Daniel Keohane - Margaret's Ark

Time was slipping away. She was wasting time with nonsense. Clay would hear her, and she'd been too long indulging herself rather than spending the time holding her beautiful son.

When she walked back into the bedroom, the stink assaulted her. So many days, too long accustomed to the smell. She fought a gagging in her throat.

Two steps into the room, everything seemed to stop. Connor was silent, though she could see his form ( sleeping , she thought, he's sleeping ) through the slats in the crib. Holly saw the pillow discarded on the floor. A stain in the center of it. Where she'd lain, of course, all these days. Just from her. Just -

She forced herself to move forward, staring into the crib, forcing her eyes to remain open. Clay said nothing as she passed his chair. He was slumped in his usual position. She kept staring at Connor’s body, forcing herself to stare into his face. His mouth was open slightly, and after she'd watched him for what seemed like hours, his eyes slowly opened as if from sleep. He saw her and became an animated little boy again. He reached up, little fingers reaching and reaching.

“Oh my God oh my God oh my God.” She lifted him up and held him against her, letting the towel drop. Connor stank like the room. Clay hadn't bothered to bathe him during their imprisonment.

Holly turned around, her heart still racing from the horror she thought she'd fallen into, tried to bring herself back to a proper calm. Why was the pillow on the floor?

On the bed, sheets had been folded up or curled into a tight ball against the corner. Sitting on the only clean spot on the mattress was a pair of shorts and t-shirt, white underwear, socks and sneakers. Hers. They were laid out carefully. Beside them, Connor's diaper bag, packed to the brim. The corners of one diaper poked out beside the unmistakable blue box of wipes and a Playtex nursing bottle in the side pocket.

When she saw the car keys beside the bag and her clothes, she stammered, “Clay, what...” She looked at the shrunken figure in the chair. It looked up at her with eyes too far back in the skull to be alive.

“Get dressed,” he hissed.

She scooted past him, laid Connor on a semi-clean area of the bed. When they fell across her body, the clothes caressed her like Clay's hands had done once, long ago when she thought he was perfect. She finished dressing except for her socks and sneakers. Clay looked ahead of him, towards the crib.

“Clay?”

He moved a little. Perhaps to indicate he was still alive.

“You can stay,” he said. “I'd like that. I mean, there isn't any place you can go. Not now.”

The image of the ark in Lavish came to her then. Like watching a movie, the Carboneau woman climbing aboard with her crew, waving to the crowds then disappearing below deck. Too late , she thought to herself. Too late for her.

Connor laughed at some unseen delight. Holly looked at him. Her heart resumed its rapid beating of earlier.

Clay was still talking. “Stay here. Stay with me. We can still be a family.”

His was a dry-paper voice. Holly stared at her son. Full of life. So small and tiny. A noise came out of her, half-shout, half-whimper. All she knew, all she could see, was her son, and the single thought in her head. Too late for her, but not for him. Not for him .

She lifted the diaper bag, slung it over her shoulder and grabbed the keys. She put them in her pocket and carefully lifted Connor. He squealed with delight. His diaper felt wet, but there was no time left. She didn't dare look at her boyfriend, but felt something brush against her legs as she passed, like a thin branch. Then it was gone. It was hard to walk. She was barefoot and her muscles, now that she was exerting them, threatened to knot up and send her toppling over.

Clay left his hand in the air. He couldn't close his fingers around her leg. Even if he had been able to find the strength, she wouldn't have stopped. Not this time.

The car started outside. He turned his head, looked at the clock.

“Holly!” he shouted. The word came out like a moan, unintelligible. A sound outside of tires on gravel, the click-click of the gears shifting . Acceleration. He listened as long as he could. The noise of the car's engine blended with the background hiss of the highway.

The numbers of the clock changed. He turned his head back and forth, looking for something to fix his gaze on, but everything had become blurry. He closed them, and pretended that Holly was still tied to the bed. Still with him. He didn't feel so alone then.

That voice, so perfect and calm, said beside him. “You did the right thing, Clay.”

He sighed and whispered, “Go fuck yourself.”

* * *

It was nearly Summer in the remote Arctic town of Resolute Bay, at least as much as summer ever came this far north. Greg Nassun pulled back the fur-lined hood of his parka and was instantly reminded that the season meant something entirely different here. It was still early in the morning, but the temperature would soon climb to plus ten Celsius. If it stayed this way for a couple more weeks, the thinning ice of the bay would break up enough to free the icebergs, allow an occasional cruise ship to pay the island a visit. The two weren’t normally associated with each other, but up here you took advantage of open water whenever it presented itself. Not that it mattered. Greg didn’t plan to be here much longer.

Though the cold seeped down his neck, the few minutes of un-obscured vision was worth leaving the hood down. His growing frustration would keep him warm enough for the moment. He knew why Francois wanted these readings done, especially today. He’d brought out a small card table from the hotel room and set it up on the hill, a short way past the distance marker and its Montreal 2082 miles teaser. Down the slope in front of him, the frozen bay groaned and cracked as it slowly, very slowly, thawed. The sound was momentarily overpowered by a flock of skimobiles racing across the ice. Two miles beyond them, a mountain of ice caught in last year’s freeze waited patiently for its chance to escape.

Greg checked the compass duct-taped to the top of the table. Nothing . One-point-nine percent declination over the average reading two years ago. These past four mind-numbing weeks Francois insisted on daily readings. The man was seriously nuts. If Greg had had any doubts, they were eliminated by last night’s phone call. Readings every hour today. Greg argued that magnetic North hadn’t shifted once in four weeks. Why would it do anything today?

Francois wasn’t listening. Greg’s boss was convinced something was going to happen this morning. He didn’t say this outright. But Francois Gourmond believed . Greg wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been secretly building an ark of his own, on those rare occasions he was actually out of the office.

Fine. That was fine. He agreed to this charade only as long as Gourmond let him go home tomorrow. Four weeks without a sunset was long enough, thank you. He wanted to be back in Quebec, under artificial lights and real starlight. Vacation in the States, perhaps, pay a visit to Mickey Mouse or lay on a beach. Go someplace warm , where Greg could relax, become the happy, mellow guy he used to be.

The crowd behind him wouldn’t shut up. D o you think anything’s going to happen? How can anything happen? It hasn’t rained! But they’re all so sure . Everyone’s climbing aboard their boats right now!

Shut up, you idiots, he thought. Shut up shut up!

Even Dora, who’d come by with a complimentary cup of coffee twenty minutes ago, bubbled with excitement. Everyone was either terrified or relieved that it would all be over in a few minutes, waiting impatiently for the allotted time to pass and praying nothing happened. Nothing at all.