Tears Of Ice-Love Story

 Tears Of Ice

Rain in the wind turning to sleet, turning to snow. That’s the way it would go. Her car tore along but she knew the snow would fall before nightfall. She didn’t want to get caught on that lonely stretch between St Paul and Grey Water where dark woods encroached either side of the road.

She had to reach the crossroads at Undledown before six to stand a chance, putting her foot down hard. Windscreen wipers grinding out a rhythm; heartbeat, beating heart. She hated that sound; it reminded her of uncertainty and she turned up the radio.

It was a clear road, except for animals roaming, and people – there were always lone people, mainly joggers or cyclists. Sometimes other vehicles passed, always driving at excessive speed – hooting her. Didn’t they know she wanted to get to her destination as quickly as them? But the old car couldn’t handle speed and was designed for short zippy journeys about town?

She caught sight of him from time to time in the rear view mirror as he slept; he always slept heavily after a bout of drinking. What was it he said before leaving?

“Why the hell do I want to meet your parents?”

It was said to infuriate, but Dana knew his methods. He wanted her to go alone, to arrive shamefaced and empty handed, turning up to repeat the failure of previous visits; well not this time.

He was a gobshite for sure, but he was her gobshite, and this time he wasn’t going to rattle her insecurities and force her to abandon plans he knew she counted on for his support.

Why did she want to visit her parents? Last time she went harsh words were exchanged. They didn’t care for Matt – or what they had heard about him. He could be tricky; he drank, smoked, fornicated, mocked religion and supported issues they believed inappropriate. He could be obscene in his language, and was; rarely caring who he upset in the process.

She knew why he did and said what he did – to get a reaction, to provoke an outcry among the dull and sedentary. And as a consequence, if there were fights, arguments, disagreement or dissent, felt pleased with the outcome.

She left him; she came back, she left again. He rarely apologised, but he did cry – sometimes she thought she understood his terror and confusion, but that was dangerous. It brought them closer; she tried to get him to talk, but he never would confess what disturbed him so deeply, although his mind hardly ever seemed to stop whirling, with a babble of insane ideas and profane thought.

Did she love him – no, not love but something close. Two days after telling her she was the only woman in his life, she caught him in bed with someone else. She took a long handled ladle to his head and beat him until he bled; he lay on the bed staring up at her woefully.

“It was the drink.” He implored. “Don’t hit me again.”

Twice more he did the same, and she left him; he phoned constantly, he was never truly apologetic – he needed to explain. She hated herself for going back, but he was the only man to get her full attention.

It sounded desperate, and it was, but he never tried to hide who he was or what he thought, and for that she was – grateful.

God, what a word; she wasn’t grateful, no – more happy in her discontent. She had always been a glass half empty person, and he was… He was the one drinking from her glass.

The car lurched between potholes; they were on a bad stretch of back road. It wasn’t a route she travelled willingly, but she needed to make up time. It was his fault of course they were late setting out. His fault for being in the pub and not getting back when he was asked; his fault for being half cut and then becoming argumentative and abusive. His fault she hit him; now he would have a bruise to sport when they reached her parents.

It would mean another lie, unless he told the truth. He would smile and put a finger to his cheek.

“Look at this – see what your daughter is capable of.”

They would examine her, and she would smile shamefaced before hardening.

“Don’t blame me, you gobshite.”

She slowed the car; the sleet was heavier now, and the sky dark with ponderous snow clouds. There were forty miles remaining; forty miles, and she thought of a song he’d sung in the bath – ‘forty miles of bad road’. Christ.

She flipped open the CD player and slipped in a disc. It was one of his; she hated his taste in music, loud, aggressive, hard core lyrics – sometimes she allowed the sound to drown out thought.

It was possible – for a while – not to be real, and to pretend. She liked to pretend – when things went badly, or when circumstances didn’t allow her to be the person she wanted to be, or when life threw a curved ball.

Or like now, this journey she was making; this journey to see her parents, and try to get them to understand what she was doing with her life. He was part of it – he had to be there, had to be.

Not to be real; the thought revolved in her head as the wind threw snow in a swirl against the windscreen. It was getting darker; the weather turning the sky black and with it came the dour sense of late afternoons in empty places, driving, driving into gloom.

Not to be real – when she thought about it - pretending, she liked to imagine herself one of those slinky sirens from the past, singing emotive torch songs to audiences of men; it was always men. Men who would attempt to fondle her body as she slid among them. Then it became murky and dirty – perhaps she’d always had a dirty mind?

It wasn’t just Matt with what he said or wanted to do – no, she was equally culpable. Was that still a valid word – culpable? She smiled, and would have asked but he was sound asleep. Sleeping like an innocent despite the lurching vehicle and crunching road.

She slowed to read a sign but it named places she didn’t know; this was the problem with taking back roads; oblivion was always signposted and lay midway between Despair and Original Sin.

She brought the car to a halt to take a much needed pee; crouching in the semi-darkness, listening out for half imagined wild creatures, but the wind remained wild and shrill. She heard only her own heartbeat gathering strength for the remaining journey.

It was a sad business when she thought about it, humanity – this constant need for food and love, for sleep and sex, for change and acceptance. This need to become someone in a world designed for nobodies, where everyone had to take a pee, had to expel whatever passed their lips.

She hurried back into the car, staring rigidly ahead, concentrating hard on what she could make out of a disappearing road. It would be harder now to achieve the kind of headway she needed, and to compensate she increased pace with the back wheels spinning and skidding beneath the car as she struggled on.

She laughed, talking to herself as she drove, but hoping he would take note of her reckless behaviour if he woke.

“I’m like Michael Schumacher – nothing’s going to catch me now.”

She hunted under the dashboard for a chocolate bar, tearing at the wrapping with her teeth.

“Matt, do you want a bit?”

No answer; more for her she thought, devouring chunks greedily.

A full scale blizzard was sweeping across the bonnet as she reached the main road, turning towards her parent’s home town. The last part was only fifteen miles but it took nearly an hour with conditions as bad as they had become.

The radio told her to remain at home unless her journey was essential. That was the trick of course, to deceive the senses by imagining something was more necessary than it really was.

Despite his imperfections she had remained faithful to Matt; faithful, what did that mean? There was a snail trail leading to and from the bed they shared; Matt thought nothing of looking elsewhere. He had to be underpinned. She wanted this weekend to be the beginning, but it was desperate – a desperate move.

She was crying now, coming home with red streaky eyes; what would her parents make of that? Would they believe Matt was a bully and had been treating her cruelly?

Reaching the outskirts of town, she pulled into a pub car park, and rested her head against the steering wheel as the windscreen wipers continued their heartbeat rhythm. Finding a tissue to wipe her eyes, she turned to wake him.

“Matt, we’re nearly there. Matt, do you…need…..”

The back seat was empty; his coat and shoulder bag the only evidence he had ever been present. She stared into the empty space and screamed.

“Matt.”

The weather turned worse and it wasn’t until the following morning that a search could be mounted. The police discovered a body frozen into a foetal like posture, wearing t-shirt and jeans, and huddled beneath bushes close to where she had stopped to take a pee. Nearly three feet of snow had fallen overnight, with the temperature hovering around minus four.

The police told her, without shelter he wouldn’t have stood a chance. She knew it; she knew the fault lay within her. She hadn’t protected him. He had got away from her; he had vanished into that hinterland in which she had no place, despite her strong desire for ‘no reality’. It wasn’t her turn yet to go where he had gone, and she wept, not just for her loss, but for his too.She wept tears of ice.