The Dark Beneath the Ice

by Amelinda Bérubé

  I wait for Not-Marianne to cross the distance between us, pull me down. But it doesn’t move.

  “What are you waiting for?” I grate. “Come on!”

  But it pulls back from me as I start toward it, casts a look over its shoulder, into the emptiness. I’m alone with it this time. There’s no one it can use against me. And there it is again, suddenly plain to see beneath its venom and rage: a desperate fear.

  “It’s not fair,” it moans. “It’s not fair, it’s mine, give it back!”

  I edge forward, past the waves. Into the darkness where the river meets the icy lake, where reality gives way to the dream. The water slices into my thighs; silence closes over my head. But Not-Marianne shies back another step with a wordless cry of mingled fury and despair.

  I could make it keep going. I could bury it forever. That’s what it would do to me if it could.

  But it can’t.

  It’s a ghost. It’s just a ghost. It’s never been more than a shadow.

  And I’m made of light, molten and pure: a rage like I’ve never known. A certainty. I’m the one who deserves to live. I’m the one who’s real.

  I’m the one who crosses the distance between us in one lunge.

  My hands close around its throat. Numbing cold seeps through my fingers, up my arms, but I ignore it. I won’t let go. Not-Marianne lets out a single sobbing cry, clawing at my arms, but I’m as ruthless as the invisible tide eddying around us, crushing it down, submerging it bit by bit. It struggles to lift its chin above the surface, powerless as a moth pinned to a board, the water devouring its snaking hair. It will never break the surface again. I’ll walk away from here serene, untouchable. Perfect as the moon.

  “Marianne!” The shout comes ringing out over the water from behind me. “Marianne!”

  It’s Ron, her booted feet flying across the crescent of the beach, charging heedless into the water.

  “Help,” the ghost splutters, choking, sobbing. “Help me!”

  The rage pulses through me again and I push it under. The water closes over its head. It flails, manages to fight its way to the surface again for a frantic gulp of air. It will be the last time. I will make it the last time.

  “Stop it!” Ron screams.

  I twist to look around at her, bewildered. And a shred of black drifts across my vision.

  My hair. Floating.

  I snatch my hands up to quiet it, to pull it back down around my shoulders, but my fingers have gone numb, and my hair sifts through them as if I’m underwater. Not-Marianne flounders desperately away from me, splashing back toward daylight.

  Toward Ron’s open arms.

  “No. No!” I hardly recognize my own voice as it ramps into a scream. “That’s not me! It’s a trick!”

  The ghost stumbles toward Ron, but its hair isn’t hanging wet around its face the way it should if it were real; it’s still a swirling cloud, defying gravity. Ron grips its outstretched arms, holds it away from her, though it begs and leans toward her.

  “You can save me,” it pleads. “Don’t let her drown me. It’s me. You know me. You saw me!”

  “Don’t leave me here!” I wail. “That’s not me! I’m the one who’s real!”

  And Ron looks frantically between us, back and forth.

  She can’t tell us apart.

  The hot white light that’s been filling me, insulating me, bearing me up goes cold and clotted. The chill winding up my arms seeps into my chest, into my bones, sends shards of ice slicing into my thoughts. Images vivid as nightmares flash through my head, crystallizing around and through my last two years. Memories that fit into mine like the other half of a split piece of wood. Double memories.

  Shadow memories.

  Did I get up and leave the yoga studio with Mom? Or did I open my eyes to find the room dark and silent, the doorknob untouchable? Did she tuck me into bed that night, or was I trapped, left behind, hammering on the door and screaming for her in silence while the water rose past my waist?

  Did I drift through school, a placid nobody, or was I drowning? Like in all my dreams? There’s no time when you’re drowning. Ten seconds could be a year. Two years. A thousand. Clawing for the surface. Pounding on the underside of the ice. Without thought, without sound, without breath, without anything but the purest terror.

  The night I thought was missing is knife-sharp in that shadow memory: when I finally broke through into the light, into the air, gasping and choking, stumbling against the railing on the roof. And Mom found me there as I sobbed in bewilderment and relief and exhaustion. The daylight part of me faintly remembers stumbling along a dark and silent beach. But the shadow memory says I let loose a torrent of rage and betrayal on my mother, let my fury bear me into the air like it was water, finally in control. Her face was pale and terrified at my feet.

  But she reached for me. She caught my ankle. Pulled me back to earth, wrapped her arms around me. I clung to her, couldn’t let her go, made her promise over and over that she’d save me from the invisible hands that had held me down for so long, that she wouldn’t let me drown. She stayed with me for hours, sang to me like she did when I was little, until I finally fell asleep.

  I thought I woke to her sitting on the side of my bed, head bowed, hands clasped between her knees. But the shadow memories say I found myself alone in a world gone silent and dark, become a nightmare copy of itself. It was bordered everywhere by silent, icy water, no matter where I went. And just out of sight, there was always someone with me, someone who dragged me into the water, pushed me under, over and over again. I screamed for help, for my mother, and couldn’t make a sound. There was no one to help me. I fought for every second above the surface. Even the dark was better than drowning.

  What I remember as Ron’s silly incantation…in those shadow memories it was someone calling me. Summoning me back to sound, to the mesmerizing swirl of the wind, to her. A girl with warm dark eyes in a beautiful painted face. She lit the way back like the sun. She heard me when I spoke. And she told me who my enemy was. The one who had taken my place in the sunlight. Who had taken everything.

  They spin through me like snowflakes, like a tide, a torrent of snips of moments seen two ways. Dad leaning across the table…or leaning away from me, toward a stiff, pale copy of me sitting statue-like across from us, while I watched over his shoulder, boiling over. He never wanted me. He wanted me drowned and gone forever, he wanted that frail, fearful ghost instead. The one who would cooperate. The one who’d be reasonable. Watching a movie with my mother…or watching my mother put her arms around the impostor, forgetting me. Niobe calling me back…or Niobe, for all her lying, gentle words, shoving me back into the dark so that the other could take over. Ron struggling in my grasp because she’s come looking for the other, not for me, never for me. Ron, who wanted to hear my voice.

  Who sees me.

  Ron’s hands are on my arms, burning through my sweater, shaking me. My hands are folded uselessly over my head, but I can’t block out the tide of double memories flooding over me; I’m staggering under their weight.

  “Marianne? Marianne! What the hell! Tell me this is you! What’s going on? Fight it! Stay here! Stay with me!”

  I can’t keep the two strands of memory separate, the daylight and the dark, they’re blurring together, the world is blurring together. I can’t tell which memories are mine anymore, which set is real. I can’t hold onto the rage anymore, and underneath it there’s only fear, bottomless and icy.

  There was only ever fear. Fear of the water, the silence, and the dark. Fear of never being seen. Fear of an eternity alone.

  My own fear.

  When I open my eyes again Ron has vanished, her voice smothered into roaring silence. All that’s left in the world is this ghost, this shadow, standing face-to-face with me in the glassy black water that sucks hungrily at our legs, waiting to pull us down. Which one
of us is real? Does it matter?

  We’ve each pushed the other underwater, tried to banish each other; we’ve been fighting for so long. But I have both our memories now, and we both remember the cutting sweetness of the wind. The brilliance of a red slide.

  I remember.

  I remember being desperate for the sun.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper, and my voice cuts through the silence and the dark, ringing clear as thought. It—she—stares at me, uncomprehending.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I won’t leave you here.” I lift my hands to touch her icy face; she reaches up to grasp them. Our fingers blur into each other. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

  And I press my lips to hers. Drink her down. Like ice melting on my tongue; like water too cold to taste. Until the mouth on mine is warm. Until the sound of the waves is crashing in my ears.

  The wind is like a slap, colder than the waves shoving at my thighs. I reel dizzily backward, but someone is gripping my arms with both hands, and my lurching motion overbalances us both, topples us together into the water. When I flounder upright again I find Ron already back on her feet, staring at me, water plastering her hair flat against her head and dripping down her face. Around us the sky is lightening, the river gray-brown, stretching out toward the hills on the other side.

  “Is it you?” she gasps, sloshing toward me. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  She clasps my face between her hands, her eyes searching mine. Her fingers tangle in my hair; it hangs dripping and ordinary, subject to gravity again. When I don’t speak, she takes a sobbing breath.

  “God dammit,” she says. “You can’t just give up, Marianne, what the hell!”

  I barely notice as she drags me to my feet. The sound of the waves rushing past and the wind lashing the trees is like music, an endless, unconscious chorus, a layered galaxy, every piece in motion. It’s mesmerizing. Beautiful.

  “Say something,” Ron demands.

  “It’s me,” I whisper. It’s so easy to lean against her, to let her hold me up, hold me close, keeping a glow of warmth between us against the slice of the wind. “It’s okay. It’s over. It’s just me.”

  • • •

  I’m curled on the couch in Aunt Jen’s fluffy robe, finally warm, barely awake, when Ron emerges from the shower, her hair wrapped in a towel, wearing the skirt I borrowed from her what seems like a million years ago. She kneels on the floor next to the couch, her face level with mine.

  “You said it’s over,” Ron says softly. “Are you sure?” I nod. “What the hell was that? What happened?”

  I turn away, shake my head.

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Try me. What did you do? What was it?”

  I hide my face behind my hands.

  “Look,” Ron says, a little desperately, “I know this whole thing has been weird and horrible. It’s just that after all that, and with Mom, and… I need to know, you know? Can’t you tell me?”

  “Don’t ask me. Please don’t.” The words break into pieces as they fall.

  “Hey,” Ron says, pulling my hand away, folding it in hers. “It’s okay. Really. I’m sorry. Never mind.”

  But I have to tell her. It’s too heavy a secret to keep, and I’m not drowning myself anymore. I’m leaving the icy lake behind.

  If she’s going to hate me I need to know. I need to know now. I lean my head against our clasped hands.

  “It was my red shoes.”

  “It… What?”

  “Remember that story? With the red shoes? That’s what it was. The ghost. This piece of me I tried to drown. Because no one wanted it.” Stupid tears drip down my face, leaving searing tracks. “I did cut off my feet.”

  She doesn’t let go of my hand, though she frowns, sorting through this.

  “So you…have your feet back now? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Does that make sense?” I scrub my eyes with the heel of my hand. “I don’t know how else to explain. It’s okay if this is too weird. If you have to go. I understand. It’s just…” You’re the only one I want. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  She reaches out a tentative hand, brushes clinging tendrils of hair away from my face.

  “I woke up,” she says, “and you were gone. I thought I wasn’t going to reach you in time. I thought for sure you were just going to let go and…and give in. But you said something to me. I was pretty sure it was you. You said, ‘I’m sorry. I won’t leave you here.’” Her eyes are bright, suddenly, and she swallows. “‘You don’t have to be afraid.’”

  “I’m afraid,” I whisper. “I’m still afraid. Your mom was right. It’s in me.” All that want. All that rage. Everything that lashed out at Ron, held her down, knocked her sprawling. The knife-edge between love and hate. “What do I do with that?”

  “Well,” she says, “drowning it didn’t work, right? So what did?”

  What worked was plunging in. Drinking it down. A kiss like standing under a waterfall. When the wind yanked me back to reality it came with a mouth warm on mine. Ron watches me in silence while I teeter on the edge of asking.

  “Ron. This might be a stupid question, but…did you kiss me?”

  She shifts a little and rearranges her arms before meeting my eyes again, a little wary, a little defiant.

  “You kissed me first.”

  Silence wells up between us, alive and humming. Her hand in mine, fingers wound tight together. The impulse that wells up in me is as nameless as the ghost, but it has the weight and momentum of a breaking wave, impossible to stand against. Slowly, I lean toward her, pull her to me. I taste smoke and summer as our lips meet. The room spins gently around us, time dissolves.

  It’s nothing like kissing the ghost. It’s the opposite of drowning.

  When we draw apart she gives me a tentative half smile.

  “You mean this, right?” Her voice trembles. “You’re not going to…pretend it didn’t happen? I mean, I’d understand. It’s been a weird night.”

  I rest my forehead against hers. When was the last time I wanted something? When was the last time I let myself?

  “This is everything,” I tell her. “This is everything I want.”

  This time she’s the one who kisses me. Tender, hungry, like she’s challenging me to prove it. And wordlessly, with my whole heart—the sunlight and the dark—I promise to, I promise, I promise.

  22

  I follow Aunt Jen down the hospital hallway, hunching my shoulders against the subliminal whine of the fluorescent lights. My shoes, still soggy, squeak on the linoleum with every step. Somewhere an intercom crackles.

  I want to explain. I have to, somehow. But telling Mom what it really was… I run aground on the idea, stumbling into blank anxiety. How can I tell her?

  I told Ron.

  I feel for the crinkle of paper in my pocket. Ron. The note says to call her later. There’s a glow of warmth to the thought, like a promise, like a piece of solid ground, somewhere to stand. If the ghost was real, Ron was too. Her lips full and soft against mine. The whisper of her breath.

  “Marianne?” Aunt Jen’s touch on my arm makes me jump. “How are you doing? Are you okay with this?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, not looking at her. She puts an arm around my shoulders.

  “I’ll be right with you, okay? I’m right here. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Chaperoning me. Protecting me—or maybe protecting us from each other. She’s barely spoken to me all day, although I’ve caught her watching me. I scared her last night, I think. Maybe she halfway believes me.

  But it doesn’t matter what she thinks, I tell myself as she holds open a door for me. Not anymore. It’s over. It’s just me now.

  Sunshine is pouring through the window, a dazzling river over the floor. Mom is a shadow against it, curled
up against the tilted end of the bed, facing away from us.

  “Laura?” Aunt Jen says. “I’ve brought Marianne.”

  No response, but the line of her back is tense, listening. When I lick my lips and try, “Mom?” she flinches from the word, just a little.

  Aunt Jen shoots me a helpless look, but I don’t return it. I clench my fists. Courage is a rope I can hang onto. I stepped out into the icy lake, didn’t I?

  One foot, then the other. I wade into the light, toward the bed with its plastic rail.

  “Mom. It’s me.”

  She doesn’t move. I watch the shivering lift and fall of her ribs under her flannel pajamas. If I reach out to her, will she pull away?

  But as I stand there working up the will to try it, she turns, finally, by slow degrees, like she’s afraid what she’ll see.

  “Mom, listen,” I begin desperately, but she squeezes her eyes shut, shakes her head. Tears drip down her face onto the pillow.

  “I’m sorry.” She barely makes a sound, mouths the words. “I’m. So. Sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  She raises her arms to cover her face, turns away as if she can’t bear for me to look at her. Keening the same words over and over, even as I scramble onto the bed and put my arms around her. She barely lets me, all bones and hard edges in my embrace.

  Aunt Jen looks like she’s debating coming closer, pulling me away.

  “I’m fine!” I fling at her. “Can you just give us a minute? Please?”

  She seems about to speak, but just stands there, shifting unhappily.

  “Well,” she says finally, “I’ll be right outside, okay? If you need me.”

  I wait for the door to click shut behind her. Wait for Mom’s sobs to ebb.

  “Mom. Listen. It’s—”

  “Don’t,” she chokes. “Don’t tell me it’s okay. It won’t ever be okay. How can I ever let you be alone with me after this? How can you ever trust me now?”

  “But it wasn’t you. You know it wasn’t you.”

  “I should never have let you come home. I should never—”