The life cycle of the salmon is a common topic in schools around Washington state. Karen learned about their fatal migration growing up in the Skagit Valley, around the same time her husband Jake studied their Columbia River struggles in Vancouver. Karen remembered painting the salmon species of her choice in fourth grade. She’d painted a sockeye, with its distinctive humped back, garish red sides and hooked jaw. The final product resembled an exaggerated caricature more than the actual creature. Her mother had hung it on the refrigerator for a season before relegating it to a box in the attic with other touchstone school projects, essays, awards and other art projects. Karen wondered if her sockeye was still there. 

For Jake, these annual studies of the salmon included multiple field trips to the Bonneville Dam fish ladder and the hatcheries along the Columbia’s tributaries. He’d told Karen that the fish ladder could be viewed both from above, through cascades of water rapidly descending deep steps to simulate waterfalls, or through submerged windows below the churning surface. From the outside, eager visitors watch the water for the fish to jump as they ascend their aquatic switchbacks. From the inside, they press against the glass for a more consistent view of the fish. A pale, green-blue light filters through the windows as the fish swim by. “Though we seldom saw anything other than creepy, window-sucking lamprey,” Jake recalled.

Karen mused on these descriptions while finishing her pregnancy during Vancouver’s unprecedented heatwave. The metro area experienced three consecutive triple digit days for the first time in its recorded history shattering the area’s previous record high set in 1952. Her co-workers at OHSU constantly grumbled about the weather. Grace was the most consistent complainer. “I left Texas because of the heat,” she’d moan to anyone who walked by, fanning herself in the records room.

Karen had never minded the rare summer heat. In fact, after a December family vacation to Orlando in her youth, she coveted warm weather. Convinced that such climates were foundations for happiness, she dreamed of escaping to sunny Florida to work as a marine biologist. There in the opposite corner of the country, she would mow her lawn in a bikini and sneakers, a fine layer of humid moisture glistening on her skin, just a normal part of daily life.

But that was before she met and married Jake, when they both moved to Seattle for college. Before they’d moved back to Jake’s hometown, before the recession and student loans made it impossible for them to remain in Seattle. Before she waddled into her last trimester during the hottest summer in Vancouver’s recorded meteorological history. Still, even before all those simple twists of fate, Karen recognized that mowing her lawn in a bikini and sneakers would get her labeled “high maintenance” in the Pacific Northwest. 

Their new house like most in the region lacked air conditioning. A luxury deemed unnecessary and too expensive in their typically temperate climate. With both of them working again, the best Karen and Jake could do was close off the house and hope the temperature didn’t rise too much while they were out. Unfortunately, their home did an amazing impersonation of an oven and proved prone to retaining heat. A formidable prospect when leaving their air-conditioned workplaces. And so, on the hottest day, Karen opted not to go straight home after work. With their first child’s impending birth, she’d made a habit of working as many hours as she could, to help them survive the lean finances during maternity leave. For this reason, Jake didn’t question when Karen called to let him know she’d be late and not to wait to eat with her. He was freelancing at nights anyway and was easily distracted and often preoccupied. Leave him to his sorting and unpacking she thought, as her car cut through the sweltering heat up the gorge toward the fish ladder.

Karen wasn’t sure why she’d lied to Jake about what she was doing that evening. Nor was she certain she’d set out to deceive him when she called. Lie was too strong a word. She’d never claimed she was working late. Karen simply hadn’t corrected Jake’s incorrect assumption. Still, she wasn’t just not working an extra shift, she left early that afternoon. But what difference did it make? Who did it hurt? No one, as far as Karen could tell. And if this was the extent of her subterfuge in her marriage, she told herself that Jake should feel grateful. 

Karen bypassed the orientation desk at the visitor complex and took the elevator directly to the fish viewing room. She felt the temperature drop as the doors opened to the cavernous concrete room and breathed a deep sigh. A row of windows with wide wooden lips, worn from the elbows, hands, feet and seats of previous visitors, lined the wall and peered into the water below the surface. Faux white shutters were mounted directly into the concrete walls. She couldn’t decide if these accoutrements served some functional purpose, or as she suspected, were purely ornamental. The muted green light filtered in through the water, just as Jake had described. Speckled silver steelhead languidly swam upstream while a few stubby shad frantically fought the current generated by the concrete labyrinth of the ladder. At times, the stouter fish looked dazed and disoriented to Karen. Slender lamprey slithered and suckered their way along the bottoms of the windows. Occasionally a summer sockeye passed, but they were few and far between. 

The walls of the viewing room were painted with murals of salmon on their intrepid journey upstream. Interpretive panels recounted the indigenous belief that the salmon returned and died in order to sustain the people. Karen wondered if preservation was all there was to reproduction. The floor was covered with thick, plushy carpet in large segments of rich pink, maroon, and two shades of blue. She wanted to say the carpet’s alternating colors were intentional, perhaps representing currents. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that the floor had simply been constructed from remnants or patched with strategic partial replacements. 

Karen practically had the dam to herself. Few others had thought to utilize the fish viewing room as a refuge from the heat, instead hunkering down in the woods (tinder dry and ready to burst at the slightest spark), or their homes, or taking to the water themselves. She skirted the edge of the other visitors, eager to prevent anyone from infringing on this small, strange indulgence. As the pregnancy had progressed, Karen discovered that strangers couldn’t resist touching her belly. They either asked but didn’t wait for a response, which certainly would have been no, or simply didn’t ask and helped themselves to her swelling midsection. Like an obviously adopted child or a person with a facial scar, pregnancy she discovered was an intimate detail about her she had no choice but to disclose to anyone that looked at her. The condition could be observed without any specific context. Forcing a blurring of the line between her private and public life in a way Jake only minimally shared when they were seen together. It had never occurred to her that this invasion of her personal space and private life would be an issue. She’d never experienced anything like it, outside of a handsy, loquacious date.

She found a section with no fish gawkers and gingerly sat on the wooden ledge with her back against the window’s concrete jamb. On the other side of the glass, a few fish swam past her head, while lamprey futilely attempted to cling to her stomach with their sucker mouths. The low light and temperature washed over Karen. She took pleasure in the goosebumps induced by the cool glass and her own sweat after so many sweltering days. She removed her shoes and allowed her feet to dangle just above the floor.

She’d left her phone behind in the car, which meant she was cut off from her life. Jake couldn’t reach her behind the concrete confines of the fish ladder. Leave him to his sorting and unpacking, she thought. Let him figure out what to eat on his own. With a slight smile, Karen placed her hands on either side of her stomach, closed her eyes, and focused on her breathing. 

She honestly didn’t expect Jake to try to check up on her. As far as he was concerned she was safe at the office and would come home whenever she was ready. He’d be more concerned with putting his home office together than her whereabouts or well-being. It was no secret Jake wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He’d been withdrawn since learning that he would be a father. A sour aura seemed to permeate their life together, as though he blamed her for the return to his hometown, for the need to purchase the house. At best, it felt to Karen as though they were going through the motions with one another. She wondered if marriage was supposed to be this hard. She hoped an evening apart would do them both good.

Karen wasn’t thrilled with the situation either. While her connections and the promise of a job at OHSU had facilitated the move, they could have found a way to stay in Seattle. The move took her farther from her own familial support system in the Skagit Valley.

She realized how bad the timing was, even though kids were part of their plan. Initially she hadn’t even told Jake about the pregnancy. She recognized how disruptive it would be and considered terminating it without telling him. She’d gone so far as to find a clinic that would handle things discreetly. After all it was her body, her choice, right? And what Jake didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. They could continue to finally get their life back on track. Things weren’t perfect, but it felt like they were making progress together again. The pregnancy was the latest in a series of unexpected complications that had plagued them since entering the adult world. 

In the end, in the lonely waiting room of the clinic, Karen had thought better of it. It was his child too, and she wasn’t sure inconvenience was a good enough reason when they did eventually want kids. However irrational it may have been, she feared she might never be able to get pregnant again. Once she’d told him and their families, there was no going back. The choice was made and the pregnancy would naturally run its course. Jake did put in some effort, attending birthing classes, driving her to doctor’s appointments, and reading parenting books with her. The exaggerated effort he put into ensuring the most convenient bathroom remained available to her always made her smile. But all of these tasks were performed with a sense of duty and obligation, not loving enthusiasm. Jake also did more than his fair share of sulking, as though he’d been trapped by some biological trick, while she bore the physical, social and financial burdens.

Their parents were ecstatic which added the strain of putting on a happy and brave face to Karen. The pressure increasingly left her exhausted. Despite the general excitement around the announcement and her own resignation to move forward, Karen still wasn’t sure at times that she’d made the right decision.

She felt the gentle pressure of an extra set of digits on the center of her stomach. When Karen opened her eyes, she was face to face with a park ranger. Her long, silver hair was braided and tucked beneath her flat hat. The other visitors were gone. The ranger perched next to her on the landing, and for a moment it felt like there were a pair of thirteen-year-olds sitting side-by-side on the floor by a bed just trying to figure everything out. Karen shifted awkwardly and prepared for the typical onslaught of questions—when she was due, is this your first baby. Instead, the ranger smiled and told her she was carrying a healthy, baby girl. When Karen asked how the ranger knew, she said “instinct.” And with that, the ranger let her know the visitor center would be closing in twenty-minutes, and left Karen to enjoy her temperate refuge. 

She wasn’t sure if she could or wanted to believe the ranger. Until that moment, Karen hadn’t put a lot of thought into the gender of the child. In many ways the baby felt like an extension of herself. Even Jake viewed the baby as part of her. The ranger’s prognostication added weight to the situation. A child, kids, had remained an abstract concept. Something reserved for the mythic someday. Karen had never considered a preference toward a son or daughter. Why did it matter? What could she do with one but not the other? Although plenty of people, including her own mother, advised her to hope for a boy. They claimed boys were “easier” to raise, whatever that meant. Karen just wanted the child to be a healthy and happy. She had no grand plans for her offspring other than to raise her to be a decent human being. Karen didn’t want her daughter to live as an ornament or means for her to vicariously recapture her youth. Such intentions felt like narcissism that could only lead to impossible expectations and strained relationships. For the first time, however, she wondered if Jake had any preferences. They hadn’t had a chance to discuss the practical elements of raising a child. Would he be disappointed in his daughter? 

Karen crammed her swollen feet back into her shoes and turned to consider the fish one last time. Despite everything people knew about them, the salmon were still mysterious, incomprehensible. No one knew exactly how salmon find their way back to their home redds, to the streams of their birth. Instinct? Scent? Magnets? Some combination? The salmon were drawn on despite the obstacles, by the need to reproduce, to pass on their genes, guarantee the survival of their species. And then die.

She knew not all of them would make it. Some would fail to find the safe way past the dam. Others would get picked off by the opportunistic sea lions and birds that waited for them to bottleneck at the ladder’s entrance. There were many tributaries upriver that hadn’t seen a single salmon in decades. Karen pressed her back against the cool glass one last time, her hands lightly resting on her stomach. She felt for the little tremors that represented the life within, as a rare run of summer sockeye with bright red sides swam against the current behind her.

And she wondered how much longer their lives would be if they chose to keep living in the ocean and never have sex. 

– B. R. Lewis