20

Can we play outside tomorrow?” Tycho asked, bouncing his floppy-legged moose on his belly as he lay tucked in bed.

Orla sighed as she knelt on the floor beside him. She didn’t know how to answer his question. How long would it take for so much snow to melt? Would they run out of provisions? She didn’t want to infect the children with her fear any more than she already had; she bore some responsibility for making their situation worse, for the subtle ways she’d affected the household’s overall mood, if not for the snow itself. What if she just answered, “Yes”? As an experiment in optimism if nothing else. Or what if—if they might really be dance partners—she took a stab at choreographing? It couldn’t hurt to express gratitude, appreciation…or even a desire to play outside.

As a young child, just a year or two older than Tycho, she’d kept a secret from her parents: sometimes she prayed. It was something she overheard relatives whispering about when her little brother got sick. But young Orla had prayed for silly things—to do well on a test; to ride her bike so fast she’d leave the ground and fly. Later, she understood the latter had been impossible while the former hadn’t required a deity but a bit more of her own effort. She’d learned a lot since then, much of it quite recently, at least where sending thoughts outward into a nether space might be concerned.

“Do you want to play a little game with me? Before you go to sleep?” she asked her son.

“Okay!” He started to sit up, but Orla stopped him with a gentle pressing of her hand.

“We can play it right here. All we have to do is shut our eyes.” She shut hers by way of example, then peeked to make sure Tycho had shut his too. She couldn’t help but smile at the expectant look on his face, his tightly clenched eyes and hopeful grin. “Sometimes it’s good to acknowledge what you have—the people you love, your home, the important things. Maybe we need to do that a little more often.”

Focusing on the positive might also be a balm against her very real worries.

“I’m so grateful we’re all safe and snug in our warm house. You’re safe, and so is your sister, and Papa, and me. We have electricity and food and everything we need. I’m thankful…we’ve seen so many beautiful things—”

“Like the snow!”

Her boy’s muscles, beneath the hand she’d kept on his chest, telegraphed his readiness to spring into action. And Orla saw she was right when she opened her eyes; his eyes were already wide open.

“Like the snow! Is playing better than praying?” she asked. He nodded with great enthusiasm and she laughed. “Well, maybe we need to add a little something to our prayer, a wish that we can go outside and play tomorrow.”

“That’s what I wish for! And ice cream!”

“It’s a good hope. But I can’t promise anything, love.” Orla smoothed his hair, tucked the moose under his arm, tugged up the comforter.

“Are we praying to God?”

Orla considered his question. They hadn’t talked much about religion as a family. She and Shaw had kept things vague—people had different beliefs, and maybe there was a higher power, but the most important thing was how people treated one another. Neither of them had wanted the children to believe there was a humanoid—a, God forbid, white man—hanging out in a fictitious wonderland waiting for them to die. A humanoid invested in—and responsive to—everything from their daily routine to catastrophic disasters to personal and global suffering.

“I’m not sure what God is,” Orla said, truthfully. “But I think the universe contains powerful and mysterious things. And I think it doesn’t hurt to say thank you, and think positively.”

“Thank you!”

She gave him kisses on his cheek until he giggled and held out his moose. “Thank you for praying with me,” she said after giving the moose a kiss. In fact, she did feel somewhat better. Looking at things objectively, she realized they were okay. So far. “I love you. Good night.”

“Good night, snow!”

  

Eleanor Queen, book propped on her chest, scrutinized her mother. Orla stayed on her knees beside her daughter’s bed.

“What are we praying to?” the girl asked, her intense gaze unwavering.

Orla held up her hands and gestured to a whimsical universe, the everything, the unknown. “To…whatever’s out there. People find it comforting—”

“Can you hear it?”

“Hear it?”

“The thing that’s out there? On the land?” Her chin quivered as her eyelashes beat away the tears. The girl looked hopeful and expectant. And terrified.

“You hear something…” It wasn’t a question but the faint vocalization of Orla’s worst fear. The hairs on her shoulders tingled. It hadn’t been her imagination, her daughter’s behavior. Her husband’s. She didn’t know what it meant, except that her daughter needed her. More than ever. “I’ve been…suspicious, but I don’t know what it is that you, Papa—”

“Something is out there, Mama.”

Her daughter’s whispered words sent a piercing pain through Orla’s brain, the pounding of a spike. She hadn’t wanted to take her imaginative child too literally before, but she couldn’t keep denying that Eleanor Queen had been trying to make her understand something. Orla wanted to dismiss it as a game or a hallucination, auditory or otherwise, but that wouldn’t erase what she saw on her daughter’s drained face. And Shaw was writing down words! Perhaps her child was ill? Her husband too? The fox-hare delirium knocked on its door, wanting back into Orla’s consciousness. Maybe they were all crazy.

Or maybe they weren’t.

Orla treaded carefully, not sure of the territory they were entering. “I know the weather’s been a little scary, but—”

“It’s more than that.”

Yes, Orla believed that, if she was being completely honest. She studied her daughter, small and frightened in her first solitary bed, her first room. Orla couldn’t brush it away anymore, chalk it up to Eleanor Queen being afraid to sleep by herself (even with the safe glow of the recovered night-light), or her own trepidations about such an unfamiliar place.

The words were sludge in her mouth, but she had to make them sound normal. “What do you think it is?”

Eleanor Queen turned her head toward her window and narrowed her eyes in concentration. “I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I hear it, something calling. Sometimes it’s just a feeling, but it’s…many things at once. Excited. Scared. Needy. I thought for a while that Papa heard it, I was sure he did. But Papa doesn’t want to hear it. I thought you were refusing to too. I’m glad you know…something’s here.”

Orla’s back tightened and a shiver came on so hard that it filled her mouth with bile. All she heard her daughter saying was You’re failing me. Orla vowed to stop fighting herself, to stop talking herself out of things no matter how impossible they seemed. One way or another, she needed to protect her daughter. Would Eleanor Queen find relief or terror in the history they’d discovered? Could that be the source of her voices? But she wasn’t quite ready to have a conversation about ghosts, not before she and Shaw decided on a resolution. We’ll leave, that will fix it.

“It’s scary, because we don’t understand this place yet,” said Orla. “But that doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

Eleanor Queen drew a long breath in through her nose. She turned onto her side and scrunched down so her face was closer to Orla’s, and they studied each other. Maybe they looked the same, with a squint of worry as they tried to read each other’s mind.

“I know you haven’t always been comfortable here, and I’m sorry I wasn’t…I thought you, all of us, needed time,” Orla said. “But now…I’ve been a little afraid too, and I think I haven’t been a very good role model. I’m not gonna let myself be afraid of the weather anymore, not when what really scares me is that you’re scared and I don’t know how to help. Bean, I’m here—I’m always here for you, you can talk to me.” That would always be true, even as she grappled to make sense of everything else.

A tiny grin brightened her daughter’s face.

Orla clutched herself tighter as she knelt beside the bed. Anxiety was getting the better of them, but that didn’t mean her daughter—her husband—couldn’t persevere. She still wasn’t sure what to prescribe or where to look for answers, but she needed Eleanor Queen to understand she wasn’t alone and that her mother was trying to—would—help.

“How would you like things to be different? Let’s think about what would be good, what would make you happier.” Orla pushed apart two storm fronts as they threatened to crush her—one an optimistic possibility where they could still find their equilibrium in this new place, the other the louder, more worrying likelihood that they’d made a terrible, unfathomable error.

Eleanor Queen flipped onto her back and a more relaxed, dreamy expression brought a glow to her cheeks. “I guess I’d like…it’s weird being in the house all the time, all of us. I thought I’d like it, but…I guess you’re right, if the weather wasn’t so bad and we could get out. Do you think there’s someplace nearby where I could take violin lessons?”

Orla sat back a little, fighting to keep the surprise from registering on her face. Where had that desire come from? In the city, they’d offered her every variety of lesson: dance, art, music. Eleanor Queen had never been interested. She’d enjoyed those classes at school, but refused their offers to expand her abilities with more focused studies. What unbelievably horrible timing.

“Bean…”

“I know, I know what you’re thinking.” Eleanor Queen shoved her arms under the covers, and yanked the blankets all the way up to her chin, frustrated. “I didn’t need more things to do in the city. But I need more things to do here. I don’t miss school but I miss…I always thought maybe someday I’d want to try an instrument, but there wasn’t room at home. I didn’t want everyone hearing me practice if I was really bad at it. But I could close my door here. I’d really like to play a quiet instrument, something no one else could hear, but I don’t know what that is.”

“Oh love.” Eleanor Queen was thinking in the right direction, toward making the most of their new situation, doing here what she hadn’t needed or felt comfortable doing in their Chelsea apartment. But Orla felt the thin membranes of her shame stretching and threatening to tear; she should’ve known how self-conscious her daughter was and how she might need some personal space to explore her private dreams. “I’m sure we can find someone local. Papa knows of a school that teaches different kinds of art classes; we can start there. And we’ll find something. And you don’t ever have to worry about us judging you—it takes time for anyone to learn a new skill. Okay?”

“You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad?”

Eleanor Queen shrugged. “I feel like…maybe I’m not exactly the same person here as I was in the city.”

“There’s no reason why I’d ever love you any less.”

“I wasn’t sure, because…never mind.”

Orla leaned over and kissed her forehead and cheek. “It was part of the idea for coming here, that we’d all be a little different—and maybe love each other even more. We go somewhere new and learn new things about ourselves. No one’s exactly who they were. Every day we’re slightly different, right? We learn something new and we’re not entirely the same anymore. Papa and I want that too, for you, for us. That we all keep growing and making discoveries. So if you want to try music lessons now, we’ll make that happen. Papa and I will make it happen.”

“I like it here, some parts of it. But I wish…” She silenced her wish and chewed her lip.

“Tell me what you wish.”

“I wish…we had a house with neighbors. In town. And a street, like what you see on TV. With kids riding bikes and going to each other’s houses to play.”

The tears rose quickly in Orla’s throat. Her daughter could have been describing Squirrel Hill, the neighborhood she’d grown up in in Pittsburgh. It was clearer than ever they’d made a mistake in staying in Manhattan for so long. Other families made it work, but Eleanor Queen needed—longed for—something else. Something she’d never felt confident to voice. Maybe that first day when they moved in, the thing Eleanor Queen had been looking at in the yard hadn’t been something that frightened her, but something that broke her heart: No neighbors. No people. From one extreme to another.

A tear slipped from Orla’s eye; she couldn’t promise her daughter the neighborhood she wanted. Maybe she and Shaw had only pretended to include their children in their decision-making. When they’d asked, “Do you want to move to our own house, with a big yard and lots of trees?” how many answers would they actually have heard?

“I’m sorry. I know it’s not exactly what you wanted, but when the weather’s better we’ll make sure we find the lessons you want to take, and we’ll find some places where you can make friends. It always takes a little while to adjust after a move.” Maybe we’ll move again.

“I know.”

Orla gave her fierce kisses. “I love you so much.”

“I know. I love you too.”

Orla flicked on the night-light on her way out.

“It’s okay, I don’t need it anymore,” said Eleanor Queen.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. The darkness helps me think.”

Orla switched off the light and blew her a kiss. Unwilling to leave her daughter in complete darkness, she left the door open a crack, overwhelmed by a burden of new worries. They were not, as parents, the good listeners they’d imagined themselves to be. She committed to correcting that. She’d study her daughter more closely and ask more questions. But in the meantime, it troubled her what Eleanor Queen had heard—out there, “on the land.” If they were going to stay even a day longer, they needed to figure out what to tell her. Would the specificity of dead tuberculosis patients seem less frightening than the vague “many things” she was sensing? It was almost laughable that Orla was considering easing her daughter’s fears with the “It’s just ghosts” explanation. And she couldn’t shake the apprehension that her daughter’s higher power was more present than hers. What if the girl whispered her prayers to something utterly different than the faceless goddesses Orla only pretended to know?

And how would that something interpret a girl’s longing for more neighbors, more houses, more kids?

  

With the curtains drawn, they could pretend it was an ordinary night. Hidden from view were the ominous panes of dense snow beyond each window, as if the world had been erased. That’s what Orla kept thinking as she paced the living room. Things had changed too much; they needed to force a reversal to reclaim some amount of normalcy.

“We don’t have to abandon it completely, we could keep it for a summer place—”

“Are you listening to yourself?”

The chill in his voice was like a roadblock in her path, forcing her to stop and look at him. He’d planted himself in the open doorway of his studio during her entire rant, clearly illustrating his unwillingness to budge on anything. She’d been sure he would at least see the merits of thinking more positively and understand her desire to be more considerate of their children’s needs. But Shaw looked hardened, his face as unyielding as a mask. Orla cowered a little, shrank from him, and started to doubt herself.

“What?”

“You sound insane. This morning you were gung ho to shovel out—now you’re talking about our daughter hearing things, but somehow it’s my fault for not listening?”

“That’s not what I said! Your cure-cottage theory doesn’t excuse how she’s being affected—”

“We spent tens of thousands—”

“I know what we spent!”

“Then you can’t seriously think of quitting the life we just started here. Even if we could sell the house eventually, we’d take a loss for the improvements we—”

“So we’ll take the loss.”

Shaw shook his ragged head at her, his face contorted into a grimace that bordered on revulsion. “You just don’t want me to succeed.”

“What are you even talking—”

“This is my turn, and if it bankrupts us you’ll blame me!”

“Look!” She pulled back one of the living-room curtains. The lamplight played on the glass, making a yellowish spotlight on the white wall of snow. “We can’t live like this.”

“It’s a freak snowfall. It’s not going to happen every day, or even every year. It’s nothing—it’s nothing!” She gaped at his manic denial. He shut his eyes, breathing deeply.

“We can’t pretend it isn’t happening,” she said gently, sensing her husband’s urgent need for stability, for success, in spite of their complicated predicament. “Everything. Since we got here. And now we’re trapped, we can’t even contact anyone—”

“I’ll walk to town tomorrow, I already told you. It’s not as bad as you’re making it seem. We can handle—I can handle it. I’ll fix it.”

Pain radiated from him, reaching her like waves sent out from a tsunami. Fear, passion, shame. The burden of everything he’d wanted. Guilt, hope, desperation. Looking at him, she almost expected his fragile skin to crack; there was too much going on inside him.

She’d become all turned around, blindfolded while someone spun her. Where was forward? What was onward? It wasn’t enough that Shaw wanted to shoulder the responsibility, to make things better and prove it wasn’t all a terrible blunder; his ego couldn’t be her primary concern. Eleanor Queen’s needs felt more urgent—even if Orla was using those needs to support getting her own way.

“I know you didn’t know it was going to be like this,” she said, forcing herself to appear calm in an effort to placate him. “Maybe we…go to my parents’ for a few months and come back in the spring. We can try again. When the weather’s better, we won’t feel so isolated.”

Shaw’s head made small back-and-forth movements as he pleaded with his eyes for her to please, please understand. “I can’t. I can’t go…”

His voice broke and he stepped backward into the boundaries of his personal sanctuary and shut the door. Orla gripped her head in her hands and paced, this time extending her path between the front door and the back door. Maybe it was all the snow making her batty. Making her lose her sense of self and doubt everything they had agreed to as a couple—had they ever put the children first? Ever, really? Had they always expected Eleanor Queen and Tycho to simply blossom in the shadows of their parents’ artistic entitlement? But why was Shaw—previously a loving and attentive father—acting like that wasn’t his main priority? Had he heard anything she’d said about Eleanor Queen? The place was consuming him, and perhaps, in a different way, it had infected their daughter. Orla didn’t care if it was crazy and impossible; something was happening, and she couldn’t just sit back and let it play out.

The floors talked beneath her feet, groaning in commiseration, crackling with their own weary doubt. Orla muttered as she treaded from one blocked exit to the other.

“Please. Please, god or goddess of whatever you are, keep my children safe. Be kind to us; we’re not ready for this. We need to be free to leave—and maybe we’ll stay. I don’t know what’s best for us anymore. Please be kind to us.”

And so she prayed. And went up to bed alone.

She dreamed a jumbled montage of Tycho’s wish for ice cream, Eleanor Queen’s longing for friends and neighbors, and her own desire not to feel trapped. Sometimes the dream-children were made of ice cream and melted as her daughter tried to befriend them. Sometimes the house appeared as a jail cell with snow blowing through the open bars. She quashed a nightmare in which her children were locked in the house and she, outside, couldn’t get the doors to open or the windows to break by forcing herself to see the imagery in a more positive light: The house was strong; no harm befell Tycho or Eleanor Queen. In the dream, she told them to turn away from the windows so they couldn’t watch her skeletonize with cold.

It was a bleak compromise, and even her sleeping-self doubted that such a sacrificial maternal instinct would serve its purpose. And where was Shaw in her nightmares of survival? Locked in his studio, painting? If something happened to her, who would protect Tycho and Eleanor Queen? And if they physically survived, some part of their gentle souls would always suffer from the loss.

She didn’t understand what her subconscious was asking her to contemplate. Were they heading toward a scenario where she would need to lay down her life? She would do it, if the situation required it. But shouldn’t she, as a responsible adult, not let things run so amok? Orla squirmed in her sleep, bumped into something she mistook for an iceberg. It was only Shaw. But something in her mind split and the cold water rushed in.

They were sinking.