A Late Hard Frost

by Stephanie Joyce Cole

  Sabrina skidded to a stop and stared intently at a mound on the water’s edge. With the easy grace of a dancer, she leaned over and plucked up a clump of seaweed, dangling it at arms’ length in front of her.

  “The way the strands curve onto themselves, it looks like a little girl’s braids. A little girl with long green hair.” She giggled. “A mermaid maybe.”

  Merry smiled. She'd discovered that Sabrina noticed things: she saw the world in a way other people didn’t, as if she had a special lens that changed the ordinary into something magical. It was her superpower, Merry thought.

  Merry worried about her. Sabrina was shy and self-effacing, so Merry didn’t push her to talk about her life, but Merry sensed that all wasn’t well. She adored Willy, that much was clear, but Merry perceived that a drape of anxiety, an uncertainty, often dropped over her these days.

  Sabrina plopped the seaweed back into the water. “I suppose we should go back soon. I told Ren we wouldn’t be more than a couple of hours.” She grinned at Merry. “That’s about his limit of being alone with Willy, you know.”

  They turned and retraced their tracks. The tide had turned, and already some of their footprints had been swallowed by the rapidly-advancing, lapping water.

  “Maybe you should leave Willy with me for a couple of hours sometime this week. You and Ren go to a movie, or go out to dinner, or something.”

  Merry had made the offer before, but Sabrina had been reluctant to accept. Merry suspected Sabrina thought she would be imposing. “Think about it, Sabrina. You’ve been helping Scary and me with this project.” She gestured back to the wagon. “That could be my way of thanking you.”

  Sabrina’s expression brightened. “Maybe I could, just for a little bit. I know Antonia is bored, and if we had a little time off, we could take her out to dinner or something. I feel bad that there isn’t much here for her to do. That is, if you really mean it, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble. If it really would be okay.”

  Merry hoped her face didn’t show what she was feeling. Antonia, again. Antonia had been at Sabrina’s and Ren’s cabin for weeks now. Merry was pretty sure that she was a soul-sucker, one of those people who felt entitled to special treatment, who drained the energy and vitality from other people.

  Merry had only run into Antonia alone once. Huddled into a nook outside of The Twins, smoking a cigarette, she looked at Merry blankly when Merry greeted her, and she’d nodded coolly and exhaled smoke through her mouth when Merry introduced herself as Sabrina’s friend. She hadn’t smiled, and Merry hadn’t lingered.

  “Is she staying much longer?”

  “I don’t know.” Sabrina paused, and her face darkened. “I think maybe something bad happened to her, something she doesn’t want to talk about. She seems unhappy a lot of the time. And we don’t have a lot to offer her, really, and I think Willy gets on her nerves, especially when he cries at night.” Sabrina bit her lip. “I wish I could do something to cheer her up. Maybe an evening out would help.”

  Merry pressed her lips together. The afternoon had been lovely, and she wasn’t going to spoil it for Sabrina by telling her what she thought about the situation. Sabrina hadn’t asked for her advice, and their friendship hadn’t yet had enough time to deepen to the point that Merry felt she could offer it up unsolicited. But in her gut, she was convinced that it was long past time for Antonia to leave.

  ***

  “It’s like with a dented bowl!” Sabrina was almost quivering, squeezing the stem of her half-filled wine glass as she bent across the table.

  Scary grinned at her, and slapped his hand on the tabletop.

  “How, girl, how is it like a dented bowl?”

  Merry sat between them at the table in Scary’s studio, nursing her own glass of red wine, watching them ricochet their thoughts off of each other. She was in awe. When she’d brought Sabrina over to introduce her to Scary, she thought they’d share some interests, but she’d had no idea how easily and completely they would fall into conversation, and how well they seemed to instantly understand one another. The cups of tea she offered quickly morphed into the opening of a very good bottle of wine, and they were off to the races. Were they talking about art, or life, or what? It all seemed to meld together.

  Sabrina leaned back into her chair, darting a quick glance at Willy, who was sleeping soundly in his travel seat. “When you dent a bowl, you can knock the dent back out, you know, but the bowl will never be perfect again. It will always have the history—the residue—of the dent. It will never be unmarked and round again.”

  Scary rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Yes, yes, but the less than perfect bowl, the bowl with the memory of what happened to it—can’t it be more beautiful and unique in its imperfection? Can’t it be the most stupendous and remarkable bowl in the world?”

  “Yes, yes.” Sabrina nodded vigorously. Merry looked from one to the other. What on earth were they talking about? She relaxed and let her thoughts wander. Whatever they were discussing, they didn’t seem to need her in the conversation, and they seemed to be having a rollicking good time.

  Sabrina’s face sparkled with energy. Merry loved seeing her like this. She thought Sabrina had few opportunities to indulge herself in this kind of conversation, to share her way of looking at the world with someone who understood her. She doted on Willy and didn’t seem to resent the way he consumed most of her waking hours and attention, but she blossomed now, and Merry saw a different person, confident and creative, who was hidden most of the time.

  Willy gurgled and shrugged in his sleep, and they all paused and looked down at him, but he sighed and settled back down. Sabrina slumped happily into her seat and swirled her wine in her glass. Scary reached over and poured Sabrina a little more, but Merry lifted her palm to refuse the refill, glad that she had picked up Sabrina and Willy from the cabin and driven them all here to the studio. She suspected Sabrina might need a nap herself, after this afternoon’s visit.

  Sabrina and Scary drifted into a conversation comparing their pasts. Sabrina pulled her thick fleece jacket close around her, perching her Sorel-clad feet on the chair rungs. She told them she’d grown up in California, by the coast. As she listened, Merry could easily imagine Sabrina with her long lanky figure and streaky blonde hair frolicking on a beach in a bikini. College hadn't stuck, but the relationship with Ren had, and they were living his dream of a cabin in Alaska. It was an adventure, she said, but a bit lonely sometimes. She flashed a grin Merry’s way. But she was making new friends now, and well, when Willy was older, maybe she’d go back to school.

  Scary poured some more wine in his own glass. Today he had dressed all in black, unusual for him because he loved bright colors, though the pants appeared to be satin and so the whole effect wasn’t quite as gunslinger as it might have been otherwise. He stared into the glass and paused.

  “Yes, it’s an adventure here all right, and a good place to be. But you’re right—it can be a little lonely.”

  Merry’s ears perked. She had never pressed Scary about his past, and when he seemed to avoid answering the few gentle questions she’d posed from time to time, she let it be. She’d assumed he just didn’t like to talk about his personal history, but she certainly was curious. When she’d first come here, he had a business partner, Roger, and they shared the studio to create and display their paintings. They often coordinated shows of their works, though their styles were completely different. Scary’s paintings, unlike his installation pieces, were very polished and traditional, presenting realistic Alaskan scenes that captured the rough and rugged beauty of land and sea. Roger’s paintings were abstract, inspired by the Alaskan landscape but defined by strong bold lines and swatches of intense color. Somehow the two styles never melded but never clashed in their shows. But by the time Merry returned, Roger was gone, “back to civilization,” Scary said, without much more in the way of explanation.

  Scary sighed and poured himself some more wine, emptying the bottle. “There was som
eone, a while ago, and I thought I had finally found the person I could fit with, here in Homer. The one for me. But it didn’t work out.” He sighed again and lifted his glass.

  Merry held very still. Roger.

  “But you know, she just didn’t like it here. Too cold. Too far away from everything. She moved back to Los Angeles about two years ago.”

  She? They’d never discussed it, because it had never come up, but Merry assumed that Scary was gay. The way he moved, the way he dressed, the way he flitted—it all added up to gay for her. Now she reran her past few weeks with Scary in her mind, factoring in this new information, and she realized that she’d just jumped to that conclusion, from the outset. It hadn’t made any difference with regard to how she felt about him, but once she concluded that he was gay, she let all her experiences with him slot into that assumption. His flamboyance, his artistic temperament, it was all part of him being gay.

  Sabrina was nodding. “Yes, it can be hard. It’s not for everyone, living here. There were times this winter I thought I was going crazy. Ren got to go to work, which was hard too, because the lumberyard was brutal on some days, when wet snow blew sideways. He was stiff and frozen some days when he came home, his face as red as a beet.” She pushed back her chair and stretched out her long legs. “But at least he got out. With Willy so small, I was sometimes too scared to take him out when it was so cold and dark.”

  Sabrina reached over and patted Scary’s hand. “I’m really sorry. I hope you find someone else.”

  Scary sighed again. “Well, I even had a wife for a while, back in New York. She was lovely, absolutely lovely, but she was also very practical. An accountant.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “Allison had a very orderly life, and she liked it that way. Me, well, my life has never been orderly, and I don’t want it to be. Even though we loved each other, it just didn’t work out.” He shrugged and smiled.

  Sabrina and Scary moved on to a new topic, and for some reason they were now naming all the colors they could think of that connoted the color red: scarlet, crimson, cherry, candy apple. Scary disputed Sabrina’s designation of raspberry, which led to a spirited debate about fuchsia, but Merry’s thoughts were stuck on this new light shed on Scary.

  We all do it. We make assumptions and then we remake our world to support those assumptions. Her thoughts were uncomfortable, but she refused to push them away. It was so easy to see the world one way, to come to a conclusion based on little real evidence, and then to see everything that comes after in those terms. She’d assumed that Roger and Scary were a couple, but now in hindsight she knew she had just built on a loose impression with no facts to back it up, and she’d been wrong.

  She’d done it with Michael too, she realized. She’d ignored all the obvious warning signs that her marriage was cratering because it was so much more comfortable to fold and tuck all of Michael’s actions into the fantasy world she wanted to occupy: His cruelty and inattention to her, she had rationalized, happened because he was under so much pressure at the law firm, and he was working so very hard. It would get better. But, of course, it never did. When the truth about his treachery came to light, she felt like a fool. She had been a fool.

  She gave her head a quick sharp shake and stared out the window. Sabrina and Scary were still chattering, completely oblivious to the thoughts whirling in her brain.

  Well, hadn’t she done it with Nick and Cassandra too? What did she really know about what happened? Bringing them to mind was still searingly painful. Betrayal. They had betrayed her, they had destroyed the life she was building, her love for Nick, her deep friendship with Cass. She didn’t need to know more. She didn’t want to know more. But really, what did she know? On the dock, Nick had reached out to her, wanting to connect, perhaps to explain, but she didn’t want to listen. What could he have said, after all? She went ahead and created a reality for herself in which Nick and Cass had chosen to reject her and choose each other. She shook her head again, trying to knock her thoughts into line. Even if there were more to the story, she wasn’t sure she could bear to hear it.

  Willy stirred and whimpered. Sabrina scooped him out of his carrier, blankets and all. She plopped his bottom onto the table and cooed at him, and Scary reached over to take Willy and cradle him gently in his arms. The fusty odor of dirty diaper wafted in the air. Scary grabbed Sabrina’s diaper bag and headed for the bathroom, waving Sabrina back into her chair. She dropped back down onto her seat cushion with a contented sigh.

  Twisting in her seat, Merry watched the waning pink light of late afternoon gleam across the wet pavement in front of the studio. It was time to leave, time to get Sabrina and Willy back home. Scary’s voice murmured from the bathroom, occasionally punctuated by Willy’s goos and gahs. Sabrina’s head tipped to one side, her eyes closed, her lips curved into a peaceful smile. But despite the quiet harmony, Merry’s thoughts continued to whirl. What if more of what she believed to be true was not quite as straightforward and simple as it seemed?

  Chapter 15

  Kevin could talk after all, and once he started, Nick thought he would never stop. After a full night’s sleep, Kevin trotted behind Nick like a small shadow, as Nick hauled wood from the stack next to the house, washed the truck windows, and packed up the garbage to take to the dump.

  “Do you have a dog?” Kevin’s head tipped to one side as he rubbed his toe in the dirt driveway.

  “Nope,” Nick smiled down at him. “Do you see a dog?”

  Kevin grinned at his toes. “No, but I thought maybe there was one.” Kevin sucked on his lower lip. “Is there a cat?”

  “Nope. No pets. But look over there.”

  Nick squatted next to Kevin and pointed to the stand of trees about a hundred feet away, behind the cabin. “What do you see?”

  Kevin frowned and squinted, and then a puff of breath exploded from his throat. “A deer!” he shouted.

  The moose looked up, startled, and shied away into the cover of the trees.

  “Nope, that’s a moose. A lot bigger than a deer. They’re all over here. We can probably see one a lot closer when we’re out driving. Or sometimes they come right up to the cabin and look in the window.” Nick reached over and ruffled Kevin’s bristling red hair, and Kevin moved closer and leaned against his leg. “A moose,” Kevin said thoughtfully. “That’s…like a mouse. Like a really big mouse.” He laughed, obviously pleased with himself. “Does you have mouses too?”

  Nick laughed back at him. “Yes, mice and voles and lots of little critters, who like to crawl into the house when they can to get away from the cold.”

  Kevin buried his chin in the collar of his jacket. “Yes, it’s cold here. A lot colder than home. But I like it. And it smells like grass and sky here.”

  “Oh really? And what does sky smell like?” Nick stood with his hands on his hips, pretending to be stern.

  “It smells like…not dirty air and not bad dog poop on the sidewalk. It smells blue.”

  Nick looked down at him in wonder. It was all he could do not to grab him right up off the ground and hug him. This was his grandson. Amazing.

  “Let’s go see what your mother is up to. And you probably need to get inside and warm up for a while. We’re going to have to buy you some gloves.”

  Kevin skipped towards the door. “Gloves, gloves, gloves,” he chanted happily. Kevin banged through the front door with Nick right behind him. “Mama,” he called out, “I need to get some gloves.”

  Cindy still slumped on the couch in front of the fire. She hadn’t moved since breakfast, and she didn’t look up. Nick realized that she must have been dozing.

  “Hey, Kev, I think Mama might be sleeping. Let’s be a little quiet, okay?”

  “No, no, it’s okay.” Cindy sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. “I’m awake. I just got a little sleepy there for a minute.” Kevin snuggled in next to her. “What have you been up to, little man?”

  “Mama, there was a moose, it’s kind of a really big deer,
right outside. And it might come to look in our window.”

  Cindy smiled down at him, her face soft and vulnerable in the light from the fire. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah! And I need some gloves, gloves, gloves.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that. I’m not sure how long we’ll be here, after all.”

  Nick’s heart quaked. They hadn’t yet talked about the future, about Cindy’s plans, and she’d only been here for a few days. Already, though, his heart was opening, pulling Cindy and Kevin into the small circle of people he loved. Already, he didn’t know how he was going to let them go. Cindy was still defensive and sometimes downright rude, but no one could doubt that she loved Kevin. And she seemed to be a bit less prickly around him, maybe a tad more relaxed. There was still so much he didn’t know about them.

  And Kevin, Kevin was a little sponge, soaking up everything here and already making Nick see the world anew through his four-year-old eyes.

  “I was thinking that you and Kevin might like to come out on the boat sometime soon,” Nick said. “I have to take her out sometime in the next week or so.” He flexed and released his hands, surprised at how nervous he felt. “It will be pretty cold out there on the water this time of year, but it might be fun for you two.”

  “Yay! The boat, the boat, the boat!” Kevin bounced up and down on the sofa cushions. “Can we go on the boat, Mama?”

  Too late, Nick realized he should have asked Cindy first, before getting Kevin’s hopes up, but Cindy just smiled and nodded. “Sure, why not?” She rubbed Kevin’s back. “I need to get some air, I think. Kev, why don’t we walk down the road a bit, before you take your nap?”

  Nick pulled out coats, gloves, scarves and hats from his closet and bundled them both up. Everything was too big but would keep them warm. The sun was out but a brisk breeze was coming off the bay.

  “If you do see any moose, steer clear of them. They can be dangerous. They kick out with their front feet, not with their back feet like horses. And they’re very unpredictable.” Cindy looked alarmed, so he hurriedly added, “You’ll be fine. Just keep your wits about you, and maybe stay out of the woods, stay on the road for now.”