The Ice Queen

by Alice Hoffman

  “I hurt you,” Lazarus said.

  He had pulled on his clothes and come up behind me. Nothing had hurt me since that night on the porch; nothing had even come close. I was shaking, still wet, so he put his arms around me. I could feel the heat through his clothes. I could hear his heart beating, the strong heart that had defied death, that had stopped and come back to life. Nothing could have made me want him more.

  I wasn’t much different than that greedy, selfish girl I’d been years ago. Only now I didn’t want the universe, not the whole wide world. Just this and nothing more: Make me feel something, anything, in cold water, on a bed of ice, on a night so dark it’s impossible to tell the difference between the earth and the sky. Let it happen again and again, time after time. Hurt me so I know I’m still alive.

  II

  Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside? At the library I couldn’t help but notice which patrons checked out the same books. They appeared to have nothing in common, but who could tell what a person was truly made of? The unknown, the riddle, the deepest truth. I noticed them all: the ones who’d lost their way, the ones who’d lived their lives in ashes, the ones who had to prove themselves, the ones who, like me, had lost the ability to feel.

  I kept going out to the orange grove. It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t have to. It was as though I had one map inside my head and it led to the man who was waiting for me. Someone who was as alone — maybe even more alone — than I was; someone whose story dovetailed with mine — burned alive, trapped in ice. I thought about Jack Lyons — I might have learned how to be human with him, but what good would that have done? There was so much more to learn from Lazarus. After the first few times we were together, I had gotten up the courage to ask what it had been like to be dead. I’d pleaded to know, but he wouldn’t tell me. All the same, I wouldn’t let it go. I nagged and begged. Did it hurt, was it heavenly, was there white light or the darkest agony? Lazarus refused to say. He had a beautiful smile, one that made me want him even more. Want, I had discovered, was a country of its own. Everything else drops off the map: oceans, continents, friends, family, the before, the after — all of it gone.

  Throughout the summer the only thing I could think about was the road to Lazarus’s. I’d dream about it: the stop signs, the white line, the turnoff, the front porch, the door. My brother phoned and left a few messages, but I didn’t bother calling back.

  “Are you alive?” Ned’s familiar voice asked one day when I played my phone-message tape.

  Actually, yes, I wanted to tell him. Amazingly, incredibly enough, I seemed to be. But he wouldn’t understand. How could I explain that on rainy nights Lazarus and I sat out on his porch in the dark, drawn there by whatever was inside us, some external weather trapped and mirrored inside our blood and bones. I felt addicted, to the danger, the rush of being alive, taking chances. We had sex outside, in the dark, with the rain coming down. We went down to the pond, turned away from each other, took off our clothes. We didn’t have to see each other to know what we wanted. It was a story that no one else knew.

  Now when I went to the survivor group I felt nothing, no kinship. I wanted to run away from their sorrowful tales of lives gone wrong. I came late, left early, avoided the girl with the mismatched socks when I saw her on the street. We were nearing hurricane season, a time when lightning-strike survivors feel more stress than usual. Anything can happen at any time. In group, we were told safety tips. Stay away from windows; have a hurricane cellar. And there I was on the porch on nights when the wind nearly carried us away. I wasn’t thinking of safety at all.

  “Where’ve you been?” Renny asked me at the snack table after one survivor meeting. There were oatmeal cookies and cream cheese brownies and some gray thing I supposed was red velvet cake, allegedly a specialty around here.

  Lately, I’d been more selfish than ever. I had a secret dark world and it suited me. In my greed, I had forgotten about Renny. I was that sort of friend, I suppose, the bad sort, and I was embarrassed by my own self-involvement. Renny looked nervous and underfed. Not that he was my responsibility.

  “Here and there,” I said.

  “You’re fucking him?” Renny said. Just like that. As though he could read my mind. Did it show? Surely, I had no expression on my face. I never did.

  “Good Lord, you are suspicious.” I took a cookie, though I hated oatmeal. “And nasty.”

  Renny wasn’t so easily fooled. “You mean smart.”

  “I actually did mean that.”

  We both laughed.

  “You, on the other hand,” he said. “Very stupid.”

  “And your romantic life is something to boast about?”

  Iris McGinnis. The girl who didn’t know he was alive.

  “Good one,” Renny said. “You got me.”

  The basis for my friendship with Renny was our shared chapter on pain. It was an inclusive chapter, the guiding principle of all that was to follow: Careful what you feel. Better yet, feel nothing at all. With his gloves, Renny could not feel enough and had difficulty picking up a straw or a stone. Barehanded, there was too much sensation, dizzying, all-encompassing. Because I’d seen him less once I began to go out to the orchard, I didn’t understand how bad his pain had become until that night at group. He looked more anxious than usual; the summer semester was ending and Renny had very little faith in himself.

  I was at the library the next day when Renny called on me. I had to show up for work occasionally, but I took my time, slowly, lazily replacing books on their proper shelves, in the dream state I entered whenever I thought about Lazarus. I was the Ice Queen who wanted to be burned alive. I wanted to take the path full of stones that led through the forest of ashes. At the end of that path I would find what every fairy-tale creature yearned for. Not pearls, not kingdoms, not gold. I was looking for something better than that. Real treasure. Real truth.

  “You’ve got to help me,” Renny pleaded.

  “Is this about Iris again?” Iris McGinnis, nymph of sorrow, so far away she might as well have been living on the moon. Renny loved to talk about her. I usually just tuned him out and let him drone on, but my patience was wearing thin.

  “Not Iris. Not this time.”

  He was failing his architecture course; his end-of-the-summer term project was due and he couldn’t work on it himself because of the pain in his hands. He was taking Demerol, along with Tegretol for the tremors. I could feel guilt rise up inside me like a living being. I wanted to tell him no. After work I planned to get in my car and drive to the secret country where oranges were white. I wanted to walk into the cold pond where Lazarus and I went swimming on clear nights, after all the workers had left, after the trucks had been loaded up and driven away, after it was dark. The mud between my toes under a black and starless sky. I’d been thinking about it all day as I shelved books. I wanted to be dragged under, forget there was anything else in the universe.

  But how could I deny Renny, my friend, Renny the sorrowful? How could I tell him what I really wanted? Go away, go away. I’m in a different country now, one where no one can find me, one where there’s no difference between fire and water.

  I should have advised him to pick a new major. But no. Always the volunteer, I offered to do the work if he would instruct me. Renny came over that night. I could tell he was desperate. We were that much alike. His tremor was worse. His hair was long, knotted. He hadn’t bathed. All the signs of despair. It was my clicking that kicked in when I felt that way. Sometimes I couldn’t hear the TV over the sounds in my own head.

  “You’re sure you’re up for this?” I asked.

  Had he been drinking, smoking weed? His eyes were red. And then I thought, Oh, no. He’d been crying.

  Renny gazed at his gloves; from his expression he might have been looking down at cloven hooves or a lion’s paws. “Maybe it’s time for me to give up architecture.”

  Like drawn to like, story to story. I should have said, Yes,
give it up; study literature or art history — any discipline he might have a chance at rather than a field of study that would surely lead to failure. But that wasn’t the way it was going to happen. Jump down the well, sleep for a hundred years, tie yourself to a tree at the base of the mountain, the one where snow falls every day and the ice is ten feet thick.

  “Don’t be silly.” Here I went, pushing him down the well. “Architects don’t actually do the building. They inspire and create. Carpenters do all the work.”

  “I should give it all up. Architecture and Iris. Ridiculous dreams.”

  “Give up and it will never happen.”

  I sounded like a character out of an Andersen story, on the side of reason and goodness. I was his cheerleader, his friend, his familiar, his liar. Step up and make the leap. Don’t bother with a helmet or a life preserver. You can do it if you really try! Walk on glass, pull the sliver of ice from your heart, face up to it. Overcome.

  I sounded so false to myself, but Renny grinned, won over. I suppose people needed stories like Andersen’s sometimes. The should-be story, the could-be tale. Renny ran a gloved hand through his messy hair. “I don’t have a chance,” he said, but I could hear it in his voice — he was being coerced into believing.

  “Let’s do it.” I always got in too deep. I didn’t even want to be here, now I was committing to a major project. “First the temple, then Iris. Inspire me. Boss me around. Treat me like a carpenter.”

  Renny had brought over glue, sticks, balsa wood, bamboo, Plexiglas, paper. He unfurled the blueprints on the countertop. Truthfully, now that it was before me, the task terrified me. I had never built anything. Destruction was my game. Renny took note of my expression.

  “Fuck it all,” he said. “Maybe I’m supposed to fail.”

  I cleared off my kitchen table and set out a large sheet of clear plastic Renny had brought along for the base of the project. We were to construct a Doric temple, if we could ever get the cat out of the room, something we finally managed by setting an opened can of tuna on the porch. I was directed to begin with thin sticks of bamboo. Renny instructed me, but the anxiety of ruining the project made me sweat. I never did anything right, why had I assumed I could help him?

  “Terrific,” Renny kept telling me whenever I was able to connect the bamboo with thin wire. “Excellent.”

  All the same, it looked like a temple of bones when I’d finished what was supposed to be the framework. “Are you sure this is right?” I peered at the blueprints. Sixty percent of Renny’s grade would be based on this project.

  “It’s just the skeleton,” he assured me. “We’ll do the rest next time.”

  We ordered a pizza delivered, then locked the kitchen to keep Giselle from knocking over the temple. I had the fan on, but with it or without it, the clicking inside my head had grown quieter.

  “When it’s done, I’m giving the temple to Iris,” Renny told me. “I planned it out at the beginning of the summer.”

  “Really,” I said. I had the shivers; this could lead someplace dark. Did Iris even know he existed?

  Renny opened his wallet and shook out a small gold charm imprinted with the shape of Iris’s namesake. It was sad and beautiful and tiny in his huge gloved hand.

  “I had this made up by the jeweler at the Smithfield Mall. We’ll hang it over the doorway. I’ll bet no one ever made something like this for her.”

  “Renny.” Obsession or love, or both? He could read my pity and my doubt.

  “You think I’m an idiot. You think I have no chance at all.”

  “I’m not sure I think anyone has a chance,” I admitted.

  When the pizza was delivered, Renny paid, treating me to dinner as a thank-you for all my handiwork. When he handed over the cash, the delivery guy stared at Renny’s gloves — wary, I suppose, that Renny had some communicable disease.

  “He’s an idiot,” I said of the deliveryman when he had gone. “Pay no attention.”

  Renny put the gold charm back into his wallet; it took him a long time to do so, he was clumsy and careful both. Usually, I didn’t notice Renny’s gloves any more than I noticed Giselle’s paws. I noticed now. I thought of Iris McGinnis, without a care, leading the life of a college student, not thinking of dark love, gold tokens, Doric temples.

  I could feel a change in the air pressure; I leaned out the door and called for the cat. Giselle raced inside and trotted to a corner. She ignored our dinner on the coffee table. Not typical. She had caught something again. Little feet. Gray shadow.

  “Is that thing alive?” Renny asked.

  “She kills whatever she can get her fangs into.” I apologized for Giselle. “It’s her nature.”

  Renny went to the corner and battled the cat for this second mole. She sank her teeth into his glove. “God, she’s vicious. Drop it!” he commanded.

  The cat wasn’t about to take orders, so Renny grabbed her by the neck and gave her a little shake. I suppose Giselle was mortified — I treated her like an equal — she growled and let go, then stalked away, hissing. “Murderess,” I called after her. My pet, my dear. I was getting attached to her. I worried when she wouldn’t come in at night; I waited anxiously in the yard until she sauntered up in her own good time. She’d stare me down. Then rub herself against my legs. I’d begun to buy cream for her. Bad sign. No attachments, that was my motto. None at all.

  “He’s got teeth marks in him.” Renny had picked up the mole.

  “Is he dead?”

  Our pizza was getting cold, but I came to examine the mole. It wasn’t moving.

  “I’ve got another one out on the porch.”

  “Seriously? Another mole?”

  I brought Renny out to where I’d left the shoebox. I lifted the cover. “This one’s definitely dead.”

  “Are you collecting them?”

  We laughed, but it wasn’t funny. There in the shoebox was the little fallen-leaf mole, curled up, not much more than skin and bones. Could it be that I’d even become attached to this poor little thing? It smelled like dust and earth, a sad, bitter scent.

  “Well, this one’s alive,” Renny said of today’s mole. He put it in his jacket pocket. “I’ll bet that one was alive, too. Just playing dead. It’s difficult to tell, you know.”

  I was still the death-wish girl. Touch you once and you turn to ice. Twice and you might disappear.

  “Did you check to make sure before you threw him away?” Renny asked.

  After all I’d done for him tonight Renny seemed to be accusing me of murder, or, if not that, thoughtlessness. Same difference. I had glue on my hands and my numb fingertips were raw from attaching those damned bamboo sticks. It was never going to work, not my life or his. I was annoyed and I couldn’t hide it.

  “Maybe we’d better call it quits on the project,” I said. “If I do everything wrong, how am I going to construct a temple?”

  “So, you’re done with me now? Is that it? Why not? Everyone else wants to get rid of me.”

  He was so sensitive a single drop of poison could affect him, a word, a look, one sliver of ice. He had his head down. He was checking on the mole. I saw what I didn’t want to see: Renny was brokenhearted. Like and like. I knew how he felt.

  “I don’t mean it that way, Renny.” I came up beside him, close. My only friend. I could see that the mole was breathing softly. Now I noticed that one of its ears had been torn in half.

  I told Renny about Lazarus, not everything, of course, not the way I felt inside, just how I arose from bed at odd hours, compelled to drive out there; I revealed the corners of what was happening. Yet I said too much. Be careful whom you tell your story to. As we sat on my porch, both of us feeling the change in the weather, knees touching knees, I made the mistake of mentioning that Lazarus and I were always together in the dark. I suppose it was something that nagged at me. As soon as I’d said it I knew that I should have kept my mouth shut.

  “And that doesn’t worry you? You’re suspicious about everything
else, but not that? Clearly, there’s something this Lazarus doesn’t want you to see. Hell, I wish I could do the same with Iris. But even in the dark, I wouldn’t be able to trick her. What’s wrong with me would be even more obvious. The dark makes it worse for me.”

  Renny decided he would show me this final effect of his strike. The one he kept from everyone. I had the feeling this might be the deep secret, the riddle of who he was. I wasn’t certain I wanted to know. But there was no stopping him.

  The whole thing was much too personal. I wanted out. I wanted solitude. I wanted to tell him not to show me. I wanted to say I only appeared to be someone who was interested and concerned. But I just sat there next to him. Frozen.

  Renny took off his gloves. I could hear him doing it; he grunted with the pain, the rub of the leather against his ruined skin. And then I saw. Amazing. Bits of yellow and green glowed on his skin. It was so strange, and in some way quite beautiful. You could see it only in the dark, the gold in his skin had been woven into him, as though he were a tapestry. The gold went beyond the area where his watch and ring had branded him, as though the metal had been splattered over his hands. But I understood why he feared love as much as he wanted it: he didn’t look quite human.

  “They did a biopsy to see if it could be extracted, but the gold is mixed in with the fat and tissue under the skin. I’ll never get rid of it.”

  I gently took his hands in mine. I felt like crying. I wondered if damaged people ever got over what had damaged them.

  “So you’re made out of gold. It’s better than plain flesh.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m a freak.” Renny went to put the porch light on. He kept his back to me and pulled his gloves on. “And so is he, I’ll bet. Your friend Lazarus.”

  Like understands like. I believed that. Renny turned back to me.

  “He’s hiding something,” my friend said.

  I never should have told him. Never talked to him. Never gotten involved. “Well, then, I hope it’s something as beautiful as your hands.”