Bewere the Night

AND NEITHER HAVE I WINGS TO FLY by Carrie Laben

“I’m sorry,” Faith says. A lie, but the satellite phone connection is too expensive to argue across. “The only safe thing to do is to stay put. We’re well supplied, we’re on the sheltered side of the island.”

Vivian sighs. It’s one with the wind against the porthole. “I wish you hadn’t gone. Dad is worried to death.”

I hope so. “This is my job. If I only went out when there couldn’t possibly be a storm, I wouldn’t go out at all.”

“Yeah, but … ”

“I have to go, Viv. Don’t call again unless it’s a real emergency, okay? I’ll let you know as soon as we get back, promise.”

“Okay.” Faith has the phone halfway back to the cradle when she hears her sister’s voice add, “One more thing!” She doesn’t hang up.

“What?”

“You’ll never guess who I ran into the other day.”

“No, I won’t.” The satellite phone is also too expensive to gossip across, but if she lets Viv have this one moment maybe she’ll save in the long run.

“Marika Mendel! Can you believe that? She came into the store, we had a nice chat.” Viv pretends to catch herself. Or maybe it’s honest, Faith can’t know for sure. “But I know you can’t talk long. I’ll tell you all about it when you come home. Bye!”

Outside, the rain is just getting started, and most of the passengers—five grad students, one professor, two amateur filmmakers, and three die-hard birdwatchers—are still on deck, sucking up as much fresh air as they can, as though it’ll last them. One of the filmmakers and one of the grad students have been seasick since they set out from San Diego, and the chop they’re likely to get riding this out will be hard on everyone, even the crew. Even Faith.

At night she writes blog posts, even though they can’t actually be uploaded until she reaches shore. The blog is her best free advertising, and lots of good you-are-there material is the key to its appeal.

But tonight, even though she should be thinking of adjectives to make the storm sound like a glorious adventure that people would pay for, she’s writing about gannets.

The Northern Gannet, Morus bassanaus, is one of the largest seabirds of the north Atlantic. The adult bird is all white and ivory, except its wing-tips and feet which have been dipped in ink. Its beak is a spear… no, backspace… When it dives, it is a spear, its beak foremost. Flocks of gannets gather over schools of fish and plunge into the water from great heights, like bombs.

She does not write, My mother is a gannet. She doesn’t put personal stuff on the blog.

Eventually she is done with the gannets, and with the little glass of Laphroig that helps her write. She walks back up on deck, where the rain is now lashing and the waves are sending spray well over the deck. If she had a skin of gannet feathers, it would slide off of her and leave her unaffected. Her Marmot windbreaker is good enough, but the cuffs of her jeans get wet, and then dampen her socks.

But Vivian won’t even come out on the boat. She says she’s not scared, but Dad won’t come—Dad won’t even get in sight of the sea, a beach scene in a movie makes him walk out—and she won’t leave Dad alone.

Faith suspects she is scared.

At the height of the storm a small yellow-and-black landbird tries to perch in the rigging, then falls to the deck exhausted. The birdwatchers hover over it and identify it as a Hermit Warbler. It would break their rules to touch it, since nature must take its course, but they manage to half-crowd, half-shepherd it into the galley. The cook, Chaz, has been complaining about an infestation of fruit flies since they set out.

Chaz sets out a dish of water and some of the offending peaches. Out of the wind and the wet, the bird soon sheds its sickly, puffed-up look and begins to take an interest in these offerings.

Over dinner, everyone watches their new companion, who seems to have more of an appetite than any human aboard. The sailors and the birders swap stories of other warblers, sparrows, falcons, even a sand grouse that once washed on board an oil rig. The phalarope that flew into a lighted bathroom and swam in circles in the sink. The heron that crossed the Atlantic on a yacht.

When everyone has drifted away and Chaz is washing up, Faith takes a closer look at the bird. It’s almost certainly just a bird; still, on the off chance, she waits.

The bird ignores her, hovers to pluck a spider out of the corner, then drops back to the table and drinks. The yellow of its face shines in the slanting evening light. She can understand wanting to touch it, but she can’t—can no longer?—understand not knowing that touching it would be wrong.

Maybe she’s been hanging out with birdwatchers too much.

The bird stays until the storm has blown itself out and they’ve started back for San Diego. Then one morning it is gone.

If it headed east, the birdwatchers say, it will probably make it. Or maybe not, but at least it has a chance.

Once they’re back in cell phone range of port, Faith calls Vivian. She tries to run through the usual reassuring niceties, but Vivian cuts her off immediately.

“You’re back?”

“Less than a day out of port.”

“Thank god. We need your help on Wednesday; not tomorrow but this coming Wednesday, I mean.”

“That’s not going to work, I’m sailing out again as soon as we clean up and take on more supplies.”

“I thought that you didn’t have another trip scheduled for a month!”

“I didn’t. But the director we took out this time got an inspiration bug and is paying us to go out ASAP and get more footage. He wants to do a short feature on birds who get blown off-course and end up…”

“We need your help. An apartment in my building opened up and Dad’s moving into it. I can’t keep driving back and forth across the city twice a day to check on him.”

“That’s great,” Faith says. The idea made her choke, but she’d gotten it through her thick skull at least that other people were other people and had other feelings. “You deserve more free time.”

“And this way I can make sure he’s actually eating real meals. You know how he is about cooking for himself.”

“Well, it serves him right. He’s had years to learn.” Wrong, wrong wrong time for that argument, but it was too late to back up. “I’m sorry. I think it’s a great idea if it makes things easier on you, but I’m heading out again by Monday at the latest.”

“Tell the guy you have to wait.”

“If I make him wait now, it’ll be next year before he get another shot at what he’s looking for. And he’ll probably go look for it with a different captain.”

“We need you.”

“No you don’t. You’ll be fine.”

“With just my little car, it’ll take two days.”

“I didn’t even known this would be happening.”

“I didn’t know that the apartment would be available.”

“I’m sorry.” Faith would like to think of herself as an honest person, but it’s getting harder and harder to do that. Still, she only lies in self-defense and a lot of things are justifiable in self-defense.

“Dad misses you.”

There’s nothing she can say to that, not even the baldest lie would fool Vivian into thinking that she felt sorry for Dad. The first time Vivian had used the line, back when Faith was in college, she’d tried to lie that she missed him too. The second time she’d been drunk and she’d quoted Star Wars, to the effect that the more he tightened his grasp the more star systems would slip through his fingers. Neither worked, so now she waits. Vivian hears silence, not the slap of the waves on the boat and the chatter of the passengers outside, and her own need to fill that silence will always push her on eventually. That’s one of the few ways in which Vivian takes after their father.

“I saw Marika again. In the store.”

“How is she?”

“She’s fine. I told her you’d be ashore next week, and that maybe you’d want to get dinner.”

“Maybe next month.”

“She probably won’t be in town that long. She’s only here to give a lecture at the university.” Another pause. “She wrote a book, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that. I always thought she was going to be an actress.”

“It’s about our situation. With, you know, our moms.”

“Ah.”

“I asked if we were in it, but she just laughed.”

“Sounds like Marika.”

“She’d probably tell you. If you were going to see her. But I guess you won’t.”

“I’ll have to catch up with her another time.”

“You always say things like that!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” It doesn’t even feel like a lie anymore, it feels like a mantra. An incantation to protect her sister, and by extension herself.

She doesn’t even go back to her own apartment during their brief time onshore, but stays in a small hotel by the dock that normally cater to sport fisherman so that she can more easily oversee the resupply and the minor repairs that the storm made necessary. She knows she should update the blog, at least upload a few photos, but it’s a task that’s easy to procrastinate on so she does.

On Saturday night, at nine-thirty, Vivian calls again. The temptation to let it go to voicemail is very strong, but it might be an actual emergency.

“Hello?”

“Guess what?” The joy in Vivian’s voice tells Faith immediately that no one is in the hospital or dead.

“No idea.”

“Oh, come on, guess.”

“You got a new job?”

“No, silly. Why would I be calling about a job this late on the weekend?”

“You heard from…”

“Mark proposed!”

Faith opens her mouth, but no sound comes out. When she thinks of Mark, she always thinks of the day he came over, drank all her beer, and talked over her with stories about the thirty-foot fishing boat he’d played around on with his dad in Sarasota, before his dad decided that being a bull was better than being a banker and a husband and a dad.

“Tonight, at dinner. He had the waiter hide the ring in my dessert, it was so sweet, I started crying right there.” It sounds as though Vivian is crying again.

“Well, congratulations.” That’s okay. That sounds good.

“Look, I know you and Mark aren’t best buddies. But I love him, and he really is a good guy if you’ll give him a chance.”

“If he makes you happy…. I want you to be happy.” There. Something true and useful.

“I am! I’m so happy! Listen, here’s what he wants to do. We’re going to exchange skins. Instead of just him having mine, I’ll have his too.”

“That doesn’t actually make it any easier if you end up splitting up.”

“We’re not planning to split up!”

“No one plans to split up.”

“We won’t do that. We both know what it’s like, growing up with a parent who took their skin back and just took off. We wouldn’t do that to our kids.”

“Are you pregnant?” There’s no keeping the oh-shit out of her voice.

“No, of course not. I’m just saying, when we do have kids, we have to both be in it for the long haul. And Mark knows that.”

Don’t say, but what if. Don’t say it, don’t say it.

“I’d like you to be my maid of honor.”

Don’t say, but what if.

“We’re scheduling the wedding for July or August, you never go out then.”

“Of course. Of course I’ll be your maid of honor.”

Vivian makes a noise of pure delight, and for a moment Faith can feel the lure, the impulse that says, making this other happy would be easier than making yourself happy. Making this other happy would replace making yourself happy. But as soon as she feels the lure, she can’t help thinking of the hook and how much thrashing it takes to get off of it.

“When you get back, we can sit down and talk about dresses and reception venues and things.”

“Absolutely. When I get back.” This time, she doesn’t want to leave the silence hanging. “I know this is what you’ve been wanting. Congratulations.”

It’s the first trip she’s ever run where the passengers have complained about the lack of storms. The director says, over and over again, that he know he needs to wait for the right moment, that it’s no different than any other documentary, especially when you’re dealing with animals, that it’s fine. But she can feel his tension, the way he’s tallying the cost of each day in his head, and so can his crew. Unlike the birders, or the people she sometimes takes sport fishing, they’re not in tune with the kind of waiting the ocean requires. They’re antsy.

So when the bird appears on the horizon, the boat damn near explodes. Or at least, some of the passenger do. As it gets nearer, Faith can see that it’s not one of the normal Pacific birds she knows, and for a moment her heart rises up—but it’s no gannet either, too big, and one of the few birds too white: a gannet would have black wingtips.

It may be the biggest bird she’s ever seen. Its long neck splits the air ahead of it as it heads straight for them, its long legs trail out behind it. She’s seen the image in a thousand photos and paintings, but she’s never seen a real crane, alive and flying free, before.

Without considering, without circling, it drops for the deck and lands among them all. The director’s crew scramble to re-aim their cameras and get out of each other’s shots. The crane gives an unbirdlike little shrug, shakes its head. It’s impossible to see how the feathers start to drop, even if you’re watching for it; it’s just a sort of rippling motion and then Marika Mendel is standing there in the center of their circle with a slightly sweaty face and a coat of birdskin bunched around her feet. She’s wearing a pair of gray slacks and a black silk top, totally unsuitable for salt water, and sunglasses with huge green plastic frames, and the dangling feather earrings that have been her trademark ever since Faith first met her at age twelve. Probably she flew straight from the reading, or whatever kind of reception-type deal they had afterwards, or so Faith imagines.

“Well,” Marika says, glancing at the cameras as she scoops up her skin. “Looks like I came to the right place.”

Faith shakes her head. “This guy, he only wants birds who are in the wrong place.”

“Bummer.” Like all of them, she has the trick of folding her skin neatly without any apparent effort; it’s now a cube in her hands barely the size of a Kleenex box.

Faith shouldn’t stare at it. She should introduce Marika around. She should do a lot of things, and despite her surprise, she does—makes the introductions, shows Marika to an empty cabin and a head where she can wash up, gives her a quick overview of the ship’s layout and where the life jackets are and when dinner is served. All the while, she feels as though her brain is drifting somewhere a few feet behind her, still marvelling.

“So, you inherited the skin,” she says when her brain finally catches back up.

Marika nods. “And so did Vivian, I hear.”

“That’s right.”

“But … ”

“But not me.”

“Seems like it would have been better the other way around, though.”

Faith can’t help but smile. “You haven’t changed.”

“Sure I have. I’ve gotten taller, for one thing.”

“I just heard the Marika who told Dr. Kravitz that her dad was just … what was it? … just fucked off that he couldn’t go around with a Japanese chick on his arm anymore.”

“I stand by the accuracy of that.”

“How is your dad?”

“Still not talking to me. Somehow, since the book came out, not talking to me even harder.”

“Yeah, Vivian said you wrote a book. What’s up with that?”

“Half memoir, half cultural survey, all sexy. At least according to Publishers Weekly.”

“Are you allowed to write half a memoir these days?”

“Oh indeed. One of the girls in my workshop was working on a project that was simultaneously about global warming and how her mother died of lung cancer. It was pretty good.”

“But not as sexy as yours.”

“Nothing’s as sexy as mine.”

How could she be talking to Marika the way they had at fifteen, without feeling that awful fifteen-year-old feeling again?

And how could the engine choose that moment to make an awful choking noise that demanded any decent captain’s attention?

By the time the engine stops hacking, it’s dinner time. The director wants to talk to Marika over dinner about how skin-birds cope with the conditions that drive real birds astray, which leads to a discussion of how many skins are rejecting the idea that non-changing animals are more real than they are, which leads to talk about Marika’s book, which leads to a short interview on the stern while the sun is setting. Meanwhile, Faith looks at the weather radar, trying to find a pleasing storm to finish off the trip on a potential high note, and talks with Robert, her first mate, about the vacation time he want to take, and works on the blog, and drinks her Laphroig.

Marika disappears to her bed as soon as the interview is over. It must have been tiring, flying so far.

In the morning, Faith sits by the director at breakfast and discusses heading a bit south towards stormier weather, but his budget won’t accommodate more than one extra day. Then she goes to check on how the wire-and-duct-tape repairs to the engine are holding up—fine, as they should be. And then she takes a stroll around the lower deck, just to see how things are.

Marika turns out to be inside, talking to Chaz about Indian food. She wraps that up without seeming to, and follows Faith without seeming to out onto the bow.

“So, I didn’t ask you how your dad is doing, yesterday. So rude!” She’s still wearing the sunglasses and earrings, but she’s now in a pair of cargo pants and a green T-shirt. Where these changes of clothing come from is a mystery to Faith; it never occurred to her to ask her mother, until it was too late, and Vivian doesn’t ever want to talk about anything to do with having a skin, until this thing with Mark.

She doesn’t feel ready to ask Marika, either. “He’s still speaking to me. More’s the pity.”

“That implies that you’re still speaking to him.”

“Now you sound like Dr. Kravitz.”

“She was right sometimes.”

“It would upset Vivian if I just cut him out of my life.”

Marika nods and pushes her sunglasses up to perch on her head. “Vivian is still making your dad out to be the good guy.”

“In her mind it’s easy. One person ran away, and it wasn’t Dad. Plenty of people agree with her.”

“It’s the number one question I have to field at readings, you know. Your mom ran out on you. Tell us how mad you are at her, how much it fucked up your life.”

“Must make you crazy.”

“Nah, I was already crazy, just ask Dr. Kravitz.”

“Vivian’s getting married soon.”

“Yeah, I believe I may have heard a little something about that, when I stopped by to see her Monday night.” Fifteen-year-old Marika would have rolled her eyes, and fifteen-year-old Faith would have been mad at her for it, so maybe they have both grown up a little.

“Her fiance’s dad was a bull.”

“Heard that, too.”

“They have some kind of big plan where instead of her just giving him her skin, they’re going to swap.”

“Let me guess. Then they’re going to hyphenate their names.”

Faith sighs. “I just don’t see how it’s going to be any better. I mean, it is better. He didn’t outright steal her skin the way Dad stole Mom’s. But she’s still going to be trapped.”

Marika is silent for a moment, the wind ruffling her earrings. A drop of rain hits the upturned lens of her glasses. “And you ran away to sea.”

“That I did.”

“Are you looking for your mom?”

“No, Dr. Kravitz. Gannets live in the Atlantic Ocean.”

“And yet, here you are. In the blue Pacific.”

“I just like it out here.”

It’s raining for real, now, and they retreat inside by wordless mutual consent.

After dinner the rain tapers off. Out on deck, Marika is leaning carelessly against the rail, and Faith has an image of her sunglasses falling off and sinking through the cold water, tumbling, to end up miles below in the silt. Of course they don’t.

As she gets closer, she realises that Marika is muttering.

“…when my dimensions are as well compact, my mind as generous, and my form as true as honest madame’s issue?” She turns, and doesn’t even pretend to be embarrassed by Faith’s presence. “One of the few good things about getting locked up in an all-girl’s boarding school at sixteen is that we got top play all the boys’ roles too.”

Faith looks at her, at the swing of her hair brushing her shoulder, at her earring.

“So I was Edmund in King Lear.”

Faith nods. The earring sways in the breeze.

“You know: ‘Thou, nature, are my goddess…’”

“Sounds cool. The only Shakespeare we ever did in high school was Romeo and Juliet. I hated it.”

“You never had King Lear in college?”

“I mostly took science classes.”

Marika shakes her head and chuckles. “All work and no play…”

“The ocean is play. The ocean is beautiful.”

Faith isn’t looking at Marika at all now, but she feels her moving in, feels the air get warmer and moister in the moment before they kiss.

In the morning, Marika isn’t in Faith’s cabin. Her skin is, though, neatly draped over the chair where Faith sits to write her blog posts, the only place in the room where something that size could be neatly draped, impossible to miss.

Faith hesitates for a moment before even picking it up. The feathers are warm, which doesn’t seem like it should be possible. They leave a fine powder on her fingers like a butterfly’s wings.

Marika didn’t leave it behind by mistake, that’s impossible. She must have wanted Faith to see it, to have the opportunity.

Faith folds it—her clumsy inexperienced fingers can only get it down to the size of a bath towel—and takes it to Marika’s cabin. No one is inside. She puts the skin on the bed and locks the door so that no one but Marika will find it. Hook evaded.

Maybe she should ask Vivian for a plus-one for the wedding. It would be nice to have someone there who understands.

But that’s months away. Today, they’ll have to head east.