Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories (39 page)

Rudy explained who had sent us, and handed her the
paper bag bearing the message from the packing crate lady in the city. With her lips moving, Finnish Mary read the words on the paper bag three times until she knew the message by heart, and then she opened the door of the woodstove and tossed the bag into the flames. “Paper is fuel,” she grunted. “Never waste anything.”

We nodded politely.

“Talk,” she said.

Rudy told her his story first, and then mine, and Finnish Mary smiled a little but she didn’t interrupt or ask a single question. When Rudy had finished explaining, he said, “This is a dangerous job. Is there some kind of herbal medicine or maybe a crystal that you could give Gerda to help her? Maybe something to make her stronger in case she has to fight her way into the Snow Queen’s estate? I figure she needs to be about as strong as twelve men to get her friend out of there.”

Finnish Mary smiled up at him. “The strength of twelve men. That would not be of much use!” She took a parchment scroll down from a dusty shelf near the door, and read it silently, while beads of sweat ran down her forehead. We edged away from the woodstove, but it wasn’t much cooler anywhere else in the shack. We waited.

Finally she said, “The Snow Queen isn’t home right now. She’s gone south to make another delivery of the white powder. Probably took most of her guards with her. So you won’t have much trouble getting up there, but getting what you want is something else again. Kay is going to stay with the Snow Queen because he’s hooked. He’s got that mirror crack inside him, and as long as he’s into that, then he will never feel like a human being again, and the Snow Queen will always have him in her power.”

“Right. That’s clear enough. What I’m saying to you is, can you give the girl something so that she can cut him loose from the habit? Some kind of potion that will break the spell, you know—”

Finnish Mary shrugged. “I can’t give her any power greater than what she already has. It takes love to break a spell like the Snow Queen’s. And sometimes even that won’t do it. Gerda has to get into that house, and then try to get Kay to see what he’s doing to himself. If that doesn’t work, there’s nothing else that you or I can do to help her. Here’s what you do, boy: walk Gerda down the road until you come to the iron fence. That’s the garden of the Snow Queen’s estate. Leave her by the bush with the red berries on it. You going in with her?”

“Me? No!” Rudy’s voice trembled, and for the first time I could see how afraid he was. It had taken all his courage to get me this far. “The Snow Queen may be gone, but who knows how they’ve booby-trapped that compound! I already lost one fight with a gang like hers. I’m playing it safe for the immediate future.”

“You don’t have to go with me,” I told him. “I’m in this alone.”

“Then leave her at that berry bush, and get back here fast, before anybody sees you. I’ll come outside with you and show you the way.”

It was nearly dark by the time we started on the dirt road that led up into the hills. I could see blue lights up ahead of us, and I knew that we were going in the right direction. I was a bit afraid of the Snow Queen and the guards that she might have around her estate, but I had come so far that I was eager now to reach journey’s end, and to find Kay at last. I didn’t know if I could save him, but I wasn’t going back without trying.

Rudy walked with me as far as the berry bush beside the wrought iron fence. He kissed me on the cheek, but before I could thank him, he turned and began to run back down the hill toward Finnish Mary’s ghost town. I was alone.

As I slipped between the bars of the iron fence and began to creep toward a thicket of shrubs, I noticed that it had begun to snow—a welcome change to me from the
hot dusty city down on the plains. Maybe the snow helped me get past the Snow Queen’s guards, too. As the wind picked up, it became darker and colder, not a night to be out patrolling a peaceful compound. I decided that they didn’t get too many visitors in this remote mountain outpost. Or maybe there weren’t any guards. Maybe they all went with her, for I sensed from the silent, dimly lit grounds that Finnish Mary had been telling the truth. The Snow Queen was not at home.

Within a few minutes I was within sight of the house. It looked like a palace made of drifted snow—very white, probably stucco, or adobe, or whatever it is they use to build in these unforested mountains. Spires and turrets spun out of the main building like icicles, and through the glass patio doors I could see soft blue lights illuminating the interior. I still didn’t see any guards around, so I ran from one thicket to another until I reached the side of the house. I edged close to the glass doors and looked inside.

The great room beyond the doors was vast, empty, and icily white. In the center of the room stood a blue-lit ornamental pool that was frozen—the Snow Queen’s
signature
, I supposed. But I had little time to notice any more of the details of that vast cold room, because by then I had caught sight of Kay, paper thin and blue with cold. He was sitting in shadow at the edge of the frozen pool, hunched on the floor, concentrating intently on some small pieces of ice. He was moving the broken shapes into one position and then another, as if he were trying to put together a pictureless puzzle. He was so absorbed in the complexity of his task that he did not even look up when I slid open the glass door and eased into the room.

As I came closer, I could hear Kay muttering, “I have to spell
eternity
. She said she’d give me whatever I wanted if I could spell it out with ice.” His hand was shaking as he pushed more ice shards together. I could not make out any shapes at all in the design, but he
seemed to think he was making a sensible pattern.
This is what the Snow Queen’s powder has done to his mind
, I thought, and suddenly I felt so tired, and so sad that it had to end this way, that I began to cry. I thought that nothing could make this shell of a man recover his health and spirits.

I knelt down and put my arms around him. “I’ve found you, Kay!” I said, holding my wet cheek against his cold face. He felt like a sack of bones wrapped in parchment when I hugged him. “It’s going to be all right. I’ve come to take you home.”

He looked up at me then, and at first his stare was cold and emotionless, as if he had trouble remembering who I was, but I got him up and made him walk around, and gradually his eyes cleared a little, and he began to mumble responses to my questions, and before long we were both crying. “Gerda,” he whispered. “Where have you been all this time? And—where have
I
been?”

He was like somebody waking up from a long nightmare. At one point he looked around the room, and said, “This place is cold and empty. Let’s get out of here!”

“The sooner the better.” The Snow Queen could come back any time now, and, since I wasn’t armed, I wanted to be gone before she returned.

We had a long way to go to get back home, and Kay had an even longer way to go to get the craving for the Snow Queen’s powder out of his system, but we took it slowly. First, out the garden and down the mountain, where Rudy met us and helped us back to the highway. Then back to the city, and finally the long journey home to Denmark, where Kay could get long-term medical care for his condition.

It is spring again now. More than a year has passed since Kay took off on the wild ride with the Snow Queen, but he is almost his old self again. He grows stronger every day, and he’s talking about getting out of therapy
soon, and looking for work. Maybe he’ll become a gardener in the country. He’s growing roses again.

I looked at him, tanned and fit in the warm sunshine, with roses in his cheeks as pink as the ones on the tree, and I whispered, “Peace, O Lord.” This time I wasn’t swearing.

T
HE GHOST OF
my father-in-law arrived today, smiling vaguely as he always does—or did, taking no notice of me. He acted for all the world as if I were the ghost instead of he. Not even a nod of greeting or a funny remark about the weather, which was about all the conversation we’d ever managed when he was alive. I’m not very good at conversing with people. Stephen says that I have no small talk. I listened a lot, though.

With my father-in-law, I became an audience of one to his endless supply of anecdotes, and I think he enjoyed having someone pay attention to him. He used to tell funny stories about his days in the Big One, by which he meant World War II, and he could always find a way to laugh at a rained-out ball game or a broken washing machine. This did not seem to endear him to his energetic wife and son, especially since his inability to hold a job made ball games and washing machines hard to come by, but his affability had made him a comforting in-law for the nervous and awkward bride that I had been. We were never really close, but we enjoyed each other’s company.

Later I sometimes shared Stephen’s exasperation with the smiling, tipsy ne’er-do-well who could never seem to hold on to a paycheck or a driver’s license, but in truth I would have forgiven him a great deal more than poverty
and drunkenness for giving me a few moments of ease in those early days when I had felt on trial before Stephen and his exacting mother, for whom nothing was ever clean enough.

I didn’t hear the front door open and close—or perhaps it didn’t.

When he arrived, I was alone, of course, in that long emptiness of the suburban afternoon. I told myself that I was waiting for Stephen to come home, but I was careful not to ask myself why. Certainly I was not expecting any visitors that day—or any other day—and my father-in-law was as far from my thoughts as he had ever been in life.

I had been dusting the coffee table, a favorite pastime of mine, because you can make your hand do lazy arcs across a smooth wooden surface while thinking of absolutely nothing, and if you happen to be holding a damp polishing rag in your hand at the time, it counts as actual work. When I looked up from my shining circles, I saw my father-in-law clumping soundlessly up the stairs in his baggy brown suit and his old scuffed wingtips. He was probably wearing a worn silk tie loosened at his throat. He looked just as I remembered him: a portly old gentleman with sparse gray hair and a ruddy face. I even fancied that I caught the scent of Jack Daniel’s and stale tobacco as he sailed past. He was carrying the battered leather suitcase that used to sit in the hall closet at his house. I wondered where he was going, and why he needed luggage to get there.

He did not even glance around to see if anyone was watching him before he went upstairs. Perhaps he was looking for Stephen, but Stephen is never home at this hour of the day. For most of the year I scarcely see him in daylight. He works very hard, unlike his dad—or perhaps because of him—and he doesn’t talk to me much these days. He is impatient with my depression, although he always
asks if I am taking my medicine, and he is careful to remind me of doctors’ appointments. But I know that secretly he thinks that I could snap out of it if I wanted to. An aerobics class or a new hairdo would do wonders for me, he suggests now and then, trying to sound casual about it. He thinks that depression is a luxury reserved for housewives whose husbands have adequate incomes.

Perhaps he is right. Perhaps those who are forced to go out and face the world with such a mental shroud about them throw themselves in front of trains or run their cars into trees rather than endure the tedium of another dark day. I have thought of such things myself, but it would take too much effort to leave the house.

I always promise to
cheer up
, as Stephen puts it, and that ends the discussion. Then when he leaves for the office, I crawl back into bed and sleep as long as I can. Sometimes I play endless games of solitaire on Stephen’s home computer, watching the electronic cards flash by, and scarcely caring if the suits fit together or not. I do not watch much television. Seeing those noisy strangers on the screen making such a fuss over a new car or a better detergent always makes me feel sadder and even more out of step with the world. I would rather sleep.

I am tired all the time. I manage to get the washing done every day or so, and by four o’clock I can usually muster enough energy to cook a pork chop or perhaps some spaghetti, so that Stephen won’t get annoyed with me, and ask me what it is I do all day. I push the emptiness around the polished surfaces of the coffee table with a polishing rag. It takes up most of my time. There is so much emptiness. I force myself to eat the dinner, so that he won’t lecture me about the importance of nutrition to emotional health. Stephen is an architect, but he thinks that being my husband entitles him to express medical opinions about the state of my mind and body. It is practically the only interest he takes in either anymore.

He is not so observant about the state of the house. He never looks under the beds, or notices how long the cleaning supplies last. With only the two of us, there isn’t much housekeeping to do. He has offered to hire a maid, but I cannot bear the thought of having someone around all the time. I do enough housework to get by and to stave off the dreaded cleaning woman, and he does not complain. I am so tired.