Because Summer Never Came

I yank a sweater over my head, then a sweatshirt. My thickest coat buttons up on top of that. I pull on my day gloves, red fingers poking out through the frayed tips. The pinkie sleeve on my left glove hangs empty, a permanent reminder of when my parents had forgotten to put on my night gloves as an infant. Winter had come and stolen that pinkie. Mama called it a warning. Next time, she said, the cold might take me.

My breath frosts in front of me until I wrap my wool scarf up so high even my nose is covered. Grandma is waiting in the kitchen, staring at the wall through her wire-rimmed glasses.

“Ready to go to the museum, Gram?”

“Sss… ome… her…” Gram murmurs incoherently.

I slide her wheelchair away from the wall and to the door, lacing up my skates after checking that I’m wearing the recommended four pairs of socks.

Sixty-three years ago, Winter came as usual. Gram had been my age, barely an adult. She said she worked as a lifeguard in something called a pool. Every day she sat under the warm sun and watched people glide through water. And then the pool closed as the seasons changed, but things were different that year.

Winter never left.

I pushed Gram out of our house. Gram braced herself, huddling down into her chair. Sixty-three years, and she’d never gotten used to the cold.

I skate down the street, past Mr. Ziski who was shaping the ice sculptures out front. I wish Ma would fix up ours like that instead of just leaving the lumps of ice. Gram’s chair has blades on the bottom and skids easily over the frozen street. The world is white, blindingly so, and the only noises are the chipping of Mr. Ziski’s pick and the creaks of shifting ice. I rumble over some rough patches in the road, glancing at Gram as I do so. A few years back she fell so bad skating that she hasn’t stood since.

Gram gazes ahead. We slide under an arch so encrusted with icicles that I wish I’d brought our helmets. At least the museum itself doesn’t have an overhead, just walls to mark the perimeter. Some of our elderly neighbors once complained about snow falling into their houses. Mr. Ziski’s mother had been adamant about having a roof over her room. I remember Mama telling me it was hard for older people and we outta respect that, but when the ice creeped in one night and the roof burst, Mrs. Ziski died right there in her bed. Mama used that story as a word of caution.

A museum attendant dressed in an expensive snow suit asks for our names, their voice muffled by a mask.

“Glace Runsler. And my grandmother, Chloe Runsler.”

The attendant nods and scratches out our initials into the ice. They waved us ahead. I push Gram’s chair more slowly, looking around the frigid white expanse. I haven't been to the museum since I was a little kid.

The first exhibit was straight below, a 2027 Lexus frozen deep in a pond of ice. The placard said it was considered a nice car in the 20s, but it just seemed strange to me. Gram stared blankly at it then looked ahead. The next frozen pond contained an array of People and National Geographic magazines. Pretty boring. I’d studied those in school for years and never understood why they’d been saved. I was never a good history student anyway.

Gram pointed at the nearest magazine, a glossy cover depicting a man who wasn’t wearing a scarf, gloves, or even a coat. I find myself shivering just looking at it.

We skate from pond to pond, peering into the windows of the past. The sound of my skates scraping against the ice echoes eerily against the museum walls. Twine dusted in frost hangs around us. People have used it to pin up old photographs and drawings depicting a stranger, warmer world pre Modern Ice Age. Houses with green yards that seem textured and foreign compared to Mr. Ziski’s sculpted ice. Orange and blue landscapes with curled water that are labeled “beaches”. Smiling people walking on black roads instead of skating on white sheets.

This whole place unsettles me. I look at Gram. Her glasses are misted over, and I can’t help but compare them to a frozen pond, as if Gram is the historical artifact and the glasses are her shield from this brave new time. I touch her arm, but she shakes her head and babbles to herself,

“Soh… Mha… Arrr…”

She points fervently at the wall on the far side. I propel us over to it, past dozens of ponds. Gram runs her hand along the surface. Her glove snags on spirals of ice that have formed. She pulls a picture from the twine then drops it, frowning. I quickly pick it up. The attendant is too far away to notice, but it still brings a flush to my cheeks.

“Grandma, you can’t touch anything here. It’s a museum.” I hang up the picture and take her out of reach of the wall. She whimpers and gestures again, getting upset. She peels off her thick day glove and points again, more specifically at a reddish picture near the center. I try to wrestle her hand back into the glove, but she resists, pointing still as her fingers turn pink.

“Okay, okay!” I relent, unsticking the picture from its frozen clip and handing it to her. Close up, I can make out the shape of two young women. One is dressed scantily in red swimming wear with the word lifeguard across her hat. She has her arm around the second woman and is leaning in to kiss her. The other woman has wild dark hair and is laughing so hard she’s nearly doubled over. Gram calms, letting me slip the glove over her blistered hand. She whispers to herself. I take the picture and hang it up again, but not before glimpsing handwriting in the corner.

I stop dead, understanding. The graveyard of her world is entombed in ice around her, and yet, Gram is smiling toothlessly from ear to ear. And the reason she’s smiling is the simple writing on the picture, the thing she’s been trying to tell me all day.

To Chloe,

Love… Summer