Dan Shewan
Camping on a beach under the stars sounds hopelessly romantic. The reality is that pitching a tent on sand is surprisingly difficult. As it turns out, pitching a fit is far easier. I don’t handle disappointment very well. Unfortunately, nor do I possess the acting talent to disguise it.
*
On our third date, Nicky and I went camping on the beach. In our enthusiasm to spend a night together under the stars in a tiny, almost disposable tent purchased from a local Walmart—which seemed like a perfectly good idea for a third date at the time—we hastily threw our gear into the cramped trunk of Nicky’s ailing Chrysler PT Cruiser before speeding off toward a night of moonlit walks on the sand, lingering gazes at the stars above, and, I hoped, the passionate sex that could be the only possible conclusion to such a magical evening.
*
It was when we arrived at the beach and tried to pitch the tent that things began to go wrong.
*
We had reserved our spot weeks in advance, as it was summertime and the height of tourist season on Massachusetts’ South Coast. We dutifully unpacked the car, and started to place the tent in position. However, the realities of pitching a tent on sand sank in much more quickly than the tent pegs that were supposed to secure our temporary home.
*
The strong gusts of wind that left our mouths gritty after every unguarded word threatened to rip the flimsy polyester tent from our grasp at any moment. To make matters worse, the sand was so fine that the tent pegs found very little grip. Although the worst of the midday heat was long behind us and the cool ocean breeze felt wonderful against my skin, I felt sweat slide down my back. My face was flushed, and my formerly cheerful demeanor rapidly disappeared amid the growing frustration that, try as we might, the damned tent and the weather were going to ruin everything before we had even begun.
*
Nicky couldn’t help but see the funny side of our struggle and giggled constantly as we leapt around the campsite like sand fleas, trying to stop the tent from blowing away. Our neighbors from Vermont and Illinois and Pennsylvania watched us with barely-disguised amusement from the comfort of folding chairs beneath the awnings of their RVs, swigging Bud Light and eating potato salad. Though we eventually managed to set up the tent and enjoyed a wonderful night together, Nicky would admit many months later that this was the first time she had questioned my ability to cope with difficult situations. But in the years following that eventful third date, Nicky and I endured a great many more significant challenges than pitching a tent in strong winds on a beach.
*
We watched Nicky’s mother Sue’s health deteriorate after being diagnosed with terminal small-cell lung cancer. Late one night, we stood watch over her in the hospital. She would frequently go roaming around the ward, clutching the IV stand for support, looking for the kitchen of the home in which she believed she was, so she could make coffee for her guests. The pain drew deep lines in her face in spite of the morphine, but during her fleeting moments of lucidity, she tried to tell us how she planned to arrange the flowers at our wedding. Nicky and I weren’t even engaged. I have no doubt that her words made sense in her mind, but we struggled to understand. “What colors did we use to find ourselves?” she asked. “Where’s Dan? He was tomato. I think I was gold…” We nodded, our tears blurring the sterile white confines of her room, and told her that sounded just beautiful.
*
We helped Nicky’s father Tom sort through Sue’s belongings after her death, boxing up old photographs, clothes, souvenirs from old vacations. Once the second floor of the Dutch Colonial house in which Nicky had grown up had been cleared, Tom began converting it into an apartment with the intent of renting it out to supplement the income from his disability checks. He worked long days for weeks on end, fitting kitchen cabinets in what used to be the second-floor landing, putting down laminate flooring in Nicky’s old bedroom, running water pipes through walls. Every so often he would stop, his eyes brimming with tears, and slowly shake his head.
*
We stood by while my own mother’s health gradually worsened as she succumbed to the deepening depression into which she had sank shortly after I left London to make a new life for myself in the United States years before; her only son an ocean away, her despair so raw she couldn’t bring herself to speak with me on the phone for fear she would begin sobbing uncontrollably. Though I had told him it was unnecessary countless times, my father would make excuses for her. “She’s not feeling too great today, mate,” he’d say. Every time, I told him it was okay.
*
During these difficult times, we stood by one another, just as we had stood by Sue during those last painful weeks. However, despite all we had endured together, I would sometimes wonder if my behavior that summer’s day on the beach had tarnished my record; that my childish frustration with pitching a tent on the sands of Horseneck Beach had somehow counted against me.
*
More than two and a half years after that night on the beach, just days before we would publicly vow to spend the rest of our lives together, Nicky and I were huddled close together in the bathroom of our apartment. Neither of us spoke. We busied ourselves with distracted tidying to avoid staring at the pregnancy test on our bathroom countertop. It was a harbinger of change that, like the wind and the crappy tent years before, would ruin everything.
*
If I believed in God or the afterlife, I would have feared for my immortal soul, such were the depths of my selfishness. A child would thrust responsibilities into my life, inescapable duties and disruptions for which I felt an intense, burning resentment. Changing diapers. Early-morning feedings. Incessant crying. Nicky had been forced to stop taking the pill for a month between teaching jobs because she didn’t have health insurance, and as a result, we would cease to be people. We would merely be parents.
*
Everything was everyone else’s fault but mine.
*
The test came back negative. I let out a sigh of relief, but the ordeal was not yet over. Nicky told me that it might be a “false” negative, due to the timing of the test and the lateness of her period. We wouldn’t be sure for another few days. By the time we could take another test, we’d be five hundred miles away in western New York on our honeymoon.
*
We exchanged vows in a historic Victorian guesthouse in the Berkshires three days later. It was a small ceremony, a handful of Nicky’s family and friends in attendance. My mother was too sick and depressed to travel such a great distance, and the thought of leaving her alone was unspeakable to my father. The Justice of the Peace couldn’t say “covenant” correctly, which irked me every single time she mispronounced it.
*
It was a beautiful ceremony.
*
That night we had sex, without a condom, because it was our wedding night and the bed had four posters and lace-trimmed voile panels and we were going to fuck like it was our last day on Earth, the immortal souls of unborn children be damned.
*
Something must have happened as we crossed the border from Massachusetts into New York two days later. Looking back, I can only conclude that the tollbooth that served as a transition between the Mass Pike and the New York State Thruway must have actually been some kind of gateway to a land not quite like the one we knew, but dangerously close to the life we wanted, if only we had the courage to reach out and take it. We could almost see this other, potential future. It lay tantalizingly out of reach, a blurry, shimmering haze like a barnyard mirage amid the desert of fields that hugged the banks of the Genesee.
*
The further we drove west, the more vivid this alternate reality became. As the farms sped past us, the cows and horses indifferent to our excitement, we realized that getting married had solved everything. We would lose weight. Drink less. Have more sex. Have better sex. Become parents. Become good parents with happy, emotionally well-adjusted children who lacked our anxiety and social neuroses. Everything seemed possible.
*
Until we reached Niagara Falls, New York.
*
As we drove down the Robert Moses Parkway, we thought of all the other newly-betrothed men and women who had made their own kitschy pilgrimage to the “honeymoon capital of the world” over the years. We pictured streets lined with charming, authentically retro motels, complete with neon signs that harkened back to the populuxe design aesthetic of the Fifties. We saw ourselves sipping champagne in bars with wood-paneled walls adorned with faded black-and-white photographs of the daredevils who had risked their lives for fame and glory by tumbling over Horseshoe Falls in oak barrels.
*
Like so many other cities in the Rust Belt, Niagara Falls is a ghost town.
*
Our smiles faded as we drove slowly up Main Street. Dollar stores and discount supermarkets advertising the fact that they accepted food stamps were among the few businesses whose doors were not boarded shut. A little further up Main, we passed the crumbling husk of the Jenss department store, which we would later learn was one of the area’s most upscale retailers during Niagara Falls’ heyday in the Fifties and Sixties, but had sat empty and neglected for almost 20 years. A weathered sign encouraged us to visit the “official” Niagara Falls tourist information center, its lettering faded, the paint peeling.
*
Everywhere we turned, businesses had either gone under, or were in the process of attempting to unload as much merchandise as they could before cutting their losses and closing for good. People with ashen faces waited for buses that would eventually carry them to forgotten corners of the city. Most of the ads on the benches that lined each side of the street bore the smiling, earnest faces of personal injury lawyers who were ready to fight for your rights in courts of law to get you the money you deserved.
*
We parked the car across the street from the Hotel Niagara, a once-grand building that had been one of the most exclusive hotels in the city during the Twenties and Thirties. Today, the Hotel Niagara remains abandoned, many of the windows through which newlyweds just like us had once marveled at the beauty of the Falls either boarded up or whitewashed. After exchanging our online vouchers for Discovery Passes at the official visitor center nearby, we set off toward Prospect Point, walking as if we had stones in our shoes.
*
The raw power of Niagara Falls contrasts starkly with the urban decay of the city that shares its name. We were awestruck by the majesty of the cascading water as we embarked on the famous Maid of the Mist tour toward the crescent-shaped basin of the Horseshoe Falls. The cold spray lashed our faces as we walked hesitantly along the series of interconnecting wooden decks that comprise the Cave of the Winds attraction. Standing mere feet away from the base of the falls, the immense, ceaseless torrent crashing onto the rocks below, it was all too easy to forget about the decline of one of the world’s most famous cities less than a mile away.
*
We had seen what we came to see, and reluctantly made our way back to town, unsure of our next move. As we neared downtown, we felt dirty and ashamed, as if we had stumbled across an aging starlet forced to turn tricks in a motel parking lot to make ends meet. Never before had I felt such a profound sense of embarrassment for a city. I thought of the people whose names we had seen in the guestbook at the visitor center; tourists from India, Australia, my own native England. Had they managed to conceal their disappointment from their loved ones? Or had their faces betrayed them, as mine almost certainly had? We wandered the deserted streets like accident victims, confused, aimless. With few options and even less desire to remain in Niagara Falls, we got back in the car and crossed the Rainbow Bridge into Canada, fleeing New York like refugees.
*
Comparing the Canadian city of Niagara Falls to its American counterpart is like comparing Las Vegas to a broken slot machine in an all-night laundromat. We felt an almost palpable sense of relief to be away from the American side as we walked the streets of Clifton Hill with its opulent hotels and casinos, vibrant bars, and bustling shops selling jars of maple syrup and First Nations fridge magnets. Over poutine, we speculated about how different we would feel about our trip had we chosen to stay in one of the destitute motels in Niagara Falls proper, rather than the late 19th century guesthouse at which we were actually staying in Newfane, New York, about 20 miles away.
*
Sitting there, gazing out at the American falls, we felt as though we had narrowly avoided a catastrophe from which our honeymoon might never have recovered.
*
We spent the next several days on the Canadian side, feeling both smug and relieved every time we looked across Niagara Gorge at the flat, desolate skyline of its American neighbor. Each night, we made our escape back into the wilds of western New York, feeling somehow safer with each passing mile. We spent our nights sipping wine in the hot tub of our suite, reading online news articles about Niagara’s inexorable deterioration. Each story read like a crime report; the city and its people the victims, the passage of time the perpetrator. There were no eyewitnesses to these crimes in the typical sense, only generations of people who had watched their once-proud city slowly succumb to the ravages of economic decline the way we had watched Sue’s health worsen from her hospital bedside. To add insult to injury—the kind against which even the most fervent ambulance-chasing attorney couldn’t litigate—Niagara Falls, Ontario, had flourished; a cruel mirror-image that mocked its American neighbor in both appearance and reputation.
*
On the fourth and penultimate day of our honeymoon, we were once again huddled together in the confines of a small bathroom, albeit a much nicer one than our own, in our suite. Once again, our disposable traveling companion stared back at us from the marbled sinktop, commanding our sole attention with its stoic silence. It mocked us, withholding the news that would change our lives forever. Once again, I couldn’t disguise my disappointment.
*
The test was negative. We were still people.
*
The etymology of the word “honeymoon” is unclear, but notable British essayist Samuel Johnson famously described it as “… the first month after marriage, when there is nothing but tenderness and pleasure.” During our honeymoon, there was plenty of both. What made our honeymoon all the sweeter was that despite the potential for the trip to have been a disaster, we both remained positive and hopeful about the future. Our future. The one we had seen, for just a moment, as we drove along the New York State Thruway.
*
Not so long ago, I might have seen the decay of Niagara Falls as a portent of what we could expect as husband and wife. I may have reacted in the same childish way I had years before on the beach, another barely-restrained tantrum borne of the frustration that reality rarely matches the fairy tale ideal—but I didn’t. On the day we packed the car and prepared to make our way back to Boston, I could hardly contain my excitement to return to our comfortable, familiar little world and begin our married life together anew. The thought of becoming a parent no longer filled me with a bitter dread. The trip had revealed to me a glimpse of the husband and father that one day I know I’ll be.
*
I don’t handle disappointment very well, but I’m learning.
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Originally from London, Dan now resides in New England. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Rumpus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Full Stop and Hippocampus Magazine, among others. He is currently working on a series of short stories and essays, in addition to planning a longer work of fiction. You can follow Dan on Twitter @danshewan.