Free My Last Continent by Midge Raymond

staring at the wall, at a photo of an emperor colony. Our beers slosh as I put them down on the table, and I tumble into my seat.
    Finally he turns to me. “Remember the other day—you told me how penguins that fail to breed will sometimes choose new partners.”
    For a long moment, I can’t comprehend what he’s telling me.
    â€œIt was our first child,” he says. “Only child.”
    He takes a long drink, and I try to remember how many rounds we’ve had. “She died,” he says. “Car accident.”
    I don’t know what to say. He is very drunk, and he’s talking far more than he ever has, yet his body remains still, lean and almost statuesque in the chair. “I thought we might try to have another baby,” he says. “But she decided to try another husband.”
    â€œJust like that?” As I look at Keller through the bar’s haze of cigarette smoke, I’m finding it impossible to imagine anyone walking away from him so easily.
    â€œJust like the birds,” he says with a harsh laugh. “I can’t blame her.”
    I want to touch him then, but I don’t move.
    He shifts in his seat and pushes his hair off his forehead in a slow, tired motion. “It was my fault,” he says. “Ally was nineteen months old. Britt, my wife—she went back to work after Ally’s first birthday, and we took turns dropping her off at day care, picking her up. I was supposed to pick her up that afternoon, but a meeting got rescheduled. I called our babysitter, Emily—a grad student who took care of Ally from time to time. Ally loved her. I even bought an extra car seat so Emily could take her places. She used to joke we were killingher love life, with a baby seat in her car. It was this crappy old subcompact. If only I’d bought her a new car instead.”
    He reaches for his beer, but he doesn’t pick it up, doesn’t drink. “I had my phone off during the meeting. I went home and no one was there—no Ally, no babysitter, no Britt. Then I turned on my phone.”
    His hand tightens around the glass. “I went to Children’s,” he says, “but she was gone. A driver on a cell phone had run a red light and slammed into the back, on Ally’s side. Emily survived. Britt blamed me more than anyone. I was the one who should’ve been there.”
    I reach over and touch his hand, still wrapped around the glass, his skin rough and wind-chapped, and I think of how Antarctica toughens you up, how maybe this was what he wanted—maybe this is what we all want—to build calluses over old wounds.
    He turns slightly in his chair, leaning almost imperceptibly closer to me. “It didn’t fall apart all at once,” he says. “It’s strange, how people disappear. No one likes to talk about it—as if it might be catching. Our friends, Britt’s and mine, didn’t know what to do—I mean, all of a sudden, we didn’t have kids who played together anymore. My sister was the only one who would listen, really listen. She’s the only one who calls me on Ally’s birthday. The only one who invited us over for dinner on the first anniversary of her death, so we wouldn’t have to be alone. She’s good that way, like my mom was. Everyone else—they seemed to want to pretend it never happened.”
    He lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “Britt and I tried to make the marriage work. She couldn’t move on—or didn’t want to. We didn’t last much more than a year. After she left, I triedto immerse myself in work.” He looks down into his beer. “When we were together, when Ally was alive, the days always seemed too short—there was never enough time to fit it all in. Then, all of a sudden, every day was endless. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. I wanted to escape—like Britt had, I guess. But she only went as far as Vermont.”
    He