by J T Kalnay
The Topsail Accord
JT Kalnay
Published by jt Kalnay
Copyright 2011, JT Kalnay
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the story is based on experiences, real or imagined, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of my overactive imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.
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The Topsail Accord
Shannon
No-one would notice me. Not that man I saw jogging on the beach yesterday, and the day before. He didn’t notice me. Not even in this bathing suit that my sister insists is beautiful. Who would notice me? Maybe when I was younger, but not now as I approach forty and the first strands of grey appear in my hair and the first and second inevitable lines etch their history near my eyes. Who would notice me?
Not my husband. Well that’s not true. He notices me more now than he did when were married. He misses me and calls me and writes me love letters like he never did when we were married. He texts and emails. He drives by my lab and drives by my house. I have dropped my Facebook account because of his posts. I have changed my cell phone number and disconnected my landline. Soon I will be moving. Thank God he has never discovered my North Topsail cottage.
I do not want his attention. He made his decision, and I lived with it. Now that his third marriage is over I remain uninterested, even as his interest grows afresh. I know, like he does not, that he would throw me away again, as soon as possible, or as soon as convenient. As soon as he felt he could, as soon as someone else came along. Someone to watch over the children I never gave him, no matter how many doctors and treatments we tried.
No, no-one would notice me. Not the jogger, who is very fit, and very well-tanned, and thankfully not tattooed. He would never notice me, and neither would those children digging in the sand. I walk past them and their eyes do not meet mine. Like somehow they know I am not a mother; I will never be a mother. But their mother notices me, from behind her sunglasses and over her novel. She watches out of the corner of her eye, makes sure that I continue on past her children. She relaxes only when I am several yards down the shore, and moving further away. So at least there is someone who noticed me.
Joe
She is walking on the beach again, North Topsail Beach, at 7:15 in the morning.
I am jogging, like I do most every morning when my knees don’t hurt too badly. The sand is still cool underfoot, not yet burning hot as it will be later in the day. The sun is just a hand above the Atlantic, just barely above the pier on this Wednesday in late July. It is humid, but bearable. It is another in the endless progression of perfect beach mornings that stretch out before and behind me on my sublimely beautiful beach. That’s how I think of it, as my beach. Perhaps no-one can claim greater title to it, for perhaps no-one has spent so much time, toil, and love on this sand. Certainly no-one has spilled so much pain into this sand.
She was walking here yesterday, and the day before. By herself. In a light blue bathing suit with a loosely fitting gauzy white wrap that flows around her in the morning breeze. The outfit is perfect for her figure and for her tan. She is thin, toned. She must exercise a lot, or never eat, or both. She has long black hair. She is indescribably beautiful, though I suspect she has no idea about that.
She doesn’t notice me as I shuffle by. Just like she didn’t notice me yesterday, or the day before. She certainly didn’t notice me when I rode my mountain bike back and forth on the beach last night. Luckily I have reached that combination of age and weight and tiredness that makes me invisible to beautiful women and non-existent to girls, whether beautiful or plain. Not noticing me makes this walking vision like most of the other weekly renters. The locals, if we are visible at all, are local color, not real people. We are the servers, the shopkeepers, the policemen, the fishermen, the people who live here because of the renters. That’s how they see us. Like we exist only to serve them and should be thankful for their annual weekly visits. Which we are, they are important to our economy. And I am, because sometimes they buy my coffee and sometimes even come to my bed for a brief romance. But I don’t think this reclusive beauty is one of those.
Her walk is not purposeful. She walks like her mind is elsewhere, which can happen, especially here on this stretch of the barrier islands that line the North Carolina coast. I resist the temptation to stop and say good morning. I am unwilling to intrude on her time in this place, and wherever else she is. And I am unwilling to be ignored today.
So I will see her tomorrow morning, and a few more, and then her weekly rental will be up, and she will be just another woman I didn’t meet. Her week will be up, and another woman will take her place, in the house and on the beach, while I continue on alone, here on my barrier island home.
My jogging footsteps carry me north and east. It is just another mile to the pier, then I can turn around, and maybe catch sight of her again. I think she is renting the house beside the house with the green roof. Near the roped off turtle nest. Where they film that television show. She’s pretty enough to be one of the actresses. I wonder if she is an actress?
She might be renting the house beside the house with the green roof. If I speed up or slow down or stand in the waves to cool off I might be able to figure it out. But even if I figure it out, I know that I will do nothing about it. Even if knowing more about her makes the vision more concrete, she will still just be a vision.
Shannon
It is foggy, cool, and damp. I am cold in just my bathing suit and wrap. Mini-goose bumps adorn my exposed forearms. I consider going back to the house to get sweat pants or a sweat shirt, but then decide to stay the way I am.
Yes I am a creature of habit. I like things a certain way. I like my coffee in the morning and my one glass of Merlot at night. I like to research what lies beneath Ohio in the summers, and study and catalog the rocks from the digs and cores in the winters. I like to visit my Mom on Saturday, and to call my older sister on Tuesdays and Thursdays and to walk with her on Wednesdays and Fridays. Yes, I like things the way they are in my carefully reconstructed world.
So why am I out here on the beach earlier than normal today? Why did I wake up earlier, and nervously have two cups of coffee instead of one, and then come out to the beach at least a half an hour earlier than normal? Is it the fog? Is it the intense quietness of the whispering waves and the promise of anonymity on the foggy beach? Am I trying to not be noticed? You would practically have to run into someone out here to see them. Luckily I can’t get lost. Even in the fog I can tell the difference between beach and water, and can find my way uphill to the dunes and my house behind.
Is it something else? Am I trying to catch a glimpse of that jogger? A man? Not likely. Not that he would notice me anyway. And not that I would want him to. Even with my freshly painted deep red toenails. There is a little spa just across the bridge. It caters to renters, their daughters, and their nieces. They advertise special beach pedicures and will paint little dolphins on your toes. Or pelicans. My nieces demanded that we go. And my older sister can deny them nothing, perhaps because my younger sister, their mother, can provide them nothing other than heartache. So we went, and now here I am with crazy red toenails screaming out “look at me” in the fog, in the quiet, on the beach on North Topsail Island.
We used to go to Nags Head. For years we went to Nags Head. But that was my husband’s place. We started to go there after we were married. His family had been going there for years. So we started to go there. And it was lovely, for a while. The water was almost always too cold to go in past your
toes, but that didn’t matter so much because so few of the family went in the ocean. They would swim in the pool at the beach house. I always thought that was crazy, and excessive. But after feeling the frequently icy water brought south by the Labrador Current, and its insistent undertows and rip currents, I understood why there was a pool. Regardless, I instantly came to love walking on the beaches on the barrier islands in the Atlantic. The Pacific is not the same, nor the Mediterranean. There is something special and different about an Atlantic sunrise on a barrier island. Something about the sun rising in the east, from Europe, after it has crossed the Atlantic. Maybe it brings the scent of fresh croissants from France, or wine from Italy, or sandalwood from Africa. Maybe the ever present onshore morning breeze and the equally never clear eastern horizon make the sunrise slower, so that it can be savored.
So now I come to North Topsail. The water is warmer with the Gulf Stream dominating the Labrador Current here below Cape Hatteras and below Cape Lookout. Topsail is closer to my northern Ohio home, even though it is farther south than Nags Head. It is south of Hatteras, but not so far east out into the ocean. Still in North Carolina, but far enough away from Nags Head.
Over the years “my” house has grown from being a rental just large enough for me and my Mom to being one of three that I own. This one is large enough for my older sister and her husband, and sometimes my other sister but always her collection of children, and my brother, and his “friend”, and my other brother and his wife and their children. Yes I have gone from renting a cozy two bedroom cottage to owning the largest house on the island, an eight bedroom beachfront mansion that even though it rises out of the dunes and towers over the landscape is still dwarfed by the ocean. It is gaudy, and I am not. But I don’t care, not in July. Because for a month each summer this is my home and this is our home, all of ours, together. And sometimes when the January snow and cold is just too much in Ohio I can slip down here for a few days and see, feel, and taste the salt air on a beach that I usually have to myself. It is my home away from home, it is my other home, my Atlantic home.
Home is everything to me. Home is where my family is. This family. Not my ex-husband’s. He never got that about me. Or maybe he just never accepted that about me. That it was always a package deal. That he was joining a strong intact group from which he should not attempt to extract me. Why couldn’t he join? Why was he always trying to pull me away? To always have me just for himself, or to force me into his tribe? Why couldn’t he have had friends to go off and do things with? Like my wife’s brother, who will go ‘out west’ for a week or to the golf course for an afternoon without needing or even wanting my sister to go. Why couldn’t he have just left me be the way I was?
From this palace on the beach I set out each morning to walk the firm sand near the water. But this morning I leave a little earlier, with my red toe nails, which even the nieces have forgotten about since yesterday, and which no-one will notice. I leave a little earlier, and plan to walk a little longer, going back and forth in front of my house, first in the direction from which the jogger appeared yesterday, and then in the other, towards the house with the green roof where the television stars visit. Covering the same two hundred yards over and over, so that if he sees me, if he notices me, he will see my house. It stands alone on this part of the island. I purchased the empty lots on either side of the house when I bought the house. A nature preserve guards the eastern flank, and the island is too narrow on the western flank to admit any more building. It will never be overbuilt like Nags Head. Like me, it will retain some peace, some solitude, some distance and some quiet moments, even when the renters and families are here.
Nearby there is a tiny public beach access, which is rarely used, because there are only four parking spots, and during “my” weeks, we surreptitiously park a few of our cars there so no-one else accesses “my” beach. Bill the local policeman knows I do it and he leaves me be about it. He’s a good man. If I were a few years younger, or he a few years older… but not really, not now. He’s good to me, checks on all my houses all year. He is a good cop, a real addition to the community.
If the jogger notices me this morning, he will have to assume that I am renting the big house, my house, the three story sand colored house that has morning views out over the Atlantic and evening views over the bay and the Intracoastal and the brackish marshes where I love to paddle. It is the only house for hundreds of yards in either direction, and since I am carrying my coffee mug with me he will have to know that I am staying here. Not that it would matter, because he won’t see me, and he won’t see the coffee cup. He won’t see my red toe nails, and he won’t think about my house. And that is alright. Because it will be August soon and in August I am going back to Ohio, back to my lab, to my searching, to my rocks, and to my data. To my other home, where the entire family is nearby, but in their own houses. So it is okay that he won’t see me.
Joe
My footfalls are soundless in the North Topsail sand this morning. It is completely fogged in. Even the tiny rhythmic sounds of my middle aged shuffle are muffled into the ripples that have replaced the waves and into the fog that hovers over the serene Atlantic. It’s before seven and there is not even a hint of a breeze. It is cooler this morning after the overnight rains. Cooler than it has been in a while. I am running faster because it is cooler and the sweat that is normally pouring out of me at this point in my run is supplemented with the cool almost clinging wetness of the fog.
It is going to be hot today, like every day in July, and there will have to be afternoon thunderstorms as the heat chases away this morning chill. I am completely prepared with the weather forecast, just in case I run into someone and need to have something to say. It is convenient to always have something to say about the weather, that way I never have to say anything.
I woke up earlier this morning, and thus am out earlier for my morning run. Morning jog is more like it. Back in the day it was a morning run, but now it is a jog. Time, tide, and arthritis waits for no man, and I am no exception. Through my 49 years here on the Island I have been a boy, then a man, and am now an older man, broken in parts, healthy in others, but still an islander. I have loved here, been loved, and I have lost here. It is my home. Though I left it for a few years for college, and for Colleen, I will never leave it, never again.
I wonder if I will see her, the walker, in her light blue bathing suit and the gossamer wrap. I’d have to be practically right on top of her to see her in this fog. I hope I don’t startle anyone on the beach. Sometimes the renters get startled, with their heads down looking for shells, or with their minds and eyes out to sea, watching the rise and fall of the grey or blue or green water and the flashes of sunrise on the horizon and on the waves. I don’t like to spook them. They are here to relax and to unwind, not to be bothered. I am likely safe though, because the beach is deserted this morning because of the fog, and I am earlier. Why earlier? Am I trying to avoid her?
I am near where I saw her yesterday. But I am earlier. So unless she has varied her routine, I won’t see her here. And she might be dressed differently, because it is cooler. Would I recognize her again? Yes. Absolutely! I think I would recognize her anywhere. She is that striking. Would she recognize me? No. I am just another local jogger on the beach before work. We are invisible to the renters, except those who are looking to have a little flirtation, or even an affair, during their week, or to those who imagine us all to be Nicholas Sparks like characters, or even Nick himself. He is Nick to us locals, especially when he buys beers for us at the Green Turtle or rides bikes with us through the trails cut near the fences of Camp Lejeune.
Yes when they are looking for “love” in this most beautiful place, then we are visible, at least for a day or three until their rental is up, when the promises of “I’ll call you”, or “I will see you next summer” are either made or not made, and almost never kept. I slow down then start to walk when I reach the point where I saw her. I do some pushups in the sand, loo
king first east up the coast, and then west down the coast. The fog and condensation make the sand cool to my touch, cool where the sweat and fog-water run off my nose and ears and chest.
Maybe I am not trying to avoid her. Maybe I am trying to see her. But there is no-one else here on the beach. I am alone. Not like I am in January on this beach when I will go seven or ten days without seeing anyone on the beach, or just a solitary walker huddled inside wind gear. But alone never the less. With the weather report ready in my head, just in case.
January. In January on this beach, in this place, I can be alone, or with my closest friends and family. I can think or not think, run or not run, bike or not bike, see or not see. January, my time alone on the beach, where days go by without seeing another person, whether there is anyone here or not, and where the summer humidity does not soften the Atlantic sunrise. Where the persistent eastern winds fetch over hundreds of miles to make swells instead of sea. Where the January cold and clear is a lens that focuses the morning light to where you can see individual grains of sand.
Shannon
I am older now. Well beyond the days when men and women fall in love. Falling in love is for kids, for younger people. So there is no reason to think it will happen again for me. And no reason to think I want it to. I love my nieces, and I love my family. I had a husband and it didn’t work out, because he didn’t love me, or didn’t understand my love, or for some other reason I don’t know. It had to be more than just that he wanted a family and that we could not have that family naturally. We could have adopted, could have done many things. So I try not to think about it so much anymore. In fact, I only think about it now when someone else brings it up, or when he sends me yet another email or text or letter. He needs to learn to leave me alone. If he had learned to leave me alone while we were married, then we might still be married. I loved him, but I wanted to be left alone. Well, left alone to be with my family, or with my lab, or out here on the beach. He never got that. I like being alone, for long periods of time, weeks, even months. I like to think things all the way through, and that takes time.
