And The Sea Called Her Name (3 page)

It hadn’t felt like there were any fingers
attached to her hands when she’d gripped me. Her touch had curled
around my arms in a liquid way, almost like—

But the idea was too much and I gritted my
teeth against it, concentrating on her breathing beside me. She was
safe and that was all that mattered. Even with my internal
assurances, it was hours before I drifted into a fitful sleep. And
it was only upon waking in the early morning light and listening to
the renewed strength of the tide that I remembered what she’d
whispered to me as I entered her.

It knows my name.

~

I thought there would be a long and arduous
discussion that next day, but Del rose refreshed and lighthearted.
She ate a huge breakfast that I cooked at the stove, the whole
while talking animatedly about several new programs she was
securing for the coming fall in her department. I watched her eat
over my own eggs, toast, and bacon that cooled on the plate before
me. When she finally stopped speaking and took in my stare she
paused, letting her fork come to rest on the table.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m okay. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I know you’re worried about
yesterday but I think I just spaced out and went for a walk along
the beach. I must’ve decided to go for a swim.”

“Del, the water’s not even fifty degrees yet.
Why the hell would you go for a swim?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t
remember.”

“And you don’t find that the least bit
troubling?”

She reached out for my hand then and I had
the urge to draw it away. Mostly because of the irritation I felt
for her flippancy regarding the previous night and only partially
because I worried what her hand would feel like on mine.

But her fingers were thin and firm, warm and
a little greasy with butter. She gazed at me, the grayness of her
eyes like veils of fog.

“I’m not going to worry about it. If it
happens again, then we’ll take the next step. Everyone has
something like this happen to them from time to time. It’s like
thinking about something while you’re driving. All of a sudden
you’re to where you’re going and you don’t remember the last
fifteen miles.”

I wanted to tell her that leaving your house
to walk to the ocean over sixty yards away and dive in fully
clothed was a little different than daydreaming, but held my
tongue. It was the virility that she exuded that kept me from
saying something. She was so alive and vibrant that it made the
prior night’s events seem colorless and dull, like a
half-remembered dream that pales as the waking minutes turn into
hours.

So we went to work that day like any other
before it and we didn’t mention her voyage into the sea again. The
days and weeks strung together as the summer took full hold on the
land. Grass grew and I mowed it twice a week in the yard. Del
planted a garden that I tilled for her, growing a section of
tomatoes and onions as well as a plot of wildflowers that spilled
out in a medley of blues, reds, and yellows from the borders of the
brown dirt to the edge of the leaning rocks above the beach. The
fishing was bountiful those first months of summer and we began to
get ahead on our payments. We dined most nights in the small
enclosed veranda my father had built himself off the rear of the
house that overlooked the ocean. We made love most nights of the
week and we were happy.

I look back at those days as the flatness
that comes upon the water just before the black clouds are
reflected on its mirrored surface. My father called thunderstorms
‘boomers.’
Boomer’s comin’,
he’d say, and more often than
not, the wind would die and the water would calm just as the low
rumble would fill the sky somewhere in the direction of Canada. The
stillness of the air full of electricity and the day losing its
light as if something were leeching it away.

I still remember the look on her face the
afternoon she came out from the bathroom, her mouth tremulous as if
she might either smile or be sick. I was sitting in the living room
reading a novel after having fished a half-day. She came to my
chair and handed me a small white stick with a blue plus at one end
visible through a little viewing window. I held it dumbly for
almost ten seconds before all the implications settled on me and I
looked up at her, my hand starting to shake.

“Is this?” I said. She nodded. “Are you
sure?” Again the nod and the beginnings of a smile at my
confoundment. My mouth was open but there was nothing else I could
say. I stood and pulled her close, feeling her face against my
chest and knowing that there was now another life between us,
growing bigger and stronger each day.

~

I fished with a new vigor after that, as well
as doubled my job searching efforts. If there was to be another
person who would be depending on me, I was going to provide the
very best I could. And I would be damned if I would have only a
fishing boat and the sea to offer as a legacy when it was time to
be passed down.

Del began a very strict diet consisting of
only organic foods, making sure to balance her proteins, carbs, and
fats with each meal. We took to taking long walks down the beach
after work, Del insisting each night that we needed more exercise
and that it was great for the baby, me grumbling beneath my breath
that I got plenty of exercise casting and hauling in lobster traps
all day, but always acquiescing to her suggestions.

There was a cove that we loved to walk to
barely a half-mile from our house that bordered state land. It was
shaped like a wide U with high croppings of rock rising on either
side, flanked by a sickle of beach sand that had grown fine as
sugar over the years. To the locals it was well known but not
overly visited. Many nights we would climb the small trail leading
over the northern mound of rock and sit for an hour or more on the
beach, our feet and toes pressed into the sand. The water would be
alive with the last day’s light, the waves gentle and lit with
golds and reds that reminded me of Del’s flower garden. Our
favorite pastime was to expound on what our child would become when
grown, each guess becoming more elaborate and unique until we were
telling each other complex fantasies that nearly always drew
laughter from one of us. We would trek back to the house in the
near dark, the surf gathering enough light for us to make our way
home, if the moon or stars shone at all. Then, of course, there was
the planning of the baby’s room, which I was converting from the
former guestroom beside our own. Del would stand in the doorway and
watch me work when she felt too tired or sick to help, her stomach
seeming to grow each day, the tautness in her shirts more
pronounced along with the clothing expenses that came with new
maternity wear.

The first sign that anything was wrong was
when she quit packing me lunches and snacks on her days off.
Normally I rose an hour or more before she did and gathered
something reasonable into my lunch bag before brewing a thermos of
coffee and heading out the door. But on days she was off from the
university she would get up with me, either cooking me something or
piecing together a meal from leftovers. I didn’t notice her
sleeping in at first, but as the weeks passed it became apparent
that some days she wasn’t asleep but made no effort to get up with
me. I didn’t question it, as I’d told her many times she didn’t
need to wait on me, especially now that she was pregnant. But with
each morning that I climbed from bed, her soft form facing away
from me, I felt a slight but unquestionable rift that was left
unsaid. It wasn’t that she couldn’t get up, it was that she didn’t
want to. As I drove to the harbor on these days, I imagined her
rising the moment she heard my truck leave the yard, going to the
kitchen to make her own low-fat breakfast in the silence of our
house. Our lovemaking had also tapered off to almost nothing. I
hadn’t attempted any advances in over two weeks and she hadn’t
shown any interest or passion whenever we would kiss goodnight or
goodbye. Even then I cut the head off the snake of jealousy each
time it reared inside me. It was simply a change, one of many I was
sure, that came with pregnancy. I’d heard tales from other friends
my age about how their wives had become strangers for nearly nine
months and then returned to their usual selves once the baby had
been born. Either way, I didn’t blame her and even went so far as
to chastise myself about noticing something as trivial as food
preparation.

It was on the day before my first promising
job interview that the rift seemed to widen between us. I’d applied
at a law firm in Portland for a partner’s assistant position weeks
before and completely written it off. I got the call on the drive
home after having cleaned the boat of the sea’s detritus. They
wanted to interview me the next day. Could I come in the morning?
Of course. The man on the phone said that the firm had been
thoroughly impressed by my answers on the application and that they
were looking forward to meeting me.

I hung up consumed by an elation I hadn’t
felt in years. A light had broken through the encasement that
surrounded my career, a small chink that might widen into a hole I
could pull myself through along with my family. The thought of the
short commute to Portland wearing a tie and loafers instead of
jeans and rain boots was like the dose of some glorious drug.

I entered the house and heard music playing
somewhere upstairs. There was the heavy smell of fried food in the
kitchen. And when I opened a white takeout box on the counter, I
saw it held the remains of some type of noodles and dark, coiled
shapes wound throughout them. I sniffed again, realizing what the
oily forms were.

Eels.

My mouth puckered with distaste. I hated eel,
and up until that point I thought Del had too. Her appetite had
remained good until then, her tastes never including the
stereotypical cravings of most pregnant women. Until now that
was.

“Honey?” I called. No response. I moved
through the living room and caught sight of her standing in the
veranda, her back to me. There was a languidness to her posture, as
if she’d fallen asleep standing up. “Del,” I said, moving closer.
She turned her head a little, showing me a slight angle of her
face.

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“What are you doing?”

“Looking outside. What’s it look like I’m
doing?” The acidic edge to her voice caught me off guard. Emotional
swing, I figured, and tried a different tack.

“I got a call today from Edward and
Towe.”

“Who?”

“The firm I applied to a few weeks back,
remember?”

“Oh yeah.”

I waited, hoping she would turn fully to look
at the smile on my face, but she returned her gaze to the sea
instead.

“Yeah. I got an interview in the
morning.”

“That’s great,” she said, but her tone said
otherwise. It was as if I’d told her the mail was here or that my
mother was coming to visit next week.

“I think it could be the one,” I said, still
trying to engage her, but she didn’t respond. She picked up a glass
of water from the windowsill and took a drink before setting it
down.

“I’m really tired,” she murmured after a
drawn silence. She moved toward the stairs, turning her shoulders
so that she wouldn’t brush against me, and left me standing in the
doorway alone with my good news that had deflated like a pricked
balloon. Some quiet music clicked on a moment later upstairs.

I hovered there for nearly a minute before
stepping into the porch to stand where she had. The skies were
overcast and low, threatening a cool, fall rain. The ocean was a
frenzied wash of whitecaps and breakers that tossed foam high into
the air wherever it touched an outcropping of rock. A feeling I
hadn’t felt in a long time began to invade me. The last time I’d
encountered it was the first year of college when I’d seen my
steady girlfriend of the moment out with one of our teacher’s aides
at a restaurant after she’d told me she was heading to her parents’
house upstate for the weekend.

My hand trembled slightly as I reached out to
pick up Del’s glass from the sill. A weakness flooded my muscles
like poison as thoughts that I would’ve scoffed at hours ago
whirl-winded through my mind. Absentmindedly I brought her cup to
my mouth and took a drink.

I gagged, spitting onto the wood floor.

The glass was full of saltwater.

Abhorred, I brought the tumbler up and looked
at it, holding it to the gray light. Particles and brown bits I
didn’t want to identify swirled within it. I stared in the
direction of our room and listened to the music pour down from
where my wife had gone.

~

I didn’t get the job.

The interview had gone as wrong as one could.
I couldn’t blame it on anything or anyone but myself. I had
stuttered. I had gotten one of the partner’s names wrong, twice.
Near the end, when I knew the job would never be mine, I answered
in single words. It couldn’t be helped. I hadn’t slept the night
before, there was no way I could after having drank from Del’s
glass and realized what its contents were. I had tried to bring it
up to her that evening, but each time I did I would catch the
vacant look on her face, as if she were miles away, experiencing
something or someone intimately, completely in a world of her
own.

When I came home there was a note on the
table. I approached it with the kind of dread a bomb squad member
feels when reaching for a ticking briefcase. Del’s script was the
same looping scribbles I had always known, but even through the ink
left on the page I could feel her distance.

Went to an appointment today for an
ultrasound at Megan’s clinic. Was going to do some shopping. Be
home later.