by Abby Geni
Now, however, I understood. He was still pacing, the glow from the lamp tangled in his white hair. I took in his agitation, his brisk stride. Outside, the breeze howled like an irritated child. A shutter bumped against the wall. The elephant seals were making noise now, grunting and squealing. I was doing mental arithmetic. Eleven years ago, Galen’s wife had passed away. Ten years ago, he had left the mainland for the Farallon Islands, never to return. The pieces fit together at last.
“It was a one-two punch today,” he said. “Charlene on the stretcher—barely even breathing—” He broke off. “My wife had red hair, like hers. It all came back.”
“I understand.”
Outside, the wind smacked the glass. I held still.
“An accident,” Galen said. “Another accident.”
“Yes.”
He rapped his knuckles against his thigh. Then he said, “How long have you been on the islands? How long exactly?”
“Oh,” I said, a bit thrown at the abrupt shift in topic. “Six months.”
“And what do you think of it?”
“It’s my favorite place,” I said. “And I’ve been to a lot of places.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Despite everything that’s happened.”
“Despite everything,” I said firmly.
On the coffee table, the octopus oozed into view again. His skin was now the color of blood. He had circumnavigated his tank and was beginning a new revolution. All eight arms grappled against the glass, the suckers splayed.
“I can be someone new here,” I said.
For the first time, Galen smiled. “I suppose that’s true. You can be Melissa or Mel. You can be a little mouse girl.”
“Yes.”
“We can all be someone else on the islands,” he said.
He shifted his weight. I heard a cry outside the window. It sounded like a seal pup.
“Do you want to sit?” Galen said.
“What?”
“Or a glass of water?”
“No. Why?”
“Never mind.”
The octopus turned himself upside down in his tank. There was something arboreal about him in that position—his tentacles scrolling along the screen above him, shifting like tree branches in strong wind. Galen was watching him too. He stepped closer to the glass and bent down. Then he glanced at me. His expression was calculating, his eyes obscured by grizzled brows.
“Every animal acts according to its own nature,” he said.
“I know what you mean,” I said. “An octopus always wants to escape.”
“No,” Galen said. “That’s not what I mean. The octopus doesn’t want to escape. The octopus tries to free itself because that is its nature. The shark hunts because that is its nature. The female elephant seal abandons her young because that is her nature. This is what I was telling you before. Weren’t you listening?”
I realized I had taken a book down from the shelf, a hardcover volume decorated with a photograph of a squid. I was holding it against my chest like a shield.
“It is always a mistake to anthropomorphize an animal,” Galen said. “We can observe its behavior. We can catalog its actions. We can keep a record of what it eats, how it mates, where it urinates and defecates, how it plays, where it finds shelter. We can study its actions all day long. All year long. But we will never know what it thinks. We will never know what it wants. Even among humans—”
He paused, running a hand through his hair.
“We believe we understand one another,” he said. “As a species, I mean. But how can anyone ever know what’s in another person’s mind? How can we be sure?”
He paused again. Beyond the window, the surf boomed. The islands seemed to be waking up—no longer peaceful, no longer still. A strange expression flickered across Galen’s face. It could have been a grin or a grimace.
“I’m a biologist,” he said. “That’s what I am. If an animal is violent—if an animal is injured—if an animal acts according to its nature—”
He laughed. The sound surprised me, high-pitched and ringing. It chimed through the living room like a struck gong.
“What do you think of that?” he said.
I was lost. But his mood had lightened, and that was a good thing.
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said.
It was an empty phrase, but he appeared to take it at face value. He straightened up, towering over me, his chalky hair nearly brushing the ceiling. Then he turned to me once more, and I saw a smile playing around his mouth.
“What is your nature, Miranda?” he said.
I sucked in a breath. I had been waiting for an opening like this.
I knew what he was hinting at. I knew what to do. Galen had broken the first rule of the islands: he had talked about the past. Now it was my turn. In a way, it would be a relief. He had laid the groundwork for me.
I began to speak, stammered, and cleared my throat.
“My mother,” I said. “I lost my mother.”
“You did?”
“When I was fourteen.”
My voice came out louder than I had intended. Galen’s demeanor changed, his expression growing softer, more open.
“She was hit by a car,” I said. “A truck, actually.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been hard.”
“It was. I mean, it is. Still. It changed everything. It changed me.”
“Of course.”
Galen made a gesture I could not interpret, his finger orbiting in space.
“Is that why you came here?” he said.
“I think so.”
“I see,” he said. “I see.”
The wind had begun to moan outside. The cry of the elephant seals was entangled with the thunder of the ocean. I was breathing hard. I had the feeling that Galen was making up his mind about something. He nodded several times, as though agreeing with a private train of thought.
“That expression is interesting,” he said. “You lost your mother. I lost my wife.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve lost them. You’ve misplaced them. That’s exactly how it is. Something you always had with you, something you were so accustomed to that you never even thought about it. Like your keys or your wallet. I still find myself wondering, ‘Where is she? She was just here a minute ago.’”
I looked down at my hands.
“And now Charlene,” he said. “I’ve lost her, and so have you.”
I heard the distant rumor of the storm-petrels singing. The noise outside was almost symphonic—the deep bass of the sea, the wind wailing like a violin, the treble of the seals, the piccolo of the birds. Wild music.
“I remember the first time I met my wife,” Galen said. “She was so young. So wide-eyed. It was a blind date, of all things. Our friends had matched us up. She and I were walking to the restaurant together. A fine summer night. This little Italian place I liked. All of a sudden she blurted out, ‘Tell me the story of your life.’” He chuckled. “That was her way of making conversation, I guess. ‘Tell me the story of your life.’ I didn’t answer. I told her it was an impossible question.”
I nodded.
“I could answer it now, though,” Galen said. “When you’ve lost someone, that is the story of your life. It’s the only story you’ve got.”
All at once, I was so tired I could barely breathe. I found myself slumping, sagging. A weight seemed to have settled on my shoulders.
“Go to bed, Miranda,” he said.
I lifted a hand to restrain a yawn.
“Go on,” Galen said gently. “I think we’ll both be able to sleep now.”
27
TODAY IS THE first of March. The new month started on a high note. The radiophone squawked into life in the early morning. Galen went to answer it. He came back beaming. The call had been from the hospital. Charlene was out of the woods. Her concussion was healing nicely. Her cuts had been sewn up. The doctors had run a final test, verifying beyond a shadow of a
doubt that there was no brain damage. The dislocated elbow had been reassembled and placed in a sling. Galen told us these things over our standard breakfast of macaroni and cheese. There were cheers, glasses clinking, toasts to our brave little intern.
Galen had spoken to Charlene personally—her voice distorted by static and distance. She had told him that her parents had flown in, renting a hotel room in San Francisco with a nice view of the water. She would stay in their company, pampered and cared for, until she was strong enough to make the journey home to Minnesota. There she could finish her convalescence in peace. This idea brought me comfort. I liked picturing Charlene, her head still bandaged, arm in a sling, surrounded by her parents and siblings. In my mind, her relatives were all as red-haired and genial as she was—a crimson poppy-field of a family. I imagined Charlene in an armchair, being served tea and toast. Charlene being grilled by her brothers and sisters about her time on the islands. Charlene reveling in the glittering pull of the television set, the gush of hot water from the taps, the grease of a freshly ordered pizza.
I went to the window. I gazed out at the sea. All around me, the islands seemed to be growing progressively wilder by the day. Charlene had left this place behind. She had crossed the horizon line. She had crossed over. She was so far away now that I wondered whether I would ever see her again.
In that moment, I wanted to be among the elephant seals. I wanted to be close to them, to photograph them while I still could. I grabbed my digital camera and went out in the mist. I followed the roar of their voices, the scent of their musk. A group of them had settled on Marine Terrace, reshaping the shoreline with their bodies. In the fog, they were lumped like clouds, as soft as pillows.
The pattern of their lives has begun to change. The females nurse their babies for a month. At the end of this time, they mate with the alpha male of their harem. Then they return to the ocean without a backward glance. Pregnant, they leave the islands. They leave their pups alone. There is something ruthless about these mothers. Their business on the Farallon Islands is pure biology. Birth, suckle, breed, depart. No emotion. They do not form lasting pair bonds; they attach themselves to the strongest male, receive a deposit of sperm, and move on. They do not teach, protect, or nurture their progeny. They offer milk, and when the milk is gone, they leave.
The juveniles will never see their mothers again. They must learn to swim, hunt, and thrive on their own. They must learn what it is to be an elephant seal without guidance. Over the next few weeks, the babies will remain on land, deserted, figuring out the pulse and swell of the tides, gradually growing hungry enough to risk that first vital dive into the briny blue. They will depart into the sea, following the schools of fish, following the deep rhythms of their own instincts, discovering their true nature, leaving the archipelago in their wake. Next winter, the ones who survive will return to the Farallon Islands to begin the cycle all over again.
On Marine Terrace, I set up my tripod. I had Gremlin with me, one of my digital SLR cameras. The most expensive and flashy of the group. The fog had wiped away the horizon and obscured the border between the ocean and the rocks. The elephant seals seemed ghostly. Their cries were disembodied in the mist. The air was strangely warm. I wondered if the fevered whirl of their mating had heated the coastline. I removed my sweatshirt. I peeled off the cardigan beneath.
Then I heard it. A high, desperate keening. The sound was coming from behind me. It was a seal pup. On land. Somewhere near the cabin. At once I was in motion. I pushed through the damp air, squinting against the haze.
“This way,” I shouted. “Come here. Come to me.”
A dark shape appeared. The baby moved with an irregular gait, lurching and snuffling. As it drew closer, it lifted its muzzle and wailed.
I had dreamed so often of this moment. I could not help but believe. Probably it was not the same lost pup I had seen on my walk with Mick all those weeks ago. Probably it was not the poor creature who had been haunting me ever since, inhabiting my nightmares. I knew the odds. But there was no way to be certain. All the babies looked alike, black and smooth. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. I did not want to startle it away. The sensation was like wings beating in my chest. I forced myself to believe it was the same lost pup, finally found.
I did not touch it. I was not supposed to touch it. My hands floated in space, encircling its sleek head, miming a caress. Its expression appeared to be pleading. As it approached, I backed away, moving in slow, gentle increments.
“Follow me,” I whispered. “Come on, now.”
The baby obeyed. I led it toward the water. With each step I took backward, the animal bounced forward, as though we were dancing. I stopped at the crest of the hill. My tripod stood skeletal against the mist. On the other side lay a pile of sleeping elephant seals. Gray females. Mountainous males. Inky pups. I waited for the baby to see them—to smell the milk—to hear their throaty breathing—to lunge down the hill—to return to its family at last.
But it did no such thing. It stayed with me, panting at my side. It gazed up at me with what I felt to be adoring eyes. I laughed aloud. I could not help myself. The sound rose out of me like bubbles in soda, bursting into the open air.
“Go on,” I said. “Go home.”
My pointing figure meant nothing to it. A shooing motion meant nothing to it. The wind was as warm as bathwater. The seal pup snuggled down on the rocks as though it intended to linger beside me forever.
I decided to take a picture.
In general, I do not traffic in self-portraits. The human figure is a subject that has been done to death. There is nothing new to say about our hands, our faces, our bones, our eyes, our gestures, our capacity for emotion and expression, the play of light and shadow on our skin, the fragility of our newborns, the strength of our musculature, the inevitable encroachment of our aging process, the finality of our dying. The story of the human body has been told and retold. As a rule, I photograph animals. I photograph landscapes. I leave people outside the frame.
This is doubly true for myself. I am the artist, not the artwork. I do not want to fall into the trap of seeing myself from the outside. I don’t care what I look like. It doesn’t matter what I look like. It only matters how I look at the world.
As I slipped behind the tripod and set the timer, I felt a shiver of apprehension. I was breaking the rules—my own code as a photographer, as well as the biologist’s creed of noninterference. I was about to stand on the wrong side of the camera. I was about to intervene, no longer passive, no longer detached.
Yet this moment seemed to be a powerful exception. Something remarkable was happening here: woman and stone and animal and ocean and fog. I returned to the seal pup, gazing into its eyes. It squeaked, and I made sounds in return. I did not pose; I tried not to pose. The camera clicked in the distance. The baby waddled closer to me. It lifted its whiskery snout. I extended a hand, and we made contact—a damp, warm touch, as intimate as a kiss. I gasped. I had not expected this. I was glad for the curtain of fog, concealing my transgression from view.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that. It might have been minutes. It might have been hours. The sea crashed. The heap of elephant seals snored behind me. The camera snapped image after image. The pup nuzzled its maw against my palm. Its breath on my skin. Its milky scent. The sleepy wells of its eyes.
28
IN THE MORNING, I scanned through the photographs I had taken. I was not expecting anything astonishing. I was not expecting to be struck by a bolt of lightning. I was looking for composition, depth of field, beauty. It is strange to think that a moment like that—quiet, contemplative, alone—can change everything.
But you knew that already, didn’t you? You learned that yourself on an icy road in D.C., all those years ago.
I had just woken up. Bundled in the blankets, I held my camera in my lap. The biologists were scattered through the cabin—chatting in the kitchen, running water in the bathroom, making toast. The smell of coffee
filled the air.
The photographs were better than I could have hoped for. The seal pup and I seemed iconic, emblematic. Behind our bodies, the mist was as painterly as brushwork. At first, flicking through the pictures, I focused on the pup. I was hoping for a snapshot that showed it in profile, its canine snout and flippers in full view. I wanted to see its silhouette printed like a shadow puppet on the air. My thumb worked the button, skipping forward, watching the baby move and maneuver on the screen.
Then, somewhat reluctantly, I turned my attention to my own shape. My outstretched fingers. The twist of my hips. The fall of my curls.
I cannot explain how it struck me. I felt hot and cold at the same time. Even before I understood what I was looking at, I had begun to cry. I leaned forward, my nose nearly touching the screen. A wet sob escaped my throat.
I have always been a small person. Less than five feet tall. Skin and bones. I eat like a bird (in the colloquial sense, rather than the true one, since most birds are actually gluttons, according to Lucy). I have never been able to gain weight. Sometimes it feels as though I skipped right over puberty, missing out on the curves I was promised in childhood. My breasts are tiny enough that they do not require a bra. I don’t have much in the way of hips. No gut. No softness at all.
But there was no mistaking what I was seeing. The incipient swell of the belly. Firm apple-breasts. A voluptuous figure. I could not take it in. I could not think of that woman as myself. She was a stranger. A stranger framed on the tiny screen of my camera. A stranger on the coast of the Farallon Islands.
I sucked in a shuddering inhalation. I batted the tears from my cheeks. The image hit me like a tidal wave. The woman stood in profile. Her jeans were tight, encasing thighs that had begun to thicken. If she had been wearing layers—a hoodie or a sweater—her stomach would have been concealed. But she was dressed only in a T-shirt, which clung. Her hand was extended, cupping the nose of the seal pup. It was a sweet moment of connection. And there, between the two figures, hung a dark orb. Ripe fruit.
