Ashleigh's Dilemma Read online

  Patrick had laughed, “You’ve been studying.”

  “Nope.”

  “It just comes natural?”

  “Okay, I admit it; I did some reading. Given that you’re such an expert, I thought it was the least I could do. Also, I didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of you.”

  “That’s more like it. That’s the real reason.”

  They ate lunch on a large boulder in the very midst of the Patapsco as Ashleigh removed her boots and poured the water out.

  “See? Not so bad,” Patrick had laughed.

  She directed her usually effective, ‘I hope you will be very dead very soon,’ look toward him, but all he did was again laugh. It was only her pride that had been hurt, she realized; but next time, if there would be a next time, she’d come alone and practice hopping across the stepping stones with their white heads poking just above the dark and swirling river until she had it right. She would never embarrass herself like that again.

  Patrick arranged the lunch as she laid her socks on the sun-warmed rock. It was warm for spring, the sky blue, the sun bright, and the leaves just new and freshly green.

  “Ashleigh?”

  She turned.

  “Have you ever been kissed on a boulder in the middle of the Patapsco River, in May, with the river running wild around you and the sun warm on your face after a meal of crackers and cheddar and dried cranberries and apple?”

  “No… Don’t even think!”

  That’s when he kissed her for the third time. She had felt stupid afterward - but, and as she had admitted later, she had kissed him back.

  It was a great puzzle. She would sometimes glance at Patrick when she thought he wasn’t looking to see if she could somehow catch him out. She never could. Eventually he would feel her looking at him, he would turn toward her, and smile - and eventually she had found herself sitting on the edge of her bed with her heart beating many hundreds of beats per minute.

  “I can see you’re not ready,” Patrick had said.

  “I’m not.”

  “We’ll just lay here, then.”

  “Promise?”

  “I do.”

  They made themselves comfortable, her heart slowly settling as he breathed next to her, his arm wrapped about her. He kissed her forehead and her hair and lay with her.

  “I hear you breathing,” he said minutes later.

  “I hear you breathing.”

  “Like lovers after making love.”

  “Hah! …You’re funny.”

  By two in the morning, Ashleigh awoke because she had to go pee. The room was dark. She pushed herself upright and, still half sleep, and without thinking, had leaned over and kissed him. “You gotta go now,” she’d said. Patrick opened his eyes and, seeing her hovering over him, smiled back. He got up, straightened his clothes, passed his hand through his hair, smiled back at her one last time, and left just as he said he would. She could hear the back door opening. “See ya!” he’d called. “See ya,” she’d called back, still sitting on the bed, listening for the door to close, and then the sound of his truck starting, and then backing up. She slipped out of bed and ran to the window to see him pull away. Back in bed, she had fallen asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. It was a dreamless sleep from which she did not awaken until late in the morning.

  After that, they would lie together in her bed, fully clothed, snuggling up to one another; sometimes they kissed, but mostly they just talked. Patrick told her stories of his youth, reliving his first impressions of her, making her tell what she thought – honestly thought. She always told the truth, but he often questioned it, making her say it again from a different perspective until she sometimes found she wasn’t saying the same thing at all.

  “See, I told you, you didn’t mean it.”

  “I do mean it!”

  “It doesn’t sound like it!”

  “Hah!”

  She’d poke him and then fall into him laughing with the truth revealed until tears formed.

  Sometimes he just made up stories, silly ones, funny ones. When he saw her laughing, he’d make the stories even more outrageous so she would laugh even harder.

  “What was that?” she’d beg; “Say it again!”

  “The one my father used to recite? ‘The Little boy’…?”

  “Yes, that’s the one!”

  “The little boy stood on the burning deck

  Picking his nose like mad;

  He rolled it up in little balls

  And threw it at his Dad!”

  For some reason Ashleigh found that particularly hilarious; “It’s better than your stuff!” she’d laugh, and Patrick would laugh with her, although not for the same reason: he would laugh just to see and feel her laugh like that, she knew.

  “Okay, time to go.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not yet?”

  She turned toward him and smiled. “One more breath, and then I’ll go.”

  He caught her eye. “It’s just like breathing, so don’t linger,” and his kayak sprang ahead, following the wave that had surged beneath them, drawing him away from her; only meters away but dwindling into the distance, becoming unreachable. The building wave carried him toward the shore where it crested and broke and swept him far up onto the rocky beach before falling back and collapsing into the sea, only to surge up and pull back leaving him high and dry. Even before the last of the water had trickled off the broken rock, he had climbed out and swung the loaded kayak up onto his shoulder, and ran with it to the safety of the higher ground.

  Ashleigh waited for the next wave and then began to paddle. She watched it lift up ahead of her and then rush up the shore foaming against the hard rock. She began to paddle back turning parallel to the shore. Try again, Ashleigh; try again! The returning swell flipped her over; disoriented, her world now a tumbling white and a paralyzing cold, she automatically pulled the skirt release as Patrick had shown her and she felt herself fall free as he had promised. The surface foamed above her. So this is it. This is death.

  The sea suddenly retreated leaving her free and clear lying flat on the rock. A good thing: she was breathing again. She looked up. Patrick was wrestling with her kayak. He flipped it upright and too heavy to lift began to drag it up toward the beach; she could hear the fiberglass scraping over the rock. That’s why we get rentals… She called but he didn’t even glance in her direction. She climbed to her feet and slipped onto the rock. She sat up and felt pain, and was immediately overtaken by the next wave that swept up from behind. Once again, she was submerged and once again, it passed. She stood, spitting out seawater, her eyes stinging with the salt, and called out to Patrick. She had only seconds to find him before the retreating wave knocked her once again off her feet, this time tumbling her over the rock and sweeping her back out to sea. When she surfaced, she was in deep water almost where she had started.

  Patrick was right beside her: “Hey! Hey!” She reached for him like someone drowning. Once she had him, she was never letting go. “Okay… I gotcha…” He grabbed hold of her lifejacket; “I’m not letting go...” They rode the next wave in. It swept them forward and up the slope, turning to foam and falling away, leaving them sitting side by side on the hard rock. In a heartbeat, Patrick had her standing next to him high up on the beach, the sea running off her in torrents, her teeth chattering. He gave her a towel and let her dry her face and gently guided her up the stone beach toward the sun-warmed rocks on the beach.

  “Phew, that was something!” he said; “Good thing we stored our gear in those water-tight bags or we’d have a long cold night ahead of us.”

  “Fuck the bags!” she blurted and wrenched her arm free. “I don’t know how you’re going to get me off this shore but I’m not getting into that thing again!” Her voice quivered. She couldn’t help it. She was still in shock. “Why did you grab the kayak and not me?” she snapped, her teeth continuing to chatter.

  He explained it was because the next wave might have crash
ed it against her and she might have been seriously hurt.

  “You don’t think I wasn’t seriously hurt?”

  She lifted her palm showing him the cuts and pointed to her knees.

  “I bet that stings,” he said. He reached for her hand to examine them more closely but she jerked it angrily back. “But by tomorrow they‘ll be gone; they’re just micro cuts,” he added looking up and smiling.

  “Micro cuts?”

  “A little bit of Polysporin and you’ll be good.”

  Ashleigh gave Patrick the very best of what her anger, despair, frustration, embarrassment, and fear could deliver: “Argh! Those sleeping bags - don’t even think of zipping them together!” She stamped angrily up the beach.

  “That was a tough one, I’ll give you that!” he called after her.

  “You should have brought two tents because I am not sleeping with you, not ever!” she called back over her shoulder. She was already making unshakeable plans how to get back to Ucluelet and, from there, Maryland and the safety of her home. She imagined that once safe within those walls she’d lock the door, disconnect the phone, and never talk to him again; he’d call and call but she’d rather be damned than answer! Argh! A sense of relief flooded through her and she almost cried but she held it in check. There was no way off this damned island and she knew it.

  Five days and four nights later found Patrick sitting on a rock high up on a ridge overlooking the sound: a string of snow-capped mountains disappearing into the haze of distance, the deep blue of the sound studded with islands carpeted in fir and spruce. He could trace the route they had taken: first Gibraltar, then Gilbert, Turret, Willis, and now Benson where they were not allowed to stay the night. The Tseshaht’s oral traditions name the island as their place of origin from which the first Tseshaht man and woman were created. It was a place to linger and think but not to stay.

  There were totems on the beach looking out over the sound. They were old and weathered; they had been looking out over the same, always changing, body of water for longer than he had been alive, and possibly for centuries. There were other totems of same age mysteriously placed in the midst of the rainforest looking into the dark depths cut by beams of light originating from the high canopy and filled with a riot of dancing mots all in a sighing silence. “This is a holy place,” he had said to Ashleigh as he watched her reach up to trace the contours of the heavily weathered carvings and then smile back at him. It was holy to her too, he could see.

  Ashleigh was below and behind him preparing for her evening bath. She insisted he didn’t turn about and he intended to keep his promise. She wasn’t ready for that yet – perhaps tomorrow.

  It was a large pool held between the forest and the rocky shore. It was sourced from a mountain stream the surface almost invisible in its dark clarity – and it was very cold. Ashleigh had put her hand in and had quickly withdrawn it. Her hand ached from the contact, she said; it would kill her if she jumped in; her heart would stop. Patrick smiled and described what she was missing: the reckless abandon, the shocking, almost paralyzing impact; the sudden silence, the breath forced from the lungs, the encompassing numbness, the racing heart; the exhilaration of being suspended like in a dream above the rock and crags twenty feel below.

  “Okay, enough! I get it! If you think I’m going in you’re crazy! I’ll smell and I don’t care. You might, but I won’t.”

  He suggested she might try the ocean if she thought the pool too cold; it would be warmer. She shook her head. There was absolutely no possibility. There’d be fish swimming about and dangerous and slippery rock and razor-sharp mollusks and strings of kelp that would tangle about her feet capturing her lifeless body in a wild tangle to float forever amidst the silent creatures of the sea - to say nothing of the killer whales and frolicking seals frequently exploring close in to the shore.

  “I get it, I really do, Ashleigh; you’re not going in.”

  “No, you don’t get it! I am going in! I can’t smell like this for another four days!”

  It took a few days on the stone beach but Ashleigh eventually discovered within herself what Patrick knew was there all along. He had seen the truth in the Emily Carr she hung in her hallway and in the National Parks calendar hanging in her kitchen. For all her edges she knew all about beauty. She felt it everywhere. He remarked on the beautiful scene for the month and she turned to follow his gaze. She lifted it down. “Look at this…,” she said while lifting each page to show him what had passed as well as what was to come; “…I just don’t what to say about this…” Having carefully gone through each one, she returned it to its place on the wall beside her fridge, the correct month showing. “I get one ever year,” she had added casting her eyes off to the side and blushing as if she had suddenly realized she had revealed something about herself she had not intended to: not arrogance; just shyness, he knew now.

  The first night had been a total wash. Some of the gear was wet from Ashleigh’s tumble. They were tired and she was anxious so he didn’t press. There were no zipped up bags that night. They stayed an extra day on Gibraltar to dry their gear and rest. The swells died down and Ashleigh practiced coming into the shore, climbing out, and dragging the boat up as high as she could manage. The September weather was beautiful and cool: perfect weather. It rained late at night and once in the morning, but that was alright. They walked for miles along the beach and then in the opposite direction. They talked and talked, and laughed. They shared the duties: hanging the clothes to dry, the bedding to air, cooking each meal together. They stayed up late at night feeding the fire watching the blue flames dance and, just before bed, stepping away from the fire and looking up at the silent banner of stars.

  “I have never heard such silence,” she had whispered leaning back into him; “I can hear my heart.” She turned about keeping within the circle of his arms and looked up; “…And I can hear yours!” laughing with him at the incredulity of it all.

  On the second day they broke camp and paddled to the next island in the chain. It took only a few hours. Coming ashore and setting up was effortless, fun.

  Just before the sunset on their third day, Patrick slipped into the tent and began to zip the sleeping bags together. Ashleigh followed him in. She smiled on the way in but would not meet his eyes; nor did she say a word but helped him adjust the combined bags over their air mattresses. She set the pillows comprised of their clothing inside the bags to keep the dampness out as he secured their packs ensuring no creatures would climb inside. When done, not once having said a word or so much as glanced in his direction, she crawled back out and sat by the fire slowly building it up from a pile of driftwood they had gathered earlier. He followed her out and scooped out a place in the warm gravel beside her so that he faced the sun with his back against the driftwood Ashleigh sat upon, and his feet extended outward.

  “If this is not heaven then what could heaven be?” he sighed settling back further, pulling his hat down while pushing his sunglasses up.

  Ashleigh quietly laughed and placed a larger piece on the fire.

  Patrick pushed himself upright and turned so he was on his knees facing her.

  “Have you ever been kissed on a stone beach, in the middle of… as the sun…?” “Don’t even think of it!” she laughed.

  Late that night, dinner done, the pots and dishes cleaned, the first stars out, the chill and dampness slipping down the sides of the mountains and creeping out from the dark cavern of the forest, the sea perfectly calm mirroring the sky and the distant mountains, they sat close together staring into the dancing flames. She sat with her back against him for added warmth; he sat next to her with his wrapped about her, with the promise of the evening, and even the rest of their lives, still ahead of them.

  A light mist was rising before the nearest island almost black against the undisturbed and sun-scattered sound. The tide was in and there was a slight swell reaching up the shore and sweeping back; he could hear the tumbling of the rocks as the waves retreated. He
could also hear Ashleigh stepping across the stones to the edge of pool – short steps, hesitant, almost the only sound in a perfect morning. There was a long pause – and then she was in. He could hear her hit the water – glass and ice breaking and scattering away - and then her scream. He laughed quietly but didn’t turn about. He heard her splashing, “Soap, soap, soap!” and another splash, a gasp: “Argh! Hair, hair, hair! God it’s cold!” Another splash, a hesitant silence: “Argh!” He heard her climb out, her bare feet once again on the gravel; he imagined her reaching for her towel and lifting it. He turned. She was drying herself off, scrubbing herself down, bringing circulation back into her flaming limbs. She glanced up, caught his eye, and laughed, making no attempt to hide herself. He watched her run naked up from the beach, gingerly jumping from stone to stone, “Ouch, ouch, ouch!” and heading directly toward him and the sun-warmed rock where she had left her clothing. He knew then that he loved her. He loved her for a thousand reasons not the least of which was her smile and the echoing sound of her laughter.

  End

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Mary Alice Marsh for setting me upon this road. Patti who taught me all I know, or think I know, about love. Robin for her instruction in the finer mysteries of a woman’s heart. Jim (aka, Mister Wood!) for his support and many years of friendship. And, lastly, Neil Bobroff for his wit, insight, friendship, and support.