And The Sea Called Her Name(6)

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.