And The Sea Called Her Name Read Online Free

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