Migrations(30)

“Who ended it?”

He glances at me like he wants me to shut up. “She did.”

“Because you went to sea?”

“No.”

“Anik said you don’t like me because I don’t have the training to be here. He said it’s dangerous.”

Ennis grunts.

“Is that all it is?”

Silence.

I lick my dry, cracked lips. “Okay. We can do this, you and me, we can do this whole thing with you hating me for some reason and that’s all right, I can deal with that. Or we can just talk and maybe make things easier for us both.”

Long moments pass and I guess that means he’s chosen the first option. Truth is I’m not sure why it bothers me. Of all the things that matter, Ennis’s regard is not one. Not in the scheme of things. And yet with each passing day his dislike digs deeper under my skin. Maybe it’s because I’ve been working my ass off on his boat, and I’d kind of hoped he might respect that.

“It’s not just that,” Ennis finally admits.

I wait.

He doesn’t look at me as he says, “I know your kind.”

“My kind?”

“Greenies.”

“Oh, Jesus, now you sound like fucking Basil.”

“I don’t care what you believe in. That’s your business. But why come on my boat with those eyes and look at us like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like we’re scum. Like I’m scum.”

I pause, astonished. “I don’t think you’re scum.”

He doesn’t reply.

“Ennis, I don’t.”

Again, nothing, and it’s clear he doesn’t believe me. My mind whirls, trying to figure out if he’s right. I haven’t said a word to any of them about what I think, except to Basil last night. But I guess I haven’t needed to. I don’t think they’re scum—against all my better judgment I’m actually starting to like these people—but there’ll always be a part of me that’s disgusted by what they do. Maybe once upon a time the world could tolerate the way we hunted, the way we devoured, but not anymore.

I swallow, sitting up and holding the leg of the desk. “I didn’t mean to,” I say. “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand.”

“You got the luxury of not understanding.”

My grip slips and I forget to protect my head in the backslide, clunking heavily. Pain pricks my eyes and blurs him. “I thought you were a hard old sailor who didn’t get bruised by anything,” I admit. “I thought you couldn’t care less what I thought. I mean I’m no one, Ennis. I’m no one.”

He looks at me once and a flash of lightning streaks his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything, because that’s mostly what he does, the not saying anything.

Exhaustion sets into my bones. I could sleep dreamlessly now, I’m sure of it, swayed into a lull broken only by the walls. If I were a deep-sea creature the storm would be nothing to me but a vista above, a painted roof to the world.

“Is it often like this?” I ask tiredly.

“It’s just a bad day,” he says, misunderstanding. “There’ll be worse, and plenty of good.”

I nod and it comes in a wave, as it does, the rupturing force of missing my husband. He too loves storms.

“I’ve been reading,” I say. “Can I tell you what I’ve learned of the ocean?”

Ennis is silent again, and I think this means no, so I close my eyes and imagine the words.

But he says, “Go on, then,” and a tense part of me uncoils within.

“It never stops moving around the world. It edges its way slowly down from the polar region, and some of it forms into ice. Some of it gets saltier and colder and starts to sink. The water that sinks into the deep cold makes its way south along the ocean floor, through the black twelve thousand feet down. It reaches the Southern Ocean and grazes the icy water from the Antarctic, and then it gets flung across into the Pacific and the Indian. Slowly it thaws, warmer and warmer and rising to the surface. And then at last it turns for home. North again, all the way to the mighty Atlantic. Do you know how long it takes the sea to make that journey around the world?”

“How long?” He is humoring me, but gently, so I smile.

“A thousand years.”

Ennis shares my expression. How could he not? Who was it that discovered this extraordinariness? Someone like my husband, who has dedicated his life to the questions by which others are dwarfed.

“This ocean that’s tossing us about?” I say. “She wasn’t here sixty million years ago, but the earth moved enough to make her and now she’s more boisterous than most. More stubborn. That last bit wasn’t from a book. Samuel told me.” I let my eyes drift shut as I speak. “We don’t know her at all, really, or what she holds in her depths. We’re the only planet that has oceans. In all the known universe, we’re the only one sitting in the perfect spot for them, not too hot and not too cold, and it’s the only reason we’re alive, because it’s the ocean that creates the oxygen we need to breathe. It’s a miracle we’re here at all, when you think about it like that.”

“Your parents teach you how to tell stories?” Ennis asks, startling me.