Alice Hoffman - The Ice Queen

“Your brother always gives the best parties,” someone said to me. I suppose that was a compliment. I found it surreal. I had never seen my brother speak at length to another person besides Nina and the funeral director in New Jersey when we were planning my grandmother’s funeral. Pine box, small gathering, white flowers that looked like a snowbank. I hadn’t known this part of him, just as I hadn’t know of his interest in fairy tales.

“You’re leaving?” Ned caught up to me as I headed for the front door.

Perhaps I’d never known him, and only thought I had. “Lovely party, but I don’t belong here. Look at them all.

I barely speak their language. Math and science. I do not fit in.”

“Library science,” my brother reminded me.

We both laughed. Had we ever done that before?

“Well, you seem much improved.” Ned sounded hopeful. I hated when he did that.

“Seems that way.”

My brother looked at me carefully. “Meaning?”

I wanted to say, meaning Death is not standing at my feet, not at the moment at any rate, not right now. I was thinking about the volume of fairy tales on the shelf. I wanted to ask Ned what else there was I didn’t know about him. Instead, I said, “Meaning yes. Sure. I’m improved. But you look like crap.”

My brother ran a hand through what was left of his hair.

“Probably a gift from our father. Baldness.”

“I think you inherit that gene from your mother. You look skinny, too. Maybe you’re the one who should go to the doctor.”

“I have to say, I’m glad you came to the party.” My brother seemed genuinely happy I was there. “I know you don’t like these kinds of gatherings.”

“I didn’t want to be rude.”

“Really? That never stopped you before.”

I could see through the crowd into the kitchen. Nina was back. She had shaken off whatever had possessed her in the garden and was now serving punch to the students.

“Thank Nina for me, will you?”

“Will do.” My brother looked behind him. Nina waved to him across the room. “Lucky me,” he said, and waved back.

I drove home, if that’s what my rented cottage could be called. I let the cat out and drank a tall glass of whiskey and fell asleep on the couch. The quiet was overwhelming. I liked to be alone, or so I’d always thought. I fell asleep quickly; I was drunk, I suppose, exhausted in some deep way. I dreamed that my sister-in-law was a butterfly. I dreamed my grand­mother was sweeping the floor. I dreamed I reached into a dark bucket of water and felt fish swim through my fingers; the coldness of that water turned to heat and rose up my arms, through my bloodstream, up to my chest.

There was a knock on my door, and in my dreams I turned from the bucket too quickly and tipped it over. Water spilled on the floor, one drop at a time. Clear and then white and then red. That’s the way truth always surfaces in fairy tales, written in glass, in snow, in blood. As I came to consciousness I had a feeling of dread, the way I had on the morning after my mother’s accident. You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you’re dreaming of butterflies.

I was still in the confines of my dreamworld as I went to the door. Rats, cats, bats, any of them might find their way up the path. I felt true panic. It was a feeling I remembered wholly. Go back to bed, it’s too dark, it’s too icy, it’s too late.

I was relieved to find that my caller was only a delivery-man, bringing me a cardboard box of flowers. I laughed and had him wait while I went to find my purse. I tipped him ten dollars, extravagant for me.

Giselle came running in, something in her mouth.

“You’ve got a little hunter,” the deliveryman declared.

“Oh, lovely.”

Two little paws hung out of the cat’s jaws.

A murderess. The perfect pet for me.

A trail of blood dripped onto the floor as the cat trotted by. I couldn’t see the color, but I remembered it. I had hoped to see the feathers of some nasty crow or the whiskers of a rat, but instead Giselle dropped one of the moles she was always waiting for beside the hedges. Blind, and soft as a glove, helpless. Caught at last.

Before I went over to deal with the mess, I lifted the cover of the box of flowers. Roses. Right away, I called to the deliv­eryman to ask what color they were.

He laughed, then saw I was serious.

“Color-blind,” I explained.

The deliveryman was young and apologetic. “Sorry, I thought you were kidding. They’re red.”

But they were white to me, as my admirer knew they would be. The duality of the gift amused me, but it also frightened me. One visit and Lazarus Jones thought he knew me. Fairy tales are riddles, and people are riddles, too. Figure one out and he’s yours forever, whether he likes it or not.

Giselle was hovering over her prey in a corner; I shooed her away with a newspaper.

“Go on! Leave it alone!”

The cat had played her part, but the game seemed all wrong. The mole was curled up like a leaf. I sat down and when the poor little thing didn’t move, I picked it up with a bit of newspaper. The mole was lifeless. All the same, I held it up to my ear, the way some people do with shells to hear a far-off sea.

After a while I got a shoebox from the closet, filled it with tissues, and lay the mole’s body inside. When I had time I would bury it next to the hedge, where it belonged. Now I was busy cleaning the blood off the floor, a trail that looked like snow to me.

Giselle had figured out the riddle of the mole: stay beside the hedge long enough, it will appear and be yours. Blind and gentle, plodding through the dark, unable to see stars or teeth, it assumes what is safe one day will be safe again the next. That was how you caught somebody, easy as pie, in one bite. That was how I’d been caught, too. I put the roses in the freezer overnight. Cold storage for a cold heart. I didn’t know if I wanted them or not. In the morning, when I took them out from between the ice cubes and the cans of frozen juice, the roses shimmered. That’s all someone in the grip of an obsession needs: the single possibility that desire might be real, a tiny shred of evidence to show you’re not all alone in the dark. I thought of poor Jack Lyons, offering me field flowers in the parking lot in New Jersey. I thought of Jack far too often as a matter of fact. All the same, he hadn’t a clue as to who I was. But these roses sent by Lazarus Jones were so sharp a person could cut herself and draw blood. That was the key to my riddle. For all I’d done, for all I’d wished, a rose made of ice was exactly what I deserved.

I drove out in the morning, when the sky was still dark and the rising heat pressed down on the earth. There was rain in the forecast, and I could feel the change in the atmosphere inside my body. In the night I’d dreamed I had long dark hair. There was ice all over my body. I was so cold in my dream that I woke up shivering. Now in the brutal temperature of the hazy morning I stopped at a service sta­tion, bought a diet Coke and gassed up my car. I crunched on ice. There was the smell of oil and oranges and heat. I’d been more careful about my clothes this time: A black T-shirt, jeans, sandals, nothing that would make anyone stare. It took me close to an hour to get to the orchard on this occasion, time enough to change my mind. I wasn’t thinking much. I wasn’t seriously hoping for anything. I had the radio on and before I knew it I was listening to Johnny Cash. I thought of the roofer who’d been struck while doing penance for the affair he’d been having; he should have known he was done for when he heard “Ring of Fire.” And here it was again, playing on the AM station I was tuned to. People played that song a lot around Orlon. They listened to the warning, then walked right into the burning ring, clear­headed and stupid at the same time.