Migrations

by Charlotte McConaghy

  I wait what feels an age for Mara Gupta. She is a tenacious fiftysomething barrister, and she’s brought her handsome and extremely clever young assistant, Donal Lincoln, who I’m fairly certain must be at least thirty years her junior. From previous meetings with them I’ve got the impression they might be sleeping together. A distant part of me loves them for it, loves Mara for it. But the part of me that loves anything is right now being resoundingly silenced. My heart has gone cold.

  Because.

  The world of fear. My new home. Fear that I won’t survive this, fear that I will.

  “How are you?” Mara asks me.

  I shrug. There aren’t words for what I am.

  “Do you have enough money?”

  I nod blankly.

  “Franny, we need to talk about new evidence that’s come in from forensics.”

  I wait, noticing her delicate gold watch. I wonder what it’s worth. Having spent a painful eight years getting to know Niall’s parents, I can say with certainty that it’s probably a lot. The thought occurs to me to fire her again. I have done so twice already. She has been rehired. The Lynch family gets what they want, and they want me out of here.

  I used to want enormous, unrealistic things, too. Now I only want my husband.

  “Franny?”

  I realize I’ve missed what Mara said. “Beg your pardon?”

  “Focus on what I’m telling you because this is serious.”

  Serious. Ha. “Can you get me time outside? They won’t let me outside.”

  “We’re working on that but as I’ve said, you need to speak clearly with a psychologist about your claustrophobia.”

  “I did.”

  “Franny, she said you sat in silence for thirty minutes and she couldn’t diagnose you.”

  I don’t remember that.

  “I’ll arrange another session and this time try to speak, okay? We’re going to talk about the evidence now.” Mara’s eyes are enormous. Someone coughs and I jump, shattered, exhausted, so fucking terrified I can barely function. Mara takes my hand and centers me, forces me to concentrate on her next words.

  “There’s new forensic evidence and the prosecution are claiming it means this wasn’t an accident. You and I both know it was, but it now looks premeditated, and I’m going to need your testimony to help me argue against it. So I need you to tell me again what really happened—”

  “Premeditated.”

  “You wanted to do it,” Donal supplies. “You made plans and carried them out.”

  “I know what premeditated means,” I say, and watch him blush. “What’s the evidence?”

  “We’ll get to that, Franny, just listen for a second. This changes things,” Mara says. “They don’t want you for manslaughter. They want you for two counts of murder.”

  I stare at her and stare at her. Neither of the lawyers says anything, perhaps letting me process this. But I have processed it a thousand times over. I’ve been waiting for it. I squeeze Mara’s hand and say, “You shouldn’t have taken this job. I tried to tell you. I’m sorry.”

  The Saghani, NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN MIGRATION SEASON

  “I’m sorry,” Léa says when I tell her of the drowned terns. If mine couldn’t survive the storm then it’s unlikely any of the others in her group did. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats, and I can see that she too is stricken by what’s happened.

  I nod, but can’t think what to say. I’ve only told her so that she’ll inform the crew for me. There’s a yawning mouth in my chest. When I close my eyes I see the birds, one after the other, sinking into a watery grave.

  * * *

  Dinner is quiet tonight. Poor Samuel can’t get up from his bed so we’re without his comforting presence. Basil’s large knee is digging into my leg and I hate it, I hate his touch, but there’s no room for me to move.

  The course has been decided. We’re for St. John’s, Newfoundland, and Labrador. It’s where Samuel’s family waits for him, where we can get him medical attention and repair the cable that snapped. From there I don’t know. Ennis said he didn’t want to cross the Atlantic—it’s a long way, and an unknown sea—but they’re the only birds we have left to follow.

  Maybe he’s tired of following birds.

  I don’t know if I can convince him again, but I let my feet carry me up to the bridge anyway.

  It’s the first time Ennis hasn’t been at the helm. Anik stands in his place, eyes on the horizon. “Where is he?”

  “On break. He hasn’t slept in days. Leave him be, Franny.”

  I slump into a chair, and I don’t open the laptop screen to check on the dots. Anik’s gaze pins me a little. There’s something heavy about it.

  “Are you gonna tell me to get back to work?” I ask.

  “Would you listen?”

  “Probably not.”

  Anik’s wide mouth curls into a smile, the first real smile I’ve seen him offer. He says something in another language. I wait for him to explain, but he turns back to the helm.

  “What language was that?” I ask.

  “Inupiat.”

  “Is that Inuit?”

  He nods. “Northern Alaska.”

  “Is that where you met Ennis?”

  Another nod.

  “How did you meet?”

  “On a boat. How else?”

  “What’s it like up there?”

  “So many questions.”

  “I have millions.”

  His perpetual scowl is back in place. But he surprises me by saying, “It’s death, up there. And life. The truest of each.”

  I watch the stretch of ocean before us, expecting at any moment to see land on the horizon. “How long will it take to get there?” I ask.

  “Two days, maybe. What will you do, now that the birds…”

  “They’re not all dead,” I say. And yet … “I don’t know.” I can’t stop picking at my scabs and making my hands bleed. “If Ennis doesn’t want to keep going…”

  “You’ll find another way,” Anik says simply.

  But he doesn’t understand. I tried for months before I found a captain to agree.

  “They’re not all dead,” Anik echoes.

  I take a breath. He’s right, but I can’t stop seeing the bodies sinking down into the blur, and I can’t stop remembering the hollowness of Samuel’s chest as I blew air into it. It sends a shudder through me. “That moment before he woke up. Before we shocked him…”

  Anik looks sideways at me.

  “It was frightening.”

  “Yes.”

  “He was gone for a second. He didn’t seem in his body anymore. I breathed into his mouth and it filled him up like a balloon. He was just this … just an empty thing.”

  Anik nods. “My grandmother would say that for a moment he visited the spirit world. We called him back and perhaps he’ll thank us for that and perhaps he won’t. Some think it unkind to be forced from such a place.”

  “Have you spoken to people who’ve returned from there?”

  “They say they have.”

  “Do you believe them?”

  I want him to say yes, I want it so badly, but he only shrugs.

  “How do they describe it?”

  Anik thinks for a time and I realize I have leaned so far forward I’m in danger of slipping off the seat.

  “They say it is free of rules or punishments,” he says. “They call it weightless, and very beautiful.”

  And suddenly I am crying. “Everyone goes there?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Even us? Even me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the ones we love?”

  “Of course.”

  I close my eyes and tears spill down my cheeks, and the spirit he speaks of, my spirit, I can feel it trying to get free, trying to find its way there, only my body won’t let it, not yet. “She’s waiting for me, then.”

  “Who is?”

  I open my eyes and meet his brown stare.

  “My
daughter.”

  His shoulders drop as he breathes out. His eyes are full now, too.

  “Franny,” Anik says, reaching to place a hand on my hair. We watch the sea, waiting for land and wishing we never had to reach it.

  12

  The Saghani, LABRADOR CURRENT OUTSIDE NEWFOUNDLAND MIGRATION SEASON

  The mood is bleak this morning as we near the coast of Newfoundland. We have abandoned any search for fish, and I didn’t expect the profundity of their loss. It’s easier to see how much the sea drives this crew, how much they belong to the hunt, when they are no longer in it.

  Samuel warned me about the Labrador Current and what it would be like to reach where it meets the Gulf Stream. Still I couldn’t have imagined it. We have been flung at such speeds that I fail to believe anything could stop us. Furthermore, the two currents running alongside each other, one freezing cold and the other warm, have created a shroud of heavy fog as we approach land. I stand at the bow, unable to see my hand before my face let alone the rocks we careen toward.

  The bell sounds overhead. I imagine the shrill cry of a gull, and the sound of its wings swooping through the fog. There should be hundreds of gulls on a shore like this.

  We are slowing. The crew members on deck shout to each other now, and the sweep of the lighthouse beam makes a path through the fog. The bell tolls in a steady rhythm to which I can match my breathing. Ennis guides us into the harbor of St. John’s with what seems little effort. But I know the stress such a berthing has caused the crew. They’ve been tense all morning, unable to control the weather or the skill of their skipper.

  I am nervous for a different reason: my passport is fake.

  Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s not fake, it’s just not mine.

  The sound of it reaches me before anything else. I start to notice more voices adding their shouts to the wind. Shapes form through the fog. Bodies with signs held aloft. Stop the massacres! Oceans belong to fish, not people! End the killing!

  I take a breath, a gasp; a fist connects with my chest. The shouting is almost violent, it is filled with a fury I know well: it is my husband’s rage they embody as they chant and cry, as they try to do what little they can to stop the maddening inevitable doom we have built.

  Léa moves to my side. Her eyes are cold, jaw hard. “Don’t look at them,” she says, flat.

  I see one sign, larger than the rest—What more must we destroy?—and a bottomless shame opens within me. I’m on the wrong side of that sign.

  It’s strange being on land again, even after only a few weeks at sea. Already it feels unnatural. The earth is too hard under my feet, as though it will compound me a little with each step. I move down the gangway to the customs terminal, making sure to tuck myself between the crew members of the Saghani. I am handed a customs form to fill out and I do so using Riley Loach of Dublin’s information. An overzealous customs officer watches me with hawk eyes the whole time. But the man behind the counter only gives me a cursory glance—I make sure to smile widely at him, obscuring my facial features a little—and then he stamps the passport and lets me through.

  There is a corral separating us from the protesters but I can hear them so clearly, can make out their individual faces, each one watching us in disgust, bearing the same disbelief I’ve struggled with. A man near the end of the group wears a striped beanie and brandishes a sign that reads Justice for fish, death to fishermen. It sends a chill through me, and that’s when our eyes meet, just for a moment, and it’s as though this man can see straight inside me and has judged me monstrous.

  “Come on,” Basil says, pulling me by the elbow. “Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

  We walk until the street is clear and then we wait for an ambulance to transport Samuel to the hospital.

  “You okay?” Léa asks me softly, the two of us standing a little apart from the others.

  I cast her a sideways glance. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Just seem jumpy.”

  She has begun to watch me, this French mechanic. I feel her dark eyes on me often, and sometimes when I catch her gaze she turns quickly away. I have not been sure until this moment if what lives in her interest is concern for my sanity, or something more intimate, more painful.

  Ennis travels in the ambulance with Samuel while the rest of us divide into cabs. I spend the drive staring through the window at the winding city, brightly colored houses built into craggy hills. Everything is still blanketed in heavy fog, giving the day a sense of unreality.

  We find Ennis sprawled tiredly in the waiting room and sink into chairs around him. “He’s being looked at. I’ve called Gammy, she’s on her way.”

  Forty minutes pass before Samuel’s wife, Gammy, arrives. She strides through the doors in thick leather boots, riding leggings, and a shaggy woolen sweater to cover her robust form. Her hair is as red as Samuel’s, plastered with sweat to her forehead and flushed cheeks. Blue eyes dart worriedly as she takes Ennis in a bear hug and thumps him on the back. “Where is he?”

  Ennis shows her the way and then we are quiet once more, waiting. I am not good at waiting.

  “How long have they been married?” I ask Dae.

  “’Bout thirty years. Think they’re up to about a dozen kids now.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah. Samuel’s got a lotta love to go round. Just ask him.”

  “I have and he’s told me the same thing multiple times already.”

  We while the day away, keeping ourselves occupied with a pack of cards Dae thought to bring. Léa and I go on a food run and return with egg rolls and coffees. Gammy finally reappears midafternoon, looking wan.

  “They’re keeping the idiot overnight. He’s on some hefty antibiotics for the infection, and they want to monitor his heart. Think there might be a problem with it.”

  “From the defibrillator?” I ask.

  Gammy’s eyes find me and soften. “No, darl. The heart condition was from before he got injured. You saved his life.” Gammy glances at Ennis. “Goddamn cable that hit him probably saved him as well. Otherwise we wouldn’t have known about the bad ticker until it was too late. Never thought I’d thank you for anything, Ennis Malone.”

  I expect it to be a joke but no one smiles. Ennis inclines his head a little in acknowledgment. Gammy watches him for a good long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she spreads her hands. “Right. Let’s get off, then. I’ve got ravenous beasts at home who need feeding and I’m sure you lot could do with a proper wash and feed.”

  I wind up in Gammy’s car with Ennis and Léa, while the others all head off to find a rental car. Gammy and Samuel’s place is out of town somewhere.

  “I hope this’ll be enough for you now, Ennis Malone,” Gammy says. Maybe she’s one of those people who find authority in using full names. Her accent is the same as Samuel’s, the distinct “Newfie” mix of Irish and Canadian. “Although losing your men to the waves has never stopped you before,” she adds coldly. “Anyone’d think you’d started tossing them overboard yourself.”

  This is an immensely cruel thing to say, and I wonder at the poor people she’s talking about; I wonder at Ennis’s involvement in their deaths and his regret. It shouldn’t surprise me. He sent Anik into a storm, didn’t he? Wasn’t it his determination to catch fish that nearly got Samuel killed? And the rest of us, besides?

  I find myself coming to an uneasy understanding of the captain’s will. Twice before I’ve recognized something similar—in myself and then in my husband—and I know it to be destructive. How far will Ennis go to get what he wants, this mythical Golden Catch? What will he sacrifice?

  “He’s home now, Gam,” Ennis says quietly from the back seat. I steal a look at him in the side mirror. His head rests on the window and he watches the ocean to our left. The burden of his desire weighs heavily upon him.

  “Too late, Ennis Malone. Too fucking late. And if you’ve brought any trouble with you I’ll be giving you a hiding.”

  “W
e’ll stay in town if it makes you more comfortable.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It wasn’t Skipper’s fault,” Léa speaks up, obstinate. “We all know the risks. It’s a fool who steps onto a vessel and assumes he’ll leave it breathing. You know it, Samuel knows it.”

  Gammy looks in her mirror at the much younger woman. “And do you think it’s fair, to use people’s devotion against them? To pull at their hearts until they do as you say, and take bullets for you as well?”

  Nobody speaks.

  Gammy looks at me and I brace myself for her next blow. “Who’s this one, then? How’d he rope you into his mess, darl?”

  “I roped myself in.”

  “Good luck to you, then. Lord knows you’ll need it. Now if you keep an eye on the hills ahead, you’ll see our place coming up a little ways.”

  As we round a curve in the road a lighthouse appears on the headland, rearing into the sky.

  “No,” I say. “Do you really—?”

  Gammy laughs at the look on my face.

  The lighthouse is remote enough that it’s not automatic, but still manned, and as Gammy tells me the story of her family and how they’ve always kept it, passed from generation to generation, I feel her deep sense of home. I can feel it in the earth, too, when I get out of the car and walk upon the rocks. It’s in the sky and the roaring ocean and the keening of the wind, it’s in the way she strides over her land and into her lighthouse; she owns this place and it owns her, tangible and unarguable. What must it be like to be bound so deeply and willingly to a place?

  “You right, love?” Ennis asks me, handing me my backpack from the trunk.

  I nod and follow him inside. The house adjoining the lighthouse is normal, really, not a relic of the past but an ordinary house, low-ceilinged, fireplaced, messy enough that it must harbor children.

  And what children they are.

  For an instant I try not to stare, and then I give up and do so with delight as they emerge from their shared rooms or come in from the hills outside. There are, not a dozen, but six identical daughters, the littlest six, the oldest sixteen, each with the same unruly red hair and pale freckled skin. None of them wear shoes. They look strong, a little dirty, very free. And they gaze at me with the same expressions of interest, with intelligence and mischief. I love them even before I’ve learned their names. Maybe it’s their Irish-ness, their familiarity. Maybe it’s the fabulousness of their sameness, or the strangeness of it.