Algobay the most, likely because her namesake ship was also his favourite. He’d been heartbroken over the freighter’s troubles in those first years after her launching: a collision that resulted in the loss of two lives, running aground the following year after the steering gear failed, and only a year after that a head-on collision with the Montrealais on the St. Clair River. He blamed the ship’s bad luck on the wife of the bank chairman who’d christened the ship, and refused to deal with that bank his entire life. After each minor catastrophe in which the Algobay found itself, Richard would sit Algobay on his lap and ask her if she was okay, holding the confused child tight to his chest, tears in his eyes.
A fleet of girls was born, pair by pair, until the final installment: one singular baby girl, unlike the rest.
Ann’s last pregnancy had surprised even her. When she discovered she was pregnant again, she was sure it was twins. Even when the doctor told her it wasn’t, she left his office to buy two matching sleepers to celebrate. Months later, after the nurse put Algoma into Ann’s arms, Ann asked the doctor for a second opinion. He’d laughed and walked out of the delivery room. “Enjoy your little girl, Mrs. Belanger.” She’d left the hospital with one baby, almost convinced they had forgotten one inside her.
Algoma’s birth had shattered Ann’s theory about herself, and she went into a deep depression that lasted months. Privately, she’d considered herself a Noah-like figure, her destiny to guide pairs of God’s creations into a world where she cut the sandwiches and poured the milk. She wore a pink plastic rosary around her left wrist, a gift from her younger sister who’d been to Jerusalem, and practiced her “Mary smile” in the bathroom mirror.
“God’s willing vessel,” she said to her reflection, and then said it again, trying to look humble.
Publicly, the town wondered what was in the water on the Belanger property. Twins had run in their family since the first Belanger ended up on the continent, but Ann’s numbers were staggering. It was rumoured that women with fertility problems stole onto the property at night to drink water straight from their garden hose. When Ann went to church on Sundays, would-be mothers tried to brush up against her in the aisles. Ann recognized the “accidental” grazings and enjoyed them.
Richard let his seventh and final child go unnamed for an entire month before he settled on a suitable name for what he deemed a very special child, a child who had even defied her mother’s command to be born as a pair.
Algoma.
Not the name of a ship, but the name of the entire fleet.
As the years passed, the girls’ names were shortened to versions that were easier to yell, the unifying prefix dropped: Cen, Steel, Lake, Soo, Bay, and Port.
Algoma, however, remained Algoma.
At the age of sixty-one, Ann died of a heart attack. As she lay on the potato-strewn aisle of the produce section in the grocery store, she used her remaining strength to point at the cardboard bin of stacked grapefruits: “I’ll take two.”
Like a dead man’s switch, the cessation of Ann’s heart caused Richard’s to stop. He fell at the plastic altar of a humidifier he was trying to repair for a neighbour. A thick fog of steam drifted over his body, filling the ravine between his spread legs.
Outside the Church of St. Joseph, the seven sisters escorted their intimate convoy of double-varnished mahogany toward its final harbour.
Years later, each one of Ann and Richard’s girls would document—whether they admitted to it or not—news on their namesake ships. The details were prophecy on how their lives would turn out: which was built to Nova Scotia Class and could weather ice; which had been renamed and sold only to be bought back again; which was on long-term layup; which sold for scrap; which upgraded and lengthened; which could shoulder more and how much; which made it
A fleet of girls was born, pair by pair, until the final installment: one singular baby girl, unlike the rest.
Ann’s last pregnancy had surprised even her. When she discovered she was pregnant again, she was sure it was twins. Even when the doctor told her it wasn’t, she left his office to buy two matching sleepers to celebrate. Months later, after the nurse put Algoma into Ann’s arms, Ann asked the doctor for a second opinion. He’d laughed and walked out of the delivery room. “Enjoy your little girl, Mrs. Belanger.” She’d left the hospital with one baby, almost convinced they had forgotten one inside her.
Algoma’s birth had shattered Ann’s theory about herself, and she went into a deep depression that lasted months. Privately, she’d considered herself a Noah-like figure, her destiny to guide pairs of God’s creations into a world where she cut the sandwiches and poured the milk. She wore a pink plastic rosary around her left wrist, a gift from her younger sister who’d been to Jerusalem, and practiced her “Mary smile” in the bathroom mirror.
“God’s willing vessel,” she said to her reflection, and then said it again, trying to look humble.
Publicly, the town wondered what was in the water on the Belanger property. Twins had run in their family since the first Belanger ended up on the continent, but Ann’s numbers were staggering. It was rumoured that women with fertility problems stole onto the property at night to drink water straight from their garden hose. When Ann went to church on Sundays, would-be mothers tried to brush up against her in the aisles. Ann recognized the “accidental” grazings and enjoyed them.
Richard let his seventh and final child go unnamed for an entire month before he settled on a suitable name for what he deemed a very special child, a child who had even defied her mother’s command to be born as a pair.
Algoma.
Not the name of a ship, but the name of the entire fleet.
As the years passed, the girls’ names were shortened to versions that were easier to yell, the unifying prefix dropped: Cen, Steel, Lake, Soo, Bay, and Port.
Algoma, however, remained Algoma.
At the age of sixty-one, Ann died of a heart attack. As she lay on the potato-strewn aisle of the produce section in the grocery store, she used her remaining strength to point at the cardboard bin of stacked grapefruits: “I’ll take two.”
Like a dead man’s switch, the cessation of Ann’s heart caused Richard’s to stop. He fell at the plastic altar of a humidifier he was trying to repair for a neighbour. A thick fog of steam drifted over his body, filling the ravine between his spread legs.
Outside the Church of St. Joseph, the seven sisters escorted their intimate convoy of double-varnished mahogany toward its final harbour.
Years later, each one of Ann and Richard’s girls would document—whether they admitted to it or not—news on their namesake ships. The details were prophecy on how their lives would turn out: which was built to Nova Scotia Class and could weather ice; which had been renamed and sold only to be bought back again; which was on long-term layup; which sold for scrap; which upgraded and lengthened; which could shoulder more and how much; which made it
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