The Topsail Accord (38 page)
“
I don’t know why we couldn’t talk like that when we were married,” she said.
I don’t know why we couldn’t talk like that when we were married,” she said.
These are the types of things I have heard from many divorced people before. Usually right before an attempted reconciliation, right before an impending disaster. I doubt that she will reconcile with him.
“
I told him I was in a relationship,” she said. “He didn’t need to know the details. But, if he has Google, and I’m sure he does, I’m certain he has read something about us, and will likely read more after this year’s dinner for Caitlin’s Foundation,” Shannon said.
I told him I was in a relationship,” she said. “He didn’t need to know the details. But, if he has Google, and I’m sure he does, I’m certain he has read something about us, and will likely read more after this year’s dinner for Caitlin’s Foundation,” Shannon said.
“
I can ask the press to leave you out of it,” I said.
I can ask the press to leave you out of it,” I said.
“
No. It’s okay. It’s okay if he reads about me and knows that we have been together for a year or more.”
No. It’s okay. It’s okay if he reads about me and knows that we have been together for a year or more.”
I let it drop. Tried not to fixate on her ex being in her lab, talking to her, and her participating in the conversation. I recall how she described his obsession with her after they had split, and after his second, or maybe it was his third, marriage had ended.
Was he lonely now that his children had grown and had friends of their own? Lives of their own? I stopped myself from thinking any further about her and her ex. I returned to the preparation for the Foundation dinner and for our weekend in Wilmington. How quickly ‘traditions’ come into being.
This year there are only children in the early stages of waiting for transplants. There are no children in imminent peril, and no children who have made any wishes to be granted. There are only children for whom the danger is still an evil ill-defined thing lurking in the darkness.
Danny will attend because it is part of who she is. She loves the Foundation, and she works as hard as anyone for it. Her determination in the Foundation matches her determination on the track.
We have both aged. She has relinquished some of her rides to a younger driver and team member. She knows that her days on the track are numbered, and has thrown all that extra energy into the Foundation. The Foundation is something that will never tell her she is too old, or that someone else can do it better, even if I personally have asked her to make an unfair deal, a request she denied. With the children and the donors and everyone surrounding the Foundation her experience and touch cannot be replaced. I think that she is as important to the Foundation as I am, probably more.
Shannon and Danny seem to have arrived at some détente, some working relationship where they can be polite and not distrustful. I have told Shannon everything about Danny, questions both asked and unasked. I have left out only the details that a gentleman would leave out, not that Shannon asked for any of
those
details.
those
details.
So tomorrow we go to Wilmington, and we will do the rounds and the dinner and Shannon will run (and maybe win) her race and then she will drive back to Ohio and to her rocks and to her searching. I will spend a few days with Danny and then return to my home on Topsail. My home that Shannon has never visited. She has never come over, though I have invited her. And I have never visited her cottage. I have never been invited. I wonder if we are neighbors and do not even know it? I doubt it. I would have seen her car or she would have seen my truck or my car or would have seen me riding my bike. Still, there is something crazy romantic about the thought that we have been together during the days at her beach house and then have been secret neighbors at night. No, it is unlikely.
I suspect that she lives very near to her beach house because I have never seen her car at the beach house. Of course she might park it inside, under the house. But if she doesn’t, then she must walk there in the morning and then walk home in the evening. It can’t be very far. It might be the house across the street. But I know that this is one of her secrets, and so I let it alone, unwilling to accidentally discover the truth and destroy her secret. I will not stray over the boundary, not even inadvertently.
Shannon
I am here in Costa Rica before Joe and I will be here in Costa Rica after Joe. I realize that condition is likely true both locally and globally because of our age difference. Salvaro took me to look at the two houses, and I loved the pink house. I am going to buy the pink house. Joe doesn’t need to know. Salvaro knows that I intend on keeping this secret from Joe. He isn’t sure exactly why I am going to keep this secret, and neither am I. But I am a secretive person and this is one more secret that I will keep. Perhaps ‘secretive’ isn’t the right word. Perhaps ‘private’ is a better word. I am a private person and this new house will be part of my privacy.
I never imagined as a girl that I would own two houses in Ohio, one of them a renovated Coast Guard station, that I would own three houses in North Carolina, a grand beach house for the family, a modest cottage for myself, and a house I lend to the turtle rescue people and to universities that want to study the beach. I never dreamed that I would own a home in Costa Rica. I was making a decent living as a geologist before the gas and oil. But the gas and oil are obscene. They shouldn’t be so obscene. Someone should have understood my data long before I did. They didn’t and so we were able to buy the mineral rights for thousands of square miles for pennies per square mile. No-one believed there was oil or gas down there, and even if they did, they thought there was no way to retrieve it.
So I have billions of dollars that someone else could and probably should have had. In some ways I have come to terms with my billions, but in other ways it is simply impossible. No matter how much money I try to give away there is always more money. So I will buy this pink house, and pay for some security and for a discrete staff and I will vacation here alone, read alone, write papers alone, and go surfing on the low tides with Salvaro and his visitors, maybe sometimes just with Salvaro.
He gets my deal with Joe, but warned it will be harder than I think. I don’t know what he means, and he hasn’t tried to further explain. I would consider him a Buddha-like thinker but for the fact that he is ruggedly handsome and fit. I will think on that.
Joe
Last year I got here first. This year she got here first. And she is going to stay a day after as well. I think she likes Costa Rica. And I think she likes how she feels in Costa Rica.
It’s odd that she really does seem to be different people in different places, at least during the day. But at night I have no idea who she is because we almost always sleep apart. She is one way in Topsail when her family is there in July, and she is another way in Topsail in January when her family is not there. She isn’t a lot different, but enough different that I notice. Am I that different from July to January? And what is she like at night? Is she one hundred percent the same at night? Does she wear the same pajamas every night? Drink the same glass of Merlot every night? Sleep on the same side of the bed every night? Wake up at exactly the same time? I know her in January and Costa Rica and July and lighthouses, but only by the day. Even at the lighthouses, where we share a hotel room, I never wake with her in the bed, she is either up before me, or sleeping on the couch, or in the other room. So there are months during her year about which I know nothing, and there are hours in her day and nights about which I know nothing.
I know that she is different in October at the lighthouses, more of a researcher, and yet a tourist at the same time. This is when I really see the inquisitive side of her. And then there is Costa Rica. She is a wanton woman in Costa Rica. There is no other way to describe it. For a few hours she is a creature of the sea, married to its tides and waves and rhythms, and then she is an insatiable lust-filled animal for the rest of the day. An animal who would be at home as a predator in the jungle that sits just yards from the bungalows that are perched on Salvaro’s hill. When we eat in Costa Rica she will try anything, even though in the States she eats with a pathological regularity for the days and meals. But here she is nearly equally pathologically irregular.
After dinner in Costa Rica she is a dominatrix. She feels some need to control me, and she does so in a most enjoyable way. I submit, as I have submitted to so many other things while together. Se feels this need to control me, and so I yield.
Shannon and Joe
“
Those waves,” Joe says.
Those waves,” Joe says.
“
Yes,” Shannon answers.
Yes,” Shannon answers.
“
Not too big, not too small, spaced apart, with long breaks from left to right, and then a shoulder to turn back over,” Joe says.
Not too big, not too small, spaced apart, with long breaks from left to right, and then a shoulder to turn back over,” Joe says.
“
Exactly,” Shannon answers.
Exactly,” Shannon answers.
“
And exactly at sunrise, with the sun coming over the mountains. I swear some of the shadows that reached out into the water were at least a mile long,” Joe says.
And exactly at sunrise, with the sun coming over the mountains. I swear some of the shadows that reached out into the water were at least a mile long,” Joe says.
“
Maybe five miles long. And then to watch those shadows leave the ocean, retreat over the beach, and then pull back up into the hills.”
Maybe five miles long. And then to watch those shadows leave the ocean, retreat over the beach, and then pull back up into the hills.”
“
I’ve never seen anything like it,” Joe says.
I’ve never seen anything like it,” Joe says.
“
It’s probably like that every morning,” Shannon says.
It’s probably like that every morning,” Shannon says.
“
Even if we’re not surfing at sunrise tomorrow, maybe we should paddle out again just to see it,” I say.
Even if we’re not surfing at sunrise tomorrow, maybe we should paddle out again just to see it,” I say.
“
I’m in,” Shannon says.
I’m in,” Shannon says.
Shannon and Joe
“
Everyone will be here in an hour,” Shannon says.
Everyone will be here in an hour,” Shannon says.
“
We have the ocean to ourselves right now,” Joe answers.
We have the ocean to ourselves right now,” Joe answers.
“
It’s so calm right now, with the tide slack or maybe just starting to go out.”
It’s so calm right now, with the tide slack or maybe just starting to go out.”
“
Yes.”
Yes.”
Joe lays on his white surfboard and Shannon sits astride her red one. They look at the first tinges of pink that kiss the sky beyond the rain forest draped mountains. They cannot see the main house where Salvaro lives, but they can see the big hill shrouded in greenery that rises behind it and the orange roofed bungalows that cling to its verdant sides. They can see the billboard for the canopy tour on the even bigger hill closer to town from Salvaro’s house.
As the first morning’s rays light the beach, they mark the black sand and the large bizarre shaped driftwood that has washed ashore from some distant, unknown forest.
“
It seems like the jungle and the ocean are fighting over the beach,” Shannon says.
It seems like the jungle and the ocean are fighting over the beach,” Shannon says.
“
Fighting?”
Fighting?”
“
Like they both want control of that little ribbon of black sand,” Shannon says.
Like they both want control of that little ribbon of black sand,” Shannon says.
“
Oh,” Joe says. “Whether you call it rain forest or jungle, it seems a little sinister to me,” Joe says. “I can’t ever get completely comfortable here.”
Oh,” Joe says. “Whether you call it rain forest or jungle, it seems a little sinister to me,” Joe says. “I can’t ever get completely comfortable here.”
“
Not even here? On the ocean? With me?” Shannon asks.
Not even here? On the ocean? With me?” Shannon asks.
“
Sharks. Every time we’re in the ocean I think of sharks.”
Sharks. Every time we’re in the ocean I think of sharks.”
“
So not even here,” Shannon says. “But I know what you mean. I have a feeling about the rain forest too. I feel like if I sit still for too long it will take back wherever I am sitting and reclaim me with it. So it makes me feel like I always have to be in motion here. I don’t feel like that in Ohio, or at Topsail. I can just sit. I can just be. I know where things are and how things are and how they’re going to be an hour and a week from now. But here it seems that even though you can predict the next tide exactly you can’t tell what the next minute or hour will hold. It feels like the jungle is just waiting for us to turn our back or to disregard it and then it will have us,” Shannon says.
So not even here,” Shannon says. “But I know what you mean. I have a feeling about the rain forest too. I feel like if I sit still for too long it will take back wherever I am sitting and reclaim me with it. So it makes me feel like I always have to be in motion here. I don’t feel like that in Ohio, or at Topsail. I can just sit. I can just be. I know where things are and how things are and how they’re going to be an hour and a week from now. But here it seems that even though you can predict the next tide exactly you can’t tell what the next minute or hour will hold. It feels like the jungle is just waiting for us to turn our back or to disregard it and then it will have us,” Shannon says.
Joe paddles gently with his left hand to point more towards where Shannon sits on her surfboard. He sees that her gaze is focused miles away in the mountains, over the unfinished hotels on the beach and the concertina wire that guards the beachfront houses. Over the rusted tin roofs of the cinder block shanties in which the majority of the locals live. Over the small palm trees that rise out of the black sand and over the poison Manzanita trees and their swarms of termites. He sees her in profile, sitting quietly, but sitting on a surfboard that is alive with the receding tide of the ocean.
He gently sculls one hand, then the other, keeping his surfboard oriented so he can see both her and the sunrise. He squints his eyes to refocus and everything but Shannon and the thin strip of beach goes out of focus. Everything but her and the diffuse sunlight disappears.
He will keep this vision of her in his mind forever.
Joe
I am seated in a rope seat that hangs from the central beam in the open sided yoga building. It is a roof supported by six posts and three beams. It has a dark hardwood floor with tiny gaps through which legions of black ants emerge to devour a scrap of food that a yogi has left behind. The ants emerge, collect pieces of food larger than their own bodies, and then disappear back through the gap in the slat.
The roof is an orange brown corrugated tin roof. The pelting rain pings and tings in an ever changing rising and falling symphony. Several pillows are piled in the center where the rain cannot reach them. Flame red flowers ring the three or four feet of manicured green lawn that surrounds the yoga platform. A single fruit tree that is laden with a green fruit that I cannot identify sits directly west, between the yoga place and the ocean. My gaze is fixed on the fruit, where before the rain a parade of brightly colored hummingbirds darted in impossible paths in and out of the tree, hovering over and all around the pinkish white flowers on the fruit tree. The hummingbirds are territorial and will chase away the yellow butterflies that try to share the nectar from the fruit tree.
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