The Ice House

by Laura Lee Smith

  “Next week.” Corran tried to imagine his father submitting to the indignity of any sort of medical procedure. It was hard to reckon. Would he wear his work boots with his hospital gown? Would he criticize the quality of the gurney, maybe offer to retool a set of casters in his garage-cum-machine-shop on Watchers Island? Would he do what the nurses told him—pee on command and eat applesauce and shuffle around in post-op physical therapy like one of Toole’s pitiful seniors?

  “Well, I hope it goes well,” Corran said, realizing as the words left his mouth how utterly lame they sounded. “I mean, I hope you’re up and running again quick.”

  “Thank you, Corran.”

  Corran heard a car pulling up in Margaret’s driveway in front of the house. Toole, most likely, come to take Sharon, Johnny, and Chemal back to Dunedin. This was it, then. Real soon. The big goodbye. Johnny was headed back to Florida tomorrow for a date with a scalpel. And he was headed back empty-handed. The one thing he wanted when he came over here was Corran’s apology. Do it, Corran said to himself. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t take the ring. Because maybe you did. Just say it. Get it over with. Do it. He took a deep breath.

  “Da,” he began. “About Pauline’s ring—”

  Johnny held up a hand. “Don’t say it, Corran,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Christ. Listen to me. I don’t care about the ring. Pauline doesn’t care about the ring. The only thing we’ve ever cared about is you, lad.” He reached over and took Corran’s hand. His voice was rough. “I don’t want an apology. I just want you to be all right. Do you hear me?”

  Maybe it was the relief of Lucy being safe. Maybe it was the twitching agony of the longing for skag that had been wardancing around in his head all morning. Or maybe it was the warmth of his father’s hand against his own. Whatever it was, Corran realized he was crying. Crying! He hadn’t cried since he was a boy. He dipped his head quickly, hoping Johnny hadn’t seen. Too late. Johnny put an arm around Corran’s shoulders.

  “Ah, lad,” he said quietly.

  “It’s hard, Da,” Corran managed.

  “I know.”

  “I’m trying, Da.”

  “I know you are. And you know what you do now?” Johnny said.

  Corran looked at him.

  “You let me help you,” Johnny said.

  Corran nodded. They sat for a little while longer, hands clasped. It was a little awkward, Corran thought, but then again it wasn’t. The kitchen door opened and Toole walked out. He stared at them silently, and Corran took a moment to register what Toole must have been seeing: two grown men in fuzzy socks and women’s tracksuits, leaning together and holding hands under a half-frozen rose arbor.

  Toole shook his head.

  “And Sharon says I’m going potty,” he said.

  Corran was standing atop a teetering stepladder in Margaret’s kitchen. The stepladder was making him uneasy, and the attic access through which he was about to stick his head and shoulders was yawning blackly, and why he’d agreed to any of this he had no idea. Margaret had called him to come over—

  The thrashing of his arms woke Corran from the dream, and for this he was grateful. He looked across the room and saw the pajama-clad mound of Lucy’s backside motionless in her crib. She gave a soft sigh in her sleep. He shook himself fully awake and walked into the kitchen. He looked out the window. Down the hill from the croft, the shimmer of Loch Linnhe wavered in the moonlight. The Drumscaddle ferry light was off. Corran’s phone buzzed with a text from Jintzy: Call me.

  Corran dialed the number and kept his voice low so he wouldn’t wake Lucy.

  “Jintz?” he said. December, Jintzy said. He’d gotten the report from the company. Corran could come back to the rigs in December. Class Two engineer. Full benefits. Ten days out, four in with an option for overtime. Jintzy talked them into waiving Corran’s HUET training for another year, since he’d completed a session within the last twenty-four months.

  “I did it, mate,” Jintzy said, laughing. “Got you back. All you need to do is show up December first. You’re back aboard.”

  “Brilliant,” Corran said softly.

  “They’ll be sending the forms.”

  “Thanks, Jintzy.”

  Corran went to the kitchen. He checked the time: nearly midnight. In six hours, his father would be on a plane back to Florida. He wondered if Johnny was getting any sleep. He pictured him in the little room in Sharon’s house on Boscombe Road, dozing in the twin bed under the eaves like he used to do when Corran was a little kid. It was comforting, then, to listen to his father snoring. He would try to memorize the sound of it for the months and months when he didn’t hear it. But now he could scarcely remember it at all. Last night he’d cracked open the bedroom door to see if he’d catch it. But there was nothing.

  In the shadows of the living room the activity quilt was balled up on the sofa. It looked like a living thing, something warm and resting. He walked over and picked it up, then sat down on the sofa and held the quilt to his face, inhaling Lucy’s sweet scent. An image of her frightened face, trapped underwater, appeared to him, and he tried to push it back. Great—another horror to add to his mental photo album. Fabulous. But no, he reminded himself, this one was different. Lucy was alive.

  It was funny, because during the seconds he was struggling underwater with Lucy’s straps, a quiet, dispassionate voice was speaking in Corran’s ear. If Lucy dies, it was saying, you’ll simply follow her, that’s all. Get a gun, take a leap, tie a noose: Do whatever you have to do. You’ll figure it out. You’ve held off this long, for her, but now you can get it done. Maybe shoot up a liter of skag, needles in every vein, go out in a sweet, hot blaze of glory. Just get it over with, at long last, whatever it takes, because there’s no way you can survive this one, kidda. Forget it.

  But Lucy was alive.

  And wasn’t it fucking ironic? All that HUET training, all those underwater simulations—strapping and unstrapping yourself, fighting for egress. What good had it done him when his own daughter was trapped in that situation? If Johnny hadn’t been there on the other side of the car seat, Corran’s daughter would have drowned. Corran wouldn’t have been able to get her out in time. And God knows Johnny was in no shape to be thrashing about underwater and bashing his head in the process. He knew the risk. He went underwater anyway. So, the lesson here, folks? Corran wanted to email the HUET trainers, tell them to add a little something to their curriculum. You can get pretty damn good at saving yourself. But saving somebody else? That takes something more. Courage? Yeah, courage. Sacrifice, perhaps. No—love. It took love.

  And Lucy was alive.

  Let me help you, Johnny said.

  Okay, Da. Okay.

  Imagine, Corran thought, just for a moment: Lucy growing up in the warm breezes on Watchers Island. Running down to meet the surf, retreating back when the foamy waters approached. Soft towels. Cry of gulls. Sunscreen and bathing suits. Her own bedroom. And Pauline, sweet Pauline, leaning over the crib in the night, telling Lucy stories of valiant, good, hardworking Scotsmen who lived cleanly and braved the raging North Sea and loved their little girls more than anything else in the world. And Johnny—Johnny even!—making little pots of treacle-sweetened porridge and spooning it into Lucy’s mouth, hungry little bird she’d be. Imagine it. She’d never be cold again, his Lucy.

  He could ask them. He could.

  Can you help me, Da?

  Can you help me, Pauline?

  Corran went to the keyboard in the living room and set the volume down to zero. He played the Moonlight Sonata. No sound—he didn’t want to wake Lucy. Just touch. Just sense. Just memory.

  Eighteen

  Inversion, Johnny thought. Inversion might do it. He was somewhere over the rocky coastline of Newfoundland, trying to tough out a headache and turbulence-induced nausea, when the thought occurred to him. He closed his eyes and pictured the frozen piston in the engine block of the VW back on Watchers Island. He was willing to bet that when he got home this
evening, he’d find the damn thing still immobilized and, if Pauline’s assessment was correct, still dripping Marvel Mystery Oil like a leaky faucet. There was no reason to assume that the frozen piston would have done as he’d hoped and self-corrected while he was off negotiating a truce with Corran and nearly drowning in Loch Linnhe in the process. That would have been just too easy.

  Fine. So, next tactic. Think inversion—turning the whole thing upside down. Not easy to do, sure, given the structure of the piston housing. But still. If he invested the time to take out the entire mount and then used a lift to turn the contraption upside down, then he could clobber it from the bottom and try to break it loose. It was worth a try. Not a bad idea at all, in fact. He was pretty proud of himself for noodling this one through, and with a tumor lodged in his brain, no less. If it worked, that was.

  Admittedly, studying the problem of the piston was a smoke screen for the problem Johnny was trying to avoid thinking about, which was Corran and Lucy and the cold, bleak remove of the little cottage at the top of the hill. But with the way his head had begun to throb since the plane reached cruising altitude, Johnny had determined that little good was going to come from continuing to fixate on that particular problem, especially here at thirty thousand feet, with Chemal dozing next to him, with the shores of Northeastern America growing closer, and with the reality of all that was awaiting him at home looming larger by the minute. For now, there was only this: Corran was alive. And Lucy was alive, and if they all put their heads together, maybe they could find a way to keep them that way.

  All right, so! What’s to worry about next? Shit. Johnny opened his eyes. A wave of nausea broke. He took a deep breath. The conk on the noggin he’d suffered yesterday while bumping about in the sunken Polo in Loch Linnhe had triggered something in the tumor/cyst situation, no doubt about it. Sharon had pestered him nearly blind over it when they got back to Dunedin last night, taking his vitals every twenty minutes, then wanting to take him to the ER and get it checked. But he’d refused. Twenty-four hours, he reasoned. In twenty-four hours, he’d be home and could stagger into Dr. Tosh’s office if his condition hadn’t improved. Tosh would know what to do.

  Starting the whole business over again in Scotland was out of the question. Johnny could picture it: repeat MRIs, blood tests, medical history—the whole nine yards. And then what? If tumor trouble was indeed found, it would only delay the trip home—he could picture it already: Hospital admittance and a missed flight would be sure bets. No thank you. Johnny had paid for two seats on the morning’s Virgin Atlantic departure from Glasgow to Jacksonville, connect in Charlotte. And come takeoff, he intended for his and Chemal’s asses to be planted in them.

  “You’re being stubborn,” Sharon told him last night. They were in her kitchen in Dunedin, sorting through waterlogged luggage. The suitcases were a loss, but the clothing, at least, was salvageable. Sharon had been running loads through the little clothes dryer under the counter for the last hour, and now they were trying to reassign Johnny’s and Chemal’s belongings into a pair of worn duffel bags Toole had produced from somewhere.

  “I just want to get home, Sharon,” Johnny replied.

  “You’re gambling with your health.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. Sharon and Toole exchanged a look. “Don’t do that,” Johnny said.

  “Do what?”

  “Look at each other like I’m some sort of disobedient child.”

  “Well, if the shoe fits, Johnny,” Sharon said.

  Johnny held up his hands. “I’ve got a wicked headache, Sharon,” he said. “Let’s try not to make it worse.” He left the rest of the soggy packing job to Chemal and made his way to the little room at the top of the stairs, where he spent a fitful night tossing in the twin bed, choking back nausea, and listening to the wind batter a loose piece of flashing under the eaves. Don’t die, he told himself over and over through what seemed an interminable night. Not yet. We’ve come this far.

  Let me help you, he’d said to Corran.

  Okay, Corran had said.

  And what did that mean, exactly? An idea had begun to form in the back of Johnny’s beleaguered mind: They could bring Lucy to Watchers Island. But in order for this idea to even begin to be given any serious consideration at all, three things had to happen. One, Johnny needed to survive brain surgery; two, he needed not to have cancer; and three, Pauline needed to be on board. The third point seemed easy; but in the darkness of Corran’s old bedroom last night, neither point one nor point two seemed a foregone conclusion. At some point, Johnny dozed. All afternoon and evening he’d been worried about what kinds of dreams would visit after the nightmare of the car crash and the vision of little Lucy’s wide, terrified eyes, but as it happened, once he finally fell asleep, there was only blackness, for better or for worse.

  In the morning, Sharon and Chemal took care of everything. Toole had already departed for work, leaving a jolly enough note on the kitchen counter for Johnny: A’s weel that ends weel, Johnny. Safe journey. Chemal loaded the replacement rental car they’d picked up in Dunedin, a robust Mercedes that—for the love of Pete—they would enjoy no farther than the rental return corral at Glasgow Airport. Sharon printed out the boarding passes and made a bit of porridge. “Try, love,” she said to Johnny. “It may help.” It did. The nausea had abated for most of the flight, in fact, not returning until just a little while ago, when the plane hit a patch of turbulence. Deep breath, Johnny told himself now. He caught a glimpse of the motion-sickness bag in the seat pocket in front of him, and he spent a panicked moment wondering if he needed to go for it, but then he averted his eyes from the bag and the sickness seemed to recede. Power of suggestion, Ice, he told himself. Don’t look at it again.

  Think positive.

  Easier said than done.

  Then just think of something else.

  Sex. That ought to do it. The deep curve of Pauline’s back when he came up behind her. The roll of her hips. The way she laughed when she climaxed. Laughed! Little joyous barks. Every time. It was the most wondrous thing, though now he found himself fretting a bit over what he’d seen in recent years as a disturbing wind-down in Pauline’s libido, even though his never seemed to so much as hiccup. Most nights when they got into bed she fiddled with her iPad for an hour or so, then pecked his cheek, drew her knees up pertly, and rolled away. She had told him many times that her waning enthusiasm for sex was not about him, that he shouldn’t take it so personally. “It’s natural,” she would say. “I’m just getting older, that’s all. Paul Newman himself could walk in here right now and get down on his knees and I’d still feel the same way.”

  “Paul Newman’s been dead for years,” Johnny would say.

  “Still.”

  “So you’re saying I’ve the same odds as a dead man?”

  “I’m saying you have no worse.”

  Sometimes she took another tack: “It’s biologic checks and balances, you know,” she’d begin. “One gender has to want it more than the other. If nobody ever wanted it, the species would die out. On the other hand, if everybody wanted to have sex constantly,” and here she’d look at him a bit reprovingly, “then we’d be in a huge overpopulation mess, wouldn’t we?”

  “There’s such a thing as birth control,” Johnny said.

  “You’re messing with the human genome, Johnny. I’d watch it if I were you.”

  And so it went.

  He finally dozed for a few moments, but he was jolted awake by a bump of turbulence and realized he’d been dreaming of orphan babies haunting the rafters of the ice plant. One of the babies looked like Lucy. He rubbed his eyes and tried to push away the image.

  Death! He kept coming back to it. Johnny had once heard a story about a famous starlet—Marilyn?—being asked about death. “What does it feel like?” she was asked. “Well,” she replied. “I suppose you feel the same as you did before you were conceived.” Which was brilliant, really, and which ought to have been quite reassuring, this promise
of oblivion, of unawareness, of a sleep so deep it wasn’t even sleep. Should have been. But wasn’t, really.

  Johnny looked out at the clouds over Newfoundland and wondered.

  Chemal nudged him from the next seat. “Want some M&M’s?” he said. Johnny declined. Chemal yawned loudly. “Yo. I’m tired, Mr. Freeze,” he said.

  “Me too,” Johnny said.

  “I don’t usually get tired.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  Chemal peered at him carefully.

  “You all right?”

  Johnny shrugged.

  “Dang,” Chemal said. “I’ll be glad when we get your ass home. You think it’s getting worse?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Chemal.”

  Chemal looked a little hurt. Oh, shit. Now this. Johnny shifted in his seat and leaned against the window. Pass the time, he told himself. Talk to the kid, why don’t you.

  “I’m thinking about the piston on that VW,” he said. “About turning it upside down and trying to break it loose that way.” Chemal narrowed his eyes and seemed to study the seat back in front of him. After a moment, he nodded.

  “Might work,” he said. “But that’s a big job, Iceman. You’ll have to take the whole housing apart.” He drummed his fingers on the tray table. “Isn’t there another way? Something more, like, direct?”

  “Been trying to figure it,” Johnny said. “Let me know if you come up with an idea.”

  Chemal snapped his fingers. “Delighted, dude. I’ll study on this. Hey, I can even help you with it when we get home!” He grinned. “We’ll get that muther out of there one way or another,” he said. He plugged his earbuds back in and commenced bobbing. Johnny tapped him on the shoulder. Chemal took the earbuds out.

  “What are you going to do when we get home?” Johnny said.

  Chemal looked at him blankly. “Work on the piston? Didn’t we just cover that?”

  “I mean in a bigger sense. With your days. Your future. What are you going to do with your life?”

  Chemal grimaced. “Please,” he said. “Don’t pull a Jerry on me here.”