Chasing Gulls

There she was. Sitting on the flotsam – all the brush and tinder the mighty Pacific had taken in its throes and then retched up back along the shoreline in a bundle of thatch, plastic bags, soda cans and all slick as an oil-slicked branch, and smelling of salt. Seaweed pooled in bunches and tanned itself up, then crackled and blew away with the breezes.  She didn’t seem to mind the wreckage, but just sat there, looking at each wave crashing its energy against the sand, and then swallowing back pieces of the earth.  Therese stared out beyond the breaking, and her eyes misted up, almost imperceptibly.  

We didn’t speak for what seemed the longest time.  

I met Therese on my first year of work out of college. We both worked for a company neither one of us wanted to be working for.  Therese wanted to be a writer, but one always has doubts about those sorts of characters. I planned to work for a year and then apply to medical school, which was what I was doing, and why I was working now in healthcare consulting.  

We both had a few days scheduled to work out in Oregon at a hospital out there. I finagled an earlier flight to get to Oregon a day before my shift started so I could stay with Therese and drive out to the ocean with her.  She left a key with the hotelier.  In the morning, she came into the room after her shift.  She was working the twelve-hour night shifts and looked more than tired.

Do you want to sleep for a couple of hours before we go?

Are you kidding? Let’s go. The car’s waiting.

And so we were off. I drove. She nodded off along the way.  The road wound through a thick forest of evergreen and pine. Most of the drive was cloaked in a shade with a rare sort of sunlight filtering through the canopy.  On the drive down, I kicked myself for going through with it. I’d been dating Elise for a year and a half. And here I was, situating myself in the eye of a storm. My hands gripped the steering wheel, and I tried hard to focus on the road, while Therese murmured in her sleep next to me.

When we arrived at the coastline, Therese was awake, her blue eyes glittering about everything.  We parked the car and walked out toward an edge of the coast which soon became rocky, and then soon only ledge and water.  We stopped. She sat among the wreckage.  I wondered if this decision, which seemed minor at the time, might just determine my life’s path and become a defining moment in my life.  I supposed, though, that it is with such weight we come to bear our later burdens and with equally as much lightness stitch together the pieces of our possible lives.  It was here, also, where I wondered if what attracts us to one another, is nothing but a selfish desire to take with us pieces of a life we can never fully have. She turned her eyes away from the ocean and looked to her left. Away, too, from me.  I imagined then myself as the wave, taking a piece of her back into my own self, and feeling fuller, somehow. How life always seems to do these things to us.  It was incredible. The distance between two people who were sitting right next to each other.  And then I remembered it was all because of me. It supposed it was possible to be in love with two women in two different ways.  I had Elise, but I was now in love with Therese. And she knew.

Think we should head back?

Without turning back to look at me or to say anything, Therese nodded and stood up from the debris.  She started walking back toward the car, and she did not so much walk as meander.  She stopped here and there to pick up a piece of driftwood, or a shell.   Therese bent down to pick up a smooth, well-worn piece of green sea glass. She had moved closer to the water, and her pant legs were damp to the knee.

When we reached the car, Therese and I retrieved the various pieces of a picnic we’d cobbled together from a grocery store along the way: some melon, a bottle of wine, some cheese, some crackers.  We brought these things back to the beach, and finding a place where the sand dune acted as a block for the wind, we sat and handed the bottle of wine back and forth. The air, when we did catch a feel for the wind, was cold. Our hands were cold, but the wine numbed them.  We talked the things people talk about when there are other, more important things to talk about, things which are not yet fully formed enough for words. So we talked of work, memories of similar beaches, picnics, and of course, the infinite reservoir of childhood.  Therese smiled, and offered me a memory of her family on the East Coast caught in a hurricane one summer. Of how her parents had been foolhardy and taken her brother swimming in the violent surf, and how he hadn’t been strong enough.  About how she would, years later, dig holes into the sand where the waves broke upon the sand, hoping to find a glimpse of how he might look today. Then, I thought about all of the shared stories I had with Elise, and Therese and I went back to not talking.  And in this not talking, I envisioned a golden band wrapping itself around the two of us, soldering us by our hearts, and leaving us mouthless.  

By this time, the seagulls squawked curious and scavenged around.  They circled, landing closer each time. And the barked at us, opening their high-pitched narrow beaks, and stuck out their tongues.  I had had enough of sitting and wanted to make Therese laugh because I loved it when she laughed. Her eyes sparkled when she laughed, and her mouth opened wide and showed off her teeth, beautiful white teeth, and she didn’t seem to care how she laughed.  She just laughed, and this is what was most beautiful of all.  So I stood up, and ran right at the seagulls, scaring them into a flurry, flushing them out into the air, and racing them with my arms outstretched. I ran fast down toward the water and then swooped back up in a great arc toward where Therese was sitting. I made the sounds the seagulls made, and then ran and ran and ran around in circles up and down the beach, to the water and back, through the water and back, my feet wet and cold and caked with sand. Therese laughed, and despite being cold and feeling a little bit foolish, I was happy because I had made her laugh.  

I could never do that with someone watching, Therese told me later on as we walked up this giant sand dune to get a closer look at the sunset.  

Do what?

You know. What you did before. Chasing the gulls.

Don’t you think we do things like that all the time?

No. We don’t. Or at least I don’t. Maybe you do. I only do things like that when no one’s around.

What do you do when no one’s around?

Dance. Sing. Pretend I’m something I’m not. But, I admire it in you. I think it’s the definition of freedom.

And then she looked away, for she was looking at me the whole time. And she stared out again at the water, and didn’t say anything for a long time.
I drove us back from the coast. Therese slept all the way back to the hotel with the sea glass nested glittering and silent in her hand. I thought about what Therese had said, about the way she laughed, and felt many things, but the light breeze of freedom.