Coffee Cove

Title: Coffee Cove
Date: November 25th 2010



I stared at the lake, glaring at the morning mists as they rolled off the quiet waters. Somehow, I felt personally insulted by the fact that the world seemed so peaceful; it felt like Mother Nature was mocking my fractured, worry-filled mind by refusing to give me something – anything – else to focus on.

With a damp, slimy stick, I traced out those damning words in the sand by my feet: I am pregnant. I hated looking at those words and kicked the sand until they were all gone.

It had to be a mistake. It wasn’t true, or real or . . . or anything! I had sex with one boy, just to see if I would like it, and we used protection.

A low growl escaped my lips as I fell backwards with a heavy thud and glared at the clear, pink-purple sky. The moon – a perfect quarter crescent – was still visible and I couldn’t help but think it was laughing at me. Everything was laughing at me. I hated it.

The sand was cold and uncomfortable against my back, so I sat up. There was a girl in a canoe crossing the lake towards the beach. It was . . . strange. Not even the people in the cabins were up and about yet – it was, like, six in the morning! And the girl was young too; she couldn’t have been much older than me.

“Good morning!” she called out as she drew near. The canoe’s bottom crunched against the sandy shore of the cove as she beached it and stepped out. She was barefoot and her toenails were painted a sparkly green; I noticed because they caught the light of the rising sun and glittered before disappearing into waters that were probably still icy from night’s grasp. “You look angry. Want some tea?”

I blinked at her and raised my eyebrow. She just laughed as she pulled a backpack out of the canoe and tossed it onto the sand beside me, ignoring my attempts to shuffle away from her presence and continue angsting in solitude. “I believe that tea can solve all the world’s problems,” she explained; I glared daggers at her instead of the mist and she blithely ignored me as she kept puttering around. “If everybody just sat down and had a nice cup of Earl Grey, we wouldn’t have war or murder or anger or any of that shit. You’ve been here since four in the morning. I know – that’s when the best fishing is and I’m always out here by then, and the mist doesn’t start to settle until around six. Are you cold? You look cold. I’ll make a fire pit and get a blaze going.”

While she chattered on and on, she collected some rocks from the cove and dug out a fire pit and made a fire. She spread a blanket from her bag out close to the pit and in a few minutes, there was a nice, cheerful blaze going. Before she sat down, she hauled the canoe up a bit higher on the beach so it wouldn’t float away.

She was wearing cut-off jeans and a tank top that was a size too small for her; there was a warm flannel jacket and another blanket abandoned in the canoe, probably used to combat the night’s chill while she was fishing.

“Here.” A plastic thermos cup was held under my nose and before I could help myself, I inhaled a tangy, sweet, spicy scent. “It’s Rose Chai, my own blend. It’ll perk you right up and cure what ails yah. So what are you doing out here all alone?”

“Um . . . being angry,” I mumbled as I shifted so that I was kneeling on the edge of her blanket; I was covered in sand and I didn’t want to get it dirty. “Just being angry.”

“At what?” she chirped, her bright green-blue eyes sparkling in the dawn light. “You can tell me. I’m a total stranger and we probably won’t ever see each other again. So spill. Why are you angry? And come sit on the blanket. It’s a beach blanket. Its reason for existing is to be covered in sand and it is very sad when it isn’t.”

She threw me off-balance. It was like she . . . knew. It was off-putting and I was terrified. But at the same time, my ass was soaked from sitting on the damp sand and the tea I was almost reverently cradling was sending pleasurable waves of warmth up my numb arms. I finally, grudgingly, obeyed her command and moved onto the very edge blanket as far away from her as was politely possible.

“I’m angry at a lot of things,” I stated as I took a sip of tea. “At myself, at everything else, at just . . . everything. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Fuck, we were safe about everything!”

“Bun in the oven?” the girl hummed.

She hit the nail on the head and for some reason, instead of being frightened or angry, a deep, soul-crushing sadness welled up in me and I started to sob uncontrollably. I was shaking so badly that tea spilled over my bare legs and stained the short dress I was wearing. Up until then, I hadn’t registered anything beyond the knowledge that there was a little person growing inside of me and . . . it all just fell on my shoulders. What was my dad going to think? We lived in a small, dying, strictly Roman Catholic mining town. What was everybody else going to think? Nanny? My friends . . . Mark.

The panic hit me like a freight train hits a bunny rabbit on the tracks. It zoomed up fast and by the time it was gone, there was nothing left but little bits of mush and fur.

“Hey,” the girl soothed. She touched my shoulder and then tucked one of my unruly, sand-caked black curls behind my ear. “It’s okay. It isn’t the end of the world. You’ve got options.”

“It doesn’t feel like I do,” I sobbed as I dropped the cup and curled into her, hiding my face against her bare neck. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me! It’s like I’m l-lost in the woods and n-nobody is looking for m-me!”

Everything – all the anger, sadness and hopeless feelings – drained out of me while I sat there and cried on the shoulder of a strange girl. Her arms wrapped around me, warm and comforting, while I cried out every last drop of torment that I was drowning in.

She eased us both backwards until we could look up at the ever-lightening sky. I fit so perfectly against her . . . it probably wasn’t very comfortable for her, though. I was all skin and bones and she was soft and curvy. “Are you real?” I mumbled.

“I might be,” she responded; I could hear her heartbeat, could feel her shiver slightly in the cold as I cushioned my head on her breast. “I might not be, too. None of us – none of this, any of this – could be real, or it could all be real. Or both at the same time. We could be God’s acid trip, for all we know. We might be the product of his rebellious teen phase.”

I laughed weakly and sat up. “You’re an odd duck,” I decided. “I like odd ducks. They make the most interesting people. I’m Theresa, but you can call me Tessa.”

“Nice to meet you, Tessa, I’m Lucy.”

We sat on that forgotten patch of beach and talked for . . . it must have been hours, because by the time we were running out of things to talk about, the skies were getting dark again. She’d cooked up some of the fish she’d caught earlier when we were hungry and even after it had gone cold, her tea was more than enough to slake our thirst.

“Have you figured out what you’re going to do?” Lucy asked; I shook my head. We both stood up and started cleaning our mess from the secluded, clean cove. “Well … If I were in your place, I’d keep my baby. Everybody deserves a chance at living life.”

“Yeah . . . and it’s kind of against the law for me to have an abortion now,” I murmured as I shook the sand from her blanket and started folding it. “I’m two weeks into my second trimester. According to my doctor, I should be able to start feeling movement in a few weeks.”

“Nifty!” Lucy started hauling water over to the coals using her canoe’s water-bailing bucket. “Y’see, the way I see things, you’re gonna be one of two things: A really awesome-ass cool mom, or the person who gives a childless couple a hell of a lot of happiness. And who knows? Maybe nobody’ll make a fuss about it.”

A bark of laughter escaped my lips before I could stop it. “My dad’s a strict Roman Catholic,” I explained. “I can probably fall back on my Nanny if he kicks me out, but I’m probably gonna get shit from all quarters for getting knocked up before marriage – before my eighteenth, even.”

“Direct them to me,” Lucy giggled. “I’ll tell them where to go and how to get there. I’m kinda good at that.”

We both slowed in our work and when we stopped, we looked at each other and smiled. Warmth flowed into me, like hot caramel over the whipped cream you put on cocoa, and I felt normal again. I mean, I still had anxiety out the wazoo, but it was manageable again.

“Sometimes strangers make the best therapists,” Lucy said softly.

“I swear to God you’re a psychic!” I burst out laughing. “Yes, yes, strangers do make pretty radical therapists, but we aren’t strangers anymore, are we?”

“Friends make good therapists too.” Her autumn-coloured hair caught the fading gold of the setting sun. “So. Summer’s here. School’s out. What’s going to happen?”

“I’m going to enjoy the summer while it’s here,” I decided firmly. “It’s tradition for me to spend my summers out here with Nanny, and she’s a very liberal Newfie woman.”

I grinned as Lucy giggled; her laugh was soft and whispering, like prairie wind through a field of corn. I decided I liked that laugh. “I’m a mass of hormones and random mood swings and a strange desire to eat chilli all the time,” I continued quietly, “but things are really looking better, and I have you to thank for that, Lucy. I’ll be out here most days from now until the end of the summer . . . I’d like to spend more time with you, if that’s alright.”

“Oh, hon, there’s no way in Hell you’re getting rid of me now,” Lucy laughed. She got into her canoe and I pushed her off the sand bar, setting her adrift in the green-gold waters of Paint Lake. As she began to paddle her canoe back to where ever she lived, she called over her shoulder, “See you tomorrow, Tessa!”

I waved goodbye in the dusk light and took a deep, calming breath.

A lifetime with Lucy . . . Yeah. I think I can live with that. Me and my baby . . . we can both live with that.