21â17 Packers!
And the Lt. Colonel and his daughter are jumping around the room on a trampoline, reeling, ecstatic, rapt. Dotsy on the couch laughing, her hand over her mouth. The game of the century, maybe all time. The Ice Bowl. And we were in it together, you and me, Dad.
Later they'd find out Starr had told Lombardi he wanted to run it. And Lombardi had replied, “Well, run it in then and let's get the hell outta here!” Nothing else like Lambeau Field. Nothing else like the Packers. The goddamn mother-loving cheese-heads. Little Elizabeth Krause and her father, all their lives in love with the field of time between October and January. A glorious time. Crackling leaf season. Game after game season. Lazy Saturdays and Sundays spent in front of the TV, fire in the corner, each curled up in a blankets, up to the waist. The Lt. Colonel's chair, the La-Z-Boy, sacred. Only for him. Beth on the sofa, sometimes Dotsy, if she wasn't up to something in the kitchen. Always a new excitement on the stove, in the oven, in the Crock-Pot, slow cooking. sauerbraten, stroganoff, strudel, pot roast, goulashâthick winter stick-to-the-ribs dinners, fit for a fire, next to the tree. A graceful thanks, roast turkey and then all the Christmas decorations taken out and placed, Mr. and Mrs. Claus salt-and-pepper shakers. Poinsettias. Pinecones. Tinsel. The tree. The three wise men. The ornaments. Each thing, each token, a memory.
The stockings embroidered by hand by Dotsy. “Charles”â“Dorothy”â“Elizabeth.” Over the fire they hang, as simple and serene as the nativity. A Midwest trinity of quiet, modest, humble means. Our home. No, we are not millionaires, but we are good people. Softly, in gestures.
And Beth liked nothing more than these football Sundays, tucked in by the fire. This was home. Thinking, now, at dinner, the storm outside chopping the lake to pieces. She could never let them know about the bad things she did. They must not know.
Jeff had to be kept far, far away. He made her guilty. He made her do things she knew she wasn't supposed to do. With his dark brown hair and eating eyes, a villain-face, he devoured her.
Wanting not to want. Wanting not to need. Hog-tied. Not seeing herself as the angel atop the tree. Not seeing herself, in fact, at all. Where am I? A glass figure in a glass globe, swirling. Where will it land? The snow frantic, shaking, blind.
E
verybody knew the shelf ice was a death trap, widow maker, never-go-there-ever. Everyone knew you couldn't tell, with that blanket of snow above and months and months of the wind whipping down from Canada, where the ice was thick as cement, layers and layers tightly packed, and where it was like a sheet of glass, air pockets seven feet down. You'd go through it and never see daylight again, plunging deep into the freezing black water, you couldn't tell where you fell, no light through that six or seven or eight feet of ice, snow packed on the top. They would find you in spring.
Even so, Shauna Boggs stood feet in the sand of Lake Michigan, moving forward, drawn. Even so she seemed trapped in a death-grab, a call from the lake. This is the only way to stop the sleepless night and stomach-pit and heart falling into itself. This is the only choice. Salvation.
Come.
The white sky and snow and sand almost heaven already, a gateway. Come. Your time is come.
Entranced by the shelf ice in mountains, jagged across the shore, a mini-Alps every winter ooh and aah, taking pictures. The water coffin below.
One foot off the sand, onto the snow would do it. Start the clock. You wouldn't walk far. Everywhere around signs.
SHELFICE
â
DANGEROUS
â
KEEP OFF!
Lifting her foot to take the first step, it came to Shauna, dropped down like an ice cube.
No.
I'm not the one who will die here.
H
e could not get close enough to her, couldn't dig down deep enough under her skin and crawl inside. The thousand unnatural slings and arrows of his youth, somehow erased. By her. Only by her.
It was the cure, the tonic, the medicine he'd never known could exist, all encapsulated in this little pill, this blonde doll-of-a-girl pill, taken once daily, twice daily, never enough. Answer the phone! Come to the door! Look at me.
Jeff Cody. Helpless for this pill. There was no antidote. Withdrawal symptoms: A cold sweat. Panic. Anxiety attacks. Possible seizures. Staring down on her saucer eyes, now closed, the saucers off, her child-girl breath sinking up down up down on her chest. What could he do? What could he do to take her out of this panel-wall Green Mill Inn and with him forever? His panic pill, his medicine, his cure?
He could not lose her. That was simple. Stay with me. Stay with me 'til the moon flies outward and the earth spins fast and the sun grows into a million billion trillion suns and devours the earth and the moon as one. 'Til the end of the green-grass trees, the ocean tides, the days into nights and nights into days. Stay
with me 'til the end of the light, the last blast, the last dying days of oblivion. Stay with me as the earth and the moon are enveloped, devoured, scorched by the sun, and you and I shall cease to be as one. I will carry you.
In the morning light off the ice-lake painting, a terror thought, a kill-you thought. What if she left me?
M
aking his way over to Sanborn's on Henry, his dark green Plymouth flying over the slosh pebble streets, Jeff Cody might as well have been levitating.
This is the day. This is the day he'd do it. Saving up, he'd started not knowing what he was saving up for. Maybe a cruise, maybe a trip out west, maybe even a trip somewhere unheard of, someplace like Bali, Tahiti, Fiji, with bright umbrella drinks, giggling native girls, and inedible insect platters.
Someplace he'd be gone and gone for good, lost forever to this too-planned, over-gridded nation, turning quickly into something he'd not quite understood, turning briskly away from that free-spirit '60s and now, shimmying up to the '80s, what would come?
But now, this winter, this town, this most romantic, exquisite, exotic place on the globe. Muskegon, Michigan, a paradise of delights.
And now, having saved and saved for those stupid, child-boy fantasies, he knew, knew now, that there was only one point, one arrow, one vector for this savings. Beth.
Beth Krause, he would marry her, here, right here in Muskegon at St. John's, maybe even the chapel choir would
sing. Maybe even she would sing, sing at her own wedding. Oh, wouldn't that be something? Now, that would be something to write home about. If there were any home to write to.
If there were any parents to take her to. “Ma, this is my girl, Beth and me, we're getting hitched!” And then later, “Dad, the wife and I are comin' down for Thanksgiving, we got news!” And then soon after that, maybe even a baby, a baby boy, a towhead, maybe name him Wyatt.
None of that. No, never. But he didn't need that. Why should he? When he had Beth, both the sickness and the cure. Beth, both the little girl lost and the lusty woman he could bury himself into, each night, every night, for the rest of his boundless days.
She would die when she saw this ring. He had one picked out of the paper. A green-and-white diamond emerald jobby, with the green in the middle, crystal on the sides. An oval-shaped stone, a trio, in silver setting or platinum, couldn't decide.
He would take her hand in his, get down on one knee, maybe at that French place, Mes Amis, down on Main. He'd wait until dessert. Or could he wait? Christ, he'd be so jittery. He couldn't hide it, no, he knew. Better tell her up front, over champagne. A champagne toast! Then, he'd spring it on her.
What if she said no. Impossible. But . . . what if she did? Oh no, he couldn't think about that now. It couldn't be. No, no . . . not after last night falling asleep in her arms, collapsing into her. Not after staring deep into those blue-ice eyes, owl eyes, eyes too big for her face, falling into her. You, you. What have you done to me? What has happened here? The same story, an ancient story, repeated here, again, for the trillionth millionth time. A man falls
in love with a woman. Time stops. Never anything before and never anything after. A suspension of season, tide, the thousand natural shocks of past and future disintegrated, dissolved into a dew. Nothing bad. Nothing bad ever again.
The outside of Sanborn's a mirage of twinkling necklaces on dismembered bloodless necks, headless beauties, all in a line. Dress me. Drape me. Destroy me before I destroy you. The brisk stab air nowhere to be felt by this young man, this husky action, moving forward, forward into the store, a ring, a future. As certain as stone.
Inside, an older woman. A Russian. On the phone. A quick look at Jeff and a size-up. Not a sale.
Jeff, seeing himself in the mirror magic sparkle glass. Not a bad-looking guy. Handsome even. Handsome, yes, everyone told him so. All the girls, all the myriad girls. And Shauna. Not quite Beth. Not quite yet. But she would. She was just being shy, you know.
Work boots, a navy parka, light blue jeans ripped at the knees but only a little. What's wrong with him? There's nothing wrong, right? It's just a parka. It's an ice-cold day and he's wearing a parka and hiking boots. What gives?
“Can I help you?”
Russian lady buries the phone in the crook of her neck. Vague bleary words coming out of the receiver. Maybe her husband. Does he own the store? Is this the owner? Is this the owner's wife? Why is she looking at me like that? God, is it that bad? Am I that bad?
“Yeah, I was looking for this ring.”
There, take it out. A newspaper clipping, folded, why did it look so pathetic all of a sudden? Yellow, framing red, the emerald ring in the middle over the print. While supplies last! Final sale!
That was just this morning so of course they'd have it. How could they not? And anyway, they just say that, say that to get you into the store. Scam you. It's all a scam, see.
“Sorry, sir. That one's out.”
“What? No, you see, it says right hereâ”
“âOut. We don't have it. Very popular.”
Was it his face? Was there something about his face? His hair! Maybe his hair's messed up. Not thinking, his hand up to his tawny hair, combing it down, making it look like a casual gesture, a thinking gesture. Add a sentence.
“You see, it's for my fiancée. Or my future fiancée. I want to ask her. Want to ask her tonight.”
“No more left.”
“Listen to me!”
And now, the phone gets grasped. The phone gets lowered slowly.
“Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”
“No, listen. Listen, what the fuck? I'm just asking for a goddamn ring! I'm just asking to come in here and BUY a motherfucking RING like you advertised here in the NEWSPAPER!”
“Sirâ”
“I mean, what the fuck? Why PUT a fucking ad if you're gonna treat people like this?! I am a CUSTOMER. A CUSTOMER in your store!”
And now she's speaking Russian, speaking thick-goop words into the phone, words welded together with Vs and Ws. Gobbledygook bad-guy words made of lead. Cold war words. Spy words. Into the phone, getting faster. Hurry.
“What the fuck are you saying? What the fuck are you saying, you fucking old bag? Go back to Moscow, you fucking fat sow. Why don't you fuck Stalin, you fucking borscht-face pig?! Fuck you!”
And her face stays still, stoic-still, Stalin-still. But her hand goes forward and a button is pushed. A button is pushed in Sanborn's on Henry and now an alarm goes
ping ping ping
through Jeff Cody's skin, heart, veins. Get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck out.
And the green Plymouth can start fast and the snow can crunch under the tires and the borscht-mouth can swear in Vs and Ws through the dismembered row of necks. But somehow the ring cannot be bought.
A
rowdy night at Dreamers, full moon and all. A Friday night and something in the air. What will happen? What will happen next?
Sky-blue jeans and a deep-red halter make Shauna the guy-fuck fantasy of the night. And Beth, beside her, boatneck and denim skirt . . . wishing to go home. He isn't here.
While Shauna does shots, plays pool, wracks 'em up, orders another drink. Still . . . he isn't here.
Growing impatient, staring at the clock, trying not to notice the slobbery, herky-jerky souses on every side. Pickled. The black-and-white checkered floor, the red painted walls, the drunken snapshots behind the bar. Piggy faces, Polaroid hollers, obscenities frozen in time. An endless parade of pickle faces teetering cheerfully into obscurity, the past, oblivion.
Beth is not amused. Shauna and her dumb plans.
But there was also the guilt. Shauna had confided in her that Jeff had left her for “another woman.” Shauna had cried, wondering who it could possibly be.
Beth couldn't bring herself to tell her.
What was she supposed to say? “Well, Shauna, now that you mention it . . . the other woman is me.”
Shauna crying to her for hours, asking repeatedly, “Who could it be? Who is it?!”