The House of Frozen Dreams

by Seré Prince Halverson

She went upstairs and lay under the new down comforter. She pulled it over her head and let the images of that day play on the white screen of the blanket. She viewed it all now with some perspective. From here she could even observe herself. There was Kache standing in a corner, ready to intervene if need be. There was her grandmother, sitting in her chair, watching her, listening to Nadia tell her story. It was as if Nadia was the center of the sea anemone, with all her siblings and her parents crowding around her like tentacles, coming in closer, than backing off. But her grandmother’s face stayed calm when Nadia said she no longer believed. Now, under the covers, Nadia watched her again closely, the slightest upturn at the corner of her mouth, the touch of light radiating from her eyes. And she had told Nadia she was strong, that she would always love her. Nadia was sure of it; she was not dead to her grandmother.

  Yes, all of the tendrils of the anemone she found at the beach were green, but Nadia imagined there might be a red one, not swaying with the others, still attached, but distinct.

  Now that Kache was gone for the day, Nadia found herself opening one of the boxes of journals. She turned to Elizabeth’s last entry:

  Last night was the darkest night in the history of the Winkel family, or so it felt. We are all of us extremes, living on the extreme edge of the world, where the mountains themselves were shaped by the force of colliding tectonic plates.

  And so it is for this family. What will be the shape of us after last night? An impassable range of great height now between us? Time will tell. The lemony morning sky already casts new light, healing light.

  I wish I could shine that light into Glenn’s heart and reveal the dark corners. Lord knows we all have our blind spots, but sometimes I think Glenn’s has become a full eclipse. He is a stubborn bull of a man, and I don’t imagine he could have gleaned a life from this land were he not. But he rules over the boys like the military he despised—giving them little freedom to make decisions, let alone mistakes. He is stifling them. And while Denny seems to everyone else the stronger of the two, I know this is not the case. Denny is a pleaser. Plus, he loves this land as much as his grandmother and father do. It’s natural for him to pick up a rifle, to use his back more than his brain. He is agile and strong and he wears a yoke without complaint because it’s been tailor-made to fit him.

  But Kache. Strong-willed, independent Kache, who was given a gift none of us could ever begin to master. The gift of music. And yet, you would think the guitar was a machete raised over his father’s head.

  Jealousy is part of it. It’s painful to watch a parent jealous of his own child. But there it is. It may as well be spelled out in the tread of the man’s boot, the word with a capital J left wherever he walks.

  The other part of it is fear. Glenn ran off to Vietnam, intent on seeing the world and then came back to duck and cover from it for the rest of his life. Deep down he is afraid that the world out there will kill his boys just like it killed his friends. But Alaska is just as dangerous if not more so than any city in the Lower 48. Alaska does not forgive mistakes. We all say it because it’s true.

  Nadia always wondered what Elizabeth meant by the phrase Alaska does not forgive mistakes. That you could not be forgiven when you lived here? Nadia needed to ask Kache about this. She would wait until the time was right. She skipped to the last lines, for these had become a totem to her:

  But for now, I will gather these men together and we will fly away from here for a few days. We will look down on this house, this land—free from it—and the perspective will do us good.

  Nadia had never failed to notice that Elizabeth’s last written words were Do us good. She often thought of them as a new type of commandment for her to follow, and she thought of it often when she was tending the house in the years before Kache returned. But now that she knew him, now that Snag and Lettie were coming out to the homestead for Thanksgiving, the commandment felt more weighted, and broader. It wasn’t just about tending the house and land. There were many ways to do good, and to not do good, by someone. To do good to the people you loved, and to still be truthful to yourself. That was the narrowest of bridges.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  It was life’s obsessions that Snag found herself obsessing over as she sat in her robe, drinking her coffee, looking over her calendar and realizing she’d missed the last two Caboose chamber meetings. Without her there to argue her point, the chamber most likely had voted 33 to 0 in favor of leaving the red caboose in its now-most-likely final resting spot at the end of the tracks, at the end of the Caboose spit, where it housed memorabilia of days of yore and looked complacently out over one of the prettiest views on the planet. What Snag found most bewildering was that she didn’t give a hoot. Not even a snort. She simply no longer cared.

  And yet, and yet. She had raised her voice at countless meetings, handed out flyers, even carried a sign in protest. And why? Why? It had felt necessary. And now it did not. Hmph, she thought. She looked at her watch and realized she had to get moving if she was going to get all her deliveries made before she went to see her mom—and Gilly, of course. Now that there was so much snow, she wasn’t delivering by foot and wagon. But she did schedule in a stop at the gym. She’d even ordered herself a bathing suit from Lands’ End and had taken up swimming laps.

  Her body hadn’t experienced stuffing itself into a bathing suit in nearly forty years. But there she was in all her glory; she loved the lukewarm water, even the smell of the chlorine. She loved the kick boards and the linked plastic lane dividers and the old people (even older than her) swimming (even more slowly than she was) with such good intentions. It made her feel happily tolerant—no, way beyond tolerant, even proud. Here they all were, putting forth such effort for the strength of their bodies, for the strength of humankind.

  Easing herself into the water she thought of Nadia, of how they would all be celebrating Thanksgiving together. She thought of the young girl she first kissed at the beach. Agafia. How one sweet, brief encounter set her on the path to Gilly. She wondered if Nadia knew Agafia. She thought of the strange way her actions, and non-actions, had led Kache to Nadia. And as Snag swam, she felt herself linked to each person, if only briefly, like the chain of buoys that floated beside her in the pool, creating a lane, keeping her going in a single direction so she didn’t spin in circles, one linked to the other to the other: this way, this way, this way, then back again.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Kache could see that Nadia had taken once again to killing things. A skinned rabbit and a plucked spruce hen hung from string in the barn. The woman could skin a rabbit without a knife. The first time he’d watched with uneasy awe as she grabbed its legs and, holding it upside down, firmly pulled the leg fur up like socks, then the tail and all the rest of it in one continuous motion, as quickly and easily as if merely removing its sweater.

  Kache jumped when he heard another shot go off from the west. He liked it much better when she was shooting movies rather than animals, but there seemed to be no stopping her.

  In the bracing cold, he fed the cow, the goats and the chickens, all understandably a bit on edge. The pure white goat, Buttercup, stuck by Kache’s side the whole time he worked. He offered them all gentle reassurances along with the hay and grain, but who could be sure? Nadia’s nerves were shot too. The idea of preparing a Thanksgiving meal for five had the most capable woman he knew wringing her hands—along with a spruce hen neck.

  He wanted to head out to the woods to remind her they had an 18-pound turkey—bought from Safeway already plucked, gutted clean, and now brined and stuffed and roasting in the oven—but he didn’t want to join the casualties, so instead he removed his boots, entered the warm house, and basted the turkey.

  He sifted through the pile of his mother’s recipe cards until he came to the recipe for cranberry relish. They’d always used the lowbush cranberries they picked every August—the lingonberries. He and Nadia had picked enough to can and freeze some and now they glistened in a bowl, waiting for him to chop t
he walnuts and add the sugar and the whole orange. Staring now at the recipe card with its hard chunk of lingonberry sauce still attached to it, realizing: That lingonberry is over twenty years old. The last time that card had been pulled out, it had been pulled out by the hands of his mother. She had no idea the speckle of lingonberry she smudged on it when she picked it up—perhaps to check again on the amount of sugar because she’d always complained that including the orange rind required that you add a ridiculous amount of sugar—would still be tenaciously clinging to the index card, long after she’d let go of the card, and had to let go of this life.

  So there Kache stood, holding the card his mother once held, his eyes misting up. Over a recipe card? Yes, he thought, and blinked. Did it ever end? When a tear splashed onto the card he wiped it away quickly so it would not upset the persistent lingonberry remnant, so that it might stay on the lined index card with the folksy mushroom artwork above the olive green type that said Our Family Recipe.

  All these years of non-celebrations, declining most invitations to other families’ celebrations. He’d accepted a few. One of the guys at work had told Kache that since he and his wife lived far away from their families, they always hosted a “Homeless Waif Thanksgiving,” inviting people who had nowhere else to go. Kache went to that one, ended up taking home a tall brunette fellow homeless waif and sleeping with her. She talked about how she was definitely going home for Christmas, that she’d already shopped and had shipped her parents’ and six siblings’ presents. He left before morning.

  Years later, Janie had tried, and Kache had tried along with her, helping her make her family recipes that her mom had emailed her. But of course, it was never the same. It never is.

  But this? This was as close as it came without having those three walk in, and he let himself imagine it once again, and soon he was thinking about the village and what it must have been like for Nadia’s family to see her standing there in real flesh and blood and bones, talking, reminding them of the way she creased her brow and fluttered her hands sometimes when she spoke.

  Nadia came in through the side kitchen door, hoisting up the skinned rabbit, Leo following close behind with a triumphant grin, head and tail held high. “Time to put stew in the oven.” When Kache raised his eyebrows she added that she would happily freeze the spruce hen but she really wanted to serve the rabbit for Thanksgiving.

  “But the turkey. There’s no room in the oven.”

  “Shit damn.”

  Kache cracked up.

  “What?”

  “I swear, the way you swear.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I love your original combinations.”

  “‘It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.’”

  “Huh?”

  “Melville.”

  “Of course. Anyway, it’s fine. We don’t need rabbit stew. We have turkey. We have dressing. Mashed potatoes. Green bean casserole. Shall I go on?”

  “But Lettie loves rabbit stew.” There was such insistence in her voice he half-expected her to stamp her foot.

  “She does?” He stared at her, her nose red and running a bit from the cold. “But of course you would know that.”

  Kache cleared a pan off one of the burners, which worked fine for the stew. He managed to set the table with his mom’s china without blubbering, and Nadia managed to stop shooting innocent animals. “At some point,” she said, fluffing the new pillows on the couch yet another time, “you are going to have to learn how to shoot gun.”

  “I told you. I’d rather my protein sources come in those Styrofoam trays wrapped in Saran wrap with stickers. Hypocrite that I am, I don’t want to kill anything. I’m the guy who takes even poisonous spiders outside, remember?”

  “There are no poisonous spiders in Alaska, remember?”

  “Oh, but there are in Austin. And scorpions. And rattlesnakes. And all kinds of things that creep in the night. And I didn’t even shoot them.”

  “You are, how is the word? A pacifist.”

  “So you get my point.”

  “Still, you live in Alaska. I am going to teach you how to shoot tin cans at the very least.”

  “Right now?”

  “No, right now we get this house looking like it’s perfection, like it is on one of those Internet websites about beautiful homes.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Only little bit.”

  “Next you’re going to want me to build you a brick patio.”

  She scrunched her eyebrows together. “Why? Can you do that?” She ran her finger along the coffee table and looked at it, then looked at him. “What?”

  “Just don’t ever call me Mr. Happenings.” He took her up in his arms and kissed the gold studded track along her ear. “Hey, are you the same woman who was hiding under the bed screaming in Russian while your ferocious dog lurched at me?” She nodded. “Look, you’ve gotta stop. It’s going to be fine. They’re going to love you. Lettie already does.”

  “I am afraid I am just ‘that squatter’ to them. But to me, they mean something. I feel that I know them, that I even love them.”

  “You know Lettie doesn’t think of you as a squatter. Never has. They’re grateful to you. And so am I. Very grateful. And don’t worry about Snag. She’ll love you too once she meets you.”

  Nadia kissed him once on the nose, then the forehead, and the neck before she went up to change into her new Nordstrom clothes. Kache stuck another log in the woodstove, waited on the couch with Leo sleeping, snoring at his feet, and was dumbfounded to realize he’d been imagining two little kids—a blonde girl, a dark curly-headed boy—jumping on him, climbing on Leo, disturbing the peace and quiet with their miraculous little Daddy! Daddy! screeches.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Nadia and Kache had been sure to shovel the walkway wide enough to fit a wheelchair, but in the end Kache lifted Lettie out of the car and carried her up the porch steps she and A.R. had once built and through the doorway into the living room, which had once served as their whole cabin.

  Nadia held the door open as they filed in. Leo barked, alarmed at the idea of visitors, but once Nadia reassured him, he calmed down. The woman she assumed was Snag carried the pies, and the other woman, Gilly, heaved the folded wheelchair up the steps and once in the living room, opened it.

  “Well,” Lettie said, settling into the wheelchair. “I don’t think my husband ever carried me over the threshold, and I certainly didn’t think my grandson would, but thank you, Kache. That made things easier, didn’t it.”

  She looked up at Nadia and said, “Why there you are. How are you, my dear?” Nadia bent to hug her. Lettie said over Nadia’s shoulder, “And that must be Leo. A fine dog he turned out to be. I knew it. Best of the litter.”

  Nadia had read that a hostess should offer to take her guests’ coats, but when she did so after Snag set down the pumpkin pie and rhubarb crunch, Snag said, “That’s okay, dear. I know where they go. Believe me. I’m Snag, by the way. Nice to finally meet you.” She shook Nadia’s hand with vigor and introduced Gilly, who smiled warmly and gave Nadia a hug.

  There was an awkward moment of silence while the women took in their surroundings. Nadia almost felt an inventory occurring. She understood how strange it must be for them to be here, with some things finally changed now, but so many still the same.

  “It’s as if time folded back on itself,” Snag finally said.

  “We’ve changed things a lot,” Kache said. “You should have seen it before. It was exactly the same as we left it.”

  “This feels pretty exact to me.” Snag walked around, staring at the walls, at the bookshelves and the paintings, at the old Japanese fisherman ball and the photographs along the top of the piano. Nadia saw now the little difference their attempts had made. Moving the furniture, adding a coffee table, pillows, some artwork … That barely dented the accumulation of memories Snag and Lettie must have been poring through.

  Everyon
e held their breath and then Lettie sighed. It was a long sigh, as if she’d inhaled all the air in the room and let it all back out so that everyone could resume breathing. “All I can say is it sure feels good to be home.”

  While Kache went to put the goats and Mooze in the barn for the expected cold snap, the women arranged themselves in the living room, Lettie accepting the afghan Nadia offered her for her lap—the afghan Lettie had once crocheted—and a small pillow to cushion the back of the wheelchair somewhat. Snag took the red-checked chair and Nadia and Gilly sat on the futon. The fire crackled and sputtered then suddenly burned brighter.

  “So, my dear,” Lettie said, looking at Nadia. “Tell me how your life has changed since the last time I saw you. Kache tells me you’ve been filming. Still dream of San Francisco?”

  Nadia had once admitted to Lettie that she stared for hours at a time at one of the Winkels’ big, oversized photography books that said San Francisco, City by the Bay on the cover. Until she’d seen those pictures, she hadn’t imagined that such a place existed.

  “Yes,” she said, “sometimes. You remembered. Now I have a file on my computer and it is there I keep photos of San Francisco, so I can click over and pretend I am in this great city.”

  “I remembered because you reminded me of me. There was one bent up little photo that pulled me here to Alaska. I recall … one photo pulled you the most. One taken from the Golden Gate Bridge, looking toward the city. I understand that kind of magnetic force. No denying it.”

  Snag said, “I didn’t know that, Mom. A picture started it all for you and Daddy? Really?”

  Lettie rested her chin on her fist while she spoke from her wheelchair, and Nadia thought how she looked like a much older version of Rodin’s The Thinker. “Your poor father. He came along, of course. But he was doing it all for me. I was the one. Alaska this! Alaska that! If I hadn’t heeded that call I would have lived my life in regret.”