14 Degrees Below Zero

by Quinton Skinner

  “Well,” Lewis said. He looked down at Ramona, who was staring up at him with an expectant look. “Yes?”

  “I saw Grandma Anna the other day.”

  Ramona delivered this news in such an offhand way that Lewis was forced to ask her to say it again. When she did, Lewis touched the wall of the elevator to keep his balance. They stepped out into the walkway by an upstairs bookstore.

  “You mean for real, honey?”

  Ramona nodded.

  “Did she . . . did she say anything?”

  “No. She just smiled and waved at me.” Ramona walked quickly, so fast that Lewis barely had to slow for her.

  “Where was this?”

  “At day care.”

  Ramona didn’t seem to be looking for any sort of comment or sign of credulity on Lewis’s part. As she often did, she was simply transmitting what she took to be pertinent facts. Lewis took a deep, ragged breath and caught himself just before it turned into a sob. He wasn’t sure at all about what to do after the film, but he knew that he had to keep Ramona happy—and that she would eventually lead him to Anna. The end was coming, he knew that, but before it was over Ramona would lead him to his wife.

  There was only one kids’ movie showing. It turned out to be some rot about a talking tree and his forest animal friends and how they had to band together to save their plot of woods from the despoliation of humans. It was a pretty blatant work of PC pro-environmentalist brainwashing, and none too subtle about it. The weather was keeping people away, though, and Lewis and Ramona pretty much had the place to themselves. Ramona noshed her way through a small bucket of popcorn and a soda pop, raptly staring at the screen without a word throughout the whole thing.

  Every once in a while Lewis would steal a glance in the darkness at Ramona’s profile, her upturned nose, the bangs that fell over her forehead. She looked so much like Jay.

  After the movie they got back in the car—Carew wasn’t asleep, but not screaming his head off, either—and drove out into the night. Lewis could tell it was getting very cold just by the look of the streets; there weren’t very many people out, and the ones who were bore the expression of individuals suffering an exotic generalized torture. Lewis flipped on the radio and heard the local news. No mention of Stephen yet.

  “Where are we going, Grampa?” asked Ramona from the backseat. “Are we going to see Mama?”

  “Not yet.” Lewis fingered the cell phone in his pocket, but he didn’t turn it on.

  “Why?”

  “Mama has something she has to take care of,” Lewis said vaguely.

  “Are we going to your house?”

  “You ask a lot of questions, kiddo.”

  He had meant that to be lighthearted, but he was quite unhinged and it came out harsh. There was silence in the car as Ramona brooded in the back.

  “Hey, I know,” he said. “How about one of those Happy Meal things you like so much? Would that cheer you up? And maybe after that we can try to find Grandma Anna?”

  Lewis looked in the mirror. She wasn’t speaking to him for the moment, but he saw her smile as she stared out the window.

  INTERLUDE. HE REALLY NEEDED SOMEONE TO TAKE CARE OF HIM.

  Grampa could be mean. That was the thing about him that she always forgot, and then he would say something, do something—usually to someone else, but sometimes to her.

  What he said hadn’t been very nice. And so she was going to punish him for a while. She didn’t punish him when he was mean to Mama, or to Stephen, or to the girl at the ice cream store, since that was their business. But sometimes she wished she could punish Grampa Lewis for them.

  She put her hand on Carew’s back, which was furry and rough. She liked the way he smelled, and she liked smelling her hands after she had been petting him.

  Grampa was acting weird. He was nervous, and Ramona was pretty sure that there was something he wasn’t telling her about Mama. At least she was getting a Happy Meal. Sometimes they even had stuffed animals in them—little ones, but for some reason she liked the little ones best. It was like the squirrel in the tree movie she just saw. She liked small furry things that made her laugh.

  One thing that Ramona didn’t understand was why Grampa Lewis wasn’t taking her to his house, or at least to hers. It was snowy. Grown-ups were always saying it was hard to drive in the snow. It seemed to Ramona that they shouldn’t be out going to the movies and driving around. But she wasn’t sure.

  Grampa got her a cheeseburger Happy Meal and paid for it at that funny window. He usually said it wasn’t good to eat in the car, but now it seemed to be OK. Ramona tried to eat her food while Carew tried to take it away from her. Grampa stopped the car a bunch of times to yell at Carew, which was funny.

  But what wasn’t funny was what happened next: instead of going toward home (Ramona knew the way), he went the other direction. Pretty soon there were fewer and fewer buildings. It started to look like the country, and Ramona felt a little scared.

  “Grampa?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I thought a drive would be nice.”

  He had talked about finding Grandma Anna, which was exciting—it meant he believed Ramona had seen her. But it was also strange for a grown-up to be looking for a dead person, since grown-ups believed dead people didn’t come back. They rode for a while without either of them saying anything. Ramona thought about things. Grampa Lewis loved her and would never hurt her. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Grampa Lewis was sort of . . . upset, in a way that made him act like maybe he didn’t know what he was doing. It had kind of been that way since Grandma Anna died, but now it was getting worse. She tried to make things better earlier, when she told Grampa about seeing Grandma, but it just seemed to make him more confused.

  The thing about Grampa was that he really needed someone to take care of him. Grandma used to, and it really helped him. She sort of took care of everyone.

  Grampa thought he took care of a lot of things, but really he needed a lot of help. Ramona wasn’t sure she could give it to him. It was awfully hard.

  In the backseat, driving into the night, the Perfect Princess took charge.

  “Grampa?” she said.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Everything is going to be all right.”

  Grampa didn’t say anything at first; he held on to the steering wheel for a while, then glanced back. His eyes were shiny.

  “Can I take your word for it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said the Perfect Princess. “Because I know.”

  “We’re going to find her, aren’t we?” said Grampa Lewis. “We’re going to find Grandma Anna. She’s somewhere out in the snow.”

  “Yes,” the Perfect Princess said.

  “She wants me to find her,” Grampa Lewis said, driving.

  “She wants you to find her,” said the Perfect Princess, said Ramona.

  21. NOTHING BUT THE CRYSTALLINE FORBIDDANCE OF THE BAY.

  After a few hours of watching Stephen—immobile, not a sign of movement behind his closed eyelids—Jay decided that it might be appropriate to succumb to panic. She couldn’t get in touch with Lewis to check on Ramona, which was increasingly a cause of distress. She managed to get through to Stephen’s mother, who had left her cell number on Jay’s voice mail. Stephen’s parents were on their way to San Francisco to catch a plane, but for now the Minneapolis airport was shut down and there was little hope of getting a flight anytime before midday tomorrow.

  Jay had made two trips downstairs to smoke, but the Canadian air mass was coming and, as advertised, the temperature was already around zero. She could barely taste the cigarette, nor feel its pleasant burn—she was preoccupied with pain as she inhaled an atmosphere colder than the inside of a freezer.

  There were plans afoot to move Stephen to another room; the one he occupied was a temporary staging area for the severely injured, and someone out there in the city was going to be severely injured anytime
now and would need a bed.

  Where was Lewis? She dialed his cell number again, listened to his voice mail pick up. She didn’t leave a message. She’d lost track of how many she’d left already.

  A nurse came and hovered over Stephen for a while. She checked out the machines and wrote something in Stephen’s chart. Stephen continued his slow, mechanized breathing. Jay had never imagined seeing him like this—even in his deepest sleep, and he was a deep sleeper, Stephen had always seemed somehow composed, very much himself. Whatever she could call this human form laid out next to her, it bore little relation to Stephen.

  “How are you holding up?” asked the nurse.

  Jay realized she had been staring at Stephen. “Can’t really say.”

  “The doctors here are excellent,” the nurse said. “They’re going to do everything possible to bring him out of this.”

  They exchanged names. Hers was Norma. She looked like a Norma, with dyed-blond hair pulled back in a bun, and a shapely figure neutered by her smock and heavy blue slacks.

  “What do you think his chances are?” Jay asked her.

  Norma thought for a moment. “He took a lot of trauma. The time underwater has possibly damaged his brain. You know, we get a couple of cases like this every year—usually because someone steps on thin ice and falls through. Each one is different. Sometimes they’re fine. Sometimes they never wake up.”

  Jay listened to this as calmly as she could, relaxing her hand when she realized she was clutching like an animal to the edge of Stephen’s blankets.

  “You love him,” Norma said.

  “Yes,” Jay replied. “Well, yes, I do. But we had just broken up.”

  “They’re not mutually exclusive,” Norma said. “Listen, hang in there. We’ll know more soon.”

  Jay thanked Norma, who came over and squeezed Jay’s shoulder. When the nurse was gone, Jay felt enveloped by the fluorescent light and the ambient grumble of all the medical devices. She supposed she could go for another cigarette. There seemed no point, though, not if that meant going outside again.

  She flipped on the TV, which had a channel selection like Romania’s in the seventies. All the local news anchors were going on about the snow, and the cold, with a surprised gravity that suggested they never considered such things happening. Jay turned it off.

  It was tricky, figuring out the etiquette for a bedside vigil. Stephen was lost to the world, so sealed off. She wanted to go, but it seemed deeply wrong to leave Stephen alone. She hungered to hold Ramona with such palpable fervor that, she knew, meant she needed consolation from her child.

  In the bathroom down the hall she had a look at herself. It was an unpleasant reconnaissance over a blotchy terrain and a lost, fearful expression she didn’t recognize. When she went back to Stephen’s room, the cop from earlier was there, along with a female partner.

  “Hey, we were looking for you.” He held out his hand. “Officer Wallace,” he said.

  “Officer McInnis,” said the woman, also wanting a shake. She was almost as tall as her partner, and wore her hair in a ponytail.

  “What do you want?” Jay asked. “Nothing here has changed.”

  “Is Lewis Ingraham your father?” Wallace asked.

  Jay said he was. Wallace and McInnis exchanged a satisfied look.

  “Why?” Jay said, trying and failing to quell a wave of unspecified alarm.

  “Were you aware that Stephen filed a restraining order against your father a couple of days ago?”

  “I . . . well, actually, no I wasn’t.”

  Wallace weighed this for a little while, hiding whatever conclusions he made behind his cop impassivity. “Where is your father right now?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jay told him. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with him. He picked my daughter up from her day care. I imagine he just took her out to eat or something.”

  Jay felt inordinately intimidated by the police uniforms, the black leather belts housing handcuffs and God knew whatever other sadomasochistic implements. And then there was the matter of the thick metallic gun handles that protruded from twin holsters.

  “This restraining order,” Jay said. “What did my father supposedly do?”

  “Nonspecified threats,” said Wallace. His mustache gave a little quiver. “The details would come out in a hearing next week that Mr. Grant would attend. And Mr. Ingraham, if he wanted to rebut the allegations.”

  “So you don’t know what happened, exactly?” Jay asked.

  “Your dad threatened your ex-boyfriend,” McInnis offered. “And scared him enough to get a restraining order. What was going on between them?”

  “There was some friction, but nothing—”

  “Define ‘friction’ for me,” McInnis said.

  “Friction,” Jay said. “I guess it was coming from my dad. He thought Stephen was . . . that he was getting between members of my family.”

  “He didn’t like Stephen,” Wallace suggested.

  “It’s not as simple as that!” Jay said, rapidly shocked by where this was going. “Look, my father can be a little . . . intense. He lost his wife—my mother—within the last year. He’s very protective. But if you’re suggesting he had anything to do with—”

  She pointed at the evidence: Stephen, the sleeping man.

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Wallace said. “But I want to talk to your father about his whereabouts earlier today.”

  “It’s only procedure,” said McInnis, flipping her ponytail.

  Jay knew people well enough to understand that the police had started to formulate a hypothesis, and that they were looking for clues to build up and bolster it. And that idea was, apparently, that Lewis had done something to Stephen.

  It was impossible. Lewis wasn’t a violent man. He had been so strange at times recently, though. And the restraining order—he had done, or said, something sufficient to frighten Stephen. Who didn’t easily admit to being afraid.

  And Lewis had been unavailable to her all day.

  And he had taken Ramona.

  “Look, I’m sure this was an accident,” Jay said, trying to sound like she believed it.

  “It’s a shame we can’t ask him,” McInnis said, more to her partner than to Jay.

  “Yeah. A shame.” He nodded at Stephen. “What are they saying about him?”

  “As far as I can tell, they’re just going to wait and see,” Jay told him.

  “Can you give me your father’s address?” McInnis asked. “And yours, as well?”

  Jay complied, and the officers seemed satisfied. Wallace gave Jay a card. “We’re going to look for your father,” he said. “If you see him first, tell him to call that number right away. If he doesn’t turn up soon, we’re going to start thinking about an arrest warrant.”

  How many hours ago had it been when it all made sense—she was going to pick a city, move, start over. Learn to do something, figure out how to make life work for herself and Ramona. And now this.

  She picked up her keys from the bed stand and kissed the narrow patch of Stephen’s exposed skin.

  “Sorry about this,” she said. “But I have to find Lewis. I have to believe he didn’t do this to you. I have to.”

  He walked the slope of the mountain over the dull California scrub brush and the gentle slopes leading down to the familiar view that he . . .

  Wait. That wasn’t right. He looked around. No people, no cars, no road where there should have been one, winding up to the top. And no sign of anyone . . . and no—

  No San Francisco. No Golden Gate Bridge. Nothing but hills and the crystalline forbiddance of the bay. He was standing on Mount Tamalpais, there was no doubt of that, but there was no human imprint on the landscape. He was looking out over the vista as it was before anyone populated it. Which meant—

  What, exactly? Where was everyone? Stephen walked faster now, up and up, trying to remember.

  He had been in a very cold place. He knew that. And now he looked up and saw Jay walking
slowly down a rise toward him.

  He was filled with an immense sense of relief. Surely Jay would be able to help him. But she was taking such a long time. Stephen sat down on a big rock and passed the minutes letting his eyes wander over the water to the unfolding land on the other side. Sausalito used to be there. Or would be there someday. It made his head hurt, and he didn’t want to think about it at all.

  “Have you seen Lewis?” asked Anna Ingraham, standing right next to him. She wore chinos, a linen blouse, and a sun hat.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Stephen said. “Not for a while.”

  “He’s looking for me.” Anna peered out over the bay, the sun’s radiance captured in her light brown eyes.

  “Should I give him a message?” asked Stephen.

  Anna paused. “He’ll find me when it’s time,” she said. “Good-bye, Stephen.”

  “Good-bye, Anna.”

  Anna was gone. Jay seemed to be walking at a normal pace, but she was taking ages. She was wearing jeans and one of those strappy things that drove him crazy. God, she was beautiful, even at this distance. But he really wished she would hurry up and join him. He was starting to feel frightened. He had no clue how he got here, and he was sure that Jay could provide some clarification.

  It was kind of like her, in an admittedly obvious symbolic manner—the way she was letting herself be seen without joining him, the way she had always held something in reserve and never given herself fully to him.

  Then she was standing right next to him.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” he said. He made a move to embrace her, but she didn’t seem willing. She stood next to him and stared out at the water, her expression blank and unavailable. In profile, she looked very much like her mother.

  “How did we get here?” he asked.

  She said nothing, maintaining her stony appraisal of the spectacular view.

  “Jay, the cities are gone,” Stephen told her. “Tell me why. Please. Tell me where we are.”

  “What do you think his chances are?” Jay asked in a faraway voice.