My Last Continent(94)

Richard had left Kate wealthy. After her own daughter was born, she moved to Seattle, where a donation in excess of $4 million earned her a seat on the board of the Antarctic Penguins Project and allowed the organization to expand its small full-time staff, which now includes me. Kate visits ­Eugene frequently, often staying for weeks in my former cottage, and our daughters are growing up together. When I go to Seattle, Kelly and I stay with her, for as long as we can. When I’m asked to speak or teach, I try to bring Nick and Kelly with me. I want Kelly to be a good traveler, since I plan to take her south one day—and I want to do it before everything changes, before the ice melts, before we begin seeing the last of the Adélies.

In the airport, I hug her tight, until Nick touches my shoulder. “Final boarding call,” he says. I’m always the last one on the plane.

I let Kelly go and straighten up, watching Nick palm the top of her head with his hand, which is swallowed up by brown curls. I kiss them both one last time, then turn and hand over my boarding pass. I walk backward toward the gate, waving at them until I have to turn the corner.

While we’ve made a family, Kelly and Nick and Gatsby and me, I don’t think I’ll ever stop looking for Keller. When I’m on the peninsula, I tell myself I’m here to rescue the penguins, yet I know that, each time, it’s the penguins who rescue me. When the cruises visit Booth Island, I steal away in a Zodiac. I go to a desolate beach and climb up to a remote gentoo colony. There, I sit and I wait. Every time, I feel a moment of dread, wondering if this will be the season he does not appear. And then, I see him.

Admiral Byrd waddles over, turning his head sideways, showing me a round dark eye. I arrange my legs just so. When he is settled, I remove my gloves and stroke his smooth, dirty feathers.

Sometimes, when I feel the weight of Admiral Byrd in my lap, I feel that Keller is here with us. I think about the day I’ll sit here with Kelly, instructing her to sit, still and quiet, as her father had once instructed me—and I picture the look on her face, in those green-flecked eyes that are all Keller, when Admiral Byrd makes his appearance, then lets himself tumble into her lap.

Because Keller’s body now belongs to the Southern Ocean, I like to believe we’ll see him one day—that we’ll experience a fata morgana and glimpse him standing up amid a cluster of penguins, his red bandanna around his throat, squinting as the sun’s reflection off the ice bounces into his eyes. That he’ll see us and smile. That he’ll say, as he used to, Fin del mundo, and we’ll respond, principio del todo.

The end of the world, the beginning of everything.