The Topsail Accord

by J T Kalnay

  I will take the high road and say good-bye and tell him that there are no hard feelings and good luck with the Foundation and with Danny. I will be classy and I will be unequivocal. It is over before it began, and he will know and know that I know. I will be unmovable and unreachable.

  Joe

  It is 10:30 before I wake to the sound of Danny in the shower. I have stood up Shannon. I call her but only reach voicemail. I apologize and ask her to call me. Tell her there was an emergency. Tell her that I will explain it all in person, the way she likes. I ask her to call me to arrange dinner.

  My phone alerts me to a message from my friend Michael. It has a link to the photo with Danny and me at the fundraiser, and another link to a photo of her helicopter still on the pad beside the hotel this morning. The text simply reads “Duuuuude...”

  Shannon will not return my call. I have no idea now how I will apologize or explain.

  Danny comes into the room in just a towel. She walks right up to me, takes my hand, kisses me on the cheek, whispers “thanks for last night.” She can kiss me in her towel, fresh from the shower, and know it is just that, nothing more. Even though she tarries for a moment, perhaps hoping that there will be more, that there will be a moment like the moments we had before.

  “Danny I am in deep shit with a woman,” I say.

  “How can I help?” she asks.

  “Can you call her? On behalf of the Foundation? Let her know that I spent the night with a sick child and that I am on my way home and hope that she will meet me for dinner?”

  Danny calls. Shannon takes the call. I only hear Danny’s side of the conversation.

  “She said no to dinner. But she said she’ll see you tomorrow morning for coffee and trash. Whatever that means.”

  I explain it and Danny helps me prepare for Friday morning.

  Sea Turtles In The Night

  I haven’t seen the dolphins in a while. Last night, while walking the beach alone, I felt the presence of the dolphins very strongly, but did not see them. In my mind they were swimming along beside me, keeping me company like Joe did not. There for me when he was not.

  In the morning, at the first dawn, I see two sets of tracks from the high tide line into the dune. At first I think two sea turtles have crawled up and laid eggs. As my coffee kicks in I realize one path is up to the dune and one is back down to the ocean. I touch the flipper marks in the sand, feel where she has dragged her shell up.

  I bend closer to the tracks. I see the zig zag patterns she has made while pulling first one way and then the other. I see the deeper indentations from the edge of her flippers in her tracks. See how she has dragged her shell along the sand, one lurch at a time.

  I place my hand in the track. Her flipper is bigger than my hand. I track the pattern of the indentations. I put my foot in a track. It is a good fit. Her flippers and my foot are a good match.

  I close my eye and feel her struggling, pulling herself up the beach, up the dune. I feel her digging her nest, and then it stops. She lays no eggs. The vision goes black.

  I cry for her. Like I never cried for myself all those days and years ago. My salty tears disappear into the tracks in the sand.

  As I lay there amazed by Nature, cleansed by my tears, I connect my premonition of the dolphins to the appearance of the sea turtle. The feeling was so strong, and close, but inaccurate. I read it wrong. Like I read Joe wrong.

  An hour later the North Topsail Sea Turtle Project volunteers are here and searching for eggs in the dune the turtle visited. Two women in their forties or early fifties have five foot long avalanche probes that are doing improvised duty as egg probes. They probe the dune searching for a cavity in which she may have laid eggs, unless she was spooked, unless the tracks and the trip to the dune are a ‘false crawl’.

  They probe and dig. But find nothing. They keep probing and digging. The women are covered in sand, having dug on their hands and knees for at least an hour. Yet they have found no eggs. They tell me she has come up on the dunes three nights in a row without laying her eggs. They are starting to worry.

  The leader makes notes in a spiral bound note book. She takes photographs with her digital camera. Sullen, they pack up their protective cage, warning sign, and caution tape. They leave one strand of orange tape on my blizzard fence, and prepare to leave. I give them bottles of water. Their heads are hanging and they are tired from the unfulfilled excitement. I offer to carry their tools for them back to their little pickup truck that is parked in the public pullout.

  “Those footprints are too big for you, so I know you weren’t on this dune. But maybe you could ask your guests to stay off the dunes?” one of the tired diggers asks me.

  “There’s just me here,” I say. “What footprints are you talking about?”

  “Right here,” the one woman says. After she points them out I see the footprints leading up the dune to where someone must have sat. Sat on my dune and maybe scared away the sea turtle.

  They catch my gaze, and see me look from the dune to the house.

  “Yes I’m here by myself. And I’m heading home on Saturday. You can use my driveway from then until Christmas if you’d like,” I say.

  “Thanks. But we don’t like to bother the renters,” the leader answers.

  “I don’t rent it out. It’s my house. I’ve just spent the last five weeks here, and I won’t be back until the day after New Year’s. You won’t be disturbing anyone. But the cleaners and workers will be here in between Christmas and New Year’s. So if you get a call near here, please feel free to park in my driveway instead of having to schlep your stuff all the way up or down the beach.”

  The women look at each other, they size me up. The word ‘donor’ must have flashed simultaneously through their minds in large neon lights.

  “You didn’t rent it out for August through December?” the leader asks.

  “No.”

  “Can I have your email address?” she asks.

  I write it in her notebook, she gives me her card.

  She notes the lab address I have given her.

  “What do you do at the lab?” she asks.

  “I’m a geologist. I’ve been studying the Marcellus shale and writing papers.”

  “Want to learn more about turtles?” she asks.

  “Sounds interesting,” I say.

  I wonder what form her solicitation will take. I will welcome it in whatever form it takes because I have seen their dedication, seen their hard work, seen their selflessness in the heat and humidity and sand of late July. I will know from their solicitation whether they, like Joe, have Googled me and found out about the oil and gas and the shale.

  In this found time, time that was supposed to be spent running with Joe and then laying with Joe, on the morning when I was going to give myself to him, I have been given a much greater gift.

  Though she did not lay her eggs in my dune, she crawled out of the ocean directly towards my house. She picked me. When Joe did not. She picked me.

  Shannon

  I drive across the bridge for the last time this year. Once again I am driving over the bridge with the fresh hurt and disappointment of a failed relationship in the front of my mind. This time my words will end it, even though his action, his ‘business’, is what truly ended it. Ended it before it began.

  I see the wading birds in the canals below where we paddled just days ago when I thought I was falling in love. They are still lovely. This place is still ‘my place’ and he has in no way changed it. He has not been to my cottage, he has not been inside me physically. Though he has touched my heart, it was only a touch, not a grasp, not a hold. Nothing that will change anything about the place for me.

  I drive down off the bridge and head for the coffee shop. Two coffees, one hour of picking trash, and one direct conversation and I will be on my way back to Ohio, to my life and family and lab and routine. Back to being me after this failed experiment in lust and love. Perhaps not a failure, perhaps just a ‘false craw
l’.

  Joe

  She just pulled in to the parking lot. I knew she would come. She said she would be here so I knew she would be here. She is direct and honest, with no superfluous or extraneous words or ways about her. I have one chance to explain. She will listen, I know she will, but no matter what I say I also know she will return to Ohio in a little more than an hour.

  I have one hour. One intense hour in which I have one chance. One hour where my new life as I know it has arrived at a crossroads.

  No pressure.

  Shannon

  He is waiting for me with a cup of coffee. Will he grovel? Will he even apologize? Will he pretend that his ‘business’ was just business and not monkey business?

  It doesn’t matter what he says. Not really, not going forward. It matters only in how I will describe him to Cara when we talk later this week. But it will not change my mind about returning to Ohio.

  It doesn’t matter what he says. I am picking trash, like I said I would. I am taking the high road, but I am telling him that I am going home, with no hard feelings.

  I am going home, no matter how good his coffee is.

  Shannon and Joe

  “Good morning,” she says.

  “Good morning,” he says. “I’m glad you came. I’d like to explain about Wilmington.”

  “There’s no need to explain. You knew I didn’t want a commitment, you knew I was going back to Ohio, I knew you were staying here. Wilmington is Wilmington. No need to explain.”

  “Alright. Then without explaining, I’d like to make sure you have an accurate set of facts about Wilmington.”

  “You think I would believe you?”

  “You might, and you might not. But I’m not going to ask you to believe me. I’m simply going to give you the facts, and then you can believe or not believe, with or without doing some research, as you see fit. Then I’ll know that you’re leaving here with accurate information.”

  “Why is it important to you that I have accurate information?”

  “Because you’ll be back here in January, and you’ll be back here next summer, and I want to be able to pass you on the beach in the morning and smile and hope that there are no hard feelings.”

  “No hard feelings? That’s what I wanted to tell you. That I have no hard feelings about Wilmington. You were supposed to come be with me. You didn’t. You didn’t call, until after you had stood me up. And then you have a woman call me to try to explain why you stood me up. As spectacularly inappropriate as all of that was, I realize I brought at least a little of it on myself with my ‘no calls, no emails, no texts’ rule. So I have no hard feelings. I would have liked to have known about Caitlin’s Foundation. You could have told me that you were going to Wilmington to raise money for her Foundation instead of telling me you had ‘business.’ And you could have told me you had a date. We’re not married, we’re not even the junior high version of ‘going steady’. But you could have told me.”

  “I should have told you.”

  “Please don’t ever use the word ‘should’ around me.” My ex got trapped in ‘should’ and then when he couldn’t or wouldn’t do what he thought he should do, it messed with him and it was the end of us. So please don’t use the word ‘should’ around me, or at all. Every time you say ‘should’ you are saying that you know something different is appropriate and yet you are unwilling or unable to do the right thing. Every time you say ‘should’ you are telling me that you are making a choice and that the choice is one you know isn’t right.”

  “Deal,” he says. “Now let’s go work the highway, everyone’s waiting.”

  It is mostly the same group from the previous Friday, with the exception of the missing Cara and the missing Mike and the addition of Bill the cop. They don their gloves and pull their trash picking tools from the back of the truck. Joe is corralled by one of the other business owners and Shannon finds herself walking alongside Joe’s sister.

  “I’m surprised you’re here,” Joe’s sister says.

  “Why?”

  “He told me about Wilmington.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He told me he unexpectedly had to stay overnight, he didn’t say why, and that he was supposed to go running with you on Thursday but he couldn’t make it.”

  “People get delayed on business all the time,” Shannon says.

  “Yeah well he also told me about having Danny call you to try to smooth things over. My brother can be such an idiot.”

  “You know about Danny?”

  “Everyone knows about Danny,” she said. “After Michael Jordan and Chris Daughtry I imagine she’s the most famous person from North Carolina.”

  “Yes I don’t understand why he would do that. I mean I saw their picture in the online paper, she’s a beautiful woman, and they’re obviously great together, so I don’t understand why he would do that.”

  “He explained it. He said you told him not to call you. But you didn’t tell him not to have his old college girlfriend call you. That’s the way he thinks. He can be kinda literal.”

  “Old college girlfriend?”

  “First of many. Until Colleen. She was his last girlfriend. Until you.”

  “I wouldn’t put myself in the ‘girlfriend’ category,” Shannon says.

  “Well you’ve got the pissed off, jealous, I got stood up thing working pretty good this morning,” Joe’s sister says. “Puts you in the ‘girlfriend of Joe’ category for me.”

  “My bag is full,” Shannon says. She stops walking and waits for the sag wagon truck to catch up to her. While she waits, Joe works his way back to her.

  “Will you help me do the lane up to the cemetery?” he asks her. “They can pick us up on the other side on the way back.”

  “Yes,” Shannon answers.

  They walk the lane into the immaculate but inevitably overgrown cemetery. There is no trash to be seen in any direction.

  “This is easy work,” Shannon says.

  “It’s about to get harder,” Joe says. “For me.”

  He stops in front of two headstones, one larger, one smaller.

  “Caitlin is on the left, Colleen is on the right,” Joe starts. “The Foundation in Wilmington is in Caitlin's honor. It allows kids who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford treatment, all the way to a transplant, to get treated. I go down there once a month to see the kids, and twice a year for board meetings. The other night we had a fund raiser and then I saw some patients. One little girl was near the end. It was so similar to how it was with Caitlin. This little girl, all she wanted was for her dad and brother to meet Danny. Her dying wish was for her dad and brother to see Danny. She wanted her dad and brother to have something to be happy about. She said they’d been sad for too long.”

  Shannon says nothing. She takes his hand because the twenty year old pain from Caitlin is real and returned and present. They keep looking at the graves.

  “After Caitlin died, Colleen blamed herself. And she was right to. So was I.”

  “You can’t blame yourself or your wife that your daughter got sick,” Shannon starts.

  “We didn’t blame ourselves that she got sick. We blamed ourselves that we didn’t start her treatment sooner. We were extreme Fundamentalists back then. Thought that prayer was the right way and the only way to deal with illness, that all the science and medicine was hubris, Man’s way of thinking he could do something about one of God’s creations. We thought that if God had made a child sick that there was a reason and who were we to interfere in His plans with medicine.”

  “I see,” Shannon says.

  “Our little girl suffered and suffered for our Fundamentalist pride. I see now that that’s what it was. Pride. We were so proud of our stance against medicine. I hardly believe it now. But I do. I still see it in people around here. The Fundamentalists. Their faith is more important than reality. Their pride is a sin but it is a sin they embrace. The reality is that Caitlin could have been treated if we hadn’t let it g
o so long. I know that now, through my work with the Foundation. I see little girls like Caitlin who are cured, not a lot, but I see them. She could have been one of them. But she wasn’t. She was a poor girl who suffered acutely because she got sick and because her parents wouldn’t let her get treated until it was too late.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Shannon says.

  “Yes. But let me finish. Colleen never forgave herself for Caitlin’s passing. She blamed herself constantly. And she blamed me too. I left our church, and have never gone back. She went deeper and deeper into the church. Started fasting and doing other things. We grew apart. At the end, before she killed herself, we were basically living separate lives. I had thrown myself into the business, and into starting the Foundation, and she had thrown herself into the Church. I admit now that her passing was a relief. She killed herself with guilt. It’s that simple. I used to look for deeper meanings, explanations, but that simple one is the best.”

  “How did you feel about it?” Shannon asks.

  “I didn’t feel anything about it for a long time,” Joe says. “I think I had used up all my feelings watching Caitlin’s decline and then demise. I think that was all the feelings I had. I avoided any leftover feelings by working, probably the same way that Colleen went looking for feelings in the Church. We both dealt with it differently. Luckily for me, setting up the Foundation and focusing on my business turned out to be positive things. Unluckily for Colleen, spending all that time embracing her guilt was not a positive thing.”

  Shannon turns him towards him. Takes his other hand in his.

  “Thanks for sharing that with me,” she says.

  She does not kiss him.

  She releases one hand, and then another.

  She turns her back and walks back down the lane from the cemetery, leaving him alone at their graves.