Girl in Ice(29)

“Where’s the kid?” She slipped off her welding gloves and tossed them on the workbench.

“Sleeping. Is this a good time to do this?”

“Good as any. Just about done repairing these shelves,” she added with a touch of pride as she stashed her tools in cubbies above a long worktable truncated at one end by a circular saw. A floor-to-ceiling walk-in freezer took up nearly a third of the space, its door padlocked. Why lock a freezer? I knew the ice cores were stored there, but what else might be?

The thought occurred to me—unbidden—that I had never seen Andy’s body. I’d been too upset to identify it. Dad had taken care of that horrific task. Andy had been cremated, because he’d always told me he wanted his ashes to be scattered over the ocean. He’d said, If I ever die out here, don’t waste a minute grieving for me. Grieve for this dying world of ours, a request I could not seem to fulfill.

My breath bloomed white in the frosted air. Shivering, I wrapped my scarf a little more snugly around my neck. I was there because of Wyatt’s latest dictum: Everyone on-site needed to know how to use all the vehicles. That morning he had run me through the basics of operating the snowmobile, but directed Jeanne to school me on the ins and outs of the snowcat.

And I was praying for a quick lesson. Jeanne put me on edge; something about her was a cautionary tale I hadn’t yet deciphered. The chronic anxiety in her face, her downcast eyes, as if some Sisyphean task consumed her. In fact, she never stopped moving. First to rise, last in bed, she was forever cooking, cleaning, sweeping, hauling, repairing gear, clearing snow. If there was nothing left to do, she’d manufacture a task: flush out the snowmobile lines, fortify the struts in the Dome, rearrange the dry goods in the pantry. She’d even repaired the doll Sigrid had smashed, gluing back together every ceramic shard of its flush-cheeked face. It sat on a high shelf glaring down at us, red lips frozen in its Chiclet-toothed smile, pigtails retied tight.



* * *



WITH A GUST of canvas and machine oil, Jeanne creaked open the passenger door of the cat and heaved herself up next to me. The sun, rallying at its highest point of the day—just cresting the horizon—seemed to be beam cold down on us. A brisk wind rattled the machine as we sat on the glinting ice field. Once I got the hang of remembering to raise and lower the ice blade and rev the motor just so, I had us—after a few clumsy fits and starts—rolling across the tundra toward the frozen bay.

“What brought you here, Jeanne?” I asked after a few nearly companionable minutes.

She didn’t answer right away, and I began to wonder just how awkward this trip would get. But after she knocked around in the glove compartment, slipped on a pair of glacier glasses, and handed me a pair, she cleared her throat to speak. “Not big on being around people, but you could probably tell about that. I’m one of eight kids, the only girl. The only way I could see my dad was to hang out in his garage, and I turned out a better mechanic than any of my brothers. My mom was a pastry chef for this Italian bakery. Cute place. Lots of real whipped cream. She taught me all her secrets too, so in those ways I was blessed.”

“So you’re from… Minnesota? Duluth area?”

“Now that’s spooky.”

“It’s those long o’s. The flat a’s. Bit of a lilt. It’s charming, actually.”

She turned to me, unsmiling. “But you, Val. You’re blessed in a way. Your talent with words and all. Wish I could have been the one to help with the girl, but I guess high school dropouts don’t fit the bill. Wyatt wanted you up here in the worst way.” She withdrew a flask from under her seat and took a pull. “Whiskey?”

“Sure, thanks,” I said. I hated whiskey, but not nearly enough not to drink it.

“You asked why I came here, though. My husband and daughter were killed by a drunk driver a couple years ago. Wyatt tell you about that?”

“Just that it happened. I’m sorry.”

She nodded but kept her eyes on the glistening ice field. “Everything I was living for—gone, just like that.” She flipped the flask up, took a long swallow. “Best not to linger on it. Few months later, I see this ad for a cook-slash-mechanic way up north, middle of nowhere, and I think—that’s for me. I can fix anything, cook anything, and I love the cold.”

“And you have Wyatt, so you’re not totally alone.”

She shrugged. Ice crystals flashed in her mirrored frames. “He’s my boss. Had tons of them, some better, some worse. He’s not perfect, but he leaves me alone in the ways I need to be left alone.” She gestured with the bottle at the blip of yellow on the stretch of luminous sea ice before us. “Why don’t you head over to the Dome? We can do a circle around it and head on back.” I did as she asked; the machine juddered as I made the turn—too sharp—then fell into the task. “So, you got somebody back home?”

“I’m recently divorced.”

She nodded. “You use those, what are they, dating apps they’re called? Swipe right and all a that?”

I laughed. “I’ve swiped right a few times. No luck, though.”

“I see.” She shifted in her seat, offered me another sip from the flask. “So, the girl, uh, Sigrid—got her figured out yet?”

“Not exactly.” The whiskey burned down my throat. I could feel it joining forces with my meds, making me brave. “Can you tell me what it was like, thawing her out?” I asked as casually as I could.