Elea stood at the sizzling black range in the once white kitchen. Her eyes glittered, reflecting the pixilated television’s sheen. Jon stumbled in from the back porch. He tripped over his untied boots that were covered with wet sand. He fell into his chair at the head of the table, sniffing at the bacon with a smile.
Elea turned the gas up—with it, the television volume. Her long black hair dangled across her back. Each lock danced, tumbling over the apron strings affixed around her thin waist. She flipped the eggs. Then she scraped at the burnt yellow film caked upon the black pan. All the while watching whatever it was on the screen. “Did you go to the bathroom?” Her voice challenged the fizz of the eggs, some dogs barking through the televisions speakers and the sea just outside the window.
“I did,” he said. “But then I didn’t.” Jon pulled his feet from his boots, stretching his toes.
Elea shoved the spatula under the eggs and she rationed them out between three plates. Then she flipped the bacon. “You did what?” The bacon hissed.
“I did,” he said. “And then I didn’t.” He looked out the window and he watched a sea of gulls fly overhead. “I went for a walk.”
Elea turned from the television to Jon, who was frozen-eyed in his stare toward the sea. “Knock it off, Jon,” she said as she walked to him. “There’s nothing in it for ya.” She dumped a plate of eggs in front of him and she returned to the range. “You call the market at least? I’m sure they could use a hand today.”
“Elea,” he said. “There is no work today—like how there was no work yesterday. Like how there was no work the day before that. No work at sea, El. No work at the market.” He bit his lower lip, lifted his head and he closed his eyes. “The sea’s dried up. Listen.” He cuffed his hand around his ear, gesturing to Elea to do the same. But she stayed static in her stare at the screen. “The gulls,” he said. “They cry of hunger. I cry of hunger. I walked along her before. I tasted her. She don’t taste dry. But she is. Only the sharks remain—coming closer to shore and they are looking for the same thing we all are. But it’s dry, El. Barren as a desert. Dried up.” He opened his eyes and Elea gradually came back into focus.
She blinked hard and she glanced over at Jon—for but a moment—then she eyed the TV. “So you say. Well, you got only but a short time to go without work ‘til it starts to cave in on not only you, but myself and your son. You better get on a boat soon or man up. Get a real job,” she said. “And stop playing out in that damned sea.”
Jon closed his eyes, taking long controlled breathes before he could find the words. “Fishing is a real job. My father’s whole life was fishing and it bought this house.” He tried to remember his father’s words to his mother across the very same table. “‘Fishing is the last real honest living out there. And you can be damned to ever find me behind some desk pushing pencils and papers all day’.” Jon recollected the words perfectly, capturing his old man’s tone. “Now, when the sea fills up in the spring, things will start to look up. I know it.”
“But Jon,” Elea said, turning back to the range. “What if it stays dry? The sea isn’t paying the bills right now and a nine-to-five pushing papers and pencils will. Todd said he could help you find work in the city.”
“Fuck Todd,” Jon said. “He’s not a native. He’s of the city. I’m of the sea.”
His bony elbows shook on the hard table. Jon suddenly felt muted. “The sea,” he thought to himself, “was speaking to me. It is not dry. But it is. It cannot be long.” He shifted his position on the chair. Then he looked up at his wife who was writing what was on the television into a small notebook. “It won’t be long, Hon. It’s just a little longer than usual. That’s all. Just wait ‘til spring. You’ll see then.”
“I hope you are right.” She paused for a second, looking at him. “For your sake, I hope you are right.”
The tea kettle whistled into the air, startling them both.
Elea dashed the kettle from the flame. “Tea?” she said, as if the fight before had never been. She paused for an answer, but when none was received, she mumbled, “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” and she poured two steaming cups of tea.
Jon rubbed his eyes under his glasses with the sides of his long index fingers. He looked up at Elea who was keeping her conversation with the television alive—her eyes plastered to the TV. She looked older to him than he’d last remembered. The TV lit up wrinkles under her high cheek bones. Gray roots in her hair showed ever so slightly in the light. He knew she had dyed her hair by the empty hair-dye boxes in the bathroom trash basket, but he had never actually seen the gray roots before. The skin under her neck now seemed to hang a little loose, too. Not much. But just enough for him to look twice at her. “Is this really the same woman who I asked to marry me?” Jon asked himself. He pulled on the seam of the red tablecloth that hung over the small wooden table. His father had built the table the same summer when the old skipper first took Jon out to fish. Jon could barely remember that day. All he had known was that fishing was the family business. And he remembered that he had tried to match the seriousness of the matter—wearing the same stern face of his father’s tight lipped expression.
Jon folded the cloth over. He rubbed the underbelly of the table. The grains were thick and smooth and ran like rivers over rocks through the notches in the wood. “This table is from the land,” he mumbled to himself. “Right from this yard. It consumes the nature of the sea. It flows through this very house.” He streamed his fingers along the wood for awhile. He knew that the sea would suffice. It had for his entire life. And before that, it had for his father. The famine was a fluke. But far, in the outer trenches of his mind, Jon knew this day would come. He knew that the ease of life could not come without hurdles. For this long, he had taken the sea for granted. As had his father. Jon had never thought twice about the sea and what it offered him. He never thought of what the sea gave him as a gift. He had taken all he could from it. Exploiting every catch to a sizeable profit. And when times got rough, a slight dry spell, he would have enough saved from the surplus to survive. But times were different now. Jon had not turned a profit since August. Christmas had come and gone—and now Jon was facing the new year.
He looked out the small window above the sink. Gulls flew overhead crying from a hunger in their hollow bones. The bare trees held moaning crows that had nothing to pick at. The sea’s hushed waves floated away, distancing themselves from the land. “The beating heart of the sea runs right through me. Right through this house.”
Elea’s eyes darted towards Jon in question. “What are you babbling about?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s about that damned sea. I know it is.” But before Elea could sink her teeth into her husband and all of his insufficiencies, a slender teenager shuffled his loose sneakers across the floor.
“Morning, Pa. Good morning, Ma.” The young man grabbed the backs of his belt loops, hoisting his pants up. His high cheekbones and leathered skin resembled that of his father’s, but the boy’s face was clean shaven. He stood motionless in the middle of the kitchen. His fingers dancing across his cell phone keypad. He was enveloped in the conversation he held in his hands.
“Barry, I made breakfast. Go sit with your father.”
“Okay, Ma,” he said, not breaking his stare at his phone. “But I need to get a move on. There’s a meeting for the Community Teen Service Club before first bell. I don’t want to miss it.” He pulled out the chair next to his father and he sat. Barry’s face wore a smile that showed his bright white teeth. His hair was greased and the part on the far left of his head cascaded like a wave crashing onto his forehead. The young man wrapped his arm around his father’s shoulder. “Father, you okay? Your eyes look dull.”
Jon’s muscles contracted. He knew Barry had heard the loud words he’d had with Elea be
fore. Jon knew his son had heard all of the verbal lashes. But Barry always seemed to break the tension when they needed it most. As if the boy had known the exact time to enter into a situation to diffuse it. But Jon tried not to think of that. Not now. Instead, he tried to paint the image of happiness across his face. He batted down his messed hair and he buttoned up his opened shirt. “No, son. I’m just fine. Just a little tired. Didn’t sleep a wink last night with all that wind.”
“Well, at least it’s died down. But it sure looks like snow is about to fall for days.”
Jon spoke soft. “It sure does, son. It sure does.” He propped himself up on his chair and he rested his lank arm around his son’s shoulders. Jon felt the warmth of his son’s youthfulness fervor up within him and Jon collapsed his head onto Barry’s.
“Hey, Pa. Watch the hair,” Barry cawed. He fought against his father’s tight hold. Jon’s muscles bulged and he pressed against his son’s soft forearm. Barry shook against the force of a thousand sea voyages—finally the boy’s resistance eased and Jon broke the hold.
Jon squinted his tired eyes into his son’s bright blues. Barry winced slightly. Then he revealed his teeth again, inviting his father to smile. “The sea is strong in him,” Jon thought. “He just needs more learning. More control. More time.” Jon smiled. “He will save us from this dying ocean. This empty sea.”
Elea dropped plates in front of the two men. “Here you are. Eggs, bacon and fresh toast.” She turned to the range and then she settled an extra plate of bacon in the middle of the table.
“Looks great, Ma,” Barry said. He gripped his fork back into his palm and he plunged it into the eggs that were scrambled to a golden yellow. “And tastes great, too,” he added.
“Nothing I wouldn’t do for my boys,” she said, placing a filled glass of orange juice in front of Barry.
Elea’s cell phone sounded from her apron pocket. “Oh my,” she said, peering down at the phone. “I better take this inside. It’s Lola. She’s been at it all week with her little Jimmy.” She shuffled off down the hall, slipping behind the bedroom door, slamming it shut.
Jon swallowed his eggs hard, flushing them down with the boiling hot tea. He could feel the burn of the bronze liquid leave a harsh trail to the bottom of his stomach. His vision blurred as he stared out the small kitchen window. He sniffed back the drips of moisture in his nose, catching the smell of the salty sea. He felt his pain lifting. He smiled at the waves and thought, “For a moment, the sea had been my wife—comforting me.” And all his body eased.
Barry sat stilled by his father’s reactions. “Okay,” the boy finally said. “Time for my meeting.” He got up and he stood over the trashcan next to the sink, scraping away the breakfast.
Jon focused on the image of his son.
“It’s Wednesday. I have Math Club. Don’t forget to tell Ma. I’ll be home by dinner.” Barry nodded at his father. Then the boy walked out of the house.
Jon sat quietly at the table with his hands holding his head of emptied thoughts. He took his eyes away from the window and over to the food chilling in front of him. He could hear Elea giggle into the phone over the voices of morning television anchors casting the news to the soiled pans on the range. Jon cringed. He gripped his fork deep into his hand. For he knew the truth. He knew that the suitor on the other line was not Lola, or Margie, or any woman Elea would have programmed into her cell phone and wanted him to believe. For it was a man. A man larger than himself. With a slick-shaven face. A close cut head of hair. Roughly the same age as himself.
Jon had followed his wife three months back. After years of marriage, the suspicion of infidelity aroused in him after one too many early morning phone calls—one too many breakfast dates with either Casey or Lola or Margie. He followed her to what was not the local diner but the local motel.
Elea returned to the kitchen red in the face. She closed her cell phone into her hands. She now wore dark red lipstick. Her eyes outlined in a thick black pencil. She had replaced her cream apron with a tightly fitted little blue dress that gripped at her curves.
“I’m going out to breakfast with Lola. She had a fight with her little Jimmy. She really needs me. Talk it out, you know?” Elea said, shrugging her shoulders to the heavens. “I’ll be home whenever. Sometime later. We might go into town afterwards so I pre-set-recorded all of my stories. So don’t go messing with the settings, Jon. Not like last time.”
“I didn’t even mean to. I must of sat on the remote or something.” Jon bit his tongue. Then he separated his parched lips and he threw back another gulp of steaming tea. Elea dissolved from the room like mist through his blurred eyes. The pain settled in the lower breaches of his stomach. He blinked the blurry vision out and he removed his glasses. He breathed a warm sigh over the lenses, rubbing the water stains on the glass between the fold in the red tablecloth.
Jon eased his glasses back onto his face. He ran his fingers through his hair, messing it in all directions. He looked back out the window. He watched two gulls wrestling in the sky over a small brown lunch bag. The bag fell—splitting over the sandy shore. Aluminum foil scraps and plastic wrappers danced along the shoreline as the gulls pecked feverishly for food. The wrappers must have been empty—empty like the sea. And the gulls flew on out of Jon’s perspective.
CHAPTER 3