It was his idea. Actually more a fantasy or an obsession that had plagued him for decades. No one to blame but himself, other than perhaps that damn fog. Who bets on a nice day up the shore from St. John’s?, Stewart shook his head incredulously. The story of his life, the fog, the mist, the dullness clouding over everything, settling into his mind and body as a sort of weight or weariness.
He had the life of his dreams. A house on the beach that he had built with his own hands, two delightful children, a good mother, and a faithful wife, a well-paying job. But the zest and enthusiasm for his life had been slowly waning. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Hours he would hang over his deck watching the eagles soar above, circling, so distant and detached from all the tediousness of ground-level plodding.
Midlife, he had repeated to himself dismissively. Everything gets stale after a while. What do you expect? It can’t be fireworks all the time. After all, he was an adult with a family, the provider, the one responsible for paying bills and putting food on the table. No, his career as an accountant wasn’t exactly thrilling either but then that is why he got paid so well. And every romance loses its spark in time.
Then Cheryl resurfaces, right in the middle of his “nowhere man” drama. Not that she had ever really left him. In the back of his mind, there was always the image, the fantasy, the magical notion that she would always be there waiting for him to give the word and they could just leave this all soul-sucking responsibility and fly away.
Just an email. She was in town giving a presentation to the marine biology department at Memorial University about the decline of bull-head seaweed along the Avalon peninsula and its effect on the sea otter population. She wanted to know if he was up for a coffee or walk in the park or whatever.
This is the anniversary of our tryst, for God’s sake. Does she know? Twenty years to the day, July 13, 2000. Was she too, all this time dreaming every night of their romance to soothe the ache within? Every time she had sex did she turn to thoughts of him to lift her to climax?
They had not been in contact since that time. The romance was over almost as quickly as it had begun. They went their separate ways heading to different life challenges in other parts of the country. She had moved to Toronto to continue her studies and he had remained in St. John’s. No encumbrance of commitments. Just their moment in the sun. That was that.
Now, out of nowhere the invitation. To be truthful, he had not put an effort into tracking her down. Nonetheless, in the back of his mind – or the forefront – always was the memory, the image, the fantasy. This could be his chance to rekindle the charge, to reclaim all that had been abandoned, the feelings, dreams left behind in the sand.
He jumped on her suggestion of “whatever” and immediately dictated to her, and the weather gods, the particulars. Everything exactly like the vision he had held in his mind for 20 years: Erratic Beach, the sun, a warm breeze, her cotton sundress flitting in the breeze, her slight form backlit by the sun. He, picking her up in mid-step, grasping her tightly around her thighs, falling to the blanket that he had strategically laid out. The soft ground beneath giving way to their throws of passion, until they were encrusted with sand and seashells. Laughing playfully as they took time and care to wipe away all the shards from the delicate folds and creases.
He got up early on the morning of the 13th, unable to rest but also feeling guilty about lying next to the wife. Married 15 years come September. He attempted not to disturb her as he rummaged through his mound of clothes in the corner. At one point she muttered about where and when and he muttered something back about later but not too long and she fell back to sleep. She was used to him absenting himself on the weekends to go out fishing or help with the boys down at the dock.
He parted the curtains. Fog. Shit. Maybe it will burn off by mid-morning, he consoled himself. He would count on it.
The children were stirring in the upstairs bedroom. He grabbed his flannel shirt, and climbed into his non-fishy jeans, took a glance in the mirror, combed his hair, and quickly heated a cup of yesterday’s coffee in the microwave. Boots, jacket, and keys, and he was out the door.
“Shit. I forgot the blanket.” He stepped back inside and grabbed the frayed grey wool blanket that he had guarded carefully, tucked away in the corner of the closet. It was his tactile memento of their beach frolic. Hopefully, it would be his good luck charm for today.
As he turned onto Flat Rock Drive the fog had settled in thick, obscuring even the shoreline. He had to slow down as a caution, worrying about being late for their rendezvous.
“What the …?” He hit the breaks as a shadow darted in front of the car. Missed it. Maybe a fox or a dog. He was forced to slow down even further.
He pulled onto the beachhead and anxiously checked his watch. Only a little late. He grabbed the blanket and headed out. His feet sunk into the soft soggy sand as if it was intentionally resisting his progress. The wind was dying down somewhat but the brume still hung cold and heavy. The crashing waves all but drowned out the incessant squawking of the gulls.
He walked over to the large granite erratic, hollowed and polished by aeons of Atlantic storms, leaned against it, and waited. A bell buoy was clanging off the edge of the channel. An omen, perhaps?
He squinted back into the mist. Could he even be sure that she was out there? Was she even going to show?
A shrouded form, barely discernible was moving in his direction. “Cheryl” he called but no response, the fog and the sea swallowing his voice. He picked up his pace. “Cheryl?” he called again.
“Stewart?” the response.
Fifty steps more. Yes, sure now, the woman of his dreams. Changes certainly, signs of aging, hair slightly peppered and cropped shorter, glasses, character wrinkles around the eyes, but still familiar enough for the feelings and memories to come flooding back.
This is it. His mind raced through his visual script: their rapturous race to each other’s arms, the thrill, the embrace, the escape. Instead, they approached slowly, almost cautiously, as if each needed time to size up the situation. He extended his hands tentatively and she reciprocated. They stood silent for another moment, looking into each other’s eyes.
He was searching for some clue as to what she might be feeling. He had assumed that she had given the invitation in the same spirit as he received it, a desire to rekindle the abandoned romance, to recreate their lives together. Only now did it strike him that those thoughts might be the furthest from her mind. The absurdity of his presumption paralyzed him.
“Hi, Stewart.”
“Hi, Cheryl.”
“It has been a while.”
“I was worried I might not even find you in this fog.”
“Yes, well Newfoundland. What do you expect?”
“Definitely not this,” he replied.
“Apparently not,” she said coyly, with a glance down at the soaked wool blanket tucked under his arm.
He blushed and let it fall lamely by his side. How pathetic.
They hugged, almost as an afterthought when they didn’t know what else to say or do. The cold and wet was an excuse to hold her tighter than the moment might have called for. Her peppery hair washed over his face, his mouth. His lips found hers, soft, salty. He could feel something. An aching, a yearning was rising into their kiss. Not passion. Not heat. Just an ache.
He loosened his embrace slightly to see her face more clearly. He wanted some assurance that she had come with the same desperation, the yearning that had possessed him. She kept it nestled into the shoulder of his leather jacket, perhaps to keep warm and dry, perhaps not to be seen.
That damn fog, he cursed silently. Must it ruin my life? He gathered up her icy hands and tucked them into the fleece lining of his jacket. His fingers traced hers, running lightly over a wedding ring. He grasped a little tighter.
His throat tightened. He could barely swallow. So many things he had intended to share, the hopes, dreams. Finally, he managed to clear his throat, “I missed you.” There it was. His grand soliloquy.
Silence.
“A long time ago, wasn’t it?” Her tepid response gutted him. She continued somewhat wistfully leaving him to bleed silently, “The thrill of being young, all those feelings, the sexual charge. Reckless and carefree.” She looked up. “Do you ever miss that?”
Dare he cry out, Yes, constantly, desperately. I have hungered, yearned for this moment. I want to fly away, You and me. A new life together.? His guts splayed out beneath her feet as she unknowingly ground them into the sand.
She nestled back into the crook of his jacket, “It’s a different life now. Consistency, stability, responsibilities. Good things. Children. A good husband. A fascinating job. What I have always wanted to do. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but sometimes I do get a little tinge of wanderlust. It doesn’t last but I guess that is why I thought I would come to see you. Just to be sure that I wasn’t missing out on anything. I didn’t want that uncertainty to be niggling in the back of my mind.” She paused again. “ Anyway, I am rambling. Thanks for responding to my invitation. It has helped me settle that question.”
“Thank you. You’re welcome,” he replied in attempted gallantry. He leaned back against the rock to prevent his weakened knees from buckling.
“No. Thank you,” she replied. Cheryl interpreted his pulling away as a graceful closure. She gave him one more look and smiled. One more kiss, lighter. One more squeeze and she was off again, swallowed by the fog.
He stood still watching until her form completely washed away. He crumpled to the ground and sobbed. The sea-soup fog wrapped itself around his broken shoulders as if a comforter, a companion in his misery.
He gathered up his sodden blanket and hugged it to his chest, ashamed that he had sacrificed his treasured memories to the ravages of the weather. The fog, that master of illusions, the trickster, shapeshifter, the shrouder of secrets and guardian of half-truths. “Where the hell is the sun?” He screamed into the recalcitrant sky.
Would it have helped? Maybe the sun is false, he thought. Maybe the sun is the deceiver. Maybe the sun reveals too much too fast, shows more than it knows. Maybe technicolor clarity is itself an illusion. Maybe his entire memory was an illusion, a bad case of sunstroke. Maybe intimacy weathers better in the fog with the uncertainty and heart-numbing cold. Maybe.
He scrambled to make sense of his devastation. What was he expecting? That she would put her love life on hold as he had for the last 20 years? That they would reignite the same passion with the same wild abandon as when they were 25? Yes, he was happy to see her and she seemed pleased to see him as well. But it wasn’t passion. Even their embrace wasn’t erotic. They almost neglected to kiss!
How could it be that through all the years the memory of a love lost could incite more arousal than when the object of his desire was in his arms? Apparently none of the feelings and fantasies that he had nurtured through the past twenty years was about a real person at all. Cheryl had come and gone and left him behind with his romantic delusions.
Perhaps his sexual fantasizing was merely a way to deflect or assuage a more pervasive longing. Maybe I am missing me? he wondered. Maybe I have neglected to tend to myself, and those around me?
The foreign notion that he was alone responsible for his ennui stunned him. He had always counted on Cheryl’s memory to touch a part of him that otherwise remained dormant. It sustained him when he was immersed in papers and mortgages and deadlines. It was his mental escape from the dullness or boredom or fog-sodden dreariness, holding on to it like a life ring, afraid that he would drown in an ocean of mediocrity if he let go.
In truth, he had always treated love (all feelings for that matter) as a sort of affliction for which Cheryl was the only cure. Maybe it suited his purpose to keep his heart locked away, protected, distant safe from the vagaries of life. As long as his heart was securely moored to a memory that he could call on when he wanted, then he would not have to be present to the routine demands of those around him. He could keep his heart pure, untainted, unsullied.
He laughed, incredulous. “I am a fucking virgin! I am too much a coward to risk loving something, someone real.”
The sharp squawk of a gull uprooted him from his reflections. The morning sun was finally beginning to burn through the blanket of fog. “You fucker,” he muttered upward and headed toward the car, wiping the tears and snot from his face.
He checked his watch. How long since Cheryl had abandoned him to his soul-searching? If he was gone too long he would have questions to answer when he got home.
A terror seized him. Am I crazy? What the hell was I thinking? Was I actually going to risk my family for a quick fling? A dream, a memory, a fantasy? A romp on the soggy beach?
He hadn’t given much thought as to how his crazed scheme would affect his marriage, his family, the life that he had painstakingly crafted over these last 15 years. Sure it lacked a little lustre at times but it was his life. It was what got him up in the morning. These were the people, the commitments, the obligations that brought whatever meaning and satisfaction he had to date.
This was the life he had been given the privilege to love. Maybe his fantasies had kept him detached, distanced, dispassionate from his home life, seduced by the deluded notion of romantic love that had everything to do with a moment of wild passion and nothing to do with waking up together and getting your partner a cup of coffee.
He pulled into the driveway. He felt grateful and sick at the same time. Ashamed of all the love and affection and attention that he had directed elsewhere to feed a mental addiction. Hoping that there still was the opportunity to forge that longing into real love.
Sarah and Aaron ran out to greet him when he stepped out of the car and jumped up for their hug.
“Daddy, guess what I found,” said Sarah cupping a frog in her hand.
“Why were you gone so long?” whined Aaron.
He picked them both up in one motion and gave them a bone-crushing squeeze.
Brenda was by the door standing under the veranda. He shook the children free. “I’ll come out and play in a bit. I have to talk to your mother first,” and walked over slowly.
He made a little more of their hug than customary. “I’m sorry.”
Brenda stiffened slightly. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” he replied, “Nothing. Or at least not enough. I haven’t been here enough. I haven’t put enough effort or energy into our relationship.””
She paused before responding, her body still tense, sensing that there was more. “That’s true.”
He countered, “It’s going to be different.”
“It needs to be.” She waited for him to complete his confession.
He pulled back. Later, he thought. The right time.
The children began assaulting him again, attempting to pull his attention back to their world of sticks and stones and mud puddles.
“Go back out and play,” Brenda said, “Daddy will be out in a bit.”
She opened the screen door and turned. Stewart smiled tentatively, and then followed her inside. The door squeaked as it closed behind.
I have got to fix that, he reprimanded himself. Right after we talk, maybe.