The Seal Wife - Kathryn Harrison [69]
By chance, there’s a piece of kindling that’s straight and the same length as the splintered stretcher. All he has to do is peel off the bark and whittle the ends so that it fits. She sits on the bed, arms still crossed, watching as he works. Under her gaze, he picks up the mended chair and sits carefully, testing it. He puts the furniture back where it belongs, table before the stove, and he replaces objects on the shelf.
All right, he thinks as he works. All right.
And, like someone reciting a prayer, he goes over the remainder of the afternoon. She will cook and we will eat. We’ll sit across from each other without saying a thing, and when we’re finished, we’ll get into the bed. And she’ll touch herself. She’ll reach down when I’m inside her and make herself cry out—the first little noise from her after all that I’ve made. I’ll come, and then maybe she’ll let me hold her, but probably not. She’ll take a bath, and I’ll sleep. I’ll sleep a little before going back to the station. And tomorrow, tomorrowI’ll wake up in my bed. For a minute I’ll lie there, and then I’ll go outside to the instruments and write the numbers in the log and transcribe them into code and carry the page to the cable office. And come home. I’ll come home every day to draw my maps, the maps for me, for the book of storm tracks, and the forecast maps for the post office. There will be time left over, some afternoons, to build a new kite. Muslin is cheap, and wood for the spars. I know the dimensions.No instruments, but still, the kite will allow me to observe the wind, the wind above the water.
It will be as it was. For as long as she allows it, I will come to this house. I will come, and I will bring a gift and she will cook and we will lie together in her bed and she will bathe and smoke and I will watch and then I’ll go home.
He opens the tobacco tin and reaches inside to straighten the dent that he made, sets it on the shelf. The woman rises from where she’s sitting on the bed. She stands before the stove for as long as it takes for him to replace the blankets, the pillow at its head. Then she walks to the door and she opens it.
She holds it open until he gathers his things and leaves.
A LONG PUNISHMENT, but, he supposes, not longer than he deserves. Despite the fact that she won’t open the door, neither to let him in nor to accept any conciliatory gift, Bigelow finds comfort in her presence—she’s there, in her house. Every day he checks and sees that she hasn’t left. On occasion, she even meets his gaze through the window. She looks at him, unblinking, for whole seconds before she turns away.
And the days grow longer; this alone makes him optimistic. En route to her house he feels the rush of birds overhead, returning, flying so close to the ground that their wing beats set the air shuddering around him.
It’s just a matter of time before she takes him back. He cannot imagine any other outcome, and while he waits, he is building a new kite. He has what he needs—spars, muslin, wire, notebooks filled with calculations, his field book recording details of all but the last flight—and undertakes the project as a distraction. A copy, he thinks when he begins, an exact replica. He can reinvent what he lost.
But as he sits drawing at his table, Bigelow has a sudden, new idea. What if the cells were not square but triangular? What if, between two grand triangles . . . Bigelow starts with a fresh, unmarked page.
An hour passes, and another. Geese cry out, and when someone knocks he doesn’t lift his head. Upstairs, a bird must have hit a windowpane. After all, visits to his station house are few.
Where was he? A central deck, between the two triangles, on which to mount equipment. If he increases the distance between the two cells, then—
“Hello?” A man’s voice calls out. Another knock, louder.
Bigelow stands stiffly from his chair. He tucks his shirt into his trousers with ink-stained hands. When he opens his door, the man before him has already removed his hat.
“Davison,” he