Up to This Pointe

by Jennifer Longo

  I shrug.

  “Well, Ben wants to. And here, too. Scott’s Hut is right behind the fire station—it’s like three hundred yards, and he won’t step into it. Idiot.”

  “Why hasn’t he been anywhere?”

  “Nobody wants to take him! Getting to the pole is something every scientist, every explorer on the planet wants to do, let alone some random jerk who just wants to ‘win.’ But unless you’ve got an assignment or a job at the South Pole Station, or you’re support staff and there’s a last-minute available spot and you’ve got a scientist willing to take you with—I mean, I could take him.”

  “No chance?”

  “None in hell. The day I met that guy three winters ago, within the hour I arrived, he told me how great it was that affirmative action had reached The Ice.”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  “Yeah. The Ice is white.”

  Ballet is, too. Most tights and leotards are made for white skin; people have to dye them to match darker skin tones. And those same nonwhite dancers are constantly rejected on the basis of “wrong body type.”

  I am ashamed by proxy.

  “What did—what do you say to shit like that?”

  “Nothing. He said it right after I’d turned down his drunken offer to escort me to his room.”

  “Classy.”

  “He’ll never get to the pole. His own fault.”

  “Have you been?”

  She smiles. “Very best day of my life. True South.” She steps to a window, gazing love-struck toward the pole for a long while, then back to the hut. “Look at these blankets. Folded! I don’t think they’ve been touched. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Maybe it’s the jet lag or the cold, but in this moment, it really is. Beautiful. Sacred? Like being in a church. Like in the ballet studio before class…alone, waiting. The floors are wood—rough—but it’s such a big open space, except for Shackleton’s small bedroom. High ceilings. Push these beds and tables against the walls and it would be perfect for a balls-out series of grand jetés across the floor.

  I shut my eyes.

  “Scott was kind of mean to Shackleton,” Charlotte says quietly, studying a pair of laced leather boots. “They were on The Ice together once, Shack got sick, Scott kicked him off the crew, sent him home. He was jealous the men trusted Shack more. Natural leader…Why am I telling you? You know all this.”

  Not all of it. The light through the windows bathes the hut, and its perfectly preserved hundred-year-old contents glow.

  There are unlit lamps that are fed, Charlotte says, by a carbide acetylene generator above the door. I have no idea what that means. Except that Shackleton was clearly very smart.

  “You’re a reluctant Scott? Right?” I say.

  She tips her head to the beams in the peaked ceiling. No dust. No cobwebs. “Yeah,” she says. “In my heart of hearts…I like to think I’ve got some Shackleton in me. I think everyone wishes that. ‘For scientific research, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.’ ”

  She’s paraphrasing Sir Raymond Priestly, a geologist who narrowly escaped dying with my Scott.

  I love the light in this room; it is quiet, electric, waiting alive-ness.

  “All right!” Charlotte says, breaking the spell. “Penguins.”

  We step out into the ice air, and the wind is carrying sounds, like floating to the surface of water, waves against the ice and rocks. Wind. Long, low voices and higher, shorter calls. Charlotte grabs her pack, and we walk toward the Ross Sea.

  Thousands of smooth little black-and-white penguins. And their eyes—

  “Blue eyes?” I whisper.

  “Black,” Charlotte says quietly. “The white ring just makes them look blue.”

  They’re maybe two feet tall and smaller, milling around, climbing rocks, and calling out to one another. Tuxedoed little kids playing in the snow.

  “Adélies!” Charlotte sighs from inside her fur-lined hood.

  I’ve never had any kind of affinity for penguins, despite Mom’s love of all things Antarctica. The walls of our San Francisco house are full of paintings and photographs of whales and seals and penguins. But now here, so close, there is a rising lump in my chest.

  “This is the end of breeding season,” Charlotte whispers. “And tourist season, thank God, so I can get in there without a bunch of random people standing around, freaking them out. Those piles of little rocks…” She points to clusters of smooth gray stones among the black crags. “Nests. Two eggs at a time, parents take turns feeding in the water. The babies have nearly all finished their molts, but there may still be a few….”

  Oh my God. There is a cluster of parents and babies, chicks in various stages of maturity, not twenty yards from us. Miniature white-chested, red-beaked babies hang with the grown-ups, and there is a tiny, fuzzy gray-flocked angel; its head is smooth, his body a pouf with legs. It waddle-runs to a parent, who bends its head to the baby’s, and they have a conversation about something.

  There’s a makeshift wire wall contraption set up in the rocks, just a two-foot section with a gap in the middle. The penguins investigate it, walk through the space, and then ignore it.

  “That’s a scale,” Charlotte murmurs as she unloads her pack. “It sends aggregate stats for the whole group back to the station. They don’t know we’re going to put them all on Atkins. Little fatties.” She’s got ziplock bags of test tubes, lidded petri dishes, tweezers, some superlong Q-tip things. She pulls off her mittens, snaps on a pair of latex gloves, unfolds a small blue tarp, and arranges it all in rows. “We’ve tagged a bunch of them. I need some samples of poop and maybe a feather or two if I can get them before my hands freeze. They’re very curious. Just stay still and quiet and wait; they may decide to investigate you.”

  I forget to be cold, to be anything but still and quiet. You know those coffee table books of photography, and there are images of places on Earth and animals, and they don’t seem real, like it’s all Photoshopped marvelous? This is real. These breathing, moving…I am never this touchy-feely, but…souls? They live here; this is their home, these black rocks and white ice, this dark, undulating sea beneath the upturned bowl of intense blue sky.

  I can barely breathe. My heart hurts more than my head.

  Charlotte walks carefully toward, then into, the group. She turns and beckons me forward, but I can’t move. Her red parka and giant snow boots move carefully among the flightless birds. They regroup and follow her, ignore her and talk to her. They are not afraid.

  She kneels in the midst of them all, holds one on her knees for a moment, looks at its tag, swabs its foot and its beak, and lets it scuttle away to shake its feathers and head, annoyed, but still it likes her being here—you can tell. Charlotte collects some poo, watches the babies run around and slip on the icy rocks. She scoops a bit of sand into a bag. Makes notes on a folded paper.

  And then one of them leaves the group. He…she…who knows? He is walking toward me. I don’t blink. I don’t breathe.

  He is an adult. His body is sleek and shines in reflected-snow light. The ring of white feathers around his seeming ice-blue eyes makes them brighter in his perfect black face. He stretches his neck to the sky, unfolds his wings, and levels his gaze at me. His family calls to him, someone in the group does, and he turns and runs to them. He stops and looks over his shoulder at me, then rushes back into the rookery’s warm embrace.

  I exhale. My face burns. Tears are frozen there, and they hurt.

  Charlotte makes her cautious way back to me as the colony separates and swims around her retreating form.

  “What do you think?” She smiles, stashing the samples and notes in her pack. We stand and watch the Adélies together.

  “They’re leaving in a few weeks,” she says, her face lit by the pulsing sun. “The babies will finish molting, winter comes, and they migrate all together.”

&
nbsp; “Like emperors?” I can’t imagine these sweet birds, the dads huddled together in the freezing inland wind, balancing their egg-bound babies on their feet while the poor females make the icy trek to the ocean. I’ve seen March of the Penguins. Those guys are nuts.

  “No, not at all,” she murmurs, still intent on the rookery antics. “Adélies follow the sun. When it sets for winter, the Ross Sea freezes, the continent size nearly doubles. They walk with the ice as it forms, hundreds of miles, to always be at the water to feed. They walk straight into the horizon, following the sun so they’ve always got this sliver of a glow in their sight. Then, when winter’s over and the sun rises, the pack ice melts and they stay on the shore and let the sun bring them right back to the rookery. It’s magical. I love them so much. Follow the sun and you’ll always be where you’re meant to be.”

  She pulls her mittens back on. “You still okay?”

  I nod.

  “Harper, you need to live this place for all it’s worth. Do you understand? Every moment you’re here, you need to be a lover of life. You need to think like a scientist.”

  “Like—think in questions?”

  “Yes! Turn what you think you know over and over. See what’s underneath. Let yourself be surprised.”

  “All I ever am is surprised.”

  She puts her mittened hands on the sides of my hood. “Okay, then remember: ‘Science is nothing but perception’—that’s Plato. He was all about getting out of the cave, seeing life from a new angle, in a new light, letting things move all they want. The ice we’re standing on is shifting as we speak. We’re not where we were five minutes ago. Be here while you’re here. Understand?”

  I imagine Earth in space, Antarctica at the very bottom of the axis. Gravity is holding us as we walk upside down, keeping the blood from rushing to our heads, the ocean safely at the shore. If there ever was a place to see things from a new perspective…

  The Adélies are hushed, their faces turned up to the sun.

  “I understand,” I tell Charlotte. “I do. I will.”

  - - -

  We return the snowmobile, give back our radios, and fight the wind to pull open the station door—dark and unfathomably cold. There’s another guy at Ben’s desk to sign us in to the dorm, thank God.

  “I’m going to shower and hit the hay. You all right?” Charlotte says from inside her parka, already halfway up the stairs with her pack full of data. She calls over her shoulder, “See you at eight, bright and early! Meet me at my office then or at seven-thirty for breakfast. Sleep well!”

  There are voices from the dining hall, and at once I’m hungrier than I think I’ve ever been in my entire life. I pull off my parka and mittens and grab a plate.

  There are mashed potatoes. Dehydrated, probably, but still. Soup and corn bread and green beans, cheese and butter—it all looks amazing, and my stomach tightens. I fill my plate with salad. Splurge with Parmesan cheese. An apple for dessert.

  It is late. Most of the tables are empty, and I fall into a chair by myself and destroy the food. I drink hot tea. My hands finally start to tingle and warm a little. I lay my head on my arms.

  “Hey,” a voice says quietly near my ear.

  “I’m up,” I mumble, half asleep.

  A guy in an apron…half apron, tied around his waist like people on cooking shows wear them. T-shirt, jeans.

  “Hey,” he says again, and smiles. “You need one.”

  He offers me a tray of cinnamon rolls.

  I can’t stay here six months. I miss home so badly I could cry—what is this guy doing with cinnamon rolls? He’s just standing here, holding the tray at my face.

  “I thought there’s no milk or eggs in winter. What’s in these?”

  “We’ll run out for certain, but your plane brought the last of the freshies. We freeze them or use them till they’re gone. Take one.”

  He’s Irish. Scottish? I’m awful—it’s one or the other, one of those accents that give legitimacy to Hollywood movie spies and lean, muscular international criminals who go around committing treason and espionage with their strong jaws and dark curls and—Are his eyes really that green?

  “Go on,” he says. “You must be starved, gone all day.”

  The rolls look nothing like Dad’s, but they have lots of melting frosting and they’re warm. Straight from the oven.

  “I’m sorry,” I sigh, and I am. “I’d love to, but…wait, how did you know I was out all day?”

  “Watched you go this morning. Are you gluten intolerant?”

  “No.”

  “Diabetic?”

  “No.”

  “Allergic to perfection?”

  The cinnamon and cream cheese are killing me, they smell so good. I swallow and shake my head. “Sorry.”

  He puts his hand over his heart, dejected. “Really?”

  “Thanks, though.”

  He takes my cold left hand in his, shakes it. “You’re Harper. Scott, yes? High school grant student? I’m the third! Astronomy. I got stuck with a Beaker who never wanted an assistant but got assigned me anyway, so I’m sort of also work study in the kitchen. Aiden.” He pulls my fingertips closer to his eyes. “Your nails are blue. Should you go to the infirmary?”

  I pull my hand back, stand, and pick up my plate. “They’re always blue. I think I just need sleep.”

  He blatantly takes in my bony frame. “You’re sure, then? Not just one small bite?”

  I want to eat them all. I shake my head once more.

  “All right,” he says. “Coming to breakfast?”

  I nod. He smiles.

  “I’ll save one for you.”

  I drop my plate in the dirty dish tub, climb the stairs to my room, get my shower caddy, and take a seven-minute shower. Because I’m frozen and tired, and the whole shower thing is on an honor system anyway. It’s not like they’ve got timers on the showerheads. I don’t think. I need to ask Charlotte.

  I pull the blackout shades over the window. I should unpack. I should also call Mom and Dad again, but I can barely lift the blankets of the unmade bed to crawl in and finally close my eyes, let alone go find Charlotte and ask to use her office phone. They’ll live. This bed is so comfortable I can’t believe it; what am I lying on here, a million kittens?

  In the dark, quiet hum of the heat rushing through the pipes, I close my eyes and hear the Adélies, their bossy, barking words. I hear the crashing waves and the snowmobile’s engine skimming the ice away beneath the sun, straight into the wind all the way from the rookery. Perfect penguin feet, sleek and fuzzy bodies so graceful. Elegant. Shackleton’s cabin, just as he left it. Blankets folded. Cream cheese. Cinnamon and powdered sugar. Home.

  In a drawer, the unopened letter waits patiently to be read.

  “Good morning, Anna Pavlova,” Dad sings as I stagger in the kitchen door, boots off and bag dropped beside them. He’s already been to the bakery and back, never not in a kitchen. “How were the kindies?”

  I sigh happily and fall into my seat at the table, right on my bruised hip. “Argh, my ass is totally broken! I actually just had the first graders, but my kindies are amazing. They’re picking up the steps so fast, and they just want more—more turns, more travel patterns.” I rub my poor, broken body. “I’ve got an hour, and then I’ve got the kindies to teach before rehearsal, so let’s get this show on the road!”

  “I’m here! Feed me!” Kate calls from the door, collects a hug from Dad, and drops her bag beside mine.

  “Perfect timing,” Dad says. “What would you like in your crepes and how many?”

  “Strawberries and as many you can fit on the plate, please.” Okay, so people like Kate are where the urban legends come from. Racing metabolism or something. She pours a glass of juice for Mom, who shuffles in, still half asleep, kisses the tops of our heads, and sits.

  Dad puts my Saturday oatmeal in front of me: steel cut, blueberries, bananas, raspberries. I hug his neck.

  Kate’s plate is heaped with crepes. �
��How are we going to survive in an apartment on our own when we’re used to this spoilage?” She sighs.

  “We’ll live on Cream of Wheat and carrot sticks,” I say. “And Dad will come make us breakfast every Saturday. Right?”

  “Absolutely not. You people are on your own.”

  “Don’t talk about it,” Mom wails from behind her juice glass. “I can’t think about you not being home, and speaking of which, did Luke go out?”

  Saturday breakfast happens only once a month. Dad does his 5:00 a.m. check-in at the bakery, then leaves it in the hands of his staff every first Saturday so we can all eat together. Mom and Dad are militant about it; we may not get to eat together during the week, but our monthly morning together will happen come hell or high water.

  “I’m here, sorry!” Luke hollers right on cue from the front door, cold air and some guy following him in. “This is Owen, friend of a friend from school. Okay if he stays? Hey, Kate.”

  Kate waves. Kate is probably the only reason Luke ever shows up to monthly breakfast. Which is hilarious for two reasons: The Plan precludes any kind of distracting fraternizing with boys until employment is secured, and also, dating her best friend’s brother? Too much awkward for one lifetime. It’s not going to happen. He needs to let it go. Poor guy.

  It is Luke’s one Saturday off from the bakery, too. He works weekends and after school with Dad, between classes at SF State, where he is majoring in Living in a Van Down by the River, working toward a degree in mythology and comparative religion, an education perfectly suited for a career in decorating cupcakes with fondant.

  “Nice to meet you, Owen. What would you like in your crepes?” Dad calls without turning around.

  “Oh. Um…hi, thanks so much, I’m…”

  “Just do it all, Dad, thanks. Hey, Mom.” Luke tosses his backpack on the sofa, rubs Mom’s shoulders, and takes a clean plate from the dishwasher for this Owen person, and they sit opposite Kate and me at the kitchen table, where Mom pulls her robe around her and sits up.

  “Owen,” she says, extending her hand across the placemats. “Lovely to meet you. You’re an SF State student?”