A Whale’s Tale

“Get out!” I said to her back. 

She stopped her writing, put down her pencil, and her spine stiffened. She stared at a photograph I had bought her at the ocean years ago when we were still happy before I screwed everything up. 

I know she heard me, but she didn’t say anything.

“Get out,” I said again, but not so forcefully. 

She breathed in and out slowly, still staring at the photo of a humpback whale’s tail dripping seawater into the dark green ocean water.

“I’m sick of you and trying to make this work.” I tried to explain.

Her silky, long, blonde hair fell in waves gently down her back. I wanted to go to her and nuzzle her long neck and smell the womanly scent behind her ears. But I knew I could no longer do this. It wouldn’t be right.

“I met someone else.” I justified, but she didn’t ask anything and still had not moved. It was as if she had dived into the sea, grabbed ahold of that whale, and left me. I saw her swimming beside the whale, holding onto one of its fins and her thin waist melting into shiny, blue-green, iridescent scales to her sleek mermaid tail.

“We need to talk about this...” I went on as I heard the call of a seagull in the distance. The room blurred for a moment, and I thought, for only a second, that maybe I had had one too many glasses of vodka. I felt the salt air spray on my cheeks and the wind pulling at my hair, returning the lost memory.

“Will you turn around and talk to me?” I pleaded. The day I had bought her the whale tail photograph, we had taken the early ferry from Ocean Shores to Westport and had spent the day exploring all the touristy shops and local pubs until we had to leave to catch the last ferry back to Ocean Shores.

“I need to explain this, and we need to figure out what to do….” I began to spell out the plan I had come up with halfway through the bottle of Smirnoff. We had started running to make it back to the ferry terminal before the drizzling rain became a Washington downpour. We weren’t fast enough and stopped in the doorway to a small gallery we had overlooked on our way up the street. We huddled there for a moment, and I kissed her pretty upturned face, and soon we were lost in the moment. 

“It’s my house since we never changed the title, and you need to leave.” Still, she didn’t move, and yet, somehow, she did. The room seemed to darken like the sky that long ago day at the ocean. The gallery owner opened the door, and a brass bell clanged like a mooring buoy in a stormy sea. He invited us in to come out of the rain, and that was when she saw it. The largest and most expensive photo in the gallery. She grinned at me and pointed at the solitary framed picture on the wall of a diving whale tail. I was a sucker for everything she wanted and took my wallet out.

“I haven’t made you happy in a long time, and you haven’t needed me in years.” I wanted to start this conversation so it could be over soon. When we left the gallery with the brown paper-wrapped frame and photo, the rain had stopped, and the sun had broken through the storm clouds. We jogged to the ferry and handed over the return tickets. She ran like a little girl to the bow of the boat. She loved to ride the waves and feel the wind on her sun-kissed face. I sat in the covered section of the bow, saving a spot for her. I felt like the luckiest man in the world.

“I want you out tonight, so stop what you are doing, and let’s get this over with.” I implored her. I vaguely remembered that she was probably trying to finish our taxes since today was April 15^th. I met her in April and was head over heels in love that day. Halfway across the channel, the sky opened up and dumped buckets of rain on us, yet she still held her spot on the bow as the waves and rain splashed over her. The captain ran out to her with a blanket and dragged her into the cockpit with him, along with her picture frame. I watched them from my seat under the awning. 

“I don’t want to fight about this. I have decided it is the best thing for both of us if you go quietly now.” She never did anything quietly. She was laughing and shaking her hair out in the cabin of the ferry, and the next thing I knew, she was standing at the helm, navigating the boat through the choppy waters. Who was this woman who could steer a 50-foot passenger ferry and swim with whales? I stumbled a bit as I went to fill my glass with more vodka.

When I turned around, I was at the railing of the ferry and throwing up over the side. Wait, where am I? When am I? I thought I was sitting in my recliner, in my otherwise empty house, thinking about those two days so many years apart.

I had a delivery service bring me a case of Smirnoff after she left. I know this because I have the charges listed on my bank card. I never called the other girl. It turns out she never existed. It was my memory of my beautiful, sweet-smelling, happy young wife, whom I crushed with cheating, drinking, and gambling. She left me on the night of April 30^th. I don’t know what I did for those two weeks, but I do know that when I returned home (I was the one who left), she was gone, and so was that whale tail photo.

I’ve been sober now for five years. She has been gone for ten. I heard she remarried and has a happy life. I still can’t get the vision of that day out of my head.  I fear I might have fallen overboard.