Free And The Sea Called Her Name by Joe Hart Page B

knowing he was having his laugh and
had gotten what he wanted after all. But I hated the sea more for
always being first in his heart.
    And Del. She was more solid than any of the
great stones embedded on the shoreline. She got a job waitressing
at a decent restaurant on a harbor south of town. The old money
would come there in the evenings, crawling out with jaundiced eyes
from their five-million-dollar homes to sit and sip cocktails. The
yachts would float beyond the lights, bobbing there for everyone to
watch while Del brought the food, the pants issued by management
too tight but were that way on purpose so the geriatric men could
lay their gazes on her ass as she hurried away to get them another
‘tini.
    I hated it. I hated everything that we had to
do then. We barely saw each other in that first year of marriage,
both of us so bent on making it. Some of our friends, the very same
that jeered us out the pub door on the first night we met, were
doing well in Boston. The city gave opportunities that we didn’t
have further north, but then again nearly all of our friends
descended from the same old money that Del served most weeknights
and every weekend. They were the same who bought the lobster and
tuna that I caught. Their trust funds dripped with cash while they
surfed their industries until they found the perfect position. I so
wanted more for us. More like our friends had. The hate was strong
in those days.
    But the love was stronger.
    We would come home exhausted, almost too
tired to speak, but our bodies had their own agendas and I expected
we would have a child within a year, but she didn’t get
pregnant.
    Seeing an expectant mother now sends
sickening gooseflesh down my arms and back. My stomach rolls with
revulsion and the nausea is almost too much to bear.
    To say that we were happy in those first
years would be an understatement. We were young and so in love with
one another that each day held colors for us that I’m sure others
couldn’t see. We were broke but content with where and who we were,
and that was more than many of our friends could say for
themselves.
    In the second year of our marriage Del took a
job at the college we’d both graduated from. She started out as an
assistant in the admissions department stuffing orientation packets
and guiding tours of potential students and their parents who would
be paying the tuition. Less than six months later she was promoted
to a managerial position after the man who had held it for fourteen
years went home one Friday afternoon, loaded the shotgun his wife
had given him for their tenth anniversary, and took it into the
shower with him before turning the hot water on and ending his
life. Del hadn’t wanted to celebrate her promotion and I didn’t
push the issue. She spent several of the following nights looking
out our kitchen windows and watching the undulations of the sea. I
can still see her there now, her slim outline before the sink, so
motionless it seemed that she’d become part of the house.
    Meanwhile I still hadn’t found work. The days
in the boat were long and tiresome but became a routine that I’d
forgotten from my youth. One morning, as I splashed hot water on my
face in the dim dawn light, I looked into the mirror and saw my
father staring back at me. I had his same chin and hadn’t shaved in
several days so the stubble bore a resemblance to the short beard
he’d worn. I left the bathroom that morning on legs that were
partially unstable. Looking back I wonder if somewhere in the
sleeping place that resides within everyone’s mind I knew something
was coming. It is beyond instinct, that area within our psyche that
has never truly awakened after being lulled into a slumber through
the centuries since we stepped out of the jungle and began to
fashion tools to protect ourselves. I believe at times it opens its
eyes as a warning and that’s all we get from it before it submerges
again into the depths of the unconscious.
    When I came