Lighthouse

"Who are only undefeated
   Because we have gone on trying;"
	--T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages

Time is viscous, like motor oil or petroleum jelly, a real sticky bog. It slows you down, makes your limbs tense up and tire, and eventually you sink. You just stick and whither up and crack. Maybe, if you're lucky, something comes along to unseat you, and you can drift back. That usually takes time, though. My wife left yesterday on a plane for Ireland; I saw her off, waved, hopefully a bit sadly, and returned to what was once our apartment. Today, I'm driving to Rockport, Massachusetts along Route 495. It's five thirty in the morning. I'm alone. I am attempting to retreat against the flow, to release myself from the sensation of sticking.
My name is Kyle Matthews. Right now I'm the closest to truly screwed up I've ever been, and I've been close. Through all the years of study I've subjected my brain to, through all of the literary theory that I was said to be disenfranchised from, through all of the literature classes that destroyed my love of literature, through the hit and miss that masqueraded as my marriage, this is the end result: sappy, romantic gestures; a throwing of oneself against the piers, a dashing against the rocks and thankful stupor.
Sure, the coast is nice in March. It's like a birthday present, right? I mean, April first is my birthday. Consider it pampering. Yeah, right. She left me one week before my thirtieth birthday to dance, to follow her art, to drink stout with some Irish choreographer who gets off on leather and artsy Americans. I'm scrambling to salvage something, anything, to put a piece together where it belongs, to make some viable connection to the past ten years, to validate that it still happened, that it still meant something. Right now that's the best I can hope for. Right now that's more than I can hope for.
I teach. I teach English literature, writing theory, sexual innuendo, political theory, colonialism, post-colonialism, Caribbean literature, Native American literature, African literature, Asian literature, Indo-European language development, Feminist literature, and, in my spare time, the dynamics of relationships and failing marriages. I plan to offer a course in the fall called "How to Let Your Decade Long Marriage Decline to the Point of Departure." I have to work on the title, though, a bit too long. I whine sometimes. I expect too much sometimes. I like my job, to a degree, sometimes. Today I could teach my graduate students the concept of fragmentation and its implications on history, my history. Lately, though, I’ve been theorizing on the dynamics of stickiness. Thank god I have sick time.
I'm rarely wrong about things. Nobody stumps me at Jeopardy. I can name every monarch in the long line of English kings and queens, can tell you about the Industrial Revolution, Naturalism, and the Corn Revolt. Caitlin once got me with a stumper about ballet, but you would expect her to know that crap; it was her specialty. I have a particular affinity for nineteenth century novels, and, if George Eliot was sipping a gin and tonic at the University Club after graduation, I would more than likely hit on her. Maybe I'd score. Maybe I'd go home alone. Maybe I'd try again.
I'm five eleven and one half, one hundred and seventy lean pounds, am horrible at basketball and sports in general, even golf, and can't help but feel embarrassed in some masculine, patriarchal, white guy way about that. Brown eyes. Brown hair, bangs, no gray yet. Average build, although I've lost that elasticity that once inhabited my belt line, and that too is getting stuck in the muck. I'm no great lover. My penis is average length and width, I guess. None of my five partners has complained, but I wouldn't vouch for their honesty in all cases. I have no children.
Despite the appearance of smugness, I am simply listing myself. It is one of the basic tenets of any course I teach at the State University: list the traits as they appear, then sort them out. In a sort of post-deconstructive way the listing is reassuring, almost comforting. It validates me as the author of this text. It allows me to inventory the fragments of my life, to try to pull together a whole from this mess. At the very least the construction and deconstruction of my life allows me to pass the time as I drive. Is this myopic? Narcissistic? Who cares? It's what I do.
Caitlin and I honeymooned in Rockport. The Cape Ann Bed and Breakfast on Pleasant Street. It is now my destination. To be exact, I am planning on returning to the room that was our nuptial suite. Sort of like returning to the scene of the crime to retrace the bloody footprints. I suppose that it's weird to be doing this, to return, but, really, where else was there to go? Boston looms ahead to the right like a specter on the horizon, the sun peeking out from behind the squat hills that flank the road. My Nissan hums along, constant companion that it is. A good car is like that, you know? Keep it oiled and gassed and it will take you to the ocean. My wife, now, was different. Oil and gas her and she runs off with Michael Fucking O'Brien and the dancing Irishmen. The essential difference between women and cars, there. The cars don't leave you for better drivers.
The crack about the dancing Irishmen was uncalled for; I would be soundly criticized for my lack of sensitivity if I muttered that crack in a faculty meeting. I would be written up, reprimanded, and stigmatized for my thoughtless attack on the innocent ethnic group that simply wanted to coexist with me. My articles would be pored over for innate references to anti-Celtic sentiment, and, if one could be found, that too would be published. My thesis, scholarly dinosaur that it is, would most decidedly be used as proof of my long standing dislike of Irish authors, as it consists of a look at George Eliot and Jane Austen, decidedly not Irish authors. In the end, I would fall to the Thought Police, confess my sins, scream a bloody "No Micks Need Write" at my Disciplinary Meeting, be relegated to teaching five sections of Freshman Composition, and be treated as the utter fool that I really am. Justice, in most cases, is blind.
Of course that would never happen, I'm much too careful. As I round the curve of 495 and head north up 128 I begin to suspect that this maybe wasn't my most brilliant decision.

At seven a.m. I am through the brunt of the drive. Behind me are Swampscott, Lynn, Salem, and Gloucester. Ahead, just beyond the rotary is Rockport. I haven't really thought much about this area for some time. Sure, Caitlin and I talked about the honeymoon from time to time, but that was really just couple talk. It was the "do you remember that restaurant we ate at on our honeymoon" talk, or "do you remember the time we went skinny dipping at Front Street beach and you flashed that family?" type of talk. It was what we did, and it only lasted a few months after the event. The talk slipped away behind our careers, and we lost it.
Caitlin jumped into dancing with a fervor. She took classes at the University, riding a free tuition waver because of my assistantship. She swam in the pool, danced in the shows, and graduated with an M.F.A in Dance. I finished a Ph.D. in Nineteenth Century Literature, settled into a cozy adjuncting gig which, after three years, became tenure-track, and we were set. The problem was that she got sick of dancing in tiny, chicken shit recitals. I got tired of her complaining. We both just collapsed in on our own lives, shut the other person out. Ours was a quiet house. In the end, I suppose I should have seen it coming.
Mike O'Brien was a visiting instructor of dance who flipped into our lives just after our fifth anniversary. He came from the University of Chicago, and carried a lecherous reputation to accompany his major accomplishments. He had choreographed on Broadway, won a couple of Tony's, and had been floating rumors about starting a traveling review of modern dance. I was somewhat suspicious of his intentions when he selected Caitlin to be the lead in his production of "Celtic Oaks" that fall. I mean, she was good, but not that good.
The fall was a blur, really. She was caught up in rehearsals, I got caught up in an article, ironically enough, on the love triangle in Adam Bede. She spent a lot of time in the theater, I was in the library. I'm not really sure that she slept with him then, although I have my suspicions. I never pinned her down to it. Like Adam, I was oblivious.
At the performance she glowed. The press foamed at the mouth to talk with her. There was even talk of Broadway, with O'Brien's help. I couldn't help feel a bit jealous. I was no stranger to the rejection letters that had been gracing my door.
As I pull into the Rockport town limits, a sharp left off the highway past rows of white clapboard Victorian homes, the anger of it all suddenly wells up inside of me. I can't help but feel the heat, see red. After all, I'm the hurt party here. I jam the Nissan into fourth gear as I round the sweep of Park Street, disregarding the stop sign and befuddled couple out for an early morning jog. Through the light fog that floats over Rockport I am in good shape to become a motorized murderer, vehicular manslaughter clamoring in my mind. As I careen through town, though, I see no other victims.
The penultimate street on my journey, Dove Street, yawns black and slick, like a gash, as the ocean fog swirls. From above, sweeping down the hill like an archangel, is a pair of headlights. The twin beams belong to a mini-van, a Dodge or Plymouth ( I always mix them up). The thought hits me that it would make for a spectacular view, the two vehicles colliding on an early Friday morning, right in front of the old Edgar Allen Poe Inn, beside the foot path to Back Street Wharf, sight of innumerable deep sea fishing excursions and seedy, greasy, fried fish dinners at Alta Joe's Fish Restaurant. The crash would reverberate over the moaning surf, the flames would cascade down the street, perhaps even engulfing the entrance to Bearskin Neck, the once fishing village now shopping emporium perched on a rocky, quarter mile slip of land jutting out into the Atlantic. The carnage would be spectacular, a tribute to the chaos theory that is currently my life, and I would be through. Message signed, sent, and delivered.
Of course, the thought of the family that most certainly inhabits the mini-van pops into mind, the harried parents and two jawing toddlers excited about a day at he beach, unaware of the harbinger of death that floats a mere three seconds due east of them, and I have to let the van pass, unmolested. I can stomach the loss of my own life, but not others, not innocents. That's the problem with suicide bombers. The cause just doesn't quite justify the act. I'm not that righteous; she only left me, she didn't kill me. I downshift and ease up the hill.
Pleasant Street is just as I remember it, the rows of Victorian houses pinned neatly into their postage stamp yards by the wrought iron, spear headed fences. The fog hasn't stretched up this far, and has contented itself with pooling slightly lower on the hill, as if the ocean's fog is somewhat like the ocean's tide, and the high ebb has reached its peak. It reeks of Melvillian simplicity. Give me an ocean, a whale, and you've got a party. The B & B is slightly half the way down the street, just above School Street. Its high ceilinged porch and enormous red front door stand in the brilliant, glaring morning sun as I pull into the parking lot.
At seven-forty five a.m. I'm not sure anyone will be up to greet me, but I'm not really here for the company. As I gain the porch, it is somewhat calming to look down the hill, past the homes and Inns, past the Episcopal church's enormous bell tower, past the shops of Bearskin Neck, to the ocean. The mist is over the water, over Bearskin Neck, over Dove Street, but is evacuating quickly to sea, soon to be burnt off. It will be hot today. The view would have been perfect, except that I am reminded that across the ocean, in just the direction I am looking, my wife is dawdling with a transplanted Chicagoian. It's funny how quickly that thought could change my mood.
The porch is just as I remembered it: wicker settee with ancient white wicker rockers, hanging baskets brimming with red, purple, and pink impatiens and phlox, side tables of deep mahogany laced with moisture rings from errant glasses left to bake in the afternoon sun. The trellis at the far end of the porch is covered with creeping rose vines, in the summer a deep red, but now a deep salt encrusted green. A black and white cat lazes on the railing, eyes me as I approach, and stretches its back in an arc of anticipated contact. Its claws dig into the railing as I rub my hand down its soft spine. After two strokes it tenses, finished with my attention, jumps down into the yard and moves noiselessly around to the back of the house.
The sun hits the door in full brightness, invigorating last year's paint which, although still very sharp and neat, has begun to fade. The New England winters are fierce; nothing new can stay. Caitlin and I had spent one whole evening of our honeymoon talking to the Inn Keeper, Dennis Lewes, about the horrible winter of 1978, how the hurricane had come in and slammed the Motif #1, how Bearskin Neck had flooded. It was Dennis who had said the line about nothing new, all shiny and warm, and a bit philosophic, after half a bottle of cognac. He had staggered off to bed, and Caitlin and I had remained on the porch, watching the lights, drinking our wine, and, later, when all of the guests were present, accounted for, and snug in their rooms, making love on the wicker settee. It seemed symbolic to throw our love making in the face of the Atlantic, that equalizing and destructive force. You can do things like that in arrogance and passion. No one in their right mind does that type of thing if they think about it . I'm past romantic gestures, now. I ring the bell and walk in through the unlocked door.

The hall is fettered with shadow as I tip toe in, the porthole windows casting strong beams of morning light against the bottom stairs. To the right, in a deeply recessed alcove, a radiator sits littered with brochures. On the back of one is the smiling face of Dennis Lewes, looking like a slightly older version of Richard Dreyfuss, graying and receding hair not at all impairing his million dollar smile. It is nice to see he has weathered the winters well. The rest of the hall is awash in the deep greens and reds of the rug, a tastefully ornate Victorian style of spears and swirls. A coat rack sits empty at the entrance to the dining room, where the animated voices of lodgers can be heard in hushed undertones. It is the standard scene in many B&B's, a simple case of etiquette, where the first early risers politely attempt to control their ebullience for the upcoming day by choking their words back with continental breakfasts of imported coffee and home made pastry. It is from such this constrained and joyous setting that the voice of Dennis Lewes emanates.
Dennis, as I mentioned, looks like Richard Dreyfuss. He is the same height and build, although Caitlin and I disagreed on this point, she saying he was a bit thinner and I going the opposite because I really felt it, and not for the sake of argument. His hair is thinner and grayer, but, other than the few lines around his eyes when he smiles, he is the same man. "Good morning," he says to me, raising the carafe of tar black coffee he has been pouring into the anxious mug of a portly guest, "can I help you?"
I tell him who I am, although he is obviously struggling to remember. "I was here ten years ago, with my wife, on our honeymoon. Her name was Caitlin. We stayed in Room One."
"Oh, yes," he says, his smiling eyes brightening at the appearance of remembrance, "a nice looking couple you were, at that. Looking for a room?" He is the consummate salesman, for I remember clearly watching the same light appear in his eyes when Caitlin and I were breakfasting in the very seats occupied by the slightly overweight couple before me. He confessed later, high on brandy, that he had not remembered the couple that had sashayed into this dining room, but that good acting was the key to successful business. Caitlin had agreed, and they had gone off on a tangent about the theater, we finding out that Dennis was a theater major in college, and was active in the local community theater group.
"Yes. Room One, if it's available. I'll only need it one night." He pauses, eyes tracing the cornice work along the ceiling, deep in thought for the briefest second, and then hits me with that eye brightening gleam.
"Well, the Sandlers are leaving today, and they're in Room One. They're just finishing up a two week honeymoon with us! I have new lodgers coming in tomorrow. You can have it if you can vacate tomorrow. It won't be ready until three this afternoon, though."
"That's fine, " I say, happy to have gotten in, "I have some things to do in town, anyway."
"Great! We'll see you two this afternoon, then."
"I'm alone, thanks," I mutter, and then, as if to wipe the smiles from the newlywed Sandler's full and butter greased cheeks, "She left me to screw an Irish dancer. Go figure. Don't put too much faith in those vows." As I cavalierly grab a piece of banana bread, I gauge their hushed reactions. It has the appropriate effect, for Sandler's face goes blank, and the brand new Mrs. Sandler drops her corn muffin into her coffee, splattering droplets along the white linen tablecloth. Dennis tries to apologize, to them or me, the gleam in his eyes seamlessly transferred to the eyes of worried concern, but I turn and leave. As I make the hall's buttery warmth, it dawns on me that that was a pretty crappy thing to say to honeymooners. Oh well, I don't need their pity. Best they get a reality check before they go off to reinvent the paradigmatic happy marriage, anyway. Its been deconstructed by millions before Caitlin and I took our crack at it, and, although we did a pretty neat job of breaking it apart, it certainly won't be the last time it will be broken.
Lewes is self consciously polite as he takes my name and charge card for the reservation. He doesn't offer much in conversation, and the Sandlers have resumed their post-breakfast muffled discussion in the dining room. They have had enough of the lunatic that has invaded their breakfast table and vaguely threatened their newly found syncopation. They'll probably decide to clear me from their mental palates by skirting out of town as soon as possible. No matter. I have to chuckle as I step out onto the porch, Lewes shuffling back into the kitchen for a fresh pot of coffee, and the fully realized morning hits me square in the face.
I have decided to go shopping.

Bearskin Neck awakens early, rising with the tide. Some early visitors wander the thin streets, looking at the closed shops. I'm one of them. They're mostly geriatric, retirees out for a major power walk before breakfast. After all, it's nearly eight. The shops apparently aren't on season yet, but some of the artisans are strolling in, tool kits and paints tucked under arms. One of the carpenters staggers by lugging a new chair. I give him a hand with his door. He eyes me suspiciously, but utters "Thanks," nonetheless. The March sun is blasting against the ocean. It is pristine, shiny, and utterly lonely.
Tom Sherves waddles down the street, canvases and paint box balanced precariously against ribs and arms and belly. In ten years he hasn't really changed a bit. He doesn't look the part of the watercolor artist responsible for the brightly colored acrylics and somber watercolors dangling in his shop window. He has the gait and glint of a children's book illustrator, with his shock of white hair and bulging gut. His blue and green crew neck sweater seems a bit small, but his faded blue jeans and worn deck shoes all add to the overall image.
As he approaches the door, I watch him struggle with his keys from my vantage point on the bench overlooking Front Street bay. The Motif #1, lobster shack extraordinaire, gleams in the morning sun. The Rockport Apple, a tour sloop, sighs against its mooring. Sea birds circle overhead. Shouts emanate from the Lobster Mart, and a bloody aproned man dumps a bucket of shrimp over a tub of crushed ice. Further up the street, the door to the fudge shop is opened, a sales woman places a mannequined T-shirt emblazoned with the Rockport Fudge slogan in the doorway. The morning is just loaded with the promise of the sale. I am here to satisfy it.
Tom has the door open by the time I get up and stretch. He, as I mentioned, is exactly like I remember him. Caitlin and I visited Tom on the second day of our honeymoon, and she fell deeply, extravagantly in love with a small pair of water colors he did of a lighthouse overlooking the ocean. One tiny painting was of the lighthouse, done up in bright red and blue, the second an ocean scene stretched out in green, blue, and maroon. It was rather pretty. It was rather costly. The eighty dollars per painting was a bit steep, but Tom explained that he was doing well and in high demand. They were new paintings, as well, and you had to pay for an original. At least that was what Caitlin explained to me as we wandered away that day. You had to pay for the newness of it, the experience. We debated those paintings for a week, each day making a pilgrimage out the Sherves' Paint Shack to ogle the pair in the window. Each day we discussed our poverty. In the end, on our last day, we bought one of the paintings, leaving it up to the fates to return the second to its mate. Here I am.
As I approach the shop I glance in the window. He still hangs pictures but, to my chagrin, the lighthouse combo is absent from view. It was ten years ago. Other paintings play out across the glass canvas, though. Briar roses and fishing boats, the Motif #1 awash in sunlight, couples dancing on a moonlit beach: Tom has taken a romantic turn in his decade of painting. Caitlin would have loved these.
The inside of the shop is cluttered. Sherves' perch is a high stool situated in front of a big bay window overlooking the greasy, fishing boat cluttered bay. A paint spattered easel blocks his view of one half of the small shop, and rows of paints, jars, rags, and a decrepit Mr. Coffee line the shelf to the painter's right. It is a set up for an artist. The shop is peppered with sporadically hung paintings, some huge, some tiny, all revolving around the local, tourist theme. In the center, a rack of postcards showing great European paintings separates the room into its two sides, a buffer between sides of Tom's apparent sell out. I wonder if Caitlin will send me a postcard from Ireland. Hey Ky, doing fine, pursuing my dream, having great sex, glad you're not here- Cait.
I am close to leaving when Sherves notices me. "Can I help you?" he mutters, the sleep still in his voice. He has been making coffee, his back to me, and he appears somewhat startled at the prospect of handling a customer before the coffee brews.
"Yes," I say, intent on trying to find the name of the painting in the caverns of my memory, "I'm looking for a watercolor of the ocean. It was done ten years ago. My wife and I bought its twin, a lighthouse, when we were here on our honeymoon."
He bustles around the shop as I'm talking, mumbling incoherently to himself. "You'll have to forgive me, but I was very much into pairs at that stage of my career. In the late eighties I must have painted hundreds of lighthouse combos. I don't have any left, not even prints, but I do have some of these ocean scenes you might want to match for your wife." He points to a section of wall containing maybe fifteen miniature paintings. They are carefully positioned to give the effect of combination, the colors playing off of each other in a swirl of coherent cacophony. I am delighted that they appear to be postmodern efforts at describing the old archetype of Neptune's home.
I don't mention this to Tom, though, and he seems disoriented at my silence. Normally patrons are all too willing to chat; I, too, once was willing to chat, when I had my wife with me. She was so open, engaging. The painting we did buy was only purchased after a series of twenty minute discussions, one every time we entered the shop to ogle the merchandise, about the local fishing history and Sherves' attachment to it. On the first encounter Cait found out he was retired from the local high school, an art teacher making good on his dream of commercial success. The second time he described a locals only beach that would be perfect, and turned out to be, for honeymooners. The third, and final, was on Tom's attachment to the Motif #1, that he had helped in the 1979 rebuilding of the shack after the horrible winter. Caitlin glowed as he went on and on, soaking in the local color, reveling in the gem she had unearthed from the rural New England soil. She was able to connect. "Was your wife a red head?" Sherves asks, wiping his glasses with a handkerchief.
I smile. "No, a blonde. Short, a dancer. Cute smile." I'm not sure why I throw the last piece of the inventory in. I, of course, could go deeper. I could say that her eyes were hazel, that she liked to wear her hair in a ponytail until O'Brien made her cut it short in a Page Boy for his play, and that she adored making love in public, just out of the view of others, yet hovering on the edge, the margins of perception. I could say that before she became a vegetarian she really liked a good steak, that she pretended to like sea food so as to fit in in small coastal tourist spots, that she secretly stuffed pieces of shrimp into her napkin to feed the village strays, and that, on the night we purchased a Tom Sherves original we ran back to the inn, replaced the house oil of a whaling scene with the tiny lighthouse painting, and pretended that we were screwing in our very own bedroom. I could say this all. I don't. "It was a long time ago."
"Yes it was. I could have swore I remembered you with a red head in here. I guess I shouldn't say that too loud, eh? I wouldn't want to land you in hot water." He smiles as he says this, looking around for my better half.
"Don't worry, she'd have to have pretty good ears to hear you where she is." I say this with no trace of bitterness or irony, although Sherves picks up on one of these and watches his next step.
"Oh, she's not here?" he mutters.
I'm tempted to say that she's dead, just to see him flail around, but that would be almost as harsh as earlier causing the greased up Sandlers to choke on their corn muffins. I'm not really that bad a guy. I let him off with honesty. "She's in Ireland rehearsing a show. I figured I would try to complete our set." Pseudo-honesty, at least.
"How nice," he's relieved that I don't lance him with the bitterness he probably can sense just underneath my skin, and gratefully accepts the opening to scurry back to his easel, "Just let me know when you're ready."
The thought strikes me that I don't really know why I am here, that all of the effort could simply be a running away from the hurt. It doesn't take a psychologist to see that a man who loses his wife is going to be pretty screwed up, but to return to the scene of his honeymoon? It sounds like I'm just beating myself up. Or is there more?
Out Tom Sherves' side window a sea gull has lighted, clawing the rope entwined stump of one of the dock piers. It sits only a moment, lets fly with a call to its associates, and, just as fast, leaves, as if dropping below the pier to the sea. It is a sign.
The painting I choose is the most subdued of the bunch I can find in the PostModernist wing of the shop. It is fractured, full of overlapping colors, white spaces, and brush strokes. It is not a watercolor, but an acrylic. Abrupt, glossy, glaring. It matches our life together now. It's also cheap, a mere twenty dollars. Tom must not be in such demand now. He smiles as he cashes me out, happy to make a sale just as the Mr. Coffee finishes, unaware of the true meaning behind this reunion. He doesn't even remember me.
It's nine thirty by the time I get to the beach.

Rocky Point beach is a small slip of sand sandwiched behind a row of condos and rental vacation houses. Immense sand dunes shelter the beach from view, a tiny planked path notched between two of the bigger sand hills marks its only entrance and exit. Fingers of piled rock extend out into the ocean marking the beach’s boundaries in the sea. These eventually slip below the hard gray surface, and the horizon becomes unbroken. This was the honeymoon beach that ten years ago my wife and I dubbed make out beach. It's funny, sitting on the sand this morning, to think that this secluded spot, the perfect spot for an open air romp, was actually too subtle for Caitlin. It was too sheltered and private, as if it had been set up for just that purpose. She preferred the Inn porch.
We made it to this beach on our second day, just at sunset. We had staggered out after dinner at the E.A. Poe, shining with too much wine, and walked the mile to the beach hand in hand. Weaving through the tiny village's side streets, eyeing the picket fences and rose gardens, soaking in the late afternoon breeze from the ocean, it all made sense. We were full of hope and promise. We sat and watched the sky go black that night, watched like voyeurs as the couples rolled up underneath each other, spied on the stars and the moon. That night we slipped back to Pleasant Street like thieves, thrilled with our secret find.
We went back every night, never to have sex but just to soak in the essence of the place, to feel the gritty presence of sand and water and margin. Now I'm here in March of the year she has left me, a second Tom Sherves original in tow, in the harsh, angled sunlight, searching for a connection.
Why am I here? What has brought me to this place? Caitlin? It must be Caitlin, after all. She is the impetus for this journey. She sat in the passenger side of the Nissan yesterday, crying, dabbing at her eyes with a wadded up tissue, as the planes roared over us. "You don't have to go," I muttered, "Things will work out here." I think that's the crap I said. I mean, she's leaving me, and all I can say is things will work out! It's almost as if I don't deserve her, because I didn't have the balls to call her back. I just watched her walk through the terminal doors, her tiny frame hunched over by the enormous suitcase that she was dragging behind her, our suitcase. I have to give her credit, though it still makes no sense to me. She followed her dream, followed it right to another country. I'm sitting on an empty beach trying to put it all together. I can almost feel the vicious, sticking sensation of time locking me in place.
In what seems like a flash it begins. Behind the backdrop of the rolling tide and incessant sea gulls something begins to rise in me, unidentifiable just yet, but there. It's like the kernel of an idea, a bit of a connection, the hair length section of connected synapse trying to entwine a coherent thought. Through my murky, tired mind, it feels like anger.
Yes, anger. And now it takes a form, infantile, shifting, plasmic. The first face is O'Brien's. It burns behind my retinas, dances out in front of the sun, and then fades. Lewes pops up, smirking behind his coffee carafe, as do the obese, slick Sandlers. They just giggle as they hunch together, a bloated union. Tom Sherves comes next, the missing companion watercolor in his hand. He is grinning, motioning me out to the sea. Then he is gone. Then they are all gone, and Caitlin appears. It's just her face, light, indefinable, but present. And then she, too, fades. I'm digging into the sand, scooping mounds of the stuff, trying to squeeze it into glass. Little trenches form in the spaces where my hands work. My eyes itch with water and sand.
I teach this stuff, right? The stuff of literature, the human comedy, the human drama. I can tell you how Dorothea felt when Ladislaw left, can talk for hours about Adam and Hetty and Dinah, but I can't figure it out myself. I can't deconstruct the texts of my own life, put them into focus, sharpen them. And it pisses me off.
I remember then, the image slashing into my consciousness with the speed of a razor, a clue to this all. Only a clue, certainly not a reason, but a clue that helps shed some light on why I am here. She was packing; must have been Sunday night, then. She was sobbing, letting it all well up from her abdomen in these huge, wracking sobs. She was tossing a Guess sweatshirt, pink, frayed, into the case, and I was sipping a cup of coffee at the beaten down desk in our bedroom that I use for a study.
I was grading papers, a series of essays on Austen, and really enjoying the sharpness of the responses I was levying against my smart ass graduate students. I had just finished Joel Chandler's illiterate look at Pride and Prejudice when I heard the scraping. I turned to find Cait perched on a chair by the far wall, the chair tilting, her small fingers wrapped around the dusty frame of our one, true Tom Sherves original watercolor. The lighthouse shimmered in the bedroom's half light, and, for a split second, they were framed there above the bed. Cait pinned at an impossible angle, defying gravity as she hung out over the bed, the painting resisting the pull of its owner, the one who lusted for it, pined over it, on those sticky days now a decade ago.
And then it let loose. The frame splintered under Cait's weight, breaking off and sending toothpick sized shards along our quilt. She dropped like a stone, straight down, onto the bed. She seemed to be human, then, a real thing, spawled out on the mattress and trying to recover. She was up in an instant, grace recovered, veneer intact, and placing the damaged painting in her case. A large piece of the painting, the part with the lighthouse’s light, was next to her on the bed. I didn’t move or offer to get it; I just pointed. She looked from the piece to me, then placed it in her bag. Then she started crying again, only now she was really crying, letting it all out. She looked at me, water in streaks down her face, for an instant.
I hesitated. I paused as I rose to look at her, study the face, the eyes, the stained little cheeks. In an instant the hurt, hope, disappointment, joy, pain coalesced in her face, played itself out on the screen of her eyes. I knew I wasn't supposed to be there. I stopped.
She looked sort of glad that I didn't move, then. She spun, wiping her eyes, and resumed the task of loading her life into a beaten and ripped suitcase, the case we had shared ten years ago on our honeymoon. And I had sat back down. Life resumed.
The beach has gotten chilly, the wind whipping itself up as I've sat here pondering. I am still alone, of course, but the occasional traffic noise drifts down from the street behind the dunes. I have dug neat little moats around me as I have been clutching at the sand, and now I am running out of room, making my perch too small. Gooey and stiff, I have hardened in, settled, the frame of reference blurred. Bits of sand are rolling into the trench. Pretty soon the whole thing will collapse. I get up and step outside of the ring.
The ocean is flat, a thin gray line extending to nowhere. Little rolling breakers toss about the water's edge, the only break in the incessant sameness. But the water does go somewhere. It goes to her. Out there, beyond the rocks and gulls and Bearskin Neck, is Caitlin. Somewhere, dancing or eating or screwing, is my wife. I grab the Sherves as I rise and stalk to the water, taking the ocean in a handful of quick, long strides, moving towards her.
I'm up to my knees before I know it, the frigid water soaking into my jeans. The coldness of the water stops me, forces me to hesitate. What am I doing? Where am I going? The force of the moment pushes me out. Don't think, react. Pure thought in motion, resolve as deep as any character that graced a nineteenth century novel, I press on. This is, after all, real life, and I have made a connection.
The water encompasses my waist by the time I have to stop again. There is a sharp pain in my groin, but the lower legs have gone pretty much numb. As I go deeper the ocean floor gradually recedes, beckoning, like it invites the scads of summer swimmers and ocean players to enter and be refreshed. It is a much more shrill voice that calls me now.
Armpits now, and I am forced to carry the Sherves above my head. The icy water undulates under my chin, caressing and swaying. I am on frozen pins at this point, my legs and waist gone. If I trip, I am sure I will go down and never get up. Is that what I want? Is that the connection, here? I stop. It's not a pause, but a full stop. I didn't notice the tears before, but, chin deep in the cold Atlantic, I am crying.
The ocean, when you're in it, is far from calm. The tug of the undertow is constant, a pressure so elemental that it would seem right to follow its pull, allow yourself to succumb to its call. There are rocks and bits of debris on the ocean floor, but the water is too gray to see through. God knows what else is hidden down there, what sleek creatures live and eat and die within the water's embrace. Despite my frozen legs, I can't help but notice the sensation of life in the water, the bigness of it all. And I lose my resolve.
Let her dance. Let her screw her artsy boyfriend until she's blue in the face. She'll be back. Or perhaps not. Maybe she'll walk into the ocean herself, overwrought with the enormity of her decision, pained at the loss of me and our life of pristine uniformity. Maybe. As I begin to send my legs the signal to return to the beach and the warmth of March sand I remember the Sherves suspended above my head. It sags in its brown paper bag, flecks of wet spots adorning the surface. I did come to get this, to fill the hole left when she pulled down the original, to put up another lighthouse. There are no more lighthouses.
There is also no more anger. It has all left. Gathering all of the strength I can while my hands are over my head, I swing the Sherves out into the atmosphere, it's brown outline pinned against the steel sky for an instant before it disappears with a plunk below the ocean's face. Satisfied, I turn and begin the frozen trek back to the beach.

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