Opposite of Frozen

by Jan O'Hara

  “Not exactly…”

  “What are you doing there? If you tell me, we might be able to problem-solve.”

  She stopped walking, huffed out a breath. “Can you stop pestering me? Please?”

  “Okay.” He reached over her head, pulled an evergreen branch, and showered her in snow.

  “Oliver!” she said, but she was laughing as she dropped her poles to brush herself off.

  Oliver grinned and went in to “help.” During the ensuing skirmish, they were both laughing, both finding excuses to touch one another, and Oliver felt the carefree feeling begin to soar in him again.

  The next thing he knew, he was blinking through a mess of cold, foggy white. The shock kept him frozen in place until an icy drop of water crept under his collar, freeing him to pull off his glasses.

  “Oh my God.” Page’s mittened hands covered her mouth, muffling her voice. Her eyes were huge with apprehension. “I swear I was aiming for your chest. Did I hurt you?”

  “I’m okay.” He dusted his hair, found a Kleenex in his pocket and used it to wipe his glasses.

  She came forward to help him brush off. “Then why are you blinking?”

  He forced himself to stop. “The habit of paranoia. I’m fine.” And surprisingly, he really was. His headache was a mere ghost in his temple, his vision no different than before.

  Further, he realized as he relocated his poles and took the lead on the trail, so she’d stop looking at him like he was going to hit her, he’d done better this time.

  She’d lobbed an actual snowball at him—and connected. He’d been completely unprepared. But unlike the incident in Second Verse, he hadn’t made any snap judgments, he hadn’t lost his temper. He hadn’t lost himself. He really was improving. One day you’re going to come out of this, Oliver. You’re going to be okay.

  As he walked, he let that sense of possibility fill his heart.

  Eventually, he knew what he needed to do. He was asking Page to open up, to trust him with her secrets when he hadn’t divulged more than a fraction of his own. Go big or go home, Oliver.

  When the Shevchenkos took a break, he paused beside a fallen tree. “You were right about my brother, by the way.”

  She leaned on a pole. Her eyes had lost their wariness. Her cheeks were pink with exertion, her eyes the color of spring grass on a ball diamond. “How so?”

  “When you were guessing why I took over the tour.” She’d come scarily close. “He tried to commit suicide two days before this trip.”

  She straightened and her mouth fell open. “I’m sorry. I was showing off and you must have thought I was so cruel.”

  “Not at all.” He thought back to how she’d tossed out information and smiled. “You impressed me.” Dazzled him, actually.

  She smiled shyly.

  “Also, you were right about the guilt. Since my accident, I’ve been self-absorbed and temperamental.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  He wasn’t ready to let himself off the hook. “To a point. But when Shawn started going downhill, I didn’t notice. It’s not okay to be that oblivious.” Oliver liked how Page’s expression remained soft, but she didn’t attempt to argue.

  “How’s he doing now?” she said.

  “Better. He’s out of the lock-up unit and my parents are there for him.” Somehow they were more skilled at handling Shawn’s illness than they had ever been at handling Oliver’s—a fact he might have resented them for in the past, but was grateful for now. Shawn deserved all the support he could get.

  “You’re helping him, too. You rescued his business from a huge setback. Look at them.” She pointed ahead, to where the Shevchenkos were indulging in a little horseplay of their own. “They wouldn’t have this without you. You should feel proud.”

  A lock of hair had fallen over her cheek, and Oliver tucked it behind her ear. “Don’t forget your part in this,” he said gently.

  Page slowly swung to face him. She began to trace the stitching on his breast pocket with her thumb, keeping her gaze on her hand instead of meeting his eyes. “I’m going to Vancouver for my grandmother’s birthday.”

  Okay… Why did he have the feeling there was more to the story? And somehow he’d gained the impression Page was homeless. “By how hard you’re fighting to get there,” he said carefully, “she must be special.”

  Page laughed without humor and looked directly at him. “She passed. Eight years ago.”

  As if saying the words had uncorked something, now she began to explain. How she had been ten, being raised by her free-spirited, single mother when her mom’s aggressive breast cancer had struck. How she had never known her father.

  How Page and her mom had gone to live with her grandmother on Vancouver Island. How her grandmother had nursed Page’s mother at home until her death. How even though their time together had been marred by her mother’s baldness and vomiting and radiation burns, they’d been happy—a tiny triumvirate of love and joy for nearly two years.

  How her grandmother, whom Page called Nan, had stumbled and fallen at the funeral when going up to deliver her daughter’s eulogy. How no one thought much of it at the time, given the carpet’s poor placement, but that the moment marked the beginning of a four-year battle with ALS.

  How Page had devoted herself to her grandmother’s care, fighting with social workers and healthcare aids and doctors to keep her grandmother at home until the end, and to not be committed into foster care herself, as her grandmother’s health declined.

  How the final straw had come on the day of her grandmother’s funeral, when a seventeen-year-old Page returned to the house to find her cat gone, because one of Nan’s friends had left the door ajar.

  How, Leo, lacking any street sense, had come running to Page at the moment her newly-licensed neighbor turned the corner in his VW. How Page had buried Leo’s body under a rose bush and started walking.

  How she had never quite stopped.

  She’d been on the road since—unmoored, untethered, unwilling to be traumatized by another loss.

  And here Oliver was, asking her to cozy up to a group of people who had a more obvious expiration date than most.

  During her recitation, she’d delivered the story dry-eyed, matter-of-factly. But she had allowed Oliver to draw her into his arms and was returning the embrace.

  “What’s the commonality between Mrs. Summers and Mrs. Ingram?” Oliver asked, after a pause.

  She shrugged but kept her cheek pressed to his shoulder. “They wear Second Debut—my grandmother’s favorite.”

  He pulled her closer. “And you didn’t have any other relatives to lean on?”

  Her mouth twisted. “Do you count an alcoholic cousin?”

  “Definitely not. What about friends?”

  “What friends? I barely managed high school.”

  He pictured a young Page, burdened with all that responsibility, fighting with authority figures to advocate for her Nan. That explained her strong counter-cultural streak—why she’d been adamant about avoiding the hospital when she was sick, why she hadn’t considered going to the police.

  This all explained so much.

  He released her and stepped back. She looked lighter now, unburdened. “Did you have streaks in your hair when you were twelve?”

  She laughed. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Just trying to picture a young Page.” He nudged her. “I bet you were hot even then.”

  That got her smiling again.

  Ahead, the seniors had wound things down and were brushing off their clothing.

  “So the birthday,” he prompted, wanting to know it all. “You go and, what? Pay her tribute somehow?”

  “Yup.” She pulled a pine cone from a nearby tree and passed it from hand to hand, her eyes thoughtful. “Her and Mom and Leo, all at once. Every year on my Nan’s birthday, I walk to this tiny liquor store near English Bay Beach. I buy a bottle of Grand Marnier and drink enough to feel numb. Then I walk to a sea wall my mo
m loved in Stanley Park, and pour the rest into the ocean.” She smiled. “It sounds silly, but it makes me feel better.”

  When he remained silent, brooding over the image, she cast away the pine cone. “What are you thinking?”

  That he should be honest. “It sounds incredibly sweet, and incredibly lonely. Maybe this year you’d like company. Say, forty-something guests?”

  She shook her head.

  He couldn’t read her expression. “No?”

  “No.” She narrowed her eyes, grabbed his jacket collar and pulled him in.

  She wasn’t going to throttle him, Oliver realized, or clock him. She was going to kiss him.

  “But I’d do it with you,” she whispered, just before he ducked his head and met her half-way.

  Her lips were cool and hot and sweet with promise all at once. He wound his hands into her blue locks, reined her in and held her tight.

  Eventually she murmured, “Batter up,” in a suggestive tone of voice, and they pulled apart to stand there laughing, eyes full of one another, delighted in one another, the palpable spirit of the future so thick in the air it was almost a miasma.

  Then, from the trail ahead, somebody blew a whistle.

  Chapter 19

  Though he was desert-born, burdened with a backpack, and she was Canadian, when Page found she couldn’t move as quickly as Oliver in her snowshoes, she urged him to run ahead. A few minutes after he’d disappeared from sight, kicking up traces of snow in his wake, she caught up to a clump of retirees on the trail.

  “Coming through,” she bellowed, and they stood aside to let her pass. She rounded a curve on the path, ducked under a low-lying branch, and entered a small clearing. Oliver stood on the far side, his red hat a point of contrast against a background of aspens. He was surrounded by a semicircle of seniors.

  Page eased her way through them to find the source of their concern, and the originator of the whistle call.

  Avis.

  She was bent over a fallen log, casting up her stomach’s contents with volcanic force. On the other side of the tree, an alarming volume of half-digested food already spattered the snow and underbrush.

  In an echo of how she’d stood the day before under the street lamp, Avis had one hand propped on the trunk of a mountain ash as the other clutched her abdomen.

  Oliver was rubbing her back and speaking in low, soothing tones.

  Meanwhile, Mavis stood a little apart, her body angled towards the silent group rather than her suffering twin. Her eyes were cast downward. She was lacing her gloved hands together, pulling them apart, and repeating the gesture in a stuttering loop of activity.

  When Page seized Mavis’s hands, her eyes lifted momentarily.

  “Something is wrong with Avis,” Mavis said to Page, her voice quavering, her gaze skittering down to her feet again. “It might have been the sauce on the Eggs Benedict at breakfast. Or maybe it was the actual eggs.”

  “It wasn’t the eggs,” Avis said, panting. The panting changed to retching, then full-on vomiting once more.

  Oliver caught Page’s eye and pointed to his discarded backpack. “Water,” he mouthed.

  Page released Mavis’s hand, knelt and retrieved a bottle, which she opened and passed to Oliver.

  “Oh, I don’t know. They tasted a little funny to me. A little off.” Mavis continued to address the packed snow under her feet. “Or it could have been the fruit juice. Did you know freshly squeezed juice is risky, because it’s unpasteurized? Most times when people think they have the flu, it’s actually a food-borne illness, and juice—”

  “It’s not the flu.” Avis was getting a reprieve now. She accepted the water from Oliver and performed a quick rinse and spit. When Page produced a Kleenex from the depths of her coat pocket, she accepted that, too.

  “I know that. Didn’t I just say that?” Mavis snapped.

  “It’s not food poisoning, either.” Avis used Oliver’s proffered hand to straighten, and with a grateful smile to him, half-limped, half-walked to Mavis while clutching her belly.

  “So now you’re the resident medical expert?”

  “Mavis,” Avis said gently, ducking her head to try to intercept her twin’s gaze. Astonishingly, Avis’s color was better than her sister’s, and she seemed to have recaptured some of her robust energy.

  Mavis rounded on her. “All these years and I never told you how to run a theater production. Now you read some article and—”

  “Mavis,” was all Avis said, but she said it with devastating gentleness. She held her sister’s gaze. “Give me your hands, you silly, silly woman. Do you think I’m kissing you on the mouth after what I did over there?”

  Pale and stricken-looking, Mavis peeled off her gloves and dropped them in the snow.

  Avis took Mavis’s hands in hers. She pulled them to her cheek and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat. “I’m so, so sorry.” She pulled Mavis’s hands to her mouth and pressed her lips to each one in a long, tender gesture. “I’ve been sick for a while.”

  “No,” Mavis said weakly.

  “Yes.” Avis was firm. “I’ve been able to cover until now. But it looks like I’m not going to get away with it this time. Do you understand?”

  After a pause, Mavis nodded.

  Despite what she had said, Avis tugged Mavis into her arms for a kiss on the lips that was desperate and spoke of decades of non-sisterly familiarity. When they finished, Avis put her arm around Mavis’s shoulders and turned them both to face Page.

  Mavis looked ten years older, sunken and subdued.

  “And now,” Avis said with immense dignity, “I’m going to need you to take me to the hospital.”

  “Of course,” Page said gently.

  “As quickly as possible, please,” Avis said.

  And as Teague rushed into the clearing, Avis bent over the tree trunk once more.

  Chapter 20

  If you had to wait in a strange emergency room for news that couldn’t be good, you could do worse than the Harmony General Hospital, Page decided.

  Somehow, Dr. Sheridan heard of their arrival and came by. He didn’t tell them anything informative so much as conveyed a quiet optimism, and told them Avis was in good hands.

  The nurses were unfailingly kind, tolerating Oliver’s pacing and the parade of visitors who came to check on them, beginning with Teague. He came by to reassure them the remaining seniors were safe at the Thurston and in the capable hands of the staff, who sent their best wishes.

  Mrs. Patel insisted on a quick visit.

  Gill was next, with a food delivery arranged by Mrs. Arbuckle and concocted by Chef Guy, because they “couldn’t be expected to endure the wait on hospital food.” It was surreal to dine on French cuisine with the sharp scent of disinfectant wafting around them.

  Page couldn’t help thinking how different things might have been for her and Nan if she’d had this kind of supportive community.

  But the biggest help of all had been Oliver. She, the girl who prided herself on her ability to rely on no one and nothing, didn’t know how she’d have managed without him. He was solid and dependable.

  And completely unaware you talked to Bart behind his back, a little voice said.

  That little voice was going to have to stuff it for a more appropriate time and venue.

  “Want coffee?” Oliver asked now. “I can run across the street.”

  He had his arm around Page’s shoulder, and she opened her mouth to refuse, more because she didn’t want him to move and take his warmth, than because she couldn’t use the hit of caffeine.

  Then Mavis came through the automatic door which separated the waiting room from the active care area. She walked with her usual briskness, as if she had come back to herself in the intervening hours.

  Had the surroundings restored her to the comfort of her professional persona? Page wondered. Or had some secret part of her known Avis was ill, and was relieved to have it out in the open?


  Mavis caught sight of them. She gave no visible reaction to seeing Page’s head on Oliver’s shoulder, or her hand tucked inside his. After pulling them into a quick embrace, Mavis said, “You can come see her now.”

  They trailed behind her, dodging a freckled girl with a nasty cough and a teenager playing a game on his cell phone, his casted leg propped on a stool.

  At the end of the corridor, Mavis opened the door to a private room.

  Avis lay on a stretcher with a kidney basin in her lap—empty, Page was glad to see, probably because of the tube which entered her nose and now drained her stomach. The left railing of her bed was up. Beyond that, a nurse in pink scrubs was hanging a replacement bag for the IV attached to Avis’s left forearm. Avis’s color was better. Her hair was dull, but freshly combed, and she smelled of toothpaste when Page went in for a hug.

  “Your grin is goofy,” Page said, patting Avis’s wrinkled cheek. She perched on the open edge of the bed.

  Oliver put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall.

  Mavis sat in the chair to Avis’s left and, after the merest of pauses, firmed her chin and grabbed Avis’s hand.

  “That would be the painkiller and anti-nausea meds,” the nurse said cheerfully. She gathered a bunch of wrappers and tossed them into the waste basket. “I’ll be back at nine for your next batch. If you need me in the meantime, ring the bell.”

  Then they were alone.

  Page nodded toward where the two women were joined by their linked hands, feeling it necessary to address the elephantesses in the room. During the hours of waiting, she and Oliver had tried to pinpoint the moment they’d decided Avis and Mavis were fraternal twins, rather than the spouses they had confirmed themselves to be at the hospital registration desk.

  Oliver thought he’d picked up his initial understanding from Shawn. Page couldn’t remember anything more than their shared last name and eerily similar first names, implying a shared parentage. Neither one, however, could remember Avis or Mavis explicitly claiming one another as twins.

  “I feel stupid about the assumptions I made,” Page began.