Alice Hoffman - The Ice Queen

“You’ve got to help me,” Renny pleaded.

“Is this about Iris again?” Iris McGinnis, nymph of sor­row, so far away she might as well have been living on the moon. Renny loved to talk about her. I usually just tuned him out and let him drone on, but my patience was wearing thin.

“Not Iris. Not this time.”

He was failing his architecture course; his end-of-the-summer term project was due and he couldn’t work on it himself because of the pain in his hands. He was taking Demerol, along with Tegretol for the tremors. I could feel guilt rise up inside me like a living being. I wanted to tell him no. After work I planned to get in my car and drive to the secret country where oranges were white. I wanted to walk into the cold pond where Lazarus and I went swim­ming on clear nights, after all the workers had left, after the trucks had been loaded up and driven away, after it was dark. The mud between my toes under a black and starless sky. I’d been thinking about it all day as I shelved books. I wanted to be dragged under, forget there was anything else in the universe.

But how could I deny Renny, my friend, Renny the sor­rowful? How could I tell him what I really wanted? Go away, go away. I’m in a different country now, one where no one can find me, one where there’s no difference between fire and water.

I should have advised him to pick a new major. But no. Always the volunteer, I offered to do the work if he would instruct me. Renny came over that night. I could tell he was desperate. We were that much alike. His tremor was worse. His hair was long, knotted. He hadn’t bathed. All the signs of despair. It was my clicking that kicked in when I felt that way. Sometimes I couldn’t hear the TV over the sounds in my own head.

“You’re sure you’re up for this?” I asked.

Had he been drinking, smoking weed? His eyes were red. And then I thought, Oh, no. He’d been crying.

Renny gazed at his gloves; from his expression he might have been looking down at cloven hooves or a lion’s paws. “Maybe it’s time for me to give up architecture.”

Like drawn to like, story to story. I should have said, Yes, give it up; study literature or art history — any discipline he might have a chance at rather than a field of study that would surely lead to failure. But that wasn’t the way it was going to happen. Jump down the well, sleep for a hun­dred years, tie yourself to a tree at the base of the mountain, the one where snow falls every day and the ice is ten feet thick.

“Don’t be silly.” Here I went, pushing him down the well. “Architects don’t actually do the building. They inspire and create. Carpenters do all the work.”

“I should give it all up. Architecture and Iris. Ridiculous dreams.”

“Give up and it will never happen.”

I sounded like a character out of an Andersen story, on the side of reason and goodness. I was his cheerleader, his friend, his familiar, his liar. Step up and make the leap. Don’t bother with a helmet or a life preserver. You can do it if you really try! Walk on glass, pull the sliver of ice from your heart, face up to it. Overcome.

I sounded so false to myself, but Renny grinned, won over. I suppose people needed stories like Andersen’s some­times. The should-be story, the could-be tale. Renny ran a gloved hand through his messy hair. “I don’t have a chance,” he said, but I could hear it in his voice — he was being co­erced into believing.

“Let’s do it.” I always got in too deep. I didn’t even want to be here, now I was committing to a major project. “First the temple, then Iris. Inspire me. Boss me around. Treat me like a carpenter.”

Renny had brought over glue, sticks, balsa wood, bamboo, Plexiglas, paper. He unfurled the blueprints on the counter­top. Truthfully, now that it was before me, the task terrified me. I had never built anything. Destruction was my game. Renny took note of my expression.

“Fuck it all,” he said. “Maybe I’m supposed to fail.”

I cleared off my kitchen table and set out a large sheet of clear plastic Renny had brought along for the base of the project. We were to construct a Doric temple, if we could ever get the cat out of the room, something we finally man­aged by setting an opened can of tuna on the porch. I was directed to begin with thin sticks of bamboo. Renny in­structed me, but the anxiety of ruining the project made me sweat. I never did anything right, why had I assumed I could help him?

“Terrific,” Renny kept telling me whenever I was able to connect the bamboo with thin wire. “Excellent.”

All the same, it looked like a temple of bones when I’d finished what was supposed to be the framework. “Are you sure this is right?” I peered at the blueprints. Sixty percent of Renny’s grade would be based on this project.

“It’s just the skeleton,” he assured me. “We’ll do the rest next time.”

We ordered a pizza delivered, then locked the kitchen to keep Giselle from knocking over the temple. I had the fan on, but with it or without it, the clicking inside my head had grown quieter.

“When it’s done, I’m giving the temple to Iris,” Renny told me. “I planned it out at the beginning of the summer.”

“Really,” I said. I had the shivers; this could lead some­place dark. Did Iris even know he existed?

Renny opened his wallet and shook out a small gold charm imprinted with the shape of Iris’s namesake. It was sad and beautiful and tiny in his huge gloved hand.

“I had this made up by the jeweler at the Smithfield Mall. We’ll hang it over the doorway. I’ll bet no one ever made something like this for her.”

“Renny.” Obsession or love, or both? He could read my pity and my doubt.

“You think I’m an idiot. You think I have no chance at all.”

“I’m not sure I think anyone has a chance,” I admitted.

When the pizza was delivered, Renny paid, treating me to dinner as a thank-you for all my handiwork. When he handed over the cash, the delivery guy stared at Renny’s gloves — wary, I suppose, that Renny had some communi­cable disease.

“He’s an idiot,” I said of the deliveryman when he had gone. “Pay no attention.”

Renny put the gold charm back into his wallet; it took him a long time to do so, he was clumsy and careful both. Usually, I didn’t notice Renny’s gloves any more than I no­ticed Giselle’s paws. I noticed now. I thought of Iris McGin­nis, without a care, leading the life of a college student, not thinking of dark love, gold tokens, Doric temples.

I could feel a change in the air pressure; I leaned out the door and called for the cat. Giselle raced inside and trotted to a corner. She ignored our dinner on the coffee table. Not typical. She had caught something again. Little feet. Gray shadow.

“Is that thing alive?” Renny asked.

“She kills whatever she can get her fangs into.” I apolo­gized for Giselle. “It’s her nature.”

Renny went to the corner and battled the cat for this sec­ond mole. She sank her teeth into his glove. “God, she’s vicious. Drop it!” he commanded.

The cat wasn’t about to take orders, so Renny grabbed her by the neck and gave her a little shake. I suppose Giselle was mortified — I treated her like an equal — she growled and let go, then stalked away, hissing. “Murderess,” I called after her. My pet, my dear. I was getting attached to her. I worried when she wouldn’t come in at night; I waited anxiously in the yard until she sauntered up in her own good time. She’d stare me down. Then rub herself against my legs. I’d begun to buy cream for her. Bad sign. No attachments, that was my motto. None at all.

“He’s got teeth marks in him.” Renny had picked up the mole.