Andrea Barrett - Ship Fever - Stories

“I’ll have to take your word for that,” she said. “I hardly remember any of it.”

“But your grandparents…?”

“They never learned English well.”

Outside, beyond the windows, the snow fell and fell and fell. The afternoon had only just started and there were hours to kill before Joel and the children returned from the slopes. There was nothing to do but talk, and so when Dr. Sepulveda said, “And what about your husband?” she answered him more fully than she might otherwise have done.

“Joel’s grandfather was a chemist,” she said. “He synthesized a drug used to treat ulcers, and then he started a pharmaceutical company to manufacture it. The family still owns most of the stock.” When she mentioned the name of the company Dr. Sepulveda raised an eyebrow in recognition.

“Your husband runs it?”

“One of his cousins. But Joel’s on the board of directors, of course, and he works there — all the cousins do. Joel’s the vice-president for community relations.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’s the do-gooder,” Zaga said. She would have given anything for a bottle of wine, green and slim on the table between them, but her doctor at home had forbidden alcohol. “He oversees all the nonbusiness stuff,” she said. “The sports programs they sponsor, and the scholarships and grants and the corporate art program. Joel buys contemporary art for the offices, and he collects some privately.”

“Very enlightened,” the doctor murmured. “He must have a discriminating eye.”

“And you?” Zaga said. “Are you married?”

He ordered more coffee for himself and, without consulting her, removed her cup and replaced it with a glass of fresh juice. “You shouldn’t be having so much caffeine,” he said. “Not in your condition.” Then he turned to the window, where the bright figures of the skiers flashed against the snow. “Charles Darwin came by here,” he said — the first time he mentioned that name, the first hint she had of the stories that were to come. “A century and a half ago, when these mountains were wilderness. He walked through the pass in the Cordillera near here, past Aconcagua and into Mendoza. Did you know that? If it wasn’t snowing so hard, you could see the tip of Aconcagua from your chair.”

Aconcagua ; that chain of gentle, open-mouthed vowels could not be more different than what she remembered of her grandparents’ speech. She rolled the word around in her mouth, and only when Dr. Sepulveda said, “Zaga?” did she hear the link to her own name.

The woman at the museum was very persuasive and Zaga, after an argument with her broker and a long phone call from her lawyer, wrote a substantial check. It was thrilling, inking that row of figures onto the smooth green paper. And she felt sure that Joel would have been pleased — he would have left the museum the funds to maintain the paintings had he not been overscrupulous about providing for her. But she had everything she needed. When her sister Marianna came to see the condominium, Zaga blithely told her about her gift.

“ How much money?” Marianna said. “You gave that much to strangers? ”

Zaga explained the situation: how there was money left from the sale of the house, how the museum needed it. “I’m fine,” she told her sister. “Joel left me in good shape.”

But Marianna wasn’t worried about Zaga’s financial stability. “You might have thought of us, ” she said, aggrieved and pinkfaced, and then all the resentment she’d felt since Zaga’s marriage came pouring out. Zaga, she said, had not been sufficiently generous.

“Look at your clothes,” she said. Zaga could not see much difference between her blouse and jacket and Marianna’s pretty sweater. “Look at your cars.”

“I only kept one,” Zaga protested. “Remember when I gave Dad the Oldsmobile?”

“Oh, please,” Marianna said. “Big deal.” And when Zaga reminded her that she and Joel had paid the hospital bills for her father’s final illness, and also the live-in housekeeper who had made possible her mother’s last days at home, Marianna only made a face. “What did that cost you?” she said. “What did you have to give up? Nothing.”

“I had to ask Joel every time — you think that was easy?”

Marianna flicked her hand in front of her face, as if she were waving away a gnat. “Joel was a weenie,” she said impatiently. “If you’ll pardon me for saying so. We all knew he’d do whatever you asked. But things are different now. My kids are headed for college in just a few years, and Teddy and I don’t have any idea where we’re going to scrape the tuition from — how do you think it makes us feel, watching you give that kind of money to a museum?”

“I didn’t know you felt like that,” Zaga said, unwilling to admit how impulsive her gift had been. “The museum was very important to Joel.”

“What’s important is family,” Marianna said. “If you ever came home, you might have some idea what was going on.”

“I visited as much as I could,” Zaga said. But she knew that this was not precisely true. Within a few years of her marriage to Joel, the row houses and narrow streets of her family’s neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia had come to seem unpleasant. Christmas days they had spent with Joel’s family, but on Christmas Eves they went to her parents’ house, where all her relatives gathered. Each year she’d been more uncomfortable turning off Roosevelt Boulevard and heading into the blocks where she’d grown up. Reindeer and sleds on the shabby roofs, shrubs wound with colored bulbs and children everywhere. The contrast with Merion, where her neighbors hung small wreaths on their front doors and framed trees between half-drawn curtains in front of picture windows, had made her queasy. Joel had never mentioned the garish decorations or been less than courteous to her family, but she had always imagined that he suppressed his distaste only out of kindness. Rob and Alicia had sometimes giggled out loud.

Abashed, Zaga promised her sister that the next time she felt like giving money away she would keep her family in mind.

Zaga would not have said she knew Dr. Sepulveda well: during their afternoons in the hotel lounge she learned only the barest facts of his life. He was a widower, he had three grown sons. He had an apartment in Santiago and, during the ski season, a suite of rooms at the Hotel Portillo, which he received in exchange for his services as hotel doctor. He didn’t ski but he loved the mountains, and he said he enjoyed the hotel’s cosmopolitan clientele.

He didn’t ask Zaga any more questions about her life and he seldom talked about himself, but he was a pleasant companion, full of interesting tales. In 1835, he told her, his great-great-grandfather had shown Darwin around what existed of Santiago and had helped with arrangements for Darwin’s journey over the Portillo pass. “They were friends,” he said. “These stories have come down through my family. I still have first editions of the journals Darwin published.” The last Darwin story he told her, on the day before the blizzard ended, was the most unusual.

“I’ve never been able to get this story out of my mind,” he said. As he spoke he took a small black camera from his leather bag. On the Beagle, he said, the ship that had carried Darwin and his companions around South America, “—on that ship were three Fuegians, natives of Tierra del Fuego who’d been away from their home for years.”

FitzRoy, the Beagle’s commander, had made an earlier visit to Tierra del Fuego, during which some Fuegians had stolen a whaleboat from him. In retaliation, FitzRoy had taken two men and a young girl hostage. Later he added a little boy, whom he bought from his family for the price of a pearl button. The Fuegians seemed happy aboard the ship, and FitzRoy took the four of them back to England with him.