Castle of Water: A Novel(61)

C’est la vie, as Barry often told her, a French phrase that she found herself constantly reminding him wasn’t really French at all.





40

And of course, there was still the pressing issue of choosing a name. Barry and Sophie were as at odds on the matter as parents anywhere can possibly be. He found her suggestions to be effeminately French (Pierre-Marie? For a boy? Are you serious?), while she dismissed his preferences as petit bourgeois (Brandon? Sharon? Dégueulasse!). It appeared for the first half of the pregnancy that no name would ever suffice. Several unpleasant arguments ensued, with neither parent willing to compromise or retreat. And while recent developments in their food situation should theoretically have eased the tensions of oncoming parenthood, in the end, they seemed only to complicate things further. Because while Barry’s fishing net still provided the bulk of their protein, Sophie’s diving was beginning to augment their diet in no small way. In addition to the dozen or so fish Barry strained out of the sea on a weekly basis, Sophie was dumping a healthy assortment of crabs, lobsters, and clams into the mix. Her contribution provided a reliable buffer against the risk of starvation and filled in nicely on the days when the fish were nowhere to be found. Full bellied they were not, but comfortable, yes, that they were.

This all changed, however, as soon as Barry learned of the pregnancy. He couldn’t give a precise reason, yet he felt strongly that bobbing among wild reefs one hundred yards from the safety of shore was not the sort of thing a woman with child ought to be doing—especially a woman with child whom he loved very much. The inevitability of fatherhood had brought out his protective side and made him far more cautious in his various nautical pursuits. Sophie pfffed him aplenty and chastised him for being overprotective, but she eventually gave in. Things had been going well as of late, naming issues aside, and she was in no mood to upturn whatever precarious equilibrium they had achieved with yet another pointless argument. D’accord, Barry. She sighed. I won’t go out with you on the boat anymore.

And for a couple of months, that worked out just fine. Barry compensated by increasing his fishing trips, from two or three a week to one almost daily. He began to brave the perimeter of the reef, piloting the Askoy III past the shallows to the open sea beyond, where the sandy seafloor—white as ivory beneath the shallow turquoise of the lagoon—vanished abruptly into a black abyss. By chumming the waters with leftover offal, he was able to summon strange fish he had never seen before. Bat-winged rays, serpentine eels, gape-mouthed groupers—things that never failed to give him a shudder. Each time he entered their domain, he was reinstilled with the wisdom of staying close to the island and reminded of all the horrific uncertainty that lurked just a short ways from it. He ventured past the reef only as long as was necessary, and as soon as a fat dolphin fish or two was netted, he would paddle furiously back to the shallows.

But then Sophie got the hunger. Or perhaps craving is more accurate. Four months in, when the morning sickness had finally faded and the bulge of her belly was really starting to show, it came. Without cause, without warning. Just an excruciating yearning beyond anything she’d ever known. She didn’t feel it so much in her gut as in her bones and her molars. It wasn’t for pickles and ice cream, or even cornichons and a cornet de glace. It was a fearsome hanker for … well, at first she couldn’t place it. Then, like a thunderbolt, it struck her. Something leafy, chewable, and rich in iron. Greens. She wanted greens, which wasn’t totally inexplicable given that their diet consisted almost totally of bananas, with a few fruits de mer thrown in for good measure.

Racked by her craving, Sophie clenched her teeth and clutched at her stomach. There were no greens on the island. Nothing full of fiber or teeming with vitamins. No epinards, no chou vert, no mache, no frisée. Absolument rien.

Nothing except seaweed, that is. Beds of it, both rich and green, clustered on the forbidden side of the reef, just before the ocean floor dropped off into darkness. She had seen it from the canoe when she had gone out with Barry; she had watched its emerald dance through smoky shafts of light. She had even tasted it, when rough seas had uprooted a stalk and left it bunched on the tide line, although such occasions were exceedingly rare. And while she had no way of knowing for sure if the limu, as it was known to ancient Polynesians, or Ulva fasciata, as it is known to modern scientists, contained all the minerals and vitamins she needed, she was confident in her hunch that alleviating the craving was within her grasp.

“No way.” That was Barry’s response when she explained what she intended to do.

“But you know where the seaweed is. It can’t be more than four or five meters underwater. It’s no different than when I used to dive for the clams and lobsters.”

“Yes, it’s very different,” he attempted to explain as unagitatedly as possible, “because you’re almost five months pregnant. And that seaweed grows outside the reef. I’ve seen what it’s like out there, it’s just not a good idea.”

“I’m not asking your permission, Barry, I’m telling you I’m going to get it. I’ve had almost nothing green in two and a half years, and now, with a baby inside me, I need it. The baby needs it. So are you going to help me or not?”

Sophie eyed him with the same fierce determination he remembered from their first weeks on the island: that way of telling him, with a burning stare and iron jaw, that she was her own person and could make her own choices. It had taken him the bulk of his tenure there to realize it, but he loved her for it. It was, after all, what had kept her alive and there alongside him.