Afterwards, when Annie saw the picture on the front page of the newspaper saved by her neighbor Joan, she felt pierced by the blank in her mind. All the publicity had bypassed her while in the hospital and then she had been released when her memory improved and flown home to Portsmith. The red hull lying amongst the white ice was familiar in a narrow piercing sense and she put in under a magnet on her frig. It must have turned fully on its side after the rescue, so of course she would not have seen this view. The idea of the four hour wait in the rubber rafts wedged in by Antarctic water and ice seemed less significant in her life story without the wallop of her own memory.
More photos arrived from a fellow passenger in a link to his blog. She couldn't look at more. It was from that Alfred fellow who had sat across from her singing songs that were drown by the wind that sprayed water onto their sub-zero gear. She could remember slices of details, narrow appetures. His email said he was going to throw a reunion the following November. One of the other passengers visited her in the hospital and said Alfred had sold photos taken with his cell phone of rescue. People lived so publicly now.
A refund or a voucher for another trip was coming according to the mail. I should think so, though Annie as she turned off her computer unable to face the mound of email. She laughed to think of ever getting back on another ship going into polar waters or anywhere.
The thermostat turned up, she looked for her suitcase. But of course it was not the one she had left with. What would she need to replace? The list of what to take on the expedition might still be the bedroom trash.
Beforehand, she had pictured the sun each time she saw herself on the Explorer, even a cruise ship geared for polar travel. But it had been gray skies. She could remember that kind of abstracted detail, a singular aspect reduced from the whole. She might have told the TV cameras that she went for the penguins but that the closest she got was the Powerpoint presentation on board with the naturalist woman.
Joan wanted to host a neighborhood potluck undoubtedly to ask about those four hours astride the ship awaiting rescue. The hull looked like a great red whale on the frig. She might tell them that and about the gray sky. The cold was easy to describe--she had been cold from the beginning, even before the rubber rafts. She could call forth vague details and found herself filling in the blanks, planning how she might tell her story.
Oh Annie needn’t bring anything to the potluck, just herself. And wasn’t that all she had on the raft...herself? Had she stuffed some pills in her pocket or loose tissues like in normal life. Something to overdose with and cry into if the rescuers really weren’t coming like they said. But then she’d be frozen numb, right. Isn’t that how it worked. An easy death, pain free. On the opposite side of the globe, Eskimo grandmothers were left to die in the snow when they could no longer hunt, and this they accepted as a natural fate. It was hard to imagine accepting your own death like that. Maybe it was hogwash, folklore, racism. She must research it. It suddenly seemed very important even though she was not a grandmother.
By the following Thursday, Annie ankle was in a fresh cast which precluded her attending the potluck. The break from her small fall on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store precluded her expected return to work at Barney Page, the law firm from whom her 15 years service bonus had funded the Antartic trip.
She discovered daytime television and the birds in the large tree outside her bedroom window--Titmouse, Purple Finch. The bird identification book stayed by her bed. She wanted a feeder for them, to keep them close like this, always. Suddenly, like an iceberg out of nowhere, the presidential campaign heated up, the economy cooled more rocking Wall Street and there was a local scandal in the Portsmith's Mayor office. Annie lived off the news, and felt like a little Buddha living in the now—the now filtered to her by the digital TV screen. She turned her mind to this modest engagement with a kind of pure dedication. She had four weeks to recover...again.
Wednesday, she remembered swimming. Not in the Antarctic, but in pools all her life. Wednesday evening and Saturdays had been her schedule for years. Why had she forgotten this bit of self knowledge? How much more unknown was there to uncover she wondered as she stared at Jim Lehrer and Judy Woodruff as if they were neighbors on her block. Joan did look a bit like Judy if you added 40 pounds to Judy's frame and dyed her hair brunette. Annie began to react if anyone was wearing predominately bright red. This impulse came in the form of a anxious fingering of a button or scratching her own palms. Then the TV had to go off.
More photos arrived from a fellow passenger in a link to his blog. She couldn't look at more. It was from that Alfred fellow who had sat across from her singing songs that were drown by the wind that sprayed water onto their sub-zero gear. She could remember slices of details, narrow appetures. His email said he was going to throw a reunion the following November. One of the other passengers visited her in the hospital and said Alfred had sold photos taken with his cell phone of rescue. People lived so publicly now.
A refund or a voucher for another trip was coming according to the mail. I should think so, though Annie as she turned off her computer unable to face the mound of email. She laughed to think of ever getting back on another ship going into polar waters or anywhere.
The thermostat turned up, she looked for her suitcase. But of course it was not the one she had left with. What would she need to replace? The list of what to take on the expedition might still be the bedroom trash.
Beforehand, she had pictured the sun each time she saw herself on the Explorer, even a cruise ship geared for polar travel. But it had been gray skies. She could remember that kind of abstracted detail, a singular aspect reduced from the whole. She might have told the TV cameras that she went for the penguins but that the closest she got was the Powerpoint presentation on board with the naturalist woman.
Joan wanted to host a neighborhood potluck undoubtedly to ask about those four hours astride the ship awaiting rescue. The hull looked like a great red whale on the frig. She might tell them that and about the gray sky. The cold was easy to describe--she had been cold from the beginning, even before the rubber rafts. She could call forth vague details and found herself filling in the blanks, planning how she might tell her story.
Oh Annie needn’t bring anything to the potluck, just herself. And wasn’t that all she had on the raft...herself? Had she stuffed some pills in her pocket or loose tissues like in normal life. Something to overdose with and cry into if the rescuers really weren’t coming like they said. But then she’d be frozen numb, right. Isn’t that how it worked. An easy death, pain free. On the opposite side of the globe, Eskimo grandmothers were left to die in the snow when they could no longer hunt, and this they accepted as a natural fate. It was hard to imagine accepting your own death like that. Maybe it was hogwash, folklore, racism. She must research it. It suddenly seemed very important even though she was not a grandmother.
By the following Thursday, Annie ankle was in a fresh cast which precluded her attending the potluck. The break from her small fall on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store precluded her expected return to work at Barney Page, the law firm from whom her 15 years service bonus had funded the Antartic trip.
She discovered daytime television and the birds in the large tree outside her bedroom window--Titmouse, Purple Finch. The bird identification book stayed by her bed. She wanted a feeder for them, to keep them close like this, always. Suddenly, like an iceberg out of nowhere, the presidential campaign heated up, the economy cooled more rocking Wall Street and there was a local scandal in the Portsmith's Mayor office. Annie lived off the news, and felt like a little Buddha living in the now—the now filtered to her by the digital TV screen. She turned her mind to this modest engagement with a kind of pure dedication. She had four weeks to recover...again.
Wednesday, she remembered swimming. Not in the Antarctic, but in pools all her life. Wednesday evening and Saturdays had been her schedule for years. Why had she forgotten this bit of self knowledge? How much more unknown was there to uncover she wondered as she stared at Jim Lehrer and Judy Woodruff as if they were neighbors on her block. Joan did look a bit like Judy if you added 40 pounds to Judy's frame and dyed her hair brunette. Annie began to react if anyone was wearing predominately bright red. This impulse came in the form of a anxious fingering of a button or scratching her own palms. Then the TV had to go off.
DRAFT STORY BY ROSIE DEMPSEY
No comments:
Post a Comment