The Topsail Accord (4 page)

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Authors: J T Kalnay

BOOK: The Topsail Accord
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“
Off and on for at least a couple of weeks.”
“
And we’ve been coming to the beach for what? Twenty years?”
“
About that.”
“
And in those twenty years, not once, well maybe once, but not even once that I can recall have you just ‘run across any bridge’ for a minute by yourself.”
“
And?”
“
And… what’s across the bridge that makes it a certainty that you will be okay on your own?”
“
I’m going to get a coffee.”
“
You already had two or three cups, and we have more hot coffee in the machine.”
“
I’m going to meet someone for a coffee.”
My sister Cara puts her iPhone into her purse, stands up, and walks over to stand beside me where I am looking in the mirror. I have dabbed on clear lipstick and am applying very light mascara.
“
A man?”
“
Yes. I met him on the beach.”
“
A local?”
“
Yes.”
“
Oh Shannon. A local? You can’t be serious.”
“
It’s just coffee. He spilled my coffee on the beach and he offered to get me a replacement. He actually runs or maybe even owns the coffee shop. The ‘Cuppa Joe?’ His name is Joe.”
“
Joe? ‘Cuppa Joe’?”
“
Yep.”
“
Cute. Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you? I could go for a latte. And protect you from hideous puns.”
“
I’ll bring you one.”
“
Thanks.”
“
Shannon?”
“
Yes?”
“
Be careful.”
I step back from the mirror, place my hand on my sister’s forearm and brush her very gently.
“
Thanks. I will. But it’s just coffee. Really.”
Joe

 

I pick the sea turtle mug off the shelf for myself. Hers I have washed and have ready for her. While she is loving the perfect cup of coffee, we can talk about the sea turtles. Everyone loves sea turtles. You can’t read a Nicholas Sparks novel or any novel written about the Outer Banks without reading about sea turtles. So I choose the sea turtle mug because there is a nest right near where she is staying. Maybe she’s seen The Last Song and will know something about them. The sea turtles were even interesting to the man from Ohio who stopped in yesterday. He said he was on his way back to Ohio and wanted a coffee for the road. I get a lot of early morning people who want a good cuppa Joe for the road. They try to extend their weekly rental by taking my coffee with them.
Why am I planning what we are going to talk about? Haven’t I learned that there is no such thing as a plan? That no plan survives the first moments of reality? Didn’t I learn that with Colleen? That plans are pipe dreams at best, cruel jokes of fate at worst?
I wipe the sea turtle mug some more. It is spotless, and just warm enough. Hot coffee needs to go into a warm cup. Going into a cold cup or into a hot cup hurts the perfect cup. I know coffee.
Shannon

 

Snowy egrets wade the canals looking for their breakfast beneath the bridge as I pass from the Topsail barrier island to the mainland. I think about the passage every time I make it. From the beach to the land. From the beach house to places that are not the beach house. Passing over the dark water of the Intracoastal, made dark by the banks of marsh grass and shadows of scrub trees and saw grass.
It’s hard not to realize that you have left the beach because you have to drive over the bridge. It’s not a miles long causeway like it was at Nags Head. But it is a bridge. A tall bridge. A grey concrete bridge. That crosses the Intracoastal waterway and the brackish marshes where the birds I love wade and fish. I visit the egrets and herons and kingfishers that fish and mate and live in the narrow canals that wind in and out and around down below the bridge. I visit them in my kayak, though they never let me approach too closely.
I think about the causeway at Nags Head. I can remember the first time we drove out to the Outer Banks over the causeway. Mile after mile of river and sound and marsh below with the two lane pavement and waist high concrete guard rails above and excitement and newness waiting ahead. And I remember driving back to the mainland by myself that last time, with the last tears I swore I would not cry still stinging my eyes with disappointment and heartache behind. That causeway crossed the Intracoastal, and the Alligator River, and miles and miles of flats and marshes where I saw countless birds that I craved visiting. But we never did go kayaking back in those little canals like we always said we would.
There were so many things we never did. There was always some reason not to. I always wanted to, but it never happened. What I wanted to do never happened and who I wanted to be never happened. Making things much worse, during all these times when what I wanted to do didn’t happen and what I wanted to be didn’t happen, he didn’t do what he wanted to do and he wasn’t who he wanted to be. Between us we got nowhere and did nothing. And he blamed me, even though I was giving up practically everything so he could do what he wanted. I would have been happy if he had gone and done the things he wanted to do. Because then he would have come home happy, and inspired, and would not have been sitting around blaming me and blaming us that he never got to do what he wanted. That’s another thing he never really got about me. I wanted him to be happy. I wanted him to do the things he wanted to do. But he insisted that there was a way things “should” be done. That we should do things together. I did some things with him. I did
that
with him. But there is a finite amount I want to do with anyone. I like to be by myself, except when I don’t. He never got that about me.
I reach the top of the bridge and sneak a short look over the side and down to the canals. The canals that I have paddled with my brother in law and with my nephew and by myself. I have done it. I have actually done it. I paddled. Once, and then again and again and then so often that now I can paddle it even when I am frozen in an Ohio winter. I can paddle it anytime by simply closing my eyes and feeling the kayak beneath me and the sun above me and the water all around. I have paddled it with my camera, with my sketch pad, with a thermos of coffee, and just by myself. I have paddled it at dawn, at dusk, and at every hour in between. I do things now that I didn’t do before.
Before I was married I did things. And now after I am no longer married I do things. But while I was married I did nothing. I didn’t realize at the time how little I was doing. How everything was about my husband and what he wanted. About the baby we never had. About the family he wanted. About how he thought things “should” be. He could never escape the “shoulds.” Who invented the “shoulds?”
I start down the other side of the bridge. The unimposing country club appears on the right, and the brackish marshes stretch away south on the left. It is not far to his shop. It’s just a short drive from my house to the bridge, and another half mile from the bridge to his shop. Before I know it I am there. Yes, I am doing something. Without my husband, without my sister. Just me.
Joe

 

I didn’t think it was possible, but she is even more beautiful in the demure print sundress she is wearing than in the bathing suit I have seen her in these last days. She moves like an athlete. She must be some sort of athlete to be so trim, especially since she must be, I don’t know, in her mid-thirties? I might be too old for her?
Too old?
For a cup of coffee and a talk about a sea turtle nest? How old is too old to have coffee and to talk about turtles? I’m hoping there is never a “too old” for this. Clearly she doesn’t think I’m too old, or else she wouldn’t have agreed to come, and she wouldn’t have actually come. Agreeing and doing are different things.
Shannon

 

I can see him watching me. He’s cleaned up, and isn’t wearing his jogging clothes. What? Did I expect him to be a slob who would still be wearing his jogging clothes and who would be sweating over the counter and into my coffee cup? Maybe it would be easier if he was a slob and was ruining my coffee. It might be easier because it might be over right now. Over? How can a cup of coffee be “over”?
I’m still not sure why I did this. Or that I am actually going to go through with it. I can turn around, get back in the car, and go back over the bridge right now. Or I can go in, get my coffee to go, and be out of here in under a few minutes.
Both of those might be the better choice. I am going back to Ohio in a few days. I’ve had a great month here. It’s my house, I can come here anytime I want. I often come during the winter, but not to the big house. I come to my little house, my cottage. The big house is too big and too empty in January. The big house is for the summer, and for the crowd of the family and nieces and their cousins. Sometimes I stay there for a few days alone in the summer before they come. It is good for a few days. Yes it makes me homesick, but in a good way, and then they arrive and cure the homesickness.
There is nothing like the Atlantic for me. Now that I’ve filled my beach house with my family for these last couple of years, being there alone can quickly become too much. I like to be alone, but not that alone. I’m not lonely. I like my life. I like my life alone in my new home in Ohio. I like my life alone in my lab, and at my digs. I like my life with my Mom and my sisters and all the nieces and nephews. I have it in order, and I like it.
But I do come here in the winter, in January, and other times. Sometimes I fly to Wilmington and rent a car and drive up to my cottage for a few days. Other times I drive down and stay for two weeks.
The family has never come to the cottage. My sister gets me, and she gets that the cottage needs to be my place. Just for me. She gets that if even one time it was filled with the family then those voices and feelings and memories and presences would be in that house and that would make it too lonely for the times when it wasn’t filled. Right now it is my private place here on the beach. She doesn’t even know which house it is, or at least she pretends. I love my sister and how she gets me. My ex never got me like that. How could he? Who could?
So why am I here if no man ever gets me?
I don’t really need another cup of coffee. And I don’t really need a complication for the next couple of days. And maybe it’d be weird next summer if I actually talk to this guy today. Maybe I’d have to avoid this coffee shop, and his sister’s day spa. This could get weird fast.
But... He poured out my coffee. Who pours out someone’s coffee after they almost run them over?
Shannon and Joe

 

“
You came,” Joe says.
“
I came,” Shannon answers.
“
I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he says.
“
I wasn’t sure I’d come,” she answers.
“
Your coffee is almost ready.”
“
No-one ever makes me coffee.”
“
Until today.”
“
Until today.”
“
I didn’t have to ask for Joe,” she says.
“
At Joe’s,” he answers.
They both almost laugh. Almost.
“
Did your staff call in sick or something?” she asks.
“
I told him to get lost for an hour.”
“
Why?”
“
Because I thought if it was just the two of us we might actually be able to talk.”
“
Really? You know that to be able to talk you have to be able to listen.”
“
Yes.”
“
Really? Are you a good listener?”
“
I’m working on it.”
“
Did you remember my coffee order?”
“
Yes. But that doesn’t mean I’m a good listener. It just means I’m a good waiter.”
“
So what was my order?”
“
Half regular, half decaf, no cream, a sixteenth of a teaspoon of sugar.”
“
Yes. You got it right,” Shannon says, ignoring his teasing about the quarter of a teaspoon of sugar.
“
Yes I did. It was simple.”
“
So you think I’m simple?”
“
I doubt it,” he says.
“
So then you think I’m complicated? Or maybe high maintenance?”
“
I don’t know. I wouldn’t presume one way or the other. I’ve made that mistake too many times.”
“
How many times is too many times?”
“
Once.”

 

He turns back towards the coffee maker, and to all the extra things that are his specialty. He mixes the drink carefully, precisely. Like it matters.

 

“
I’m sorry,” she says.
“
No need,” he answers.

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