The Missing One

by Lucy Atkins

  The floathouse was sheltered from coastal winds by a towering forest of pine, cedar and hemlock, and rocks formed a natural barrier against the waves. They’d be relatively well protected when the storms came. Even Eve had admitted that it was a ‘good spot’. The floathouse belonged here. It was if this little bay and the rocks and the trees had just been waiting for it to arrive.

  Out of habit she scanned the water for a triangle of dorsal or a plume of breath but the waves rose and fell steadily.

  ‘We have to be patient,’ she whispered. ‘And they’ll come.’ She watched a golden eagle sweep on the wind tides above the trees, its feathers splayed like monstrous claws.

  *

  The cleaning took three full days – punctuated by feeds and diaper changes and the occasional ‘kwoof’ out in the bay when she’d drop everything, seize baby, papoose, camera, life preserver, and scoot down to the Zodiac. She never went far beyond the bay and she couldn’t listen without a hydrophone, but she took photos and scoured the catalogue at night to work out who they were.

  Raven Bay was forty minutes away by boat when the tides were right. When she motored down on the third day to buy shelf brackets, wood, screws, paint for the kitchen cupboards and more nails, she bumped into Ana outside the hardware store.

  Ana must be busy, with her boys to look after, and the summer guest house to run, but she invited Elena to the house for a cup of coffee.

  Her kitchen smelled of baking and was warm, with the boys’ clothes draped across the range, and fishing tackle, gum-boots, slingshots and comics strewn about the place. Today, there was a basket in one corner containing a black cat and six mewling kittens, still blind and jerky. An old Swedish clock ticked above the stove, and with the back door open you could hear waves thudding on the dock, and the clink of masts.

  As Elena breastfed, Ana moved around as if there was no hurry at all. She always wore the same thing – a weathered blue smock that came down to her knees, thick tights, and clogs. She poured coffee for them both, and put down a plate of zucchini bread, still warm from the oven.

  ‘So,’ Ana said, ‘You’ll be laying down stores for winter, I guess?’

  ‘Uh, yes.’ Elena said, through a mouthful of cake.

  ‘Every spring I can up a winter’s worth of salmon, but you’ve missed that. Now’s the time to preserve your fruits and berries, though – do you have jars?’ Ana’s voice was unhurried; each syllable had its own place, emphasis and melody.

  She hadn’t thought about jars. She hadn’t thought further than getting the floathouse in place and getting back out on the water with the hydrophone. ‘You need to think ahead,’ Ana was saying. ‘This isn’t Nanaimo – you can get days on end, up at Black Bear, where there’s no way in or out.’

  So, together they made a list of winter supplies, including powdered milk, rusks and porridge for the baby. She should buy in big jars of peanut butter, Ana said, canned meats, yeast and some big bags of flour.

  When it was time for Elena to leave, Ana went to the attic for a box of clothes that her boys had grown out of.

  ‘We don’t get many folk coming to settle up here.’ She leaned a hand on the doorpost as they said goodbye. ‘Least of all with little babies. The whole community wants this to work out for you guys, you know.’ There was concern behind the steady brown eyes.

  ‘We’ll be fine.’ She smiled back. ‘We know the sea up here – we’ve been around here most of the year anyway. And we’re pretty tough, you know.’

  *

  The sink doubled as a baby bath, the gentle movement of the floathouse rocked the Moses basket and she strung up a garland of diapers on the deck. Over the next few days, during nap times, she tackled the trickier jobs. There were rusty nails and splintery edges everywhere so for a whole day she went from one danger spot to another, hammering nail heads down and sanding off corners to make it all safe for soft knees and curious hands.

  Quite a few of the floorboards in the front room were unstable, so one afternoon she parked the baby basket in the bell tent, covered it with netting to keep out any curious animals, and spent two hours levering up rotten boards with a crowbar, sawing, sanding and hammering the new ones in place. When she’d finished, the floor was a patchwork of worn and new pine.

  She’d cover it with the rag rugs she’d bought in the market in Victoria, the day she’d finally said goodbye to Susannah.

  Finding the right location at last – and then the floathouse – had washed away much of the tension of that stressed-out week in Raven Bay; they’d parted as friends. But she was not in a hurry to have Susannah up here; she couldn’t forget about the argument over the dinner table, and the weirdness in the air between them. But Susannah had been sweet in the end, eager to please – perhaps trying to make up for it. They’d both been under pressure. It was best forgotten about, really. Best to move on and finally put some distance between them.

  *

  On her sixth evening in the floathouse, Elena painted the peeling kitchen cupboards a sunflower yellow – it had been the only colour left in the hardware store but she kind of liked its sunshine feel.

  The next day she got up at five in the morning, when it was still dark. The dawn howls of wolves and coyotes echoed through the trees as she stripped the window frames down to their bare wood. Through the glass – clean now – she watched the first pink rays stretch out across the horizon and the sea turn from gunmetal to its soft morning green.

  She pulled on her grubby fleece, and went out to boil a pan of water on the camp stove by the tent. She brewed a pot of strong coffee, taking it out onto the deck. She felt light-headed and a little queasy from paint fumes and sleep deprivation but as she drank the coffee and ate a stale bread roll with jam, she watched the sky lighten to baby blue and she was completely content.

  It was hard to picture what was to come in winter. She knew about towering waves, and hurricane-strength winds, and about the south-easterly storms that could sweep in from nowhere and last for days. But she also knew they’d stick it out up here, whatever happened, because this was home now.

  She didn’t feel lonely during those eight days, but she did feel a growing impatience to get back out there. There was so much work to be done and every time she saw a plume of breath and motored out with the camera towards the whales she was acutely aware of the vocalizations she was missing beneath the surface.

  One particular matriline – consisting of seven whales – seemed to ‘own’ the bay. She felt sure that they were curious about her activities. Sometimes they lingered in the bay, close to the rocks, and spyhopped – their faces peering upright out of the water – as if checking on her progress. Once, when she motored out to them, they put on a playful display for her. The two younger brothers breached, twisting their muscular bodies as they flew through the air and slapping their flukes on the surface so that the sound bounced off the rocks. They tail-lobbed, plainly relishing the echoes they could create by thumping on the surface of the water. Their elegance amazed her. These creatures were the size of tankers but they rose up from the depths and entered the air like ballet dancers – hundreds of pounds of shining black-and-white muscle suspended gloriously against the sky.

  She needed the hydrophone. It was agony to watch this and not listen too. She wanted to know what vocalizations went with all this horsing around. She wanted to record the sounds that the matriarch made just before they vanished – she was sure there must be a single command. But she had to be patient. Only two more days and she’d have the parts, fix the hydrophone and get back out there.

  On the day before the guys returned – another bright and sunny sky – she decided to go down to Raven Bay again in the Zodiac to get supplies for a special homecoming meal. She strapped her gurgling baby into the papoose on her back, and steered the Zodiac out of the bay, eyes fixed on the horizon.

  In Raven, she bought more preserving jars from the hardware store, along with another box of nails, two packets of sandpaper and twenty more shelf
brackets – she was learning that whatever quantity she thought she’d need, she should double it. She also bought more crackers, flour and yeast so she could bake bread when they got the oven working, some granola bars, coffee, two more bottles of bleach and Milton fluid and a pint of peanut butter. She longed for apples – to sink her teeth into a crisp Jonagold – but there was no fresh fruit in the store. She bought tins of beans and canned tomatoes and a sack of rice to make a vegetarian stew. There was sorrel and chanterelles in the forest behind the house and so far she’d picked four pints of blackberries. It would be a feast.

  *

  Back at the floathouse, she moved all the crockery and kitchen things from their boxes in the tent into the newly painted kitchen. With tin mugs and plates, and real glasses and cutlery, and cupboards full of supplies, it was complete.

  She opened a beer, and carried her exhausted baby back out to the fire pit by the tent – chucking on another log and wrapping a tartan blanket around them both. The stars were coming out in great handfuls and there was a chill in the air. She felt tired and a little queasy as she settled down to feed. It was almost a seasick feeling – like she had on the Zodiac the first few times Jonas took her out. She hadn’t eaten properly today. It was easy to get depleted when breastfeeding a big baby.

  She needed to fix the hydrophone the moment she had the parts, and get back out there. Even if Eve was right, and some orcas really did come here throughout the winter, most would surely be gone by the end of October. That only gave her two months to gather as much data as she could on the matriarch’s burst pulse sound – she felt sure it was an instruction. She had a hunch that it was directional – probably to do with food. It could also be a sound that the others mimicked. If she could collect enough data on this one sound by late fall – establish whether it was a stereotype call, or something else – then she had her starting point.

  She put the beer down and sat back, gazing up at the stars. As always, at the back of her mind, was Bella. Somewhere out there was Bella’s mother. What she hadn’t realized, until she saw killer whales in the wild, was the strength of their family bonds. They stuck together, touching each other and communicating verbally all the time. It seemed such a harmonious way to live older whales were never left out, they were always in the centre of the group, and the pod shared everything – childcare, hunting, play. It was wrong to use words like ‘love’ but it was clear that the social bonds in family units were profound.

  If this closeness extended to language – if particular sounds were peculiar to one pod or another – then theoretically it would be possible, one day, to match Bella’s vocal patterns to her family. That could take decades, of course, and she’d have to go back to Sea Park and gather more sound data from Bella. But maybe one day she’d be able to map Bella’s vocalizations to a pod, and find out where she belonged.

  Elena hadn’t shared this particular obsession with anyone, not even Jonas. She had asked the orca survey guys, last year, if there was any way to trace Bella’s family, but although they knew about the two Sea Park whales, they didn’t know which pod Bella had been taken from. She’d been captured in the bloodbaths, before the regulations came in. They knew about a couple of other captive whales in Florida – there were records of their captures, and they’d been able to work out their whole family trees. But not Bella.

  She sipped her beer and looked down at her baby’s beautiful sleeping face, a perfect oval, completely symmetrical. It occurred to her that this need she had, to find Bella’s mother, might not be purely scientific. It was somehow related to the darker part of herself, the frightened eight-year-old whose mother wasn’t coming back. But there was no use thinking about all that. She’d boxed it all up and it should stay that way. She never could see the point in introspection or looking back.

  ‘We just need to get back out there,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t we?’

  Her research wasn’t something she ‘did’ any more. It was who she was – as much a part of her as this beautiful baby. She remembered something Dean said about his wife, who stopped travelling among Native Canadian communities to stay home with their son. He said she didn’t do anything ‘by halves’. At the time Elena had taken this to mean that she’d made a positive choice to be an at-home mother. But in fact, maybe Dean’s wife didn’t have a choice: some things can’t be watered down, portioned off or rationed out.

  It occurred to Elena that without the floathouse she would be in exactly the same position as Dean’s wife. If she couldn’t make it work up here she would have to stop completely. A life studying killer whales in the wild was full immersion or nothing. Without this place, she would have to become a different person. There was an awful lot invested in these cedar planks.

  She closed her eyes and swallowed the mouthful of beer and for a moment she was overcome with gratitude for her shabby floating house and the rocky corner of land that had allowed her to stay and be herself.

  Chapter fourteen

  At first I can’t see a thing. A powerful smell of mildew hits my throat, and beneath it something rotten and organic. A faint light glows through the doorway up ahead and as my eyes adjust I see that I’m in a galley kitchen. I stumble towards the light.

  And there he is, on her hip, sturdy and round and bundled up in his navy-blue fleece. She is facing me, but he’s looking out the window still – maybe looking for me; the back of his hair is all knotted up. I throw myself across the room. ‘Finn!’ He turns his head. His eyes are huge and frightened.

  ‘Oh love, oh sweetheart! I’m here. I’m here. I’ve got you!’ He opens his mouth and lets out a strangled wail, part surprise, part desperation. He throws out his arms for me, tipping his body after them like a diver launching off the high board, trusting he’ll be caught – and I catch him. I feel his weight in my arms and the sobs swell in my chest and throat. I hang on to him, feeling him mould himself to my body again, and cling there, like part of my flesh.

  I screw my eyes shut and just for a moment my whole being is wrapped around Finn, breathing him, absorbing him; a sphere again. This is over. It’s over. There is no red line after all. I have my baby back. He’s safe.

  My legs are shaking so I slide to my knees and hold him tight, rocking gently to soothe him. His arms are tight around my neck. I know I have to rein myself back in. I have to not frighten him with the force of this relief.

  ‘I was worried about you, love, but it’s OK. I’ve got you. Everything’s OK now. Mummy’s here. I’m going to stay with you now, OK? I’ve been looking for you all day.’

  This is not a crisis any more. I have to get a grip and be calm for my already frightened child. I kiss his wet cheeks. ‘What an adventure you’ve had,’ I say. ‘My poor little love.’ He looks up into my eyes and then he lets go of my neck and holds onto my jaw with both hands, as if checking that it is really me.

  ‘I was looking for you, love. I was looking so hard and I didn’t know where you were, but I found you, didn’t I?’

  Slowly I become aware that Susannah is standing above us. And she is not moving.

  But I can’t take my eyes off Finn. She has put him in his spaceman pyjamas and his warmest fleece. His eyes are startled and red-rimmed – he is so tired – and I can see he’s been crying for a long time. But he’s not hurt. Not physically at least. I run my hand over his arms and legs. They feel solid and warm beneath the clothes. She has even pulled socks over his footsie pyjamas. As least she is attempting to keep him warm – and it’s freezing in here. The dampness feels like a poultice. I kiss his face all over, breathing in his sweet smell.

  ‘I’m here. I’ve got you. It’s all going to be OK now.’

  Finally, I look up.

  I’m expecting an apologetic face, guilt, even fear or tears in her eyes. I’m expecting her to run her hands through her hair and say, ‘Shit, Kali, I’m so sorry! We missed the ferry and I had no way to reach you … ’

  Her face is a frozen mask.

  She stares at us. In the d
im light, her eyes look albino. I clasp Finn tighter and stand up to face her. And that’s when I lose it.

  ‘What the … what do think you’re doing?’ I have to force myself not to scream and swear because of Finn and my voice comes out strangled. ‘What in God’s name are you playing at, Susannah? Who do you think you are, taking my child like this? Jesus Christ, I should call the police! I don’t care what you thought you were doing, who you thought you were helping. This is unbelievable. It’s unbelievable! You can’t just take someone’s baby!’

  She doesn’t take her eyes off my face. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t even blink.

  ‘Well?’ I hiss.

  Finn whimpers and puts both arms around my neck again. I kiss him. ‘It’s OK, love, I’m a bit cross with Susannah, but it’s OK. Everything’s OK.’ I glare at her over his head. My limbs are trembling. ‘Say something.’ I grit my teeth. ‘Explain to me. What the hell did you think you were playing at, bringing him here to this place?’

  And then she smiles. She actually smiles. It’s just the corners of her mouth, not the eyes: the smile of an aristocrat observing a peasant. One eyebrow rises fractionally. She lifts her chin. Her pallid eyes are settled deep in her skull.

  Rain drums on the roof. The house creaks and shifts and sways. The house, I realize, is unsteady beneath my feet. In fact, it doesn’t feel like a house at all – it feels like a boat: unstable, perpetually shifting. Then I realize that the room is so dim because the only light is coming from candles. They are everywhere, on every shelf and flat surface – thick, church-type candles, melting and oozing wax. Garlands sway above her, pale in the flickering candlelight, like the ones in her meditation room at Isabella Point. But this is nothing like Isabella Point. This place stinks and it’s so cold. Susannah is still staring at me.