Ashleigh's Dilemma (9 page)

She couldn't help it; she broke his grip and turned her back to him. “It's good to have you here, too,” she said;
but then could not help herself, turning back and challenging him, “But where would I be if I wasn't here? I live here!”

“You know what I mean.”

Ashleigh turned away from him again, her arms across her chest. She would not look at him.

“You have to go now. The movie's over,” she said.

“Kicking me out already?”

“Yep.”

Patrick nodded, “Okay, I'm going... I'm going...,” he sighed.

She pushed hi
m along and followed close behind.

“But wil
l I see you tomorrow?” he asked over his shoulder as she pushed.

She thought about it
and knew she probably shouldn't, once a week was enough.

“I don't know… I have to go to the gym.”

He suddenly stopped and turned back, blocking her forward motion. She nearly collided with him. She found herself wanting to take a step back, but refused to give ground and so stood close to him toe to toe. “Okay...” she agreed finally, nodding her answer - and then he kissed her, in the kitchen, under the dome light, with the dishwasher running, and the leftover Chinese food still on the counter. She let him kiss her – and then pushed him back.

She hoped he could not see that her eyes were welling, threatening to spoil her makeup. She knew she was as red as she'd eve
r been – no avoiding that. Her nose was running. She spun away and found a tissue and, without a great deal of elegance she thought afterward, blew her nose, followed by quickly but discretely dabbing at her eyes. “Now you really have to go!” she said and glanced at him over the tissue she kept to her nose.

Patrick's smile reached from one side of his face to the other.

“Don't smile like that!”

“Sorry!”

Ashleigh again blew her nose – and could not help herself and laughed too – but silently. What came out was muffled by the tissue she continued to hold up to her nose.

“Go, please!”

I'll pick you up at ten?” he asked, persistent. “McKeldin area? Hike?”

“Okay... I'll bring the leftovers,” she
offered, turned, and again pushed him toward the door, leaving him with no doubt that this time it was time to go.

He trundled with
her down the hallway, opened the inside door, stepped past it, but then stopped and turned back, she colliding with him. She waited for him to go while moving back but staying close, her eyes cast downward, her face careening to red, while wondering if another kiss was coming but not certain she was ready for another. Patrick – again unpredictable – only brushed his face against hers, his cheek to hers.

“See you tomorrow,” he said
and kissed her again quickly as she looked up.

He smiled as he
stepped back and opened the screen door letting the cool and fragrant summer evening drift in. “See ya...” he called back, stepping beneath the light cast from her porch light, and then one more step into the darker night.

“Bye...”

She closed the door. She didn't watch him drive off
. She locked the door, and feeling warm and lonely didn't bother to clean up the rest of the kitchen but went straight to bed. She couldn’t wait. She needed the comfort of her bed and the promise of sleep. She knew it would protect her from the haunting sense of loneliness that had unexpectedly settled upon her. It was a feeling she was not familiar with, and yet another she could not understand the source of.

That night
, Patrick wrote Ashleigh another poem. He called her at two in the morning. She had slept for a while, but then had awakened, and when the phone rang she was wide awake.

“What do you want
?”

“I wrote you a poem. I want to read it to you.”

“For God’s sake, it’s two o’clock in the morning! Can’t it wait?”

“No, no, it can’t!”

She could hear him unfold a piece of paper and place it in front of him.

“Okay, are you ready?”

“I don't want to hear it. I want to go back to sleep!”

“It's short.” 

He read it. The words his voice sang sounded strange and beautiful. Sinking lower into the comfort of her bed, tears filling her eyes, not understanding the source, filled with the mystery of it while hoping his voice would never end, she listened. 

The first time Ashleigh found the strength and courage within herself to give up of herself, was in a tent between zipped up sleeping bags. The tent was pitched high up on a stone beach overlooking the Broken Group Islands, Barkley Sound, Vancouver Island; it was the only tent on the beach. An old growth forest of
Douglas Fir
and
Sitka Spruce
ringed the rocky coast and carpeted the ancient mountains. The sea was calm and blue and teaming with marine life: seals, killer whales – and, soaring above, gulls, bitterns, and a bald eagle spiraling against a sky as blue as the sea.

Ashleigh sat in a kayak off the craggy shoreline. The sea swelled up beneath her, lifting her kayak
before passing on and proceeding toward the shore where it rushed up the in a trail of foam before sweeping back. On each retreat it exposed a sheet of sea-worn rock blackened with marine growth, and colonies of mollusk tangled in rubber-like strands of kelp. Ashleigh studied the shoreline:  rounded boulders tilted on their sides as if some hand had placed it there; a gravel beach, the gravel rounded and smooth and not all of one size some pieces large too big to lift and others small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. There were tidal pools, black oasis’s in the gravel; and, further back, the rainforest itself overpowering, green, and lonely, with curtains of mist keeping to the dark shadows that she would not step within without Patrick by her side. And above and beyond, holding it all within, green and black snowcapped mountains towering in and out of beams of light falling through the high cloud: tall, reaching, dark and deep: she could feel her stomach knot.

She t
hought the motel at Ucluelet had been bad enough, but this was something else. Ashleigh had some difficulty in pronouncing,
‘Ucluelet’
– a native word meaning ‘people of the safe harbor’ …apparently… according to Patrick, that is. Patrick had no such difficulty:
Ucluelet
… the ‘l’’s and the ‘t’ twisting and snapping off his tongue.

She glanced at Patrick
. He sat next to her, his kayak synchronized to hers, lifting and dropping with the swell. He was resting on his paddle; it was placed across the beam of his kayak as he had shown her to do.  She saw him in profile. He was looking back over his shoulder at the string of islands they had just passed through now shadowed black in the lowering sun - lifejacket across his chest, dark blue Gore-Tex jacket tight about his wrists but open at his neck; broad-brimmed hat pulled low; sunglasses tied from behind with a floatation lanyard. This was home to him.

He turned back and smiled and she felt herself smile back. He pointed toward the shore with his paddle.

“What do you think? You good?”

“No, I’m not
good! I might even die! Now wouldn’t that be just great!”

He laughed “Not so bad
, then!”

Of course, s
he knew what was going to happen: once close in to the shore the sea would foam up and about her kayak and throw her over. It would be over quick: the next wave would toss her against the black rock, breaking her back, shattering her skull, pinning her against the black rock, ending everything.

“I’m going to die.”

“No, you’re not.”

But with no way to contact the authorities, and no chance of rescue this far into the wilderness, Patrick would have to search for her on his own
, likely not finding her lifeless body until the next morning. He would weep then, closing her sightless eyes and kissing her one last time while recalling how she had told him how she couldn’t handle this and undoubtedly feeling as guilty as hell about it – not that that would help her any. At that point, she would have threaded her way up as far as Heaven and would be looking down – pissed. That was one of Patrick’s words; he used it when a little bit upset about something:
pissed
– she rather liked it. It was the first opportunity she had had to use it. She smiled inwardly and turned to him.

“I’m pissed!”

He laughed, “Way to go!”

It would
by necessity, be a shallow grave; her lifeless corpse would be covered only by gravel found on the beach. Once Patrick had returned to civilization – his home, Maryland, his tree business, putting her forever behind him - the wild-life would be free to root through the loosely gathered pile easily pushing the rounded stones aside to reveal a limb – her arm, her leg.

She had told him how she feared the wildlife
and how she hoped they wouldn’t tear through the thin fabric of their tent and eat them while they slept. “Funny how that is,” she had said to him; “How your imagination can allow you to stand outside and above looking downward and recognize something as personal as… your arm; your leg… being rendered by razor sharp teeth, and… She had heard…”

“
Lions, and Tigers, and Bears! Oh my
!” Patrick had interrupted, teasing her.

“You told me there are Grizzlies and Black Bear and Moun
tain Lions, so give me a break!

“Don’t worry, you won’t feel a thing,” Patrick had placated still teasing, but more gently; “You’re a bit paranoid,” he had added and had leaned over and kissed her to calm her down.

She had needed calming
, she realized. Her anxiety had been growing by the second and she was finding it difficult to keep it out of her voice. Despite that, she began to describe to him how the Black Bears, or Grizzlies, or whatever, would then proceed to drag her lifeless corpse free of its interment and ravenously tear her to pieces leaving behind only what they could not consume for the birds,  the Gulls, Terns, Cormorant.  “Oh God!” she had cried; “I can’t imagine what part of the anatomy that might be!”

She mentally chastised herself; Patrick seemed to know the names of all the birds and she had forgotten her copy of the
Peterson Field Guide
and now she was going to look stupid; “Argh!”

Returning, she recalled how he
had nodded; “Yep, probably your skull; whenever you find remains in the forest, it’s usually the skull that remains – well chewed, mind you.”

The
sea surged, catching her kayak just off the centerline and she quickly placed her paddle in the water to steady herself and her heart returned to where it belonged.  She glanced at Patrick. He nodded and smiled, smiled and nodded, handsome in his kayak, in perfect balance, congratulating her on her recovery. She hated him for it.

He’d wrap her corpse up in a sleeping bag.

“Hah! That’s ironic!”

Patrick had
purchased two separate sleeping bags for the trip which for a moment had seemed encouraging, but when she had asked him why he bought two when he already had one he explained it was because they had to match: if they don’t match you can’t zip them up together.

He had picked up her reaction.

“What?”

“Nothing!”

“It’s a little bit more difficult with the
foam bed rolls…,” he had continued and she knew he was once again teasing her - his eyes danced, his smile was just below the surface; “You can’t zip them up. We’re likely to slip between the cracks.”

“What do you mean by that
?!”

“Just that they get pushed apart and we end up sleeping on the ground sheet against the hard rock.”

“Oh… That’s not going to happen. I’m sticking to mine!”

“Easier said than done,
” he’d laughed.

She turned to tell him about the sleeping bags – she wanted to see his reaction; he’d understand immediately and laugh, she was sure - but he was a distance away paddling close to the shoreline near where the sea lifted and broke, his kayak skimming over the surface, the blades of his paddle flashing. She smiled watching him – and then cringed. Once ashore – if they made it ashore - Patrick would have her exactly where he wanted; that is, alone with him in the middle of nowhere, with nowhere to go but into the tent and into those zipped up sleeping bags. They wouldn’t find her body until spring, if ever. Not that Patrick was capable of murder, but she knew how frustrated she could often make him. Left alone for days on end who knows what could happen? If they had been able to agree on
Machu Picchu
instead, she would have been able to arrange for a separate hotel room. That is, if worse came to worse; awkward, yes, but if that’s what it took, if that’s how she felt, then so be it.

“Now let me get this strai
ght,” she had asked him as they prepared for the trip; “After three sessions on
Centennial Lake
you’re asking me to… What? Where? No, no, no, no! I don’t think so!
Machu Picchu
, maybe - but kayaking with you in the middle of nowhere and with no chance of rescue, ever? No way!”