My Last Continent (11 page)

Moments later, the boat lurches us back to where we are—we've drifted into view of the
Cormorant,
a dark shadow behind a thickening layer of mist, and the wind is increasing, blowing snow off the tops of the bergs.

I murmur into his neck, “We should get back.”

“Not yet,” he murmurs back, and as we stand in the gliding boat I sense what he's thinking: We are like the ever-shifting, ever-changing ice—and whatever happens next, wherever we end up, we'll never be quite the same again.

FIVE DAYS LATER,
after disembarkation, Keller and I spend the night in an Ushuaia guesthouse, not knowing when we'll see each other next. We speak very little, even during our last moments together, when, in the sharp, bittersweet morning
air, I stand with him on Calle Hernando de Magallanes as he puts his bag into the cab that will take him to the airport. He turns to me, and I press into the heat of his body, his arms around me, his fingers on my back. I want to feel the roughness of his hands one more time, his tall lean body against mine, skin to skin. I slide my hands under his pullover, landing somewhere between cotton and fleece, knowing as I do that I won't be able to reach any further, that this is as far as I can go.

FOUR DAYS BEFORE SHIPWRECK

Bransfield Strait
(62°57'S, 59°38'W)

T
here are no portholes in the exam room of the medical suite, and though I can feel that the sea is calm, my nausea is getting worse. I've managed to put off Glenn's insistence on a doctor's visit until today, and now I'm hoping my queasiness is only because I can't see the horizon. I know Susan has something stronger than meclizine for seasickness—she doesn't prescribe it except in extreme cases, but I'm getting to the point where I think I qualify.

I always feel a little out of sorts when I can't see the ocean—which is strange for someone who grew up in the Midwest and spends most of the year landlocked in Oregon. Growing up, I loved the water and would often swim in Shaw Park's public pool in Clayton, Missouri. I'd dive off the ten-meter platform, pretending it was a seaside cliff. I'd put on my mask and snorkel and imagine that people's limbs, in their myriad shapes and sizes, were sea creatures. I'd see their colorful swimsuits as brightly hued fish.

My other favorite place had been the geodesic dome at the botanical garden. My father used to take me there when he was in town, which wasn't often, and the rainforest inside, with its tropical humidity and mist, with waterfalls and wildly exotic plants, made me want to explore the world. By the time I was in junior high, my neighborhood had gotten one of the first outdoor-gear stores in greater St. Louis—it was a small store, but just walking through its narrow aisles felt like adventure. I'd try on the extreme-weather clothing and imagine myself at one of the poles.

I didn't know back then that I would, in fact, end up spending much of my life in one of the polar regions, and, over the years, I've come to think of the continent not only as a place but as a living, breathing thing—to me, Antarctica has always been as alive as the creatures it houses: Every winter, the entire continent fattens up with ice, then shrinks again in the summer. When I'm here on the peninsula, looking out at the green and white of young ice and the deep, ancient blue of multiyear ice, I feel as though the bergs, too, are alive, sent forth by thousands of miles of glaciers to protect the continent from such predators as the
Endurance
and the
Erebus,
the
Cormorant
and the
Australis
.

And this is what worries me.

Keller knows as well as anyone that the
Australis
isn't equipped to take on these icy sentinels. He knows what an iceberg looks like underwater, that beneath the exquisite beauty above the surface is a sharp, jagged, nasty thing that will destroy ships if they attempt to pass too close. Even for an experienced captain, miscalculating the distance is not difficult to do, with the constantly shifting winds and waters, the contin
ual calving of new icebergs. Charts of this heavily traveled area have regions not properly surveyed, and every captain knows there is nothing more dangerous than unseen ice.

Sometimes I wonder how long this alien invasion—the ships, the humans—can continue before the continent strikes back.

Susan opens the door, returning to the closet-size examining room where I've been waiting. Earlier, she'd had me pee in a cup, had taken my vital signs and done a quick exam, asked me a dozen questions. I'm starting to feel a bit better, and I stand up as she enters the room, ready to forgo medication and be on my way.

“Have a seat,” she says.

“I'm good to go, actually. Shouldn't have wasted your time.”

“Please,” she says, motioning me back down. Her face is serious, too serious for something like the flu.

I sit.

“Deb,” she says, “I don't know if this will be good news or bad news, but”—she pauses—“you're pregnant.”

“What?” I can barely choke out the word. Feebly, I lean back in the chair.

“You're pregnant.”

“That's not possible.”

“You mentioned that you had sex—”

“I know what I said.” I can hardly think straight. “What I mean is, I was careful. Very careful. Can you run the test again?”

“Already have.” Susan looks at me. I've known her for years; like so many, we see each other down here and nowhere else.
“You're going to have to take extra care on the landings. You're about eight weeks along.”

She doesn't bring up options, as most doctors would, because down here there are no options for something like this.

“This can't be right,” I say.

“I'm sorry,” she says. She begins talking about what foods I should avoid, what activities I should let other crew members handle, but I'm barely listening. When I leave her office a few minutes later, promising I'll return, I can't remember anything she'd said.

“There you are.” It's Glenn, jogging behind me in the passageway to catch up. “You all right?” he asks. “What did Susan say?”

“Don't worry,” I say. “It's not food poisoning. The ship's not contaminated with norovirus. I'm fine.”

“You sure about that?” He studies my face. “You don't seem yourself.”

“Residual jet lag, probably. I just need a bit of rest, that's all.”

He nods. “Take the rest of the day off. We don't have another landing until tomorrow. You'll probably feel better then.”

I nod back, then make my way to the sanctuary of my bunk. I lie down and lay my hands across my belly, which feels the same as always. I think again of icebergs, of how much is hidden away under the surface of the water. How appearances can be so deceiving. I can conceal this pregnancy for the duration of the voyage, but then what? My mind can't move beyond this concept of ice, how everything you have to fear is what lies beneath, what's unseen and unknown.

THREE MONTHS BEFORE SHIPWRECK

Eugene, Oregon

I
cross the garden from my cottage to the main house, a light rain dampening my hair. As the austral summer begins in the Southern Hemisphere, October in Oregon is much the same: gray, rainy, a chill that sinks into your bones. A few strands of hair stick to my forehead, and I pause on the back porch, securing the bottle of wine I've brought between my knees as I release my ponytail and shake out my hair, slipping the band around my wrist.

I hear the sounds of raised voices and laughter, and before I reach the door, it bursts open. “Sorry!” a woman says. The guy beside her is laughing, his arm around her waist, and they stumble out into the garden.

As usual, I'm late to the party and a bit too sober.

For the last five years, I've rented the little cottage behind this restored Craftsman where my landlord-now-friend Nick Atwood lives with a fluffy white cat named Gatsby. Nick and I basically share custody of Gatsby—Nick's an entomologist at the university, and his house is so often filled with col
leagues and friends that Gatsby frequently comes to my place for some peace and quiet.

Nick's kitchen is warm and smells of his famous Brazilian risotto cakes. I put the wine on the counter. Gatsby comes over, tail in the air, and lets me scratch him behind the ears. “What're you still doing here?” I ask him. “I expected you at my place hours ago.” He flicks his tail and stalks into the laundry room.

I head toward the living room and immediately bump into Nick, who's on his way to the kitchen. He gives me a big hug, and a kiss somewhere around my ear. “I was about to give up on you.”

“Sorry. Traffic was brutal.”

“Right.”

Nick draws me into a circle of colleagues and their plus-ones; he slips a brimming wineglass into my hand, makes introductions, and leaves me with the group. I wish for a few familiar faces, like my friend Jill, a fellow bio lecturer who's away visiting her boyfriend in San Francisco. It's much more fun when she and I can be each other's date for the evening amid all the couples.

“So
you're
Deb,” says a professor from Nick's department.

I turn to look at her—a dark-haired woman named Sydney, sharp-featured but soft-eyed, her slender body standing very straight. “Have we met before?” I ask.

“No,” Sydney says. “But I've heard a lot about you.”

Before I can ask what she's talking about, she introduces me to her boyfriend, a construction manager who draws us into a discussion about
LEED
-certified building and local politics. I listen, trying not to think about how I'm neglecting
the lesson plans for my biology course. Eventually I ease my way out of the conversation and wander across the room.

The house is neat and clean, with Nick's love of invertebrates on full display; the walls in the living room are covered with photographs and illustrations of bees and butterflies. As much as I dislike parties, I do like the white noise of them, and I always enjoy being in Nick's house. I love seeing the way he's merged science with art, and I like the semisocial aspect of being around people, even if not fully engaged with them.

Soon I feel the draft of Nick's front door opening and closing, the noise level in the room fading slowly as the party winds down. As I turn the corner into the empty hallway, the ambient sounds of people talking and laughing and saying good night are almost like a lullaby.

The first time Nick invited me over, soon after I'd moved into the cottage, I demurred—as I did the second and third times. Finally, to be polite, I went, feeling the whole time as though I were in a dollhouse, as if I were back home, where my mother's eagle eye would catch every fingerprint I left, every speck of dirt my shoes deposited on the floor. Then one of his friends toppled a glass of wine onto the couch, staining its beige cushion with a large, deep-crimson moon—and Nick simply poured her a fresh glass and tossed a pillow over the stain.
Trust me, Gatsby's done a lot worse to that couch,
he said.

That's when I began to relax—once I noticed the claw marks on the coffee table, the shredded arm of the sofa, the tiny nose prints on the inside of the kitchen window. And over the years, as we've grown closer, Nick has become one of the few constants in my life, someone who's always here when I come home after months away.

Now I wander back into the kitchen, where Nick's talking to Sydney. Her boyfriend isn't around, and they don't see me, and I feel, as I often do in these situations, that I'm not really a part of what's happening but observing it from a distant place; I'm on the periphery, like something in the background of a photograph that never catches the untrained eye.

When the boyfriend returns, we say our good nights. Nick walks them both to the front door, his hand brushing against my back as he passes by.

I open the dishwasher and begin to run water over the glasses in the sink. A few minutes later, Nick is back, depositing empty beer bottles into the recycle bin in the corner.

“Leave it for the maid!” he says, pouring himself another glass of wine.

“I would, if you actually had a maid.”

He leans over to shut off the water, gently hip-butting me out of the way. I see that he's used a rubber band to tie his hair—a thick, light-brown mop he never seems to know what to do with—into a little bob at the nape of his neck.

“Come here a second,” I say.

I stand behind him and begin to untangle the dirty rubber band from his hair, as gently as I can. He tilts his head back to help, and I feel the waver of his inebriated body trying hard to stand still. I pull my ponytail holder from my wrist and put it between my teeth, running my hands through his hair, smoothing it out. It's a little damp from the rain outside, and it smells green, like a forest. I pull the hair back and tie it behind his head again. Then I turn him around to face me. “No more rubber bands,” I tell him. “They tear the shit out of your hair.”

“I'm thinking of cutting it, actually,” Nick says, running his hand along the back of his head.

“Don't,” I say. “It looks good long.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” His hair, especially when it's tousled, reminds me of Keller's.

He looks as if he's about to ask me something, but he doesn't. Nick has a sweet face, like a Saint Bernard's: calm, competent, a little somber. He's tall and solidly built, and with his year-round suntan, from studying insects up and down the West Coast, he looks more like a rugby player than an entomologist.

As I sneak a couple of glasses into the dishwasher, I say, “That professor friend of yours, Sydney—what have you told her about me?”

“Nothing.”

“She said she's heard a lot about me.”

“That's what friends do,” he says. “We talk from time to time.”

“About what?”

“Why you never come to my parties. Despite the fact that I'm an excellent cook and you have nothing but dehydrated camping food in your house.”

“I'm here. Fashionably late, but here.”

“You know what I mean,” he says. “When would I ever see you, if I didn't drag you over here for food and booze?”

“I'd bring the rent check by eventually.”

“Funny,” he says.

“Oh, you know I'm kidding.”

“Right. Because you pay by direct deposit.”

“It's not that.”

“It is, though, isn't it?” He props himself against the counter. “Don't you ever go out?”

“Sure I do,” I say. “Just the other night, Jill and I went out to Sam Bond's to grade quizzes.”

“Doing work at the local pub is still working,” he says.

“We had beer.”

“Unless you woke up in someone else's bed with a raging hangover, it doesn't count.”

“For the record,” I say, “I
do
have a social life. He just doesn't live here. In Oregon, I mean.”

Nick raises his eyebrows. “I'm familiar with the concept of long-distance relationships,” he says, “but don't you think that's a little extreme?”

“You're one to talk, Professor Kettle. I don't recall seeing any single women at this party.”

“I thought you counted penguins for a living.”

“Your point?”

“You counted wrong.” He steps closer. “But then, she was the last one to arrive.”

I reach for a nearby wine bottle and refill my glass because I don't know what to say.

“Remember what Freud said?” he asks. “You need two things in life—love and work. You know, as in a balance of the two?”

“Maybe I like being off-balance.”

He takes a step backward, still slouched against the counter, as if holding himself up. “I'm serious. When are you going to settle down? Join the real world?”

“Come on, Nick—you're a scientist. Reality's depressing.”

“I'm not talking about bugs and birds,” he says. “I'm
trying
to talk about the birds and bees.”

I smile and take a long drink of wine.

He leans forward. “Don't you think you could ever be involved in a relationship that's not quite so long distance?”

“Define
long
.”

“The same county? Zip code. Street, maybe.”

He's close again, his face next to mine, and I look down at his mouth, at his full, wine-stained lips, and then I back up and turn to the fridge, where he keeps the aspirin. I shake two pills into my hand and pour him a glass of water.

“Take these,” I say. “And drink the whole glass. Every drop.”

He takes the water and aspirin but doesn't say anything. I give his hair a quick tug and say, “See you tomorrow.”

As I open the door, I look back and watch his expression change—a furrowed brow, a quick smile, something ­wistful—and then I shut the door behind me and walk across the garden.

LATE THE NEXT
afternoon, as twilight falls, I'm trying to focus on my lesson plans when Gatsby's yowl at my back door gives me an excuse to get up from the kitchen table.

I let him in and step away as he shakes the water from his long fur. He stretches, then jumps up onto one of the kitchen chairs and starts a bath. “You hungry, Gatsby?” I ask, scratching the top of his head. He pauses and looks at me, then resumes bathing. He's sometimes hungry, sometimes not—such is life between two households—and I keep cans
of cat food among the beans and soups in my cupboard for the days that he is.

I glance out the window, across the garden, and am surprised to see the windows mostly dark, the house quiet. I picture Nick inside alone, hungover, and I feel a little guilty for having invited Gatsby in when he should be keeping his real owner company.

I sit back down at the table and return to work, but it's not long before I hear a knock. It's Nick, blinking rain out of his eyes, holding a stack of mail and a bottle of wine. I open the door to let him in.

“Isn't that the bottle I brought last night?”

“It's probably the only thing I didn't drink,” he says.

He puts the wine down on the table and leafs through the mail. “Thanks for coming by,” he says, lifting his eyes briefly as he hands me my mail—a couple of bills and
Conservation
magazine. “You didn't need to clean up, though.”

“You barely let me anyway.”

He motions toward the wine. “Where's your corkscrew?”

I get the corkscrew from the drawer next to the stove, and, while he opens the bottle, I plunk down two wineglasses on the table.

Nick tilts his head toward my laptop and says, “What're you working on?”

As I sit down again, I shove the laptop and my folders across the table, out of the way. “Class stuff.”

He fills our glasses and sits down across from me, in the chair next to Gatsby's. “I want to apologize for last night,” he says.

I've been half-hoping he didn't remember. “No need.”

“It wasn't fair,” he says. “Your life is your business. Your love life especially.”

“Don't be like that. I want you to be a part of my life.”

“But only a few months out of the year, right?” He looks at me and shakes his head. “Will you ever get that place out of your system?”

“Why, so I can settle down here in Eugene? Build a picket fence and have a few kids?”

“What's so wrong with that?”

“You're lucky, Nick. Your work is right here in our backyard—
Bombus vosnesenskii, Bombus vandykei
. The
Pygoscelis
penguins are in short supply around here, in case you haven't noticed.”

“Right,” he says with a laugh. “Like you didn't choose penguins for the very reason that they take you to the other end of the planet.”

I don't answer.

“It has cost me, you know,” he says. “Staying here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was supposed to get married,” he says. “Years ago, before you moved in. This cottage was going to be her art studio. She got a job with a magazine in New York and decided to take it.”

“And?”

“We told ourselves we could make a commuter marriage work,” he says. “But the truth was, we were both stubborn. Selfish. I thought she'd move back here, and she assumed I'd join her in New York. Neither of us got what we wanted.”

“You did what you had to do. Why's that so wrong?”

“Because I regret it. Because I couldn't see past the present moment—that I might want something different one day. Do
you think I wouldn't take off to the other side of the globe if I could? That I wouldn't be in Antarctica myself, if it had bumblebees?” He meets my eyes, studying me. “Don't you worry you'll have regrets?”

The sound of a fist on the front door is so jarring in the following silence that we both jump. Nick's leg bumps against the table, rattling our wineglasses. He follows me as I walk through the living room.