"Madame – are you awake?" I shift in the Adirondack chair and wince at the arthritis in my shoulder. The Captain leans over me from behind, his arms across my chest. My hair is short, brittle and bottle-ash blonde, but he nuzzles my wrinkly face anyway. "Mmmmm, is this the fake 80-year-old Daniel or the 45-year-old ghost of my dreams?" I demurely inquire. He insists on aging himself at times. I'm really not vain but I am horribly insecure about the inexorable toll the years have taken on my body, and how it might affect his desire for me. "It's the lover of all your ages," he replies suavely, but I can tell from his voice the young Daniel Gregg is behind me. "Madame," he chides, always able to sense my thoughts. "No matter how old you get, I'm still 100 years ahead of you." I've heard this many, many times, but it always placates my inappropriate vanity. Still, when I die, will I be 35 again, physically, or remain a ghostly Cougar for the ages? He lifts me and carries me from our balcony to the large antique bed we have shared for 41 years. I spin the polished telescope in passing. Daniel closes the French doors, and when he turns, I see both the aged Captain and the young Captain twinkling, together in the same dimension. We lay in our bed, my head on his shoulder, my arm across his chest.
I am an old withered woman, now. In my mind, it's still 1968 and I'm young, vibrant and waving at Captain Gregg from down on the beach. Jonathan and Candy are running in the surf, not off lawyering in Augusta or serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. I'm starting a new life, a new adventure. Martha is alive, Scruffy too. Claymore's still in the closet and Ed Peavey is "the law" in Schooner Bay. I am physically, if that's the word, much younger than the ghost of Gull Cottage. Life is ahead of us, the past buried hundreds of miles to the south in Philadelphia. We don't have enough money, but I'm young, determined and don't care. We are at the center of our own universe, happy and healthy, and it doesn't even seem strange to have added a poltergeist to our most unconventional family.
I recall kissing that ghost's surprisingly substantive lips on a charmingly dark and stormy night, as he blustered over some thing historically quite irrelevant. It's perhaps the only time I ever caught him truly off guard – and it worked! Claymore officiates at our hasty, impromptu, if not fully legal wedding that weekend. Jonathan hands Daniel a golden band and I am a not a wife again, but the pampered and fully loved consort of an otherworldly Captain who vows to watch over me until…what? Til death do we join again? For the moment, the Captain is simply satisfied the children will never think he took sexual advantage of their mother while I am secretly taking advantage of him! Life is gloriously corporeal, incorporeal, wonderfully gothic, often anachronistic but happily, happily ours in the cottage by the sea.
The Captain's asleep now. Were he awake, he would put an immediate halt to this train of thought. Pleasant as it seems, it's a one-way ticket to sorrow. Tomorrow is a very unpleasant anniversary of sorts. He and I have been over this so many times. How could I ever forget what happened on tomorrow's date, over 35 years ago? It sends me hurtling back to the past every year, to the exact moment I almost became forever trapped in a nightmare not of my own making, when time rushed out to sea like a retreating wave at low tide – and never returned. Even Daniel cannot erase from my mind the events of that day when time stopped then ran backwards, away from the beach, Gull Cottage and Captain Gregg.
I visualize myself all too well, in the moment before everything almost ended, on my knees in the front garden, trowel in hand, wondering whether the peonies really have a chance this summer. Candy's blaring Beatles music out the window. I think she's played Let It Be 100 times, but it's a huge improvement over the inane Partridge Family. Daniel and Jonathan are nowhere to be found, which isn't at all unusual. Martha's talking to Ed on the phone. Scruffy's out back, sunning himself at the top of the stairs leading to our private beach. I've finished all assignments so my editors have no reason to call. The day is mine.
I'm so used to the shriek of the gulls and the quite literal roar of the surf, that at first I don't hear the sound of crunching gravel. I miss the slam of the car door. I'm still squatting beside the flower bed when two large feet swing out of the driver's side and plant themselves firmly on the other side of the car. I wipe my forehead and stand. I expected one of Candy's girlfriends to pop out of the passenger side any moment. This isn't what happens. For a moment, I can't think. Inexplicably rooted to the pavestone, I stare. staring. Blood starts rushing in my ears and my lungs remind me it's time to breathe. Strange, I can neither breathe nor see. Some unheralded blackness hurtles toward me like a wave on the beach, and I drown.