Free Lake People by Abi Maxwell Page B

told Clara there would be whales there. Which there were; he saw many of them. “There!” he would say, and point, and “There!” again, but not once did Clara see a whale he pointed to.
    The cliff was broad, but in one spot near to them it transformed into a narrow, rocky bridge like the neck of an hourglass. Over that short bridge you could walk to a small splatter of grassy land that seemed itself the very end of the earth. After breakfast Paul draped the baby over his shoulder and headed toward that spot.Clara called to him, told him not to cross with Alice. And he heard her, plain as day he did. But he did not respond.
    They had been up for a few hours, Clara had hardly slept, and by now a cranky weariness had set in. “God damn it,” she said, but he crossed without trouble, of course he would, and Clara went to the van. There she saw that he had left the gas to the camp stove on. He could have blown up their entire van. Had the baby been in it he could have killed her. In a rage Clara crossed that land bridge. She tripped at the edge, and had she not been able to catch her balance she would have tumbled to her death. Paul did not see it, for his eyes were pinned decidedly upon the water.
    “Give her to me,” she said. He patted the baby’s back and kissed her head. “You’re a child,” Clara told her husband. It was the way he had ignored her. He did this when he believed he was right; he had an uncanny ability to act as though she were only a space of air that he could see right through. “I’m tired of being married to a child,” she said. She held her arms out and eventually he handed the baby her way without looking at his wife. As she headed toward that small land bridge with the baby in her arms, she wished wildly that she had not said what she had said. She did not like heights, and she wanted Paul there with her now to hold her hand and make her know that she was safe. She wanted him to carry the baby across because she did not believe that she herself was capable. She should have laughed and apologized. Yet he was still watching that great ocean and Clara did not admit her error. With her baby in her arms she headed back for the narrow strip of land.
    Later in her life Clara will think for a time that she could become a marine biologist. She will hear a young woman speak on the radio about a moment out on the ocean in the middle of thenight when she and her colleagues discovered that dolphins feed in groups. No one had known this yet and there they were, awake, watching it take place. The vastness of the night and the stars and the ocean, and the singularity of those dolphins and herself, and the moment when they all converge—Clara will know just what that woman must have felt. But for Clara, it will turn out, sitting on the cliff and watching a whale rise is enough.
    She made it back to their camp spot just fine, and by the time Paul came back to her, the baby had eaten and was sleeping in her crib in the van and Clara thought that the fight would be over, that together they could walk the one path that led up the road and then down the hill to the base of the cliff. There was a small beach there; they could find driftwood and whalebones, sea glass to line their kitchen windows. But Paul was silent, and this alone sent Clara back into her rage. She went to the glove box—what was she looking for?—and he went to the driver’s seat, where he had left his backpack. He began to root through it with abandon, and Clara asked him to please quiet down, the baby was sleeping. This made him rustle his things more loudly. She asked him once more to quiet down and this time he cursed her. Clara was perched halfway in the van now, one leg up on the ledge to climb into the seat. The terns were gone and the sun was high and the water behind her glistened with life and light. She reached her arm over the emergency brake and grabbed hold of her husband’s bag. She pulled at it but he would not let go.