My Last Continent(21)

“Just like that?” As I look at Keller through the bar’s haze of cigarette smoke, I’m finding it impossible to imagine anyone walking away from him so easily.

“Just like the birds,” he says with a harsh laugh. “I can’t blame her.”

I want to touch him then, but I don’t move.

He shifts in his seat and pushes his hair off his forehead in a slow, tired motion. “It was my fault,” he says. “Ally was nineteen months old. Britt, my wife—she went back to work after Ally’s first birthday, and we took turns dropping her off at day care, picking her up. I was supposed to pick her up that afternoon, but a meeting got rescheduled. I called our babysitter, Emily—a grad student who took care of Ally from time to time. Ally loved her. I even bought an extra car seat so Emily could take her places. She used to joke we were killing her love life, with a baby seat in her car. It was this crappy old subcompact. If only I’d bought her a new car instead.”

He reaches for his beer, but he doesn’t pick it up, doesn’t drink. “I had my phone off during the meeting. I went home and no one was there—no Ally, no babysitter, no Britt. Then I turned on my phone.”

His hand tightens around the glass. “I went to Children’s,” he says, “but she was gone. A driver on a cell phone had run a red light and slammed into the back, on Ally’s side. Emily survived. Britt blamed me more than anyone. I was the one who should’ve been there.”

I reach over and touch his hand, still wrapped around the glass, his skin rough and wind-chapped, and I think of how Antarctica toughens you up, how maybe this was what he wanted—maybe this is what we all want—to build calluses over old wounds.

He turns slightly in his chair, leaning almost imperceptibly closer to me. “It didn’t fall apart all at once,” he says. “It’s strange, how people disappear. No one likes to talk about it—as if it might be catching. Our friends, Britt’s and mine, didn’t know what to do—I mean, all of a sudden, we didn’t have kids who played together anymore. My sister was the only one who would listen, really listen. She’s the only one who calls me on Ally’s birthday. The only one who invited us over for dinner on the first anniversary of her death, so we wouldn’t have to be alone. She’s good that way, like my mom was. Everyone else—they seemed to want to pretend it never happened.”

He lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “Britt and I tried to make the marriage work. She couldn’t move on—or didn’t want to. We didn’t last much more than a year. After she left, I tried to immerse myself in work.” He looks down into his beer. “When we were together, when Ally was alive, the days always seemed too short—there was never enough time to fit it all in. Then, all of a sudden, every day was endless. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. I wanted to escape—like Britt had, I guess. But she only went as far as Vermont.”

He takes in a breath. “I started reading about the explorers, you know, wondering whether there was any uncharted territory left. Even by the time I decided to leave the country, I didn’t really know where I would go. I didn’t have a plan.” He pauses, and a small, sad smile emerges on his face. “Looking back, I guess I did know. I remember the day I went into my boss’s office and handed over my resignation,” he says. “I told him, ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ ”

I know, of course, that these were the last words of Captain Lawrence Oates, who died along with Robert Scott and the rest of the expedition team on their return from the South Pole. Knowing he was near death anyhow and a liability to his party, Oates walked out of his tent and onto the ice. No one ever saw him again.

Eventually I tell Keller about Dennis, and he’s not surprised; he’d known all along. “I remember reading about it,” he says, “and seeing your picture. I thought about how alike we were, even though I’d never met you before.”

“Alike how?”

“Abandoned,” he says.

Antarctica gets her icy claws into a certain type of person, I’ve realized over the years, and I can see now that Keller is one of them. Now that he’s caught, he’ll return again and again, and he’ll learn that no one back home can quite understand what brings him here—the impulse to return to the ice; to these waddling, tuxedo-feathered creatures; to the hours-long fiery sunsets; to the soothing wild peace of this place—and he’ll eventually build his life around Antarctica because he’ll feel unfit to live anywhere else.