Ice Cream

It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather. Daisy had killed herself the week before. They probably thought we needed distraction. Without Daisy, the staff-to-patient ration was higher than usual: five patients, three nurses.

Down the hill, past the magnolia already losing its fleshy blossoms, the pink turning brown and rotten along the edge, past the paper-dry daffodils, past the sticky laurel that could crown you or poison you. The nurses were less nervous on the street that day, spring fever making them careless - or perhaps the staff-to-patient ratio was a more comfortable one for them.

The floor of the ice cream parlor bothered me. It was black-and-white checkerboard tile, bigger than supermarket checkerboard. If I looked only at a white square, I would be all right, but it was hard to ignore the black squares that surrounded the white ones. The contrast got under my skin. I always felt itchy in the ice cream parlor. The floor meant Yes, No, This, That, Up, Down, Day, Night - all the indecisions and opposites that were bad enough in life without having them spelled out for you on the floor.

A new boy was dishing out cones. We approached him in a phalanx.

"We want eight ice cream cones," said one of the nurses.

"Okay," he said. He had a friendly, pimply face.

It took a long time to decide what flavors we wanted. It always did.

"Peppermint stick," said the Martian's girlfriend.

"It's just called 'peppermint,'" said Georgina.

"Peppermint dick."

"Honestly." Georgina was revving up for a compliment.

"Peppermint clit."

The Martian's girlfriend got a nurse nip for that.

There were no other takers for peppermint, chocolate was a big favorite. For spring they had a new flavor, peach melba. I ordered that.

"You gonna want nuts on these?" the new boy asked.

We looked at one another. Should we say it? The nurses held their breath. Outside, the birds were singing.

"I don't think we need them," said Georgina.

Susanna Kaysen