“Looks like the poor thing’s been sick.”
“Oh no.” I gently folded the covers back; Sigrid yanked them over her head with a growl.
Nora went to the kitchen, returned with a wet towel, and got busy cleaning up the mess. “That was you talking last night, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, relieved to spill the truth. “Last night she completely turned around with me, Nora. She wanted to communicate. She learned a couple dozen words, easily! And concepts, too, because language is learned in chunks. It’s how a toddler learns.”
“That’s brilliant, Val.”
“But why now? I can’t stop wondering. Why did it take weeks for her to open up?”
Nora shrugged. “Maybe she realizes her family really is all gone. You’re it for her now.”
Why hadn’t that occurred to me? Maybe Sigrid had been hanging on to the fantasy that her family would be found alive, but seeing them mortally wounded under the ice put an end to that.
Nora sat next to me on the bed and inhaled deeply. “She smells so good now. I almost miss my stinky girl.”
I laughed. “No, you don’t.”
“It’s great she’s making progress.”
“Look, Nora, you’ve got to keep this on the down low, okay? That she’s finally talking to me?”
Jeanne rapped on the open door, startling us. “Hey, birthday girl,” she said to Nora, unsmiling. “Mind going outside to wait for your cake?” Not waiting for an answer, she disappeared from view.
* * *
FROM BEYOND THE open door, peals of laughter from Wyatt mingled with the muffled sounds of Nora and Raj talking. Jeanne rifled through a drawer next to a tall, round cake festooned with swirls of canned chocolate frosting, extracting a beat-up box of birthday candles and matches.
“You have birthday candles here?”
“People have birthdays in the Arctic. We did it up for Andy last spring.” She poked half a dozen candles in a circle on the cake. “Mine was last week.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
She waved me away, concentrating on her decorations. “Never liked my birthday. Happens to fall on a really bad anniversary, if you want the truth about it. Wyatt never remembers it anyway.”
I opened the door wide in preparation to march outside with the cake. The thunk of the football on the roof, another bout of laughter from the party.
Jeanne struck a match and lit the first candle; the flame glowed against the rough skin of her hand. She lit the next one before her match burned out.
Wyatt spoke in a stage whisper. “Well, you’d think that after a year with just my fist I’d screw anything…”
The wick of the third candle sputtered and drew the match’s flame, igniting. Her hand shaking slightly, Jeanne moved to the next one.
“… and then I think, well, Jeanne’s not that bad… I mean, she is female, after all…”
The fourth wick caught, but the match was used up. Something clattered on the roof, a plate or silverware, maybe. A bitter gust shunted down into the kitchen from the open door, sucking all warmth from the room. Jeanne struck another match.
“… but the same thing always happens. I have a really good look at her, and I’m back to my fist.”
Jeanne’s hand shook badly now, the match’s flame not catching at the wick for the longest time until it singed her flesh as she lit the final candle. She threw the match in the sink, where it sizzled on a gob of frosting.
“Ready?” she said, meeting my eye, her face so tired-looking, so pinched and hard and sad, before picking up the cake and starting for the door. I felt punched in the gut—as if he’d been talking about me instead of Jeanne—but cleared my throat to try to belt out my best “Happy Birthday.”
twenty-eight
It was just past four o’clock in the morning. Under blinking fluorescent lights, we all crowded around the industrial sink, bleary-eyed and thrumming with energy. The baby, with his inscrutable smile, soft rise of belly, and fat-dimpled knees, rested in a shallow lake of warm water. Though stiff as a porcelain statue, he had nearly melted free of his ice block. Only a millimeter-thick coat of ice remained on his body, as if he had been dipped in glass or varnished to a high glaze. From the picture window, the black polar night gazed down on us, fat-mooned, clear, windless, stars sparking with their unspeakable knowing. Sigrid, hair mussed with sleep, stood on a chair next to me clutching the rim of the sink. We were all silent; the mood was reverent.