North of Hope (26 page)

The night of the performance falls as quickly as winter in the Arctic. I stand in my designated row on the risers behind the orchestra on stage, blinking against the bright lights and concentrating on not locking my knees. I work to imagine Dad
walking in the doors at the rear of the dark concert hall, coming in to take his seat, looking up to find me on the risers. But the doors remain closed.

Perlman comes out from behind the curtains stage right. His legs splay and his crutches angle out supporting his body. I wince at the juxtaposition of the elegant concert hall, the precision and poise of each instrumentalist and vocalist standing at the ready, and Perlman’s halting ambulation. Yet as soon as he takes his seat to conduct us, the moment he sits down, Perlman is utterly in control of the orchestra and the choir, each of us mere instruments on which the music is played, demanding that our spirits and souls tune the strings and become music. The tension is resolved. His body has failed him, but the music will not. The connection to the spirit of life will not. I follow the baton as though transfixed. My gaze moves between my score, following where the black notes lead, and the wand Perlman wields. I tumble down the rabbit hole, no longer one but many, no longer earthbound but part of music soaring beyond the physical into all that is wild and real and deep and sacred. I am part of the music as a drop of water is part of a river, feeling the currents and eddies and flow, the crashing and tumbling and streaming, the whispering and sighing and moaning and rumbling. On wings of air and water and fire and earth, instruments, voices, and maestro fly in one great surge of prayer and harmony.

At the end of the performance, Perlman drops his arms. He smiles at us, broadly. There is applause. A standing ovation. And then we file off the stage, moving as one unit. The orchestra disperses too and once backstage puts away their instruments in black cases with pictures of family members taped inside. I walk back to the bathroom to pull off my polyester black dress and tights, to change into something comfortable for the drive home.

I am curiously not happy, not unhappy, but I had expected more. I had wanted salvific forces to surround me, the heavens to soothe my wounds, and they did not. But I have internalized beauty. I have
internalized prayer. I have learned how to hear again. The dull ache that was there before the performance, that was temporarily lifted by breath and voice and absorption in the maestro and the music, settles back in, comfortably arranging itself in the void inside of me. If it is a little lighter, it is imperceptibly so. I can pray, it seems, and even sing, but I will have to wait. I will have to sit with this thing that weighs on me like a stone. I will have to work to will each breath for as long as it takes, though it feel like eternity. In this waiting, there is beauty, if I am willing to hear it. In this waiting, there is witness. But it is hard. I am not in control.

After singing Mozart’s Requiem, I understand at once, an awareness coming like a gust of wind through a door, that my thoughts about going to the Arctic are not merely an interest but a necessity. I have to see the place Dad and Kathy loved so much. I have to see the place where they died. They had taken to rivers later in life, a departure from previous adventures. The river was their Requiem. I have to finish their trip.

Looking out of the window,
one of us witnessed what kept vanishing,
while the other watched what continuously emerged.

—Li-Young Lee, “Descended from Dreamers”

O
ur campsite that night was a large gravel island bordered by green willow and covered in wild sweet pea. We set up the kitchen at the far end of a gravel spit and found a place inland for the tents. After dinner I excused myself for a bath. Carrying a bar of soap and a camp towel, I walked to a tiny beach at the other end of the island that was surrounded by willows but still allowed good visibility of the bank across the river and the island behind me. The constant vigilance weighted me down like lead; I also felt very much alive.

I was no longer surprised that the Arctic evening greeted me with disparate perspectives: the low light on the water, gentle as a touch, danced over the surface, inviting me even as I winced in anticipation of the glacial chill. As I pulled off my clothes, the cold washed over me the moment my skin was released from its encumbrances, from polypropylene weighted by odor as much as by fabric. First a jacket, then a long-sleeved polypro shirt, my camisole, my sports bra, my long johns. I stood naked on the small patch of mud, toes curling like a child’s. My vulnerability—my sheer ineptitude, my lack of defenses in this wild place—shone in the whiteness of my goose-pimpled skin in the late night light.

The river lapped, frigid but tender, at my feet. I reached down and splashed the glacial melt up over my shoulders, pulled it up my arms, over my stomach, down legs bumpy with cold. My feet felt numb quickly; the rest of my skin, after the first sting of the water, merely cool. Though the soap barely sudsed, I rubbed the smooth bar over my body, caressed by water and pacific night air. Rivulets of river ran over my skin. I cupped water in my hands, soaking my hair. I rubbed soap between my palms and massaged my scalp, grimacing at the cold stabbing at my forehead. Slowly the shock of the water eased, and the water renewed me with its vigor.

I watched the water. I listened to the water. In it, I heard the sounds of rocks, low sounds of gurgles and streams and trickles. And I heard voices. Somewhere under the water, even in this shallow place, voices came out of and through the water. I could not understand them, but they talked back and forth with excitement and joy. I stopped still to listen; what I was hearing was impossible. But the voices continued. I wondered if they were voices of ancient peoples in this same place, if they were voices of another world, if I should be wondering at all, or only humbly reverent. I did not think it was Dad and Kathy; it was many voices. I listened with what I still believe was sanity. And I have come to believe that whatever it was I was hearing, whomever it was, I am meant only to know that there are worlds beyond my knowing, and that the only appropriate response is awe.

I stepped out of the water. A new layer of polypro, top and bottom, still clean, saved for this moment. A new pair of socks. I brushed through my snarled hair until it was smooth. Slowly, my body warmed to the new layers. The numinous quality of light warmed me all the more. The breeze kept mosquitoes at bay but did not chill. I sat on the bank, anointed by light pouring over the tundra, washing over me.

The next morning we had a quiet breakfast. No one spoke. I walked with my bowl of oatmeal to the shore and looked across the river, across the tundra stretching away on the other side. The sky labored under a muted overcast, and the light flattened out to something ordinary, less than ordinary, not worthy of the space we traveled. As we loaded the boats, Ned stood back, distracted, facing away and pacing. I noticed this, but stayed focused on the boat.

“Sally, want to grab that strap over there?” I asked. She stood on the other side of the raft. “Right, that one. See if you can tighten it down over those dry bags.” Sally grabbed the strap and pulled it through the teeth of the buckle. We repeated the process with each strap holding the gear. “Well, it’s not pretty, but I think it will hold!” I forced a note of cheer into my voice. “Ready, Ned? Think we got it all set.” Without a word, he walked to the raft, and we all pulled it into the current. The water took us away.

I should have seen it coming. The biggest beasts on our trip still stalked us. I hadn’t been paying attention. I’d thought the worst was over. I had faced the beach. I had made a monument. I had said my prayers. But I’d been selfish. I’d thought the trip was only about my own grief, my own issues, but unacknowledged grief is insidious, a shape-shifter, a poison.

The river braided mercilessly. Interrupted by frequent walking of the raft over riffles as the dispersed current barely trickled over gravel bars, unsure of the distance yet to travel, we resolved to make it as far as we could.

In these silent moments, the birds were our companions. A jaeger flapped its wings and soared, paused, dipped as its velocity lost to gravity, flapped its wings again. I hummed softly to myself. “Sunrise, sunset …” slowly moving the steering paddle behind me. It gave me something to hold onto, this music and this wild.

And then it came out of nowhere, as suddenly as if a rip appeared in the universe around me. Ned said violently, “Shut up!”

I watched the river in front of me with eyes narrowed, searching for what lay beneath. It was a steady current. We rode it smoothly. I moved the paddle to keep us in the current. Sally kept looking forward. I clenched my teeth against whatever was happening, and hummed quietly, as a source of the only known in the present, the only thing I understood.

“Shut up!” he yelled.

I stared at the river. I did not look for answers or for help but tried only to stay in the current.

“You can’t paddle this boat!” he yelled. “We’d be better off without you!”

I did not respond, and continued to hum softly, focusing on the breath it followed, looking to it for strength.

He continued to shout. I sat in the stern, relying on the pressure of the paddle against the water for stability. His words carried without his turning around, words that I had never heard directed at me before, words that did not bear repeating, names that were ugly and profane and laden with hate and pain.

“Why don’t we pull over?” said Sally.

“That’s probably a good idea,” I said. We maneuvered onto a large, flat gravel bar in the middle of the river.

“Want me to stick around?” Sally asked, looking at me.

I smiled thinly at her and shook my head, just barely. She looked at me quickly and then said in a low voice only I could hear, “You know, there are some things that can’t be fixed.” Then she walked off twenty yards.

Ned got out of the boat. I was aware of the placement of the two weapons. I was also aware there wasn’t anyone around for miles. Karen’s group would already be back in Kaktovik.

A sneer warped Ned’s face. I sat on the back of the raft. He walked over to stand inches from me, leaning down from his six-foot height and spitting as he talked. “You always have to be the one, don’t you?” he said. I sat still and quiet, feeling oddly detached
from my body.
“Don’t you?”
he screamed. I looked directly at him, or my eyes did. It seemed as if I was sitting on the tundra on the opposite bank, watching.

“I don’t know what you mean.” My voice stayed monotone of its own accord.

“You always have to say things; you always have to have the last word. I’m just like Dad! You just don’t want to admit it!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m sorry,” I said. “My dad would never have talked to anyone like this.” Immediately I regretted my response. This was not a rational conversation. This was not a rational person.

“See?”
he yelled. He turned suddenly and looked across the gravel bar. Sally was walking slowly about fifty feet away, her eyes on the ground. “
Just
like
that!
”

He wheeled back around and leaned toward me, his face an inch from mine. “I should
kill
you,” he hissed. His words, barbed with profanity, coiled and lashed.

I sat silently. The raft was firm beneath me. It occurred to me that I might die on this river too. It seemed as likely as any other outcome. And just as quickly came the thought that it would be okay if I died here, now. I had been to this place. I had brought the Eucharist to Dad and Kathy’s beach. I had glimpsed the truth that this life is mystery. Next to that, death seemed very much a secondary thing.

Another thought: Ned might have just enough sanity to refrain, simply to avoid prosecution. That seemed even more likely.

“I should drown you in this river!” he yelled, suddenly reenergized. Whipping around, he looked downriver. I breathed deeply and slowly. Ned turned back to me.

“I shouldn’t have said those things,” he said. “I shouldn’t have called you those names.” The tenor of his voice modulated only slightly, the agitation in his face and body still coiled like a spring.

I sat still and found freedom in the depth of my breathing. I saw
time and events and life flowing by on the surface of the river. I breathed. I stayed in the current, then rose high above and looked down at three tiny creatures around a blue raft on a rocky beach in a vast country.

“Let’s go,” he yelled violently across the gravel bar.

Sally started walking back.

“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” he said suddenly, regaining strength in profanity. “You’re going to get off this raft and start walking. You’re going to walk all the way back to Kaktovik.”

I spoke in low tones, and slowly. The sense of calm I felt seemed to have come as a part of the wind, or the water beneath the raft. It was nothing less than grace. “We’re all going to get in the raft, and we’re going to go to the pickup point,” I said. “Let’s get in, and let’s go.”

Sally pushed the raft off, and Ned shoved it hard and leapt in. He sat motionless holding his paddle on his lap, staring downriver.

We were in the main channel, and the river meandered slowly back and forth between gravel bar and banks. The raft pointed itself, requiring only tiny corrections. Our trip returned to silence—or at least to as much silence as there is in the presence of a running river, crying birds, mosquitoes, and all the forms of life in an Arctic summer. The silence in which words and anger might settle stiflingly.

I watched the river flow. Around the raft, and away from me. I knew Sally was right, and recognized a brokenness that I could not and should not try to fix. I recognized it with the same compassionate objectivity I understood the possibility of my death. For the first time, I recognized that the anger I’d just witnessed, now unchecked by my dad’s restraint, did not have to be a part of my life.

I saw two people who had known the same person so differently, known life so differently. We were scrawling our own stories across wrinkled pages, and despite sharing relationships and
circumstances, our stories bore only a faint resemblance to each other. Each of us staggered forward in different directions with the opportunity—the responsibility—to write our own lives.