I reach in the freezer to get some ice for my glass of water. I can’t stand drinking water that has merely been refrigerated. I need it to be ice cold, so cold that the minute it touches my back teeth they chime and ring upon my nerves. I want to be able to feel the icy water rush down my throat like rushing rapids and hit my calm stomach, coating it with a thin frost. Then of course, I want the brief shiver that starts at the back of my neck as my body reacts to rapid temperature change. That is how drinking water should feel.
I pull out the ice tray and find it empty, except for the small slivers left behind from banging the ice out of its mould. These puny pieces are useless to me. No one had filled the ice tray, again. My mother, who uses the ice most, refused years ago to never make ice. When my parents went shopping for a refrigerator, my mother wanted one with an ice maker but my father resisted; playfully saying that he would be the ice maker. The refrigerator without the ice maker was within their budget so that is the one my father bought.
Every night, I would hear my mother’s hand grab in the tray, causing the other ice cubes to jaunt and jingle. She would plop them in her drink, one by one, until the glass overflowed. The cubes would crack and cackle once they hit the vodka mixture and then quietly bump against each other. When she walked, the cubes would wobble lightheartedly as they pushed some of the liquid from the glass. I always knew my mother had made a drink when I either heard the ice cubes shriek or when my bare foot would step upon a small vodka puddle. When my father went to fill his occasional drink, the tray would be barren except for those small splinters. He would then quietly refill the tray and make more ice. His silence lasted until he noticed that I was using the ice too.
“Kathleen Anne! Fill the ice tray,” he would then yell.
One day, without me knowing, the position of ice maker had fallen to me. I wanted no part of it; I was not there when the decision was made to get a refrigerator without an ice machine. If I were there, I would have voted for the ice machine because even at a young age I would have known that it would be me, the youngest, which would suffer. If I were to fill the ice tray, it would be me forever. I see the past me, young with red cheeks and long blonde hair with homemade popsicles from the ice tray. My mother would pour orange juice and lemonade in the trays and stick popsicle sticks in. One of my teachers told me the water freezes because the molecules would slow down and then they would expand. I would wait for what seemed like years, starring up at the freezer, waiting for those water molecules to become lazy and fat. Would I have wanted an ice machine to steal that memory from me? Then again I see the future me, living in a built in freezer in my parents’ basement, shivering next an empty ice tray. I resisted, I would not get in between the ice cube battle.
I sighed heavily. I really want ice but I don’t want them to know that I filled the ice tray. If I fill it, I give in and my future of a walk in freezer life becomes a reality. I cursed my father for not buying that stupid fridge with an ice machine. I cursed my mother for putting that last ice cube in her drink, causing it to overflow when she could have left it in the tray. I cursed myself for not being able to drink water without ice. I reached to the ice mould tray and pried a few cubes from their square nest and plopped them in my glass. I grabbed another glass, filled it with water, and then poured it into the empty holes of the mould tray. I stood in the kitchen for what seemed like years, starring down at the freezer, waiting for those water molecules to become lazy and fat.
No one would ever know.
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