Jensen Beach - Swallowed by the Cold - Stories

He was out. Edvin had just shot, placing the ball wide of the green on a narrow thumb of rough that hugged the lake. Jacob lined up for his shot, swung, and watched his ball land short, bounce high twice, and then skip onto the green, rolling to a stop just left of the pin. Edvin raised his club above his head, shouted, “Jacke!” The heron took off and for one very calm moment, Jacob didn’t think about Henrik or Jenny or the shame of having admitted his fears to two friends he didn’t particularly care for, and even when he focused his thoughts directly on it, he could not feel anything unusual in his arm. He saw only the white bird flying low above the water and the light blue morning sky.

V

Halloween had suddenly become a thing. He held a piece of a fabric that would soon be transformed into a wizard’s cape and tried to think of when Halloween had arrived. He set the itchy brown piece of cloth down beside him on the couch and picked up his drink. Halloween wasn’t a holiday when he was a kid. It wasn’t even a holiday when his daughters were younger. Not that he could remember anyway. Three years, four tops. His wife, his daughters, everyone lately was acting like Halloween had always just been there. And it hadn’t. He took a sip of his drink. It was late and he was helping Jenny make costumes for the girls. They needed them for school. Alex was going to be a wizard from Harry Potter and Kristina was going as a ladybug or a butterfly or something. He couldn’t quite tell what the mess of fabric next to his wife was going to transform into.

He picked up the cape, kneeled on the floor with the fabric spread out in front of him, and measured out a rectangle like Jenny had asked him to. “When did this happen?” he said, waving his glass over the fabric.

“Halloween?” she said. “I think it’s nice.”

“When we were kids we went to the cemetery to light candles. It meant something. How does this look?” He sat back on his heels and looked at Jenny.

“Maybe even a touch longer,” she said. “All Saints’ is a little morbid, don’t you think? And the church part of it bothers me.”

He’d never been the type to raise the Swedish flag or celebrate the King’s Name Day or anything. He knew a couple of the old songs but he had no particular attachment to any of it. This was no culture battle, but Halloween seemed so fake. It was like trying to live in an American television program. It bothered him. “Doesn’t it bother you?” he said.

“Why should it? The girls love it. Costumes, candy. All their friends dress up.”

“It’s stupid,” he said.

“Sometimes, Jacob,” she said.

“We don’t have to do everything they want,” he said. “It’s our job to give them the experiences they need to have. I don’t think I’m wrong.”

She pushed the fabric into a pile on her lap. Without looking up at him, she said, “I can do the rest. I don’t need your help.” He felt his own anger hardening, pushing him further into a position he didn’t particularly care to occupy. He got up and left before the fight could start.

VI

Jacob spent the afternoon online, looking up information about comas. A woman in Florida was in a coma for thirty-seven years. Her name was Elaine Esposito, a name he liked because it sounded strange when he said it out loud. If they ever bought a dog, he let himself think, even as he knew it was a terrible thing to think, Esposito would be a good name. Next he read about a man in Alabama who woke up from a coma after twenty years. Like Henrik, the man had been in a car accident.

Jacob’s fears always manifested as physical pain. For six weeks in the summer, he’d been convinced his heart was failing. Then it was a sharp cramping pain in his stomach, just behind his belly button, that had him thinking ulcer, possibly cancer. A swollen lymph node in his neck brought him through the fall into early winter with thoughts of leukemia. None of it corresponded directly with Jenny’s visits to Henrik, but Henrik had become a kind of physical pain for him, a throbbing reminder that something was wrong, something that he was too scared to check.

Outside, an early storm bore down on the house and Jacob felt warm and safe indoors. Jenny was at the hospital. She’d met Henrik’s wife, Lisa, on one of her visits and they’d become close. Jenny often cooked Lisa meals, took her out for the evening or else shopping in town. To keep her mind off Henrik, Jenny said, though she never qualified this statement with an explanation about how, exactly, these things prevented Lisa from thinking of her husband. In any case, they were close and whenever Lisa was at the house, Jacob had strict orders from his wife not to bring up Henrik or the accident.

He watched the snow through the window. Henrik wouldn’t wake up. The doctors had been clear about this. His brain was too damaged. It was going to be a difficult winter. The weather reports called for heavy snow every year, but this year Jacob had a feeling he should believe it. He set his computer on the crowded little table beside the couch where he’d been sitting for the past hour and got up to look out the window. By the height of the snow against the hedgerow along his front walk, he estimated how much had so far fallen. If the cold stayed, they would have snow for Christmas. The sun had set and the light on the walk had come on, turning the snow in the driveway and on a little less than half of his front lawn a sickly orange color.

That morning, he’d woken to an odd fluttering sensation in his stomach, one that seemed related to or suggested by his heart. Both his grandfathers had died of heart attacks, and he drank too much, that was for certain. Heart trouble wasn’t out of the question, probably even likely, and his fear of this was almost always present, if only just as a whisper. But by breakfast the feeling had passed and he’d gone to work and was able to lose himself in the report he was filing for accounting, and by the afternoon he’d nearly forgotten about it. Jenny had been gone for a little over an hour and would be gone, it was likely, for at least another.

He knew the way to the hospital but still he followed the GPS. The voice said, “In 900 meters turn left at the traffic circle.” He did this. Within thirty minutes he was parked in the hospital’s small garage, watching a maintenance worker throw salt on the pathway to the main entrance. He watched the man finish this work before he got out of the car. On the concrete pillar beside him someone had painted a small black swastika and the words Keep Sweden Swedish. He read this sentence several times. He didn’t worry that Sweden was becoming less Swedish, but clearly some people feared that, and he knew fear caused people to act strangely. Jenny’s car was in the lot, about a dozen spots up from where he’d parked. He considered saying something about the swastika to the maintenance worker as he passed on his way into the hospital, but decided against it at the last moment and instead simply nodded to the man. “Watch your step,” the man said. His accent was thick and his voice was very deep. “I’ve only just shoveled here. It’s probably still icy.”

Jacob stepped carefully from one patch of melted ice to another. Because he hoped to make it clear that he heard and understood what the man had said in spite of the man’s accent, Jacob smiled broadly and nodded quickly. That he felt somehow guilty about the graffiti in the parking garage was an emotion he sensed distinctly but didn’t care to explore.

Inside, he sat in the only available chair in the cramped waiting area nearest the door. He knew his wife was upstairs. He checked his watch. She’d be down in a half hour. He had that long to figure out if he was going to go up and see her or if he was going to wait for her here. Cold air rushed in every time the doors slid open. He didn’t take his jacket off. There was a television mounted to the wall opposite the door. It was showing a news program at very low volume. A panel of guests was discussing the algae they already predicted would be a problem in the lakes that summer. It was only December, Jacob thought, and already everyone was anxious about what summer might bring. On the floor directly across from him sat a dog carrier. There was a sleeping dog inside, a small dog, its still head lit by a square of light streaming in from above. He decided to go to Jenny, and walked toward the elevators. When he passed the dog, it woke up suddenly and stuck its wet muzzle out through the cage. He heard the claws clicking on the hard plastic. The woman who owned the dog smiled at Jacob and said, “He must like the way you smell.”