Crossing Cabot Strait

By Geeta Kothari

Above Cabot Strait, the dark sky appeared impenetrable. Below it, the water churned, anxious whitecaps scudding the surface. It was not a good day for a crossing, and for someone who felt queasy no amount of Dramamine or ginger capsules would help. In the spring, the ferry between Port Aux Basques and North Sydney ran on one engine instead of three. Now the four-hour crossing would take six, and the passengers would suffer each and every wave as the ship lumbered through the rough water. Tourist season would begin in late June, and until then, the ferry ran slowly.

Anna Seth, normally not prone to motion sickness, had insisted on stopping at the drugstore on the way to the terminal for some Dramamine, but that had been a ruse, and it never occurred to her that she might actually purchase some. Upon boarding, she and her husband Dev found seats in a side lounge on one of the higher decks. The lounge had wide windows and textured red and white upholstery, curved couches that formed alcoves around small round tables bolted to the floor.

“I have to go,” she said.

She hugged her leather bag to her chest like a shield. The ferry hummed, and although they hadn’t left port yet, her mouth felt dry and her head buzzed as if she’d just slammed down a shot or two of tequila. She wished she had, but she hadn’t had a drink since St. John’s a week ago.

“Feeling sick?” Dev spread his notes on the table in front of him.

“I don’t want to move to Toronto,” she said and left before he could respond.

In the restroom, Anna peeked under each of the four stalls to make sure she was alone. The pale pink tile had a dull shine, and the floor was spotless. By July, it would be covered with muddy footprints, bits of toilet paper, wrappers of various kinds. For now, though, the room was hers, sanitary and silent.

In the stall, she reached into her purse, soft brown leather lined with paisley fabric. She had stuffed the test, hidden in a brown paper bag, into the zippered pocket between the two compartments. Now she pulled it out. When you want to be sure, the box said. 98% accuracy. But she was sure. She wanted inaccuracy, an indication of her own misdiagnosis. She wanted a sign that the nausea and headache and sudden sensitivity to fried foods indicated a passing bug. She wanted to know that in a week she could drink coffee and eat seafood and unpasteurized cheeses without a second thought.

The instructions said to wait five minutes, but within seconds, it seemed, two pink lines emerged, crystal clear. She had placed her bets on the thick blue line, the solitary and resounding “no,” and she had lost. After five minutes, nothing changed, and she threw the stick into the metal garbage can on the floor, the kind shaped like a house with a swinging door for the roof.

She sat for a long time in the stall, her hands in her face. She had never wanted children. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be married.

She was forty years old, married to a younger man whose mother hated her.

A baby would change nothing.

A baby would change everything.

The ferry had pulled out of the harbor. In the lounge, the walls thrummed with the vibration of the ship’s single engine. It smelled of stale fries and beer, summers long past and forgotten.

Anna surveyed the room for Dev’s thick black hair. A tall man, even sitting he should have been easily visible. In the center of the lounge several rows of empty chairs faced a large flat-screened TV with a blank screen. Starboard, a family occupied two alcoves. A woman with a toddler sat alone. He was flapping his hands and refusing to eat. Two older children, blonde like their parents, sat in the other alcove with their father. They were reading, while their father tried to have a conversation with the mother. Anna pulled out her binoculars and finally caught a glimpse of elbow on knee, blue jeans, black hairs at the wrist.

Dev was talking to a woman. She couldn’t see the woman, but Anna didn’t need special sighting to know this, no further magnification or periscope to peek around the pillar blocking part of her view. Dev put his elbow on his knee, leaned in only when he was talking to a woman. Old, young, middle-aged, fat, thin, beautiful or ugly — it didn’t matter. If Anna had peered into a crystal ball to see her future, this would be it — Dev leaning forward, into a conversation with a woman, as if she were the only person on earth. This was how he talked to his mother, and Anna felt this knowledge kick in the belly. How had she missed it before?

Behind Anna, the toddler shrieked and when she turned around, she saw him pushing his mother’s stomach, his little legs flailing as he tried to escape her grasp, his face red with rage. The father kept talking to the mother as she wrangled the child. She held him, and he bucked and wriggled in her arms, howled as if he were dying, and all the while, her face remained expressionless. She was tall, and her dark hair was stranded with white. Wisps of it escaped the braid that curled around her neck.

Anna felt the woman’s age in her bones. Had the child been an accident or planned? Too bad one couldn’t walk up to her and ask. Not that Anna would have done that. She wasn’t one to bond instantly with other women just because of their shared gender. Cautious by nature, Anna had never experienced instant intimacy, that flash of recognition when meeting someone for the first time. Unlike Dev, she didn’t lean forward when talking to strangers, male or female. The mothers and fathers of her patients leaned towards her when she spoke, and if they got too close, she took a step back. For someone who liked big open spaces, who felt best when she could see the horizon, the examination rooms at the practice would always feel small and cramped.

Dev was deep in conversation with a woman, who sat across from him, knitting while they talked. If he hadn’t waved at her, Anna would have sat elsewhere. She wasn’t in the mood.

“Look who I found,” Dev said. “Or rather, she found me.”

It was Sarah, the wife of Dev’s old advisor, Russ. Anna had met them at the opening reception. Sarah’s hands didn’t stop moving when she looked up and smiled. The cords of her neck, beneath papery skin, suggested she was closer to sixty than fifty, but she wore thin silver bangles on both wrists and they clinked and tinkled as she moved her hands. She didn’t look at her knitting; instead, her eyes darted everywhere, landing on no one or anything for long.

“Russ went for coffee,” Sarah said. She reached inside a tapestry bag, shaped like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. “I can call him if you want something.”

She would have liked some saltines but didn’t want to call attention to her nausea. Sarah had been a midwife, she’d recognize the saltines like a flag signaling distress.

Midwife. Anna had forgotten just about everything they’d talked about that evening in St. John’s, but she did remember the silver bangles jangling up and down Sarah’s crepey arms, one thin bangle for each birth. Too many or too few? Anna couldn’t tell.

Anna took a seat near the window, a couple of spaces on the couch between her and Dev. Dev patted the seat next to him, inviting her to join the conversation. But she felt too queasy to talk, too queasy to even feel the full force of her irritation.

“I want to watch for birds,” she said. “I can participate from here.” She didn’t want to be ungracious. What she felt wasn’t jealousy exactly or possessiveness; sometimes she imagined Dev falling for someone else, as his mother had warned her, someone younger, someone prettier, someone Indian. Then the ten years between them would no longer be a question mark, and the guillotine hanging over them would fall and sever the relationship once and for all. But in three years, he hadn’t strayed once, hadn’t indicated an interest in anyone but her. He liked people, and people, especially women, liked him. He could easily talk about the difference between acrylic and wool as well as infantile whooping cough and puffins.

Anna slouched in her seat, feeling blond and wispy and small, like she might blow away. She put her feet up on the table in front of her and ignored her roiling stomach. Her mouth was dry, but thought of water made her gag. If they’d been alone, she might have asked Dev to get her some ginger ale and ice, but she didn’t want to share her discomfort in front of a stranger. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to share it with Dev.

“Did someone make those socks for you?” Sarah’s hand hovered over Anna’s foot, propped up on the table. “May I?”

Anna nodded. The socks were striped and soft, a gift from her older sister, who’d told her they should be worn with clogs, which Anna was doing now. She didn’t often listen to Eva, but her feet had expanded in the last week and her hiking boots were no longer comfortable.

“Oh no.” Russ appeared at the end of the alcove, carrying three coffees. “She’s found another one.” His face was sunburned, and his thick white hair sat like a cloud on his head.

Anna looked around to see what she’d missed.

“She’s always on the lookout for other knitters.”

“I don’t knit.” Eva promised to teach her how to knit with such regularity, Anna no longer heard the words.

Russ settled down opposite Dev. “You look like you should.”

“It’s those Scandinavian genes.” Dev didn’t look up from his papers when he spoke.

Russ and Sarah wouldn’t have known it, but Anna and Dev were in the middle of an argument that had begun in the car as they rolled onto the ferry and followed them up the three flights from the parking deck to the passenger lounge. It was the kind of argument that some might call a discussion, and others might call a fight. They spoke in low, well-modulated tones, but Anna’s voice had an edge to it, recognizable to anyone who knew her.

“I don’t understand why it has to be next week,” Anna said to Dev’s back as he climbed the steps. His black hair curled at the collar of his sweater, neither long nor short, just insouciant enough to be charming.

“They need to make a decision by Friday,” Dev said. “It’s just one more day. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“You should have talked to me first.”

“But you said if something came up, I should go for it. We’d be moving back home.”

When Anna agreed to let Dev’s job search take them to another city, the possibility had been as remote as Newfoundland. There were jobs in Pittsburgh, and he had a job he liked. His desire to move back to Canada had hatched in St. John’s, when Russ suggested Dev apply for a position at an international aeronautical company setting up a new office in Toronto. How long had he been sitting on this longing to return home? It bothered Anna she hadn’t noticed.

“I need to be back by Monday.”

“You told me you weren’t going back to work until Wednesday.”

“Can we at least stay in a hotel?”

“How am I going to explain that to my mother?”

So it had come to this: Toronto trumped Pittsburgh, engineer trumped pediatrician, mother-in-law trumped wife. Was this universal to mothers-in-law or just Indian ones? Dev was the youngest of three, the only son of a woman who filled whatever room she entered. Sushila had been an exemplary wife, leaving behind her family in India with no complaints when her husband took a job at Lockheed Martin in Ontario. She made sure everyone understood exactly how much she had sacrificed to follow her husband to this “cold hard country.”

“You don’t even like Pittsburgh,” Dev said.

“That doesn’t mean I want to give up my job.” And enter the cold hard country of Sushila with a baby.

Dev sat down. He was done talking. And so was she.

The binoculars hung from Anna’s neck, at the ready for a puffin sighting. Evolution had left them with short wings, a round body and a tiny little head, the bright orange beak a signature contrast to the black and white feathers. They could navigate their way back to the previous year’s burrow but they were known as PPF’s, piss poor flyers.

“You won’t see any birds this far out,” Russ said, pointing at her binoculars. “Sea’s too rough.”

Anna shrugged, a gesture that made her feel fourteen, not forty. She huddled deeper into her fleece jacket.

“Seasick?” Sarah rummaged in her bag, paper rustling and coins clinking. “I have some Dramamine.”

Anna shook her head. “What are you making?”

“It’s a mess,” Sarah said. “Lace. It only reveals itself when you’re done and give it a warm bath. Until then, you can’t really tell where it’s going.”

Her hands moved swiftly over it, like an alchemist drawing fabric from a tangle of threads.

“Who taught you?” Anna’s mother had taught Eva, Anna’s older sister, but when Anna was old enough to learn, she consigned the job to Eva, an impatient teenager who preferred to fix Anna’s mistakes rather than explain them.

“My mother-in-law. Many years ago, when we were first married. I did a scarf first, then a baby sock.” Sara was reading from a pattern, marked with sticky notes and highlighter tape. “With two heels. That was the end of socks for me.”

Sarah’s needles moved quickly, slick and silent, unlike the ones Anna’s mother used. She knit when she was angry, and her stitches were tight and uneven. Anna wondered what she had been knitting the night she told Anna’s father she was pregnant not menopausal. Eva once told her they argued in the months before Anna was born, bitter discussions filled with long silences, doors slamming and tears.

Russ was reading, Dev was taking notes. He didn’t look up when Anna excused herself. Up on the top deck, she found the observation lounge, empty and unheated, big picture windows lining its walls. Anna shivered and stuck her hands into her sleeves. She had been cold the entire trip, a deep cold that she felt in her bones. Newfoundland in late May was about two months behind Pennsylvania, and there were still pockets of snow on the ground, visible from the Trans Canada Highway as they drove towards St. Johns, where Dev was delivering a paper on airport fatalities in the early part of the twentieth century. One night, they stopped at Shoal Harbor, and Anna was so chilled, even though they’d been in the warm car most of the day, that she fell asleep in her flannel nighty and fleece pullover. That was when she knew. Her body was no longer her own.

Dev sat down next to her.

“You can’t get away from me,” he said.

“Those people are annoying,” she said.

“They’re fine,” Dev said. “I don’t get you. It’s one interview.”

“Your mother hates me.”

Dev withdrew his arm from her shoulders.

“When we get to North Sydney,” Anna said, “I’ll rent a car and meet you at home.”

She had made the appointment from St. John’s, during one of the few moments she had to herself, while Dev ate lunch with colleagues he’d met at his conference. The receptionist asked if she knew how far along she was, and when she said, “Six weeks, probably,” the receptionist said, “Perfect.” Anna, so imperfect in so many ways, had felt oddly proud and grown up. She took the receptionist’s approval as a sign that she was making the right decision. Perhaps there would be no need to involve Dev.

Since having the pregnancy confirmed, Anna felt very pregnant. Closing her eyes gave her vertigo; looking at the horizon made her nauseous. She understood the contradiction in her refusal of Sarah’s Dramamine, acting as if she were going to continue the pregnancy while having made an appointment to end it.

Dev took Anna’s hand in his and held to his mouth. “Your hands are cold.”

Anna tried to pull her hand back. Two pink lines = happiness. She was married. Her husband loved her. She loved him. And yet. A person didn’t get to forty without knowing a few hard truths about how a baby could change her life. As two, she and Dev worked fine. And as three? She didn’t know. How would she feel coming up from the restroom, having changed the baby’s diaper for the tenth time that day, to find Dev talking to a woman with big red hair and silver bangles? Minus twenty years, make her Punjabi, with an engineering degree, culinary skills and child-bearing hips, how would Anna feel when she found Dev leaning over the table towards this woman’s conversation, discussing the merits of cumin over coriander, or worse, reverting to the Hindi, jeera versus dhuniya?

“Where’s your ring?” Dev asked. “You should wear it when we visit mum. She needs to remember we’re married.”

Her hands were swollen, and she had pried the ring off in St. Johns, right after she made her appointment. It was in her suitcase, in the pocket of the shorts she never wore.

The ferry pitched and rolled.

Anna yanked her hand from Dev’s and stood up. “What’s wrong?” he said.

Anna ran to the bathroom, barely making it to the stall. The sour taste of coffee came up. After she was done, she flushed the toilet and wiped her mouth. With her foot, she moved the lid of the metal trashcan on the floor. Nestled amongst old tissues and tampon wrappers, she saw the plastic stick. Two pink lines. Time had changed nothing.

“Are you okay?” It was Sarah’s voice on the other side.

“I’m fine.” Anna stood up. She was dizzy but no longer nauseous. Her teeth felt scummy, and her throat burned. When she came out of the stall, Sarah was standing by the sink, looking at herself in the mirror.

“When are you due?” she asked.

“December,” Anna said. “How did you know?”

Sarah puckered her lips and reapplied her lipstick. Her bracelets chunked together. The makeup made her look older than she first appeared.

“I loved my work,” she said.

“I haven’t told Dev,” Anna said. She didn’t want Sarah running upstairs to congratulate him. “Though maybe he’s figured it out.”

“Husbands are always the last to know,” Sarah said. “They’re wired to not notice because fatherhood terrifies them.”

“You don’t have kids.”

“Some people aren’t meant to be parents.” Sarah blew her nose and checked her face in the mirror again. Her bracelets shimmied down her arm.

“How would you know?” Was there a test, something more elaborate than peeing on a stick? Was she talking about Russ or herself?

“I knit a sock with two heels. It’s bad luck to turn a heel twice. Who knew? After the fourth miscarriage I’d had enough bad luck. My mother-in-law never forgave me. She always blamed the lack of grandchildren on that damn sock.”

“And Russ?”

Sarah’s makeup kit was spread out on the shelf above her sink. Her hand was steady as she applied mascara. “Russ was fine. With me and with her. She’s dead now. It all seems like another lifetime.” She spoke with regret or relief, or some combination of both. She gathered her makeup and put it away. The conversation was over.

“Good luck,” she said.

Anna returned to the upper lounge. The cabin smelled musty and it was hot, but she kept her fleece on, as if she were about to leave. Dev was reading an article, marking it up with his aluminum Lamy. She had bought it for him in Basel the year they met. Dev was a scientist, but he was Indian too. He believed in ritual, in luck, in signs. He believed in love.

The rain had stopped, and the sky was lighter, as if the sun were trying to push through the clouds.

“What exactly do you think you’re going to see?” Dev stood in front of the window. “You never cared about birds before.”

“Puffins hatch one egg at a time,” Anna said. “They raise the chick together and then leave the breeding grounds in September. The following year, they return to the exact same burrow.”

“Not possible,” Dev said.

“It’s not clear how, but they do it.”

“Well those guys out there look way off course.”

Over the water, as if conjured by wishful thinking, several black specks came into focus. She couldn’t see the color of their beaks, but they moved quickly and jerkily, and then skidded into the water.

“Those aren’t puffins,” Anna said.

“It’s just two days. We can stay in a hotel if it really matters to you. I’ll tell mom the University is paying for it.”

The birds remained distant specks through the binoculars.

“Your mother hates me.”

“I think the feeling is mutual.”

What Anna hated was the way Dev leaned in to listen to his mother, as if no one else in the room existed. She hated the way Toronto would always be home. How could home be with her — and a baby — when it was always with his mother? Moving to Toronto would calcify Sushila’s hold and soon both of them would be calling her apartment home. Their own home would turn into a hotel, a weigh stations for diapers, dirty bibs, discarded onesies. Make no mistake about it — the baby would be Sushila’s and the work would be Anna’s.

Dev put his head against the window. “How many?”

“Seven,” Anna said. She handed him the binoculars, removing them from her neck so he could see.

“They’re puffins,” Dev said.

“They’re too far from shore.”

“You told me they drop like stones.”

“They are not puffins.” Anna resisted the impulse to stamp her foot.

“I can cancel the interview.”

“Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

Right after their marriage, Sushila had cornered Anna on the balcony of her Harborfront apartment. She said, “The people in our family stay married. I hope you two know what you’re doing.”

“Your son’s a grown man.”

Now that Anna had seen a real iceberg, now that she had drifted close enough to feel the cold emanating from it, she understood the depth of the her mother-in-law’s dislike. A baby would bring her closer to the iceberg, and without a job, she’d be stranded. It all felt very permanent and irrevocable.

Dev pulled her to him. The binoculars pressed against Anna’s chest.

“How do we know?” She was at the top of a steep cliff. A nest lined with feathers and grass. A white chest and orange beak. Two orange legs. The worried eyes with the epicanthic fold. Puffin parents took turns feeding the hatchling; they worked together, they went their separate ways, and then they found their way back home. No maps, no guidebooks. Just the stars or maybe the earth’s magnetic fields.

“What else could they be?”

She didn’t know, but she knew they were not puffins. Puffins stayed close to home during breeding season.

“You’ll love Toronto,” Dev said. “Everything will work out fine.”

The sun would not break through the clouds; that moment had passed, and now the sky was washed gray, and the birds had disappeared. Head against Dev’s chest, Anna felt the steady rhythm of his heart. She tried to imagine the story she would tell herself, ten, twenty years from now, but the narrative came together with gaps, full of holes and mystery, like Sarah’s lace.

Editor’s note: To support writers like Geeta, please click the green heart below and follow the Great Jones Street publication. Thanks.

Geeta Kothari is the nonfiction editor at The Kenyon Review and the editor of ‘Did My Mama Like to Dance?’ and Other Stories about Mothers and Daughters. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in various anthologies and journals. Next year, Braddock Avenue Books will publish her book, I Brake for Moose and Other Stories.