The Ice Queen

by Alice Hoffman

  There were the marks of trees, shadow branches up and down Lazarus’s arms. The arms I knew. The rope of veins.

  On one arm there was a blackbird, startled, ready to take flight. And all over there were the wheeling branches, as though Lazarus was part human and partly made of bark and leaves.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Barely enough. Barely anything. Disloyal, untrustworthy bitch, shivering now, shuddering with the very thought of what I’d done to us. I could never get anything right.

  “No, really. Finish it! Look at me.”

  He grabbed me then. But that wasn’t the worst of it, the angry grasp, the hot hands. Far worse was a tone of voice that I hadn’t heard before, except in our darkest, deepest moments. No bullshit, no pleasing me, for himself. Just for himself. Whoever that was. Whoever he was.

  “Look at it all.”

  It sounded like a threat. It sounded like the end. And something more. Maybe it was a relief to show someone at last. To turn around and let me see. I did the worst thing when he showed me his back, I made a sound, a gasping, despite my vow to myself to have no reaction. His deepest self, isn’t that what I wanted? True self, real self, self you’re hiding from the rest of the world.

  There was a shadowgraph of a face on his back. Gray and black, the impression of an older man, mouth half open, eyes frightened.

  I knew it for what it was right away, expert that I was. There were a hundred ways, and this was one of them. The shadowgraph was of the moment of a man’s death.

  “Happy?” Lazarus asked me.

  I had been — how much so, I had no idea. The before, of course. The time I didn’t know was the before, when I’d had something worthwhile, something I had wanted, something that could be turned to cinders with a single match. How many fairy tales had warned me of this? Keep the light out, have faith, trust in what you feel, not in what you see. Leave the matches at home. Leave it be.

  I thought how the meteorologists would love to get their hands on Lazarus. How thrilled they’d be to pose him up against their white screen and photograph him, right, left, naked, one of a kind, piece of art, piece of work, shadow man, death man, my Lazarus, or the Lazarus who had been mine. Terrible time to know the truth, not the truth of him, oh no. The truth of me. But here it was. On the floor. A splash of cold water, a leftover, a strand of red thread that was invisible to me: I didn’t know it was love until the moment of bright light. I didn’t know what I felt until I went one step beyond it.

  “There you have it,” Lazarus said. “The real me.”

  He walked out of the bathroom, slammed the door. I heard the water in the tub, the wind outside. I heard the sound of my own raspy breathing.

  I got dressed. I was still shivering. I followed him. I wasn’t thinking anymore. That hadn’t worked for me. It was hot outside on the porch where he was standing. Too humid to see stars. The odor of red oranges. Do they make perfume out of it? They should. I would buy it and I don’t even like cologne. A bottle of oranges, and one of blue ice, and one of tears, and one filled with a potion that was so burning hot when you poured it over your skin you came close to dying. But not really, just hovering above all that was burning, all that was alive.

  “You should go and never come back,” Lazarus said.

  “Tell them if that’s what you want to do. Phone the newspaper. I can’t stop you. Tell everyone about this damned mark on me.”

  “It’s a shadowgraph. I’ve read about them. It’s probably caused by a brilliant flash of light.”

  “Is that what it is?” Lazarus almost laughed. But not quite. “Hell, I thought it was my punishment.”

  “Maybe I’m your punishment,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I blame the red dress for everything.”

  Everything, as in over? Everything, as in just beginning? He didn’t sound as angry. Only sad. Lost. I knew what that was like. The black trees, the path that can’t be found. The ice, falling like stones from above.

  The beetles were clicking, and so was my brain. Always my task: undo what has been done. I wanted to whirl time backward, clothes off, lights cut, door open, car on the road.

  “I feel him there every minute of every day,” Lazarus said. “I know what it is. Whatever you want to call it. It’s my punishment all right.”

  In the story of the fearless boy, the foolish hero played cards with the dead and walked through graveyards without fear, but not even he carried a dead man on his back. The burden of that was an impossible weight. I knew what that was like, too.

  Lazarus turned to me. He was barefoot and we were standing on the porch. That alone terrified me. The then and the now slammed together. His white shirt was wet from his soaking wet skin.

  “Aren’t you going to ask? You wanted to know, so go ahead. Ask me.”

  All things happened this way, didn’t they? Every story, every life, every coincidence. A left turn instead of a right turn. A stomp of the feet. A wish said aloud. A branch falling from a tree. A storm sweeping in from the east. A butterfly. A candle. A match.

  When I didn’t ask, he decided to tell me anyway.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” I said.

  As it turned out, I wasn’t so different from my brother when it came to the truth. I felt as though I were about to fall, headfirst, down into the tunnel from which there was no return. I know I asked, but tell me later, tell me tomorrow or never. That’s soon enough.

  Lazarus sat on the top step of the porch. Out in the orchard something was flying around the tops of the trees. There were bats here, too. There was my car, unwashed, dusty, the mileage piling on since I’d begun driving here and back. If I was going to stay, he was going to tell me.

  I sat down next to him. I got a splinter — just my luck — but I kept my mouth shut.

  Seth Jones, the real Seth Jones, the one with the library cards, had worked on this orchard all his life. He’d been born here and this had been his father’s business before him. He was a good son who did as he was told, even after his father had died, even after he himself had gone through middle age. He was so cautious that his life had nearly passed before him and he’d barely noticed. What had he to show for all those years? The oranges he grew were delicious, the land mortgage-free, the workers he hired were honest, and he himself awoke in the mornings, shoulders and legs aching, but alive and well all the same. Maybe that should have been enough.

  It wasn’t.

  Seth Jones, the real one, the true one, wished more than anything that he could change places with someone. He wanted not to be himself. He wanted to travel to countries he’d read about, dreamed of all his life.

  One year, and he’d give up half of what he owned.

  And then it happened, the way things do, when it’s least expected: a temporary worker from the hardware store, a young man of twenty-five, strong, healthy, a lost soul who’d been running his whole life. A foster child, always temporary, always on the move. The young man’s shoes were worn down; he had never saved more than a hundred dollars, enough to get to the next town. Twenty-five and he was exhausted. Too many states, too many roads, too many women. He was fed up with life. He dreamed about permanence, stability, trees with roots, land that didn’t turn to sand under his feet and slip away.

  One afternoon, on a day like any other, he delivered a truckload of mulch, one job of many. Temporary, of course, already fading. But this time he didn’t get back in the feed-store truck and drive away. He walked through the orchard, drawn by the scent of oranges and water. He stood at the edge of the pond. He thought about drowning himself, but he knew at the last instant the human spirit always fought to live. He’d spent his whole life traveling, doing as little as possible, getting by. Still, he had his youth, his beautiful face, his strength. Surely this should have been enough.

  It wasn’t.

  Seth Jones saw the stranger fall to his knees. The young man looked as though he was praying, when really he was cursing this world. He was a good man, Seth Jones figured, p
erhaps sent from above. Surely this was a sign, a man praying for guidance. Seth Jones went right up to the stranger and offered him a bargain no man with just a hundred dollars in his pockets could refuse. One year, not a day more, and in return, half of everything. They shook on it then and there.

  The stranger quit his job. He packed up his motel room. He didn’t have much, so it didn’t take long. On the arranged day, he took a taxi out to the orchard. Everything was set in place: Where to call to hire the farmworkers. Where the checkbook was kept and how to manage Seth Jones’s signature. What was a reasonable price for a bushel of oranges, a crate, a truckload. No one would have to see the stranger; he would be Seth Jones while the true Jones was in Italy. That was where his travels would begin. As for the stranger, he felt like someone’s son. Maybe that was his dream: a son who had inherited half of everything, as far as the eye could see.

  It was a humid day and there were storm clouds. The earth was damp. The air barely moved. So much the better to leave for one man. So much the better to stay for the other.

  They were walking through the orchard when it happened. There were blackbirds calling. The air was fragrant. Each man felt as though he’d been given a year to do with as he pleased, the opposite of his own life. The final step of this exchange: they traded shoes. The new man put on the old work boots worn for fifteen years, so comfortable he could wear them from dawn till midnight. Seth Jones put on the younger man’s walking shoes, light on his feet, shoes that would carry him far away.

  The bad weather must have been a hundred miles off. West. North. Nowhere nearby. Or so it seemed. Then it happened the way things do, when it’s least expected. Lightning hit. It tore a hole in the ground. It struck the stranger so hard that his heart stopped. He was floating above himself, and he stayed there, hovering, until he came to himself in the hospital morgue. When he tried to speak, to ask about the other man, smoke came out of his mouth. It was amazing he hadn’t been burned alive, that’s what he heard the nurses saying. No matter what the experts said about rubber soles, he figured the traded boots were what saved him. But he couldn’t figure much beyond that. He was still hovering in some way.

  In the hospital he saw the dark, branchlike splotches on his arms. All he could think was that he had to get away. When he stood up from the bath, dripping with ice, he heard them gasp at the marking on his back. It was a burn shaped like a face, someone guessed. A wound shaped like a man. But that wasn’t what it was. He knew exactly who he carried: the man to whom he owed a year.

  He got dressed and refused any further medical care; he heard those same nurses refer to him as Lazarus. Since he barely remembered his own name, he decided to call himself that as well. What was death like? For him it was a cloud, and he awoke from it clouded still. Where had he been? He had lost himself, and then he was back. If he thought hard, there may have been a battle. He could halfway remember charging through the bath of ice in some way, fighting to come back, slamming down and then arising.

  He left the hospital as soon as he could — they had no authority to hold him, he didn’t appear to be a danger to himself or others, and he had a bargain to keep. As soon as he returned to the orchard he found the exact spot where he’d been hit. The hole in the ground. The oranges turned red. And then he noticed it, what he was looking for. A pile of ashes. Lazarus got down on his hands and knees and breathed it in. Sulfur and flesh. His partner had been struck and had burst into flame. This was all that was left, a pile of ash and minerals, this and the face imprinted on his back.

  Lazarus swept the ashes into a dustpan, then funneled it all into a wooden box he’d found on the bookshelf. He didn’t once think of leaving; he kept his part of the bargain. Seth Jones had outlived most of his friends, and Lazarus avoided those Jones had known through his business, hiring workers over the phone, doing his banking by mail and phone. Every night he walked through the orchard to the place where the oranges had turned red. He had made a deal for a year; now he was forced to carry his partner forever more. When the anniversary of that day came, he could feel himself wanting to move on. It was in his blood, that’s what he’d discovered. He was never meant to be a settled man. But now he was living another man’s life, trapped by circumstance. When did a promise end? With the sort of guilt Lazarus had, the answer seemed to be never.

  Lazarus took me back inside; I followed him to the bookshelves. There was the wooden box, carved in Morocco, a death box, a burden.

  “Do you think I killed him?” Lazarus said.

  It could have been anyone who delivered the mulch that day, but it was him. Anyone who stomped her feet on the porch, but it was me.

  I held the wooden box; it was surprisingly heavy, amazingly so. We carried it out through the orchard; it seemed only right that we take Seth Jones with us now. The darkness was sifting through the trees. We went out to the pond, where Jones had first seen Lazarus, the moment when he thought his wish had come true. We left the wooden box and our clothes in a pile and went wading into the water. It was cool and deep. Nights in Florida weren’t any more comfortable than the days, only wetter, more humid, closing in, throwing you together. I held Lazarus in my arms. It didn’t matter what his name had been; he was Lazarus now. I could feel everywhere he’d been, all those towns, those women, that life. I could feel that he’d made a wish he now regretted, that he’d give anything to have his own shoes back, his own life.

  For once in my life I didn’t consider the what had happened or the what would be. None of that. The nowness, the darkness, engulfed us. Two drowning people who loved the feel of water. Kiss me underwater. Kiss me until I’m gone. I could feel a shudder go through Lazarus. How odd to have the truth there with us, right there in the black water, drifting. Hot night, beetles flying low, lightning in the distance.

  I was far above myself. Floating in the dark. No fear for once in my life. It was not at all what I’d expected. That fearless moment. Salvation where it didn’t belong.

  I could feel Lazarus shivering in my arms. “It’s not your fault,” I told him.

  And here’s the thing I would have never believed about words, my own words, spoken aloud, the ones I said to give him comfort, hope, all those things I’d never believed in: They rescued me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gold

  I

  I’d stayed away all weekend and on the way home I worried about Giselle. It was Monday, late in the afternoon, nearing suppertime. The cat would be waiting at the door, desperate to go out; perhaps she’d already ignored her litter box, choosing to defecate in one of my shoes instead, as she often did to vent her anger. I’d left out a huge bowl of food, but my guilt grew by the mile. As I was driving home I thought I heard her mewling, which was impossible.

  When I reached the town line, the blue welcome to orlon sign decorated with oranges and palm trees, I thought I heard Giselle screaming. She’d done that once or twice, when she’d spied another cat through the window, some supposed enemy or lover.

  It was only a siren I was hearing — I saw the ambulance in my rearview mirror — but the sound had done its work. My irregular heart was pounding against my ribs. I pulled up in front of my house and got out. It was fairly good weather for Florida, almost crisp, no humidity. No storms. None in sight. All the same, the hair stood up on my arms. I could feel something wrong up and down my spine. I was like a human weather vane, only for tragedy. I had that sour taste in my mouth and I hadn’t even made a wish.

  I ran up to the door and let Giselle out. She was angry with me, had her haughty expression on, her tail up; she went past me and jumped around in the weeds. She turned her back to me to pee. She was a private creature and I respected that. She held a grudge; I respected that, too.

  I wanted to go inside, take a shower, put on some clean clothes, reconsider my life. I thought perhaps I’d discovered the difference between love and obsession. Only one of them puts you in jeopardy. I felt like a gambler who had only just realized how much there was to lose. Everyth
ing seemed different. The steps I took, the scratchy weeds against the bare skin of my leg, my cat mewing.

  Giselle trotted past me to the door. She had something in her mouth. I hoped it was a bird, not another poor mole. I chased after her. She shook her prey back and forth. It was brown, whatever she’d caught: feathers or fur, I couldn’t tell.

  Giselle rubbed back and forth against my legs, then deposited her catch at my feet. No longer angry that I’d been gone so long, proud of herself. She had given me a gift. I suppose she was my pet — and I, her what? Surely not her keeper. Perhaps I was her pet in return. Her little murderess. Her darling dear.

  I bent down, cautious. The thing at my feet didn’t seem familiar. And then, it was.

  It was a leather glove. When I peered inside I saw flecks of gold.

  I ran back across the lawn. I found the other glove under the hedge. It was curled up like something broken, a leaf, a bird, a mole, a heart.

  Monday. The day after I was supposed to have met Renny to finish his architecture project. I’d forgotten.

  I went into my house, through the living room, into the kitchen. The Doric temple, unfinished. The gloves on the lawn. My irregular heart. My greedy self. My wish that he would disappear.

  I heard someone call my name. The voice was unfamiliar. I charged back through the house and saw a young woman on my front porch.

  “Hullo,” she called.

  I peered through the screen door.

  “I had a message from Renny Mills,” the woman said. She was young, blond, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She looked somewhat familiar.

  “You have a message for me?”

  “No. For me. Renny left me a note to meet him here. We were in art history class together in the spring.”

  Iris McGinnis.

  She laughed, nervous. She was thin and pale, with a sweet expression. “He said he had a present for me. I don’t know why he’d want to give me anything.”