Family Vacation

“Are you sure you turned off the coffee maker?” Jan asked, a little too harshly for a Sunday.

“I told you three times already that I did.” Matt retorted sharply, a bit sharper than necessary for fall in Vermont.

“I want ice cream.” Teddy called out loudly from the back seat, his legs pounding out a rhythm that seemed to match the bumps and cadence of the 4Runner’s tires as they pushed off the main pavement and onto the tree-lined access road near the family plot.

“Not now, Teddy.” Jan responded quickly, her mom voice cracking a little. Matt’s fingers drummed along with the guttering tires; Jan’s toes tapped out an irritated little gavotte against the lower bulkhead of the SUV’s overwarmed cabin; Teddy pouted dejectedly, his eight-year-old eyes darting back and forth between these furious figureheads.

“You promised.” He almost whispered and Matt’s white knuckled grip on the Toyota’s steering wheel tightened. Jan reached back and patted her son on the knee.

“I know, T-Rex! There’s ice cream at the cabin. And we’re almost there.”

Three hours later…they were there.

Teddy bounded out of the door, his belt already unbuckled in preparation, and disappeared into a freestanding grove of aspens where he kept his secret stash. In the three-inch snow drifts, his feet left little tufted indentations that seemed to stretch out across the land marring the pristine whiteness with stark, dark shadows.

“Ten minutes, Teddy. Then come inside.” Jan called out after him, receiving only a gusting wind in response.

“He’ll be fine,” Matt muttered absently as he hefted down two suitcases from the top luggage rack and carried them up to the front door.

“Ohhhh…hurry, get it open,” Jan urged, “it’s freezing out here. She stomped and chuffed, rubbing her hands together as if trying to start a tinder fire in the air and then blowing thick, heavy breaths against the exposed flesh.

“Can you at least hold this?” Matt blazed, pushing the handle of one suitcase towards her as he fumbled with the keys. She grabbed it, gave him a deep and lingering eye-roll, and turned her back as he pressed the first and then the second of two gold keys into the lock. Through the gaps in the deck, she could see the strand of aspens, the dark blue coat of her son moving furiously back and forth between the trees, and the plume of deep grey mist rising up off the frozen pond beyond. This was the time of year she longed for in the midst of Vermont’s sweltering summers. Just enough of a chill to snap you back to your senses, wake up those old passions, that vivacity that had been siphoned out over months of work at the hospital and PTA meetings and school lunches and weekend soccer tournaments. She could feel the swell of hope bubbling up from somewhere in those dark recesses where she had packed it away like apricot preserves, remnants of her daydreams.

“Jan….Jan? Did you hear me?” His voice was grating and irritated, and she snapped out of it, wrenching the jar of hopes closed as reality washed back over and the yawning cavern of the wood cabin door loomed.

“What?”

“Bring the bag, will you?” He disappeared into the gloom, and she could hear him fumbling in the corner with the kerosene lantern. There was power, but they always turned it off at the breaker. He wanted to get some light in here and start a fire before he stomped around outside and powered on the electric overheads. They had always found it romantic. Before Teddy, they had spent an entire weekend in the cabin with only the lanterns and a few scented candles to illuminate what they had affectionately referred to as their “Love Shack.”

“I’m coming. Trying to keep an eye on Teddy.”

“He’ll be fine. We’ve been here a hundred times.” That wasn’t really true. This was only the fourth time they’d brought Teddy to the cabin and the first two times he could barely walk.

Jan stepped across the threshold and was immediately assaulted by the musty smell, a slick wetness seemed to seep from between mossy gaps in the thick timber walls.

“Matt?”

She could hear things shuffling, a box, a table, a glass canister, the clink of metal on metal. She watched a match flare up in the corner, smelled the sulphur belch off the long firestarter, and felt the warmth of the lantern’s glow as the kerosene caught, sputtered, and flamed. She stood mesmerized, watching the light bounce across the ceiling, furrow into the ridges between the beams, and winnow along the kitschy paintings, collectibles, and Americana that lined the walls.

“Jan? Jan?” Matt’s voice was loud, almost booming when she snapped out of her reverie and turned to find him standing next to her.

“I…uh, just taking it all in.”

“I asked you, what did you say about Teddy?”

She looked at him, then glanced towards the door. The bags were no longer in the entryway. The outside light was dimming now. How long had she been standing there? She ran to the door and peered down the three-acre lot, her eyes roving among the aspen trees as she hunted for a flash of blue or tuft of light brown hair.

Nothing.

“I…I don’t see…” Her voice trailed off. She saw color bobbing in the distance. A small figure running and skipping. He was moving away from the grove of aspens, his little footsteps forging a long, dark path behind him as the snow drifts seemed to swallow and belch back little shadows where each foot fell.

Like a haze, a frosted over daydream, she felt the room spin over her. She felt her legs weaken and she leaned heavily against the thick log railing. Her chest felt tight. Suffocating.

“Teddy?” Matt called out suddenly, startling her again.

“Teddy!” Jan called, an octave louder than her husband and with a force that seemed to emanate deep from somewhere in the power of a motherly soul.

Across the field, the bounding blue figure paused, turned, waved at them, and then turned back to the path he was forging. A path that ran straight towards the frozen pond.

“Shit. He’s heading towards the pond! Hey, Teddy!!” Matt yelled out again and then started running back towards the car, towards the grove, towards the haphazard figure plodding along in the drifts.

Jan felt frozen in place, her legs lagged her torso and she stumbled forward, catching herself hard against the stair rail as she watched her husband speed off across the darkening fields. The snow was falling now, heavier than before, and she felt like it was piling up before her eyes. A thick white blanket that suspended mid-air, leaving the figures in the distance granular and shadowed. She could see blue patches closing in on the pond’s frozen lip. She could see her husband’s red flannel shirt flaring like a match as he forged his way through the aspen grove, snow billowing up from behind his feet with each heavy step.

“Matt?” She called out, stumbling behind, pushing her legs as fast as she dared. “Teddy?” She screamed, her lungs bursting as the moisture in her chest seemed to freeze, heavy icicles coating her insides. It was so cold.

She reached the treeline. She could see spurts of red between the trunks. Small, furtive flecks of red flannel and a deeper crimson…blood? No. Just his vest.

“Matt? Teddy.”

Silence.

She pushed through the grove, it was a full-on blizzard now and the sun was gone. Twilight enveloped the fields. Long shadows stretched out from the trunks of the tall aspen trees that stood in stark relief to the lanterns burning back at the cabin.

She paused, pulled in deep breaths that didn’t want to come. She stood, hands on her hips, her chest heaving, and listened. There were strange sounds ahead. A creak of a tree bough. A hoot. A gurgle of water. Was that a splash?

The moon rose, a full pale specter in the sky, it’s light splitting between two thick grey clouds like a spotlight on the pond. Rimmed in a golden halo, she saw Teddy thrashing. His fingers rose and fell as he struggled to keep his head above water.

“It wasn’t frozen through.” She realized in horror, her legs pounding against the swirling drifts as she slipped and skittered across the field.

Matt was on his knees. Then his belly. His arms were outstretched, and he grabbed at Teddy’s fingers. He caught the left hand, and then the right. Then he was leaning back and pulling hard, lifting the small, blue form up and into the moonlight.

“Teddy,” Jan screamed, slipping and collapsing at the edge of the pond, afraid to put any more weight on the thin sheet of ice that covered their summer fishing hole.

“He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay.” Matt kept saying over and over again.

“He’s not breathing.” Jan observed as Matt carried him close, the boy’s lips were pale blue, a matching hue to his shirt.

“CPR…” Matt managed. He was shaking. The cold, the exertion, the fear. He could barely hold his son steady.

Jan took the light, bird-boned form from him, laid him gently on the bank of the pond, and began swift, purposeful chest compressions. This was her wheelhouse, her skillset. She had saved kids farther gone than this before. And this was her son.

………………………………..

The candle flared. A fire roared in the wood fired stove. Heat billowed out into the cabin. Matt wrapped a thin patchwork quilt around Jan’s shoulders and rubbed hard.

“What the hell were you doing out there, Jan?” He asked her. It wasn’t accusatory, he was just genuinely concerned.

“I…Teddy. You…The pond.”

“What Jan? This again? We do this every time. It’s been four years.”

“It wasn’t. I was just there.”

“No, Jan. You weren’t. I knew this was a bad idea.” He had found her in the aspen grove clutching the quilt in her hands, pounding it into the ground like a possessed woman, kissing it over and over again, as though trying to force life back into those tattered remnants.

“It’s his day, Matt.” Her eyes were moist, and she stared hard into the fire as the tears fell heavily, pooling onto the quilt’s light blue fabric, a blanket pieced together from Teddy’s jacket and jeans.

“I know Jan. I know.” Matt was teary too. He hated this day. He hated that he had been too slow. That he had left Teddy alone. That she hadn’t been able to resuscitate him.

He hated everything about this cabin.

And most of all.

He hated that frozen pond.