Ice Storm (9 page)

Sophie collected all the dirty towels to go into the washing machine at midnight when they next got the generator, and then slumped down on a kitchen chair with a tired smile. Really, the power outage was an awful lot of fun.

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“Girl? Girl! Wake up!”

Alice rolled over in her sleeping bag. She was so warm. Except for her nose, which felt like a small icicle. She poked that icicle out of the tent.

“Yes, Mrs. Hartley?” she asked groggily. “Do you need something?”

Mrs. Hartley was sitting up on the sofa. She raised her eyebrows. “Girl, I need a lot of things, most of which I can’t have. Right now, I need my medicine. It’s in my backyard.”

“Where?” asked Alice. She was hardly awake.

“My backyard. I never took you to be stupid, girl. Wake up!”

Alice crawled out of the tent. “Why is your medicine in your backyard? Where in your backyard?” Alice was trying, but this was a little weird.

“I’m diabetic,” said Mrs. Hartley slowly, enunciating each word as if she was speaking to an idiot. “My insulin has to be kept cold. How cold is your fridge these days, girl?” demanded the old lady.

“Well, pretty cold,” replied Alice tartly. She was awake now. “I filled it with ice and snow.”

“Hmmm,” said Mrs. Hartley. “Well, I said you weren’t stupid. The insulin is right outside the back door, stuck in a snowbank. I need one vial marked “40” and one marked “50.” And I need my diabetic kit. It’s in the downstairs medicine cabinet. And if you don’t want
me passing out on you, you’d better get it NOW!”

Alice hurried. A passed-out Mrs. Hartley would not be a good thing to have in her living room. She shrugged into one of Dad’s coats and went out the back door. The insulin was easy to find, the diabetic kit not so much. Boy, the old lady took an awful lot of medicine! Alice took a quick look...she had more pill containers than a pharmacy. There were a couple of medical kits; one had a bunch of needles in it, and another had a couple of little electronic dohickeys with a whole bunch of tiny white strips of plastic. Alice wasn’t sure which kit Mrs. Hartley needed, although the needles seemed a pretty good bet. She grabbed both. Luckily Mrs. Hartley hadn’t passed out by the time she got back.

Mrs. Hartley used one of the electronic dohickeys to prick her finger and squeezed a big drop of blood on one of the plastic strips. Alice was horrified and fascinated all at once. The old lady stuck the bloody plastic thing in the other machine and it started to beep. When it finished beeping, Mrs. Hartley checked
the readout on the machine. “Not good,” she murmured to herself. She looked at the “40” vial. The liquid
inside was too cold, nearly frozen. She couldn’t draw it out of the vial. Mrs. Hartley gave the vial to Alice.

“Warm it up; roll it between your hands. You’ll have more body heat than me.”

Alice did what she was told, and then handed the vial back. Mrs. Hartley took one of the needles and inserted it into the vial. It was just like in the movies, when the bad guy fills a needle with poison to kill somebody. Alice watched with wide eyes as Mrs. Hartley lifted up her nightgown and stuck the needle right into her side. Gross, gross, and super gross!

“Is that what all diabetics have to do?” asked Alice when she had recovered from the sight of Mrs. Hartley’s wrinkled stomach.

Mrs. Hartley fixed a look on Alice. Then she sighed. “If they’re insulin dependent. Some people can just take pills, but not me.”

“What will happen if you don’t take the insulin?”

“I’ll die,” said Mrs. Hartley simply.

It was Alice’s turn to stare at Mrs. Hartley. Wow. Then she had a horrible thought. “How much insulin is in your snowbank?”

Mrs. Hartley leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes. “Two more days worth.” Alice spent a minute taking in that little piece of information. Babysitting Mrs. Hartley was not going to be easy.

Alice escaped to the kitchen, promising to make some hot tea. She needed to think. All of a sudden, her plans for dealing with the cold and the dark and the loneliness had changed. Now she had Mrs. Hartley, who couldn’t walk and was going to die in two days if Alice couldn’t get her more medicine. Unbelievable. Were pharmacies even open? Could she get to one if they were? And didn’t diabetics need special food? It wasn’t like her kitchen was offering a lot of choice.

While Mrs. Hartley drank the tea, Alice asked her about the food thing. It wasn’t so bad after all; Mrs. Hartley could eat tinned spaghetti and baked beans and they had lots of that kind of stuff. Mrs. Hartley gave her a list of the other drugs she needed from her house and Alice collected them all up in a plastic bag. She also brought over some of the non-perishable food from Mrs. Hartley’s kitchen. So far, so good. They had a pretty good larder and Alice’s barbecuing skills were improving. After a couple more hot drinks, Alice was pretty sure she could move on from boiling water and actually cook something.

They both napped after lunch. Alice left the tent flap open again. It seemed rude to zip the door shut with somebody else in the room. She woke to find Mrs. Hartley staring into the tent right at her. She could be really creepy sometimes. Alice glanced down at the nails. They were safely in Mrs. Hartley’s lap. Unfortunately, the old lady noticed the glance.

“Worried I’m going to tickle you to death?” she said ominously.

Alice’s jaw dropped. “You know that’s what the kids say about you?”

“I’m not blind or deaf, girl. Course I know. Kept all of you off my property, didn’t it?”

Alice didn’t know how to respond. “So you don’t like kids?”

Mrs. Hartley didn’t answer. There was an uncomfortable silence. Alice decided to crank up the radio.

Montréal is a photographer’s dream – the icy vistas are intensely beautiful. It is also being called a war zone. Today, thousands more head for shelters in Ontario and Québec after more freezing rain delays repair work and Hydro-Québec admits there can be no quick fix. Even Rideau Hall, the Governor-General’s home in Ottawa, has no power.

Alice sighed and turned the radio off. Mrs. Hartley shot a look Alice’s way.

“Does your Dad drink?”

“What?!” Alice was shocked. “He doesn’t, but that’s none of your business!”

“Don’t get your knickers in a knot. I want to know if you have any alcohol in the house.”

“So you drink?” asked Alice belligerently.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” exploded Mrs. Hartley. “Stop being so prickly, girl! Just because you think I’m a monster doesn’t actually make me one! I’m worried about the toilets.”

Alice just stared. This conversation was making no sense at all. Toilets? To her surprise, Mrs. Hartley’s lips began to quiver. In another moment she was smiling and after that came a great big belly laugh. Alice shifted from wondering about toilets to wondering how such a scrawny body could make so much noise. Maybe Mrs. Hartley was a full-on lunatic.

“I got up to go to the bathroom while you were sleeping, girl,” said Mrs. Hartley between chuckles. “Lucky it wasn’t far away, because old ladies like me, well, we gotta go when we gotta go. I noticed your taps dripping. That’s smart.”

Alice, still bewildered, said, “My Uncle Henri told me to do that.”

“Whatever,” said Mrs. Hartley. “Toilets have to be protected from freezing too. You need to pour in some anti-freeze, if you’ve got it. If not, liquor will work as long as it has a high alcohol content.”

“How does that stop them from freezing?” asked Alice. Her head was still spinning but she was curious.

“Alcohol lowers the freezing point of water. It’ll have to get a lot colder before the water freezes, which hopefully means your toilets won’t crack.”

“But how will we use the toilets? Won’t we flush it all away?” asked Alice.

“I meant,” Mrs. Hartley said in a long-suffering voice, “MY toilet. I won’t be needing it for the foreseeable future.”

“Oh,” said Alice. “So, just so I have this straight, you want me to find my dad’s alcohol and pour it down your toilet?”

Mrs. Hartley nodded. “You got it, girl.”

Shaking her head, Alice went to the cupboard where her dad kept the alcohol. He didn’t drink strong liquor, so all he had was a bunch of unopened gift bottles his workers had given him for Christmas. She called out the names to Mrs. Hartley, who told her which ones had the highest alcohol content, and then trudged them over to Mrs. Hartley’s house. This babysitting job was beginning to feel like slave labour.

Once back at home, Alice couldn’t help herself. “How did you know about the alcohol thing?” she asked.

Mrs. Hartley hesitated for a moment, as if she didn’t want to admit the truth. Then she looked Alice straight in the eye. “I know a lot of things,” she said. “I used to be a schoolteacher.”

“But that’s impossible,” cried Alice. “You hate kids!”

“Did I say that?”

Alice didn’t answer.

“You know nothing about me,” said Mrs. Hartley quietly. “Even though I’ve been your next-door neighbour since you were born.”

Well, that’s not all my fault,
Alice thought.
It wasn’t like you were very friendly.

“I knew your mother, though,” Mrs. Hartley continued. “You’re not much like her.”

Alice bristled. “I am so,” she said angrily. “Everyone says so!”

“Oh, you look like her, all right. But your mother had a mind of her own. She and I had some good talks. I was really sorry when she got sick.” Mrs. Hartley sounded wistful.

The Tickle Lady and her mom had been friends? This day was getting weirder and weirder.

“How’s the skating going?”

Alice tensed. “Fine.”

“And you like it?”

“Of course I do.”

“I see you on
tv
sometimes,” said Mrs. Hartley. “You’re sure you like it?”

“Of course I like skating! I love skating!” Mrs. Hartley was making Alice mad. “Why else would I spend my whole life doing it? What – you think I skate because I
don’t
like it?”

Mrs. Hartley was quiet for a minute. “I just can’t tell,” she finally replied. “Is it what you want to do, or what you think others want you to do?”

That made Alice really angry. “I want it!” she exploded.

“What
do you want?”

“I want to be a star! I’ve worked hard. I’m the best; I deserve it!”

“You might be the best skater, girl. But you’re not the best competitor. You fall all over the place, for heaven’s sake,” Mrs. Hartley said bluntly. “Maybe you should wait until you’re older to enter competitions.”

Alice was so furious she thought she might scream. How dare this old woman say that to her? “You think it’s easy, having everybody watching you? You try it sometime! So, you think I should just wait around, let everybody else get ahead, and then come back and win?
That shows you know nothing about it! My career will be ruined if I wait. You only get one chance!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Mrs. Hartley shot back. “You’re only twelve years old. You don’t have a ‘career,’ and not a single decision you make today will ruin your life. It’ll only teach you how to make better decisions later. It’s the decisions that you don’t make that will come back to haunt you.” Mrs. Hartley and Alice locked eyes, Alice’s leaking the furious tears she couldn’t hold back.

A
loud pounding on the door
shattered the moment. “Anybody in there? Anybody home?”

Alice got up slowly to go to the door, still shaking a little from the strong words lying uneasily in the room. She peered through the peephole and reeled back in shock when she saw two huge soldiers. She opened the door a crack.

“Are you here alone? Is anybody with you?” the bigger one demanded.

“Mrs. Hartley. Mrs. Hartley is here too,” Alice stammered.

“Can we come in?”

Alice led them to the living room. The soldiers asked a lot of questions about how warm they were keeping, if they had any food, how they were cooking it and stuff. They checked the thermostat, which was down to four degrees. They asked what had happened to Mrs. Hartley’s house, as if that wasn’t fairly obvious. They asked about Alice’s dad. Mrs. Hartley told them about her medicine. They asked her if she had family who could take her in.

“I have a daughter outside of Montréal. I called her Monday before the phones stopped working. She has friends staying with her. She said she didn’t have room for me,” Mrs. Hartley said quietly. Alice bit her lip. How awful. Mrs. Hartley was creepy and mean and really didn’t know what she was talking about when it came to Alice’s life, but surely she wasn’t that bad.

The soldiers said they should both be evacuated to a shelter, Mrs. Hartley because she was sick and Alice because she was too young to be on her own and her house was too cold.

Alice turned wide eyes to Mrs. Hartley. “No, we have
to stay here! My dad won’t know where to find me!”

The shorter soldier touched Alice gently on the shoulder. “You can leave your dad a note. Tell him we’re taking you to the Eaton Centre on St. Catherine Street. They’ve set up a shelter there. There’s heat, food, cots and a pharmacy in the mall for medicine. I’ll even put my name on the note so your dad knows who to contact if he can’t find you.”