Heartsick by Jessie Stephens

Author:Jessie Stephens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Patrick

Caitlin tugs on the arm of his jacket.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” he whispers back, his eyes wide so she knows he’s serious.

Her Kathmandu jacket is zipped right up to her neck, a black scarf tucked tightly into it. Gloves that look like oven mitts tug at her beanie, drawing it further over her ears. He keeps thinking how small she looks under all her layers, a floating head wrapped in thermals and jumpers and thick socks and waterproof boots you’d never be able to buy in Australia. Her cheeks are flushed pink from the harsh wind.

The week before they arrived, the temperature had dropped to minus forty with wind chill. Their guide, Matthew, had told them that when it was that cold, you could barely stand outside. No skin on your body could be exposed. Not even your face. Your eyelashes become coated in frost. If your nose ran, it was only seconds before icicles began to hang from your lip. They were glad to have missed that.

The days are more bearable than the nights. This morning, their weather app had said the day would have a top temperature of zero degrees Celsius and Caitlin had exclaimed, “Balmy!” while pulling on a second jumper. Matthew keeps saying it’s unseasonably warm and they tell him that in Australia an unseasonably warm winter means you can still go to the beach. And come home sunburnt.

“Is that a moose?” she asks, leaning her face against the high chicken-wire fence.

Matthew explains it’s not. It’s an elk. He tells them they shed their summer coat and replace it with a thick, woolen parka that keeps them five times warmer.

Patrick and Caitlin are silent, watching the elk slowly blink, the only indication it’s alive. They study how its eyelashes fan outward, creating something so human about its expression. Delicate and beautiful. Snow has settled between the elk’s wide-set eyes, and it gazes back at them.

“It looks like Roxy,” she says at the exact moment he thinks it. The elk stands up, front legs first and then back. It shakes like a dog after a bath and then brings its back foot to just behind its ear, scratching an itchy spot. Once it’s finished, it looks out into the distance, wondering what to do next. Eventually, it wanders over to a group of three other elk and settles.

Imagine if life were that simple. Eat when you’re hungry. Find others when you’re lonely. Sleep when you’re tired. The day is spent acting on immediate impulse. Patrick feels a desire to switch places. To be given respite from his own thoughts for the afternoon. Elk aren’t playing out the next twenty-four hours of their lives, trying to surface the best possible scenario while being dragged by their ankles toward the worst. He realizes what it is in their majestic, angular faces that reminds him of Roxy, their dog at home. Peace. Behind their eyes and deep in the joints of their jaws is a sense of peace. What is the opposite of peace? Agitation, perhaps.

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