“Strawberry-rhubarb?”
“Exactement.”
“And the honeymoon?”
“A road trip across America, of course. With a long stop in La Nouvelle-Orléans. You’d stay in an old French hotel with a fancy wrought-iron gate in the Vieux Carré, and eat étouffée at Galatoire’s, and dance all night to jazz on Frenchmen Street, and go to the swamps to look for alligators, and the guide would throw marshmallows into the water to attract them and call out to them in Cajun, ‘Viens ici, viens ici.’ You would have breakfast at Café du Monde, too, but you’d sneeze and blow powdered sugar all over her, and you’d both laugh about it for the rest of the day.”
“You seem to know a lot about New Orleans.”
“My old firm back in Paris did the interior design for a house there. I didn’t go, but I read all about it.”
“I see.”
“But there is still one thing to discuss.”
“What’s that?”
“Des enfants.”
“Kids?”
“Yes. Do you think you’d like to have some?”
“I mean, sure, at some point.”
“Tu es certain?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Really sure?”
“Yes.”
“Really, really sure?”
“Yes! Jesus.”
“Okay. Good.”
“Good? How come?”
“Because—”
And just then, the weather report from Tahiti was drowned out by a voice. Not of a newscaster or meteorologist, but of someone else. Someone chatting over the radio in English about an approaching storm, chuckling about the copious Bloody Marys his crew had enjoyed with their breakfast, and giving his speed at roughly ten to twelve knots.
It was the ships. They had returned.
37
When Barry had guessed that the flurry of shipping activity that periodically appeared north of their island constituted a shipping lane, he wasn’t exactly correct, although he wasn’t entirely off the mark, either. What he had actually witnessed when the storm battered him all those miles out to sea was what is more commonly known as the Equatorial Countercurrent. For while the trade winds generally create two large bands of western-moving current both north and south of the equator, a narrow slipstream of warm water can be found wedged between them, threading its way across the Pacific in the opposite direction. This corridor is common knowledge among mariners, and although used occasionally by Russian and Chinese freighter ships headed for the Panama Canal, it is especially sought after by recreational sailors and yachtsmen—it can be tricky to find, but once it has been located, the crew of a pleasure craft can sit back, relax, and allow the countercurrent, like an airport conveyor belt, to ferry them pleasantly through Polynesia, all the way to South America. Indeed, hunting it down and riding it to the end is considered something of a sport among those who have the time and the money to do such things, and the current can boast a steady procession of vessels bobbing their way along it throughout the year.
The variation, however—the reason those radio transmissions would vanish for months, even years, on end, only to reappear for a few short weeks—had to do not with the number of boats, but rather with the oscillating nature of the Equatorial Countercurrent’s position. For most of the year, the slender current of “upstream” water could be found slightly north of the equator, generally around three to five degrees up. Not a very long distance on a map, but still nearly a thousand miles away from Barry and Sophie’s island. Occasionally, however, toward the beginning and end of the rainy season, the countercurrent would shift its position and drift southward. And on even rarer occasions still—generally on the heels of the region’s larger storm systems—it could actually dip below the equator and take its armada of crisply trimmed sailboats and gleaming yachts right along with it. Which was precisely when the shortwave would begin picking up their transmissions and exactly how Barry had seen those three lights twinkling out at sea. It didn’t happen often, and it didn’t last long. But when it did, a much-traveled sea lane was no longer hundreds of miles away to the north, but only dozens. A mere two-day paddle on a raft or canoe.
It goes without saying that Barry didn’t grasp the full minutiae of oceanic currents and recreational sailing habits. But when he adjusted the tuning dial and heard not just the one, but multiple radio conversations come crackling through on the maritime band after a year of silence, he understood the momentous nature of what was transpiring and the fleeting opportunity that had been laid at their feet. Just to the north—and he was now absolutely sure of it—a fleet of ships was waiting to pick them up and carry them home. The boats probably wouldn’t be there for more than a week or two, if previous experience was anything to go by, but if they wasted no time, they just might make it.
“Baby, we’ve got to go. Now.”
He shouted it over his shoulder as he began gathering water bags and looking under their cot for whatever old coconuts he could find. And where the hell had he left the first-aid kit? The wind outside was picking up, creating a flurry of agitated notes from the bamboo wind chimes; the storm the newscaster in Tahiti had warned about was coming their way.
“Barry, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Sophie, we don’t have time to discuss this.” He found the first-aid kit and dumped it into the duffel bag, alongside the solar still and what remained of his fishing gear. “We need to get as much water as we can, get the canoe ready, and get our asses out there. This is it. This is our ticket home.”
“I think we should wait.”
“What?” Barry spun around, the waterproof duffel bag now fully packed and slung over his shoulder. “These things only last a few days, maybe a week or so tops. What, exactly, do you think we should wait for?”
He edged his way past her and ran out onto the beach, greeted by a sky that was already bruised at its base by a thick wall of thunderheads. A few spits of rain pecked at his skin.
“Barry, come back.”
“Baby, you need to grab whatever you can and come on. I told you, we don’t have time for this.”
“I’m not coming.”
She stood at the doorway of their home, her feet planted firmly in the sand. She gripped the bamboo doorjambs as a show of her determination. She had made her decision—she would not budge.
Barry dropped the duffel bag. He gripped his face in frustration and groaned aloud. “Sophie, what is your problem?”
“Just look at the sky, Barry. You really think going out now is a good idea? It’s too dangerous. We could die out there.”
“We could die here, too! I know it’s a risk, but what other choice do you think we have? There are at least a dozen ship signals coming through that radio—and they’re coming through clear, I don’t think they’re that far away. All we have to do is get in that canoe and start paddling north. We can do it, I know we can. We might not get another chance like this.” And he paused for emphasis. “Ever.”
The first peal of thunder growled from somewhere out at sea. A second pattering of raindrops skipped across the palm-thatched roof of their house. Sophie shook her head.
“Non.”
Barry struggled to maintain his composure. He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth. “Sophie, you were the one who was all for going out searching for islands, which is much crazier than this. May I ask why you suddenly think this is a bad idea?”
“Yes, you may,” she answered, unable to hide the tremolo of fear in her voice. “Because things are different now.”
“And why are they different?”
“Because I’m pregnant.”
Barry’s face screwed up into a look of profound confusion. He had heard the words, but they made no sense. “Wait. You mean with a baby?”
“No, with a cocker spaniel, you idiot.”
Then it all made sense—then the meaning at last hit home. Barry stammered for an awkward moment before stumbling back toward Sophie and clutching he
r in his arms. They stayed that way for several minutes, with the heavy rain at last coming down and the gongs of lightning beginning to crash, until Sophie took his hand and led him back inside, the radio still on, right where they had left it, a chorus of sea captains murmuring softly in the dark.
* * *
To say Barry reacted poorly to Sophie’s revelation would be a generous understatement. He sat on the edge of the cot for quite some time, in a stupefied state not entirely unlike Sophie’s when he had first found her in the raft. Not that he was upset or angry in any way—just terrified. Pure, raw, unadulterated terror, of the sort so many fathers-to-be no doubt experience upon encountering a fresh avalanche of responsibility. But his was compounded several thousand–fold by the risk inherent in their situation. A Stone Age island not much bigger than a football field did not strike him as the ideal place to birth a child, let alone raise one. The effort it took to fend off the quotidian specter of death had nearly driven both of them to the brink of madness on more than one occasion. While parents more securely moored to the modern world might worry about booster shots and playgroups and plastic Baggies full of Cheerios, they would have to contend with cyclones and shark fins and potentially lethal banana famines. Christ, lethal banana famines—patently absurd! a blindsided Barry thought to himself, oblivious to the storm that was howling outside, shaking the frame of their little bamboo house. He didn’t even know if you could raise a child on bananas, and he certainly wasn’t in any rush to find out.
“Are you sure?” he finally muttered, with eyes punch-drunk and unable to focus.
“Yes,” Sophie replied.
“Really sure?”
“Yes.”
“Really, really sure?”
“Oui, putain! I haven’t had my period in two months. And it’s been regular ever since we built the boat and started to eat better. I’ve been getting sick in the mornings, and even my tits are twice as big, if you’d even bothered to notice.”
“But we were careful. I mean, really, exceptionally careful.”
“Well, I guess your little spermatozoïdes are like Harry Houdini. I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened. But it did.”
“Jesus. Oh, Jesus.” Barry sank off the edge of the cot, gripping fiercely at the matted unruliness of his hair. “What the hell was I thinking? I knew better. It’s all my—”
“Ta gueule, Barry. Believe it or not, it’s not always about you. We’re both adults. We both knew what we were doing when we got into this, and I don’t regret a single thing we’ve done. But if this is going to happen, we need to deal with it. Like adults. If we’re going to have a child, we can’t act like children. Especially not given the circumstances.”
Barry stiffened and regained his composure; he knew she was right.
“You said it’s been two months?”
Sophie nodded. “Oui.”
“That means we have seven months to go?”
Sophie nodded again. “Oui.”
“Is that why you got so upset when I wanted to eat the mother sea turtle that we found laying eggs?”
“Tu es vraiment trop stupide, Barry.”
Barry sighed and, with the inhalation that followed, steeled his nerve for whatever was to come. This was it. Not the crash, not the tidal wave, not the octopus. This was the big one. The truest test of his manhood he would ever face. He swallowed back the fear and then answered.
“I guess we won’t be going out looking for ships, then.”
Sophie shook her head. “I’m willing to put my own life at risk, but we’re responsible for another life now, too. Maybe neither option is ideal, but as parents, we have to go with the one we’re most sure of. Staying here on the island isn’t great, but at least we’re safe.”
“I could go out by myself, you know. I did it before and—”
She cut him off again, with a maternal firmness that ended the debate. “No way. I almost lost you once in a storm, Barry, and I won’t let that happen again. And with this baby inside me, it’s too much of a risk. For our child to even have a chance here, it’s going to need both of us. Once the rainy season is over, once we have the baby, then maybe we can start talking about other options. But for right now, we’re staying right here. This is our home.”
Barry recognized the truth in what Sophie was saying. And he did also feel no small sense of relief, just as he had when he’d made the decision to turn back to the island rather than paddle after the lights. That settled it, then. His heart calmed, the tension eased; the terror of the open seas receded before him. Their course was set. They would stay on the island.
“We’ll just have to take it one day at a time,” he said at last, following a shared moment of pensive silence. “Like everything else here. And there is still a chance that somebody might find us before the day comes.”
“Do you think?”
“Anything’s possible. We might end up on rue du Château d’Eau after all.”
“Your ‘Castle of Water’?” Sophie teased him, managing a smile.
“Yes. My ‘Castle of Water.’” Barry paused for a moment, a thought suddenly occurring to him. “You know, that’s not a bad name for the island, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“If we’re having a baby here, we have to give the island a proper name. And besides, this way, we can still say we live on Château d’Eau, even if it’s not quite Paris.”
“Pfff. Okay, Barry. ‘Château d’Eau’ it is.”
“Perfect. I’ll be sure to put it on the birth certificate.”
Sophie snickered at the thought. “And speaking of names, we’ll need one for the baby, too, you know. I’m not going to name it after some stupid street in Paris.”
“Jacques Cousteau Bleecker?”
“Be serious,” she scolded him, although she was anything but annoyed.
Barry beetled his brow. Nothing immediate came to mind. “What do you think?”
“If it’s a boy, we could name him Barry, after his father.”
“Well, we could name him Barry, but he wouldn’t be named after his father.”
“Your name isn’t Barry?”
“I go by Barry, but my real name is Bartholomew.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. I was named after my grandpa in Illinois, but I was always ashamed of it. It sounded too old-fashioned. Barry was easier.”
Sophie shrugged. “I think Bartholomew is a nice name. Especially for a world-famous artist like yourself.”
“Ha. Very funny.”
“I thought so.”
“But what if it’s a girl?”
“What do you think?”
“We can’t name her Marie-Antoinette?”
“Pfff. No way.”
“Sophie? After her mother?”
“Non. We don’t do that in France. It’s weird.”
“What about Caroline, then? Your middle name? That’s pretty.”
“I don’t know. Maybe for the middle name, but not the first. Anyway, we have seven months to think about it. That gives us lots of time.”
“Seven months,” he repeated, trying to still his panic as he imagined the big day. Labor wards, midwives, trained doctors, Lamaze classes—all nonexistent. And even if everything did go off without a hitch, what kind of existence would it be for a child, to know nothing of the world beyond a few acres of sand and a meager subsistence on half-wild bananas? What kind of life would that be?
Needless to say, the mother- and father-to-be did not fall asleep easily that first night, with the rains drumming down upon their roof and the winds outside lashing at the coconut palms. Neither wanted to appear overly frightened, for the benefit of the other, but the implications were unavoidable, and that new class of fear was excruciatingly real.
But then again, there was always hope. Sophie’s patois-speaking grandmother had squeezed eight children into the world through her broad Occitan hips, and although the mountain village of Gavarnie in the 1930s wasn’t quite a
desert island, it wasn’t the maternity ward at St. Luke’s, either. And while their unspoken fears sought to overshadow it, there was no small amount of pride and joy in one very simple and profoundly human realization: They were going to be a mom and a dad, maman et papa. Making photo albums and coaching T-ball may have been up in the air, but that one fact was as sure as the sunset. And it was not the wind in the palms or the rain on their roof, but this thought alone that eventually balmed their worries and sang them to sleep. Barry settled down onto the bamboo cot and curled up beside Sophie, his head atop hers, his arm gently cradling the invisible life in her belly, and he gave her a kiss on the pale crescent of skin behind her ear. Sophie smiled and wove her fingers through his. Je t’aime, she told him. Moi aussi, he answered. J’ai peur, she said to him. I’m scared, too, he replied. And they stayed clasped together like that long into the night, the thunder receding gradually in the distance, the voices on the radio fading slowly into static.
38
Ironically, the very same week that Barry Bleecker discovered he was soon to be a father, he was also declared officially dead. Under normal circumstances (if a human being vanishing without a trace may ever be considered normal), obtaining a death certificate in absentia is a lengthy process, demanding seven years of inexplicable absence. In the case of Barry, the fact that his flight was known—or at least strongly presumed—to have gone down in the sea was indeed an expediting factor. And as such, almost two and a half years after he had vanished, the death certificate was rendered by the state of New York to his heartbroken parents. Barry had left no will behind him, and the vast majority of his savings had already been donated to the United Way, so there wasn’t much for anyone to do. Mr. and Mrs. Bleecker held a memorial service at a Presbyterian church in Cleveland, at which a number of his childhood friends and elementary school teachers offered heartfelt eulogies, accompanied by a touching, although perhaps a tad cliché, rendition of “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes, courtesy of the local fire department. His high school football coach offered to make a closing speech but choked up halfway through and had to sit down. The service was followed by a picnic on the grounds outside of the Cleveland Museum of Art—all in attendance remembered how much it had meant to Barry—and a rough approximation of a funeral reception line. The guests trickled out one by one, while his mother untaped the plastic tablecloths from the picnic tables and gathered up the grease-stained paper plates. The entire affair ended for his parents with a somber car ride home in a rust-flecked Toyota minivan; they proceeded slowly up Cedar Hill, to the house they had shared for the better part of their adult lives, and released two long, desperate sobs, almost in concert, when they came to a stop beneath the sagging basketball hoop of their only son. Then they wiped their eyes and went inside. It was finally over.
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