Years have passed since Melanie's death, and I've learned to bury
my guilt and anguish deeply within me, so that I can live each day
without fear and sorrow. But during the past month, my memories
of Melanie's strange addiction have floated to the surface of my
mind, and I am beginning to feel the pain again.
Recently I became suspicious that
my daughter, Gwen, was showing symptoms of the same addiction. Gwen
returned to live with me a year ago, after her marriage dissolved.
Up until a month ago, she was fine, even upbeat, despite her recent
divorce. Then I began to hear her getting up at night and quietly
creeping into the kitchen. At first, I convinced myself that she
was getting a midnight snack and put my worries aside. But as I
listened, night after night, I became certain that she was opening
the freezer, not the refrigerator, and that she was emptying ice
cubes into the sink.
Last night, as usual, I heard Gwen
get up and creep into the kitchen. I followed her and stood behind
the kitchen doorway, watching as she silently lifted an ice tray
out of the refrigerator and carefully twisted it over the sink.
I saw a gleam in her eyes, of either relief or joy, when the ice
cubes fell into the sink.
And then, to my dismay, my daughter
greedily lifted an ice cube, rinsed it under the faucet, and with
a trembling hand, rubbed the dripping piece of ice in slow circles
against her cheeks, lips and neck. Horrified, I saw the familiar
look of ecstasy on her face. I hurried back to my bedroom, careful
to avoid detection.
Thinking about it now, in the morning,
I don't know what to do. All the terrible memories of Melanie's
awful sickness are flooding back. And so are the memories of how
it was before then. Those are the worst. They remind me of what
I've lost. I suppose I would have been better off if the early years
of my marriage hadn't been so idyllic. It's as if I was cursed with
a cruel happiness that fooled me into a false sense of well being
and an inability to react to the difficulties that followed.
Melanie and I bought this house shortly
after we were married. No one else thought much of it; it was an
old farmhouse on a lonely hill, with a road running below it. But
we liked living in seclusion, with nothing to do but spend time
together. Melanie soon became pregnant with Gwen; and our daughter's
birth only made our life better: we were a happy, self-sufficient
family.
One of the things that had attracted
us to the house was the thick woods behind it. When we first moved
in, we became lost for hours trying to learn our way around the
woods, so we created a path for ourselves, painting white bands
on the trees on either side of it so that it would be easy to follow.
We were proud of our path and named it "the white trail" but we
remained drawn to the intricate maze of untrodden paths that we
had left unexplored. Little did we know that venturing out on these
trails would one day cause our destruction.
Perhaps it's the turn our lives took
that makes those days seem like a dream now. Melanie was always
flushed and happy. She was a beautiful woman, voluptuous and fair,
always laughing. She stayed home with Gwen, and I worked regular
hours at the bank in town. In the winter, after dinner, we huddled
by the fireplace and took turns reading books out loud. In the summer,
we took walks along the white trail, pointing out the different
trees and flowers to each other.
It was the fall of Gwen's seventh
year when the trouble began, or perhaps some time before that, when
I did not notice anything out of the ordinary happening.
At first it was nothing alarming.
I became aware that Melanie was getting up each night and going
into the kitchen.
After a few nights of this, I asked
her if something was wrong.
"It's just nerves," she said. "I
haven't been sleeping as well as usual." It was clear that she was
not in the mood to talk.
During one of her nightly visits
to the kitchen, Melanie dropped something, causing me to wake with
a start. I got up to see if she was all right.
I was a bit startled to find her
crouching on the floor in the corner by the kitchen sink. In one
hand she held several dripping ice cubes. In the other, she held
a single ice cube and slowly rubbed her face with it. Her head was
tilted back and her eyes were closed. Her lips were turned up in
a slight smile, and her cheeks rose round and full as they did whenever
she was excited.
"Melanie, what are you doing?" I
said. My voice was trembling.
She opened her eyes and stood up
quickly. "I . . . I was hot," she said, embarrassed and cross.
"But it's cool tonight," I said.
"However, I am hot," she snapped.
She nervously clenched the ice cubes in her hands.
"Let me see if you have a fever,"
I said, leaning over to put my hand on her forehead.
She slid away from me on the floor.
"I don't have a fever," she said.
Confused, I said nothing.
"Let's go back to bed," she said.
She tossed the ice cubes into the sink and refilled the ice trays
abruptly.
When we returned to bed, I hugged
her body against mine, pretending to be affectionate, but actually
curious to see how hot she was. She did not feel warm at all; in
fact, she felt cold.
Her strange midnight visits to the
kitchen continued, and in my innocence or stupidity, I didn't follow
her again, although I often woke up and strained my ears to listen
to her empty the ice trays into the sink.
In late November, we awoke one morning
and the ground was covered with snow. There was just enough to coat
our little hill and the woods behind our house with a layer of white
frosting.
We bundled Gwen up and sent her off
to the school bus stop. She eagerly ran out the door, feeling the
typical excitement of a child over the season's first snow. But
after she left, something unspoken hung in the air between Melanie
and me. She kept looking out the window with poorly concealed longing
and seemed eager for me to leave for work.
"It's a good day for you to stay
inside," I said.
"I might take a walk in the snow,"
Melanie said, a little defiantly.
"There's no reason to go out unless
you have to," I insisted.
"What are you afraid of?" Melanie
said. She had a stern, challenging expression on her face. It was
a new look. I didn't like it.
"You've lost some weight," I said.
"Your cheeks are pale. I just want you to stay well." It was true.
She was losing her plump rosiness.
She rolled her eyes and smiled.
Feeling helpless, I left for work.
At lunchtime, I called home, but
there was no answer. I felt panicky, although I couldn't express,
even inwardly, what I feared. I told my boss that Melanie had been
feverish that morning, and I was going home to check her condition.
My heart beat rapidly as I approached
home. When I rounded the bend in the road that led to our hill,
I gazed ahead and saw a figure in the snow in front of our house.
I accelerated and sped down the street.
It was Melanie, lying on her back
in the snow, and wearing nothing but a thin cotton sweater and a
pair of blue jeans.
"Melanie!" I cried, running up the
hill. "What are you doing?"
Calmly, she propped herself up on
her elbows and glanced towards me. "I'm enjoying the snow," she
said nonchalantly. She smiled at me coyly. Her lips were purple
and her face was pale.
"Get up," I said, frantically pulling
at her arms.
She embraced me lightly and giggled.
"Relax, Dear," she said.
I pulled her up forcibly and tried
to drag her towards the house. She eyed me seductively, then leaned
over and kissed me on the lips.
Melanie had not been that passionate
in a while. I pulled her towards me, torn between giving in to her
and hurrying her inside to warmth.
She pulled me to her and pressed
herself against me, and I gave in to my desire, undressing her in
the snow and making love to her while I remained warm in my down
parka and wool clothing. Now, I look back on that afternoon with
chagrin.
I sense that by giving in to her seduction
I tacitly okayed her wild race to her own destruction. In a way,
I am responsible for the actions that followed.
Winter approached, and Melanie's
cycle downwards continued. The first snow melted in a day, but the
weather remained cold. Each day when I returned home from work,
she was sitting on the porch wearing her jeans and a light shirt.
Gwen began to notice that something
was wrong. "Why do you have to sit outside in the freezing cold?"
I heard her ask Melanie. "People are going to think we're strange."
"You worry too much about what other
people think," Melanie said.
One evening in mid-December, the temperature fell below freezing.
In the middle of the night, I awoke to find Melanie gone from our
bed. I could hear a repetitive rapping noise coming from somewhere
in the house. Cautiously, I tiptoed into the kitchen. Melanie was
not there.When I turned the light on, I saw her nightgown lying
in a crumpled heap by the door. I hurried over and opened the door.
The screen door had been left open, and the wind was causing it
to slap against the door frame. A heavy snow was falling, and there
were three or four inches on the ground already. I saw a path of
wide depressions in the snow leading from the kitchen door. Clearly,
they marked the imprints left by Melanie's footsteps. I ran to the
coat closet and put on my coat and boots. If I hesitated, the snow
would cover up her path.
Once outside, I moved along quickly,
tracing the footprints. When I reached the edge of the woods, a
wave of panic swept over me. I ran back to the house and got a flashlight
so that I could attempt to trace her footsteps in the pitch black
woods.
When I returned with my light and
began to follow her footsteps, I was slightly relieved to see that
they moved from one white ringed tree to the next. She had followed
the white trail; I would be able to find her and get her back to
warmth.
We fashioned our trail to end at
a clearing graced with a broad flat stone. I found her there, pale
and naked, sitting on the stone and looking up calmly at the falling
snow.
"Melanie," I said, running over and
covering her with my body - in my panic I had forgotten to bring
a coat for her.
"Isn't it marvelous, Dear?" she said,
gently moving away from me.
"What's marvelous?" I said angrily.
"What are you doing out here?"
She glanced at me emotionlessly.
Her frustration and anger of the last month had been replaced with
a cruel nonchalance. "I hunger for it." she said.
I noticed that her voluptuous form
had wasted away. She was pale and thin, and I could see her rib
bones protruding through her flesh. I was inexplicably attracted
to her emaciated, sickly body.
"You hunger for what?" I said.
She looked at me straight in the
eye. "The cold," she said, in a weak, raspy voice, that was oddly
seductive. Once again, when I should have dragged her home, I made
love to her, pressing her fragile body against the cold hard stone.
The next day, I made a feeble effort
to convince her to see a doctor.
"You look weak," I said pathetically,
unable, now that the incident was over, to confront her with the
fact that last night she had been wandering naked in the snow.
"I feel fine," she said. She looked
at me with tired, sunken eyes and smiled the same seductive smile
that I had seen on her face in the clearing the previous night.
"Besides," she added, "you like me like this."
"No, I don't," I insisted.
"Yes, you do," she said. "Face it,
Dear, you can't keep your hands off me."
That evening, I forced myself to
stay awake late into the night. To my surprise, Melanie remained
in bed and slept. Foolishly, when it had passed the time when she
usually left the bedroom, I let myself relax and fall asleep. Thinking
back, I'm certain that's what she was waiting for.
I awoke in the early hours of the
morning and stretched my arm across the bed to make certain she
was there. I was alarmed; her half of the bed was empty. I rushed
into the kitchen. She was not there. Quickly, I put on my parka
and boots and grabbed her long wool coat, her winter boots, and
a flashlight. There were no discernible tracks outside. The wind
had blown the snow over any footprints that may have been there.
But I knew where she was. I ran across the yard despite the deep
snow and my heavy boots and entered the woods. I followed the white
trail, hoping that she had returned to the clearing again. But when
I reached the end, I found myself alone by the stone where Melanie
and I had made love the night before. I paused for a few anxious
moments, and it was here, I discovered weeks later when I returned,
that I left Melanie's coat and boots.
My memory of the rest of the long
evening that I spent in the woods is a blur. For hours, I crawled
this way and that through the snow and trees, shining my flashlight
wildly around, looking for some sign of her. The sun began to rise,
casting an eerie light over the snow covered trees, but I remained
unsuccessful. I continued searching until the hour that Gwen usually
rose. Reluctantly, I decided to return home, although I had no idea
which way to go. Defeated, I picked a direction and walked. In a
matter of minutes I came upon Melanie, lying on some fallen tree
trunks, and partly covered in snow.
I ran over to her still body. Her
opened eyes gazed ahead at nothing. At that moment, I couldn't bear
to check if she was breathing or feel her pulse, and know the truth.
I realized that I had lost her coat and boots, so I wrapped my parka
around her, and lifted her pale, fragile body in my arms. I ran
along path after path until I found the place where the trees opened
into our backyard.
I never told Gwen the details of
what happened. When I first barged into the house with Melanie that
morning, we acted with frantic excitement, and I only had time to
tell her that Melanie had gotten lost in the woods in the snow.
As soon as I felt Melanie's heart
and tested her pulse, I had to admit to myself that she had been
consumed by the icy temperature some time earlier—either as
she lay mesmerized on the fallen logs or as I carried her through
the snow and trees.
An ambulance came and took away her
cold, blue body. Gwen stood there silently and watched. She never
asked why her mother had been walking outside naked in the snowy
night. Later, I thought about what I would say to her, but while
Melanie's death was still new, I couldn't broach the subject, and
later, it became an unspoken thing between us. Perhaps Gwen thought
the topic was forbidden, although I never meant it to be.
When I saw Gwen in the kitchen the
other night, it occurred to me that long ago she may have seen Melanie
rubbing ice cubes against her face and she was reenacting a fearful
memory. But perhaps that's just a self deception, an attempt to
convince myself that she is not developing her mother's deadly addiction.
I saw the ecstasy on Gwen's face, and I fear that she longs for
the cold, just as Melanie did. If she does, her desire, like Melanie's,
will become stronger.
I must be strong and confront her.
I must force her to seek help. Yet, there is nothing I can say now.
What accusation can I make? Nothing has happened. I have seen her
in the kitchen emptying a tray of ice. I will watch and wait. That
is the best ting to do. Watch and wait.
