NON-FICTION: ICE / Spencer Tierney
Spencer Tierney’s “Ice” is more than just a beautiful sliver of mourning. It’s a remembrance of a person–or persons–sure, but it’s a reckoning with how the past shapes us, knowingly or not. There’s a scene in the piece where Spencer and his brother are talking about their lives and Tierney' writes “We try to pick apart where we’re growing.” And it seems like the headline of the piece, that we as humans are always trying to figure out where we’re headed, and we look to our past and our present to try to distill and answer, but it always flits through our fingers. Anyways, check out “Ice” by Spencer Tierney.
“Ice”
by Spencer Tierney
Sometimes when I pour ice in a glass, I think of my uncle.
The only time I heard my uncle’s voice every year was on December 22, the birthday we share. A few minutes of “how are things” and “things are good.” Always things, no details. Dad took the phone afterwards, saying more without saying more. They only spoke on birthdays, it seemed.
I finally visited my uncle as an adult, on a road trip from Chicago to the east coast. I dig through that memory to the point that it’s a faded photo, lost of color in a cheap strip mall where we ate Chipotle outside Philadelphia in September. Several times I wanted to ask him out to a bar after, to lengthen the visit, but then I remembered. He spoke of the halfway house he lived in, but only about how much better off he was than other folks. He discussed the merits of the Big Book, the AA book, because he knew I had been an English major and said that I’d appreciate how well-written it is. I might’ve downloaded it on my phone, but I never read it.
Dad didn't cry when his brother passed a year later in October. More separated than united them, on opposite coasts. Only one wedding and two funerals brought them in the same place in the past decade. During their father’s funeral, Dad held Mom’s hand during a prayer with his face in grief: pale, steady, no tears. I saw the same face again that October.
At Dolores Park in San Francisco my brother and I meet occasionally to drink Woods Beer. We talk of white male privilege, politics, power dynamics, patriarchy, queerness. Our P’s and Q’s. We try to pick apart where we’re growing. My addiction to Twitter and his to TikTok help in unexpected ways. The activists and advocates on there. I always hope he wants to stay for another drink and he usually does. We linger until the cold settles in and draws us home. “I love you,” we can say to each other without adding “man” or “buddy” at the end.
Dad spread his brother’s ashes near his childhood home in Kent Woodlands on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. He lifted up the bag and said to friends and family something like, “This is my brother. May he find peace.” Then the wind picked up and my uncle got on Dad’s shoe. We laughed and so did he.
At the post-ashes dinner, Dad’s college friend acted in a way I naively thought had died out in homophobic movies. He looked at Dad’s car, shook his head, and said, “Well Subaru's are the car of choice for lesbians.” Dad shrugged. “All the more reason to have one then.” I realized this wasn’t the first time they spoke like this, and I heard echoes of my uncle in the college friend’s tone up against Dad’s casual defensiveness.
I think of my brother and me, how we wear nail polish sometimes because we feel like it. Black, blue, red. Dad doesn’t mind, but I can guess how our uncle would react. I think of him sometimes in what he couldn’t say and what he said instead, complaining about my parents’ big house, how unorganized it was, how he couldn’t find things.
I think of my uncle too often at his worst because I didn't know his best. I didn't really know him beyond a few details. Shoveling snow outside his Pennsylvania home and proud of being the “California guy.” Collecting movie DVDs. The divorce, the drinking. At a Marin Catholic High School reunion that pretended to be a West Coast memorial for my uncle, I saw Dad around so many old classmates that were his brother's friends, not his. They talked of high school trips with my uncle, the life of the party, with details so vivid I didn’t understand how they could be memories.
At the quasi-memorial, I heard my uncle's best friend speak of being hungover the morning after my uncle and he hosted a party at their place at Santa Clara University. They got a few minutes’ notice that just outside was my grandfather, an insurance company executive who moved every few years and uprooted his whole family at the whims of his company. My grandmother took on a half-dozen teaching jobs. The two college kids sprayed Lysol everywhere and put the bongs away. When my grandfather entered, my uncle’s best friend made him a hefty gin and tonic as a distraction from the mess. He surveyed the room and his eyes went to his son. “Dougie, you don’t look good.” When he left, the two laughed.
When I saw my uncle at the Chipotle, pale and saying how he was fine, I didn’t know how soon he would relapse. I had to accept that so much more went unsaid than said between us, and I’d have to live with that. Between the lines, I could tell he felt like he didn’t belong at the halfway house, across the state from where his immediate family and friends were. He had a job, but maybe it wasn’t what he wanted. I didn’t ask him who the last person to visit him was, and I’m glad I didn’t. I wanted him to stay with me, in that moment, where it was just us and not what brought him to the halfway house.
I took a selfie of us, and we hugged good-bye. “I love you, bud,” he said before giving detailed instructions on how to avoid the traffic on 76 after the turnpike at this hour. I wish that wasn’t how my story with him ended. I wish he could’ve changed for his own sake. I sound like I'm shaming him, but I know how self-destructive tendencies can kill men. I think of Dad’s face when he’s in grief and hope he doesn’t bury what he feels.
On my latest trip home, I asked Dad questions like when do you think of your brother, and he said when he gets ice from the freezer. That time he visited and complained about no ice. Now there's always more ice in the freezer.
Spencer Tierney is a writer living in the Bay Area.
