Juneau: Wisdom Tree 4 Read Free

can tell that his grin is fixed on his face, and his hands start to look wrong, like someone operating levers or a magician sliding two cups around on a tablecloth. The photographer made him put his hands there. We were an 1890s family at heart, and would have done well at keeping still in our own spaces.
    We make our way along South Franklin Street which seems to be one store after another selling diamonds or tanzanite. Our cruise ship was the second to dock this morning, and on both sides the pavement is already taken up by clumps of comfortably built sixty-somethings mooching along in leisure suits with bumbags like my father’s and cameras around their necks. Meanwhile, inside the shops, the precious-stone merchants—thin men mostly, in dark pinstripesuits—polish their countertops or straighten their trays or stare at the opposite wall. The moochers are gazing up at the rooflines or along at the shopfronts, or manoeuvring each other into photos. Alaska, Alaska—here it is, here we are.
    A mobility scooter hums past us at low revs, its driver in a military cap denoting long-ago service. He has a white goatee, trimmed a little closer than Colonel Sanders, and sunglasses on a cord around his neck.
    Gift shops appear, advertising Russian dolls, soapstone carvings, ulu knives. At Klassique Jewelers the promotions are all cruise ship specials—whale-tail pendants, tanzanite earrings, a free hundred-carat uncut gemstone (one per family).
    My father stops and says, ‘That’s ten jewellers already. Were you expecting that?’
    Do I have an honest answer? Juneau was a blank to me before now, a word, a small shape in the fog of ancient family history.
    â€˜No. I had no idea jewellery was such a thing here.’
    No one is buying. Not in Klassique or anywhere. My father is stalled, looking sour-faced into the brightness beyond the shade cast by the shop’s awning.
    â€˜Do you know how much Hope’s actually found?’ I can imagine a neighbourhood of jewellers ending in a meeting that gives him nothing—the story of a mudslide that took all before it into the channel, and some stock black-and-white pictures of other people from around that time that set the scene but do no more than that. We have come a long way. He is invested in this, even if it’s not his style to admit to being invested in anything.
    â€˜It won’t all be like this,’ he says.
    His jacket collar is bent, half turned up. His jacket is open now, his pants’ belt riding high above his waist. There is a spot just below his ribs where it seems to sit naturally. His bumbag is at an angle, not knowing whether to follow the belt high. The jacket was a birthday present from Sam and Hannah, with this trip in mind. He has worn it every day since we entered Alaskan waters, standing on the deck in the bracing breeze, peering out at the mountains, still as a birdwatcher.
    â€˜What is this about?’ Lauren’s said to me more than once on the subject of Thomas. ‘It’s a hundred and twenty years ago. If he wants to connect with family, he could go to the kids’ soccer once . Why is your father so obsessed with this guy?’
    He is because he is. He is because older people, some older people, find a loose threadin the tapestry and want to leave with it, and themselves, woven in tight.
    Jenny views it as our father’s mad hobby. Rowan doesn’t think about it.
    Families are either full-disclosure or don’t-ask-don’t-tell, and it’s not related to whether there is much to talk about or anything to hide. Lauren comes from one side of that divide, I come from the other. We are ambassadors from two different but willing nations, working diligently on our open border and hoping it will be invisible to future generations.
    Our family’s Alaskan story mattered less to my father when he was well, or at least it seemed less urgent. It was no more than backstory when my mother