Alice Hoffman - The Ice Queen

“I think anything is possible,” I said. It sounded as though I meant it.

I left, back into the heat of the day. I was walking across the parking lot to my car, thinking about love and why it mattered. It was an idea, wasn’t it? Nothing real, nothing lasting, nothing to live or die for. In all the talks I’d had with Jack Lyons, I’d never once asked him what he thought about love. I hadn’t wanted to know.

The clouds were moving quickly in the sky. There was so much blue and there was the color I’d missed the most mov­ing across all that blue. So startling. So alive. It was a cardi­nal flying above the treetops. I stood there with a hand over my eyes. After so much time, even the smallest amount of that color hurt my retinas. I think I felt tears.

I heard something. Renny’s sister running after me.

“Hold on,” she called.

I turned and waited for her to catch up.

“Renny said you’d take care of this.”

Marina held out her hands and I held out mine. She turned over the little mole Renny had rescued from the cat. It felt like a glove, a leaf, a wish.

“What’s going to happen to him?” I said.

“I’ll take care of Renny. When he’s better he’ll go to the University of Miami. Art history. Or did you mean the mole?”

I hadn’t, but I supposed I should be interested in the poor thing; he was my responsibility now.

“If you can’t find grubs or earthworms, Renny said to feed it American cheese and lettuce. Twice a day.”

It was nothing I wanted. Nothing I cared about. But mine all the same. I held the mole up and looked into its blind face. And then I realized what love did. It changed your whole world. Even when you didn’t want it to.

On the way to my brother’s house I saw flashes of red everywhere. I suppose I was recovering. Or maybe I was hallucinating, imagining what I wanted most to see. The sign on the mini-mart flashed so deeply crimson it took my breath away. Had such ridiculous things been beautiful be­fore and I simply hadn’t noticed? I stopped, pulled into the lot, went inside the market, to the fruit aisle. Wrapped let­tuce, cucumbers, peaches, lemons, and then, at last, a single pale apple, blushed on one side as if filled with life, with blood. I bought the apple and ate it in my car. It was deli­cious, all the more so because of its color. Sitting in my parked car, I felt absurdly alone without Renny. I’d gotten involved, even though I’d known it was always a mistake.

I drove along idly until I was on my brother’s street. This was often where the story went in a fairy tale. Sun and moon, brother and sister, the guardian and the guarded, op­posites who gave each other form, guided each other until they stumbled home. Ned was at the university; I knew an emergency meeting of the lightning-research group had been called. There was a great deal of worry about the law­suit Renny’s family was threatening. None of the experts had offered him counseling, taken note that he might be un­balanced. Well, weren’t we all? It was true for all of the members of our study group. We’d been turned inside out, picked up and dropped down, flattened, wounded, torn apart. I’d seen the Naked Man several times, wandering through the park, stopping to throw tennis balls for other people’s retrievers and poodles. I’d seen the young girl with the mismatched socks at the coffee shop in town, her hand held over a tabletop, trying to make a spoon turn in a circle.

Frankly, I thought if Renny’s family sued anyone, it should be me. Ignorant, selfish, greedy, blind, the friend who wasn’t there. Oh, definitely, it should be me, although what they might take in reparations was minimal: my cat, my car, my future, my past.

I got out of the car onto my brother’s street, and tossed the apple core away. I suppose seeing Renny’s sister and her de­votion had made me think of Ned. I’d been a terrible sister; I should have told him about Nina and A Hundred Ways to Die . Now, I knocked on the door. The car wasn’t in the driveway. Maybe Nina walked to her classes; the mathemat­ics building wasn’t far. It was such a beautiful day. It was getting dark earlier. That was the only thing that was the same here as it was in New Jersey. By now the maples would have begun to turn red with the first rush of cooler weather. Here there was just a slow bluing of everything. Birds sang in the darkening sky, and a few palm fronds, ones that had turned dry with the heat, rattled and shook in the breeze.

I made my way through the hedge of gardenia and peered into the window. A white sofa. A framed red heart on the wall. Nina opened the door and stood there. I think I’d woken her. Her hair was mussed. Her eyes were foggy. I wasn’t quite certain whether she recognized me. Even when she spoke, she wasn’t connecting in any way. I might have been the paperboy or a door-to-door salesman.

“Your brother’s not here. He’s at the Science Center. There’s some sort of alleged crisis.”

“Yeah, well, a friend of mine tried to cut off his hands. He was in the lightning study.”

“Some people make their own grief.”

Nina eyed me meaningfully. So it was true. She didn’t like me. She was wearing a smock with paint smeared over it. I noticed she didn’t invite me in.

“Are you painting?”

“Yes. Obviously.” The color was yellow. I could see that on her fingers, her blue jeans.

“Do you have any American cheese?” I said.

Nina laughed. A funny, broken sound, but light, like chimes. “You’re here for cheese?”

I took the mole out of my pocket. Nina took a step back, stunned.

“Jeez.” She nearly laughed.

“I’m taking care of it for my friend.”

Nina opened the door, and I followed her inside. We went through the living room, past the heart on the wall, into the kitchen. I could smell paint. I liked the smell: something covering up something, something brand-new.

I sat down while Nina rummaged through the fridge. I put the mole down and stared at it. It didn’t move. I hoped it wasn’t going to die on me.

“Please don’t put that thing on the table,” Nina said when she approached with a packet of orange cheese.

I lifted the mole, set my backpack on the table, then placed the mole atop it.

“Some things aren’t meant to be pets.” Nina sat down at the table. She gazed at the mole. “Fair creature who cannot see or hear or want or need.” She looked at me. “It doesn’t seem to like the cheese.”

She went to the pantry for some of the food my brother left out for bats at their feeder in the yard. Fruit and veggies pureed and stored in a jar. I took a spoon of the mush and placed it in a little plate. The mole took a mouthful of what appeared to be smushed grape. I had the book in my back­pack. A Hundred Ways to Die . The mole was probably sitting on it right now. I saw the pulse at Nina’s throat, delicate, pale pink.

“What is it like to love someone?” I asked.

Nina laughed. At any rate, she made a noise. “Ridiculous question. There are countless answers to that one.”

“Then to you. What does it mean to you?”

I could see into the yard from where I was sitting. The sky was salmon, then gray, then dark and deep, a bluish color, one I hadn’t seen before. Nothing like New Jersey. Some­thing infinite, hot, faraway.

Nina was gazing out at the yard.

“I thought you loved him,” I said.

Nina turned back to me, surprised.

“Ned,” I said. “I thought you truly loved him.”

Nina glared and went to the sink. She just stood there. Didn’t bother to turn on the water. Oh, she said. I think that’s what she said.

“Look, I was there in the library,” I told her. “That’s why I’m saying this to you. You think I want to get involved? I didn’t want to see you, but I did. I know you withdrew A Hundred Ways to Die . If Ned knew what you were planning, it would destroy him.”