Tidal Flats. Cynthia Newberry Martin
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breakwater would land them between two opposing lighthouses—one flashing a green light and the other, red. She paused, unsure at first which one was sounding, but both were, as if talking to each other. Then the wind picked up again, and she couldn’t hear either one, which was disconcerting. No one else was crazy enough to be out.
Some boulders tended to the horizontal, others to the vertical; some spread out long and lean; others topped out fat and jagged; some lay smooth side up, others corner up—but all as if some massive hand had dropped them from the sky and left them however they fell. On the surface of some, pools of water collected; on others, broken bits of seashells. And there were the things that had washed up—a rainbow Hula-Hoop, one red flip-flop, a stalk of bamboo.
Something clattered onto a rock in front of her. A seagull swooped down and picked up a mollusk and dropped it again. Three times, as she stood there transfixed. The last drop cracked the shell.
The gaps between rocks became wider still. In some places, she couldn’t step but had to jump. In one spot, she had to use her hands and knees to make it to the next rock. Ahead, Ethan had stopped. She came up behind him, and he reached back for her hand.
In front of them, two long, narrow boulders, side by side.
She sat down—she was already soaked—facing the direction from which they had come. Ethan sat behind her, his back against hers, facing the steps they had yet to take. The tide was on its way out, the water singing through the rocks beneath them. That tern, which had seemed stationary, joined them now, wings outstretched.
“So,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
He leaned against her; she leaned back with equal force. And then there was no force, just the lean—just the two of them leaning on each other.
“It’s a country of contrasts and divisions,” Ethan said. “Compartments.”
Lost in the world around her, she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Nangarhar province is green, but a lot of the country is dry and mountainous. They build walls everywhere. People will create a village around a river so they have access to the water they need to survive, only to be wiped out by that same river during the spring thaw and floods.”
“I don’t want to go to Afghanistan,” she said. “Even with you.”
“I just thought if you saw it—”
“I’d understand why my father had to die there.”
“You’d understand why I love it.”
She took a sip of water, felt how easily she swallowed it, thought how easily Afghanistan would swallow her. She’d disappear.
“Three years,” he said. “That’s all I’m asking.”
“We should just wait then, until you’re done.”
“I want to belong to you now,” he said. “I want us to shape our lives together. I don’t want to end up ten years from now with nothing but Afghanistan.”
The rock beneath her was rough despite its smooth appearance. Running her fingers back and forth, she asked, “What are you looking for when you take your photos?”
“Too many things, it sometimes seems. Differing elements coming together in one moment, complications, surprising myself, color. Definitely color.”
“The words husband and wife,” she said. “Those words change things.”
“They’re just words,” he said.
“They’re possessive.”
“But I want you to possess me,” he said. “Right this minute.” He rubbed his head back against hers at the same time that he reached his hands behind him and grabbed her hips. “What if I hadn’t found you?”
“What if I hadn’t found you?” she said.
“Husband and wife aren’t possessive words,” he said. “They’re belonging words. They mean we each have a place in the world where we belong.”
She closed her eyes. The possibility of belonging was at the same time too much and still not enough. She opened her eyes and saw houses, the shoreline, the monument and the library guarding the town. “What do you see your way?” she asked.
“A lighthouse, the marsh, uninhabited land.”
His bones to her bones. She’d been alone all her life it sometimes seemed. She knew alone; she could control it. This new country, shining off in the distance, scared her even as it drew her toward it.
“How about this,” he said. “For three years, I’ll keep going back and forth to Afghanistan. And you’ll work on imagining our family. After three years, no more Afghanistan. I’ll limit travel to one night, maybe two. And if you don’t change your mind about a baby, then we won’t have any. I get what I want first, but you get what you want forever.”
An agreement. She breathed out. The agreement felt safe. It made a space for each of them. She turned to face him—this man who understood her as no one ever had. Even she hadn’t thought of planning for love.
“It may always be just the two of us,” he said, “but it will be the two of us.”
And this was more than she could resist.
She leaned over and kissed him. He kissed the top of her head.
“We need a name,” she said.
“A name?”
“For the agreement. To make it real.”
“It’s already real,” he said.
But she knew the power of words. “We’re out here in the middle of this space that is sometimes water and sometimes sand. Is there a name for out here?”
“Tidal flats,” he said and looked at her.
“The Tidal Flats Agreement,” she said.
And he held out his little finger, which she hooked with hers. Then he pulled her to him and kissed her and asked her to spend the rest of her life with him. They helped each other stand and continued on. Up ahead she was surprised to see that the rocks veered quite dramatically to the left. When they’d started out, it had looked like a straight shot.
PART ONE
LOVE
1
To Cass, he was just Ethan, the man she’d been married to for almost three years, the man who curled into a ball as he slept and who liked to read People magazine, but to the rest of the world, he was the photojournalist behind The Afghan Woman and the famous Portraits of Afghanistan. He was the “Photographer with the Soul of a Nation.”
With no direct flight from Kabul, he came home by way of Dubai, the nonstop due in at 6:06 a.m. Add to that delays, customs, baggage claim. She didn’t just pull up to the curb; she’d made it a ritual to park and go inside, to sit in the atrium drinking coffee while she waited for his text, then to stand behind the roped-off area that assured arriving passengers of enough space to exit, her eyes locked on the airport escalator on the other side of the empty corridor watching for his curly black hair. Watching his tired eyes find hers. His ears like wings, no smile—that was Ethan. Which made her smile.
Instead of navigating around the rope, he came straight to her and dropped a bag from each hand, wrapping his arms and body around her, the rope between them nothing after sixty-three days—the longest they’d ever been apart. Only then, when she could smell the tangy shaving cream he’d used in the airplane bathroom, did she allow herself to feel every drop of missing