Red Clocks(76)

“Depends what you mean by ‘meaningful,’” said the biographer. “I don’t see how gutting fish and washing six kids’ underwear by hand is equal to doing research in the Arctic Circle.”

“Why not?”

“One is repetitive and mindless, and the other is thrilling, courageous, and beneficial to the lives of many people.”

“If she’d raised six kids,” said Susan, “she would’ve been beneficial to their lives.”

Mínervudottír had no wool-capped, lamb-fed children to grow.

And Susan has no book. No law career. No job, in fact, at all.

The biographer, strictly speaking, has no book either. Her kitchen table is loaded with overdue library loans about whale hunts and ice—she has read the translation of Mínervudottír’s journals a dozen times—yet her manuscript has more holes than words. She wants to tell the story of a woman the world should have known about long before this; so why can’t she get done telling it?

The biographer eats the dry rim off a blueberry muffin she found at the back of the teachers’ lounge fridge. Forces herself to say: “We haven’t talked about your good news.”

Penny beams. “Ms. Tristan Auerbach wants the privilege of selling Rapture on Black Sand to the highest bidder.”

She could be a published author before her seventieth birthday. And if this manuscript sells, the other eight she’s written could follow.

“I’m happy for you.”

“Listen, honey, you should send Tristan your book. I’ll recommend you personally.”

She should have congratulated Penny sooner—it’s been weeks. Mired in her own sludge, she’s been avoiding the lounge, begging off Masterpiece mystery nights. Had the biographer found an agent for Mínervudottír: A Life, Penny would have baked her a cake the same day.

“I’m not sure a romance agent would be interested in a book with no romance.”

“The romance of crushed ships!” says Penny. “The romance of gangrene.”

Penny loved her now-dead husband. Loves her little house. Loves writing her entertainments. Didn’t have kids because she never felt like it. When the biographer compares such fulfillment with her own sticky craving, it is tempting to despair.

“I apologize, Pen.”

“What for?”

“Being a bad friend.”

Penny nods. “You’ve had better years.”

“I’m really sorry.”

She starts buttoning her turquoise cardigan. “I forgive you. But you better not miss my book party.”

“Won’t, swear.”

“And I think you should apply for Fivey’s job.”

“Hardy har.”

“I do not happen to be joking. You’re a good candidate.”

The biographer laughs anyway, spewing blue bits of muffin across the lounge.

Climbs to the top of the east stairwell. Sits down against a wall.

The excitement she once felt about a nineteen-year-old biology major’s sperm, her willingness to drink a foul but magical tea, her wild hope on that run to Mattie’s house— Gone.

She picks at the laces of her sneakers.

All the doors have closed.

The ones, at least, she tried to open.

How much of her ferocious longing is cellular instinct, and how much is socially installed? Whose urges is she listening to?

Her life, like anyone’s, could go a way she never wanted, never planned, and turn out marvelous.

Fingering her shoelaces, she hears the first bell.

Thinks of her brother getting accepted into his first-choice college and gloating, “I’m set.”

WE NEED COP WATCHERS! said the flyer at the Polyphonte Collective.

The second bell.

By walking, she tells her students, is how you make the road.

The morning after Portland, Mattie pointed to the photo on her dresser. “He’s cute. Who is he?”

“My favorite and only brother,” she said.

He wore that skull T?shirt for years, she told Mattie. It was the shirt of a band he loved; she forgets which one. The biographer never had a head for band names or song titles or the music itself, which worried her when she was younger—was she missing something crucial?

She did not tell Mattie that even though Archie graduated with honors from his first-choice college, he was not set.

She did not tell Mattie about finding him, eight years ago, in the kitchen of his apartment. He wore black jeans and no shirt. Lips blue, cheeks flat and white. On the counter was a half-eaten bowl of cereal, bearful of honey, burnt spoon, lighter, glassine packet. The needle lay on the floor beside him.

“Hey, kiddo,” says her father. “To what do I owe?”

“Spring break is soon,” she says, “and I was thinking of visiting.”

“Visiting whom?”

“You, genius.”

“The Duke of Denturetown? The King of Hemorrhoidia?”

“Can’t you just say ‘Daughter, I’d love to see you’?”

“I’d love to see you. But bear in mind that spring break in Orlando is a hellscape.”

“I’ll bear it,” she says.





Ice too heavy to proceed. Crew hammering at the pack to save the lead. We are more than a hundred kilometers from Fort Conger, where Greely’s expedition is believed to be.