My Last Continent: A Novel(40)
“So how did you get interested in penguins?” She suddenly seems eager to change the subject.
“I’ve always loved animals.”
Kate smiles. “Don’t we all. Even Richard, who claims not to like our cat, secretly does. I always catch him scratching her under the chin when he thinks I’m not looking. But pets are different from penguins.”
“I suppose I gravitated toward penguins because they’re so dapper and good-looking—what’s not to like? And then, in junior high, I learned about this Japanese company that wanted to harvest penguins in Argentina for gloves. This’ll tell you how na?ve I was, but I couldn’t believe people could do such a thing to penguins. To any animal. It was actually the first time I’d made the connection between the animals I loved and where my shoes came from.”
“They actually make shoes from penguins?” Kate looks stricken.
“No,” I say. “But really, how’s that different from using snakes or alligators? Just because they’re not as cute?”
“Definitely,” she says with a laugh.
“What about calfskin, or sheepskin?”
“I see your point. I guess I haven’t really thought about it.” Then she asks, almost tentatively, “So what happened to that colony in Argentina?”
“Fortunately, enough people fought to save the penguins, and now the colony is part of a research station and tourist center. I worked there when I was in grad school.”
“So how’d you end up in Antarctica?”
“I wanted to learn more about other species,” I say, “and I suppose I also wanted to keep going south.”
“You like to travel?”
“It’s not that, really. My family—we didn’t do much traveling. Not together, at least. The first time I got on a plane, I was on my way out west for graduate school. I was twenty-two years old.”
Kate’s eyes widen. “And look at you now.”
“I’m not that well traveled. I just go where the birds are.” I’ve surprised myself by talking so much, and I gesture toward the long, shallow hole in the sand near the water. “So are you going to take a dip?”
“I guess I should,” she says. “It’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?”
We part ways, and I amble along the beach in the opposite direction. After gaining some distance, I turn back toward the hot tub, where Kate is stripping off her winter clothes, down to a bikini and a pair of sneakers, which we recommend swimmers wear for comfort on the hot sand.
Kate lowers herself into the pool, which is just deep enough to cover her as she stretches out horizontally, her hands propping her up from behind, her legs extended in front of her. She begins chatting with another passenger, and I wonder whether she’s telling her new companion all the same things she was just telling me. But she’s acting different than she had with me; her sentences are short, her smiles brief. She’s closed off again, and I consider what it was that made her open up to me, of all people. Maybe we’re more alike than I realize; maybe, like me, she’s always been the type who’s had more books in her life than friends.
To say I wasn’t popular in school is an understatement as vast as the Ross Ice Shelf. Even my home life was quiet—my father, the one I was closest to as a child, traveled for work, or so I’d thought at the time; my older brother, Mark, kept busy with sports and friends when he wasn’t trying to fill my father’s shoes. My mother was in her own world—lost in prayer, or obsessively cleaning the house. Whenever Mark or I were home, she admonished us for leaving water spots in the bathroom sink, or footprints on the newly vacuumed carpet. Mark wasn’t around as often, but I spent my time skimming around the edges of rooms, ghostlike, hoping to remain unseen. When the weather was warm enough, I stole away to the tree house my father had built years earlier for Mark, who’d since abandoned it. It was my favorite place to read, and the bird feeders I hung on nearby branches fed the cardinals and sparrows as well as the fox squirrels.
I did enjoy school, in a nerdy sort of way—I embraced Science Club and the library’s book club rather than sports or social events. And it wasn’t until my junior year in high school that I finally made a good friend, Alec. It happened after he’d been seen kissing a guy in a car somewhere in the Central West End; back then, Clayton, Missouri, wasn’t ready for that sort of scandal. His conservative parents almost sent him to one of those so-called reform schools for him to be “cured,” but the guidance counselor at school managed to talk them out of it.
I saw Alec sitting alone in the cafeteria a few days later, and I sat down next to him. He gave me a weary look and said, “What do you want?”
“Fuck ’em,” I said. “One day you’ll leave here and none of this will matter. We both will.”
On weekends Alec and I would park over by the airport to watch the planes take off and land. When his popularity rebounded after everyone mellowed out, Alec enveloped me into his circle of friends, and he made my last two years of high school more bearable—weekends at Cardinals games, nights at the Steak ’n Shake, jogging in Shaw Park. After graduation he moved to New York. We’re still close, though we rarely have an opportunity to see each other. I’ve always admired Alec for living the life he’d dreamed of having. He married his partner of four years, a poet he’d met through the publishing house where he worked, and eventually moved to the suburbs with his husband and their two adopted daughters.