My Last Continent: A Novel(25)
It’s the first time I have ever called in sick. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I say, but I can’t explain further than that.
“I’ll send someone out to take your place,” Glenn says. “I want you to see Susan when you get back to the ship.”
I know I don’t need a doctor, but I also know better than to argue with Glenn.
As I make my way to the Zodiacs, I watch the chinstraps continue their shuffle from their colony down to the shoreline, where they wade in, then dive under and vanish in swirls of water. Other birds emerge, shaking the water off their backs, and head back up to the colony. The cycle continues, over and over, and all of a sudden something feels familiar in their consistent path, in their methodical gait. I see my own life in theirs: a constant back-and-forth motion, always ending up where I started, and circling back again—focused and simple—and perhaps this is why I chose this life, for the straightforward beauty I’m witnessing right now. Maybe I thought that life down here would remain uncomplicated, and that I could keep the same pace, the same arm’s-length existence from the world, forever.
TWO YEARS BEFORE SHIPWRECK
Ushuaia, Argentina
I arrive in Ushuaia late, and by the time I reach the docks I’m a full day behind everyone else and horribly jet-lagged. I’m still on the gangway, holding my duffel bag, as Glenn begins to introduce me to a new crew member. I don’t recognize the tall, dark-haired man Glenn calls over until he turns around.
The red bandanna around his neck. The mossy brown eyes.
“Keller Sullivan,” Glenn says, “Deb Gardner.”
“We’ve already met,” Keller says, extending a hand.
I take it. Keller’s hand, ungloved, is warm and rough. I let my eyes hover on his.
“Briefly,” I say, withdrawing my hand. “A while back.”
I haven’t seen Keller since the day I left him at McMurdo, two years ago. He looks at once the same and different—still beautiful, his skin a little more weathered, his stubble a little scruffier. Most noticeable of all, he exudes a confidence he hadn’t had before. He looks as though he belongs here.
Keller had e-mailed me faithfully from the station during his austral winter, and over my own long, humid summer in Eugene, I tried to understand his decision, to put myself in his shoes. I even envisioned him on that bus instead of me, pictured myself staying behind for months of lightless cold while he left for home alone. Yet I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to make that decision as effortlessly as he had.
We had only talked once; phone calls were expensive and hard to coordinate; with limited bandwidth, Skype wasn’t allowed. After that first call, after I could no longer see Keller’s face or hear his voice, as he wrote about overwintering—the biting chill, the inky dark, the supernatural green light of the aurora australis—he only seemed farther and farther away.
His choosing to stay made sense to me—he’d suffered losses that would never fully heal, and perhaps he thought the austral winter in Antarctica would help because, with the onset of darkness, the notion of time disappears along with the sun. That he could trade our plans so easily for an overwinter at McMurdo proved that he was ready to build a new life for himself, but it was one that didn’t include me.
I had worked hard to let him go, and I’m wholly unprepared to see him again, here on the Cormorant, though I should’ve known it would happen. Antarctica is a small world.
After introducing us, Glenn leaves us standing there.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I have a job, same as you.”
“You could’ve told me, at least.”
“How?” Keller says. “You stopped writing me back. You didn’t return my calls.”
I look down at my hands, red from the chill in the air, and try to settle the thoughts swarming through my head, to articulate what I want to say. “It seemed pretty clear that was what you wanted, by staying at the base, then going back to Boston—”
“I only went back to Boston because I hadn’t heard from you. Where was I supposed to go?”
“It’s fine; I get it,” I say. “You did what you had to do. So did I.”
A crackle through Keller’s radio startles us both, and he pulls it from his waist—it’s Glenn, calling with a chore.
“Can we talk later?” Keller asks, and I shrug.
Despite my casual gesture, the knowledge that Keller is on board stays with me every second. The day is chaotic, with my attention pulled in myriad directions—helping the expedition team sketch out a rough itinerary, gathering data and photos for the presentations I’ll give during the journey, pitching in wherever I’m needed—and I see Keller only in passing, within groups of crew members or other naturalists. Yet my heart rate quickens at the sight of him—and even when he’s not around, I feel his proximity like an electric current, a frayed wire, loose and dangerous.
Finally, after the ship is prepped and everything quiets down, I go out to the uppermost deck, the one reserved for crew. In the evening dusk, I look at Tierra del Fuego as thick clouds hover over the mountains and creep down amid the sunset-hued buildings of Ushuaia. Opposite are the calm waters of the Beagle Channel, from where we’ll begin our journey tomorrow evening.