The Missing One (41 page)
Authors: Lucy Atkins
In the next photo my mother is holding a baby. With a start, I realize it must be me. There I am. Me. She is smiling, her face rounder, bright, her dimples deep, eyes very green. She looks happy. My face is almost covered by a little bonnet and I am looking up at her.
My eyes fill with tears as I stare down at the photo.
When I asked Susannah if she had photos of me as a baby, she must have forgotten about this one. This is the earliest picture I have ever seen of myself. It is the only one I've ever seen of my mother holding me as a new baby. And I want it so badly. Maybe she'll give it to me. Maybe I could just take it.
The last photo is black-and-white again, and it's my mother with a very youthful Susannah â just their faces, laughing. They are girlish and beautiful. My mother is looking at the camera and Susannah is looking at my mother. And there it is, written across Susannah's face: a huge and unmistakable passion.
I stare at the two of them. So, my question is answered: Susannah is unmistakably in love. She was â maybe still is â completely in love with my mother.
This explains why she has acted so oddly, withholding things, getting furious and upset. She can't talk about the past because when my mother left her for my father she never got over it. She held onto her longing â her passion â for forty years.
I gaze at the other photos inside the desk. I am looking at a shrine.
Poor Susannah. It is so sad to nurse an unrequited love, like this, for your whole life.
Then something else catches my eye â an ancient-looking book is tucked behind the photos â browning at the edges and all curled up. It looks as if it's been dropped in a bath. I peel it open and I can't believe what I'm seeing. It is my mother's handwriting, the same girlish cursive I know from the notebook. Pages of it. Pages and pages. And it isn't scientific notes.
This book is in far worse condition than the scientific notebook. Many pages are welded together, others have disintegrated entirely; on some the writing is blurred and washed to illegibility. But it's unmistakably hers.
And, standing barefoot in Susannah's bedroom, with my heart pulsing, blood swishing in my ears, and the longing for Finn tight in my belly, I begin to read my mother's words.
Asking S to come was an epic â epic â mistake
.
I guess I lost it tonight. We were eating dinner downstairs â some watery stew thing â quite late, both so tired. She pushed and pushed at me, telling me I'm being exploited, saying the balance is all wrong and asking dumb things about payment and finances. Finally I lost it â I guess I let out all the pent-up frustration at her. I yelled something like âThat's enough! If you can't accept my choices then I don't know how we can carry on being friends.' She put her fists on the table and said, real mean and nasty, âThing is, your choices, Elle, are just so shitty and misguided.' So that's when I blew â I got
up and screamed, âFrom the moment I told you I was leaving California you've been jealous. Admit it! You're just fucking jealous, Susannah. It's pathetic
!'
What happened next was kind of unsettling. I saw this rage coming up from inside her â she literally seemed to swell and grow. She got up slowly, her face went very white; her eyes kind of bulged out of her skull. She stood very still for a moment, then leaned across the table and pushed her face right over at me. This big vein was pulsing down her forehead and her jaw was clamped shut. I think I put up my hands because I suddenly had the feeling she was going to lean over and bite a chunk out of my face. There was something vicious and off-kilter about the way she was looking at me. But she didn't move. After a moment, she pulled back, slowly, turned around and walked out. I heard the front door slam
.
I ran straight upstairs â I don't know why because rationally I knew she'd gone out front â but I just had to go check. All fine. I sat on the floor by the cot. I was shaking and I felt quite sick. It's taken me a half-hour to calm down â and I still feel unwell. In fact, I realize I have felt off-colour more or less the whole time we've been up here. Stress? So much is at stake
.
I think what I just saw was all the violence of her childhood balled up into a fist and pointed at me. I kind of always knew it was there â that's why I tiptoed around her for so long. But I'm glad I've seen it now. She gets this monotone when she tells me horrible things about her family, like ânone of that can bother me any more â I've dealt with it'. But of course she can't possibly have â you don't grow up in a house like that and
come out intact. At least, with my parents I didn't actually see anything â though I heard it, I think. Maybe. I don't remember much. I realized the other day that I can hardly remember Momma at all â just snatches: a dress with pink flowers, and that necklace with the piece of amber in it, like candy. I guess Father got rid of all her things because there was nothing there at all when he died. When I think about it, I don't remember much before my eighth birthday; I shut off all the memories â which I guess was for the best
.
But sometimes I think I don't know what's going on in Susannah's head at all. And the truth is she doesn't know who I am, really, either â we're just two people who were roommates for a while, and told each other stuff. I should never have asked her to come here. But then, I couldn't have managed this on my own. And she wanted to come. She almost wasn't going to take no for an answer anyways
.
I have to calm down. I'll go drink some water
.
I should probably have distanced myself from her when I got the chance â but when I think about it, she didn't let me do that either â writing intense letters, sending gifts, moving up to Victoria, inviting herself to stay
.
Drank water. Took a bath. Fixed with Ana to have another picnic lunch for tomorrow. Calmer now. Ana is a very calming presence. Still tired and a little queasy, but not so riled up. I feel bad for her now. I've no idea where she's gone â it's raining out there, and dark. Must be in the bar
.
I have to be more tolerant. She's been through so much. I need to focus on the good things about her. She can be great
company â funny, crazy, thoughtful, thought-provoking. Here's what I realized in the bath: she's like Gray. I can't expect her to really understand why I need to do this. I can't possibly tell her about the sense of duty that I have. Somewhere out there Bella has a mother and every time I see a female of the right sort of age, I wonder. I do feel it â like a duty. I have a duty to find Bella's mother, and I will, one day. But if you tell someone you feel a sense of obligation towards a killer whale they're going to look at you like you're a crazy person. It's more than that, though. I couldn't tell S about the first day on the boat last summer when I looked into the whale's eye and felt the connection â it was like an electric shock to the heart. You can't explain these things without sounding like you should be institutionalized. But J gets it, and so do the others, because they feel it too. We're a tribe of believers â fanatics to the outside world. S doesn't get this because she feels no connection to the whales. She thinks this is about grant proposals and funding
.
Ana told us this morning that in the old days the floathouses up here belonged to loggers. They'd tow a whole community â houses and shops, even schools â wherever the next logging claim was. Now there are still loggers, but also fishermen, and draft dodgers, hippies, and anyone escaping or running or looking for an alternative life. So surely I can find a place here too. Shit â footsteps on stairs. She's coming back!
The next few pages are stuck together. I am breathing too fast and my limbs feel shaky. My mouth is very dry. This is incredible. Proof. Though I don't know what of. I flick to the
early part of the diary. It seems to be all about chasing orcas â there are several pages about a âmatriline' and exhaustive descriptions of pods â the J pod, K pod, and L pod â and the individual whales, each with its own letter, number and name. My mother loves initials. Researchers â I assume they are researchers â are D and K and C and J. Sometimes MB. She seems obsessed with a âcatalogue'.
I read a short section where she is talking about âthe guys' and âthe boys' and I think she's referring to more researchers, but then I realize the âguys' are whales. They are three brothers and they have distinct personalities â or she thinks they do â the little one is shy, then there's the joker middle brother and the more aggressive eldest, who occasionally swims right at the boat then ducks under at the last minute. There's a baby, too â and she's obviously entranced with him. The way she writes, it's as if they are people â not friends, but people in whom she has a focused, obsessive interest. Like an anthropologist inserting herself among a kindly and fascinating tribe. Then she describes something obviously whale-like â âpec-slapping' or âbreaching' or âspyhopping' â and they're animals again.
I flick forwards, but a whole bunch of pages are clumped and stuck and I know if I try to pry them apart they'll tear. I can read fragments of sentences here and there and they mostly seem to be about acoustics: â
that ⦠burst pulse again
 â
the creaking, wooden sound
' or ââ¦
and she gave a whistle: “Here I am
” â¦
heard them echolocating
⦠'
I lift my head and listen for the sound of Susannah and Finn bursting through into the kitchen, the dogs' claws, Finn's little voice. Nothing. The house is still empty. I really
need to go and look for them â he'll be hungry. He needs his lunch. And I need him.
But this journal is unbelievable. Alice has to see this. This is incredible. Susannah has my mother's diary right here and she didn't show me â it proves, at least, that she has been telling the truth. But clearly she left out some of the crucial details. I have to take this home â this is evidence. I have to show this to Alice. This is vindication. It was not so mad, after all, to get on a plane and come here. Maybe it was instinct.
I need to call Alice as soon as I get a phone signal. I was right that my mother resented me for her lost career. When she got pregnant, all of this had to end â Dad probably insisted that she come to England where I would be safe and well-schooled. I basically ruined her life.
This information is important for Alice, too. It can't have been easy to grow up with a sister like me. Alice had to witness all our fights and live with the constant tension. She must have felt guilty that she and my mother were so harmonious â being the favourite daughter brings its own pressures. She was always trying to make amends. It isn't surprising that she grew up to be so focused on rules and laws and making everything fair. But is my sister happy? I don't think so. Alice, I realize, is as imprisoned by our past as I am. She needs to know the truth about our mother as much as I do. In some way, this could liberate Alice too.
I flick forwards: a couple of pages describing how they came across a group of orcas that were rubbing their bellies on some stony beach. A description of the guest house:
Ana, who runs this place, always seems calm, even when her boys are running around like wild things ⦠and those boys really are wild â cute, but wild â¦
⦠lovely clear blue eyes, pale lashes, and fine blonde hair that she pulls into a knot on the back of her head. I like her a lot. She told me she's from a family of Swedish loggers and Glen is a fisherman, though I guess he leaves so early and is sleeping when we get back. We haven't seen him, not once. The three of us ate together last night ⦠S silent, brooding ⦠A and I talked â¦
⦠Turns out they've known each other since grade school. A went to Victoria for a few years to train to be a high school teacher, but âit just didn't feel right not to be here, with Glen'. So she came home ⦠she said it all so simply, I felt a â¦
The rest of the page is smudged so badly I can't read any more. I turn over and the letter âS' catches my eye again.
â¦
Woke in the night, last night, maybe 2 a.m. S sitting on the wooden chair by my bed. She was watching me
.
The rain had stopped and it was white moonlight, and with that hair, her nightdress and pale eyes, she looked spooky. I don't know how long she'd been there â I guess I sensed her and woke up. I sat bolt upright and said something like, âWhat are you doing?' She said, in this low, catatonic voice, âJust watching you sleep.' I told her to quit it and go lie down. She did. So did I. We both lay there, but I did NOT sleep after that. Even when I heard her breathing slow, I just couldn't.
I was still awake when the ravens started clamouring and cawing in the trees, at 5.30
.
Now â after another day motoring round the coast, finding nowhere remotely suitable â I'm tired like someone's opened me up and taken my bones out. That's the real problem here: am so damned tired I can't think straight. I feel sick again. I guess S is upset by our argument. She's been monosyllabic today
.
She's in the bath right now. It's peaceful in here without her â hiss of the water through pipes, this sleeping angel, the patter of rain on the roof. I never have been any good at friendship, all the intensity women require â the to-ing and fro-ing and unspoken needs and all the little offences. It's just all so complicated and tiresome. I keep getting this feeling that I'm missing something really obvious, like there's a big list of rules just beyond my field of vision and I'm breaking every one of them, and that's why she's so mad and frustrated. But I don't know what they are
.
I need to sleep but have to stay awake â don't want to sleep while she's still pacing around. If I keep writing, then I'll stay awake
.
Sometimes, lately, I picture her as a wolf, following at my heels, ready to savage anyone who comes too close â but maybe also ready to turn on me too if the wind shifts and something flicks in her brain. I don't know. Something isn't right with her at the moment â if it ever was
.
J called earlier â he's making progress: CDF is interested in the Institute plan â though it has to go through some committees so won't know for a while. He'll tell me more when back
.
D's gone home now â C, K and R going next week. It's going to get lonely. I have to work something out. I have to find a home â but maybe that isn't going to happen up here. It's possible that all this has been a ridiculous fantasy
.
Right now, I have this intense pain in my head that won't go away. It's cold in this room even with the heater on. My hand is aching like hell from writing â have to stop
.
When she gets out of the bathroom, I'm going to tell her we'll do one more day then go. When she's back in Victoria I might even miss her
.