Glaciers (6 page)

As she walks toward the tables, Isabel becomes aware that someone in the corner has looked up at her. She looks toward the apple tree and there is Spoke, staring at her, caught. He smiles, but Isabel feels caught as well. She smiles back and mouths
hello
, but realizes that they are alone in the restaurant. The waitress, the owner's wife (Isabel has always assumed), recognizes her and gestures to Spoke.

Are you together? she asks.

Isabel looks from the woman to Spoke.

Yes? she says, to Spoke.

He nods and she sits across from him at the small table. They shrug at each other almost simultaneously. They have never, in the last year, gone to lunch together—at least not alone, not to a restaurant. Everyone goes to the food carts sometimes, of course, and sits together in the park.

Spoke has already ordered, and his big bowl of rice and mock duck arrives. Isabel orders the tofu special and tucks the menu back in the napkin holder.

Though they often sit in the kitchenette, at the same table, with the saltshakers between them, where she can believe that the silence they share is mutually agreed upon, now, in a public place, mere inches apart, Isabel hopes one of them will start talking.

She could bring up the party, she thinks. Some words form themselves in her mouth. They regard each other. She feels all of her abandoned places—
in her mouth, the tilt of her lower back, the bottom of her lungs—but she cannot fill them. The space around the two of them, sitting there together, accumulates details in her mind. She imagines the scene as if they were in a play: the laminated menus, hard vinyl chairs, plastic plants, spicy pickle in glass jars with little metal spoons, partial light through the window and fluorescent gleam from overhead. Her looking at him, that same inscrutable expression on his face, the way he looks her in the eye, his parted lips not quite saying what he could say. All the buttons running down his untucked red and blue plaid shirt. His sweater hangs on the back of his chair.

It's so
warm
in here, she thinks.
Say something
.

Spoke isn't eating, and she realizes this is probably because she doesn't have any food yet, and he's being polite. So she pours them both tea, and they drink.

I didn't know you were a vegetarian, she finally gets out.

I'm not, Spoke says sheepishly, scratching his temple. I just feel like I ought to be sometimes.

Why do you think you ought to be? she asks.

Aren't you a vegetarian?

Since I was twelve, she says. But I guess I don't feel like everyone should be. Unless they feel compelled.

I guess sometimes I feel compelled, he says.

By what?

I spent a lot of time on farms, as a kid. I've seen a lot of animals up close.

Did you raise livestock?

No. I spent a lot of time—school vacations mostly—at my grandparents' farm, a few miles from Chippewa Falls, where I grew up. My grandpa was a veterinarian. He converted a barn on the family farm and had a practice there. For years he was the only vet for miles. People brought animals to
him, and he drove around in an old pickup visiting farms, treating livestock. When I was staying out at the farm, I rode along.

You watched him treat the animals? she asks.

Sometimes. Mostly I played with whatever kids were around, or sat in the back of the truck, waiting, reading comic books and Jules Verne. I guess it was just seeing what my grandfather did all day, caring for sick animals. He respected the animals—not like he ever talked about it, but I think he felt for them. I think he understood how powerless they were, how, ultimately, everything is up to humans. We choose where they live, and how long, and, you know, what kind of sausage they become.

Isabel's food comes, and they begin to eat.

Spoke looks out the window behind Isabel while he chews. They eat silently for a while, Spoke staring out the window, occasionally looking back
to his bowl, then up at Isabel. Just when Isabel thinks the conversation is dead, he starts again.

It wasn't just animals, now that I think about it.

Isabel, mouth full of rice, cocks her head to the side and gives him a confused look. Spoke takes another bite and swallows.

We used to pick up junk off the side of the road—not actual trash, but dumped stuff. Washing machines and lamps and bicycles. We'd haul them back to my grandpa's shop and work on them till they were fixed—that's how I learned to fix things. If he didn't know how to fix it, he would send away for manuals and we would figure it out together. He just . . . wanted everything to last, or at least be given a chance.

Sounds like someone I would get along with, Isabel says.

She smiles at Spoke, but he just nods and looks seriously back at his lunch. The waitress
brings the little plastic tray with the bill and two fortune cookies.

Take your time, she says. I wish I could, Spoke says mostly to Isabel.

Isabel looks up, surprised. He reaches for the bill.

I'll get yours, he says.

Thanks, she reaches for her wallet. But you don't need to do that.

I know I don't. But I want to, okay?

She gives him a questioning look, but he looks away.

Okay, she says softly.

He gets up and puts his sweater over his arm. His lips are red from the spicy pickle.

They have the best fortunes here, he says, picking a cookie from the tray.

Really? she says. She has never thought so.

They look at each other. She notices the buttons on his shirt again, pearly red buttons.

I'd better get back, he says, resolved. I have a meeting to get to.

She manages a small wave.

She sits by herself, unable to eat. She pours the last of the tea from the metal pot and sips. It is lukewarm, now, and she holds it in her mouth and lets it roll over her tongue. She cracks her fortune cookie and thinks of buttons. Small, pearly shirt buttons. The way they feel between your fingertips, against fingernails, slipping through cloth.

Life in a Northern Town

Isabel wanted new things for a brief time, the spring after her tenth birthday. It was during her parents' divorce, but before she and Agnes knew that their mother was moving to New Mexico with a man named Steve, and that their father was applying for drafting jobs in Seattle and Portland.

It was a long division, Isabel would realize later. After he lost his job on the North Slope, their father started taking college classes on the weekends in Anchorage, and his band played in bars at night to make money. Their mother took a photography class at the community college
on a lark
, she
said,
to stay sane
. When her parents were together, they had little to say to each other. The fissures in their family grew until the most important parts broke free and began to float away.

Agnes and Isabel felt the separation abruptly. One day, they were driving home from Pizza Paradiso in their dad's Chevy, the taste of root beer and oregano still on their lips, and the next they were dividing everything between their little house by woods and the apartment in town their mother had rented.

On packing day, Isabel and Agnes wandered around their room, choosing this toy and that book and a favorite dress or two. They dropped them into cardboard boxes onto which their mother had written, in purple magic marker, each of their names. Isabel found herself staring into her box at her belongings, noticing how different they looked, like they had suddenly lost the context of her life.

Agnes talked about going to the mall in town to meet her friends, and for once Isabel wanted to tag along. Agnes occasionally skulked into the kitchen to whine at their mother, who insisted they stay home and pack. Isabel and Agnes had never fought much, but they were so different, in looks and in personality, that they rarely found reasons to bond. But that day Isabel felt the urge to join in her sister's crusade.

Please, Mom, they said. We're nearly done. How much longer do we have to do this? This is our weekend. Don't we get to do anything fun?

When they went back into their bedroom, Agnes gave Isabel approving looks and helped her pack clothes so that they could finish quickly.

Back in the kitchen, they started again.

Their mother pretended to ignore them, turning her back to them, pulling things from cabinets and sorting them on the counter.

Finally, Agnes unleashed the one she had been holding back, saving for just the moment when her mother's irritation peaked.

Why does your divorce have to ruin everything for us? she said.

Yeah, Isabel said, following her sister's lead.

Their mother threw the Tupperware she was holding into the box at her feet. She turned and stared at her daughters, hands on her hips, shoulders slumped. Her mouth was agape but she didn't seem to be breathing. Her curly hair sprung out of the kerchief she had tied over it that morning.

Fine! she finally squeaked out, in a high-pitched voice Isabel recognized as the end-of-her-rope voice. Just get in the damn car!

At the mall, their mother planted herself on a bench by the entrance with a diet soda and
The Shell Seekers
while Isabel silently tailed Agnes. The mall didn't have much to offer: a drugstore, a candy shop
and a Baskin-Robbins, the Book Cache, which sold best-sellers and greeting cards, Kinney's shoe store, a sporting-goods shop, a Sears catalog kiosk with a row of rotary phones to place orders, and a J. Jacobs, which catered to teenagers.

Agnes met her friends at J. Jacobs. They were all thin and pretty, with their ears pierced and their hair curled and sprayed up in waves over their foreheads. They gave Isabel a cursory glance as she lingered beside Agnes. Agnes gave her sister an apologetic look and Isabel took the hint. She set off wandering the store, looking here and there at the trendy clothes, watching Top 40 videos on the big TV above the register.

Agnes and her friends made straight for the formal wear, gushing over the metallic pink bubble skirts and heart-shaped tops. The spring formal at Soldotna Junior High was just weeks away. Isabel caught a glimpse of Agnes holding a silky peach
dress up to her body, peering down at herself while her friends cooed. Isabel knew their mother would never let Agnes wear the dress—J. Jacobs was
cheap
, she had said before,
and not in a price way
—she rarely let Agnes buy so much as a T-shirt.

Isabel watched the videos: Debbie Gibson and the New Kids on the Block. She turned at a rack of jeans and came face to face with herself in the mirrored far wall: tattered ponytail, shabby pink windbreaker, her sister's old jeans rolled up at the ankles, and dirty sneakers. She could hear the urgent, secretive talk and gurgling laughter of the older girls in the dressing rooms, and she began to understand why her sister liked to come here and try on beautiful dresses she could never buy: it was like trying on another life.

Isabel walked back through the store, keeping an eye out for something—anything—she thought she might try. She settled on a hot-pink,
short-sleeved knit top with buttons along the right shoulder. She took the smallest one from the rack and walked past her sister without making eye contact, straight into a dressing room.

What are you doing, Belly? Agnes called.

Isabel pulled the curtain shut without responding. She took off her windbreaker and the white Anchorage Zoo T-shirt she wore underneath. She slipped the new shirt from its hanger and pulled it over her head.

Isabel, you know Mom won't buy that, Agnes said quietly from the other side of the curtain.

The new shirt felt so soft draped on Isabel's shoulders. The knit fabric was loose and the hem fell below her hips, almost like a dress. There was a perfume to the new shirt that was nothing like the Mule Team Borax smell of her hand-me-downs and thrift store shirts. Isabel turned to the side, looking at herself over the shoulder, trying different angles.

Belly? Agnes poked her head through the curtain. She looked at Isabel and smiled.

Too bad, she said. It's pretty cool.

Fortunes

After lunch, heart lurching, Isabel drops her bag and the cellophane sack from Lola's inside her office door, then walks down the hall to Spoke's office. She clutches her fortune in her hand.

His door is open and the room empty. She hesitates for a moment, then leaves the fortune on his desk so that he will find it when he gets back, a little scrap that says
You will attend a party where strange customs prevail
. Then she'll ask him to go with her to the party tonight. He was right; it was the best fortune she could have gotten.

In the hallway, she hears him on the stairs. She walks to her office door and watches him coming
down with the head librarian, a tall woman in long, straight slacks who leans her head forward as she walks, as if she's afraid she'll hit it on the ceiling down there.

—what we will do without you, she's saying. It just doesn't seem right to call you back, after you guys settle back into jobs and normal life. You've given so much already.

It takes Isabel a moment to realize what they're saying. Call you back. Called back.

Will you be in the battlefield, or somewhere safer? Working with computers, somewhere away from it all?

There are computers everywhere, he says to her.

Their boss seems agitated, her eyes red-rimmed. She likes Spoke; they all do.

He's going back, Isabel thinks. He's going back to war.

Isabel puts a hand out and braces herself on the doorframe.

Their boss is speaking so loudly; she must think he has told everyone by now. She gathers from the conversation that this has been in the works for a few weeks. He must have asked their boss not to tell them. He wanted to leave quietly. Come back to his job when this tour is done.