“
Joe you’d better come quickly,” Cara says. “Maybe you can help me find her.”
“
Find her?”
“
It’s near the end. And she said she wanted to be alone for the end.”
“
The end?” Joe asks.
“
She didn’t tell you?” Cara asks.
“
Tell me what?” Joe asks.
“
You’d better get here as fast as you can. I mean today. Rent a plane, do whatever you have to. Just get here.”
I am in Cleveland, at her house, but she is not here. This house is entirely Shannon. It is distant from any neighbor and perched over the frozen harbor. Her things and her essence are everywhere. I climb the spiral wrought iron staircase to what must be her reading room. There is a letter.
I read it. It is a good-bye letter to me. She must have written it here.
But where could she be?
The beacon from the lighthouse sweeps her home and I know that’s where she is. She is in the lighthouse. She intends to die in the lighthouse. Where a winter storm is sending frozen spray higher and higher against the lighthouse and the keeper’s house.
I race down the stairs and out to her dock. The harbor is frozen but there is open water near the lighthouse. There has to be a way.
I race through her garage and into her boathouse. There is a zodiac and a jet ski and a kayak and one empty slip. The wind is howling from the north and even in the harbor there are five foot waves. Outside the break wall Lake Erie is throwing gigantic twenty foot swells against anything that dares to stand in its way.
I go back in the house and tear all the blankets and the comforter off her bed. I stuff them in a garbage bag, and then stuff all that into another. It will have to do.
I fire up the zodiac and brace myself for a cold I cannot even imagine. It is only four hundred yards across the harbor. The first hundred by the boat house are frozen. I push the zodiac ahead of me even as frozen spray finds every square inch of exposed skin. As I approach the edge of the ice, near the first of the open water, the boat suddenly breaks through the ice and I am barely able to scramble aboard after sinking to my waist.
There is no way to describe this cold.
The engine fires and I fight the waves and arrive in the lee of the lighthouse. There is a protected spot near the steps and I am able to latch onto the chains that reach down from the frozen steps. I ascend the steps using the chains and spare only one glance back at the zodiac that has been swept back across the harbor to the ice.
Out here the wind is hurricane force and filled with ice and freezing spray. The lighthouse seems to be tilting as the ice builds up unevenly.
I am inside and have closed the door behind me. The lighthouse is dark and cold and smells of decades of decay.
I call out her name but there is no reply.
Stairs lead up and I follow them towards the meager light that filters down from above.
She is here. I know she is here. She could not possibly be anywhere else.
I pull the blankets and comforter with me though my legs are so cold I can barely climb.
I see her.
She is here.
Seated with her back to her home, facing out towards the storm.
I fall on the floor behind her and kiss her.
My lips nearly freeze to her forehead. There is no fever in this frozen lighthouse.
“
You came,” she whispers.
“
Yes,” I answer. She is cold but dry. She must have come out before the storm. There is no telling how long she has been here. I remove my wet clothes and wrap us in the blankets and the comforters and pull her close.
“
I love you Joe,” she says. “I’ve always loved you. Even when I didn’t know what love was. I’m so sorry I never told you.”
“
You told me every day,” I say.
Shannon
They say it is a miracle.
That the hypothermia cured me.
That the three days and three nights that Joe and I spent frozen in the lighthouse at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River somehow saved me. There is no explanation. Tens of millions of people have watched the YouTube of the frozen lighthouse, but only Joe and I and a few brave men in the Coast Guard know that Joe and I were trapped inside.
My sister the brilliant cancer researcher has no explanation. Every time she runs her wand up or down my body that intense look of concentration on her face dissolves and turns to the purest sisterly joy and love that ever was.
She cannot explain it, but she can accept it.
I have been cured by being frozen in the lighthouse for three days. Three days without food or water or heat. Three days when Joe never left my side. When he held me to warm me. When he somehow managed to arrange a rescue. Three days when he told me he loved me at least a million and five times.
How many miracles can one woman endure? The miracle of the natural gas and oil, the miracle of Joe, and now the miracle of a hypothermic cure.
I think that a dozen doctors, or maybe a hundred dozen, have taken blood and tissue and swabs and have performed tests and have poked, prodded, and imaged every cell in my body. I have had enough.
It is time to retire from being a miracle and to relax.
Joe and I will travel from my Coast Guard station home to my home in Costa Rica. He will be surprised to learn that I have a home in Costa Rica. He will like biking back and forth from Hermosa to Jaco on the mountain bike path that now connects the two towns. The path that was built by a legion of men with machetes and rakes and shovels and no heavy equipment. Men with wheelbarrows and burros who spent five years of constant labor to make the trail. The trail cost me nearly five million dollars and employed every worker who wanted a job in Hermosa or Jaco. Salvaro put one of his cousins in charge and the construction went smoothly. Even now, every day a hundred men walk the trail with machetes and baskets and rakes to keep it clear. The jungle never rests.
So we are going to Costa Rica so that I can be warm and so that we can surf and so that we can be a woman and a man and not a miracle and her savior.
Joe
Tomorrow we leave for Costa Rica. She wants some time by herself to get ready. I oblige her. So it is March and I am running on the beach at Mentor Headlands and praying words of thanks. “Thank you God for all of this. For all these miracles. Please help Shannon. And please help Cara with her research. Please help Danny be happy.”
My turtle neck shirt is stretched high and my woolen hat is pulled low. The wind rushes in off the frozen lake and I shiver at both the temperature and the memory of the lighthouse. How we huddled together under the blankets and comforter and waited for the storm to subside so that a Coast Guard icebreaker could come alongside and snatch us to safety.
She has been cured and it is a miracle, there is no other way to describe it. For a moment I wonder what my Fundamentalist Colleen would have said.
I often pray while I run. I pray “thank you God for all of this, and for the will to try. Please help those in pain feel less pain. Please help those who are trying to help be able to help.”
My mind drifts and I begin to wonder.
Why did God create cancer? To test us? To purify people through suffering. Did He make a mistake? To provide a challenge for researchers, a test for their dedication and intellect? A problem for smart people to solve? So that we could understand perfection and imperfection? To give the zealots a way to identify sinners? Why? Why did He give it to Shannon and then save her? Why did He give it to Caitlin and then abandon her?
As I ponder and lose focus my left foot slips in the rocks and I stumble towards the Lake. I fall to my knees and come to rest mere inches from the dark angry ice filled waves that would greedily pull me under in my heavy winter clothes. I crawl back up the rocky bank, and turn to run back to my car. It might have been weeks before anyone found my frozen and drowned body in this icy gray lake.
Shannon and Joe
“
Hola Salvaro,” I say.
“
Hola Shannon. Hola Joe,” Salvaro answers.
We walk to his van that is parked at the curb of the San Jose, Costa Rica airport. A dozen official airport helpers who are identified with badges and radios protect the unsuspecting tourista from the gypsy cabs and worse that would whisk her away. Salvaro or his driver see these men every day and exchange a few Colones as is the custom to maintain their goodwill.
“
It is good to see you,” I say. “Can you take us to my house? After we see Wendy and Tino?”
“
Si,” Salvaro answers.
“
Your house?” Joe asks.
“
Si. Mi casa chica.”
Joe’s jaw literally hangs open.
“
I have so much to tell you,” I say.
“
Hola,” Wendy says. She hugs me and I can see that she has noticed something about me. Tino rushes into my arms and hugs me as though he were still a twelve year old boy and not the beautiful young man he has become. We sit at the big table in the main room and drink coffee and make plans for surfing in the morning.
“
So where’s your house?” he asks.
“
Mi casa está cerca de aquí.”
“
¿Cerca?” Joe asks. “Nearby?”
“
Si,” I answer. “Está cerca de Playa Hermosa.”
“
When did you become so fluent in Spanish?” Joe asks.
“
I have so much to tell you Joe. And I am going to tell you everything in my little house that sits next door to Salvaro’s mother’s house. Will you please come and stay with me? In my house in Hermosa?”
A tear forms in Joe’s eye.
He pours himself another cup of coffee, sips, and pours it on the floor.
Shannon
And so another ten years passed for Joe and I. We spent our Januarys in Topsail just the way we had. And we spent Julys on Topsail just the way we had. Over time the family came to know Joe, and came to know about us.
We spent Aprils and Novembers in Costa Rica. In my house. Together. We made love in the evenings and we slept together at night.
We visited a different lighthouse every October.
And we worked for the Foundation.
We lived the Topsail accord for another ten years until Joe passed away when he was nearly seventy. He wrecked on his mountain bike. What a sixty nine year old man was doing riding a mountain bike I’ll never know. But that was Joe. He had his habits. He made his deal, and he stuck to it.
I remember the day he died.
Salvaro and his mother and I were seated in rope chairs hanging on her front porch.
Tino rode up the drive, alone.
“
Él está muerto,” Tino managed.
“
¿Quién?” Salvaro asked.
“
Signor Joe,” Tino answered.
Salvaro took my hand in his.
Salvaro’s mother crossed herself, reached into her apron for her rosary and began to pray.
It did not register immediately for me.
But then it did.
Joe was dead. On the road where someone dies every day. Joe was now one of those someones, and I was alone.
Shannon and
Cara
“
It’s our thirtieth year here,” Cara says.
“
Yes. And the tenth without Joe. I still miss him,” Shannon answers.
Cara knows this is another time when she will just listen.
“
He would have been eighty next week,” Shannon continues. “I can’t believe it’s been ten years. We had twenty years together, and now it’s been ten years without him. When I had cancer, I was sure that he would walk this beach alone, without me, for years and years and years. I tried to remember everything I could about the beach and I tried to remember everything about him and I tried to get him to remember.”
They reach the pier. Stop. Look out past the end of the pier.
“
Want to go up?” Cara asks.
“
No. Let’s go back,” Shannon answers.
Sometimes they will go up on the pier and walk all the way out to the end so that Shannon can be closer to where Joe’s ashes were spread on the Atlantic. Today they simply turn and head back towards her house on the beach.
Shannon snuggles in to her sister’s shoulder. This is a new habit, one that only appeared after they were both well over fifty, closer to sixty.
“
I can feel him pretty good today,” Shannon says.