Free Water Lessons by Chadwick Wall

meaning than ever before. His adrenalin had pumped too much to grasp the overwhelming tragedy. Would it ever hold such meaning again? Would his life just become desultory, full of dead reckoning, to use the Commodore's old term?
    Another thought chased that one upon its heels.
    Though Boston was intriguing, it would be good to be sprung from the man-forged and often cold and rough urban life, and once more closer to nature, closer to the sea.
    Then he shuddered, realizing he would be farther away from Maureen, instead set out frequently upon open water, that most treacherous substance that fascinated him, yet which he so feared. Water might as well have murdered his good friend. The mere sight of it ushered back that hellish day in late August. Would it always be so?

   
    CHAPTER ELEVEN

    The movers appeared at his apartment that Friday just before dawn. After two hours, they had swallowed all of his furniture into their massive moving van. They had two more loads to pick up that day, but Jim and Maureen would intercept them in Osterville at the tail end of the weekend.
    Jim and Maureen stood idly in the apartment, now empty save for a few balls of lint and pieces of wrapping paper. She winked at him and gave a sigh of satisfaction, yet he stood in silence, surveying the room.  
    He had expected Maureen to be on edge—or snappy as she had been as of late. Strangely, she had been even supportive of his move throughout, at times even enthusiastic and high-spirited. Though her passion was understated compared to his, this was an accomplishment. Perhaps it was because, in a way, he would be more under her observation in Osterville than he would be miles away from her in Boston. He would be more of a part of her family now that he would be living amongst them. The Cape was not a world away, and when she had her fill of the variety and excitement of Boston, she could relocate to Osterville.
    They walked down the creaking stairwell of the row house and headed southbound on Atlantic. Jim pointed out the gulls squawking and circling wildly in the morning mist. A foghorn sounded deep and long out on the harbor.
    Jim caught that favorite scent of his, one he had encountered all along the New England coast: seaweed mixed with the ocean's brine, a smell so much stronger on the Atlantic. Maureen reverted to her silent melancholia, but as they turned right onto Hanover for coffee, he hoped he could snap her into conversation. They strolled, as neither was bound for work that day.
    Jim motioned to the Charles Bulfinch creation, Saint Stephen's Church, where Jim noted Rose Kennedy had been baptized. They passed the Paul Revere Mall with its magnificent equine statue of the famous patriot, and the wall plaques listing the North End's generations of war dead. He did not comment on it. She was surely familiar with the Revere memorial.
    They rambled by the Italian restaurant Strega, where they had their first dinner date that winter night some months ago.
    "I need to feed my addiction," Jim said.
    They turned into CafŽé Vittoria and ordered two coffees to go: a tall dark one for him, and a smaller vanilla latte for her. At a marble-top table, they waited for the coffee. This caféŽ was one of Jim's favorites for its history. Built in 1929, it was the first Italian caféŽ in the city, opened when the originally English neighborhood had transitioned from mostly Irish and Jewish to its current Italian phase. Jim admired the mirrored walls, the antique espresso machines, the brass bars framing the marble countertops as an aria coursed from hidden speakers.
    "Aren't you glad I took a day off to help you move?" Maureen said.
    "I sure am, sweetie." He gritted his teeth but said nothing more.
    They walked into a nearby parking garage. Jim kept his truck there—he had named it Betty Sue. His family had balked when they learned he was hemorrhaging three hundred and fifty dollars a month on a parking space several blocks from his apartment. He now