Turtle under Ice

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Turtle under Ice Page 7

by Juleah del Rosario

it will always be untimely.

  I turned back to Alex. My knee grazed against hers.

  “I know how it feels,” I began to say.

  “My mom. Six years ago.”

  Alex’s mouth curled slightly.

  “I’m sorry. That sucks, but I could tell

  there was something about you that understood.”

  Row

  I had irrational fears

  about Maribel

  in the months leading up

  to their wedding.

  “I’m scared,” I said to Dad.

  He sat at the dining table

  with his laptop, poring over

  a contract for a client.

  “Mmm” was all I got in response.

  “Dad?” I tried again.

  He looked up.

  “What?” Dad had the look on his face

  that he often had ever since we moved here

  to Little Lake for his new job.

  The face of someone

  who was perfectly content

  reading legalese

  and studying the meaning

  of language written

  into terms and conditions.

  The face of someone

  who was actually happy.

  I know that what happened to Mom

  was an anomaly,

  virtually,

  statistically

  improbable.

  But not impossible.

  But Dad was bringing someone new

  into our lives,

  and the same thing

  could happen.

  Maribel could die.

  Dad didn’t hear me at all.

  “What’s up, Row Bow?”

  I didn’t know where the pain went

  that used to lie

  on top of Dad’s skin.

  Like a rash all over his face.

  But it hasn’t been there for months.

  He looked so normal.

  He found someone.

  He had the chance

  to be loved, again.

  Maybe strength did come

  from burying the past.

  Maybe happiness was at the end

  of that journey, just like Dad had found.

  “Maribel is awesome.

  I can’t wait

  to have her as

  a stepmother,”

  I said instead,

  because looking at my dad now

  and knowing how far he had come,

  how could I possibly tell him anything

  that would jeopardize his face?

  Dad closed his laptop

  and came over to me on the couch.

  He wrapped me in his arms

  and smothered me with his

  slightly wrinkled shirt.

  “You and your sister are the best things

  that have ever happened to me.”

  Sometimes when people hugged me,

  it felt too real. Like too much love

  contained in one moment.

  I didn’t want all of my emotions,

  sadness and joy,

  heartbreak and hopefulness,

  to come spilling out of my tear ducts.

  Because once they started,

  how will they ever

  possibly stop?

  Even through love, I gritted my teeth.

  I took a deep breath,

  and I changed the subject.

  “Can I buy a new pair of cleats?”

  Ariana

  Alex came by the Wyndover Lodge again

  to pick up her cousin.

  “You want to come to a gig?” Alex said

  as I finished folding a crisp white tablecloth.

  “A gig?”

  “Yeah. We’re playing at some party.”

  “You’re in a band?”

  “Sort of,” Alex said.

  Her cousin rolled her eyes.

  “They’re good. Like record-deal good.”

  “You have a record deal?” I wanted to ask her

  why didn’t she tell me. We could talk about her brother,

  about my mom, about things

  I don’t talk about with anyone,

  but she couldn’t tell me about her record deal?

  “They have a song on the radio,” her cousin replied,

  like she was their manager.

  A song on the radio? I wanted to scream.

  “Then what are you doing hanging around

  Little Lake for the summer?” I said, but what I

  really meant was, What are you doing hanging out with me?

  Both Alex and her cousin looked at their feet.

  No one responded. They didn’t have to.

  I understood. It was the same downward glance

  that I used to do after my mother died

  to avoid talking about things I didn’t want to talk about.

  Her brother.

  We piled into Alex’s Jeep and drove to a massive house

  in a neighboring town. “A hedge fund manager’s son.

  He’s turning sixteen. Don’t judge. They’re paying us

  good money. Like, more than a decent-size show.”

  I shrugged. “Good money is good money.”

  I wasn’t judging her choices in gig, but I was judging

  our friendship, what I knew. How much I didn’t know.

  I helped Alex haul in some gear. I took advantage

  of the full spread of food and waited with her cousin

  until the band made their way to the makeshift stage.

  “We’re Kickerville Road,” one of them said.

  The song started up, and I watched the way Alex

  no longer looked like the person I knew.

  Up there on the stage

  Alex was dynamic. Not introspective or quiet.

  But as soon as she struck the first chord,

  followed by a melodic arrangement,

  she wasn’t so different.

  I looked around at the crowd, trying to see

  if anyone noticed, anyone could tell

  that the music, it sounded

  like the inside of my head.

  Row

  Kennedy and I sit cross-legged

  on the “Desert Sand” carpet

  that Maribel installed

  in our bedrooms last summer

  replacing the “Smoky Merlot”

  that was probably en vogue

  when the house was built

  in 1980-something.

  According to our stepmother,

  the new carpeting will show well

  “if your father and I ever decide to sell.”

  Ariana and I exchanged looks

  when we learned of the new color scheme,

  when we learned that this place

  we now call home might someday

  no longer be ours.

  Kennedy dumps a basket

  of paper and recyclables

  onto the carpet.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Ephemera,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Things that are used or enjoyed

  for only a short period of time.”

  She pulls out a hot-pink sticky note.

  “Ephemera,” she says again.

  “So, basically, you think

  that by going through

  Ariana’s recycling,

  we might be able to find some clues?”

  “You’re on the case, Gumshoe,”

  Kennedy replies.

  She retrieves a printed assignment.

  She finds a grainy black-and-white photo.

  “Don’t,” I say. “Put it back.”

  Kennedy examines it closely,

  even though she knows what it is.

  “Is this…?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Oh my God.

  Is your sister pregnant?”

  Her face is a mix of concern

  and horror and shoc
k.

  “No,” I say slowly.

  “Maribel is… was.”

  “That’s—” Kennedy tries,

  but trails off

  like everyone,

  everyone does.

  There are no words.

  “I’m sorry.”

  It hurts in the same way

  as all conversations before.

  Damp nose. Bulging throat.

  Constriction.

  “Whatever,” I say,

  and fall onto the bed,

  onto a lumpy pillow

  that smells like shampoo,

  and swipe to a screen on my phone

  and tune out.

  Ariana

  “Why do people love this shit?”

  Row said, pointing at the radio.

  It was Kickerville Road. The song about ghosts.

  I wanted it on repeat. I wanted it on surround sound.

  I wanted the car next to us to be playing it too.

  But Row changed the station,

  and then changed it again and again,

  until landing on something

  that wasn’t this song.

  Was there a secret language hidden in sounds?

  As if the wavelengths could say something

  to only some of us.

  Because if I closed my eyes

  and narrowed in on the chords of the piano,

  I was transported somewhere

  that wasn’t this car,

  that wasn’t the town of Little Lake.

  I was somewhere new,

  somewhere significant,

  somewhere free.

  A car honked behind us

  and I stalled out again.

  “It isn’t shit,” I told Row,

  and changed the station back.

  But she was no longer paying attention to the music.

  She was waving her hand at the green light

  and the gas pedal and telling me,

  “Let’s go!”

  I turned the key, and the engine sounded like it was crying.

  I gave the car too much gas and let off the clutch

  too quickly.

  We lurched through the stoplight.

  Our bodies hurtled forward.

  The song ended and the car smoothed

  to a steady speed, and we drove straight on the road

  that would lead us back to our house.

  “I’m glad neither of us became musicians.

  The world doesn’t need another sad song

  about people dying,” Row said,

  and swung her feet up onto the dash,

  socks dropping dried blades of grass.

  The sun glared into our eyes. I couldn’t look at her.

  I didn’t understand how she could believe this.

  The world did need these songs,

  because the world needed to know we exist.

  Row

  What was it about selling homes

  that attracted someone to our family?

  Was it because we’re a good fixer-upper?

  The bones of something that could be

  transformed into mid-century modern?

  Farmhouse chic? Boho contemporary?

  “I think they’re serious,” Ariana said.

  We tried to ignore Dad and Maribel

  sautéing garlic in the kitchen.

  We tried to ignore the second pour of wine

  and the clink of glasses.

  I was trying to find the value for “x”

  while Ariana was trying to eavesdrop.

  “Dad’s going to ask her to marry him,”

  she whispered.

  “Did he say that?” I whispered back.

  Dad opened a package of linguine

  with too much vigor.

  Pasta flew everywhere.

  The sound of the dried strands

  falling to the floor was what I imagined

  a tiny army of ants might sound like

  if they fell from the sky

  and invaded our kitchen.

  “Oh shit,” he said,

  and Maribel laughed,

  and they both crouched to the floor

  to pick up the pasta, out of view.

  I imagined that they might be kissing.

  Ariana shook her head.

  “Just look at him.

  He’s happy.”

  I shifted the weight of my body

  around on the stiff wooden chair.

  A small act of change.

  Like an accumulation of small changes

  that I had somehow missed

  all around me.

  People in this family

  could be happy.

  Ariana

  I kept listening to Kickerville Road on repeat.

  Their demo album. The EP.

  Tracks from their unreleased

  studio album that Alex gave me.

  I wanted to know what it was like to be a girl like Alex,

  someone who feels the same gutting sense of loss that I did

  and yet still makes the kind of music that burrows into your brain

  like creatures in a lonely forest looking for a home.

  There’s something I need to do. Will you come with me?

  Alex texted. I didn’t know what kind of friend I was to Alex,

  if I was the only person she turned to

  when she needed

  to feel the loss of her brother,

  like I was her emotional support animal.

  But I agreed to meet her for a hike, even though

  I knew it had something to do with her brother.

  We crossed a stream.

  My toe faltered and my shoe fell in.

  But I plowed ahead with a soggy sock

  and a heart that felt overgrown.

  We stopped at a spot where the trail opened up

  and an outcrop of rocks basked in full sun.

  Alex pulled out a small plastic container from her backpack,

  one you might use to store leftovers,

  but the insides were gray and blackened.

  “My brother,” she said.

  “Not all of him, but enough.”

  I remember scattering my mother’s ashes.

  At the time I thought it was some sort of magic.

  Her body becoming one with the earth.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that.

  I remember the wind took all of the ashes

  and blew them around with the sand and the salt-spray air,

  and I covered my nose in fear of breathing too much of her in.

  I used to believe that was how life and death

  were always meant to be.

  Commingling like a swirl of dust in the wind,

  and every time I saw the wind kick up,

  I thought about Mom.

  But there was nothing magical about death,

  because there is no magic in being human.

  Alex tried to get the wind to do the same thing,

  but there wasn’t even a breeze

  and she tried to sprinkle a clump of ash into the air,

  but it fell like a clod of dirt back onto the rocky ground.

  There on the top of a rock, blazing in the sun,

  were the cremated remains of Alex’s brother.

  We both stared at the thin layer of gray ash on top of gray rocks.

  I could have offered her advice on how to scatter ashes;

  suggest that we climb higher, find a cliff,

  go somewhere other than this clearing, with no breeze,

  no room for the wind to catch hold of someone’s soul.

  I could have suggested we abandon this effort

  and instead launch her brother’s dinghy

  and wait for the wind to carry away the ashes

  the way the wind carries away the sails.

  But I didn’t say anything,

  because this moment didn’t need

  to be carefully crafted
with the perfect gust of wind

  or timed with the right filter of light.

  The sun bore down on us,

  vegetation wilted in the heat,

  and I stood awkwardly,

  continuing to watch Alex falter.

  She dumped the remaining contents

  onto a patch of dirt near a pine tree.

  “This is where we used to play,” she muttered.

  “Who knew that the brother

  you used to climb trees with,

  pretend to be pirates and monsters and dragons with,

  would turn out to…”

  Alex didn’t finish.

  But I knew how the story ended.

  I knew that the monster ate him alive,

  the pirate drowned him at sea.

  That as kids we could be heroes in our own stories.

  That we could never be defeated by anything

  until our world stopped being imaginary,

  and the giant fought back,

  and the monsters came out to eat us.

  Row

  “How far along was she?”

  Kennedy fingers the image,

  tracing the outline of a nose.

  “Fifteen weeks,” I say.

 

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