Signs and Wonders (23 page)

On the next Sunday he didn’t pick her up. Instead he offered to go to church with Diana, who was taken aback. “How come?”

“I want to be with you,” he said, which was the truth. They attended the service together, and then went to see Lauren. They
fed her some soup and washed her hair, Mike supporting her neck while Diana shampooed and rinsed it. When clean, it gleamed darkly with health. Lauren seemed to enjoy it, making soft, snuffling noises that sounded contented. He noticed that someone had taken out her earrings, and wondered who’d done it, and when. They’d argued for months about her getting her ears pierced, Lauren wanting to at eleven, he and Diana insisting she wait until thirteen—an arbitrary number in all honesty—before finally giving in. Diana drove Lauren and Sam to the mall, and the girls returned full of pride, constantly fingering their ears …

The night of the accident it was the Kents who called them, the police for some reason having dialed the wrong number, and they all met at the hospital, including the parents of the dead boy, whose name, he now remembered, was Evan. The Kents rushed in to see Sam, who was crying in a room down the hall. He and Diana were taken in to see Lauren, who was lying in bed with her eyes closed, breathing quietly. There were lacerations on her face and arms but otherwise she looked fine. Diana touched her forehead gently, speaking softly all the while, letting her know they were there, that everything would be okay.

Now she folded Lauren’s hands in her lap, squeezed them, kissed her forehead. She was worn and tired but her strength was remarkable; it nourished him, kept him from falling into the darkness.

Mike stood up and kissed his daughter’s cheek. She made a small bleating sound; the doctors had cautioned them not to read too much into the noises she made, but it was hard not to think that she was saying something, that she knew they were there. She was still so pretty. He thought of her on the night of the accident, running out to the car. Sam in the back, her oldest friend. The
good-looking boy in the driver’s seat, gazing at her with hunger in his eyes. It was a crisp fall evening in the November of their senior year, a clear night with millions of stars speckling the sky. He hoped his daughter had seen that. He prayed she’d felt, getting into the car, a happiness too pure and rare to dwell on, a fleeting but immeasurable sense of the rightness of the world.

Because her aunt was both wealthy and caring, because people seemed to believe that divorce required a period of mourning accompanied and defined by homemade ritual, because Laureen (the aunt) was also kind of bossy and wouldn’t take no for an answer, because she (Reena) had been named for Laureen and they were therefore considered by the family and, eventually, themselves to be specially affiliated, because the same people who spoke of post-divorce rituals also said that travel broadened the mind, because the world’s wild creatures were disappearing and it was imperative to see them before it was too late, two women went on a cruise to the Galápagos.

“This is going to cheer you up,” Laureen said as they boarded the flight to Quito. She had for decades been a highly paid executive secretary who wore black cashmere turtlenecks and tasteful gold jewelry. Now, in retirement, she’d ditched all sobriety, in clothes and otherwise. She was wearing fuchsia pants and a pink striped blouse and had already downed two alcoholic smoothies
at the airport bar. She squeezed Reena’s hand, and her breath smelled of rum and chips.

Reena’s eyes watered, not from the squeeze or the breath. How long had it been since anyone held her hand? She was touched by it. She was touched by everything these days, not hardened by the divorce so much as scraped raw. This year’s holiday cards, even the generic ones from the bank and the dentist, had brought tears to her eyes.
It’s so nice people care,
she’d tell herself as she put the cards on the otherwise bare mantel in her new apartment. The cruise hadn’t been her idea, but she was grateful for it. It was two weeks of something to do every day and night, the hours portioned into particulars. Two weeks in which she wouldn’t have to be alone for more than a few minutes, or contend with those terrible, scurrying creatures, her thoughts.

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.

·    ·    ·

Back on the ship, they dressed for dinner. At Laureen’s command, Reena had brought two new outfits, clothing with no past associations. She put on a blue dress, hoping to feel pretty. Her skin felt pleasantly scorched and dry.

In the dining room she and Laureen were seated at separate tables, a procedure designed to encourage further mixing among the guests. Hans, sitting on her right, kept smiling and offering her more wine. He asked what she thought about Martin Scorsese.

“Is he the one who did
The Godfather
?” she asked. “Most movies are so violent. I don’t go very much.”

Judging from his expression, this was the wrong answer.

After dinner, the bar stayed open and people milled around, loose and friendly. Reena stepped outside to get some air. She’d spilled some of her dinner on her new dress; it was just that kind of day. A hand touched her arm, and she turned around with a prepared, chipper smile—expecting Laureen—but it was Benjamin Moore.

“Your aunt’s organizing a card game,” he said.

“I’m not big on cards,” Reena said.

“Neither am I. I thought I’d come out and join you. Is that all right?”

“Of course,” Reena said, though it was more confusing than all right.

He inquired in a gentlemanly way about her health, and together they stood looking at the black water and the indecipherable landscape. Darwin, birds, the understanding of our humble origins that science gave us: that was what you were supposed to see. All Reena saw in the dark was water and rocks.