Beach Therapy

 I’m sitting on the beach about dozen feet from the water. Its low tide and the Gulf water lightly dances up to meet the sand before gliding back. Here for two-weeks vacation on Dauphin Island, Alabama, I’m enjoying the solitude early this August morning. On the dunes, morning lilies are blooming and the sand flies are busy elsewhere for now. I move to stroke my beard, forgetting yet again that I shaved it off three weeks ago.

 Addison walks up from behind me. I sense her presence before I hear her. “Good morning Thomas. Am I intruding?”

 I point to two egrets trolling for fish at the water’s edge. “It’s Sunday. The egrets allow only one human at a time on the beach today.”

 “Then there’s no problem.” She plops down on the sand next to me. She’s holding a day lily in one hand. Another adorns her red hair above her right ear. She also has a bag with two fresh coffee rolls.

Addison has lived here, on and off, most of her life. She’s about 40 now. She was a trust fund baby who avoided the stereotype of the spoiled brat who turned to drugs. Instead, she went to work, teaching special needs kids in Mobile for ten years. I got to know her because she owns the home my wife Jamie and I rented the last two weeks in August for five years. She invited us over to her place across the street for cocktails on our last night every year. Starting our second year, Jamie extended an invitation to Addison to join us for dinner on our first night of vacation.

`The women hit it off pretty well. I was left to fend for myself except one year when a guy named Clark was living with Addison. He was a nice guy with a gigawatt of personality, but in the two weeks we spent together, playing golf, bike riding and eating fresh seafood, I never did figure out what he did for a living. Possibly it had something to do with construction, but I can’t say for sure. One thing he did do was help Addison get her bakery up and running. It just might be the quiet island’s best attraction. Her coffee rolls are far too good to be available to so few. The next year he was gone. It’s funny how sometimes you know that no inquiries are necessary. His name never came up.

This is my first summer alone on the island. Two years ago, on the night before Thanksgiving, Jamie let me know she would not be joining me at my sister’s home for dinner. She cried. She apologized many times. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

“This,” was our marriage. She wasn’t involved with another man –or a woman, she said, and I believed her. It wasn’t her style. After 11 years of marriage her reserves were depleted. She told me she lost interest in us three years ago. “When I realized that I was beginning to feel dead from the inside out, I knew I had to stop.”

I refused to cry. I went to my sister’s the next day and ate more than I should, the same as every Thanksgiving. By Christmas I was a mess. For one thing, Jamie wouldn’t see me or take my calls. Just two weeks after our separation, her lawyer called me to discuss settlement terms. That was as much closure as I was going to get.

Coming back to the island was, for me, the finishing touch in my long recovery from the breakup. I wanted to rent the same place. I had to prove to myself that I was whole again. Addison, eight year older than I am, was not a factor in my decision.     

“Are you divorced yet?” Addison handed me a lily.

“What happened to Clark?” I put her lily over my ear.

“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” she said.

“Did you bury him here on the beach?”

She laughed. “That would have been too good for him”

The morning’s first sand fly landed on my knee. I swatted it away. “The divorce was final eleven months ago,” I said.

“How many days ago?” She wasn’t smiling.

“It’s not like that. I’m over it,” I said.

“I’m happy to hear that. I waited a while for you.”

I looked at her, actually studied her face. She didn’t flinch. She just waited. “You knew?”

“I suspected something was up, the fourth year you came. But the last time you were here there was no guesswork involved.”

Her words stung. I never saw it coming. I thought Jamie and I were fine. “What made you think I would be back this way?”

“You have a thing for me. Didn’t you know?”

I stood and pulled her up to me. We kissed, tentatively, like they do in romantic comedies. “Actually it’s your coffee rolls.”