It’s hard to imagine what happened next—Richard and Keller both stranded on the ice, too far apart to find each other, and eventually too lost in fog for the women to help them. No radios—and, for Keller, no life jacket.
I force myself to consider Richard, what he must have felt, how he must have suffered—it’s the only way I’ll be able to understand, and to forgive.
I imagine him stumbling across the ice, paranoid and irrational. The wind would’ve been brisk, pushing down the clouds, darkening the sky. At some point he must have slipped, or the ice must’ve cracked beneath his feet, or a wave knocked him down—somehow, he ended up underwater, choking on salt water, lungs burning.
Something similar would likely have happened to Keller, but for Richard, the life vest would have tugged him upward. Due to a large abrasion on the top of Richard’s head, Kate was told that he’d likely been sucked under a sheet of ice so that when he rose up he met a cold glass ceiling, solid and unyielding.
He’d have clawed his way across the ice from below, the tips of his fingers raw, until he’d eventually reached open air. By then, he was exhausted, depleted. He attempted to heave himself out of the water but didn’t have the strength, his hands too tattered and numb even to hold on, and so he could only float, his life preserver wedged up against his ears, his cheeks, as the weight of his body pulled him downward.
This is where I stop.
I can’t envision what more happened to Richard because I can’t allow myself to think of Keller’s last moments.
What I do try to imagine about Keller is that some part of it was peaceful—that he didn’t suffer when he was plunged into the ocean, that he was visited by the curious penguins he loved, that he drifted away gently, that his last thoughts of life, of me, of us, were hopeful, even happy. That he felt, finally, at home.
FIVE YEARS AFTER SHIPWRECK
Portland, Oregon
I hear my flight number called over the loudspeaker—-Santiago via Los Angeles, then onward from Santiago to Ushuaia. My daughter’s hand clings to mine, but not as tightly as the year before—and next year, it will be looser still.
Neither of us likes to be apart, but she loves getting calls from “the bottom of the world”; she loves the South American toys I bring her when I return. While Nick is the only father she’s known, she’s got Keller’s and my wanderlust in her blood; she’s learned about the brush-tailed Antarctic penguins and is eagerly awaiting the day I take her with me.
After the Cormorant had limped back to Ushuaia, much heavier than when she left, I was transported to Buenos Aires, where I was hospitalized for a week. When I returned to the States, I remained on bed rest for most of my pregnancy. Kelly was born three weeks early, small but healthy, and when I brought her home a week later, Nick opened his door across the garden so he could hear her cry, and he didn’t shut it again until we’d both moved in with him.
My mother flew out six months later to meet Kelly, and my father made promises to do the same. He died of a heart attack, on a flight during a business trip, before he could. Starting on Kelly’s second birthday, my mother has made an annual visit, which has been good for all of us. She doesn’t speak of my father often, but when she does it’s with more fondness than tension, as if his absence, finally, makes sense to her. In the spring, Nick and I are planning to visit St. Louis as well as Chicago, where his family’s from, so Kelly can meet her relatives. And then we’ll fly to Boston, so she can meet her Aunt Colleen, Keller’s sister. It amazes me how this small child, all of forty pounds, has connected—and, in my case, reconnected—our families.
Even though Nick and I share a bed, I believe it was Kelly he loved first. He was often the one who heard her in the middle of the night; he’d bring her to me, and she’d fall asleep between us. He’d never been a parent before, but he slipped seamlessly into the role, as if the part had been waiting for him all along. And, watching him with Kelly, the way he’d hold her and feed her and sing her to sleep, I knew I’d found the right mate—that I would never come home to an empty nest, and, for the first time, I didn’t want to leave home.
But, three years ago, I finally returned to the continent; Nick urged me to go. I’ve been twice since. I hate leaving Nick and Kelly, so I don’t go for more than one voyage a season, and I can’t hike as far as I used to without feeling a twinge in my ankle, where the fractured bone never healed.
There is nothing in the landscape that doesn’t remind me of Keller.