The 100 Year Miracle (3 page)

She blinked her most innocent look at him. “What? You’re not cooking?”

The left half of Harry’s face smiled.

*   *   *

God, Tilda hated smoke detectors. She was standing on a kitchen chair attempting to rip the guts out of Harry’s, which dangled from red and blue wires from the ceiling. When she finally got the battery out of it, everything sounded muffled from the ringing echo of the screech still in her ears. Harry’s hands were clamped over his like an overgrown child, and Shooby was so upset she was afraid he’d pee.

Tilda had attempted to brown some butter for a sauce to go over the chicken. It hadn’t gone well. To be honest, it was no worse than the chicken, which was in no danger of giving anyone salmonella poisoning but would require big gulps of water just to get it down.

“You used to be better at this,” Harry said, lowering his hands.

He was still sitting at the table. The crossword from the Sunday paper was in front of him, and he was doing it in pen. The letters were shaky, but he’d yet to ask for help with any of the clues. Almost all the squares were filled in.

“I was never better at this,” Tilda said. “I have always been shit at this.”

Harry knitted his brows together, something he could still do. “We ate.”

“I brought home meals from the supermarket deli,” she said.

“You did?”

“Of course.”

“Did I know that?”

“I really don’t know what you knew.”

Harry tended to pay attention to only those things that interested him and had a remarkable ability to tune out those things that didn’t, which often included wives and children.

“There was meat loaf,” he said. “I remember there was meat loaf.”

“Deli,” Tilda repeated.

“It had tomato stuff on it. I liked that.”

“Maybe they have meat loaf at Jake’s,” Tilda said.

“I don’t think they do.”

“Then order something else. Where’s your coat?”

3.

Jake’s had always been Tilda and Harry’s spot. It was at the end of the road that curved around the bay, less than a mile from their house.

Harry’s house, Tilda corrected herself.

Like the beachside homes, Jake’s, too, took advantage of its waterfront position with an expansive and multitiered deck that they tried to keep functional in the winter with heat lamps and clear plastic tenting. It blocked the wind (mostly), kept out the rain (mostly), and made the whole place look like it was ready to be sprayed for termites.

It was early, but the restaurant had already started to fill. Strangers with cameras were tucked into burgers and piles of French fries, and the waitresses, young local girls with ponytails and small tattoos, looked overwhelmed by the influx.

Harry wanted to be out on the deck with a view of the goings-on down by the bay. Tilda said the cold would be bad for him and insisted they sit inside. Harry thought she was being ridiculous and motioned for the hostess to lead them out. The hostess looked like she wanted to be in the middle of an argument with a handicapped person about as much as she wanted antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea. If anyone could find and exploit the advantage in his disadvantage, Lord knew it was Harry, Tilda thought, and followed the two of them out onto the tented deck.

The outside temperature was in the low forties, but under the forest of heat lamps, Tilda needed to unbutton her coat. This did not remove the look of disapproval from her face.

“You used to be more relaxed,” Harry said to the plastic laminated menu he was holding.

“And you used to be handsome,” she said.

“You have to be nice to me. I’m dying. Besides, I’m still handsome.”

Harry—and he assumed everyone else—knew quite well that he was not, which wasn’t something he felt any sense of loss about. Tilda, on the other hand, had the sharp features and long limbs that tended to show up in Cubist paintings. It was a look that had not served her well as a young woman when her sense of herself was formed. Harry knew she did not understand how she had grown into her look and how arresting it could be to a certain type of man.

Tilda went on. “I don’t have to be nice to you. You left me for a grade-schooler. But yes, if we’re grading on a curve, I suppose you’re still somewhat attractive.”

It took all of her control to keep the corners of her mouth from turning up into something someone might mistake for a smile, so much so that she couldn’t concentrate enough to read the menu. Her eyes just went through the motions.

“I didn’t leave you for anyone,” Harry said without looking away from the entrée section.

The conversation was scripted. They had some version of it every time they saw each other. It was like a favorite old movie, though the dying bit was new.

“I met Maggie six months after you moved out, and you know it,” he continued with his lines.

“How is Maggie?” Tilda asked.

“Enjoying her alimony payments,” he said. “She’s really going to be pissed when I kick it.” He changed subjects without pausing for a breath. “I’m going to have the fried coconut shrimp.”

“That’s terrible for you,” Tilda said.

“The alimony payments or the shrimp?”

“The shrimp. It’s nothing but grease and sugar.”

“That’s hardly a deterrent. I’m not going to live long enough to develop diabetes.”

Their waitress stopped at the table to drop off water before disappearing again. She didn’t introduce herself or mention any specials, and it was clear the service that night would resemble that of a drive-through window.

“Don’t talk like that,” Tilda chastised and then, in the next breath, “God, I want a glass of wine.”

“I think I’ll have some wine, too, now that you mention it,” Harry said.

“No, you’re not. It’s not good with your medications.”

A line had to be drawn somewhere.

Harry snorted. “Yes, how terrible it would be if anything interfered with my medications, which have done nothing but drain my wallet, interrupt my sleep, and upset my stomach. Let’s not throw that off track.”

“Imagine what things would be like if you hadn’t gone on the regimen.”

Tilda had kept in touch with Dr. Woo since the divorce. He had been a friend of theirs when they were still collecting mutual friends and was one of the few who managed to maintain an equal relationship with both of them. He had been the one to diagnose Harry and the one to suggest the battery of medications Harry was now taking. There had never been any hope for a cure. The best they could do, Dr. Woo had said, was try to slow things down.

The waitress returned. Tilda ordered a Chardonnay for herself and a tea for Harry before he could get a word out. He glowered, and she cut him off. “Screw with me, and I’ll kill your dog just to watch him die.”

Harry let out a bark of laughter so unexpected he coughed on his own spittle. He had to wipe his chin with a napkin and take a drink of water to get things under control. When they were, he said, “Quit talking. The show is about to start.”

The sun, which was nothing but a pink flush on the horizon obscured by the low bank of clouds, would be gone within fifteen minutes. Yellow caution tape was strung up just at the end of the deck. Beyond it, scientists clustered under white canopies. Tables and chairs had been assembled, and laptops and microscopes were lined up and ready for use. From a distance, the researchers looked hurried and industrious, even if their movements meant little to Harry and Tilda.

Farther down the beach, a crowd had gathered to watch. They had been cordoned off, kept out of the sand, and forced to stand in the brush that grew up like a natural fence line. There were more people, including several film crews, than Tilda could remember ever seeing on Olloo’et at any one time. Two men in uniform kept an eye on things from the other side of the yellow tape, but anyone could see they would be useless if the herd decided to charge.

“You saw the news coverage?” Harry said without turning his head.

“Of course.”

Tilda had worried there wouldn’t be room for her car on the ferry. Tourists were flocking to the island to see the 100-Year Miracle. Rooms in the small local inns and B&Bs were impossible to get. If she and Harry had a fight and she stormed out, Tilda would have to sleep on the lawn.

Harry checked his watch. A minute passed. Two. Their drinks came. Tilda thought she saw a flicker in the water, but when she squinted, it was gone. Three minutes passed. Four. And then like someone switching on the Christmas lights, the whole bay began to glow. Just a little at first and then more and more, getting brighter and brighter. She had never seen anything like it.

“Jesus,” Tilda breathed.

“I know,” Harry said.

It was the sincerest conversation they’d had in months. Even the researchers, ever in perpetual ant-like motion, stopped what they were doing to look out over the water.

Harry and Tilda spent the rest of the meal watching. Generators out by the canopies were switched on, and bulbs spotlighted the workers. Those not sitting at laptops and microscopes were down by the water’s edge, their movements marked by bobbing white lights from the headlamps each of them wore.

Harry had been favoring his left hand since she’d arrived, leaving the other in his lap. But when his shrimp arrived with the tails on, Tilda watched him out of the corner of her eye use his right to pick up a knife. The utensil clattered against the plate when his hand shook. He wouldn’t want her to see, so she pretended she didn’t as he tried to use both knife and fork to trim off the tails. The simple coordinated effort proved too much. The shaking knife missed the shrimp and instead knocked a mountain of coleslaw onto the tablecloth. Harry cussed. Tilda didn’t react, keeping her eyes on the beach.

One of the researchers moved away from the buzzing colony. She had a cell phone pressed to one ear and her hand pressed to the other to block out the ambient noise. Soon she was within ten feet of them, but she paid no attention to Tilda or the other diners. In fact, she gave no indication she saw the restaurant at all. Tilda had never seen someone so intent.

The woman caught Harry’s attention, too. “Becca?”

Tilda’s spine went rigid, freezing her in place. She breathed but just barely. Nothing else about her moved.

Harry’s eyes went from the woman to Tilda, but he couldn’t stop them from slipping back to the researcher. He opened his mouth and shut it again. Of course, it wasn’t Becca. The young woman simply looked like Becca. They could have been sisters if Harry and Tilda had conceived another girl.

The pressure to say something, almost anything, was intense. “She looks a little like—a little familiar. Don’t you think?”

Tilda didn’t want to look at the woman, but Harry had made that almost impossible. There was, she saw from the corner of her eye, some resemblance to their daughter. They both had long black hair and the same fair but olive-tinged complexions. Most notable was the way they stood—or perhaps a way they simply were—that filled out the space around them, occupied it fully and without apology.

On the other hand, this woman looked as though she wouldn’t know what a tube of mascara was for, while Becca had insisted on an extensive collection of ribbons, headbands, and barrettes and had kept them organized on her dressing table. There were similarities. Harry wasn’t wrong. But they were not twins.

Tilda said none of this. She said nothing at all. They had agreed, in practice if not explicitly, never to speak of Becca. Violating that would be—Tilda didn’t know what it would be. “Fatal” was the word that sprang to mind. She looked down at their food, concentrating on it.

Harry continued staring. The woman, still on the phone, moved stiffly. She had her back to the water and was looking down at the sand by her feet, her headlamp turned off. When she looked up at Harry, he turned back to his plate, embarrassed at having been caught.

His shrimp were different. Under his nose, the tails had been sliced off and the meat divided into bite-size pieces, the way you would do for a child. He looked at Tilda, but her eyes were on her own plate. With his left hand, he picked up his fork, and no one said anything about it.

*   *   *

Rachel hung up the phone without saying “good-bye” only because it hadn’t occurred to her. The data she needed would be e-mailed shortly, and she headed back toward the tent, back toward the rest of her team, back, unfortunately, toward John.

The
Artemia lucis
’s bioluminescence was what was known as circadian. During the day, the bay looked as it would look any December, only to transform itself into a neon showpiece at night. For the next five days, they would all work in shifts. Three on days, three on nights. Rachel was assigned the night shift along with John. They would live as the arthropods lived, going dormant during the day and showing themselves only as the sun went down. Or at least everyone else would have the daylight hours off. Rachel had other plans.

That afternoon, back at the camp, Rachel had slipped two pilfered folding tables inside her cabin while the others had stopped to refill their mugs with coffee and eat cookies bought at the nearest gas station. After double-checking that the door was locked and secure, she’d set up three large aquariums like those that might hold goldfish at the local pet store, except these aquariums had been sterilized and outfitted with sensors and digital readouts to measure and track every variable that she could think of. She hooked up chillers, aerator tubing, UVA lights, and UVB lights, all to, as best as she could, reproduce a Pacific Northwest bay.

She’d first read of the
Artemia lucis
while finishing her doctorate. The mention, in a chapter devoted to animal bioluminescence, was brief but enough to lead her, after some months of digging, to the Olloo’et. Primary source material on the tribe was limited to the journals of nineteenth-century Catholic missionaries, who wrote down stories dictated by the Olloo’et, who had no written language of their own. When Rachel finally got her hands on the original diaries, she’d had to blow dust off the pages, and translating the papers, in even the most rudimentary way, took an entire summer. The priests were French, a language Rachel had gleefully abandoned after high school.