“What have you done to him?” Ravenna suddenly swung around to face the door.
Pilar had walked in with a towel pressed to her nose. The sobbing noise she emitted sounded as strange and incorporeal as a goblin’s wail.
“He caught a chill a few days ago and woke up sick,” she began, frozen to the spot by Ravenna’s glare. “I pleaded with him to stay in bed, but he said he was fine and insisted on…on returning to you. That evening he came back much earlier and immediately took to bed. He looked dejected and kept muttering something about a broken pact. I made nothing of it, but all night long he complained that a cold wind was jabbing up and down his spine. I scolded him for talking nonsense and pulled out more blankets. I never suspected—dear God, if I only knew—”
Pilar wiped her tears with the bloodstained towel. Meridia, torn by a hundred emotions, could not decide whether she ought to pity her or smack her.
“Go on,” Ravenna demanded, immovable as the ice that swaddled Gabriel.
Pilar exerted herself with difficulty. “The next morning he couldn’t get out of bed. His teeth were chattering, and I couldn’t keep him warm no matter what I did. That afternoon I sent for a doctor, who prescribed plenty of liquid and hot-water bottles. A few hours later, the first frost appeared on his lips. I panicked and piled more hot-water bottles on him. This seemed to reduce the chill, and the frost slowly began to thaw. That night, he insisted on writing a note to you. After he finished, he ordered me to change him into his best suit. I didn’t know what he was thinking, not then, and when he asked for the gardenia, I thought he’d lost his mind. He made me swear that under no circumstance was I to let you in this house. He slept peacefully that night. In the morning, I woke to find him sealed in ice. I jumped, sent again for the doctor. This time the gentleman scratched his head and ordered for charcoal to be brought in. We kept it going for hours but the ice did not thaw. ‘Just as well, the cold will keep him alive,’ said the doctor. ‘Whatever you do, do not break the ice. It will be the death of him.’ This was yesterday. Last night the ice stopped growing, and he’s been the same since.”
Seeing that Ravenna had not moved, Pilar ventured a step forward. Meridia noticed that her nose had stopped bleeding.
“I’m sorry the note never reached you,” said Pilar, a thumb scratching her chin. “I put it on the hallway table after he wrote it, thinking I would send it in the morning. But it wasn’t there when I looked the next day. I must have misplaced it. Or maybe he changed his mind during the night and destroyed it while he still had the strength. I wish I could tell you what he wrote, but he kept it secret from me. I would hate to think—”
“I received the note,” Ravenna said brusquely.
Pilar staggered back. “You did? But who delivered it?”
Ravenna had no time to respond, for at that moment a loud splitting sound erupted from inside the ice. A tiny fissure appeared on the surface of the pillar, running from the top of Gabriel’s head to just below the left side of his chest. Before anyone else could react, Ravenna leapt into motion.
“Get up, old man!” She grabbed a pewter washbasin from the nightstand and brought it down hard against the ice. The fissure broadened. Ravenna struck harder, creating a hairsbreadth line to Gabriel’s heart.
“You’ll kill him if you break the ice, Mama!” cried Meridia. Ravenna responded by increasing the force of her pounding.
Pilar let out a shriek but did not dare interfere. Meridia stood thunderstruck, thinking her mother had lost it.
“Did you think you could write me off with a lousy letter?” Ravenna shouted into the depths of the ice. “Did you honestly believe this igloo would keep you safe from me?”
As the blows rained harder and the tangle of lines spread across the ice, Ravenna’s face lit up with a madcap determination. Suddenly Meridia understood what she had to do. She shed her cloak on the floor, snatched a brass candlestick from the top of the armoire, and smashed it full force against the ice.
“Help us, woman,” said Ravenna. “Don’t just stand there and gape.”
Pilar looked as if she might faint at any second. “Stop! You’re killing him!”
“Nonsense.” Ravenna slammed the washbasin to a booming crash. “The bastard will live longer than any of us.”
Pilar’s mouth fell open. Without giving her a choice, Meridia thrust the candlestick into her hands. Ravenna tossed the washbasin aside and began to claw between the fissures. Soon her fingers were bleeding, an affliction she neither seemed to mind nor notice. Meridia took the washbasin and promptly led the demolition work on Gabriel’s feet. Sparks of ice flew to the floor, some landing inside the iron pails and stirring the charcoal into a hiss. Many minutes later, when there was only a thin layer of ice left on Gabriel, Ravenna scooped the live coals with her bare hands and rubbed them on him. Though she worked quickly, she took care not to scorch his skin. Meridia and Pilar continued to ply their weapons, the latter without once ceasing her sobs. When they cleared the last bits of ice from the doomed man, his chest faintly began to heave.
“I’m taking him home,” said Ravenna.
Pilar dropped the candlestick and trembled. “He’ll die for sure if you move him! I beg of you, listen to me!”
Ravenna answered her by stripping the bedsheets, wrapping them around Gabriel, and flinging her coat over him.
“Please stop her,” Pilar implored Meridia, her nose bleeding all over again. “Please!”
Meridia speared her a look. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, woman.”
And with that, she took her place next to Ravenna.
They lifted Gabriel out of bed and propped him up to stand between them. His staring eyes aside, they could not tell if he was conscious. A soft irregular breath, a vague hum of pulse—these were the two indications that life had not deserted him.
Pilar made a last-ditch effort to stop them. “You are two women! How will you have the strength to carry him across town?”
Mother and daughter countered this by transporting Gabriel easily to the door. Without so much as a twitch, Meridia managed to master her shock. The unkind and despotic man who had governed her childhood with terror now weighed almost nothing in her arm, utterly helpless. She bent to pick up her cloak and wrapped it around him.
Pelted by Pilar’s wail, they carried Gabriel out of the house and into the night. The rain had doubled in strength, and the wind raged against the earth in a fierce, grudging torrent. Meridia signed for Ravenna to halt and fastened the hood of her cloak over her father’s head. How would Gabriel react if he knew they had stuffed him into not just one woman’s coat, but two? The same thought evidently occurred to Ravenna, for at that moment she allowed a fugitive smile to steal across her lips.
In silence they retraced their steps through the dark heart of town. While the crude letters glowered in the wind and the eyes without bodies pursued them from the black of shadows, a glorious warmth was spreading from Ravenna, traveling through Gabriel, and nestling in the coldest part of Meridia. The same warmth glowed and illuminated their path, so even with the moon dim and the lights scattered, they did not stumble in the storm. By the time they reached 24 Monarch Street, the two women were drenched to the bone, but the man they held between them was dry as a desert. Not a drop of rain had fallen upon him.
THIRTY
Ravenna and Meridia had just put Gabriel to bed when the ice awakened. Lucent flowers bloomed on his face and neck, crystal spangles on his arms and legs, propagating with such speed that the air thickened with frost. Armed with a hammer and a wire brush, the women threw themselves into combat, but the ice thwarted them by swaddling him once more. Underneath the cocoon, Gabriel’s staring eyes were losing their shine. Slowly yet cripplingly, the cold seeped into Meridia and dampened her spirit.
“It’s no use,” she said, wiping her brow with the soiled sleeve of her evening dress. “The ice is growing too quickly.”
“It’s this house that’s too cold,?
?? said Ravenna. “How on earth did we manage to live here for all these years without freezing?”
Meridia saw the truth in this, but kept it to herself. “We need more than just heat to stop the ice, Mama.”
The words had scarcely left her mouth when Ravenna drew back with a jolt. The brush ceased scraping. The hammer fell from Meridia’s hand. At once mother and daughter hid their eyes from each other. A hissing, breathing demon had materialized between them, inadvertently summoned from the tomb of things shameful and unspeakable. Ravenna lifted her hands to her eyes. She reared. She fumbled. She backed away. Her lips began to stammer, to spin and weave the dark and private language that would return her squarely to forgetfulness.
“No!” shouted Meridia, snapping her head up. She would not let her fade this time. She gripped the hammer with both hands, and without making a single movement went after the demon who had erected this wall between them. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself lifting the hammer again and again, striking the demon’s neck and skull and brains until every festering misunderstanding that had alienated husband from wife and mother from daughter was shattered clean. The demon yelped and crumbled, helpless in the face of Meridia’s will, and took the wall down with it. For the first time since the cold wind turned the house upside down, there was nothing hidden, omitted, unsaid.
Meridia withdrew the hammer from the cracked skull and gripped it tighter. “Go get it, Mama,” she said.
Ravenna had stopped muttering. She nudged the demon with her foot and, finding it still, kicked it to the window, where it dissolved in the moonlight.
“I’ll be damned, child,” she said. Her puzzled eyes locked with her daughter’s, and in that instant saw everything clearly. She sank to the floor, crawled forward, reached under the bed. The object she retrieved from twenty-seven years of anger and resentment was not an ax as Eva had alleged, but a short-handled shovel. The once shiny silver blade was grimed with age, rust, and what appeared to be blood.
Gooseflesh broke out all over Meridia. Nevertheless, she did not look away as Ravenna clasped the shovel with both hands, swung it above her head, and brought it hard against the ice. The cocoon gasped—shrieked—and splintered in half. Ravenna struck again and again. Up and down the silver blade traveled at great speed, catching and tossing light blindingly as it had done years ago. The irony was not lost on Meridia. The same instrument that had come close to claiming Gabriel’s life was now prying him from the jaws of death.
The last chunk of ice fell to the floor. Gabriel lifted his head a fraction, coughed, and then made a weak signal with his hand. Mustering voice and breath from every vein in his body, he spoke the two words that sent shivers down the women’s spines.
“My love.”
IT WAS A STRANGE and startling lightness. Purged of the hatred of decades, the house jettisoned its yoke and floated on enchanted air. Ceilings rippled like waves. Walls swayed like windblown trees. The whimsical staircase morphed into an accordion of tunes. It was unsettling to take a lungful of air and not smell spite, to drink water from the fountain and not taste rage. The perpetual cold and dusk were gone. Light flooded the rooms and warmed the walls with a hundred golden shades.
The morning after they brought Gabriel home, Meridia sent a note explaining his condition to Magnolia Avenue. An hour later, as requested, Daniel showed up at the stone steps with a suitcase of her clothes. Noah came with him, but neither of them displayed any desire to see Gabriel. “Your father’s door has never welcomed me,” said Daniel. “I don’t see why his bedroom would.” Noah stared off into the distance and avoided her eyes. His eight-year-old mind was no doubt barricading itself against the memory of the grandfather whose most fleeting gaze could make him tremble. “I’ll come home as soon as I can,” Meridia promised. They did not hear her. She watched them disappear down the hill with a twinge in her heart.
Ravenna had moved planters from the garden into the bedroom, filled them with wood, and kept the fire going. Taking instructions from her almanac of ancient remedies, she brewed Gabriel foul-smelling tonics and rubbed his limbs with banana leaves in order to save them from atrophy. Meridia sponged, fed, dressed, and changed compresses, all while Gabriel’s stare continued to elude her. The ice was by then contained. Every few hours Ravenna picked up the brush and scraped. It was clear that to Gabriel, she was the only thing alive in the room. Husband and wife exchanged no word that day, but that night, long after Meridia retired to her old bed, the torrent of their whispers juddered her awake.
“Why did you hide and leave me?”
“Because I didn’t want to see your pity.”
“Did you think I would pity you?”
“Look at me! I can’t even wipe my own ass.”
“You’ve always been so proud, so stubborn.”
“Isn’t that what first attracted you? My pride?”
“You were kind then. And gentle.”
“You were beautiful. And loving.”
“You are gentle now.”
“You are beautiful still.”
“Where did it go wrong?”
“You changed.”
“It was the wind. The cold wind.”
“Nonsense. Something in your eyes died and you didn’t look at me the same.”
“I asked you for time.”
“I thought you’d stopped loving me.”
“I asked you for patience.”
“I thought you’d abandoned me for good.”
“You gave up so quickly. I closed my eyes and you found her.”
“I was cold and she gave me fire.”
“Did you love her? No! Don’t answer it.”
“I never loved anyone but you.”
“You owe me my heart. It was whole before I met you.”
“You almost crushed my skull, woman!”
“How foolish we were. And you, jealous of your own child.”
“Is that what she thinks? That I held her responsible?”
“You never told her otherwise.”
“I can’t look at her without remembering what we’d lost.”
“I can’t look at her without forgetting what we have.”
“Tell her I love her.”
“Tell her yourself. You’ve still got breath in your lungs.”
“My time is running out.”
“Hush. If I couldn’t wear you out then nothing will.”
“Tell her. I’ll burn in hell if she doesn’t look me in the eye before I go.”
“Hush now. Hush. Don’t talk like that, you fool. Hush…”
Meridia climbed down from the bed and went to the hallway. A thick haze of tears blinded her, made her place one foot in front of the other without thinking. Though Ravenna’s room lay just a few paces ahead, the distance seemed endless and fraught with peril. As Meridia got closer to the door, the haze closed in around her throat. Her head was beating harder. She held the doorknob a moment before turning it.
Wrapped in a blanket, Ravenna was sitting far away from the bed, studying the window with her back to Gabriel. Tight and bonelike, the implacable knot had returned to grace her head. On the bed, Gabriel lay in the same position Meridia had left him in. There were no whispers, no words, no signs that any form of exchange had occurred between them.
“How is he, Mama?”
Ravenna did not shift from her chair. “The same. Still hasn’t moved or said a word.”
Without her meaning it to, a sob spilled out of Meridia’s breast, soft enough for Ravenna to miss. “Why don’t you get some rest, Mama? I’ll keep a watch on him.”
Ravenna got up and paused by the bed. Tightening the blanket around her, she opened the door and went out without another look.
Left alone with Gabriel, Meridia was incapable of separating impressions from illusions. Had they really been speaking those words, her father and mother, whispering things she had longed to hear all her life? Or had her mind deceived her in the delirium of a dream? It must be so. Even in his condition, Gabriel wa
s not a man to admit regret. Or was he? The more she questioned, the deeper doubt sank into her heart. In desperation she seized her father’s hand and picked away the breathing layer of ice.
“I’m here, Papa. Tell me.”
The handsome face remained shut and impassive. Meridia waited and waited but no movement came from either eyes or lips.
THE ARRIVAL OF DAWN brought another whispering. Female and single-voiced, it surged from the stone steps below in a helpless, pleading strain. From her window, Meridia saw a gray figure shivering in the garden. She sighed angrily and stormed down the stairs, wishing the mist was still at hand to chase the intruder away.
“Let me explain,” said Pilar as soon as the door opened.
“I have nothing to say to you,” said Meridia. “You have deceived me long enough. Now leave before my mother sees you.”
Pilar blanched and took a hard swallow. The cut on her nose had dried into a dark blue vein, which seemed a fitting complement to the crescent birthmark on her chin.
“It was never my wish to keep secrets from you,” she said. “But fate had pitted us against each other since you were a baby.”
“So you’ve known who I am all my life? I didn’t think anyone would make a career out of being my father’s mistress.”
Pilar’s slight frame trembled from the insult. “Don’t take him away from me. What we had—what we shared—allow me to hold on to it.”
Meridia did all she could to curb her anger.
“What about my mother?” she flung out, suddenly appalled by the scent of lilac on Pilar’s skin. “You’ve taken what was hers and condemned her to hell!”
“I didn’t take your father away. Every night he withdrew himself willingly from this house.”
“Because you cast God knows what despicable spell on him!”
Pilar began scratching her chin. “Believe me, I had no hand in it. By the time I came into the picture, something else had finished tearing them apart.”