Seacoast Fog

Jacket

It’s a remnant of another foolish war; an olive jacket covered with dust.  It hung on a rusted hook in a forgotten closet for three decades. Its faded fabric saw children flee war-fog in a faraway swamp and students choking on tear-gas in Harvard Square.

 In a pocket, I found a piece of sea glass. It was the top of a blue bottle with the the surface mottled by millions of gentle nudges from ocean waves and beach stones.

 Where did it come from? Why did I save it?  What beach was it? Where was she now?

 What happened to her after a silly argument about a jazz concert? 

 I recalled an August beach and a warren of friends surrounding a smoky hole filled with seaweed and ocean fauna. She greeted me with a blue-eyed wink. Our conversation started with a requested for pepper. She said "sure, you have a peppery personality."

 I asked if she ever used salty language. She said only with close friends.

 We consumed lobsters then a few barefooted men filled the fire pit with beach wood. The sun slowly faded as someone played Dylan on a Gibson acoustic. Our conversation drifted to French literature. I mentioned Flaubert and she quoted Camus. As a French Literature student at NYU, she claimed Finnish decent with a dash of Irish.

 Her wavy hair was the color of windblown straw, the kind seen along coastal roads after a tough winter. We drifted to a nearby dune guarded by a tiny scrub oak. Our bodies moved fine sand under millions of celestial lights.

***

Where is she now?

An Internet search produced a dozen hits. It had to be her: nobody else in America had that bland American first name and quirky Scandinavian surname.

Legal documents described an incident involving a sailboat and a customs intercept. Several bags of contraband floated a few hundred feet from the vessel. The police arrested the captain and crew. The judge released everyone except her She suffered in a Caribbean prison while her fellow mates surfed and drank rum. She won her case on appeal, and her defense is taught in every law school in America.           

On another search,her name appeared at a private school on Cape Cod.

I sent an e-mail:

   I may know you. We met at a party in Wellfleet many summers ago. We became friends for a year. I did something stupid and you stormed off.  I never apologized. I want to apologize. Can we meet for dinner? If you feel uncomfortable about this email or if I have the wrong person please email me back. I need to know. It is important to me.

She responded:

I know you. I am now a professional educator and a very busy person. I don’t have any time for anything outside my academic life. I teach four high school classes. I have responsibility for financial matters at our school and our budgets are due next month.

  What happened to your cat Butchie? If that cat talked he would have plenty of tales to tell! I’m attending a conference on Cape Cod in a few weeks. Let me think about this. I will get back to you.

From the sky,Cape Cod looks like a curled arm, and Wellfleet is the wrist.  Wealthy urbanites in wide houses watch rugged oysterman harvest their famous catch on the western shore. Adventurous tourists explore the prodigious cliffs, sand dunes, and big waves of the eastern shore. Both shores are bound together by a somewhat funky sea aroma that instigates romance.

In downtown Welfleet, a crushed shell path led to the finest bistro in town. I opened the burly front door, salvaged from a sad encounter between a graceful schooner and a stealthy shoal. Heart pine creaked as I walked into a room of candles and conversation.

I saw her blue eyes from fifty feet.  We exchanged greetings and a shy kiss. Time had treated her well.  Hints of gray formed a pleasing collage with her blond hair and a sophisticated perfume complimented her tan linen suit. She put on a pair of dark frame glasses like the ones worn by New Yorker editors, turned and said, “What’s new?”

“I chased adventure for many years,” I said. “I became romantically involved with a large wooden sailboat after we last talked. She and I had a wonderful life together, then she caught fire off Plymouth Beach.” 

    “I had my own sailboat adventure," she said. "then I fell into an academic whirlpool. I had a platonic relationship with Camus, although it was ten years after his fatal car crash.”

We chose the famed local shellfish. I ordered a bottle of Mateus wine. It was her favorite back in 1973 but I hadn’t seen that label in twenty years. After a quizzical look from our waitress, the owner walked over and said, “I am from your generation. A bottle has been hidden in my cellar for many years. I don’t know how it tastes but you are such a lovely couple I will give it to you without charge. Enjoy please!” 

We toasted Camus’ soul with the wine. I took a slow sip and paused. I told her I had a surprise.  I showed her the sea glass found in the pocket of my old army jacket. She gasped and said, “We found this that night on our moonlight walk—it’s a piece of an old bottle.” 

Her Blackberry had three messages reminding her of an evening lecture.“ I’m not going to experience ennui tonight," she said. "I’ll tell them I’m not feeling well.”

We laughed about my house with tie-dyed curtains guarded by a sardonic cat.  She said, “Last time I saw Butchie, he was sprawled across your sofa like a Dali clock.”       

 “He lived twenty years, and all those stories went with him,” I said.

 We ordered black coffee. “Why didn’t you meet me at the Jazz Workshop?” I said, “It was Coltrane’s last Boston concert.”

  She replied, “ It wasn’t my fault. Please believe me. I lived through a bad vibe for many years over our breakup and you know what? I don’t care what happened. Let’s enjoy our dinner and don’t worry about it. It wasn’t meant to be; or was it?”  

  “ Why don’t we go over to that beach where we met?" I said. "I often think of that sandy cove.”

    She said, “ I do too.”

  We drove a few miles to a weathered lighthouse on a lofty cliff.  A fresh breeze ruffled her hair so I took the jacket.

   “I never thought I’d see this army fatigue again. You fought many rhetorical wars in the streets of Boston and Cambridge in this jacket,” she said.

  “I sure did, and somewhere deep in its threads there’s a speck of mud from Woodstock,” I said.

    We walked down a sandy stairway to the beach. “The fire pit was over there, and the little dune is in this direction?let’s find it before it gets dark,” I said.

    We trudged over a few steep mounds. The little scrub oak was now the biggest tree on the bluff. We sat on the jacket and watched little whitecaps glide over the serrated water of Cape Cod Bay. Our conversation started where it ended many years ago, but all the existentialists were buried in a Parisian knoll and no one had taken their place.

    Suddenly, a warm zephyr danced through our little den, and the sand moved again.

     A few hours later, a full moon guided us over the dune and up to my car.“ Look at me;a stuffy educator rolling in the Cape Cod dunes," she said. I love it! I can’t wait to see my dry cleaner’s face when I hand him my suit with the pockets and pleats filled with beach sand!”

   A year has passed since our dinner by the sea, and the same two bistro seats are reserved for tomorrow night. She has something important to tell me;perhaps it’s about a new book or recent trip. A sneaky ocean breeze can steal the warmth from a late-summer evening so I'll take my old jacket.