But, well… There’s always the tape.
I can almost feel the little silver box waiting for me upstairs, a magnet tugging at me, a weight on my chest. I have to listen to the tape. I can’t listen to it.
Later. I’ll do it later. Once I work up the nerve.
The afternoon crawls by. Between the gray weather and the north-facing windows, it already feels like twilight. Aunt Jen snaps on the light next to her armchair and goes on crocheting. I almost fall asleep, but before the wash of the rain can blur into underwater silence, a knock at the door jerks me back to reality.
Aunt Jen calls my name from the front hall. I steady my breathing, shaking off the incipient dream hanging over me.
“Coming,” I manage.
I stand, feeling wobbly and wrung-out, then trudge around the corner. And freeze.
Dad stands just inside the door, his hands in his coat pockets, looking back at me.
“Hi, bunny,” he says. His smile is hopeful, uncertain.
I blink at him and struggle for my voice.
“Hi.”
“I’ve been hoping you would call.”
“I know.”
“Listen. I know it’s hard right now, but…can we please talk?”
I cross my arms, look away. Aunt Jen catches my gaze and gives a minute, encouraging nod.
“We can go out for some hot chocolate, maybe,” Dad offers, watching us. “What do you think? Please?”
Out of the house. Sudden hope wars with dread. Away. Do I dare? What if something happens in front of Dad?
The tape is still waiting for me. If I stay here, I have to listen to it.
“Okay,” I whisper.
I steal glances at him as we drive. He looks tired. Dad has an artist’s face; if you put him in nineteenth century clothes he’d look like a poet, with thoughtful gray eyes, a quick smile, and a pensive frown. His hair is thinning, something he’s a little self-conscious about. Mom used to tell him it made him look distinguished. Gave him a “noble brow.”
He’s drumming his fingers on the wheel. I think of him smiling at me over his shoulder, some past summer in another world, the evening light slanting through his sunglasses as Mom dozed in the other seat, her breath rattling in and out.
“What do you think, bun,” he’d asked, “should we tell her she snores?”
He pulls into the parking lot of a Starbucks a few minutes later, surprising me.
“I thought you hated it here.” He always complains that everything is three times as sweet and three times as expensive as it needs to be.
“Well, maybe,” he says, pocketing the keys and attempting another smile, “but you don’t.”
I drop into a chair, my back turned to the windows so I won’t have to see my shadow reflected in the glass, while Dad heads to the counter. The rain rattles down behind me. God, I’m exhausted. I fold my arms on the table and rest my aching head on them for a minute, surrounded by the comforting, busy sound of the place: the rattle of plates, the swoosh of the cappuccino maker. But then Dad comes back to the table, carrying a big, white-and-green cup topped with a mountain of whipped cream and a brownie on a plate.
I can’t even stammer out a thank you. He sits down, watching me in silence. I poke at the brownie with my fork, take a bite without tasting it.
“Are you okay, bun?” he asks eventually. I can’t suppress a snort at the stupidity of the question. He looks away, fiddling with the receipt. “I wish you’d let me go with you to the hospital. I was really worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” I mutter. “They told me they couldn’t find anything wrong.”
“I know. Jen told me. I just wish you and I could talk about this, you know? Like reasonable people.”
I stab another forkful of brownie. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Of course there is. You’re obviously pretty angry.”
I rattle a spoon around my cup, sloshing a little wave of chocolate over the edge, trying to figure out what to say. How much does he know about what’s happened with Mom? Should I tell him? He might blame himself. Maybe I want him to.
When I still don’t speak, he tries again. “Jen said your mom’s kind of coming apart at the seams.”
“What did you expect?” I demand.
“That must be hard on you.”
“Yeah. Well.”
“I just wanted to make sure you got a chance to have your say. You must have a lot of questions.”
He’s repeating himself from that stupid email. Like he’s prepared a script in advance. No, not a script: talking points. I’m another crisis to be managed by staying on message. I let the silence pool between us, but he’s got lots of practice at this game and waits unmoved for me to speak. Finally I look at him and flatten my voice until it’s level.
“Were you going to tell me why you didn’t go to my show? The one in Montreal?”
“She told you about that, did she?” He sighs. “I don’t know, bunny. I guess I was running away. Trying to figure things out before I said anything. I didn’t want to burden you with it until I was sure. You…had a lot going on. That’s why I couldn’t go through with it, in the end. I couldn’t leave you.”
“But you can now?” I snap. He sits back a bit, looking unhappy, and it occurs to me that this is why we’re here, with people chatting comfortably all around us. So I won’t make a scene. So I won’t freak out. I take a long, calming breath. I am ice over deep water. “I thought you’d worked things out. Like you said people are supposed to do. I thought you were fine.”
“I tried. I really did. I’ve been trying for sixteen years.”
“So what happened? Are you cheating again or what?”
He gives me a pained look. “Is that what she told you?”
I take a long slurp of the hot chocolate so I won’t have to answer.
“Look,” he says, folding his arms on the table. “I just want us all to be happy. Your mom… She can’t be happy with me. I’m glad she’s finally getting some help, at least. She’s always been so fragile. I can’t make her happy. And neither can you. Don’t put that on your plate, okay?”
“What else am I supposed to do?” I’m not yelling. I won’t crack. “Just let her sink? Like you are?”
“Bunny, it’s not your responsibility.” He’s earnest now, leaning across the table. “You can’t take that on. That’s what happened with dance, isn’t it?”
The table shivers, making the plate clink against the surface. I put out a hand to grip its edge, panic splashing over me. That wasn’t me. I know that wasn’t me.
Dad, though he’s watching me intently, doesn’t seem to notice.
“I hated the way that ended,” he says. “I know how much you loved it. She ruined it for you. She shouldn’t have pushed you so hard. You haven’t seemed yourself since you quit.”
Like he’d know. I close my eyes. I’ll wash it away. I’ll make it disappear. But the only water I can summon is dark and glassy. “That wasn’t about Mom.”
“What was it about, then? I wish you’d talk to me. I want to have a real relationship with my daughter.”
Of course he doesn’t know what it was about. He didn’t really want to know; he left instead of asking. He ran. Just like he’s running from Mom now.
Maybe Mom’s not the one who’s fragile.
Under my hand the smooth stone tabletop feels colder, stealing the heat from my fingers. When I speak, the words seem to come from very far away. “You’re never even here.”
“I guess I tried to escape into work for a while. I thought maybe that’s what I was supposed to do. Be the provider, hold everything together. But it was so lonely. I don’t want that to be my life. I need to save what’s left of our family.”
By leaving me to hold everything together instead. A picture floats up through the icy lak
e: Mom sobbing in the garden. My grip tightens on the table.
“I haven’t abandoned you, Marianne. I’m still here. I just need to find a place that’s not a hotel room, and then you can come stay with me. Okay?”
“What if I don’t want to stay with you?” The words boil out of me before I can stop them.
“You don’t have to,” he says after a long pause, the words reproachful. “I just wanted to make sure you had a choice.”
“Maybe I don’t want to leave Mom!” I cry. “What choice do I have? That’s not a choice at all!”
“Bunny, please,” Dad sighs, “I know you’re angry, I really do. Please, just calm down and—”
The table rocks under my hand, and I jump to my feet, trying to hold it down, but it rebels, pitches on its side, and the cup and plate are catapulted to the floor, shattering the plate, sending shards of porcelain everywhere. Hot chocolate splatters on my jeans and runs in streams all over the floor.
“Marianne, what the hell?” Dad’s still in his chair, his hands clapped to his forehead, his eyes wide. He speaks into a sudden hush; everyone is staring at us.
“It wasn’t me.” I force my numbing lips to form the words. They’re barely audible.
“I know you’re upset, but I thought we could at least have a conversation!”
Whispers rise around us. People turn away, eyebrows raised.
“Can we go now?” I plead. “Please?”
Dad throws his hands in the air, but before he can even get to his feet, I’m already out the door.
• • •
“Call me, okay?” Dad says wearily as he pulls up to Aunt Jen’s building. “When you’re ready to talk.”
Whatever. I scramble out of the car without answering. I can feel him watching me as I run for the gate in the hedge.
I take the stairs two at a time, ignoring Aunt Jen’s hesitant call behind me. The tape recorder is sitting where I left it, a little silver patch gleaming against the colorful quilt draped over the mirror. I stand there staring at it, the chill of the linoleum floor seeping through my socks.
At first I can’t identify the source of the noise—a faint buzz, becoming a rattle, growing steadily louder—and then I see the little china animals on the dresser starting to jump and shake. It’s like there’s an earthquake, but the floor is cold and steady, the dusty frames on the wall don’t move. And then one of the figurines catapults from its place, smashing on the floor. Another. The next one goes a little farther, spattering my feet with little ceramic shards. I fall backward onto the bed as another whips past my shoulder, crunching into the wall. Another one strikes above me, raining broken debris over me as I cower.
I stay huddled there for a long time after everything has gone silent again before I dare to lift my head. Downstairs, someone on the radio is laughing. I pick my way through the shattered remains of the china animals. If I run I’ll cut my feet.
In the hall, I yank the door closed behind me and lean against it, breathing hard. I just got home. I must be awake. And that wasn’t me. Am I seeing things now? Like Mom? There’s no way that could have been me.
Knock knock knock.
It’s like someone’s tapping on the door with their knuckles, right next to my ear, quiet but emphatic. I jerk away from the sound, but then it moves, ranging all around the hallway, behind the walls, the ceiling.
“Marianne, sweetie?” Aunt Jen calls from downstairs. “Is that you?”
I wheel into the bathroom, slam the door, muttering under my breath with each step—“Go away, go away, go away!”—and the knocking dies down behind me. Downstairs I hear the front door opening, Aunt Jen calling out into the hall—“Hello?”—and then a sigh of exasperation as the door falls closed again.
She heard it, though. She heard it.
I collapse onto the edge of the tub, draw a trembling breath, and close my eyes, trying to steady myself. Cool, green-tinged sunlight. I’ll suspend time, let it all filter down to me through the water. But that only leads me to the memory of water meeting sky on that black horizon, the street running the wrong way.
I jerk the bathtub faucet on, mostly to keep Aunt Jen from thinking she needs to check on me, and shuck my T-shirt onto the floor. The gesture produces an unexpected twinge of soreness from my shoulder, and I glance down to find the tops of my arms marked with bruises, little elongated bluish circles under my skin. They almost look like fingerprints. Carefully, I fit my fingers over the marks. They line up disturbingly well.
When I look up again at the mirror above the sink, in the glass all I can see is darkness, a window into nothing, framed by a pale crescent of sand.
I whip around with a little screech of indrawn breath, half expecting to find it stretching out behind me, but of course all that’s there is the yellow tiled wall of the shower, the rush of the water, billowing steam. All around me, as if from behind the walls, comes that same quiet, insistent sound. Knock knock knock. Knock knock knock. Like someone testing for a weak spot, looking for a way in. Helplessly, I turn back to the mirror, and though the nighttime beach has disappeared, my face blurs and vanishes beneath a layer of gray fog blooming on the glass as if someone has breathed against it. And as I watch, lines drip through it, forming unsteady letters.
THIS IS MINE
MARIANNE
I snatch a washcloth from its hanger beside the sink and scrub the words from the glass, but I can’t erase them from my mind. I can’t erase the certainty sinking in my throat.
Whatever it was I saw last night—it saw me too.
12
When I finally thump back downstairs, Aunt Jen is in the front hall with her coat on, rummaging through her purse. Is she leaving me here alone?
“Where are you going?” I whisper.
“To check on your mom,” she says, and looks up at me. “Why? Are you all right?”
I swallow.
“Don’t feel so good.” It’s true. With the red edge of panic receding, I’m left sick and dizzy, my stomach still simmering. I cling to the handrail, not trusting myself not to fall.
“You’ve had a hard day,” she says sympathetically, and reaches up the stairs to squeeze my hand. “I won’t be gone long. I promise.”
“Can’t you stay?”
I see the words strike home in the tightening of her mouth, her hesitating glance toward the door. Desperation is making me selfish. I’m making her choose. I’m holding on too tight.
“I know it’s bad timing, Mare-bear—”
“Never mind,” I interrupt, hugging myself. “It’s okay.”
“I told her I’d come,” she pleads, “and she’s so worried about something happening to you. She made me promise I’d go alone.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise. You text me if you really need me, okay?”
I nod, keep nodding, until she finally shoulders her bag and reaches for the doorknob.
“I won’t be long,” she says firmly, and even as the door closes behind her she’s still watching me, blowing me a kiss before it falls shut with an echoing bang. As her footsteps recede, silence rises around me, inch by inch, filling the apartment.
Carefully, I lower myself to sit on the stairs, fold my arms over my head. I’d be tempted to just sit here until she comes back, as small as I can make myself, but the quiet is deepening every second, making my breath loud in my ears and my arms bristly with goose bumps. I should turn on the radio. I should do something to shake off the memory of that figure I glimpsed last night: a shadow, half-seen, like a reflection in a pool.
“Go away,” I whisper. The air is charged and heavy, pressing down on me. My words fall flat in front of my face, like I’m speaking into a dead phone connection. “Go away!”
Knock knock knock, comes the response. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. And this time it d
oesn’t stop. It escalates into deafening crashes, like someone’s pounding on the wall of the living room with a sledgehammer, but when I run into the room there’s nothing there, just the leaves of the plants trembling with every relentless blow. The windows rattle in their frames.
“Stop it!” I cry. “Go away!”
The hammering continues, heedless, a wall of sound pushing me back, until I give up and flee from the room. As I pound up the stairs it drops abruptly into ringing silence, and I stumble to a halt on the landing. My breath shivers in my ears. Doors open outside in the hall; neighbors’ voices drift in through the wall, raised in bewildered exclamation.
It’s real, this time. It’s not just me. It can’t be.
The floor of my room is still littered with bits of ceramic. I snatch a T-shirt from the suitcase at the foot of the bed and use it to sweep the pieces up, pushing the whole bundle into the trash can.
Ron’s tape recorder is still waiting for me on the dresser. I’m out of excuses. I have to know.
I pick it up and stare at it for a long time before hitting rewind, sinking down onto the bed.
The first thing I hear is our voices: “Seriously, Ron, can we go? Please?” Then Ron’s crunching footsteps as she paces around the circle. The wind whuffles in the speaker. Ron calls out her incantation—recorded, it sounds flat and silly, theatrical. Fake.
But her last word is lost in a sudden crackle and howl of static. I barely stop myself from leaping for the Stop button. It ebbs to a faint snarl, and Ron’s voice emerges again, blurred and reedy as though coming from a radio not quite tuned.
“…we tried, right? I’m not sure what the hell I would have done if it worked, honestly. But I hope it…helped…”
She falters, falls silent. There’s a long pause, and then a strange sound. A long, shivery sigh. The static rises and falls with it, winding through it. As if the static is part of it.
“Okay,” Ron says. Her voice has gone faint and hesitant. “You’re kind of freaking me out here.” Silence. And a breathless little laugh, shot through with white noise. The sound makes my scalp prickle.
The Dark Beneath the Ice Page 12