Through the Ice

I wait maybe ten minutes outside the high school until play practice finally lets out. It’s a cloudy winter Saturday afternoon towards the end of January. The engine is running. The heat is on. The radio talks about public schools planning for immigration raids, tariffs, and then a list of people who won’t be in prison anymore.

Elyse pulls the passenger side door open with a rush of frigid air then plops into the seat. She pulls the door shut and gropes for the belt behind her right shoulder. I slip the transmission into drive, waiting for the click of the seat belt. My foot still on the brake.

“How did it go?” I say.

“It went,” she replies.

I wait to see if there will be more, but she sits silently, staring deeply into her cell phone at something my eyes can’t see.

“Yes,” I say. “It has gone.”

It’s meant to be playful. But there is a forced cheerfulness in my voice that I immediately regret. I scan the parking lot. Children leap from behind cars like gleeful, red-cheeked gazelles. Taking my foot off the brake, I ease the car away from the curb moving steadily but carefully towards the exit. No children bounce off the hood of my car. I am pleased with our progress so far.

“You know that headache I’ve had all week?” she says.

“Yes?” I say and wait expectantly for an answer that never comes.

I’m not aware of a social script in which that is the successful conclusion of a conversation. But I remind myself that the scripts of my generation are now being overwritten by her generation. Maybe I should let it go.

“Do you still have it?” I ask.

“Yes.”

The way she keeps her eyes on her cellphone, as if it were dangerous to look away, indicates that I’m on thin ice. I wonder how deep the water is underneath the ice and what happens when I fall through. Her answer provides no way forward, but turning back now feels like some species of defeat that I’m not ready to examine.

“Can you tell where it’s coming from?” I ask. My voice is quieter. Gentler. I know I’m trespassing now.

“My head,” she says. “Where else would it be coming from?”

This is a warning shot. But if I stop now, the silence will ache like frostbitten fingers under a hot tap.

“Yes. I know your headache is in your head. I’m asking you to pay attention to WHERE in your head the pain is coming from. You may have noticed for instance that the back of your head does NOT hurt. Maybe the pain is coming from HERE,” I say, indicating my forehead just above my eyes.

“Yeah, it hurts there,” she admits.

Progress! I lobbed the ball, but this time, she caught it and threw it back. I hold back my enthusiasm and remind myself that I am a school psychologist. I interview teenagers for a living. I’m good at what I do. A professional. No leading questions.

“Do your eyeballs hurt?”

“I told you my head hurts.”

I’m driving now but I look in her direction this time. Listening to the unspoken. Considering my next move, I decide on transparency.

“I’m trying to figure out if you have some sort of sinus thing going on,” I say.

“I already said it’s my sinuses.”

On Main Street, not far from the house, I swerve gently to avoid a rust-colored lump of what turns out to be ice in the middle of the road, but my front tire catches it anyway. The ice shatters with a loud pop before fanning out and away from the tire. Diamonds skitter over the roadway hitting the curb across the street.

“Did you say it out loud or just in your head?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she fires back.

I know now. Underneath the ice, the water just keeps going down and down forever. There is no bottom. Part of me wishes I had stopped talking before we left the parking lot. Part of me worries if I stop talking now, she might think I’m angry or fed up with her, which I want to believe is not true.

“How come?” I finally ask.

And this time, her answer is immediate, direct. A surprising line-drive aimed directly at the pitcher.

“Because I don’t want a solution to my problem,” she says.

I’m both sorry I pushed her and grateful for her honesty. I do not speak again until we get home.

When we pull into the driveway, I ask if she can help me inflate the tires on the car. They’ve been running low for weeks.

She says “yes,” she will help.

Even though my wife is waiting to take the car to work, I decide now is the time to pump them up. I have Elyse sit in the driver’s seat so she can see the instrument panel and the tire pressure indicators. I show her how to step on the brake and press the ignition button. I warn her not to touch the shifter; that if the car accidentally goes into gear, she will drive away, and I will not be able to stop her.

I don’t have a compressor, so I fetch the bicycle pump from the barn. My hands, slightly humid, freeze onto to the metal cylinder for a moment until my body heat dissolves the bond. I work its plastic handle up and down. Elyse calls out the tire pressure until each tire is just right.

My wife sticks her head outside and asks, “How much longer now?” in a polite tone that means she is at least five minutes late now. Maybe more.

Elyse goes inside, already texting someone on her phone. My wife replaces her behind the steering wheel while I finish screwing the little plastic caps back onto the tire valves. Even though my fingers are numb, I manage not to drop any.

After my wife leaves, I go inside to wash up for dinner. My hands are chapped. My fingers red. Knuckles throbbing. I rinse off the soap and leave them under the tap, letting the warm water rush over them for a long time.