If the Ice Had Held

by Wendy J. Fox

  * * *

  Once when she was a child, Melanie went with her parents to watch the Fourth of July display at the park. Usually the celebration fell during the week of her birthday, but even when there was no ban, her mother would not allow fireworks in the yard in summertime. Still, she and her father would drive the seventy-five miles to the Wyoming border where he would purchase shrink-wrapped flats that he stashed in the garage until the New Year, when he would light them off over the brittle snow, the icicles on the eaves shining from pyrotechnics while Melanie spelled out her name with a sparkler.

  They took a cooler, chilled white wine for her mother and beer for her father, a carafe of lemonade for Melanie. They spread a blanket under an elm tree, and her mother ran her finger down Melanie’s cheek to check she was properly greased, even if the light was fading. Her mother was fair and demanded everyone wear sunscreen long before it was popular. They had some sandwiches and peanuts. A band played in the gazebo, the gold horns reflecting the whitewashed boards. The night fell fast under the shadow of the Rockies, the sun disappearing more quickly than it did in the low country, obscured by the pearl of mountaintop.

  When the dark deepened, the band packed up their instruments and the first tracers of saltpeter and sulfur appeared, ascending toward the moon, bursting into aluminum white and lithium red, like glass broken in a sunny room. Melanie loved the splash of metallic across the sky and she loved the speed of sound—slower, yes, than light, but as the crystalline bloom fizzled, the sonic leftovers punctuated the fading glow, and she felt it in her core.

  When she was struck by a piece of debris that came hurtling towards her, it hit her chest, and even in the dim she could see it was black and crumbly at the edges, to the touch still a little warm. She brushed her shirt in surprise. She thought the firework would disintegrate—it was only cardboard. She liked this bit that had slipped through, and she saved it in her pocket.

  The night air was warm and sometimes just in advance of the sound of an explosion, she could see her parents’ faces, fully illuminated. They were smiling as they held hands on the blanket, the crumpled beer cans next to her father flashing. The sky above them smoked. Melanie saw a boy from her school a few blankets over, looking at her, but she ignored him. When the last of the rockets burst, her mother packed the remains of their picnic and the air was heavy. They folded the blanket into a neat square and her father dumped the melting ice from the cooler onto the grass. Melanie trailed them to the car, her ears still ringing. At home, when she closed her eyes, she held the piece of cardboard between her fingers and the afterimages were bright behind her lids.

  * * *

  Everyone at work kept the news open in their browser tabs, and a few, at certain developments, grabbed their lunch bags and lit out for home in the suburbs. They received all-company emails from their corporate parent in Chicago about out-of-state fire crews who had been flown in from Idaho, Kansas, and Utah. Then the power went out, and the lights across the entire office park were gone, the substation either zapped from the heat or was consumed. They all knew it was only a matter of time before the grid was rerouted, but they packed their things anyway, sliding laptops into slim shoulder bags and rubber-banding file folders they knew they would not look at but took anyway to make their desks appear clear. The entrance to the highway was clogged with everyone else who had the same idea, but when Melanie came slowly around the last little curve before her exit, she was shocked at the quantity of smoke billowing from the foothills.

  At home her yard was dry again, but the electricity was functioning. She charged her computer and set the sprinkler. The news said tens of thousands of people had been evacuated from Colorado Springs, a sprawling, heavily evangelical and military town to the south. Homes had been foamed and pets had been counted. One photo showed a family gathered on the waxed floor of a high school gymnasium, their clothes crumpled and their necks bent in prayer. As she continued to click through the news, she found another version, where the same family were only a few in a larger circle, a hundred butts against the hardwoods, legs crossed, heads tipped so deeply as to touch their chests.

  Alex texted her. Are you okay?

  She did not reply.

  She hoped for rain and sat on her patio, pecking away on her laptop, constantly refreshing her browser. The all-company emails increased in frequency, broadcasted from a perch in the Midwest. The charitable foundation committed to a donation of Gatorade and batteries. Someone with enough rank decreed the Denver offices officially closed. IT announced that backup power was on the ready should it be needed, and her battery was already running low again.

  When Melanie looked to the sky, there was a hail of ash.

  * * *

  For years, while her mother had lived in dreary apartments—first in the gray building walking distance from Irene, and then in Irene’s building with the aqua walls—her father dated, progressed in his career, and sometimes disappeared for months, only to resurface when one fling or another had ended. All that time, her mother kept her same job at the bank, counting other people’s money, helping seniors learn to use debit cards, and explaining the general policy on overdraft charges to those who needed it. Her mother, Melanie knew, was a favorite among the customers, Irene a close second. Her mother was patient with people who came in with a jar full of pennies, rolling them expertly while the line grew; the other tellers said to go use the coin machine at the grocery store. The rolling machine took 10 percent, or roped people in to taking a voucher. Ten percent was a lot, Melanie’s mother said, when someone was counting coin. A thousand pennies made only ten dollars.

  The little branch her mother worked at had been absorbed by a national chain, and after work, when Melanie came for dinner at the apartment where she had lived between fourteen and eighteen, her mother was telling Irene about how she had not expected television cameras to show up to cover the few fascinatingly disorganized protesters who had been gathering outside on the steps. She was saying that she smiled at them.

  She hugged Melanie hello, offered her a glass of wine, and continued saying that she had just wanted to make sure the people protesting knew that she only worked the bank’s window. That she did not have a great job, she was just close money. That the big bank had not done anything for her, either.

  Melanie sat, Irene squeezed her, and they clinked the rim of their glasses.

  What Kathleen had definitely not expected, coming back from her lunch break, was the young woman with gummy braids to scream at her, How can you work for these animals!, and the camera to pan awkwardly to Kathleen holding a doggy bag, with the heel of her shoe caught in a crack in the pavement—she had not really been listening until the boom mic was in her face. The camera caught her just as she dropped her leftover lunch, while trying to wedge her foot back into her shoe, and she said, in her broadcast debut:

  “What? Do I know you?”

  On camera, the woman with the braids approached her. “I said, ‘How can you work for these animals?’”

  Kathleen, bent towards the sidewalk, her skirt riding up a little, said, “Well, I guess I need a job.”

  It made the evening news, and they watched it from the kitchen, peering over the half-wall that separated the living room in which the small television was perched on a table that Melanie knew was scratched and battered, though her mother had draped a well-ironed runner over it.

  The story led with Bank Executive tells Protester to Get a Job.

  “I wish there were better work for the kids,” Melanie’s mother said later, while they had their pasta and more wine. “They aren’t wrong to be angry, but what can I do? You’re one of the lucky ones, Mel.”

  Melanie snorted. Lucky. “I hope your boss gets the memo that you are now an executive, according to Channel 9. You should put that on your résumé.”

  “Already did, baby girl. I got the phone turned off because I couldn’t stand the ringing,” h
er mother said.

  Her mother and Irene cackled, and Irene went to smoke on the patio, and even though Melanie wanted to join her, she did not. When Irene came back inside, she smelled not just of tobacco but also of the fire from the early summer blazes.

  * * *

  Finally, the sky did break, with a deluge that soaked the smoldering forests creaking with smoke until mud sluiced down the hillsides and through the suburban alleyways. On the radio, Melanie had heard an interview with evacuees returning to their homes. One family stepped into a foundation of ash and sifted for anything left. They found a chipped ceramic coffee cup, whole in the debris. Even after the rain, it was still so hot, the woman said, I could not hold it in my hands.

  * * *

  Her desk was the most constant thing, with the background noise from her co-workers and the heat of the building. As a follow-up to her budget email, she finally got the notice that all of her travel, categorized as nonessential, was suspended, and she sighed, but was happy for a stretch of being at home.

  She checked her phone and saw she had four missed calls, Goddammit, Alex, she thought, but when she scrolled through the menu, it was Irene. Four messages.

  Call me.

  Call me back now.

  Mel, you need to call.

  Fuck!

  Irene picked up on the first ring. Her mother had done an errand at lunch, and in the blazing heat of day, had been struck by another woman, driving drunk, driving her son-in-law’s car on her own errand. They had both been taken to the hospital.

  “I’m on my way,” Melanie said.

  Irene emphasized that Melanie should be safe, and Melanie said that she would, but Irene made her promise, and so she promised before hanging up and tossing her phone into her bag to run across the parking lot to her car.

  She wanted to return to the time when the cardboard had fallen from the sky, just trash really, but felt like a treasure to her, when light shattered against the low clouds and the booms were so loud her ears rang for days. If she closed her eyes, she could feel the night-damp grass prickling through their picnic blanket and even with the breeze, smell the last bit of smoke, curling through the air.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Irene

  Winter, 1974

  Irene and Kathleen decided to swear, and once they swore, they could never go back on it. When Irene asked—Would you think of taking the baby?—she saw Kath startle some, not at the suggestion, she thought, but at one of them having said it out loud. Irene was sure her friend had already been planning the same thing, because as true as sisters bound by blood, they knew each other’s minds.

  Irene took her hand then. They were at the park after school, and the weather had turned brittle. They both had old but good coats. Even though the child inside of Irene was still very small, she had been feeling warm all of the time, warm like she had never experienced. Thin her whole life, she had always felt chilled, but the new belly wrapped her, and the baby quilted her, and she loved the closeness of the child because it was like being with Sammy again, the tight feeling of two bodies fitting together.

  The night of the ice, when Sammy had come to her room while her father was at work, he had told her he wanted to watch his sister Kathleen’s basketball game, but Irene had not wanted to go back to the school. Now she wished they would have crouched together on the bleachers and cheered on the girls’ teams—she had been afraid, she could admit it now, to meet his mother. She was sure his mother of seven children would see immediately that she was pregnant, even though she was hardly showing, she was sure. She was scared to be out with him, a high school girl with her high school beau, because it felt so common, and she had been common her entire life, until Sammy had changed that. That day he had begged her to come to dinner with his family.

  They’ll love you. They’ll only be irritated I didn’t bring you sooner, but she was not ready to take a chance on it, to risk saying the wrong thing or acting the wrong way and him changing toward her. They aren’t like that, he told her, and now she knew he was right. Sammy’s sister had found her, his sister loved her because she loved Sammy.

  Irene had thought of keeping the baby, worried on it. When the baby was hot on her at night, she thought of Sammy, how he felt pressed against her, and the last time she saw him, before he cut across the river. If she had been with him, he would not have tested the ice. They would have taken the long way across the bridge. That night, her father had come home early from his shift, and Sammy had hurried, crawling out her bedroom window with his pants only half on, and telling her not to worry.

  “It’s so cold outside,” she had said, and he said he would only walk to the school for Kathleen’s basketball game and then get a ride home from there.

  She remembered his face as he was trying to buckle his belt while leaning across the windowsill to kiss her.

  “Tomorrow,” he had said. “I’ll find you tomorrow at school.”

  “I love you,” she had whispered, and for that she got his slow, ragged smile. Like her, none of the Henderson kids had worn braces.

  “I love you too, Ireney,” he had said, and turned his head with a full breath, to take off running in the night, headed for his family, the family who held her now, and she wanting to go with him, but the last glint off his shoes had already disappeared.

  By then she had already felt the tension at her belly, and the heart of their child, and she had told him, even though she thought he would be angry, or worse, that he would be as scared as she was.

  At first he didn’t say much, other than to ask her if she was sure, and she had said that she was very late, and very sure.

  He considered this, looked at her. He had looked at her in a way that made everything inside of her well from the bottom of her pelvis to the top of her throat. She would get an abortion if she had to, even if they had to go as far as St. Louis, if it meant keeping him.

  He had said that they would figure it out. He had said she should finish school, and then they should get married.

  She had wanted to know if he was asking her, and he gave her his craggly smile and said she had to wait until he had a better job.

  “I don’t care about your job,” she had said.

  Then he put his hand on her, above her hips, and she could feel the warmth of his fingers there with the warmth of their blooming child. She thought maybe she should ask him to promise—a ring did not matter, only he mattered—but she did not, because she was sure he meant it. He would marry her, and they would raise the baby together.

  * * *

  When Kathleen asked her about taking the child, it was not that she wanted to give up the baby. She had never wanted to give up the baby. She had wanted a part of Sammy, but the baby would be better off. She did not think she could do it on her own, and she did not think she could have a regular adoption, never seeing her first born again.

  “I promise,” Irene said.

  “I promise,” Kathleen said.

  Irene remembered how Kath had squeezed her hand, their fingers laced together.

  Even before she was late, she had been sure in the pregnancy. Her breakfast would never settle, and her chest was so sore. The smell of her own cigarettes came up hot in her nose, and she had quit even though her father still smoked inside the house. She was not sure if it was better for her to smoke so she could smell his ashtray less or better for her to stay quit, because it was just a little less nauseating. She supposed it did not matter, because she had not lasted long. When she found out about Sammy, the first thing she did was raid her father’s pack, like she had done as a child, like she had been doing for years, and sit on the creaky steps of the back porch and burn each one down to the last shred of filter, choking on her own breath, the taste of salt and char at her lips.

  She was only a freshman in school. Sammy was not the only person she had been with, but she wished he were. It was
his first time, and she wanted to share that with him, this boy who was almost a man—she could see it in the way his shoulders were broadening, hear it on the rough edge of his voice, smell it when he met her after his job at the stockyard where he carted sawdust and straw and kept the floor of the pens clean, while his hands blistered and the muscles on his arm formed a knot; he was so light, like her, but the night he ran from her father, he was heavy enough to shatter the plane of ice. Still, she dreamed of them as a family. Their child, young but strong. Their home, modest but clean. She did not know his sister then, but she knew Kathleen worked in the hospital kitchen and still went to school, and maybe she could put in a word for Irene. In their life, money would always be a little tight, and the edges would never be perfectly smooth, but they would reach to each other in the hard times, and they would feel the other reaching back. They would grow old and stubborn, and the child would help them. On their front porch, with boards missing and beaten by weather and dirt, they would clasp their hands together, remembering what it was like to be young.

  * * *

  They would have to tell Kathleen’s parents, but Kath said they could trust them, plus they needed some help. The guidance counselor, the one who had tried to make Irene leave school, had scared them. Funny, how a simple thing like policy had made it real.

  Kathleen’s mother suggested her old cousin who lived in Denver. Widowed—better off, her mother said, her husband was never right for her—and her son was away, in the service.

  Kathleen’s mother said they would need to help the aunt around the house, because she was old and alone, and that they would need to insist.

  Irene saw Kathleen nod because she was used to getting directions from her mother, and Irene nodded because she was not sure what else to do. Kathleen said she did not remember ever meeting Aunt Mae, even after her mother found an old photo.

  Aunt Mae had moved to Denver because she hated it in the small towns. She had grown up in the mountains with an outhouse, but it was in the city that she had found her life.