Dawn.

Fog sat lazy on the lake. Thick and heavy, it obscured most everything in sight, save for patches of piney woods and for the fishing gear dad and I had in the boat.   I had watched the mist come in, mid-dawn from bed, and labeled it a sign or signal to get my mind right, get my mind off the woman I left in the city. But that was hard to do as her scent mingled with the cool Alabama breeze of the past few nights and forced me to find different ways to fall asleep.

            The lake was quiet, more than I remembered. I rowed, listened to my oars pull through water, listened to crickets scratch and to frogs croaking on the water’s edge.  A few birds floated past us, silent. It felt good to move on the water again. Dad and I built our boat a long time ago, over a summer, when mom left him.   

Pipe in mouth, he rested at stern with his arms over the side of the boat. He looked like me, or perhaps it was the other way around; tall, more than dark and with a heavy moustache, sectioned in gray.   

“You know,” I said. “You really need to stop with the smoking old man.”

“Why? You’re the one doing all the work,” he returned. He blew a circle of smoke up, smiled at me. “And I ain’t that old. As a matter of fact, I feel better now than I have in a mighty long time. Remember that nagging, dry cough I used to have?”

“Yes.”

“All gone.” He pounded his chest to confirm this to me.

“No, I’m serious dad, you could..” My voice trailed off. I pretended to be interested in a dragonfly that perched itself on my oar. 

“You can say it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I could die son?” He asked.

 -anyway-you just need to take better care of yourself.” My voice, though I didn’t mean it to be,  said, our voices too loud for the scene.  “And did you take your heart medicine this morning? I don’t think you did.”

“What’s the point?”

I shook my head. “The point is that you need to take them dad, that’s the point.”

“You sound like your mama.”

I rowed a few more strokes before I asked, “You talk to her dad?”

“To who?”

I rolled my eyes, stopped the boat. “To Mother Teresa. To mom dad!”

“Well, I called her.”

“Yea, but did you talk to her?”

Dad sniffed, took his pipe out and examined it. I waited for his response, looked past him in the meantime, into the mist. For a second I thought I saw a figure standing from where we set out, near the cabin. I rubbed my eyes, peered harder. It was gone.

“No I didn’t,” he said. “But I did call. In fact I keep calling, sometimes she picks up, sometimes she don’t, but when she does, she acts like she can’t hear me.” 

“Ohh-kay.” I pulled the oars in, secured them, thought of something else to say. “By the way dad, been meaning to tell you, I like these new slide seats you installed.”

“You like that huh?”

“Very nice old man,” I said. “And these new floors too!”

“Teakwood, that’s right.” He tapped a foot down to show me how sturdy they were.

“If Mom only knew how much you spent on all this.”

“Then she would talk to me. Go figure.” He reached for a thermos bottle he had in a canvas duffle bag. “Anyway, you want some coffee?”

 “You bet.” I inhaled deeply. “Smells good.”

“Fresh ground,” he said, pouring me a cup. “You know how I roll.”

“Don’t dad.” We both chuckled. I took the cup, blew over the heat. A wisp of steam spiraled from it, disappeared into the mist.

We talked for awhile, mostly about stupid things I’d done in youth, which was a perfect segue for stupid things done recently. Dad took a long sip, let the coffee wash around in his mouth and said, “So what’s your plan boy?”

I hunched my shoulders, made a trail around the lip of my cup with a finger. “Don’t have one.”

“Well,” he opened the bait box, cupped out a handful of worms. They wriggled between his fingers. “Don’t you think you need one? I mean if you want Maria to take you back.”

“I’m dead to her.”

“Dead?”

“We haven’t talked,” I answered, reached over for some worms. I baited my hook and finally muttered, “For a long time.”

“Okay,” he said. “Well, I’ll ask you what you asked me. Have you called her?”

I shook my head. 

“Why?”

“I don’t know dad. See, everything was going great you know, we loved each other, we supported each other..”

“And?”

“And,” I paused, looked at the worm and hook between my fingers. “I left.”

 “What?”

“I left her dad.” I emptied my cup, threw a couple of the worms into the lake. A flurry of fish rushed to the meal, bubbled the water into frenzy.

“What do you mean you left?”

“I woke up one morning,” I said, my head down. “And I just felt like-I don’t know-I just felt scared. I panicked, left town, didn’t say goodbye, didn’t say why, didn’t say nothing. Just left.”

“And you haven’t talked to her since?”

“No.”

“Good gosh son, that don’t even sound like you.”

“I know.”

“Do you still love her?”

“Yes I do,” I nodded. “More than life.”

“Well then you’ve got to call her boy, you must go back,” Dad said. He pointed to my cell phone clip. “Don’t let her go Rex. Call her.”

“Call her?”

 

 “What’s the worst that can happen? 

I inhaled deeply, pulled out my cell. “You’re right dad. I love this woman. I do, right? Yes, I do! I love her! What the hell have I been thinking? Life is too short, right?”

“Yes it is son.” My dad nodded. I did the same. 

Early morning sun burned pockets of light through the fog. Our family cabin appeared in the distance like a movie in widescreen. The image I saw earlier was clear. It was my mother. Dressed in a long black dress, she stood in front of the cabin, at the edge of the lake. Her long hair, which could match the color of the dress, flowed away from her face. It was hard to see exact details from our distance, but I could tell she was holding something in her arms. I raised my hand high, waved. She didn’t see us.

“Dad look,” I pointed. “It’s mom.”

“What?”

“Mom! In front of the cabin! She came dad, she came!”

Dad wheeled around, as much as he could in the boat, and said, “The dickens...well I’ll be! I don’t believe it.”

Immediately I reached for the oars. Dad’s strong, weathered hands moved over mind and took them from me.

“I’ll row son. I’ll row to my woman. You row to yours.”

“That was corny; I just want you to know that.” I smiled, examined my phone. It seemed foreign to me, as if I had never seen it or held it before. Dad flicked his hand forward, signaling me to make the call.  

“So call already.”

““I’m calling, I’m calling,” I said. For a moment I held the phone to my chest, then listened to it ring, imagined Maria besides hers, waiting for me. “Here goes nothing”.  

She picked up and said, “Hello?” Her voice sounded sad, filled with sand.

I didn’t know how to answer that.

“Hello? Who is this?” She repeated. I wondered why she didn’t know it was me, why my name didn’t pop up on the display.

“Maria,” I whispered it at first. “Maria. It’s me baby.”

“Hello?” She said again. I could hear her tapping the phone. “I can’t understand you. There’s too much static.”

“Maria!” I yelled. I told her to get a new phone months ago. “Maria!”

There was a long pause, long enough to made me question why I all of sudden got brave on the lake. “Rex,” she whispered. “No…”

“Don’t hang up, I said, speaking with my hands. “Please don’t hang up baby.”

“No…it can’t be. Oh my God. Oh my God.” Her voice trembled.

“Rex,” my dad said, low. “Rex.” 

My head was down as I tried to concentrate, tried to listen. She was crying. I raised a hand to shush him.

“Rex!” He repeated, louder. He moved towards me, rocking the boat as a result, and tapped the top of my head. “She’s over there son, with your mother.”

“What dad? I’m trying to talk to Maria.”

“Look boy!” He directed my attention to the cabin. “Maria is here too.”

I didn’t want to accept my eyes, but they had not failed. There she was. So beautiful, so elegant, far more woman than I deserved. How could I have ever been so stupid?

She stood outside the cabin door, phone in ear. Like my mother, she too was dressed in black. I wondered if they wanted to surprise us with tickets to the opera or something. I never liked doing much of anything she wanted to do, but that will change now. I smiled, watched her walk to my mother, her voluptuous figure swimming in my head. As she approached, Maria’s gait changed, crumpled like stick under stone. I heard her wail and then seen her fall, at my mother’s feet.

“Maria!” I yelled, jumped from the boat. Water filled my mouth, stung my eyes at first, worked against my wild haste to reach her. I pushed myself, envisioned my arms around her again like before, moved my arms through the water, kicked my feet behind me.    

I could see her on the ground, my mother kneeled beside her. I wonder if she had fainted, I wonder if she had become overjoyed, as happy to see me as I was to see her.

The water should have been cold, cold enough to stir my body, cold enough to shock me, but I was numb. As long as I kept my eyes on my Maria, I felt nothing save for the thing in my chest and saw nothing except the memory of my last day in the city. I was at her place, it was night.

“Are you angry with me?” She tried to rest her head on my shoulder. I pulled away.

“No,” I said.

“What is this Rex?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you being so short?” Her eyes followed me to her bedroom, seared the back of my neck. I looked through her open window, went over the skyline she made me hate. She continued. “For the past couple of weeks everything from you is a one word response. You act like you don’t have anything to say, no, you don’t have anything to say.”

“I talk.”

“You don’t Rex,” she said. I kneeled down at the foot of her bed, started rummaging through my duffel. She caught this and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Huh?”

“Are you going somewhere?”

I didn’t answer.

“Rex, I asked you a question.”

I avoided her eyes, preferring my feet. She moved close to me, grabbed my arm.

“Baby talk to me,” she said. Her eyes watered. “Please? Tell me what’s wrong. We can fix it, whatever it is. We can do it together.”

“It ain’t like that,” I said. “I just..”

“You just what..”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“You-just-what?” 

“I just need some time, damn it!”

“Time?”

“Yes Maria, time!” I jerked my duffel from the floor. She grabbed my arm. “Let go.”

“What do you mean you need time?”

“I don’t want to fight.”

“I’m not fighting you asshole, I’m trying to talk..”

“I-said-let-go!”

I don’t remember too much after that, except the sound her body made as it hit the floor.

Maria fell to the floor, sobbing. After I hit her. I left in the night.

Land.

She has forgiven me. I kept telling myself this as I neared the coast. She has forgiven me; otherwise she wouldn’t be here.

Land. 

I set my feet, started towards them. I expected my legs and arms to burn, to feel like stone after the swim, but they didn’t. I couldn’t feel anything, save for my heart. I thumped my chest, tried to quiet it. I suddenly wished dad was beside me, to tell me what to say and what to do. The closer I got, the more I wanted to turn back, the more my stomach knotted and churned. 

They sat on the ground, Maria in mother’s arms, shivering as much as I was. Mother combed through Maria hair, rocked with her, wiped tears. 

“Mom. Maria.” I approached slowly. “Maria baby I’m so happy to see you.”   

She didn’t say anything, which I understood and expected. But something wasn’t right; neither responded; neither raised their heads to even look at me. Why come so far if you’re not going to talk? 

“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey mom! Okay c’mon guys, I’m sorry. Is this what the black dresses are for? I get it, I get it okay?”

This wasn’t like my mother. Dad had the weird sense of humor.