Melt

by Robbi McCoy

  “No!” Hild cried, rushing in to snatch Gudny, pressing her roughly into her garments. “Go if you must,” she spat at Asa, “but don’t sacrifice the child.”

  “She’s mine and she’s coming with me,” Asa said firmly, dismayed that Gudny was now in tears.

  “Lock her up!” Hild demanded. “She’s lost her mind.”

  Asvald approached Hild and pulled Gudny from her, saying, “Let the child go. Her mother has the right.”

  Hild released her hold on Gudny and lowered her head between slumped, defeated shoulders. Asvald handed Gudny over to Asa, his expression grim and cold. Unlike last year when the others had departed on their quest to reach Brattahlid, these people had no prayers for Asa. She didn’t blame them, nor did she begrudge them their opinions. She wasn’t sure herself she was doing the right thing.

  Asa nodded wordlessly toward her friends and turned to go.

  “Wait,” called a deep voice.

  She turned back to see Olaf grab his son by the shoulders. He shook the boy, his face a tableau of despair, then clasped him to his chest. Without a word, he turned Grif around to face Asa and pushed him toward her. The boy looked bewildered, turning to his father for an explanation. Olaf jerked his head firmly toward Asa and said, “Go!”

  Several gasps of disbelief arose from the group.

  “No, Papa!” the boy protested.

  Olaf’s upper lip quivered through his heavy yellow beard, but his eyes remained stern. “Keep me in your heart. Go now.”

  Asa felt her eyes sting with approaching tears. She reached an arm toward Grif, whose moist blue eyes, set deep in a hairless face, were wide with fear. He walked into her embrace, then the three of them set off in a northerly direction toward the land of the Skræling, not knowing what fate awaited them.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kelly stood outside Jordan’s tent with a mug in each hand. “Jordan,” she called quietly.

  “Come in,” came the immediate reply.

  She pushed aside the flap with her foot and entered the tent. Jordan sat at her computer, her back to the entrance, typing rapidly. She wore the same turtleneck T-shirt as earlier over navy blue sweatpants, a pair of thick socks on her feet. Kelly approached and set the cup down on the desk. On the screen was a wavy, grid-like pattern of red lines.

  Jordan glanced at the cup, removed her glasses and looked up to meet Kelly’s eyes.

  “You?” she said, surprised.

  “Sorry I startled you.”

  “Uh, no, you didn’t. Actually, you did. I thought it was one of the others.” She ran her hand through her hair and picked up the mug, tasting the tea. “Rooibos. You remembered?”

  “Sure.”

  Jordan smiled gently.

  “Are you very busy?” Kelly asked, looking again at the odd shapes on the computer screen.

  “Routine stuff. Feeding data into this modeling program. It creates a 3-D image of the glacier. Each day we take measurements, plug them in, and once enough data points are collected, it can simulate the movement of the glacier over the course of the summer. Check this out.”

  Kelly watched over Jordan’s shoulder as she clicked a button and the grid lines moved like a flowing river for a few seconds, then abruptly stopped.

  “By the end of the summer,” Jordan said, “it’ll go on a lot longer, of course. Isn’t it cool?”

  “Yes,” Kelly agreed. “Jordan, I was hoping you might have time to talk.”

  Jordan gulped down a serious swallow of tea before answering. “It’s getting late, but a few minutes…”

  Kelly pulled a chair closer and sat down. It was nice just to be sitting here, just the two of them, after so long. It took Kelly back many years to those coveted minutes in Jordan’s office at the end of the school day, when she would listen raptly to whatever Jordan wanted to talk about. Even her random complaints had found a grateful audience in Kelly. It didn’t matter what she talked about. It only mattered that Kelly was allowed into the private company of her loved one, if only on campus. Jordan’s secret life beyond the university grounds had remained frustratingly unknown to Kelly. Back then, she had imagined that it was a fascinating world of interesting people and stimulating activity, but she had eventually come to understand that it was more likely spent quietly at home with a couple of cats and a stack of science journals.

  “I’m happy to see you again,” Kelly said sincerely. “You look great. How’ve you been?”

  “I’ve been good,” Jordan answered vaguely. “How about you?”

  “I’m good.”

  “How’s your mother?”

  “Her health isn’t so great. Heart disease. High blood pressure. I don’t see her much. She’s still with my sister in Portland.”

  Jordan nodded and took another leisurely drink from her cup. “So you’re a photographer. That’s terrific.”

  “I love it!”

  “You always took great photos. I told you at the time you should pursue photography seriously, not just as a hobby. But you stubbornly clung to meteorology, trying to please me.”

  Kelly nodded. “I did everything I could to please you. I was a silly girl, wasn’t I?”

  Jordan regarded her with pleasure. “Yes. But charmingly so. You’re not a silly girl anymore, are you?”

  Kelly laughed shortly. “I hope not. It’s embarrassing to think about it…now. I must have seemed like a homeless puppy. You were so kind to me. Anybody else would have told me to get lost.”

  Jordan’s slight smile looked oddly sad. But it was short-lived. She brightened and said, “I told you you’d outgrow it, didn’t I? You’d look back and say to yourself, Oh, hell, what was I thinking?” Jordan slapped her palm against her forehead. “But it’s very common to have a crush on a teacher. Nothing to be embarrassed about. You survived and went on to have more mature relationships…one assumes.”

  Although her manner was friendly, Kelly believed Jordan was holding herself at a distance, as she always had. She didn’t seem at all relaxed. Kelly had so often yearned to break through Jordan’s barriers, to peel her back layer by layer until she could touch her exposed heart.

  “I’ve had a few relationships,” Kelly confirmed. “I don’t know if they were more mature or not.” She laughed self-consciously.

  She wanted to talk about her feelings and, more importantly, Jordan’s. But it was too soon for that, she knew, after such a long separation. It was a strange situation. She felt both like they had just met and like they had known one another intimately forever.

  “I can’t believe you’ve been right there in Boulder for six years!” Kelly shook her head. “Did you ever think of contacting me after you came back?”

  Jordan looked momentarily confused. “No, I didn’t think about it. I assumed you had moved on, had a full life.” She looked apologetic. “There wouldn’t have been much point. No place for me in your life anymore.”

  “Oh, no, I disagree! We could get together now and then. Talk and enjoy one another’s company. On a more equal footing. As friends.”

  Jordan shook her head. “Kelly, I was your mentor. People always leave their mentors behind. And it’s okay. It’s expected. It’s one of the classic rites of passage.”

  “But I didn’t leave you. You left me.”

  “I know, but you would have left me in time. Besides, I’m speaking figuratively. You left me in the sense that you outgrew your fantasies about me. Once you grow up and find your own way, mentors have nothing left to offer you, not even friendship. Least of all friendship, really, because they were never real people to you. They were an ideal. So when you’ve matured, they’re nothing but a disappointment because you once thought they were perfect.”

  “I never thought of you as perfect.”

  Jordan was clearly surprised. “You didn’t?”

  “No. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody like that, to be honest.”

  “But I remember you saying that I was your role model, that you thought I was the most admira
ble woman you’d ever known.”

  “All true. I admired you so much. I still do. But it wasn’t a blind admiration. You have shortcomings like everybody else. You hide them well, but if a person is looking closely, she can see your weaknesses.”

  Jordan cocked her head, curious. “So you loved me in spite of my flaws?”

  Kelly shook her head. “I loved you because of them. People don’t like perfection, Jordan. They may admire it, but they don’t identify with it, so it doesn’t move them. That’s one of the things you learn in photography. Look for the imperfections and bring them to the fore. That’s where the interest lies. That’s where you can touch someone’s heart.”

  Jordan looked thoughtful. “You seem so mature,” she said wistfully. “In any case, you have clearly outgrown your need for a mentor.”

  “I don’t remember you ever saying whether or not you had a mentor.”

  Jordan hesitated, looking like she was trying to decide how to answer. Kelly had seen this response many times before. Whenever she asked a personal question, no matter how innocuous, Jordan always took her time answering, as if she were considering whether or not it was worth the risk. Kelly assumed this intense need for privacy had been ingrained in her during adolescence. She had grown up in a conservative, intolerant family. Her acceptance among them had required that she keep her emerging lesbianism a secret. One of the most fundamental truths about her had been abhorrent to everyone she knew. Later, as an adult, she had come out of the closet, but she never seemed to have overcome her self-protective evasiveness.

  “Yes, I had a mentor,” she finally replied. “My professor and advisor at Cornell, Alonzo Marquette. He was a brilliant scientist. As a student, my goal in life was to be just like him, to pattern my career after his and hope to accomplish just a fraction of what he had done for environmental studies.” Jordan looked distracted. “He took me under his wing and I’ll be forever grateful for the extra attention.”

  “Cornell? I thought you did your graduate studies at the University of Chicago.”

  “Yes, that’s right. I started at Cornell and finished at Chicago.” Jordan crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair, fixing a relaxed gaze on Kelly. “So you’re happy working as a photographer. Tell me what you love about it?”

  * * *

  Kelly was setting her mug down to consider her response. Jordan was relieved to move off the subject of herself. This whole situation was nerve-wracking with Kelly showing up here so unexpectedly. Even worse, here she was dredging up the sore old topic of Professor Marquette and, by extension, his beautiful and passionate wife. That was not something Jordan wanted to talk about. Or even think about. That disastrous chapter of her life was long over. She wished it could be forgotten. Actually, she wished it had never happened. There was no way it could be forgotten. After nearly twenty years, the memories had barely dulled at all.

  She could still bring to mind the pale, translucent skin of Teresa’s shoulder, a blue vein trailing down across the curve of her breast. Lying beside her, Jordan had often traced that vein with her forefinger while Teresa lay on her back, her body’s heat waning after lovemaking. Teresa Marquette had been forty-three, nearly twice her age, a buxom brunette. Her husband called her Terry. Though Jordan didn’t know it at the time, their marriage was full of resentment, discord, perhaps even hatred, at least on the part of Teresa, a woman possessed and driven by a bitterness Jordan couldn’t guess at until years after.

  From their first meeting, Jordan had found Mrs. Marquette sexy in an intoxicating, carnal way, but it had never crossed her mind that the attraction could be mutual or that anything would ever happen between them. She never suspected that Mrs. Marquette had begun to take an interest in her husband’s favorite graduate student, the brainy young lesbian he was molding in his image. Until one day when she came by their house to deliver a set of student papers she’d graded and Professor Marquette was not at home.

  Teresa asked her in for a drink, then told her how smart and special she was, and told her something she hadn’t heard before, that she was a desirable woman. After a second drink that left Jordan light-headed, Teresa made her move. She pulled Jordan against her and kissed her, deep and luxuriously, easily coaxing her body into a desperate longing. Lonely and unsophisticated, Jordan offered little resistance to the older woman’s advances. Teresa easily won her and they became lovers. There was guilt, but not enough to drive Jordan away. She rapidly became obsessed with Teresa, spending almost every afternoon in her bed, ignoring her thesis, skipping classes, employing every excuse to keep her in the blissful embrace of her illicit lover. Within days, she was hopelessly in love. Teresa used her body every way imaginable, invaded her mind and possessed her heart. She thought of nothing else day and night but the craving need that overwhelmed her. So much so that she worried that the rest of her life was turning to shambles. But when she tried to resist, Teresa would call her and say, “Oh, sweetheart, please come to me today. I’m so lonely and I love and need you so.” Jordan had no power to say no.

  It went on for weeks and it was magnificent!

  Until Lonnie, as his wife called him, found out.

  He was deeply hurt and betrayed…by both of them. He quit as Jordan’s advisor, of course. His wife told him that it had been a lark, that she had no feelings for the girl. Jordan didn’t believe it and decided Teresa was merely saying that to avoid hurting her husband. But Teresa wouldn’t see her again and was thoroughly cold when Jordan tried to talk to her.

  Somehow, news of the affair was leaked to the rest of the faculty, percolating down through the student body as well. Years later, Jordan finally began to understand that the only person who could have spread the rumor was Teresa herself. Alonzo Marquette had been thoroughly humiliated.

  He had always told Jordan that she would someday be a valuable asset to science. But after the affair was revealed, he told her, with uncharacteristic disgust, that she had thrown away everything she could have been for “a piece of tail.” It was possible he was more disappointed in her than he was in his wife.

  Jordan was devastated. She had lost the woman she loved and the man who believed in her all in one blow. She had lost her place of privilege and her path to glory. She had lost everything, in fact, that mattered to her.

  The soaring star of her career fell from the sky. The story thankfully never reached a court or a newspaper. It was a scandal contained within the halls of academe, but the halls of academe were Jordan’s world, so it was sufficient to destroy her. She left Cornell. It was too uncomfortable there with everyone knowing what had happened. Besides, she couldn’t bear to approach another member of the staff to work with her.

  Once she had had time to reflect and recover, she began to believe that all Teresa had ever wanted, from the beginning, was to inflict pain on her husband. She had wanted to take away something that represented hope, the offspring of his intellect. Eventually, she understood that she’d been used. She’d been a fool.

  After a period of painful recovery, she decided there was nothing more important to her than finishing her degree and doing the work she had set out to do. She decided she could do it without the endorsement of her mentor, of any mentor. At least she hoped she could, so she applied to Chicago and worked hard with a single-minded focus and a determination greater than any she had felt before.

  Above all, she pledged to herself that she would never again be derailed by her emotions. Her career was the most important thing in her life. To jeopardize it for “a piece of tail” was the most idiotic thing imaginable. It would never happen again. She would be beyond reproach in every way. She would never win back Professor Marquette’s respect, she knew, but there would be nobody else who would ever find her foolish or frivolous.

  By the time Kelly came along, Jordan had gotten her toe in the door and was on her way. Kelly had always seemed mildly threatening to her, even as an innocent young woman without an ounce of guile in her. She’d been infatuated with Jordan, but she
hadn’t been a seductress by any means. She’d been shy and earnest, easy to predict and easy to control. She had lacked self-confidence, so she never pushed for what she wanted.

  Kelly had also seemed a little sad in those days. Her parents were divorced and her mother, with whom she lived, suffered from depression and alcoholism. She was a sloppy, self-pitying kind of drunk who could make a child feel guilty for merely existing. Kelly never said anything like that about her mother, but it was evident from what she did say that her home life was oppressive and her spirit yearned for an escape. Her two older sisters had already left home, so it was just Kelly and her defeated mother.

  Jordan had been moved by her, and had wanted to be the one to rescue her and give her every possible means of reaching her goals. She had felt a tenderness toward her that hadn’t happened with anyone else. Not a student, not even a lover. Jordan had advised her, encouraged her and tried to make her feel capable, but had kept her at a distance all the while. Despite her innocence and transparency, Kelly had been a beguiling temptress.

  The temptation of Kelly had been a test Jordan had passed. Except for that one goodbye kiss. That had been a mistake. A foolish risk. Fortunately, it hadn’t turned into anything. But it had shown Jordan that she wasn’t completely immune to her self-destructive impulses. Since then, she had steeled herself even more against her treacherous heart, determined that it would never undermine her again.

  When she said goodbye to Kelly for the last time, she felt she had barely escaped a disaster that could have ruined her. An affair with a student, especially one so virginal and impressionable, would have been the height of folly. She never let a student get that close to her again. Anyone else who had gotten close had touched only her body.

  Incredibly, here she was again, nine years later, evoking an old ambivalence in Jordan. She was happy to see her, but keenly on guard against the feelings of fondness seeping in from the past.

  “One thing I try to do,” Kelly was saying, gesturing with an open palm, “is capture the truth of a subject. To catch it in just the right light, at the right angle, at the right moment so it reveals itself, or at least an aspect of itself that is so true it looks like something you’ve never seen before. To capture it at its most pure and honest, when it’s nothing but itself.”