He knew, and he left me alone regardless.
No, that can’t be right. It’s impossible.
• • •
She went back out to the shed, into the box with the pupae and the gorilla’s head, and retrieved the map, and looked at it again. Saw that it was, indeed, as she thought.
• • •
No wonder my mother is preoccupied during the long nights when my father and Thomas Argument, too, leave her alone.
There is, of course, a positive side to her discovery.
My Papa is alive!
That is what she begins to think, at first hesitantly, then with greater and greater conviction. Over time, as her discovery chafes at her—as she grows pale, and distant, and lies awake at night, watching the reflections of the river crawling up the wall—it becomes all she thinks. She succeeds, almost, in forgetting the other implications.
My Papa left me. He did not care.
Now, when she is alone, she brings out the map, and studies it, and runs her fingers over the pencil marks. If she shuts her eyes she can feel them. That is how hard her Papa bore down, when he marked Isla Desterrada on his map.
Even then, I think, she was already packing her suitcase. Mentally, at least.
Emotionally speaking, she had packed it already.
How many times, growing up, was she filled with despair at the sight of her Papa caressing a map? Now she does exactly as he did. Except no one sees her. There is no one to despair. There is no one to beg her to stay. No one will want to come with her. She is alone. That is what she thinks.
There is a freedom involved in no one caring. Also, in not caring oneself. There is a detachment in it, a knot unraveled, a detail set free from context. That is what my mother has learned. Not caring makes the limbs lighter. She caresses the map without worries. I doubt she thinks twice about Leopold. Thomas Argument, with all his toys and gifts, is not even on her horizon. It is her Papa that she thinks of.
He is alive! I must find him!
• • •
It is interesting, is it not, how we always think most about the one who has gone away and left us? And least about the one who has remained behind?
• • •
She imagines herself on the water, navigating by the stars.
• • •
She has forgotten other aspects of the journey. Such as the heat. The stink. The poisonous vapors. And the getting lost.
(But that, after all, was just part of the plan—Felix Girard’s plan.)
• • •
Mary! Go out to the shed and fetch me my bags! The small one, with the buckle! And the big one, with the strap! Go on! Why are you lolling, you lazy creature! I’ve asked you to fetch me my bags—and my trunk—bring my trunk too, while you’re at it, you lazy, creeping, good-for-nothing—!
The girl-of-all-work, cap askew, grumbling, makes her way reluctantly out into the yard and then more reluctantly still into the shed, where my mother’s salt-stained luggage resides among the swaying dis-ease of stacked crates shipped from London and other “parts (and ports) unknown.” Mary loathes the collected goods and chattels of Felix Girard, Gives me the willies it does, that stuff, all kind of dead things rotting, a great rotting dead bird I found in one o’ ’em boxes once, and a seal’s flipper in another—that’s right—just the flipper—it had fingernails an’ all just like we do—appallin’ I tell you!—and I thought, well, what’s next—the hind end of a giraffe?—a camel’s pizzle?! And pah! What a stink! But she goes into the shed; what choice has she got? If she needs her job (and she does), she must go. And there she will find, in addition to my mother’s small bag with the buckle, large bag with the strap, and water-warped old trunk, the grinning stone head of a Persian div—Staring straight at me it was, right out of the box, sticking out its tongue, very familiar and all, as if it knew me!