I was on the grounds with Mick when we came across the seal pup. We were on our way to Dead Sea Lion Beach, where the first females had finally emerged on land. The air was thick with a combination of rain and mist. I had not brought my camera with me, unwilling to risk the damp. Mick and I were both draped in ponchos that rustled as we moved. My eyelids were beaded with wet. He had a hand on my arm, steadying me as we slipped and crunched across the granite.
I heard it before I saw it. The baby’s call was like nothing I’d ever encountered — at once tremulous and gravelly, somewhere between the whine of a kitten and the cough of a bear. Mick’s fingers tightened on my shoulder.
“Oh no,” he whispered.
We held still. Through the fog, a shape appeared. It was jet black. It moved hesitantly, shuffling and pausing. The fur was soft, the eyes brimming, the nose aquiver with whiskers. Though the pup was large, about half my size, it still managed to be cute in that distinctly mammalian way. It lifted its maw, keening.
Involuntarily I took a step forward, reaching for it.
“No,” Mick said.
“It’s lost,” I said. “It’s going the wrong way.”
“That happens.”
The baby wailed again. The sound tugged at my gut. Somewhere its mother was making an answering call, lost in the wind and the waves.
The pup lumbered toward us. There was a suggestion of exhaustion in its manner. I sucked in a breath. It would have been the work of a moment to pick the baby up and turn it around, pointing it back toward the sea, toward its family, toward safety. All it needed was a nudge in the right direction.
“Can’t we just—” I began.
“No.” Mick’s hand was a vise, keeping me in place. “If it dies, it dies.”
I moaned. The strength of my own impulse surprised me. I wanted the pup close to me, cradled in my arms. The loneliness of that little figure was unbearable. I could not tell if I was crying. It might have been the cold rain on my cheeks. Mick held on, unrelenting. We watched as the baby headed further inland, struggling through the mist, crying out to no one, until the gauzy air swallowed it up.
19
WHEN IT COMES to you, I am sometimes tempted to play the What If Game. This is a dangerous game, no question — but in low moments, I do find it appealing. What if you had lived? What if?
It opens up a world of possibilities. If you had lived, I might not have become a nature photographer at all. I might never have been afflicted by wanderlust. I might have had a home of my own by now. I might have had a dog, or two, or three. I can imagine myself kneeling in a garden, elbow-deep in earth, my face shaded by a straw hat, my mind clear. I might have hosted dinner parties. I might have woken up every morning of my life knowing where I was. Everything about me might have been different, refracted through the lens of What If.
If you had lived, I might have had friends — not coworkers, not colleagues, but dear companions. I might have had a romantic relationship, at least once in my life, that lasted more than a few tempestuous months. I might have been able to fall in love with a man the way I have fallen in love with the islands. I might have formed human attachments, rather than spending my affection on the sky, the waves, the elephant seals, the mist, and the cold. I can imagine myself writing letters to a pen pal. Not a ghost, but a living person. Someone who would write back.
If you had lived, I might never have come to the Farallon Islands. I would never have crossed Andrew’s path. I can draw a direct line from your death to my assault. If you had lived, I might have been protected, nurtured, safe.
I might have been happy. The core of my nature might have been joy, rather than loss.
If you had lived, I would have been able to forget you sometimes. This is how normal people seem to think. I can imagine — just barely — a reality in which I might take my mother for granted, in which you would be a backdrop, like the blurred middle ground of a photograph, important but unremarked.
The What If Game applies to my father too. I can imagine a circumstance in which he might be less focused on his work, less absent mentally. He might not turn on the TV every night with the weary, glazed expression of an alcoholic reaching for the bottle. For years now, he and I have been like roommates, like acquaintances. Whenever I am home between assignments, we fall into the same old grooves, deep ruts that run parallel but do not touch. He has his poker game on Friday nights. I stop by the farmers’ market on Wednesdays. He goes for a jog every morning. I take long, hot baths in the afternoons. We each have our own shelf in the cabinet, in the fridge. We each have our own hobbies — I do crossword puzzles, he does sudoku. We each have our own routines for sleeping and waking, drifting past each other in the hallway in our bathrobes without bothering to make eye contact.
If you had lived, all this might have been different. Dad and I would not move around each other with this gentle brand of detachment. We would not spend hours together in a concentrated silence, each of us preoccupied and withdrawn, as alone as it is possible for two people in one room to be.
I did try to discuss this very matter with my father once. I remember it well. He and I were sitting in the living room, in our usual stillness. The wind filled the trees outside. It was evening, and the robins, the first birds to stir in the morning and the last to sound at night, were twittering. Dad was frowning at a file in his lap as I flipped through a catalog of photographic equipment in a desultory way.
At last I cleared my throat. “Hey.”
He glanced at me, then back at his file.
“About Mom,” I said.
He nodded, though he kept his gaze fixed on the page.
“If she hadn’t died,” I said, “do you think you and I would have been closer? That we would have been able to talk more, maybe?”
A pause. A long pause.
“We’ll never know,” he said.
CHRISTMAS IS ON the horizon. This has brought out a previously unseen side of Charlene. She has gone on a holiday rampage. In some back closet, she found a blow-up Christmas tree, the sort of cheap, rubber affair that could serve in an emergency as a flotation device. The greenery is the hue of Astroturf, the baubles painted right onto the plastic. It smells like a child’s wading pool. It is an abomination. Charlene blew it up herself, puff by puff, and set it in the middle of the living room. We all have to walk around it a dozen times a day. She has taken to wearing a Santa hat around, which she apparently brought to the islands specially, packing it into her luggage months in advance. The red clashes magnificently with her auburn hair. And she has not stopped there. A few days ago she rooted through the garbage, unearthing any bits of metal she could get her hands on. The girl has made tinsel out of empty cans.
Our ancient television now blares day and night. The old Christmas standbys are playing on a loop. The TV screen is officially broken; if any of us stares for too long into that chaos of static, we might go blind. Yet Charlene does not appear to care. Legs folded, smiling, she sits in an armchair and listens with her eyes closed. She seems to know each film by heart, laughing at bits of unseen slapstick, tearing up during a romantic moment that is invisible to the rest of us.
I, of course, am not a holiday person. Dead mothers are not festive. Christmas has meant very little to me over the past twenty years.