Castle of Water: A Novel(66)
Utterly perplexed, Barry collapsed onto his elbows and buried his face in his hands, grunting aloud in frustration. He had no idea how to make sense of it all. Defeated for the time being, he gathered his hips beneath him and sat cross-legged before the diagram, staring down at its incomplete blur. Well, almost defeated. Because while his little exercise in triangulation had proven futile, it had not been totally unproductive. Using his finger once again, he drew two clusters of islands where he had guessed the Marquesas and Tahiti to be. Somewhere to the northwest—where, exactly, he could not say—two castaways were stranded on a minuscule and otherwise uninhabited beach. But he knew in which direction both island clusters could be found. The Marquesas were likely closer, given that they were within distance to receive the occasional AM signal and that they had been flying for some time when the storm hit. But the Marquesas were also composed of just a handful of islands—if one was to make the trek, the possibility existed of missing them altogether. Tahiti, on the other hand, must have been considerably farther. Maybe too far to even consider. But Tahiti, he knew from his time spent poring over travel guides, was surrounded by an archipelago of hundreds of tiny islands. The voyage in that direction would be far longer and even more perilous, but if one could traverse all that open sea, one would be far more likely to bump into something. The trade winds could be problematic, but between tacking and paddling, they were not insurmountable. And even if no land was ever sighted in either direction, simply being closer to inhabited islands meant the chances of running into a boat or a plane would increase exponentially—and being rescued at sea wasn’t a bad option either. He remembered telling Sophie, the first time they had seen the old Polynesian cave paintings together, how those ancient people had known exactly what they were doing and precisely where they were going when they set out onto the open seas. Was he inching closer to that category? Admittedly, Barry was hardly a nautical expert, and he did not know exactly what he was doing. But the countless hours he’d logged on the Askoy III did count for something. And yes, he was far from being able to pinpoint their precise location on a map, had they even possessed one. But he did know in what general directions civilization could be found, if he were only to point the Askoy’s nose its way.
If. A big word. A humongous, daunting word, in fact, when your home was a five-acre island, your boat a rickety outrigger canoe, and the love of your life now seven months pregnant and soon to give birth. If there was only some way to get them all safely home. If only someone would come and rescue them, if only he knew what the hell he was supposed to do. If. Two letters the size of the world.
And just then, he felt Sophie’s hand, small and cool on his sunbaked back.
“Qu’est-ce que tu fais, mon amour?”
“Nothing, baby.” Barry stood to kiss her, using his foot to sweep away what under better circumstances might have been the first wings of a plan.
“You’re a sand painter, too, now?” she said both adorably and teasingly.
“It’s a little more plentiful around here than canvas. You hungry?”
“Oui. I could eat an elephant.”
“Probably no pachyderms on the menu, but maybe I can whip up some baked bananas.”
“With salt and coconut on top?”
“Avec plaisir. It’s the only way I make ’em.”
“?a marche.”
“How’s Junior doing?”
“I think she’s hungry, too,” Sophie replied, setting both hands gently on the bulge of her stomach. “She had the hiccups again earlier.”
“So the baby’s definitely a ‘she’ now?”
Sophie shrugged. “Oui. I think so.”
“Well, if she looks anything like her mother, she’s going to be very beautiful.”
“Pfff. You sound like some ridiculous Hollywood movie, Barry.”
“Then I’ll just hope that she’s healthy and has all of her fingers and toes.”
“Much better. Allons-y.”
Barry put his arm around Sophie and let her lead him back across the sand to their house, tucked unobtrusively as it was in a coconut grove, sheltered from the wind, positioned away from the sun, the closest thing they had to a haven from words like “if.”
43
The last time it happened, Barry and Sophie were seated together on the beach, only a few feet from where he had found her three years before, hanging half-conscious from an orange rubber raft. There was no reason for them to be there, beyond the fact that it was an exceedingly pleasant night. For once they were not toiling, were not fretting, and they were not planning—just sitting. Sitting together as couples have been doing since long before the advent of time. A drawn-out stretch of perfect silence was at last punctuated by a question on Sophie’s mind.
“How does it all end?”
“What?”
“You know, how would it all end, with this couple living on Chateau d’Eau, and their daughter, and their lives.”
“You mean our daughter, Persinette?”
“Yes. Précisément. How does it end?”
“I can’t say exactly.”
“You can’t?”
“No. Nobody can. But I have some idea.”
“Tell me. I want to know.”
Barry shifted his weight and settled back in the starlight. “Hm. Well, okay. Of course I’d have to teach her baseball. In Paris, we wouldn’t be able to watch games, or listen to them on the parked car radio while we had a beer in the hammock like my dad used to, so I would have to tell her all about it. I think I still have a few mitts back in Cleveland, we could get my parents to send them. Or we could go visit.”