Cassandra shook her head. The last thing she wanted was dozens of eyes and ears focusing on their conversation. “Can you come to my cabin? It will be more private. Please.”

  Merry nodded slowly, as she turned towards the stage, scanning the horizon. She headed toward Scary, who was now facing the line of waiting dancers, waving his arms wildly. “Yes. All right. I’ll come. Soon.”

  ***

  The festival had been a rousing success. It wasn’t clear to Merry whether or not the dancers conveyed whatever narrative Scary had intended to the audience spread across the meadow, but the program engendered a chorus of applause and cheers which only grew in enthusiasm as more and more beer was consumed. The final number, during which the dancers moved and then froze into odd seated positions accompanied by a cacophonous blend of trumpets and violins, was perhaps not quite so well-received, but that might have been due to the large percentage of the audience who by that time dozed on their blankets in the late afternoon sun. As the dancers dropped their costumes in a glittery pile and the beer tent attempted to deflect latecomers in its effort to close up shop for the day, Merry smiled at Scary and Sabrina, huddled close at the edge of the stage. Scary slumped dramatically against Sabrina’s shoulder, the picture of sated artistic exhaustion. Sabrina had deposited Willy on a nearby blanket, where he happily rocked on his hands and knees, seemingly ready to attempt a crawl.