Ice Cream Van
The van’s colourful decals are faded from a thousand summers, paint peeling, and the windows are dark, except for the glow from the small serving hatch.
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There it was again, closer. It was ignorable before; just her imaginings meshed into the distant hum of traffic. But now, a faint but clear tune drifting through the night air, through the open window. A familiar childhood tune. You know it too.
Clara sits bolt upright in bed. She had been fast asleep not five minutes ago, now she is wide awake, attuned to the sounds outside. The solitary vehicle passing down her street, a distant dog barking, the occasional rustle of dry, papery leaves.
The clock hand tickles past 3 a.m., and she hears it once more. At this hour?
Clara’s stubborn curiosity gets the better of her trepidation. She pulls on her slippers, slips into her robe, steps out into the chilly night air. The jingle is much louder outside, eerily out of place. How has no one heard? No lights from the neighbouring houses. Can they hear it? She follows the sound down the empty streets, heart thumping, breath misting in the cool, wet air.
She rounds another corner and she sees it — an ice cream van, parked under an uncertain, sputtering streetlight. Behind it, the beginning of the woods not yet surrendered to suburbia. That flickering light hinting at the greens, yellows and greys of bark, leaf, branch and shadow. Threatening more.
The van’s colourful decals are faded from a thousand summers, paint peeling, and the windows are dark, except for the glow from the small serving hatch. A figure’s shadow moves across the window.
Clara approaches, confident she is dreaming. “Hello?” she calls out. The music cuts off, without echo, and everything is still, and real.
“Hi,” said a voice, smooth and calm, from inside the serving hatch, “What can I get you?”
Clara hesitates. “It’s a bit late for ice cream, isn’t it?”
The figure chuckles like a child, reminding her of her brother when they were young. “It’s never too late. We have something special …” The figure shifts slightly, and she catches a glint of pearl white, perfect teeth. Unnatural smooth skin. A plastic sheen.
Clara steps closer as the ice cream man prepares her treat.
“How about a memory?” he offers, and extends a hand holding a cone with a dollop of creamy ice cream, swirling in dark, rainbow colours.
“Memory?”
“Yes.” His smile broadens until it seems to risk spilling off his face. “One lick, you relive a moment. I find nothing is more difficult to imagine than the real. But this will be real, vivid as the day is long.”
Something in the vendor’s voice compels her. She reaches out, takes the cone and brings it to her lips. The cold touches her tongue then this world we live in, melts.
She is eight again, standing on that small island in the middle of the lake. Just the two of them. Just like it is real and happening again. Just like that last time, just before it all went downhill.
Holding her father’s hand, warm, alive, smiling down at her. The sun setting somewhere behind them, smearing the horizon with oranges and purples as it descends. The scent of pine infused with wet, warm soil fills her lungs. The sound of water lapping against the shore. Tears well in Clara’s eyes as she squeezes her father’s hand, so tight, savouring the moment.
Then, with the suddenness of a switch, the sky darkens, the lake’s waters turn black, and her father’s hand grows cold. The hand collapses into two dimensions. Clara looks up at her dad, who is now just a life-sized, cheap, card-board cut-out. A static, confused scream printed on his flat face. A sudden gust blows it into the water with a delicate splash, and it floats off, like a flimsy life raft.
This was many years ago.
She had tried many times since then to leave the island. But she knows really the dark water will never let her. She wanders endlessly and aimlessly by the lakeshore. There is nothing else to do. No one to talk to. She doesn’t get hungry. She never tires. The sky will remain perpetually dark, the waters forever cold.
Sometimes she thinks she can see the ice cream man on the far shore. Or far off, in his little boat, gently rowing. His whistling carried on the wind; that same tune.
All she can think to ask, she shouts across the water: “Is this a dream?”
And the figure’s faint, distant reply floats back to her: “How can that matter?”
