“They knew the risks.” In 1915, ten men from the Ross Sea Party, the group Shackleton had tasked with laying supply depots for his Endurance expedition, had gotten stranded when their ship lost its moorings and drifted. Not knowing that Shackleton’s crew had been forced to abandon their own ship, the men kept going, completing their mission, but three of them didn’t survive.
“That’s exactly what I appreciate about being down here,” Keller says. “You know the risks—the hazards are tangible.” He takes another look around, as if what he’s trying to say is written on the time-scarred walls. “Back in Boston, I was living this so-called normal life, blissfully ignorant of the dangers all around us. That’s so much worse. Because when something does happen, you’re not prepared for it.”
I move closer, and he pulls me into a long hug, so long I feel as if maybe he’s afraid to let go—as if by clinging to me, in this hut, in this faraway place, he can preserve his memories and leave them behind at the same time. I want to assure him that he’ll find a balance, that it’s the same fine line as going from here to home and back again, but I know he’ll learn this soon enough, in his own time.
At last he pulls away, kisses my forehead. “Thank you for this,” he says.
We go back out into the summer night and walk around the other side of the hut, facing the sound. Clean, cold air freezes through my nostrils, carrying the faint scent of ocean and iced rock.
In the water, flat fragments of ice float around like puzzle pieces; in the distance beyond, thin layers of silver glisten over the light blue of large bergs. As a breeze begins to stir, I lean into Keller, a chill biting through my clothes.
He pulls me closer, staring over the top of my head. “Sea leopard,” he whispers, using the explorers’ term for the leopard seal that is passing within fifty feet of us, on its way to open water. We watch the seal, a full-grown male, as he propels his sleek gray body forward, focused on the sea ahead.
Then the seal stops and turns his head toward us, sniffing the air, revealing his lighter-gray, speckled underside. He gazes at us, his face like that of a hungry puppy with its wide, whiskered nostrils and huge wet eyes. We’re downwind, but I feel Keller’s breath stop halfway through his chest. After a few long moments, the seal turns his head and continues on his way, slipping silently into the water.
Keller exhales, slowly, and I feel his weight settle against me as he relaxes. Though a leopard seal had once hunted a member of Shackleton’s Endurance party—first on land, then from under the ice—and while they can be highly dangerous, attacks on humans are rare.
I look at Keller, thinking he’d been worried about the seal—and I see he’s smiling.
“I could get used to this,” he says.
“To what, exactly? Close encounters with deadly predators? The subzero temperatures? The six-day workweeks?”
“You,” he says. “I could get used to you.”
WITH CONSTANT DAYLIGHT, time loses its urgency, and it’s easy for me to believe we’ll be here forever. Yet eventually the sun sets for an hour a day, and then a few more—and soon conversations on the base begin to eddy around the transition from summer to winter season. As our time at McMurdo grows shorter, I can’t stop myself from thinking ahead. Real life begins to intrude into every moment. Lying in Keller’s bed one afternoon, I tuck my head under his chin. “Where do you live now? Back home, I mean?”
We still don’t know some of the very basic facts about each other. Here, none of it matters.
“After the divorce, I got an apartment in Boston,” he says. “When I came here, I put everything in storage.” With my face against his neck, I feel the vibration of his voice almost more than I hear it.
“I have a cottage in Eugene.” I curl an arm around his chest, wrap a leg around his. “Plenty of room for two, if you wanted to visit. Or stay.”
The moment the words are in the air, I feel myself shrink away from them, anticipating his reaction. I pull the sheet over my bare shoulder, as if this could shield me from hearing anything but yes.
Yet he lifts my chin to look at me, intrigued. “Really?”
“Sure.”
A pensive look crosses his face, and I think of his life before, how rich and full it must’ve been—and now this: a dorm room with frayed sheets and scratchy, industrial woolen blankets, and ahead only the promise of a storage unit in Boston, or a tiny cottage and a wet Oregon spring.
Then he smiles. “Remind me,” he says, “how long have you lived alone?”
“We’re practically living together here. I’ve spent more time with you than with any non-penguin in years.”
He pulls me up and over until I’m on top of him, looking down at his face. Our weeks here, with long workdays and rationed water, have left him windburned and suntanned, long-haired and scruffy. I lean in close, and he says, “What are we waiting for?”