If the Ice Had Held

by Wendy J. Fox

  * * *

  When Brian’s promotion came through, her heart jumped for a moment—maybe he really had been working late all those nights. Maybe he had been squirreling away extra hours saved from not commuting and putting them towards reports and finishing his email. She called a sitter and dressed a chicken to roast. She opened a bottle of good wine and wiggled into a pair of pantyhose, and she stood in the full-length mirror, her legs skimmed in black nylon as she pulled a dress over her head. She still looked good, she thought, and stepped into the pair of heels Brian had bought her many years ago. The last time she had taken them to a cobbler, he had told her that he remembered the shoes, and that it would be the final time he could do anything with them. She had been having them resoled, re-heeled, and generally refurbished for years. The shoes were gray suede with a stacked heel and a square toe. They were less in fashion than when Brian had first gotten them for her, but the arch was still shaped perfectly, and they brought her to a height she liked, and she loved the clack of them against their tiles.

  The day of the promotion, when he called her, and after she had said her congratulations, she added, Can you please come straight home after work, and he did, rolling up the drive just after six, as the chicken finished to a perfect brown as she tossed lemon onto an arugula salad.

  He kissed her on the cheek, but if he noticed the shoes—the first gift he had ever gotten for her—he did not say anything. He asked after the children and told her that the kitchen smelled good, that she smelled good. He looked tired, not excited, and she poured him a glass of wine.

  “Sit down,” she said, and took his laptop bag from his shoulder.

  Brian climbed onto one of the bar stools at their eat-in and sipped his Pinot. Jenny swirled her wine in her glass and took a big gulp, congratulating him again.

  He said that it was going to be different, and she said that she was proud of him and topped off her glass. She had on an apron over her dress, and she was stirring water and flour in a ramekin so she could make gravy.

  “The travel,” he said. “I hope that’s not too hard for us.”

  She heard the hesitation in his voice, and she wanted to say it might be easier on her, since she would not be using up so much of her time hoping. She kept mixing the flour and the water and then stirred it into the pan drippings, attacking the lumps with her fork and turning down the heat.

  They talked about the trips, domestic and international, and Jenny understood she’d underestimated it. Already, he had a new language, pretty words like Benalux, EMEA, and the harder sounding APAC. Later, she had looked these up and realized they were acronyms: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg; Europe, Middle East, Africa; Asia Pacific.

  He drained his wine and lifted the bottle for another glass, but it too was empty. “More?” he said, shaking the bottle. Jenny nodded yes, and he went to the rack, made a selection, then loosed the cork.

  She poured the gravy into a small serving dish, and she pushed the chicken toward him. He sharpened a knife and sectioned the meat expertly, breast for her, a thigh and a wing for him. He told her he loved the salad. She said, Oh good, but she had already known he would like it, because it was a popular side at one of the restaurants they used to go to, and he had always eaten all of it. She had found the recipe online.

  They sat next to each other at the counter. Jenny wondered why she had not set the table, but she had not, so she got up to dim the lights in the kitchen. At least the dishes would not be shining so hard in the sink. She felt silly in her dress. Brian was still in his button-down shirt from work and trousers, but crushed from the day. His forehead was greasy. She hoisted herself back onto the stool and put her napkin in her lap. Less light helped.

  The room was silent other than the sounds of their cutlery on the white stoneware. She thought of saying something, like asking how much the pay raise was or inquiring after Gary, but she kept her mouth busy chewing. She thought of the last time they had sex and ticked off the days in her head. It was after Connor’s final day of soccer, forty-eight days gone, if she was adding correctly. She startled some at this, and her fork clattered onto the granite countertop.

  “What?” Brian asked. He looked tired.

  “Nothing,” she said. The band of her pantyhose was cutting in to her belly.

  When she had worked as an accountant at the law firm, she had been very young, she realized. Sometimes she did long hours, but mostly, she focused on her tasks and tried to get out early. The fresh JD’s who were trying to make partner sat at their desks to be seen—they could just as easily do all that reading at home—and she glided past them, in the same gray suede shoes, and went off to a happy hour, where she would walk into some low-lit bar, shake the snow off her coat, and feel every eye on her. Ignoring the old men nursing their whiskeys and the law grads, who were not going to make partner if they insisted on leaving the office early, she would beeline for Brian, his hair always sticking up a little, his smile bright and wide. Then, she would scoot into a booth next to him, and say, Hey, darlin’, clink a glass with whichever friend he had brought along and slide into another long night in what was a series of long nights back when she could not believe the luck of her life.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Melanie

  Winter, 2007

  Afew months before Alex in San Antonio and Brian in Chicago, Melanie had left the man she was seeing. Josh was a lot like her, and she liked the long afternoons they spent together, and she liked when the daylight drifted into dark and they cooked together, boiling down bones for stock or waiting for bread to slowly rise.

  They had been talking of moving in, getting him out of his cramped apartment and into her townhouse, where they could split the mortgage. He asked her if she might travel less, and she said she didn’t think so. He asked her if she wanted children, and she said again that she didn’t think so. Sometimes he had a puzzled look, and she would ask him what he was thinking about. You, he would say, and she would frown, not sure what was so confusing.

  Also, her mother’s voice, in their old gray building, making dinners with Irene and sneaking puffs of her cigarettes, echoed. Wait to marry, they had always said, though Melanie felt like she had been smart about not getting tied down too young, and marriage was not top on her list of life goals.

  One night, it was late, and Josh was suddenly angry with her. He was watching a movie and she was on her laptop.

  “Stop with your email,” he had said.

  “It’s just work,” she had replied, though she did not have that much to do. She was only organizing things into folders, but she did not like hearing what sounded like a command from him, when she was only trying to put some order to her inbox. He said that she was too serious about her job, and she felt a rage come up in her that she had not expected.

  “Who?” she had said. “Who will take me seriously if I don’t take myself seriously?”

  “Is that your goal?” he had asked. “I think people take you pretty seriously.”

  He did not know what it meant, she thought, to self-sustain. He did not know the power of it.

  She thought of her father’s home, the gleaming pool, the polished floors. She thought of the women who filtered in and out around him, lipsticks and crumpled tissues left behind for Melanie to find like the offerings of tide pools. A single black stocking. A dropped earring. If she collected everything she could find and arranged them neatly against the cool tiles around the pool, she could not make a picture of one single woman. Maybe her father was chasing her mother, in his way, and it was her Melanie wanted to be able to build out of the debris. Her mother was at the apartment, always at the apartment, and her mother was not waiting for her father to come back. She thought of a shoe she had found once at his place that could have belonged to Irene, strappy with a stacked heel, and a napkin with her oxblood shade of lipstick on it.

  The morning after the fight, M
elanie had felt wetness on her palms, but her hands smelled of sweat, not chlorine. Josh was there, in her bed, lightly snoring. He was an okay guy, she thought, but she knew already she would wake him with coffee and ask him to come downstairs, and she would tell him that she thought they should wait—wait—for him to move in, because she was not ready. He would ask her why the sudden change, and she would not be able to tell him that it was not sudden, it was cumulative. There were many relationships that could take these half steps forward and full steps back and still get somewhere, but she was increasingly sure theirs was not one of them. Movers would never come for his things, and she would never clean out part of the closet for him in her condo. Josh would stay in his little apartment, doing whatever it was he did there, and staying static for Melanie. She had not spoken to him. Neither of them had tried to get in touch.

  It had been Josh’s number she had left for Brian to call after she had spent the night with him in Chicago, because she had thought it was funny, if mean. She remembered Brian’s trendy, too-stylish glasses that he must not have been used to yet, because he had a habit of adjusting and readjusting them, like he was trying to find the clearest, most exact place to look through. She remembered how she had snuck out while his face was smashed against the radiantly white sheets.

  * * *

  She was not sure she missed any of them, her father or Alex or Brian or Josh, but she wished she was at her mother’s apartment and that they could meet Irene down at the pool. Even though years had passed, when they met in warm weather, they still wore their bathing suits, though the suits had gotten much more modest. They would open a bottle of wine, even though it was against the rules, and she would lie out on a chair between them.

  The late spring air would be cool still in Colorado, but the pool was always filled by May, even if it was not warm enough to swim. Melanie thought if she stayed still enough, positioned perfectly in a patch of light sun, she could stay out without a cover-up or a towel, under the heat of the least distant star.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Irene

  Winter, 1974

  It must have been the same fear she had now that had pushed her own mother to leave. She’d been told it happened quietly and without warning, her mother heading out for work one day and never coming home. Irene was not sure she had any true memories of the woman, only scraps and fragments she had pieced together from a handful of ragged photographs. There was a rumor once in a while, like that her mother had gone back to her people in Kansas, and Irene thought of her pointing her empty, rusted car east on interstate 70, gunning through the flatlands of the plains until she reached her other family’s door.

  Her father had done his best, she was sure. Her mother, too. She understood her mother more, the closer and closer she got to becoming a mother herself. People said they could not imagine how a woman could take off like that, but for the first time in her life, Irene could feel for her, finally. Maybe her mother had felt as alone with her father as she was feeling without Sammy. Maybe her mother saw her whole life about to unfold, but then there was a catch at her belly, the quickening. Maybe she felt alone, and then felt alone with her husband, who she would have married in haste.

  Irene’s mother had come to Colorado with some friends, headed towards the promise of the mountains. Her father had told her this. They had planned to find a rental in the Rockies and learn to ski; they would take odd jobs and double or triple bunk to make ends meet. It was unusual for a group of girls, but there were six of them, a family of sorts, all strays in one way or another. Her mother never made it to the slopes, and she wondered if her mother had ever really loved her father, or if she was simply lured when she was out on the road by the steadiness of a man with a job, when maybe her own money, meant to last through the winter, might have already almost run out. Maybe her mother saw in her father the kindness Irene knew he held. Maybe her mother had held onto it just as long as she could.

  Chapter Thirty

  Melanie

  Summer, 1988

  Her father’s pool, the smell of chlorine and juniper, the lipsticks on his bathroom counter.

  Her mother, searing a roast and drinking wine with Irene.

  Her mother had been left, but she seemed the happier one. Melanie thought this was another thing people did not understand. When one person goes, even willingly, they give up everything, and they lose their rights to the life they had been working at. When someone is left, there is the shock of it, the feelings of betrayal, but they get to keep hold. They get to be wronged. Her mother got Melanie, and her father got his bankbook, but it was her mother who really got her freedom. Her mother’s days were not so different with Melanie’s father than without him, but there was less worry, about where he was or when he would return, so when her mother was at home now, she was peaceful. She was waiting for nothing, for no one. Irene would swing by and they would sit on the balcony and do one another’s toenails in sparkling colors, the acetone polish remover wafting around them. Irene smoked furiously even though the labels on the polish bottles clearly cautioned against this, and they cackled at each other’s jokes and spoke in an innuendo so unsubtle Melanie understood it even when she was young. She missed her father, but if it came to having someone around, she would pick Irene, who was more like her.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Brian

  Spring, 2007

  Brian came home from work, and nothing much had changed since that morning. After Chicago, he would be home for a week, at least, so he had been heading to the office every day to get some quiet. His daughter was twirling in a tutu in the living room where his son was watching television. Neither looked up at the sound of the latch in the door, nor at the sound of Brian shuffling his things into the closet, just as they had not noticed when he had left, when he did this in the opposite order. He was both a little hurt that they did not notice him and relieved that he did not have to talk to them yet. He made sure his jacket was hanging properly, and then he continued on. It was Wednesday, and when he was not traveling, he was increasingly less and less glad for the middle point of the workweek, getting closer to the weekends, which dragged on and in which he found himself scrolling through his BlackBerry and thinking about the office. He checked the device while he was still in the hallway, even though he had just checked it when he had gotten out of the car, but there was nothing.

  In the kitchen, Jenny was deciding what to cook for dinner, and she was standing in a way that terrified him, with her hand cradling her belly—when she was pregnant with their children she was always in this posture, and he had come to fear it.

  “Jenny,” he said, maybe a little sharply, and she looked up from her cookbook. When she turned a little toward him, he could see in the other hand a glass of wine—a good sign for baby watch, a bad sign if he wanted to get laid later—and he thought that perhaps it was just the angle; perhaps she was not doing the belly cradle at all.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m home.”

  “Hi,” she said. “Chicken or pork, do you think?” She swirled the wine and tipped her face into the stemware. The wine looked cool and golden, suspended in the crystal.

  “Chicken,” he said. “Just that and a salad is okay for me.”

  “The kids won’t eat salad,” she said.

  “I’ll make salads for us then,” he said. He was still not sure about her right hand—it was lingering just at the top of her pants. Maybe she does not know yet, he worried, but the hand knows.

  He loved his children. He reminded himself of this frequently, when he was frustrated at them, or frustrated at his wife, whom he thought should go back to work. Their children were beautiful, even he could admit this. Like most children they did strange and wonderful things and expressed themselves in a way that Brian found pure, but he did not find them satisfying, intellectually, and he did not quite understand how Jenny could either.

  “What if I just mad
e some pasta for all of us?” she said. “I’ll put broccoli in it for you, and they can pick it out.”

  “Make whatever they want. It’s fine,” Brian said. “Is there more wine?”

  She nodded, and he was relieved when she flipped the cookbook closed and poured for him, tipping out the last drops. He was more comfortable when her hand got busy—she was rummaging for pans and chopping vegetables. She drained her glass and suggested they open another bottle. He looked at her closely, for signs of the pregnancy glow. When Jenny was pregnant, she always said her fingers were swollen and took off her rings, but when Brian looked, the rings were on. Her fingers were circled in silver and in their platinum marriage band. He went to the pantry and found a decent red, took it back to the kitchen, and removed the cork.

  After their son Connor was a year old, Brian had gotten snipped, but she could still get pregnant from some other man, and he had heard of vasectomies reversing. Connor was four now, just starting to get fun.

  The vasectomy had not been one of Brian’s best moments. There had been a clinic on the lowest floor of his office building, and he had made the appointment for the end of the day, and taken the stairs down so no one from work would see him. He was on his way home in forty minutes; he felt very efficient.

  There was little pain, at first. The after-care instructions specified he should ice his groin, and by the time he arrived home and the local had worn off, this seemed like a very good idea. He took a magazine and a cold pack that he had sneaked out of the freezer to the master bath and lay down on the plush rug. He set his watch timer. He realized, there on the bathroom floor, that he would need to wear the dressing to bed. He realized this would go on for several days. It was not like he and his wife had sex every night, but they were still intimate, even with two children down the hall.