Red Clocks(74)

“Well it’s actually kind of an emergency unless it’s another feeling from the, you know, and I don’t actually need to but it feels like I do?”

Please don’t let them be lost. Her phone knows nothing.





The Canadian government is funding a new search mission for Lt. Adolphus Greely and his men. Their survival is not assured: resupply ships have failed to reach the expedition two years in a row. A steam-powered icebreaker named Khione leaves from Newfoundland in two months. I will be on that boat, I promise you.





THE DAUGHTER


The heart of a Canada goose weighs seven ounces. Of a caribou, seven pounds.

The daughter’s own heart weighs nothing. Not tonight, at least—no blood in it. All her upper blood is down, replacing what’s gone. She’s got on a pad and thick sweatpants, and has spread a towel across Ro/Miss’s bed. The towel is beige, but a stained towel seems easier to pardon than a sheet. The pad is a little blood diaper. At home there’s a picture of her baby self getting changed, fat legs in the air, and Mom, wipe in hand, making a face at the camera.

Are you mine?

The daughter is emptying.

She saw no bucket.

It feels weird to be in a teacher’s bedroom. Like eavesdropping. This room doesn’t give much away, though. No posters or stereo. The only thing on the wall is an old-fashioned map—the kind with dragons drawn in the waves—of the North Pole. On the dresser, two framed photos: her parents, must be, then a younger Ro/Miss next to a handsome guy in a skull T?shirt. Boyfriend? Ex?fiancé?

Saltines and a peeled orange on the bedside table; but her mouth doesn’t want anything in it, not even a cigarette. She can’t decide what to call this feeling. It isn’t sadness. More like a wilting. A deflation. The skin of a balloon after all the air except a breath or two has seeped out.

Zero weeks, zero days.

A soft knock. Ro/Miss’s face in the door crack. “How’re you feeling?”

“Crampy.”

“Want more ibuprofen?”

“Sure you don’t mind me taking your bed?”

“My couch is so comfortable.” Ro/Miss shakes two caplets onto her palm; the daughter swallows them waterless. “You ready to sleep? It’s really late.”

“What do you call a time-traveling flower shop?”

Ro/Miss raises one eyebrow.

“Back to the Fuchsia,” says the daughter.

“Time to sleep?”

“I have an idea for an invention,” says the daughter. “Which might not work but would be so incredible if it did. Want to hear it?”

Ro/Miss folds her arms across her chest. “Sure.”

“Okay, so, you know how the world is going to run out of energy unless we stop burning oil and make more wind farms?”

“Well, among other things.”

“So my idea is to harness whales. You could make very light but strong harnesses, like out of steel thread, and hook them up to super-long steel reins. The reins would be attached to turbines, which would be on their own floating platforms, capturing the energy. There would also be generators on the platforms to convert the energy to electricity.”

“That’s … huh.”

The daughter winces at a pinch of dark heat above her pubic bone. “I haven’t worked out the details yet. The point is, the whales won’t be killed if they’re making energy. They’ll be treasured.”

“Not by Big Coal or Big Oil, but yeah—interesting.”

“You think it’s dumb.”

“Nope, I do not. I think you should probably go to sleep, my dear.”

She doesn’t want her to leave.

“Would you read to me first?”

Ro/Miss sighs. “What should I read?”

“Anything. Except not poetry or self-help.”

“I’ll have you know there is not a single self-help book in this house! Okay, that’s not true; there might be a few.” She tugs the blanket up higher, to the daughter’s shoulders. “Warm enough?”

She nods.

Ro/Miss goes out, comes back. Turns the overhead light off and bedside lamp on. “Close your eyes.”

All the News down in Newville sleep deep by the sea.

Your name for our files will be Ida.

Throat clearing. Paper rustling. “‘As a girl, I loved (but why?) to watch the grindadráp. It was a death dance. I couldn’t stop looking. To smell the bonfires lit on the cliffs calling men to the hunt. To see the boats herd the pod into the cove, the whales thrashing faster as they panic. Men and boys wade into the water with knives to cut their spinal cords. They touch the whale’s eye to make sure it is dead. And the water …’”

Who is this water—girl—Ida—knife— “‘… foams up red.’”

She sleeps.





Off the coast of Greenland they saw the Crimson Cliffs: enormous shoulders of red-stained snow.

“God’s blood,” said the blacksmith.

“Algae,” corrected Mínervudottír.





THE WIFE


Early to the pub, she stands at the wall reading names of sunk ships. Antelope. Fearless. Phoebe Fay.

Please let her stop being a coward.