Alice Hoffman - The Ice Queen

The day was humid and now it started to rain. We could hear the rain hitting against the roof. There was thunder. I could be anywhere. I couldn’t leave.

“I need it to be dark,” Lazarus told me.

I didn’t care. I wanted whatever he did. He drew the blinds over the window, shut off the light above the sink. We could barely see each other. Then the last light. That one out, too. We were in the dark, groping, following our hands, hearts, skin. In truth, I was grateful for the dark. I wasn’t beautiful. I couldn’t forget that I was ten years older than he. I slipped off my clothes, stepped into the tub, shuddered in the cold water. He got in right after me, desperate, I think, wanting me; it must have been that. I could feel the edges of heat in the water. I held on to the smooth sides of the bath­tub. I thought of fish in a bucket. Death standing at the foot of a bed. When he pulled himself on top of me, I imagined I might drown. Maybe I was supposed to. For all I knew, this was the other half of my death wish — half fire, half water. He drew me under and kissed me, deep, underwater, un­ending. By the time we came up for air, I was burning. I turned on the cold tap and let it run. Over my shoulders, over my chest, in the dark that I was grateful for. I could have been anywhere, but I was there. I could have driven west or east, but I had driven here to him. I closed my eyes. Burn me. Drown me. Do anything. When he moved inside, I pulled him deeper.

When I got out of the bathtub my legs were shaking. Water had spilled onto the floor. Every step was slippery, dangerous, cold. “I have to do something,” I said.

I wrapped a towel around me, then went to the kitchen to open the freezer. My hands were shaking. This was really crazy. I got a piece of ice and pushed it up inside me, where I was burning. I didn’t care. It was worth it. I wasn’t sure I had ever felt anything before.

“I hurt you,” Lazarus said.

He had pulled on his clothes and come up behind me. Nothing had hurt me since that night on the porch; nothing had even come close. I was shaking, still wet, so he put his arms around me. I could feel the heat through his clothes. I could hear his heart beating, the strong heart that had de­fied death, that had stopped and come back to life. Nothing could have made me want him more.

I wasn’t much different than that greedy, selfish girl I’d been years ago. Only now I didn’t want the universe, not the whole wide world. Just this and nothing more: Make me feel something, anything, in cold water, on a bed of ice, on a night so dark it’s impossible to tell the difference between the earth and the sky. Let it happen again and again, time after time. Hurt me so I know I’m still alive.

A re people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside? At the library I couldn’t help but notice which patrons checked out the same books. They ap­peared to have nothing in common, but who could tell what a person was truly made of? The unknown, the riddle, the deepest truth. I noticed them all: the ones who’d lost their way, the ones who’d lived their lives in ashes, the ones who had to prove themselves, the ones who, like me, had lost the ability to feel.

I kept going out to the orange grove. It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t have to. It was as though I had one map inside my head and it led to the man who was waiting for me. Someone who was as alone — maybe even more alone — than I was; someone whose story dovetailed with mine — burned alive, trapped in ice. I thought about Jack Lyons — I might have learned how to be human with him, but what good would that have done? There was so much more to learn from Lazarus. After the first few times we were together, I had gotten up the courage to ask what it had been like to be dead. I’d pleaded to know, but he wouldn’t tell me. All the same, I wouldn’t let it go. I nagged and begged. Did it hurt, was it heavenly, was there white light or the darkest agony? Lazarus refused to say. He had a beauti­ful smile, one that made me want him even more. Want, I had discovered, was a country of its own. Everything else drops off the map: oceans, continents, friends, family, the be­fore, the after — all of it gone.

Throughout the summer the only thing I could think about was the road to Lazarus’s. I’d dream about it: the stop signs, the white line, the turnoff, the front porch, the door. My brother phoned and left a few messages, but I didn’t bother calling back.

“Are you alive?” Ned’s familiar voice asked one day when I played my phone-message tape.

Actually, yes, I wanted to tell him. Amazingly, incredibly enough, I seemed to be. But he wouldn’t understand. How could I explain that on rainy nights Lazarus and I sat out on his porch in the dark, drawn there by whatever was inside us, some external weather trapped and mirrored inside our blood and bones. I felt addicted, to the danger, the rush of being alive, taking chances. We had sex outside, in the dark, with the rain coming down. We went down to the pond, turned away from each other, took off our clothes. We didn’t have to see each other to know what we wanted. It was a story that no one else knew.

Now when I went to the survivor group I felt nothing, no kinship. I wanted to run away from their sorrowful tales of lives gone wrong. I came late, left early, avoided the girl with the mismatched socks when I saw her on the street. We were nearing hurricane season, a time when lightning-strike survivors feel more stress than usual. Anything can happen at any time. In group, we were told safety tips. Stay away from windows; have a hurricane cellar. And there I was on the porch on nights when the wind nearly carried us away. I wasn’t thinking of safety at all.

“Where’ve you been?” Renny asked me at the snack table after one survivor meeting. There were oatmeal cookies and cream cheese brownies and some gray thing I supposed was red velvet cake, allegedly a specialty around here.

Lately, I’d been more selfish than ever. I had a secret dark world and it suited me. In my greed, I had forgotten about Renny. I was that sort of friend, I suppose, the bad sort, and I was embarrassed by my own self-involvement. Renny looked nervous and underfed. Not that he was my responsibility.

“Here and there,” I said.

“You’re fucking him?” Renny said. Just like that. As though he could read my mind. Did it show? Surely, I had no expression on my face. I never did.

“Good Lord, you are suspicious.” I took a cookie, though I hated oatmeal. “And nasty.”

Renny wasn’t so easily fooled. “You mean smart.”

“I actually did mean that.”

We both laughed.

“You, on the other hand,” he said. “Very stupid.”

“And your romantic life is something to boast about?”

Iris McGinnis. The girl who didn’t know he was alive.

“Good one,” Renny said. “You got me.”

The basis for my friendship with Renny was our shared chapter on pain. It was an inclusive chapter, the guiding principle of all that was to follow: Careful what you feel. Better yet, feel nothing at all. With his gloves, Renny could not feel enough and had difficulty picking up a straw or a stone. Barehanded, there was too much sensation, dizzying, all-encompassing. Because I’d seen him less once I began to go out to the orchard, I didn’t understand how bad his pain had become until that night at group. He looked more anx­ious than usual; the summer semester was ending and Renny had very little faith in himself.

I was at the library the next day when Renny called on me. I had to show up for work occasionally, but I took my time, slowly, lazily replacing books on their proper shelves, in the dream state I entered whenever I thought about Lazarus. I was the Ice Queen who wanted to be burned alive. I wanted to take the path full of stones that led through the forest of ashes. At the end of that path I would find what every fairy-tale creature yearned for. Not pearls, not kingdoms, not gold. I was looking for something better than that. Real treasure. Real truth.