Alix Ohlin - Signs and Wonders

As they settled into first class, Laureen ordered more drinks. She had been widowed young and raised her son, Jasper, by herself. She was briskly competent, always cheerful and independent and brave and Reena didn’t want to be like her, she didn’t ever want to have Laureen’s life. But for now they were cruising, and she was grateful. When the plane lifted off, she felt better already.

The first part of the trip was a blur: two days in Quito of heat, dehydration, bland hotel food, and a dizzying trip up to the Virgen del Panecillo. Sometime after thirty she’d gone from mediocre traveler to complete wimp. Laureen kept after her, cheerleading her through the days. It was infantilizing and Reena liked it. She would have liked to be tucked into bed and read a story at night. She wouldn’t have minded a kiss on the forehead. Her mother would never do such a thing, would never have taken her on a trip to get her mind off her troubles, in fact had told her that the divorce was her fault (a belief Reena shared). Laureen’s curt dismissal of this opinion — saying of her sister, in front of Reena, “she’s very narrow-minded”—typified her general auntly excellence. And now Laureen seemed most intent on getting Reena drunk, which was largely why the first two days passed in such a blur. A brief flirtation with stomach flu or food poisoning, on the day they boarded the cruise ship, came as a relief, giving her some respite from rum.

When she emerged on the second morning of the cruise, the social dynamics of the ship had already been established. And she had been abandoned: Laureen had a boyfriend. His name was Benjamin Moore, like the paint. A sixty-year-old civil engineer from Toronto, he was sensibly dressed in pressed Dockers and a light blue shirt and the equatorial sun had already played havoc with his ruddy face. He and Laureen had had dinner together the first night on board and watched the stars, and were now, her aunt said, “thick as thieves.”

“I know all about you,” Benjamin Moore said when introduced.

Reena’s nervous laugh came out as a squawk. “I’ll have to catch up.”

“You don’t have to do anything at all,” he said kindly, by which Reena understood that he did know everything about her frailty and unfortunate life circumstances, and again her eyes watered, which she knew was pathetic and tried to hide by putting her sunglasses on, muttering something about the light.

Besides Benjamin Moore, her aunt had befriended a Japanese couple who spoke excellent, if slow-paced, English and knew everything there was to know about the wildlife photography opportunities to come. And also a German man, taking the cruise by himself and slightly younger than Reena. “He’s really into movies,” her aunt said. “His name is Hans.”

“Yo, what’s up?” he said, shaking Reena’s hand and smiling broadly. He looked like a younger, pastier, doughier version of Benjamin Moore. She understood that Laureen intended for him to be Reena’s cruise-boyfriend, a distraction to enjoy and practice on for her eventual return to the world, a boyfriend from camp whom you missed terribly the first day back home and then forgot about, remembering only the thrill of kisses in the woods.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Reena.”

“Reena,” said Hans. “We’re going bird-watching today!” He seemed very pleased about it, and punched his fist in the air. “It’s going to be motherfucking awesome, I think.”

Reena looked at Laureen.

“Movies,” her aunt mouthed.

Reena could only imagine that Hans had no idea how little the word motherfucker was generally used by middle-aged people on package vacations.

They were in open water and the sun was brutal. Reena looked around, suddenly disoriented. It was so hot and she was so far from home.

“Well,” Laureen said brightly, “let’s go!”

A young white-clad officer named Stavros led them, obedient as schoolchildren, onto one of the islands, where they would begin their wildlife tour. The Galápagos were bare and brilliant. Back in the distance their ship waited, hulking and white and patient. Reena looked at it longingly. Although seeing the wildlife was the whole point of the trip, she found the ship’s rituals comforting, the constant availability of food, the orchestrated social events, even their tiny cabin. Everything outside was too big, too bright. We’re at the end of the world, she thought, and understood why people used to think the earth was flat. Glancing fearfully at the horizon, she felt as if they might sail right over the edge. She started to cry again and hated herself for it. When would this stop? It wasn’t even localized pain anymore. Her tear ducts were just in the habit. She set off after the tour guide, hot tears coursing freely down her cheeks. Hans sprang to her side, loping energetically, like a dog. Behind her, Laureen’s happy laugh harmonized with Benjamin Moore’s lower, rhythmic music.

“This is the frigate bird,” the guide said. She was a young, pretty biologist with her hair in a long blond braid, her sturdy legs in cargo shorts planted firmly on the ground. “They’re named after a warship and they steal catches from other birds. During mating season, the male’s red air sac inflates like a bullfrog’s neck.”

“What is this air sac?” Hans asked Reena.

She tried to answer him by gesturing, but he still looked confused.

After the frigate bird they spent a long time looking at iguanas, everyone silent as their cameras whirred and clicked. It was as if they were a group of robots, these mechanical sounds their only language. Iguanas, Reena learned, are quite hypoallergenic and would make good pets, if only they were not endangered. Hypothetically good pets. Hans was taken by one that looked like a dinosaur, its neck ringed by sharply pointed, prehistoric skin.

“Motherfucker,” he marveled sweetly, almost under his breath.

She wanted to ask him why he was here, if he was pursuing a lifelong dream or escaping some disappointment. But this question— why are you here? — was too loaded. After all, she wouldn’t want to have to answer it herself.

Laureen and Benjamin were standing next to them, and she hadn’t even noticed. Reena smiled at her and said she was having a good time.

“You don’t have to be so polite,” Laureen said. “You don’t even have to have a good time. Just be, okay?”

At this, without warning or choice, Reena burst into a full-grown sob attack.

Alarmed, the tour guide came over and put her hand on Reena’s shoulder, her blond braid gently brushing her arm. “Is everything all right?”

Suddenly the world was in motion. Everyone was looking at Reena, muttering and whispering. The endangered species scrambled to take flight. Medical emergency personnel were summoned. Before she knew it, Reena was sitting in the incomplete shade of some equatorial tree, drinking water, taking aspirin, and applying sunblock while anxious crew members loitered nearby, scribbling notes on clipboards, conferring about dehydration and liability. How had she become such a spectacle? She knew what her ex-husband would say, if he were here, if they were still speaking. You go to one of nature’s most spectacular places, and you make it all about you. He would say that, and he’d be right.

After insisting she was fine at least a dozen times, Reena was allowed to stand up. Laureen took her arm, as if trying to support an invalid. Smelling powerfully of some floral perfume, she was wearing a black-and-white striped blouse, gauzy and slightly revealing of her bra, and red Capri pants, and gold hoop earrings. She looked fantastic. Reena leaned against her as birds disappeared over the horizon. And then they were gone.

· · ·