Blueback

XI

Abel Jackson went to university to figure out the sea. His mother smiled about that. He’d lived half his life underwater, his best friend was a fish and now he was leaving Longboat Bay to learn about the sea. It seemed a bit mad to her but she shrugged her shoulders and let him go.

Abel moved to the city. The university was like a small town inside the city itself. It was ugly and dreary and full of talk. In his university years, Abel pretended to be a scientist. He explored the sea with computer modelling, with books and specimens in jars, with photos and films. Now and then he went on field trips with other students. He dived in new places, from new islands and boats and beaches, but he felt the same old sea on his body, through his hair, in his ears.

Between semesters he came home and sat on the verandah at Longboat Bay and knew he was no closer to knowing what fish think. He saw whales spouting and dolphins surfing. With his mother he netted salmon and smoked herring. He painted the house and patched the driveway. In autumn he scraped out the water tanks and pruned the vines. One year he brought home some solar panels so they didn’t need the noisy generator any more. That was the year he fell in love.

Abel Jackson met a girl who loved the sea. She was sleek as a seal and funny. Her hair was black and shiny. She grew up in the desert and didn’t see the ocean until she was twelve years old. Her name was Stella. That summer Abel brought Stella to Longboat Bay.

When he climbed out of his car and introduced Stella to his mother, Abel was surprised at how lined his mother’s face was. With a young woman standing beside her, Dora Jackson looked old. There were lines like gulls’ feet all over her face. To him she’d always been young, but now, standing beside Stella, her skin seemed dry and papery. She was an old woman. I’m away too much, he thought. I’m missing things.

Abel was nervous that first day, worried that the two women would not like each other. He saw that his mother knew it. Her smile said it all.

‘Stella,’ she said, ‘you know that you’ll have to share Abel, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ said Stella. ‘You’re his mother.’

Dora Jackson laughed. ‘Actually, I was thinking of somebody else. Abel, let’s show her who we mean.’

So the three of them went out to Robbers Head and swam with Blueback. The old groper flirted with them and ate crabs out of their hands. Stella shrieked in her snorkel when he nuzzled up to her. The fish’s eyes twitched and his gills heaved. He looked as fat as an opera singer.

When they swam back to the boat Abel saw that his mother had trouble climbing the ladder to get aboard. He floated up behind and boosted her up. She laughed, suddenly embarrassed. Blueback swirled deep below them, just a blur.

That evening they had a feast on the cool verandah. The table bristled with crayfish and abalone. They ate squid and urchin eggs, apricots, grapes and melons. Cold champagne frosted their glasses and sweated on the driftwood table. Stella watched Abel and his mother.

‘You two,’ she said. ‘You seem to be able to talk to each other without saying anything.’

‘Practice,’ said Abel.

‘It’s the fish in us,’ said Dora Jackson. ‘We don’t always need words.’

Out on the moonlit bay, dolphins jumped and hooted. It was like a celebration. Abel remembered the dolphins as a good omen because that was the night he asked Stella to marry him.