Do you have any blankets? one of them asked.
Richard shook his head, turning the boat around and heading back to where he came from, back to Keller.
Thank God you saw us, the woman said. I don’t know how much more time we had on that ice. Where are you taking us?
I don’t know, Richard said, peering into the mist.
The woman looked around, confused. Where are we going, then?
I have to pick up someone.
Where?
He’s just over there.
But by then Richard could no longer see Keller—the women both said no one was there. Richard seemed to panic; he had a hard time catching his breath. They said he kept trying to get closer, skirting around the edge of the ice as if this person might appear by magic.
One of the women asked: Are you sure there’s someone out here?
I saw you, didn’t I? Richard barked.
Okay, okay, she said. She opened a storage hutch in the Zodiac and found a blanket, which the women spread across their shoulders. They huddled close together, becoming more and more worried about Richard’s increasingly freakish behavior.
Who are you looking for? the other woman asked, watching Richard strain to see across the ice ahead. Again Richard didn’t answer, and a few moments later he began to shake, the spastic movements of his hand on the steering post causing the Zodiac to lurch and hiccup in the water.
Hello! Richard screamed out into the fog. Hello!
There was no answer.
He never said Keller’s name.
Help me, Richard said, but when one of the women stood and tried to take over the steering post, Richard shook her off, losing control of the Zodiac again. He stumbled as they hit a large sheet of ice, tumbling out of the boat and falling hard onto the ice.
The women screamed, and one of them leaned over the side, reaching for Richard, while the other tried desperately to control the Zodiac, to keep it against the ice.
But Richard didn’t want to get back into the boat. Be right back, he told them, pointing ahead. He’s just over there.
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.