The Ice Sings Back, page 8
Ros caught his movement out of the corner of her eye. She pulled herself upright and onto her knees. Sweat instantaneously flowed from her pores, serrated down her back, face, and stomach. Her mouth went desert dry.
“Stop,” she said thickly, but it came out as an indistinct gurgle.
Ros watched the door slide shut and remembered clouds, smelled piss, saw red spots in the corners of her eyes.
She heaved to her feet, flung herself toward the door, but black took over the red spots and her vision hazed and sudden dizziness made her unsteady and she collided with a table chair and heard Ash cry out in surprise.
“Stop!” This, a panic-stricken yelp.
Trick twisted awkwardly and dropped his hands to his sides. His face was an ocean of incomprehension as Ros rushed him.
All Ros could see was the closed door and she focused on where she knew the door handle would be. Black spots impaired her vision, and iron flooded her mouth. With two hands she pushed Trick hard on the chest to get him out of the way, didn’t look as he pitched backwards to the floor. Her pulse hammered uneven as her fingers caught on the door handle and she yanked. The door ripped open and she shoved the brick back in front of it. She rested one hand against the smooth wood of the doorway, hung her head and took gulping breaths—in, out, in—saw nothing but shadowy spots.
“What the fuck?” Trick shouted from the floor.
Ros ignored him, leaned weakly against the cool damp door, felt her dizziness ebb away. She waited for her sight to return, pointed her face at the rain and the dark skies.
Cool air caressed her eyes, neck, hands. She lifted her head, eyed the clock. Couldn’t focus on the hands, couldn’t tell how long it had been. However much time had passed, it felt like a full tidal shift in the Bay of Fundy. She was worn to her core, a solitary horst abandoned on all sides.
She pushed off the open door, walked past Trick where he was still sprawled frozen on the floor, past the kitchen table and Ash wide-eyed and unmoving, sank down into the rocking chair, folded into herself, covered her face with her sweaty hands, and breathed again—in, out, in.
“What the fuck?” Trick repeated, getting to his knees. His tone had regained control, had deepened.
Ros felt the man’s anger wrap around her intentional breaths. But she said nothing, couldn’t open her mouth, could not explain.
“We’re getting the fuck out of here,” Trick climbed to his feet, his movements loud and jarring, clanging in the cabin. “Ash.”
Ros didn’t hear her response, instead heard Trick scrape his beer off the table, surge from the cabin, steps thunder cracks on the porch.
Darkness settled in around Ros and a tingling sensation crept into her legs. Eyes closed, she focused her breath, tried to bring her heart rate down. She listened to the rain, to the sounds of water hitting the roof and streaming off the gutters, the splashing of the rain chain onto the moss-covered lava rocks. Puddles of water echoed. She focused deliberately, tried to calm herself.
Wood creaked.
Ros’s eyes twitched open. She saw Ash across from her in the kitchen chair, steady, watching. Ros could hear the other woman’s breathing, a sturdy in and out that rang meditative, deliberate. Without much thought, she matched her breathing to Ash’s, their chests rising and falling synchronously.
“Good,” the woman said, soft, voice velvet.
Ros lifted her chin, locked eyes with her. Ash nodded. She looked different somehow, more alert, professional.
The stillness in the cabin pressed in on Ros and she leaned back, breathed, opened and closed her eyes. Her stomach loosened. She felt almost relaxed when the cabin’s atmosphere was split apart by the tonal beeping of the radio, then several seconds of high-pitched hissing. Ros reached shakily from the chair, switched the radio’s power off.
“What was that?”
“The radio call?”
“No.”
“What?”
“You know what I mean.”
Ros fenced her words. “It’s a long story.”
“I have all night.” Ash settled, lifted her feet and tucked them into the chair that sat across from her. She gazed benignly at Ros. The sides of Ash’s face, Ros noticed, softened in the cabin light.
“You want to therapist me?” Bile rose in Ros’s throat. She couldn’t help it. Ros loathed therapy. Talking about her family was never going to bring them back.
Ash shook her head, frizzy hair swaying. Her voice was unruffled. “Nope. I have a policy of no doctoring outside the hospital. This is just me, asking. One woman to another. It’s up to you to tell me what you want.”
Ros’s face hurt. She could feel the oxidation of her skin, the sensation of rust forming, her armor flaking. Weariness wove through her bone marrow.
She considered. Recognized within herself the desire to remain quiet and thus remain exactly how she appeared when Ash first met her—a fully competent scientist running a field station.
Words rolled around her tongue and Ros could taste them, identify individual sediments and crystal structures. She summoned a polite sentence in her mind. She knew Ash was the type too nice to pry further.
Ros formed the final sentence in her mind.
A strong end-the-topic-sentence.
But as Ros curated words in her mouth, she noted that Ash didn’t interrupt. Instead, the woman loosened her shoulders, waited, kept her eyes anchored. Ros fought a distracting urge to stretch out a finger and stroke the loose skin folded up like puff pastry atop Ash’s cheekbones. She’d seen lunate fractures with the same silhouette in rock denuded of ice.
Her thoughts must have been visible.
Ash reached up, touched her own face. Patted the swollen pleats of skin under her eyes. Smiled lopsidedly. “Technically, I get these from my father. Bad genetics,” she explained, rueful. “But they really started in earnest on this hike.” She swallowed, “I’m not sure why.”
“What causes it?”
Ash shook her head, sent her dark hair swaying, shrugged. “Medically, we aren’t sure. A lot of things. Inflammation? Stress?” She blinked her eyes. The droopy skin barely moved. “Various medical conditions?”
Ros crossed her legs, uncrossed them, stared at her hands. Her nails were crescents of dirt. More lunate fractures. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too. I look like a stuffed pumpkin.”
They laughed together, a soft melody winding through the palpable strain in the dark cabin.
Ros took a deep breath, recognized that Ash was giving her an out, a line of humor she could follow to the exit. Or she could stay, choose to talk. A flare of gratitude towards Ash grew in Ros’s throat. It felt like Ash was exerting zero pressure on her. That the lineaments that had locked Ros into the ways she’d handled such moments in the past had melted as the two women laughed together. She felt an urge to speak, to be heard, to release the words swirling in her mouth.
“I don’t do closed doors,” Ros offered. “Ever.”
“Sure,” the woman said, shifted, folding up deeper into the chair.
Ros flushed.
“It’s okay.” Ash obviously recognized the panic on Ros’s face. “You can talk or not, but please know, it’s okay.”
Ros summoned a brush-off sentence. She could feel it framed in her mouth. But then she opened her mouth and different words emerged. Different sentences, flowing like hot ice.
“I’m from around here. Mostly. It used to be me, my mom, and Herring. My mom was named Flower, so she named me Rosmarinus, an Oregon native rose. I couldn’t stomach the name when I got older, so I shortened it. Mom had this long black hair that went all the way to her bottom. My sister Herring had the same hair. You ever seen obsidian?”
Ash rocked her head forward, back, listened.
“Their hair was like obsidian, long liquid black. A little like your hair. Mine, by comparison, is stumpy, curly. I used to be so jealous of them. They were a pair, and then there was me.”
Ros wiped her hands on her sweatpants, cupped her knees. It felt like a hummingbird was caught in her throat. She felt undone with no real cause besides her mouth was moving and it was all coming out.
“I was seven, Herring was twelve. We were going somewhere, I think we might have been driving over to Warm Springs. Driving the 242. I know we were past Scott Lake because there were bathrooms there. But we’d passed them, and Herring needed to pee. Like bad. So she’s whining to my mom, both of them sitting up front, me in the backseat. I remember Herring actually reaching and yanking on these long strands of jade beads Mom used to wear around her neck. At some point, Mom must have had enough, because then she was pulling the car over next to a lava formation and telling me to stay in the car, that she was going to take Herring to pee. And they got out of the car, and, I just remember, so clearly even today, the sound the car made when she hit the lock button.”
Ros threaded her fingers together. When she was younger, the sound would keep her up at night, the beep-beep sounding so loud she couldn’t sleep.
“I couldn’t get out.” Ros paused. How does one describe the sensation of being trapped forever? “The car was faulty and I was locked in for three days until some hikers came by, saw me, and broke the passenger window with a rock.”
Ash inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring while she sat ice-still in the chair.
Be done with this, Ros told herself. “So I’ve always had this excessive claustrophobia. If I’m in control of the way in or out, I’m usually okay. I’ll leave a door open…”
Ros looked at Ash, didn’t know what to say next.
“That’s horrific, Ros,” Ash murmured.
“It’s a lot of rocks to lug around.” Ros tried for humor.
“I’d say.”
Ros wasn’t sure how to read the expression on the woman’s face. Waited.
“I like that you use science to explain yourself.”
Ros lifted a shoulder, defensive. “Don’t we all?”
A computer fan hummed, and the rain continued to fall. Ros couldn’t hear individual impacts on the roof anymore, instead all the drops sounded as if they landed at once, pounding down as if the sky was fighting to get in. She looked through her downturned lashes at Ash. “Thanks for listening. Sorry I’m depositing all this on you.”
Ash’s eyes flashed in the cabin light. “You’re not dumping. I asked. We all carry things.”
“You?”
“Of course.” Ash flicked a resigned smile. “There’s this.” She touched her face, gentle, just below the pahoehoe skin. “And there’s Trick. He thinks we’re out here hiking. But in reality, I’m just trying to decide if I should stay or not.”
“Oh?” Ros restricted her response to a small lift of her chin.
“He says he loves me.” Ash pulled in her bottom lip. “But he also says I’m not very loveable.”
“Jesus.”
“There are moments when I’m certain I’m leaving.” Ash rubbed her forehead, closed her eyes briefly.
Ros weighed diplomatic words.
“But he can be great. Astronomically great. For months on end.” Ash dropped her hands into her lap. “Sometimes not-great-all-the-time is better than being alone?”
Ros crooked her head. “Really?” Heard the implication of the word on her lips, the observation from a woman who chose to live alone in the clouds.
Ash slumped her shoulders. “Yep, I just heard that come out of my mouth.” She paused, cleared her throat. “I worry sometimes that I might be a little too much, you know, the doctor lady with the career, money, house in Laurel Hill. Add the height, being brown in the white wilds of Oregon, and, well, from my view the dating pool is rather shallow.”
“Being alone isn’t so bad,” Ros said gently.
“Ha!” Ash said glibly, looking away from Ros. “You know, if I’m honest, it isn’t even about that. That’s just an excuse I tell myself.”
Ros waited, felt soothed by the continual patter of rain.
“The problem is that I do love him.” Ash glanced back, and Ros was startled to see a wet glaze in her eyes. “Actually, Ros, you two have more in common than you’d guess.”
“Really?” Ros tried to keep the skepticism from her tone.
Ash trained her eyes on the cabin ceiling, took a deep breath. “Yes. You both have unresolved childhood trauma. You, being stuck in a car and claustrophobia.” Her tone was clinical, professional. “Trick, well, he lost his sister.”
“What happened?” Ros asked, her tone carefully neutral.
“I don’t know the all of it. Trick’s sister was older, a teenager, he was quite young. She was driving back from a daytrip to Cougar Hot Springs. Police found her car on the side of the 126 below McKenzie Bridge. They think she might have had car trouble. A few motorists said they saw her get into a white truck.”
Ros exhaled, cradled her hands, felt herself go cold, numb.
Ash sighed. “As a medical professional, I see this every day at work. Unresolved trauma and how it impacts adult lives. I look at Trick and I can see the anger simmering just below the surface. I know it’s not the best thing to diagnose your partner, but it’s pretty obvious, and it helps me understand why he behaves the way he does.”
Ash looked out the window. “The few times he’s ever talked about Hannah, it sounds like he’s twisted up emotionally, struggling with anger and abandonment, a lack of closure. It’s complex and confusing, but he’s literally deaf to the idea of getting help.”
Ros took in the woman’s profile. Coughed, tried to get her numb throat to make noise, tried to summon words that would help but could think of nothing.
“How much can you understand someone, want desperately to help them, but also know you can’t?” Ash’s voice came out as a whisper. “At what point do you leave and never look back?”
“Well,” Ros paused. “I know we don’t know each other, Ash, but I’m here if you ever need a long walk and talk.”
Ash looked up, met Ros’s gaze. “Thank you.”
Rain came down in a symphony of wet notes, and cool air moved through the open door. It was going to be a wet, dark night. Ros pulled the blanket draped over the chair around her. Realized she could see her own breath. She wished she knew where to take them now, how to move herself and Ash through the pall of bleakness that pressed down around them.
“Ros,” Ash said, disrupting the quiet. “May I ask you a different question, changing the subject away from my dismal love life?”
“Go ahead.” Ros’s pulse increased; she could feel nerves tingling in her legs.
Ash glanced around the cabin, was visibly trying to pick her words. Ros waited, heart suspended in her throat.
“What happened after?”
Relief sluiced wetly over Ros. The question sat vibrating before her. Finally, in the open. She took a breath, held it for a long moment. She looked out the open door, the dark night and the falling rain.
“No family showed up if that’s what you mean. The police checked in with the tribes after, but no one was missing anyone like me, so I was sent to state foster care with a set of questions I have to accept I’ll never fully understand, nor answer.”
Ros paused, looked at Ash. The woman nodded for her to continue.
“In a way, I think, science saved me.”
“How?”
Ros squeezed her eyes shut, blinked, then opened them, looked again at Ash.
“My mother didn’t give me an everyday name. She gave me a Latin name. Rosmarinus. I took it as a sign. When you don’t have anything, the littlest things seem to matter. Latin is the language of science, so I went in that direction. Science is reliable, predictable, answerable.”
“Medicine helped me,” Ash concurred. “I thrive knowing that X and Y result in a predictable outcome. It’s comforting to know what to do.”
Ros watched Ash. Waited. She knew exactly what Ash was going to ask next even before the woman had fully articulated the question. But Ros didn’t dread the question. She’d asked herself the same question her entire life.
Ash leaned forward.
“What happened to your mother, your sister?”
Ros sucked in her cheeks, exhaled hard.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. Ran her finger down the arm of the rocking chair, traced the wood grain. Looked back up.
“I watched them walk into the lava. I never saw them again.”
5
THE
DAUGHTER
The morning air was warm but laced with a winter-is-coming bite. Donna pulled an old, long-patched, puffy jacket from the duffle bag in her trunk, shrugged it on. Sleeping in the car was getting colder and colder. She looked around the clearing.
She considered driving round, getting a newspaper at the gas station. Reconsidered. Might be good to take a walk. In her mind, Donna heard her therapist agree, so she smiled. A reward is always constructive, especially in stressful circumstances.
It had rained steadily the past few days, a clingy Oregon drizzle that coated everything as it came down. Donna shuffled between the cabin porch and the front seat of her car, back and forth, back and forth. At least she’d brought a few new map design books to whittle away the time. It shouldn’t be too much longer.
She followed Horse Creek away from the clearing, fall leaves crunching underfoot. The creek babbled furiously beside her, but she concentrated on the path that used to be there. When she was younger, she and her mother regularly walked along the creek, Julene humming and foraging for edibles while Donna bounced between vine maple trunks and sang and—stop, she commanded herself.
Donna focused. She wasn’t ready to enter that memory. She closed the drawer with a clang. Instead, stayed in the present, looked for the trail amidst the wet overgrown undergrowth. Couldn’t see it. Decided to simply follow the creek.
