We were at the ferry terminal when the explosion went off. My spouse and I
were on an anniversary trip to explore the San Juan Islands. We missed the
early ferry, as we were catching up with our daughter, Fanny. She had
recently moved to Singapore, and as we talked I could see that she had gone
through some effort to make her apartment a home. There was a blue and
white tapestry hanging on the wall behind her, and a shelf of knick-knacks,
miniature painted vases with twigs arranged just so, succulents in glass
bowls, a photo stream framed playfully with copper wire. There was even
printed matter, a tiny dollhouse fashioned by glossy newsprint, and rarer –
a book.
As usual, I drew the attention of fellow passengers by taking out my
paperback, an anthology of poetry. We had a long wait for the next ferry,
and I still kept the habit of carrying it with me when we traveled. My
husband, Sutton, did not approve.
“People think you’re being reactionary. It makes them uncomfortable.”
“Nonsense,” I said, but I knew he was right, as evidenced by the looks that
I did get. The book dated to the late century, and was passed down to me by
my grandfather. The book’s cover and spine were creased, and its pages
smudged and torn. Many of the poems I knew by heart, even the impenetrable
ones.
My face is my own/My hands are my own/My mouth is my own/but I am not.
I smiled benignly at the people sitting near us, wondering what they were
reading on their portals. Their projected screens were always interesting,
and for a few moments I looked at them. Autumnal valleys, tropical islands,
snowy mountains, lush forests, space’s many wonders. Some were cloaked,
blending in with the waiting room’s interior. A handful were more personal
– smiling children, family vacations, lovers kissing in front of altars.
These people I looked at more closely, as they were wielding their
immunity. It wasn’t because they had nothing to hide; the opposite was
often the case. Although their ages were elusive (my real age had also
elicited curiosity), their behavior and dress provided clues. It was a bad
habit, from before the old system, when the tally of our years did not
equal the measure of our worth. Still, I couldn’t help it. One sat across
from me. His screen showed him with a group of people posing around a booth
at a restaurant, the table littered with plates of food, partially
consumed, and emptied wine glasses. The man was sharing the contents of his
projection with his husband, a man wearing a plaid cap, who seemed
uninterested in whatever it was on the man’s screen, and turned his
attention back to his own. By the way the man touched his husband, placing
a hand on a shoulder, a knee, tucking a strand of hair, all the while not
making eye contact, I surmised he was a good deal older. His casual dress,
relative to his companion’s, suggested an upper-level state position. To
the left was a woman whose oversized green glasses threatened to swallow
her narrow face. The effect was comical, as if she was in poor disguise.
She was dancing (sans specs) with a handsome, goateed man on her screen;
from her white gown and his tuxedo it appeared to be their wedding. As if
sensing that someone was watching her, the woman looked up at me. Her eyes–
hazel, rimmed with gold – matched her frames, and they flickered as she
considered me. I smiled. Her closed lips spread into a semblance of a smile
before she looked back down. I reached over and patted Sutton’s arm. Now
that the gulf between us had widened after so many years, it gave me a
thrill to think that people could assume Sutton was my son. There were not
many of us agers left, and now, with the new laws, we would soon be
extinct.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. There was a concession stand at the other end of
the terminal. The room was chilly, and I hadn’t had my morning coffee.
Fanny had woken us up, and we talked to her from our hotel room. She was at
the end of her day, and was wearing a suit. Her hair was swept back into a
chignon. How did we create this being, I wondered, who lived in a brand new
world, saving the planet, with her hair in a goddamn chignon? It was
impossible to fathom. I was glad we couldn’t see ourselves as we spoke – I
remembered the days when our faces floated, disembodied, on the bottom of
the screen. We couldn’t see me unfiltered, unironed, an old witch sapping
her loved ones’ youth.
“Mmm,” Sutton said, his eyes glued to his news. I tried to stay off these
sites altogether. Sutton was looking for news about the markets in
Singapore. Fanny had approached the protests with her usual equanimity,
assuring us that she was safe, and that the firm had hired extra security
onsite. When I asked about offsite security, she told us there was a night
guard.
“No daytime security?”
“I’m not here during the day.”
“I don’t need to tell you that’s not a sufficient answer.”
“You just did.” Sutton interrupted us and I let it drop. The reason Fanny
was calling us, she said, was to tell us she wasn’t coming home for the
holidays. We were renting a cabin at Lake Chelan. We used to spend
vacations on the Oregon coast when Fanny was little. Fanny peering over a
tide pool in her rain boots, writing messages with sticks in the sand,
videoing seal pups by the dunes.
“We made reservations in June. It will be four years since you’ve come
home.”
“Mom…” Behind her, the city was lit up through the windows, skyscrapers
carving the night with their blades of light.
“It’s okay honey, we understand,” said Sutton, our peacemaker.
“Did you get our package?” I asked. I bought Fanny an antique hairbrush I
came across at an estate sale. It was a silver plated brush ornamented with
a woman with flowers in her hair. I was going to wait to give it to her in
person, but some second sense urged me not to. It would fit perfectly on
her shelf of treasures. Fanny said no, she hadn’t gotten it yet. I hoped I
hadn’t sent it to her last address by mistake. It was hard to keep up with
my daughter’s whereabouts. Her job took her all over the world, to places
far more dangerous than home. In darker moments I wondered if she was
running away from me. I reminded her about the time we sent fresh food to
her when she was in Minsk, and by the time she picked it up it had spoiled.
“If you sent it to the right address, it will come here.”
“If you sent us the right address, you mean.”
“All right, now,” Sutton said, and when we got off, “Damn it Lauren.”
There was no coffee at the concession stand, but they had tea and pastries.
I bought two sweet rolls and a Danish, already breaking my promise to cut
back on sugar. Lately, I was hungry all the time, craving foods I hadn’t
eaten in years, rich creamy sauces, smoked meats, honeyed confections. The
more I ate, the more I wanted to eat. My bag was a repository for crumbs. I
took a bite of one of the sweet rolls, flecks of icing coating my lips. Two
girls ran past me, almost toppling me, with their father in tow. They
squealed in delight as he tried to corral them. When I came back Sutton was
talking to a man sitting next to him. I had not noticed him when we sat
down. They were talking about what islands the man had visited. Sutton
asked him if it was true about the smell; the man laughed and said we’d get
used to it. He said the kill pile at Deception Pass was worse, not for the
odor, but for the gulls. One attacked a young girl.
“She was eating one of those caramel apples,” he said, by way of
explanation. Were all little girls with caramel apples at risk? I wondered,
imagining a field of them, sticks in hand, the sky teeming with grey and
white wings. As I bit into my sweet roll, I longed for the luscious
gooeyness of caramel and the crisp tang of apple. I wanted Sutton and the
man to stop talking so that he could choose between the Danish and the
sweet roll so that we could split the third, but of course I wanted the
Danish. Meanwhile, a Canadian ferry came in and passengers disembarked.
They formed a line at Customs and switched on their portals, a bright row
of interpolations. I took out the Danish. I have eaten/the plums.
Here’s to Sutton and me. Twenty-five years, I thought, biting into the soft
ricotta.
Sutton had been dating my co-worker when we met. I would occasionally see
him outside our building, sitting on a concrete wall that abutted a bamboo
garden. I noticed him before I knew who he was, and tried to catch his eye.
He was usually listening to something as he rubbed his thighs with his
hands. One day my co-worker and I rode the elevator together after another
analyst’s presentation, and were having some disagreement about it. We were
typically on opposite sides, and things could get heated. She was trying to
convince me that the basis of our colleague’s argument was sound. I had
long deemed her a sentimentalist, and thought she was being lenient because
he was a supporter of hers. In any case, we walked out together. Due to its
proximity to the water, our courtyard was like a wind tunnel, and no sooner
had we stepped outside than the scarf around my co-worker’s neck flew right
off. In the elevator, she had draped it around her neck, cashmere in a
pretty green shade, and the thought that she might lose it crossed my mind.
She was a sharp dresser, but I didn’t like the drape around her neck. We
both went after it as it twirled and dashed in the air. Sutton saw us and
joined our pursuit. The three of us chased the scarf until it landed in the
bamboo. We laughed as I retrieved it and held it out for her. Sutton took
it from me and draped it around her neck. I was taken aback. Who the hell
did this stranger think he was? But then my co-worker kissed him. I had to
admit I was disappointed by the turn of events. I had enjoyed watching him
from afar, fantasizing about what it would be like to undress him. Later,
he told me that he knew his relationship with my co-worker was finished the
moment he took the scarf from my hand. But it would be several months
before that happened, and several more before my fantasies came true. He
looked so robust – at the prime of his life – and this is how he would look
on his deathbed. It was unlikely that I would get to see it, as the chances
of Sutton outliving me by many moons were high.
After I was gone, Sutton could have another life with someone else. Our
daughter would not know what it is like to see her youth part ways, leaving
her to grieve its infidelities and accept its loss. I did not foresee how
it felt to watch my face, my body deteriorate while others did not. Once
and a while I will see something pass over Sutton’s face while making love
that wasn’t doubt, or revulsion, or pity, or fear, but rather a shadow of a
deeper, truer reckoning. In someone less full of hope and idealism, my
visible age would probably not cause much distress. But for Sutton, whose
faith in humankind’s purpose in the world was steadfast, I was a daily
reminder of our inevitable annihilation. Even if I could not accept it as
anything but magical thinking I was attracted to his point of view. Still,
this morning, after we left a half an hour late and our cab got tangled in
traffic, Sutton believed we would make our ferry.
“We won’t get a window seat, but that’s all right,” he had said, but when
we ascended a hill that overlooked the bay, there was our ferry making its
slow, lumbering departure. On the deck there were figures waving goodbye to
their friends and family, but it felt like they were waving to us. Goodbye! The scene reminded me of taking the ferry to see our
grandfather on Owl Landing a year before it was wiped out in a tsunami, my
sister Elliott and I in identical tops and shorts that our dad sewed for
us. My father on the dock, sunglasses perched on top of his head. We were
supposed to do as we were told, to be polite and not talk back, to clean up
after ourselves and make our bed, to brush our teeth and go to sleep. We
were prepared to handle our duties, but our father did not tell us that our
grandfather was deaf, and that Owl Landing, was, in fact, one of just a
handful of Deaf communities left. We would have noticed people talking with
their hands on the ferry, but we were too excited to pay attention. We fell
in love with Arthur (he insisted we use his first name) and Owl Landing, an
enchanted landscape of steep, jagged cliffs and rugged hillsides. According
to our father, Owl Landing was founded by a princess.
“Was she beautiful?” Elliott wanted to know.
“She was brilliant,” he told us, “and very brave.” We were at the age where
we were starting to question our father’s stories, and believed he was
trying to alleviate some of our anxiety. This was a big journey, and we
were nervous about it, about meeting our grandfather. But Arthur bewitched
us with his laboratory and floating specimens. We loved his glass house and
surrounding garden, home to deer and rabbit and fox. We wanted to live
there forever.
When we arrived at the terminal, the automaton was out of commission and
another ager had checked our luggage instead. I could tell by the ridges in
his neck and the folds around his jaw, though it seemed he was younger. I
asked how his day was going to make small talk. “Good,” he said, without
looking up from his screen. Undeterred, I asked if this was the start or
the end of his shift. I was still getting used to being retired; I found
myself being overly solicitous with strangers, especially ones like me. Our
attendant looked up and there it was. Suspicion. We were species running
into one another in the wild, mindful of our territory, protective of our
resources.
“The start,” he said.
“Well,” I said, punching in an extra tip. “I hope you have a great day.”
“Safe travels,” he said without enthusiasm.
Sutton got us seats while I checked us in. A man in line behind me was
talking to someone. He had flown in from New York, and had also missed the
early morning ferry. He was on his way to a family reunion. Yesterday we
had taken the train to the city, and had spent the afternoon visiting
friends at their houseboat. We had dinner at one of our favorite
restaurants in the city, near our old place by the university. I had been
looking forward to coming back, but felt disappointed by our visit. I tried
to steer the conversation away from my retirement, but they wanted to know
how I was taking my sudden departure. My status as an ager had been, for
years, an advantage. My experience could not be questioned. But in recent
months the papers would come in and I had a hard time reading them. I
missed some things I shouldn’t have, sending an erroneous report got sent
to our satellite office in Dayton, which was a costly setback.
The man was complaining about being stuck at the terminal. He didn’t
understand why he couldn’t check in and take in the sights. There had been
increased security all over the country since the last bombings. In all our
years living in the Northwest, we had never been to the San Juans. We had
taken the ferry over to Victoria after we were married, before the terminal
was renamed to memorialize the whale. There was an adjacent museum
dedicated to the mammal, with films depicting its heyday in these waters.
“We’re all set,” Sutton said.
“Did you think the man checking our luggage was rude?” I asked.
“No, but it must be a bit of a challenge in his position, dealing with
people staring and such.” I loved the way Sutton talked, peppering his
speech with quaint syntax. A bit, and such. In some ways, he and
my co-worker must have been a striking pair. Sutton was refined, elegant in
his manner and my colleague had been so stylish and romantic. Sometimes I
had dreams of Sutton going back to her. In them, I would make a list of all
that needed to be done in preparation. Call Fanny. Iron shirts. Cancel meetings. I wanted to be ready for
it, but when he left I realized I had done none of things on my list, which
kept getting longer –
Contact lawyer, put house on market, transfer funds, buy plane tickets
–
and nonsensical; Elk magnolia, treble drive, skull bourbon, gum prism. When I woke up to Sutton beside me, sleeping with his
arms flung above his head, I would feel a wave of relief and gratitude, for
Sutton not leaving me, obviously (she was just a bit player in our story
after all), but also for not having to do the tasks on that list.
At home Sutton was the one to make sure our bills were paid and our house
was in running order. Before Sutton things either got done late or not at
all. But before Sutton was so long ago, it might as well have not existed
at all. Here is where I am in space. I flipped to the page of this
poem and reread it. Its association with Arthur and Owl Landing tugged at
me. Arthur had pointed the poem out to me when he gave me the book. I read
it without understanding, and bombarded him with questions. Who was Andre
Breton? What is surrealism? He withdrew a red object from a cabinet, placed
it on the ground, and gave it a spin. The object whirled around and around
before clanking to a stop. I felt I was being tricked and put the book
aside without another glance. Elliott’s gift, on the other hand, was far
better – a slide collection of bees. We pored over the insects. Our
favorite was the bumblebee for its furry cuteness, but Elliott didn’t have
the collection long, as she forgot it on the ferry home. For me the book
had a subtler effect, and it was not until I was older that I understood
why Arthur showed me that particular poem. He saw that I was a drifter, a
daydreamer, and the poem was a reminder to come back to the present.
I put away my poetry book, and checked the time. The woman in her bountiful
glasses was inputting data, fingers leisurely tapping her screen. I was
worrying what Sutton had said but didn’t know why. It was spooling and
unspooling in my head like a bobbin. The goateed man on the woman’s screen
had long eyelashes and a cancerous-looking mole on his right cheek. He wore
a gold lower case q pin on his lapel. I recognized the symbol, periapsis,
from astronomy. The point of closest approach. It was associated with a
far-right syndicate that Fanny once mentioned in passing. She didn’t like
to go into much detail about work with me. I thought about not waiting
until the hotel to write to her, and began to compose a note in my head. I
would tell her about Arthur and Owl Landing. I would tell her who Andre
Breton was. I would describe the varieties of bees.
A large group entered the terminal. One of them was my former colleague and
Sutton’s ex-girlfriend. She had left our firm not long after Sutton and I
were married. She was as smartly dressed as ever in wide-legged cream pants
and matching blouse, and her hair was tied in an elaborate bun that
reminded me of Osiris’s crown. In contrast, her companions donned
utilitarian khaki ensembles with more pockets that any one person could
possibly need, and sported baseball caps with Vade Mecum printed across
them. Vade Mecum had been one of those flash in the pan tea-leaf outfits,
long since defunct, but remembered for their “readings” that allegedly
sickened participants. She spotted us immediately.
“Lauren, Sutton, oh my!” she said, embracing us as we dutifully stood to
greet her. She was fresh-faced and girlish, and talked excitedly about our
happy reunion as her bright eyes appraised us. Before we could catch her up
on the past twenty years, she did it for us, relating our family’s
milestones as if they belonged to her, claiming them with her typical
melodrama that was not without charm: Sutton’s return to teaching and
writing, Fanny’s new move to Singapore by way of London, my various
endeavors (making them sound far more fruitful than they actually were,
dear girl) and recent retirement. The spectacle was impressive. We waited
for her to tell us about the anniversary trip we were embarking on, our
happy union, the sex we had last night after sharing a bottle of wine. Then
again maybe there was no charm in it at all. She told us she was working as
a researcher on anarchist factions. She was on an expedition (calling it a
“pilgrimage”) to reclaim the remains of a long-time radical, which were
discovered on San Juan Island.
“How very fascinating!” Sutton said, sweet man. But then he asked if she
was talking about Kay Tepper.
“My goodness, yes!” She exclaimed. She couldn’t believe he knew her name. I
believed it. My husband could tell you the number of exoplanets there were
or the outcome of the Second Punic War. They both turned to me as she told
me all about this woman. Her crown of hair swayed precariously as she
spoke; I feared it could topple over at any moment. My focus wavered
between her mop and figuring out her connection to Vade Mecum, but got the
gist of her tale. Kay Tepper had been a May 19th member, and
disappeared, along with two other women, decades ago. The discovery of her
remains was a major breakthrough, and my old associate was being sent to
investigate. Here she signaled to the crew behind her with a flourish of
her hand. I was conscious of Sutton looking at me, and was summoning an
appropriate response when Sutton’s portal beeped.
“Fanny,” Sutton said. “Hi Honey.” He excused himself, giving his one-time
love’s arm a squeeze as he got up and walked to the window. His sudden
departure left her looking wounded, but she recovered nicely by wishing us
both well, and gave me (or the general population around me) a slight bow
with her glorious bun.
I watched our friend rejoin her party, her loose pants and blouse flowing
like ceremonial robes. I half-expected the crew to kneel before her or lift
her up on their shoulders, and had the sinking realization that we’d be
seeing more of her on the ferry. I wasn’t the only one who was taken by
her. The woman with the goateed husband was watching her, too, her goofy
frames sliding down her nose. After a minute, she turned off her portal,
stood, and headed for the concession stand. Sutton was pacing a narrow
swath of carpet. Meanwhile people were crossing and recrossing their legs,
making makeshift pillows with their jackets, as their eyes darted from
screen to water to screen again. The wait seemed to be catching up with us.
The room was warm and damp, and the sound of flushing toilets and clicking
screens created an agitated and claustrophobic atmosphere.
“What is it?” I asked Sutton when he came back.
“I don’t know, I lost the signal.”
“Here,” I said, handing him his sweet roll. Sutton bit into it.
“I want her to come home too,” he said. He was growing a beard that
couldn’t decide what color it wanted to be. His chin and sideburns were
dark, like his hair, but his jaw and mustache were red. Bits of sweet roll
nestled into it; I resisted the urge to tell him.
What had Sutton said about the ager? In his position. It was not
typical to see an ager, whose very situation indicated privilege,
substituting for an inoperative droid. Some, like myself, were exempt
because of our professional status. Others had political ties. People were
circumspect around us – we were artifacts, of course, and as such, valued
for what we symbolized. At the same time the new laws had answered that
lingering, nagging question of where we did, or rather didn’t, belong.
Passengers continued to stream in and out, checking in at the counter,
talking to one another or to the disembodied buzzing in their ears. Talking
or not talking, eating or not eating, watching or not watching. But
everyone was watching. Our friend was watching, her crown miraculously in
place. Her minions, too, were watching. What were they looking for? What
did they see? Were they watching pornography? Reading poetry?
I came back to the row in front of me, to the May-December couple, though
no one could tell, as their faces bore the shiny newness of morning dew. On
Owl Landing we woke early to see the deer grazing on the shimmery grass,
their white tails twitching in soft light. Sometimes some sound, the turn
of an engine, the flapping of a wing, would startle them and they would
dart away, disappearing over the craggy hill. The men were each engrossed
in their own portal, and their surveillance lights, signaled by a tiny red
dot on the top of their screens, were turned off. I looked at the people
sitting next to them. The same. The unduly bespectacled woman and the ager were making their way toward the exit. My portal
blinked. It was a text from Fanny, a warning. I read it, considering.
“What is it?” Sutton asked, putting down his half-eaten sweet roll. I
turned off my phone.
“The brush came,” I said. “She loves it.” The roll’s layers unspooled on
his lap. The light outside was flat, the sound and sky one canvas. I took
Sutton’s hand, smooth, plump, the tips of his fingers sticky from sugar, in
my own gnarled and veiny one. A form emerged in the water. Before the light
and the roar, and the fire and the ash, and the blackout and silence, I saw
our ferry coming for us. But it could have been a pod of orcas, their black
and white bodies rising from the depths, to reclaim the sea.