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.
I wiped my eyes. I sat up in bed, trying to steady my breathing. My hands were shaking so much that I could hardly hold the camera.
The woman in my photographs was pregnant.
29
IT HAS BEEN a month since I last wrote. I have needed time. It has taken me a while to come to terms with my current state. The revelation has filtered through me like sugar in tea — glittering, swirling, only gradually absorbed.
I have stayed apart. I have avoided taking walks with Mick and Forest. I have ignored Galen altogether. Lucy and I, as usual, have repelled one another like magnetic poles. I have spent whole days in my room, examining the photographs of myself in the fog. I have not always been sure whether I am awake or dreaming. I might find myself in the kitchen, running water over my hands, or on the porch, swaddled in the wind, and I will pinch myself surreptitiously, making sure.
I have dreamed at night of the seal pup. I have dreamed of the ghost. A luminescent figure. A fall of white fabric. A chilly silence. In these nightmares, she is the one who is pregnant. The ball of her belly glows like a lamp. The fetus inside is a squiggle of neon. I have dreamed of Andrew too. A monstrous elephant seal — an alpha male, all blubber and swagger — has lumbered across the granite, flinging his limp sock of a nose back and forth. As I watch, he has thrown back his head and given Andrew’s laugh, note for note. I have dreamed of myself on the grounds, standing at my tripod, photographing a woman and a seal pup. As I frame the two figures in the viewfinder, I have wondered who the woman might be. I never seem to recognize her. In my dreams, she has remained faceless, in shadow, without identity.
I have told no one. I have said nothing out loud.
Yet the evidence is everywhere. It feels as though I have suddenly learned to see color or sunlight — a thousand details that have been there all along, omnipresent but unnoticed. Yes, I have put on a few pounds. I can feel the extra bulk when I sit down, a cushion at my middle. Yes, I always need to pee. Yes, I’ve been having hot flashes. Sometimes it feels as though there is a furnace in my stomach, a fiery oven sending up a plume of heat. Yes, I’ve had food cravings. Food aversions. Exhaustion. I have been sleeping like a teenager, craving ten, eleven hours a night. I have known and noticed all these things, yet each has struck me as being unconnected to the others. Isolated symptoms. Pinpoints of color on a canvas. Products of the islands.