On Such a Full Sea: A Novel

by Lee, Chang-rae

  Pets were simpler to raise, in every way, plus they couldn’t disappoint the family or themselves and naturally offered and received affection unconditionally, which in this world is rare, all of which accounted for why the Charters loved them dearly, and insisted on menageries of them, outfitting the expansive-by-design balconies of their condos or their backyards with romper equipment and kenneling for their squads of cats and dogs but also the toy swine and hens and even goats a growing number of enthusiasts raised for healthful meat and eggs and milk. Quig and his partners did very well for themselves, and while they weren’t as rich as the people-doctors or business executives, they were as secure as any of their Charter neighbors in what they expected from their lives, content with the kind of condo they inhabited, the vehicles they drove, how many helpers (just one, for Quig’s family) they employed, where and how frequently they dined out, all the vital metrics, as Charters would say, duly aligned. Quig and his wife and daughter were in this sense happily unexceptional. Trish was talkative and bubbly and a tad plumpish, with loose chestnut brown curls just like her mother’s, and she was a brainy girl, too, always high in the rankings from preschool onward, her parents probably thinking that she had a good chance to be an engineer or executive or maybe even a C-specialist. They also entered her in the Charter Association beauty pageants, and though Trish was not the most fit-looking entrant in the preteen category, her gifted viola playing and her astounding retention of arcane historical facts in the knowledge rounds made up for somewhat lower scores in the yoga demonstration and evening-gown promenade. She could also look stunning; her last competition gown, Penelope said, was made from a brilliant copper silk taffeta that stunningly set off her tresses. Plus, she had that electric smile you saw in nearly every page of Quig’s albums, the wide, free grin that to the judges seemed to express the most genuine, deep-seated glee, and reflected not just the glowing inner girl but the wider Charter clime that shone just as bright. She was twice a regional finalist and was preparing for a third attempt at the nationals, practicing her yoga positions and musical pieces for many hours each week when the first animal plagues struck out west.

  No one, Quig included, could have predicted how quickly things would change. Initially the cats got sick, and then the dogs, followed by the hobby livestock, but then a small percentage of the human population became infected, which wouldn’t have been so catastrophic had not nearly all of those unfortunate people died. The affected villages were immediately locked down, Charter epidemiologists flown in from around the world to determine what was causing the sickness (expressed in a catastrophic hemorrhagic fever) and how it had crossed multiple species barriers; while they were working, all pets and animals in the affected villages were ordered destroyed, whether sick or not, including, as has been noted, the fish in home aquariums. Families who tried to hide and save their pets were made examples of and banished to the open counties; soon enough every last animal was tendered. Naturally, panic spread around the Association (we B-Mors heard nothing about it until much later) and it wasn’t long before every Charter village in the country and many abroad decreed the same, banning all animals indefinitely.

  Which then became forever.

  So what happens to someone when his livelihood disappears literally overnight? It’s not the same as losing one’s job and having trouble finding another like it. The entire reason is gone, like the old-time writers who at some point found that very few people, if any, actually practiced reading anymore. But at least those writers had time, the change happening over many decades, until readers became rare enough that they were believed to be nearly extinct, like some twitchy, sensitive creatures who lingered in the twilight brush. But for Quig, it was as swift as awaking one morning to see that every appointment for a procedure or examination to come was gone, the entire calendar voided. He and his wife had some savings, plus partial equity in their condo, but his veterinary group had borrowed heavily to finance recent expansions of their staff and the call-van fleet and major office renovations. With no income and huge debts, Quig’s family had to sell their condo and move into the rental dorms normally reserved for service people, the nannies and landscapers and teachers and security/emergency workers et cetera who could never afford to own Charter real estate but wanted for obvious reasons to live inside the village. The idea was for Quig and his wife to take on whatever work could sustain them until he could figure out another sufficiently profitable line of business, and so they did, she cleaning office suites at night and he in charge of linens and towels at a health club. They borrowed money from friends for Trish’s school and music lesson fees. He applied to all of the industrial livestock corporations but got nowhere, as there was a taint upon not only veterinarians but also breeders and pet store owners, as if they had somehow allowed or even caused the outbreak.

  Pix of Quig before and after the animal ban show a profound change in his appearance. Look at the man he was, reading poolside or picnicking with his wife and daughter in a park, sporting a tidy beard and moustache, the prosperous fullness to his neck and jowls like that of any respectable midlife Charter professional who knows he’s belted in and secure, and then at his drawn, clean-shaven twin (the facial hair removed along with anything else that might appear remotely sinister, down to the kitten silhouette stickers on their car), whose newly yielding posture (lowered shoulders, a forward pitch of the chin) also contained an ever-tightening coil of disillusion, this reserve of bitterness and anger that might never spring outward but was steadily grinding its way into his psyche, forever hollowing out shadowy pockets in him that he himself was unaware of. Look at his attractive but weary-faced wife, Glynnis, who could no longer afford to have her hair colored or her crow’s-feet smoothed, time catching up and passing her by right before your eyes. And yet there she is at the boutique with their gleaming, unsullied Trish being fitted with a new carmine gown and matching shoes for the coming pageant, her thumbs-up salute to the camera betraying nothing of the bellowing wonder of how any of it would be paid for. Look, at last, at the former call-van Quig converted himself, stripping the Mobile Vet lettering from the sides and refitting it as a delivery truck for a new linens business he was about to start, the blooming of his hope reflected in the shine of the freshly dressed tires, Trish and Glynnis crammed at the wheel behind him and mugging for the camera, this family for whom he would do anything, no matter how humble or retrograde, accepting whatever destiny his needed to be.

  But the descent is the harshest journey, and for Charters especially.

  The linens service was doing all right, but a former veterinary client who was a restaurateur was the source of most of the billings, and Quig couldn’t yet afford to go less than part-time at the health club. Glynnis took a position there, too, in the women’s locker room, and it was here that she reconnected with some members she knew from before the ban, girlfriends who commiserated with her plight. Glynnis would never accept charity and in fact none was offered, but they wondered if her husband had leftover stocks of the anesthetics they used on the pets. He did, in abundance, as there was no market anymore for them, and to her surprise her friends offered to buy the drugs at an extraordinary price.

  There are illegal drugs in the Charters, of course, but they are extremely difficult to get, given the security measures, and it dawned on users that after the animal ban that certain tranquilizers might be more readily available. So it went for Glynnis, one tiny vial at a time tucked inside a rolled hand towel and placed where the cash had been left for her in the locker. Word spread and soon she was selling a dozen vials a week, and as the supply dwindled, she charged double and triple, which didn’t deter the Charter women from telling their friends. Glynnis didn’t tell her husband about what she was doing until one day he found stacks of money in the storage locker where they kept the veterinary supplies. He was furious at her—the huge risks she was taking, given the penalties for drug dealing!—but she was just as angry with him; the linens business cl
early wasn’t growing and meanwhile their standard of living was steadily falling. They couldn’t see their friends much anymore, because seeing them required spending a surprising amount of money on drinks and meals and activities, something neither of them had ever paid attention to before. They had traded in their sleek silent-running sedan for a clattery old electric wagon that partly ran on diesel, a kind that mostly counties people drove. And of course, they lived in a small two-bedroom flat instead of the airy, light-filled duplex with two balconies overlooking the village reservoir. How did he think they were still eating out once a month at places like the Tomato Grove? How was Trish able to go on the weeklong school trip to Paris with her French class, and take cooking and oil painting classes? Where did he imagine the money was coming from? It surely wasn’t put on credit, as theirs had been cut off by the banks, they would find out, the day before the ban. Glynnis wasn’t ever a spoiled Charter wife, but once things changed, it seemed she just gripped tighter to whatever semblances of their former life they could manage. Up to that time, Quig was perhaps the dreamiest in the family, the one who passionately but unassumingly went about his work with animals while Glynnis and Trish were in perpetual motion with the packed agenda of a full Charter life, his former partners the ones who arranged the marketing and expansion of the veterinary business and liked to be taken out for golfing and wine-themed dinners by their suppliers. Quig always chose to stay home with his family, and if he traveled, it was in one of the call-vans for work, when he never bothered to explore the shops and facilities of other Charter villages but instead called home to say he would be back in time to go out for dinner.

  Glynnis convinced him to allow her to continue selling the vials, which she did, and once their former stocks were exhausted, she got him to contact his old partners and other colleagues to replenish their supplies. It wasn’t long before the linens service turned into a special-delivery scheme, Quig himself at the wheel of the van with Glynnis and a former veterinary assistant named Ricky bringing the “linens” to many of the most exclusive residential lanes of their village. For Charters, we all know, relish their wine and spirits, frankly in many cases to the point of dependence, and it followed that the prevailing thin trade in illicit pills and powders and herbs had much room for expansion. They’re so busy, so focused as a lot, seeing everything they tackle in work or leisure as an opportunity for personal “leveraging,” that their tightly compacted psyches require regular and deep unwinding. The vial business boomed, the level akin to when an enterprising fellow in B-Mor marketed a scientifically formulated “synaptic-booster” cookie for our school kids to eat before the annual Exams (which turned out to be simply full of caffeine), the money piling up so fast, in fact, that they were planning to repurchase their old condo, though they couldn’t quite figure out how to pay for it aside from using hard cash, which is all they had.

  If this brief period was not exactly a golden time for their family, it was certainly a heady stretch, when Glynnis and Quig (and even Trish, who didn’t know really anything of what was going on, save that her parents and especially her mother seemed much happier) could imagine themselves to be making the climb back into their life, reinstating their tennis club membership, renting a proper non-service-people’s condo, and traveling for the regional finals of the beauty pageant to a major Charter village on Lake Erie, where they stayed in a double suite at the best hotel with views of the water and a king-sized bed for Trish as well as for them, their splurging a way to spend the hard cash for sure but also to suppress the gaining feeling of impermanence that must have been marking their days, each sweet moment tinged dire.

  It happened this way: Glynnis was making up Trish’s face and hair, and Quig was on a call with Ricky back home going over the heavy weekend orders when the line seemed to buzz. The suite door burst open, an angry platoon of midnight-blue-clad Charter security rushing in with their powered batons. Quig instinctively resisted and they shocked him nearly senseless, and they jolted Glynnis, too, when she tried to pull them off him. All the while Trish was screaming in horror and confusion in her lustrous dress that would get badly torn in the melee. They were flown back to their village and on Ricky’s testimony, Quig and Glynnis were tried and convicted. Within a week, the family was forever banished from the Charter, allowed only what they could fit into their wagon (less the confiscated cash) as their worldly estate.

  Here was the point at which Fan’s knowledge of his past life ended, Penelope having gone no further in her postmeal tellings, and as they drove on, she found herself filling in possible details and events that had followed, glancing at Quig’s faraway glare and imagining what he must have been compelled to see, and possibly do, to arrive at this place in time. Had he witnessed the last moments of his wife and daughter? Had he killed a person, or two? Fan, being raised in our fashion, was not given to probing into others’ lives, at least not face-to-face, and so it was startling that she asked him right there, straight out, whether he could let her see a picture of his family on his handscreen.

  He didn’t acknowledge her, or maybe he did; all the color had rushed out of his face. The muscles of his jaw were clenching, and now he worked the slow turns of a curvy descent with two hands instead of one. Of course, he knew people at the compound speculated about his past but gave no quarter.

  If you don’t want to it’s okay, Fan said.

  What’s it to you? he asked her, his voice, to her surprise, full of echo and ache.

  I was just wondering, she said, which we must believe was the case. He must have, too, and not just because like everyone else he thought she was younger than she was. Fan was not one to say things for her advantage, even out there in the counties. Often she remained silent, but when she did speak, it seemed only forthright and sincere, which is why people responded to her in the way they did.

  There was a long silence when only Loreen’s faint snoring could be heard.

  But then he said: Yesterday was her birthday.

  Your daughter’s?

  He nodded.

  How old would she be?

  He gave a sighing half chuckle, like he wasn’t quite accepting the turn of this conversation, or maybe that it was happening at all.

  And yet he offered: Twenty-five. Maybe just about to be married.

  From the side of his sunglasses Fan could see his eyes, searching the empty road, blinking steadily.

  Penelope told us she was a very pretty girl. With many talents, too.

  That’s right, he said, the idea of this seeming to crumple him inside, the points of his shoulders collapsing just that bit. That’s right. After a while, he touched his handscreen in the compartment of the middle console and some classical music came on. It was a viola concerto by Bach, he told her, a piece his daughter was beginning to play quite well.

  Was she going to perform it for the pageant?

  He asked if Penelope had told her about all that and she nodded.

  She was, he said. She wasn’t a prodigy like some of the girls but she was very good. She had a fine ear. And she played with real enthusiasm, like she was enjoying it. The judges always appreciated that.

  There are no pageants in B-Mor.

  I suppose not, he said. Can you do anything special?

  I can swim.

  That’s what I hear. You were a tank diver.

  Yes. I can hold my breath for a long time.

  Really?

  Yes.

  How long?

  A while.

  Show me.

  She took a round of slow, deep breaths to prime her lungs and then she took a last one in and closed her mouth. She pinched her nose so he could see she wasn’t cheating. At first he kept his eye on the road like he wasn’t paying attention but soon enough he had unconsciously slowed down, waiting for the moment she would crack. But she just sat there, totally composed, the coloring in her face unchanging; in fact, it looked lik
e she was about to fall asleep. He ordered her to stop. She couldn’t quite hear him, or at least immediately react, as she had entered that state whenever she was in the tanks a long time and aligned with the underwater rhythms, that quelled, half-alive feeling that was neither frightening nor fraught but rather strangely liberating, for the wanting of nothing, not even air.

  Stop it now, she heard him say from an outer orbit, that’s enough, yet she was fine, not even close to done, and she was notching herself down another rung when he slapped her face.

  I said that’s enough, he barked. Loreen momentarily roused but nothing else was spoken and she fell back to her dreams. He was pushing the car faster now. He was breathing fast himself, like he was running and running. Fan touched her cheekbone, more startled than scared. He hadn’t hit her hard but he had scraped her eye slightly and it was tearing and she dabbed it with her T-shirt sleeve.

  You all right? he said after a pause, though not looking at her.

  Yes, I’m fine.

  You’re a good girl, he said, if sorrowfully.

  Thank you.

  Listen, do you want to drive again?

  That’s okay.