Read Online Sea of Tranquility by Lesley Choyce - Free Book Online

and grow up and they have children, good children, happy children, well-meaning children who have their own after that. And one of those children, our great-grandchild, becomes an inventor or a scientist or something and discovers something truly, truly wonderful, like a way to feed everybody on earth so no one will starve, right? And this is a great wonderful thing.”
    Sylvie wondered at the odd nature of thinking of this man she had married. Here she lay in bed, expecting to be treated to some kind of new experience, some physical thing that both scared her and fascinated her. She had been warned it could be a harsh thing sometimes, but she was prepared, mentally and physically. But this was not the way at all.
    â€œNow suppose this new discovery gets into the wrong hands and is used to create famines and starvation instead of preventingsuffering. Suppose thousands or more die. Just suppose that happened.”
    â€œDavid, what?”
    He let out a long sigh. “I don’t know. Does that mean it would be wrong for us to have a child that would lead to such a terrible thing?”
    â€œHow would we know?” Sylvie asked.
    â€œWe can’t know. That’s it. Each of us, each married couple like us, has the power to possibly change the world for good or bad. And we can’t do a thing about it.”
    â€œThen why concern ourselves with it? What can we do?”
    â€œWe can’t and I guess that’s my point. I’m sorry. It’s my grandfather talking here,” David admitted.
    â€œI didn’t know I was climbing into bed with your grandfather,” Sylvie said, teasing.
    â€œDon’t get me wrong, I want to have children. As many as you want.”
    â€œI want ten,” she joked.
    â€œTen it is. Why not twelve?”
    â€œTwelve is too many to feed.”
    â€œWe’ll start with one and see how it goes from there.”
    â€œI want all of our children to stay here on the island.”
    â€œSo do I,” David agreed. “But once they outgrow us, we can’t make them stay.”
    â€œNo, but we can make sure they love the island like we love the island.”
    David said nothing.
    â€œDo you love this place?” she asked.
    â€œI do, but not in the same way you do. I could almost be jealous if I wanted to.”
    â€œDo you want to be jealous?”
    â€œNo. Let’s go to sleep now.”
    Sylvie has a swarm of pictures in her head, the tea some strange, exotic drug now that has catapulted her mind into another place. Things that rule her life: fish and cabbage, the backs of whales in sunlight, that mysterious moon pulling the sea slowly in and out every day, the swimming seals. Generations of German and English and French ancestors, for she could trace her roots to all three. The island had lured all three nationalities together.
    And she remembers David, standing in oilskins not a hundred yards offshore, hauling up nets with cold, slapping fish, a great steady stance he had in that dory made by his grandfather. She could still see the silhouette, the slanting posture, the wet net in his hand, back bent under the weight. His steady hand with a strong pull. While David stood there, German soldiers on the other side of the sea were slaughtering innocent families, preparing to slaughter the French and the English. In her memory, though, those two brief years of her first marriage, less than two years really, were a tenured stint in paradise.
    March of 1936. Bad news for the fishermen. Almost no market at all for the valuable catch. Hope, however, in the fact that big ships would dock soon by the government wharf and look for men to go to the ice floes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Good money to be made from seal pelts.
    â€œI’ll be gone no more than a month. Hard work, but we need the money. Save some up, spend some to build up the old place here. Plenty of food on the table after this no matter what the fishing does. Do something