And The Sea Called Her Name Read Online Free PDF Page 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.
     
    She hadn’t even signed it.
    We had decided to doctor at the clinic where
her high-school friend Megan worked as a nurse when we first found
out Del was pregnant, and I had missed the initial checkup nearly a
month ago due to another failed interview. Del had assured me then
that we would do the first ultrasound together and decide if we
wanted to know the baby’s sex. Now she had gone ahead and scheduled
the appointment without me.
    I sat down at the table after finding a dusty
bottle of tequila in the lower set of cupboards and a shot glass
with the Route One road sign emblazoned on the side. The bottle was
nearly full, neither of us had touched it since learning of the
pregnancy. But now, at the table in my mother and father’s house,
in the mid-day light, after having lost my chance at the first
promising job in years, I drank.
    I poured shot after shot, losing count after
four. When the bottle was half empty, I took it with me out to the
enclosed porch and sat staring at the sea. If asked in that moment
I would have told anyone that I would have preferred the blank and
barren reaches of some Oklahoma prairie to the undulating waves.
Even the buckling thunderheads and swirling masses of air that
signaled a tornado would have been welcome to the indifferent crash
of the sea.
    “You’re so fucking pathetic,” I said,
slurring the last word. I didn’t know who I was speaking to, the
sea or myself. “Everyone thinks you’re so majestic and wild, but I
know the truth. I know you. I know you.” I took another shot of the
liquor and sat back in the chair. “You’re all washed up.” It was a
beat before the laughter broke from me like the bray of some wild
animal. I didn’t like the sound of it, alone on the porch, but I
laughed anyway. I laughed until tears clouded my vision and I had
to hold myself to keep from falling to the floor. Slowly I came
back to an upright position and the giggles trailed off. I must’ve
fallen asleep sometime shortly after that because the next thing I
knew, Del was shaking me awake.
    “Jason, what the hell are you doing?” she
said, stepping back as I arranged myself in the chair. My head
shadowed the beat of my heart, throbbing in pulses colored a
reddish black. There were coils of rusted wire in my neck and the
vision in my left eye kept blurring.
    “I…I think I fell asleep,” I said
stupidly.
    “I can see that. It looks more like you
passed out.”
    “Yeah.”
    “What the hell’s wrong with you, Jason?”
    The anger was there in a second, rising like
a cobra. “Me?” I asked, standing from the chair while trying not to
lurch forward. “You’re asking me what’s wrong?”
    “Yes, that’s what I said.”
     
    “I want to ask you the same question, Del. Is
there something you want to tell me?”
    “Like what?”
    “Like why you’ve been so distant lately. Why
you ignore me half the time when I’m in the same room with you. Why
you’ve quit talking to me.” I paused. “Is there someone else?” The
words were out there, floating between us, absorbing the air in the
room until it was only the contact of our eyes that held us in any
semblance of place and time.
    “What are you talking about?” she said in a
low voice.
    “The way you’ve been acting over the past
weeks, I want to know, is there someone else?” With my fears now
released like the lancing of some wound, all the anger flowed out
of me as well. “I just want to know, honey. Was I not paying enough
attention to you? Did I do something?”
    She shook her head. “There is no one else.
You’re delusional.”
    “It doesn’t feel that way.” All the fight had
gone out of me. My stomach slewed with nausea and I couldn’t