It’s Sunday morning and my spouse Janyce has joined me on the bed in the master bedroom of our Cape house. We’re in the smaller room in the back, the one with it’s own en-suite half bath, and from where I’m propped up now with pillows I can see out the side window — November golden sunlight striking the tips of the oak leaves and illuminating the white arbor in the neighbor’s yard.
“I don’t know where the donut is,” I say, as I reach for the oversized ceramic cup filled with coffee, the same cups we chose special for the house, made by a local potter close to the center of town.
“No donut,” says Janyce. She hands me my cup and begins crawling over our dog who is sprawled at the bottom of the mattress on her blanket, setting her own cup down on the nightstand. She grabs a book lying there, a collection of short expository essays about the bond between women and animals.
“Read me a story,” I say. She opens to a three-page entry about the Swallow Tailed Kite. As she reads, I type the name into the Cornell Lab on my laptop and pull up a full screen video of the majestic bird soaring through the clear blue skies over a Florida swamp. The map shows that they have been sighted here in Massachusetts but I’ve never seen one.
I close my computer and look out the window as she continues to read.
We inherited this small cottage-size house that we rent out for a good portion of the year. It’s booked solid every week in the summer months and most of the shoulder season: late spring when the sun is beginning to warm up the sand dunes and early fall when the ocean water is still warm enough to swim in. But we’re grateful to have the house to ourselves during the true off-season on Cape Cod, when the restaurants and ice cream shops have shuttered, the beaches are empty, and the wooded walks along the protected inland water ponds are full of birds.
November on Cape Cod is a marvel of angled light, russet red oak leaves, and yellowing beach rosebushes still holding on to the last few shriveling cherry-size hips. This visit we took Swirly’s favorite dog walk loop around Frost Fish Creek, up the steep hills and around the narrow path strewn with brown leaves and slippery pine needles that borders a deep well of jagged, craggy pines and fallen tree trunks. We stopped several times to marvel at the light and breathe in cold bright air, looking out over the tree line at the pond shimmering in the late afternoon sun in the distance. On our way back to the car, we startled a pair of Great Blue Herons that were resting on a low branch at the water’s edge. They spread their giant grey wings and pushed themselves off the branch with their twiggy legs, soaring low over the water to the other side, an elegant long neck barely visible stretched up out of the marshy grasses.
On an early morning beach walk on Saturday, we took the long loop around the back of the lighthouse and walked atop the rock barrier at high tide. The seagulls had left the remains of a feast not long ago—hundreds of shells dropped from the sky above to smash against the rocks, exposing the snail delicacy within. I found one unbroken shell of a shark’s eye moon snail and took it home for the kitchen windowsill.
Sunday morning is slowly fading now into the day and the to-do list is looming large. I’ve since moved from the bedroom to the couch, breakfast dishes piled on the counter top. Swirls is sleeping soundly after her morning walk. A jazz Billie Holiday CD is playing softly in the background.
I’m gazing lazily out the back slider and I notice we’ve now lost the sun as grey clouds have gathered. Janyce can’t sit still for long and she is walking around the house with a roll of electrical tape in her hand. I heard her in the basement moments ago swearing while something was happening with the dryer.
She walks over to me on the couch, sitting down now with her laptop.
What are you doing? I say.
“I’m looking for the broken lamp receipt that I sent. I want to see what their hours are,” she says. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’m going to do a few errand-y things this morning while you finish writing.” she says. “Unless you want to come with me?”
The trumpet trills in the background.
Just you and I, forever and and a day. Love cannot die, we’ll keep it that way… East of the sun and west of the moon…
“No, you go without me,” I say. “Maybe we’ll go to the movies later?”
“Let me look at the times,” she says typing into her phone. “It’s playing at 3:00. Then we’ll come back for dinner.”
“I’ll read some applications for work while you’re gone,” I say.
“Need anything?” she says, zipping up her coat and opening the side door. The dog shifts her weight and breathes a deep sigh.
“Not a thing,” I think to myself, shaking my head no. “Not a thing.”