“When you get home—”
“In four months?”
“Yes, in four months, at the end of the summer. I was thinking, if it goes well where you are, maybe you could get a job at one of the winter resorts? There’s a bunch near Anchorage.”
“I don’t know anything about skiing.”
“Not just skiing. You can take people out on snow machines or—”
“I’m a fisherman.”
She purses her lips. She looks so much like our mom when she does that. I wait for her to say something, because I’m not going down that rabbit hole with her again. She’s always trying to find me a job. Suggesting I try something new. Stef may be younger than me, but sometimes it feels like she’s done a lot more living than I have. She left Alaska as soon as she finished high school. She met Graham in college, backpacked through parts of South America, then got married when she had Robbie and Graham was done with med school. Her life has been so much bigger than mine, and it’s almost like she feels guilty about that, so she tries to make amends by keeping me employed. But I can handle myself, thank you.
“Robbie made something for you,” she says.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” She glances offscreen. “Robbie. Come show Uncle Jack what you drew.” Soon, Robbie reappears. This time, he holds a sheet of paper. He lifts it to the screen, and the drawing on it is spectacular, even through a hundred miles of digital signals.
“Is that a fish?” I say, voice full of astonishment even though all Robbie ever draws is fish.
“It’s a king salmon,” he says.
“It’s amazing, buddy!”
Robbie is on the autism spectrum. He isn’t great with people, particularly strangers, but he loves Stef to death and has learned to tolerate me in the months since they left Massachusetts. But what he loves most in the world is fish. He’ll be a marine biologist someday. Or a fisheries scientist. He knows things I didn’t know after a lifetime in and near the industry. And his drawings are always perfect.
“He worked hard on it,” Stef says.
“I can tell.”
Robbie pulls on her hand, attention already elsewhere again now that show-and-tell is over.
“We should probably go. Time to get ready for school.”
By school, she means homeschooling. We tried sending Robbie to the local public school in our small fishing town, but they weren’t equipped to accommodate his needs, no matter how many times Stef went in for meetings. The teachers did their best, but after the third time he up and walked off school property during recess without any warning, they asked if he could be educated elsewhere. Stef argued that he found outdoor recess overwhelming with all the other kids running around and shouting. She suggested he stay inside, but there didn’t seem to be any flexibility on the school’s part.
Much like Graham. He seemed to think his job was to find Robbie referrals to specialists and to send Stef research articles to read, and then leave her to do all the day-to-day work of teacher meetings and therapy appointment while he was off in other countries helping other people’s children. And even when he was home, things weren’t great because his comings and goings would set Robbie off. Robbie likes it best when everything is on a predictable schedule, and Graham never seemed to know more than a week in advance when he was leaving again, or he would come home with very little warning. Stef tried her best, but Graham wouldn’t bend or cut back on his work schedule, and finally she gave up and came back here.
There’s a great school in Anchorage. With a little help from Graham, Stef could move there, and Robbie could go to school with teachers and therapists who could help him succeed and become a marine biologist or anything else he wants to do. Or, if the divorce was final, Stef could apply for financial aid and get him in.
But Graham won’t sign, and the school won’t change their position until Stef is officially a single mom. So she’s stuck at my house trying to do the best she can for Robbie, and now I’ve left them alone for the next four months. One thing I will say for the Wild Eagle Lodge: they pay well. And money is something we need right now.
“You okay?” I ask.
Stef gives me a brave smile, the kind she used to give me when we’d go cliff jumping as kids. “I’m fine. You?”
I still hate it here. But I have to stay. “Yeah.”
“Call me when you know what famous person you’re carting around this week.”
She knows I can’t. She likes to needle me.
“Love you,” I say.
“You too.”
And so I stay.
