My Last Continent: A Novel(37)

WHEN KELLER RETURNS, I ask him how it went with his friend at the university. I’m driving us home, so I can’t see his face when he says, “It was all right. We had a good chat.”

“Does he know of any teaching gigs?”

“Nothing in Seattle.”

“Well, I’ll check in with my department head before we leave. Maybe she’ll find something for you in the spring.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Keller says. I feel his hand on my knee. “I’ve got a good lead on something, actually. It’ll all work out.” Yet his voice sounds odd, strained.

Later that night, as we sit in the living room, drinks in hand, I watch Gatsby stroll over to inspect Keller’s duffel, still on the floor where he’d left it earlier, its contents beginning to pour out. “How about you unpack this time?”

“I’d like that.” Yet the tension in his tone is still there.

“But . . . ?” I ask.

“I got a call this afternoon. About a job.” He glances over at his bag, and when he speaks it looks as if he’s talking to it, or Gatsby, instead of me. “A colleague fell off a ladder at home and broke his back. He’s all right but can’t get back to the classroom. They’ve asked me to finish the semester. I told them yes.”

“You’re going back to Boston? When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? But you’ll be ready in time for—”

“Yes.” He looks at me. “I’ll be there.”

I rattle the ice in my glass. “I guess this is our fate, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Being apart more than together.”

“If I had another offer—”

“I know, I know, you need to do this. Just let me be disappointed.”

“At least I’m here now.”

“Yes, but you’re leaving again. Why didn’t you just fly straight to Seattle if you’re not going to stick around?”

Gatsby, who has settled on a chair across the room, looks up, as if to object to the high pitch in my voice. And I, too, hate this needy timbre, an echo of the powerless feeling of watching our lives unfold this way.

“I thought you loved this life,” Keller says.

“I do—but it’s different now. Everything changed when you showed up.” I sigh. “I’d just like to see you for more than a few days at a time, that’s all.”

His eyes meet mine in that way I love, almost like the sidelong glance of a penguin: intent, curious, unwavering. “This is what we’ve got. We’ll make it work. I promise.”

“I know. It’s just so hard sometimes.”

“Of your many virtues,” he says, smiling, “patience is not among them.”

“Nor is trust,” I say. “Or faith. Or optimism. What are my virtues, anyway?”

He laughs. “You’re resilient. Passionate. Stubborn. Whenever you have doubts, just trust me. I’m not worried about us.”

I reach for his hand, and he folds it into mine. “Do you ever think about having stayed?” I ask. “Back in Boston, with your wife, I mean.”

Keller takes another drink. “Not anymore,” he says. “I don’t think we’d have made it. I think we both realized, after Ally died, that she was the thing keeping us together. Maybe if we’d had another baby. That’s the one thing I used to wonder about.”

I don’t say anything. For a long moment, I wait for him to go on.

“I really wanted that, years ago,” he says, “and I don’t know—maybe a part of me still does. Children are so -hopeful. Ally was all future because she had no past. And after she died, the notion that I might be able to see the world through innocent eyes again was pretty tempting.”

I lean close and kiss him. Then I say, “I want to give you something.”

I return a moment later with a penguin tag from my early days of graduate school in Argentina. I hand it to him—a thick piece of metal about the size of his thumb, shaped like a melting triangle. Six numbers are on one side, and the other side has the address of the research station where I used to work.

Keller turns it over in his hands as if it were as priceless as a Fabergé egg. “Punta Tombo,” he reads from its back.

“I’ve had this tag for fifteen years,” I say. “It’s from the Magellanic colony in Argentina, in Chubut Province. Where I met my first penguin.”

“Do you know the one this belonged to?”

I nod.

“I’m sorry,” he says. When you have a tag without the penguin, it’s never a good story.

“I saw dozens of tags when I was down there, but I’ve kept this one as a reminder. That the birds aren’t just numbers.”

I take a deep breath. I hope he’s listening between the lines, hearing what I’m saying as an apology, of sorts—for what happened on our last voyage, for my wanting more than he can give. “Anyway,” I continue, “you’re the only person I know who can understand.”

He lifts my face toward his and kisses me. “Thank you.” He looks back at the tag between his fingers. “I’d love to hear about the bird who wore this.”