Heart of Ice

Chapter Fifteen

Garden Grove

They were a beautiful young couple, by any measure. Michael Barton, almost thirty, had an athletic build with penetrating brown eyes and dimples that never looked childlike or silly. Only disarmingly handsome. He was more reserved than shy, though he could come into his own when the situation demanded it. The only problem with Michael was that he was only able to reflect the moods of others. He seldom seemed comfortable enough to make the first move when it came to displays of warmth or charm.

Olivia Barton was a stunning Latina with smoky brown eyes that never needed shadow or mascara, and full lips that she enhanced—when she had time—with a pretty plum-colored gloss.

When Michael and Olivia bought their house in Garden Grove, they knew the first bit of remodeling would be the basement that the previous owner had outfitted with a cheesy, knotty-pine bar and air hockey table. Olivia saw the bulk of the dingy downstairs real estate as a potential playroom for the kids. Michael knew that he needed a home office.

Yet they had a son, Danny, and shortly thereafter, a daughter, Carla.

So of course, he and Olivia compromised. The bar was ripped out; the space that housed the air hockey table was replaced by a playhouse and the other side of the room was set up with a desk, PC, fax, printer, and telephone. Two slits of glass let in the sunlight of the outside world. Whenever Michael worked, he did so with the chirpy noise of the children and their friends. He didn’t mind. In fact, their little voices, their happy little voices, seemed to make his day.

Laughter like that was completely unknown after he and his sister had been abandoned by their mother. Certainly, he had been miserable in Portland. As his own kids played, little Lego-like pieces of his past would snap into place and he’d remember a few of the things that led to his desertion by his mother.

With the perspective that comes with time, Michael began to see that his mother, Adriana Barton, had probably done the best that she could. He didn’t even call her “Mom” in his mind when he thought of her anymore. It was always just Adriana. It was like she was some mythic, albeit vile creature. She was colored in his memory as the darkest shade of evil, a woman worse than Snow White’s wicked stepmother, or any of the Disney bitches.

Die, Adriana, die. I hate you.

When he was being abused by the adult who’d preyed on him when he was only a child, he wondered where Adriana had been. She should have been there. With him. With his sister. Had she left him and Sarah to endure this kind of an existence?

An existence like her own? Had she left them so she could be free?

Sometimes tears came when he thought about Portland and how Adriana had been beaten by Sarah’s father so badly that everyone thought she’d die. He remembered the time she came to see him at school and the teacher told her she had to leave.

“You’re scaring the other children,” the teacher had said.

Adriana had black-and-blue eyes that day. She’d tried to cover them with makeup, but she was never really good at such subterfuge. Her flinty eyes were incapable of lying. In fact, the only time she was ever successful in making up a story was the one about the ride to Disneyland.

“We are going to have the best time there,” she said. “I haven’t been there in a long time, but I’ve wanted to go on Space Mountain.”

“The Haunted Mansion and the pirate ride, too,” Michael said.

“All of that. Just us three.”

Later, when he revisited the trip from Portland to L.A., he remembered how they hadn’t brought any luggage. He remembered how Adriana had only thought to bring a carton of cigarettes for herself, and nothing for him or for Sarah. She cracked the window an inch as they drove over the snow-coated Siskiyou Mountains. The icy air reached inside the car.

“Mom, we’re cold,” he told her.

She just stared straight ahead.

“Mom!”

She pulled the cigarette from her lips and jabbed it at him. He pulled back, whimpering.

Adriana turned on a Dolly Parton tape and the little girlish voice of the country singer kept them company the rest of the way there.

He looked at the small circular scar on the back of his wrist. Adriana had left him with more than memories. She had left him with her mark. It was faint, but it never tanned, so it never really went away.

Down in his basement office so many years later, the PC whirled as it booted up. The screen rolled and a desktop messy with Word files, jpegs of the kids, came into view. Michael pulled down the Favorites tab and hit the bookmark named: Jenna’s BZ Blog.

An icon of a little yellow face with a frown advertised her mood. Her latest entry had been made earlier in the day.

Michael’s anger swelled; his brown eyes were pools of incontrovertible anger. He knew that he’d screwed up badly, but somewhere along the way he thought that just maybe the news reports were wrong. That he’d truly done what he’d set out to do.

Danny came from around the partition.

“I need new batteries,” the boy said, holding up a laser gun.

Michael opened a drawer. Paper clips, staples, even masking tape. No batteries.

“Sorry, pal. Better tell your mama. I’m all out.”

The little boy shuffled up the stairs and Michael returned his gaze to the computer screen. The mask that he fashioned for his son’s benefit melted from his face. It was like a shade that he could pull up and put down. He knew there was falseness to half of what he did. It was mimicry. Sometimes, he’d look over at parents with their children, knowing that the connections they felt were different than his.

It hurt. And the hurt gave him hope.

Just maybe I’m not the monster I think I am.

Olivia Barton carried a laundry basket heaped with dirty clothes down to the basement, past Michael’s office and over a carpeted floor littered with red, green, and blue cardboard bricks that were the obvious remnant of a hastily built and destroyed fort. Danny and Carla! Holding the basket against her hip, she opened the laundry room door and went inside the dark little room. A lightbulb illuminated by a pull of a chain swung as she turned it on.

With Michael at work, she went about her Tuesday routine, sorting the whites from the darks. Each item of the kids’ clothing was like a memo of what their day had been. The food they ate. The grass stains. The pet hair. Whatever had been the activity was there waiting for a spray of prewash and the hope of a mother that the stain would get clean.

It irritated her that Michael never seemed to get the hang of making sure his clothes were right side out before he unceremoniously dumped them into the laundry basket on the floor of their bedroom closet.

The least he could do… Olivia’s thoughts trailed off and she noticed a dark, reddish smear against the white of one of Michael’s usually pristine T-shirts. The T-shirt had been nestled inside a blue pullover shirt. She pulled the shirts apart and looked at the smear. He wore that Tuesday…what did we have for dinner? Spaghetti? Tacos?

She looked closer. The stain wasn’t hot sauce. She remembered they’d had a shrimp salad that night. No red sauce.

She ran her fingertips over the stain, about the size of a half dollar. It was smooth, penetrating the fabric like a dye stain of color. No lumps. No bumps. She wondered if it was blood. If it was, she didn’t recall him saying that he’d injured himself.

“Honey,” she asked later that night as they prepared for bed, “did you get cut or something?”

Michael seemed unconcerned. “Not lately. Why?”

“Oh,” she said, “I thought I found some blood or something on a dirty shirt of yours.”

“Nope. I’m fine.” His reply was brisk. Curt. It was almost as if he thought his short denial was all he needed to say to stop her brain from ruminating on whatever it was that spun over and over.

Leave me alone. Leave me be. You can’t know everything about me. I won’t let you.

He went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror.

Why is she pushing me? Why is she ruining what we have?

Olivia stood outside the bathroom door. No water was running. No sound of him urinating into the bowl. Silence.

What is wrong with my husband? They lay side by side, drifting off to an uneasy sleep.

Olivia woke as the moonlight poured though the slats of the miniblinds and fell on Michael’s bare upper torso. He’d gone to bed with a T-shirt on, but in the heat of the night, he’d shucked it from his damp skin. The retrofitted central air-conditioning of their bungalow was just that…central. It was barely a puff by the time it reached the master bedroom in the back of the house. Olivia shifted her weight and lifted her head from the pillow. Gently. Slowly. It hadn’t been a dream that stirred her from her restless sleep, but the worry that sometimes crept up in the dark of night.

You really don’t know him. No one really knows him.

Michael was on his back; blades of light played over his muscled chest. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and shifted a bit closer.

The injury was the color of rust, jagged and positioned just below his collar bone.

Michael’s brown eyes snapped open and Olivia let out a gasp. “What are you looking at?”

“You scared me! I just couldn’t sleep,” she said, recoiling into the sheets.

Michael stared hard at her before turning his back and facing the window. “Oh. Me, too. Hot in here. All I can do is rest my eyes.”

Olivia pulled the blankets up around her neck. Suddenly, she felt a chill in the air.

The two of them lay side by side, the digital clock rolling over to morning.