“You look remarkably—” Lisa searches for the right word, tugging her sweater around her tightly as if to pop out the correct one “—relaxed.”
My head spins. How could she know about last night? Or do I seem different? I certainly feel different.
“Time away must have been good for you,” she says.
“Look—” I start.
She cuts me off. “Wasn’t good for the station.”
“I’m sorry about everything, Lisa. I’m sorry I blew up on air. I’m sorry about our fight. I’m sorry I ran away.”
“No, you’re just sorry you might have ended your career for the last time.”
Her voice is roughly the decibel level of a flyover by the Blue Angels. She gets up to shut her office door. A crowd of weekend staff has already gathered to witness the commotion.
The scariest thing about Lisa’s tone is that although it’s loud, it’s largely without emotion.
Lisa takes a seat behind her desk and checks her cell.
She’s done, I think. With me. With everything.
“No, I really am sorry, Lisa. Truly. I hurt you. I hurt the station. I hurt my coworkers. I hurt my anchors. I hurt Icicle. I hurt my mom.” I look at her. My lips begin to quiver. “I just hurt, Lisa. And I have for a very long time.”
I take a deep breath and become a verbal blizzard.
“My little sister died in a tragic accident when she was still a kid,” I say.
“Oh, Sonny!”
“I loved her more than anything. I still do. Joncee adored everything about winter. She was pure light and goodness. How do you go on when your little sister is taken? When her life is stolen before it’s even started? When you blame yourself?”
Lisa reaches out and takes my hand.
I continue, head down. “The only way I could was to put a wall around myself, to distance myself from those who wanted to get too close. I did that in college, Lisa, because you reminded me of my sister: all energy and sweetness and love of winter. I don’t think I could have gone on, so I just lashed out, or kept people at bay. All I wanted was to be someone new, someone different, someone who didn’t have to talk about her sister.”
“You became Sonny?”
I nod. When I am finally able to look at her, tears are welled up in her eyes.
“I’m so, so sorry, Sonny,” she finally says. “My heart breaks for you. I wish I would have known. I wish you would have confided in me. Thank you for sharing. And what a huge compliment. I reminded you of your sister.” Lisa begins to cry. I grip her hand tightly and give it a shake. There is a long silence, and then Lisa continues. “Better yet, why didn’t I know this? I run a news station in a small city. I should have done better research.”
I smile.
“You really hurt me in college, and that stayed with me for a very long time. I know I come on too strong. I…” Lisa stops, unable to finish her thought. I finish for her.
“I should have been a better colleague. I should have been a better friend.”
The last word hangs in the air.
“So?” I continue. “Am I fired?”
Lisa laughs a hard, staccato laugh that takes me by surprise.
“Oh, you’re not getting off that easy,” she says. “I can’t just fire you and eat your contract. That lion you call an agent negotiated too well: you actually get a bonus if you’re fired. Yep, I’m the idiot who agreed to that. And you get paid for a full year.”
“She’s good.”
“She’s evil,” Lisa laughs. “We need all the help we can get around here anyway. Staff is too small, and budget is too tight. So, you stay. But with changes.”
I take a sharp breath.
“I’m demoting you.”
“What? My contract allows that?”
“I’m a lion, too,” Lisa says, sitting straighter in her chair, very proud of herself. “There’s been a push among the staff and reporters to make Polly Sue the interim chief meteorologist.”
“She doesn’t know a high pressure system from a Big Mac. She’s not a meteorologist, Lisa. From what I’ve heard, she was the traffic girl who Mighty Merle the Meteorologist, shall we say, took under his wing.”
Lisa sighs. “I’m not going to get into office gossip, but I am going to give the job to her—”
“Lisa, no.”
“—temporarily,” she adds.
“What about me?”
“You’ll be helping Polly Sue prepare her forecasts and—” Lisa stops and actually winces “—doing weekends for a while.”
“Are you kidding me with this? I’m fifty and doing weekends again?”
“You’ve had two on-air episodes, Sonny. The local media and other stations are having a field day with this. Viewers are loving what a good sport you’ve been on air, but I have to be careful. It’s a news station, but I can’t have a news station without advertisers. And they’re a little touchy right now, to be honest. I’m sorry.”
“What’s next? Are you making me do the weather from used-car lots on Saturdays?”
Lisa winces again.
“You’re going to run the Frostbite Marathon next weekend.”
“A marathon? In this weather? Are you nuts?”
“It’s a relay, Sonny. You’re doing the next-to-last leg. Polly Sue will run the last few miles. Consider it team building. And I still want you out and about in the winter. I still want you to do live shots. And I still want you to be part of the team. But you have to try to be part of the team, okay? Then, we’ll see what happens.”
“What happens is that I’m going to end up going stir-crazy and living all alone in a cave somewhere in the snow like the Grinch.”
“I think that’s already happened,” Lisa says.
I take a deep breath and knock.
Polly Sue looks up and sees me through the window on the door. She doesn’t respond. I knock again.
She rolls her eyes and waves me in.
“Can we talk?”
“I’m super busy,” she says. “You know, now that I’m the chief meteorologist.”
Interim! I want to scream. And you’re not a meteorologist.
“I’d like to talk.” I nearly choke on the next words. “Please, Polly Sue.”
She sighs with great drama. “Yeah?”
“I wanted to apologize for my recent actions. I didn’t mean to leave you, Lisa and the station in the lurch.” I pause. “I’d also like to apologize to you personally. I didn’t mean for our relationship to get off to such a rocky start.”
“Shut the door,” she says.
I look at her.
“I won’t ask again, and I won’t say please.”
I shut the door.
“Let me be clear, Amberrose. This was supposed to be my gig all along. Now it is. And I plan on keeping it. You’re unstable. You’re a hot mess. You’re an outsider.” She stops and eyes me from head to toe. “Also, you’re getting a little long in the tooth.”
You little…
“Let me repeat the words you said to me when we first met, just so we’re clear: you work for me.”
I think of my conversation with Lisa and take a deep breath to steady my rising emotions. “I’ve certainly not acted like the professional I am, and for that I apologize. This station deserves better. You deserve better. I deserve better. I blame myself for what’s transpired, and I just want you to know that I plan to help you in any way I can,” I say.
“Oh, you do, do you? Well, I don’t need any help. I can see a snowstorm coming from Saskatchewan.” She stops. “And the viewers like me. They trust me. They’ve already soured on you because—like me—they can spot a fraud.”
From underneath her desk, she produces a pointing stick.
“Surprise! I got you one, too! Consider it a little gift from me. And I’d love for you to use it.” She smiles like she just got goosed. “All the time.”
I’m out, I think. I can just as easily do radio somewhere. I consider that thought. No, I can’t. I can’t do radio.
“Take it,” she says.
I reach for it, and she waves the pointer up and down my body.
“PS. I’m going to suggest to Lisa that you change your hair color. That blonde is a bit harsh. Maybe go naturally gray. It’s all the rage right now. Or, red like me. But mine’s natural, so…”
Polly Sue stands, her polyester dress making all kinds of noise.
You’re going to rustle on air in that thing when you move, I don’t tell her. And the color is not flattering at all. And then I shake my head. You brought a lot of this on yourself, Sonny. Walking out. Pulling rank. Acting irrational on air. Stay calm. As my mother always says, “This, too, shall pass.”
“Better practice.” She stops and lifts her own pointer. “Here, I’ll show you.” Polly Sue taps me on the head with it. “I wish you’d disappear.” She laughs. “It’s working!”
I grip my pointer so tightly that I nearly break it into two.
I smile.
Polly Sue swishes to the door and heads off down the hall.
I raise the pointer over my head as if I’m going to whack her with it.
I see Icicle at his desk out of the corner of my eye. His eyes are wide. He shakes his head at me.
I lower it for a moment and then lift it again, as if it’s a sword. I pantomime impaling her.
Icicle stifles a laugh.
No, he mouths.
Polly Sue turns suddenly.
“Already feels good in my hand,” I say with a smile.
She rolls her eyes and strides away, her dress making an irritating scritching sound.
I walk over to Icicle.
“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
He looks at me and continues to edit footage.
“Or else,” I say, lifting the pointer.
“Okay,” he says.
“I’m still mad at you.”
Icicle’s voice sounds like that of a hurt little boy.
He takes a bite of the blueberry streusel muffin I bought him and looks out the window of the coffee shop in The Commons. He can’t even look at me. He has yet to look at me.
I nervously glance around at the happy Michiganders in their winter coats, bulky sweaters and cute boots sipping coffee and happily embracing winter. An open fireplace flickers in the middle of the café. I remember when I would depart Palm Springs to head to Big Bear to ski with my girlfriends. I loved that girls’ getaway. I loved shooshing down the trails, playing in the snow, drinking wine in the hot tub while flakes fell.
It was because my distance from here allowed me to distance the memories.
But the winter joy, deep down, was still the same.
“Iced coffee in the winter?” I ask Icicle.
“You get used to it,” he says, his statement an indictment. He tilts his eyes somewhat in my direction at the table. “I’m not laughing at your jokes, either.”
Icicle looks so sad and so much like a little kid that got his feelings hurt that I just want to erase all of his pain.
And that’s when I understand: Icicle and I are similar in many ways. We both have bad memories from our childhoods. I lost my sister. He was an unpopular misfit. Neither of us can let go of our painful pasts. We try. We try so hard, and yet everywhere we turn, the memories remain. Everywhere we run, we see ourselves. We can’t escape the fun house mirrors of our youth.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ve said that to everyone today, but…” I stop. “Icicle, please look at me. Please.”
He turns a few millimeters and then slowly lifts his eyes to meet mine.
“But know how much I really mean it when I say it to you. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to blame you for the videos. I didn’t mean to run away. I didn’t mean to break our trust. We were becoming friends.”
“We were?”
“Yes, we were.” I stop. “We are.”
His tall, lanky body deflates, like a pool float with a fast leak.
“I thought you were my friend, Sonny,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “And then you accused me of something really bad.” His voice warbles. “I don’t have any friends, Sonny.”
I shake my head and clench my jaw, but a tear still pops into the corner of my eye.
“I don’t either.”
He looks at me with those puppy-dog eyes.
“Allergies,” I say with a wink.
“It’s February,” Icicle says. “No allergies. You should know that better than anyone.” He stops. “And I thought you had lots of friends.”
I reach out and grab his hand. I give it a big squeeze.
“I know all about what happened to your sister,” he says. “My mom told me a long time ago. I’m really sorry.”
I nod, clenching my jaw even tighter. “Thank you.”
“Do you know, I used to watch all of your forecasts on my laptop? I studied your on-air persona but also the accuracy of your forecasts. Everyone saw Sonny the sunny news personality, but I saw Sonny the meteorologist.” He looks me square in the eye. “And you deserved that Emmy for how you handled the 1994 earthquake. You saved so many lives, Sonny, before and after. Your aftershock warnings…” Icicle stops. “No one will ever understand the hours you worked to help your community. You’re a role model to me. To call you a friend is something I never imagined.”
“Icicle—” I start.
“But if we’re friends, then don’t friends share what’s hurting them? Don’t friends trust each other? Aren’t friends always there for each other, no matter what?”
I look at him, searching for an answer.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend like that,” I finally say. “I have had people who wanted to be friends, but I’ve kept them as acquaintances because I’ve been too scared to share everything about my life. I’ve been too scared to get hurt again. I’ve been too scared to lose someone again.”
Icicle smiles a smile so much older than his years.
“Take it from someone who nearly died, Sonny. No one wants to think about death. No one wants to consider how short our lives really are. But I do. And I want my life to matter. But I’m stuck, Sonny, halfway between living and dying, and there’s no worse place to be. Remember when we talked about zombies? That’s what I feel like a lot of the time.”
“Oh, Icicle.”
“You didn’t let your past define you.”
“Yes, I did.”
“But at least you did something with all your pain. I don’t even have the courage to run away.”
“It doesn’t take courage to run away. It takes courage to stay.”
“I just want to prove to people around here—my parents, everyone—that I’m not just a shocking story in a Weird Michigan book or a punch line to a winter joke. I want people to see me in a new light. I want that light to thaw Icicle. Forever.”
My heart aches for him.
“How do we do that?” Icicle asks.
“I don’t know yet,” I say. “But friends can do anything, right?”
“Are you my friend? Friends don’t accuse friends of doing bad things.”
“Yes, I’m your friend, Icicle. Are you mine?”
He looks at me but doesn’t answer immediately. “Yes,” he finally says.
I look outside, and a little girl with skates slung over her shoulder catches my eye. She waves. I wave back.
“Want to go ice-skating?” I ask out of the blue.
“What about work?” he asks.
“You’re running with a rebel now,” I say. “I’ll tell Lisa we’re working on a story.”
Icicle laughs. “Okay!”
We head to a rink with a stunning view of the bay. As I’m lacing up my skates, I say, “You’re going to have to help me. Weak ankles.”
“I don’t think so,” Icicle says. “Not with some of the shoes I’ve seen you wear.”