A silence fell. The weight of the fetus was heavy on my spine. These days, it was all but impossible to find a comfortable pose. The baby’s girth could not be contained; it was always pressing on my bladder or lodged beneath my diaphragm, crumpling my intestines. Kamikaze Pete broke the stillness. With a shriek, he rose outside the window, his wings beating inches from the glass.
It was an awful word: father. It was an unanswerable idea. Under the circumstances, I could not lie. I could hardly blame an old boyfriend for my situation. I couldn’t make up a story about going to a bar — a stranger, a one-night stand. My only hope was to stall and evade. I had practiced a few noncommittal responses in preparation for this conversation. That’s for me to know and you to find out. Oh, let’s not get into it. It’s my little secret. Pathetic quips. Useless and unconvincing. I had not been able to think of a decent solution for the quandary of the baby’s father. Despite all my fretting, all my planning, I hadn’t come up with anything good.
“I’m sorry,” Mick said again, softer this time.
“Thanks,” I said.
“So tell me. Let’s hear the whole story.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on,” he said. “The curiosity has been killing me.”
Outside, the roar of the gulls ticked up a notch, as though someone had adjusted the volume on a vast outdoor speaker.
“We don’t talk about the past here,” I said.
The words had a hollow sound to my ears, but Mick nodded. His expression became solemn, as though I’d given the correct passcode.
“Let me get you some more tea,” he said.
He got to his feet. With that, the subject was closed.
A WEEK LATER, on a rainy afternoon, Galen left a book on my bed. There was a Post-it note on the cover in his distinctive, meticulous script: For Miranda. It was a volume I had not seen before, which made me suspect he had been hoarding it. Galen has a cache of goodies in his room — seal stones, bird skeletons, shark teeth, who knows what else. This area is off-limits to the rest of us. We are all aware that there are treasures behind that cracked wooden door. Galen keeps oddities, trophies, and relics. He keeps animal skulls, feathers, and tiny mouse skins. Once, long ago, he told me that his collection even contains a few mementos from the human side of things as well. Love letters. Forgotten items of jewelry. Interesting hats.
I turned the book over in my hands. It seemed to focus on the history of the Farallon Islands. I flipped through it idly. I was not sure why Galen wanted me to read it, but I was not about to disobey an order from him, however indirect.
I settled in bed, on my side, so the baby’s weight would not be balanced on my spine. At first — I will be honest — I wasn’t really paying attention. The radiator clunked. A drizzle pattered the windows. I leafed through the pages without much interest. It seemed that the islands had always had a dubious reputation. The Miwok Indians of California had viewed the place as a sort of earthly perdition, where the damned were sent to dwell forever in perpetual hardship.
I yawned.
The next chapter was about Bird Season — about the eggers. I pricked up my ears a little, reading with greater urgency. The story began with a man who had the unlikely name of Doc Robinson. In the 1800s, the gold rush was on. Doc Robinson came to San Francisco, like everyone else, to make his fortune. But he was an uncommonly wily fellow. In between panning for nuggets and having his heart broken over the plethora of fool’s gold, he noticed something no one else had yet perceived: there weren’t enough chickens in California. All the beloved foods that were made with eggs — pastries, omelets, mayonnaise — were absent from daily life.
Even then, Bird Season on the Farallon Islands was notorious. The archipelago was as yet untenanted — a bare, stripped sculpture of stone, a nautical hazard, a spooky silhouette against the dusky horizon. Passing sailors had returned to the mainland with tales of more birds than there were stars in the sky. Hundreds of thousands of eggs, there for the taking. (The gulls had not yet achieved their current supremacy. The ruling force, throughout the summer months, had been the murres.) Doc Robinson had heard these stories. It did not concern him that the murre eggs looked nothing like chicken eggs. They were not smooth, ivory, palatable orbs. Instead, the murres laid green-blue spheres the size of softballs, with leathery, freckled hides. Often their eggs were marked by what appeared to be letters in an unknown alphabet. It would not do to cook them outright: the whites were translucent, the yolks as red as blood, and they tasted fishy. Unappetizing, to say the least.
However, they could be used as a substitute in baking. Doc Robinson gave up on gold. He voyaged to the Farallon Islands and collected a couple thousand murre eggs. Upon his return to California, he made a passel of money and retired in triumph as cakes, muffins, and soufflés once again appeared on menus.
Thus began the onslaught of the eggers. Anyone who wanted to make a few bucks followed Doc Robinson’s example, renting a boat and heading out to sea. There wasn’t enough gold to go around, but for those who were greedy and reckless enough, there were more than enough murres. The men soon took to wearing “egg shirts” with pockets stitched onto every available bit of fabric. In this garment, one person could carry two hundred eggs. The hapless birds were unable to defend themselves against these unaccustomed predators. There was no governmental oversight, no sense of environmental balance. Nobody paused to consider what would happen if the vast majority of murre eggs on the planet were harvested and consumed.
But the islands, then as now, were a dangerous place. The work was risky. The book painted the picture for me clearly: a man’s body weighted down by the uncomfortable heft of two hundred fat eggs. His balance would be affected. He might stumble on the rocks. Guano coated the pathways. Waves washed in, filling the air with spray. Bruises and broken bones were common. A certain percentage of the eggers vanished. They took a wrong turn and were claimed by the sea.
With a sigh, I put the book aside. I began the process of extricating myself from the mattress. The baby was kicking determinedly at my midriff, urging me to rise, pulling me back into the present, away from stories and shadows.
I AM STILL realizing the simple fact of my pregnancy. This idea shines in my mind at all times, throwing everything else into sharp relief. The baby’s movements are forceful now. A punch to my rib cage. A scrape down my spine. Sometimes, in a room filled with biologists, I will have the sensation of listening to music that no one else can hear. I will close my eyes, absorbed by the interior flicker and pulse of life. The sensation is so intense, so all-consuming, that I will lose track of things. The world will fall away. I will forget where I am: in the cabin, on the islands, on the surface of the earth — I might be anywhere. The universe seems to be condensed inside my body, encompassed and circumscribed by my own skin.
I have been aware, all along, of how I should feel about my situation. Ennui and despair. Confusion and fear. If Andrew had lived, I might now be planning an emergency trip to the mainland. I might be scanning the yellow pages — our beat-up, obsolete copy — looking for abortion clinics. I might be counting the minutes until the alien invader could be removed from my body.
But Andrew did not live. He drowned. The islands took him away.
And so, this does not seem like his child at all. The two things feel entirely unconnected. There was an assault, an act of violence, somewhere in the past. There is a marvel, a gift from this place, here in the present. The memory of the attack — dark and hateful — is like an old star, disintegrating, crumbling into dust, barely visible alongside a powerful new sun. As the weeks have worn on, what I have experienced, more and more strongly, is wild, wordless, unreasoning joy.