Through the Ice

Mom wasn’t wearing makeup when she answered the door.

As she hung there in the threshold, silence drifted between us on the winter air. Her lips pulled back as if to form words, hovering on the very edge of speech, but released in the end. She heaved a breath from her nose, a sigh caught somewhere between relief and grudge.

Her arms folded around me, and she laid her head on my chest.

“You’re home,” she whispered. Sniffing back tears, she patted my back and gestured meekly into the house.

I came in and hung my parka on the rack, kicking strands of packed snow from my boots. There was a familiar smell of banana bread baking in the oven. Since dad died, mom only baked when she was stressed.

“You been alright, mom?”

“I could ask you the same,” she shot back, her bare feet thumping against plywood. “It’s been two years.”

“Yeah, I guess it has been...”

“Are you hungry? I have leftovers. I’m making a bread, but it won’t be ready for a while.”

“Maybe just a coffee?”

I didn’t recognize the kitchen I walked into. The jarring, white light I grew up with was replaced by a trio of frosted flowers with amber bulbs. That old coffee-stained table which the three of us – me, dad, and mom – used to sit at was gone, replaced by a blue foldaway table she no doubt lifted from church. It was covered with a doily that was too wide and too short, so that it hung over the sides of the table but failed to cover anything else. There was a conspicuous amount of angels hanging around the place, too: the ones that look like guilty smurfs.

“Wow, I... like what you’ve done to the place?”

Mom sniffed and filled the coffee maker at the sink. “Yeah. Figured after everything that happened, a change was in order. The light was the first thing to go. Isn’t it atmospheric?”

As I scoped out the room, I noticed a bottle of wine on the counter and a half-empty glass in the windowsill.

“You don’t drink, mom.”

She laughed and took the glass in her hands. “Well, I guess I do, now. Don’t tell Pastor Laurent.”

“It’s noon.”

“It’s also Saturday. Did you really show up after two years to lecture your old mom about her hobbies?”

I scratched the beard along my jaw and sighed. “No, mom. I just didn’t think you'd get this bad. This place is like a morgue for boomers. Where are all the pictures?”

“You’re asking about pictures, now?”

“You know what I mean—”

Her eyes narrowed, honing in on some old wound, as she sunk into her shoulders. “So before you left you hated the pictures, and now that you’re back, you want them again? So what is it, Dani?”

Even after all these years, I knew that she was calling me ‘Dani’ as in ‘Danielle.’ No subtitles needed.

“It would just be nice to visit my mom and see that she’s not replacing all our old furniture and day drinking and hiding all our family photos. That’s all, okay?”

Mom’s eyebrows knit together defiantly. “Well, I’m so glad to see you care, now.”

We sat in tense silence for a time. Before long, she handed me the coffee exactly as I always liked it – with a spoon of honey and a splash of milk. She was always good at that: knowing how to do everything with love. It was just a shame she didn't always know when love wasn't welcome.

With a draught of wine for courage, she piped up: “You’ve really changed. I can, you know, tell.” She pantomimed having a beard. Her hand was pushed into her hip; that was her way of saying I hope that wasn’t rude. “And your voice is, it’s… deeper.”

I simpered. “Thanks, mom.”

“I just really hope you’re happy.”

“Yep… That’s kind of the idea.”

Her little cuckoo clock ticked away in the background. Somehow, I was glad she didn’t replace that one.

“Maybe you should try again,” she said suddenly and unhelpfully. “You know, I was so happy when you found that nice boy…”

I knew what she meant by that. If I had found a girl, that’d’ve just been wrong.

“Mom, I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“It’s just – you know, God made us for companionship, and I think that, you know… I – well…” she fumbled, wringing her hands, pulling at her wedding ring over the stem of her wine glass. “Maybe you could talk to one of the nice boys down at the church—”

“Oh, that’ll go over well, won’t it, mom? ‘Hey, I’m a boy, and you’re a boy, let’s go talk about Jesus at my place!’”

Mom was mortified. “You know what I mean. Don’t be crass.”

“I’m a gay man, mom.”

She sighed, placed her glass down on the windowsill after a big gulp, and folded her arms. “Danielle—”

“My name is Daniel.”

“I named you Danielle—”

My coffee mug slammed into the counter. “This is why I left. Dad always supported me for who I am because it’s just that – who I am. But he's gone now. And then I met Cole, and—” my voice broke here, and I turned and fidgeted, trying to find some way out of this conversation.

But with a breath, I continued, because this was why I came back.

“—And Cole was the best thing that ever happened to me. When dad left us, I thought I’d never be happy again. He was my best friend, someone who believed in me. And then he was suddenly gone. But Cole reminded me that there’s good in the world. Now he's dead too.”

Mom’s face was tight and inscrutable. We argued a lot in my last days at home, and she was never one to back down. I took this as my chance.

“Cole is out there somewhere,” I said, pointing out the window. “I just want to find him, mom. I want closure. I want to know that he existed. I’ve been chased by the ghost of his memory and I just want to know that what happened was real and that life is really the good, beautiful thing I used to think it was. Talking about him as if he was just a phase or a sad break-up doesn’t help any of that.”

Mom slumped against the cabinet, staring vacantly out the window.

“When Cole disappeared,” I said in a low voice, “When he really disappeared that day, so did my hope. If I could find anything, any sign… I feel like I could take back some scrap of that.”

“This would all be so much easier,” mom started, her voice even and unshaken, “If you were the good, God-fearing young woman we raised you to be. You were so eligible—”

My hands shot up. I abandoned the coffee cup. “I’m done, I’m done. I’m – I’m done.”

And I was. I stormed out of the kitchen and tore my parka from the coat rack. I slammed the door behind me and veered off the path of crushed slush until it turned into an open expanse of virgin snow. I was in our backyard, and it was well into winter. Much like the winter when Cole disappeared.

Black pines rose up like timid onlookers who were too tall to shy away. There were no houses for miles around, just white wastes of snow and a sliver of grey in the distance – the pond.

I pushed through, treading on toward that place, even as my boots filled with chunks of snow and ice. My anger, my hurt, my disappointment that this turned out exactly as I feared it would kept me warm.

I trudged on through deepening snow, passing under thorny branches which reached high in the grey quiet. The pond was a little nearer now, a thin disc of darkness set in a rim of white. My breath was a white steam in front of me.

The shore of the frozen pond was in clear view now, and the snow dipped in a slope towards it. My last steps down to the ice were a stumble, and I fell to my knees, and I screamed a deep-bellied scream that told the world how angry I was.

I ripped my gloves off and pressed my hands to the glassy sheet of ice over the pond. It burned with cold but offered no answers to my years-long question: Where did you go, Cole?

And then, the memory of what happened that day welled up unlooked-for.

We were holding hands as we stepped out onto the pond. It was his first time walking on ice, and I warned him to be careful of the cracks.

His lips were warm against mine. He tasted like the cinnamon chai he had earlier. I could feel him smile against the kiss.

“I love you, Danny,” he whispered.

I looked into his eyes which dared to be green in that dead and grey place. I blushed, I grinned, and I laughed. And then I kissed him again.

“Love you too, Cole.”

We stepped out further. I led him on, squeezing his fingers in mine.

He laughed. He was doing it – he was actually doing it. He was standing on water!

I slowly let go of his hand and turned to face him. It was like watching a baby take his first steps as he crept over the ice, amazement growing in his eyes. He walked out a ways, legs spread, and howled triumphantly into the quiet of winter.

And then there was a crack. It was subtle at first, something like a warning – but then his foot broke into the water. He lost his standing and fell back. The ice under him shattered and opened up to allow him in.

It was so easy.

It was so fast.

I screamed and scrabbled at the ice. I called out for help.

I reached a hand into the water. It burned.

His hand grasped mine and I pulled.

I pulled, and I pulled.

Another arm came up to pull itself onto the ice, but the sheet broke under his elbow. The ice groaned beneath me.

I screamed at Cole not to panic even as I was panicking.

I told him to hold on.

The red glare of the ambulance haunts me even in my sleep.

The paramedics and rescue divers told me it wasn’t likely they would find him alive. Those moments turned into hours, and there was no trace of him. The search turned into days, but still nothing.

I was brought in for questioning. There’s no entry or exit from that pond, they said. It wasn’t possible that his remains could vanish like that. The ice was measured at four-and-a-half inches – it shouldn’t have been possible for him to go under like that.

But with no evidence of wrongdoing, they let me go.

Spring came. The ice thawed.

His body never turned up.

It broke me. I thought the loss of my dad ruined me, but this was the last kick.

Tears stung my eyes as I stepped out again onto the pond, alone this time. I knocked my boots against the ice, daring it to take me like it took Cole.

I ran out at a jog to the center of the pond and screamed again.

I sank to my knees and pushed my fingers against the ice. It was webbed and dark, much thicker than it was the day I lost Cole.

And then I saw them: those eyes which dared to be green in this dead and grey place.

A face rose up from the murk under the ice. I was sure I was going crazy.

“No, no, no,” I said. “Don’t do this to me.” I beat the ice with a fist. Why would my mind play these tricks on me?

And then a hand, fully splayed, reached out to touch the ice under me.

I cried. “Cole?”

My naked hand stretched out to touch it, and for a moment, I felt as if I was looking into a mirror that showed someone I missed dearly instead of my own reflection.

I don’t know at what point the ice opened up, only that when I met the water, his hands buried themselves in my parka. He pulled me into his embrace.

And his lips were warm against mine. He still tasted like cinnamon chai.