Green and Cold
“How was it?” He asks pulling her in for an embrace that envelops her.
“Green and cold,” she responds without a pause, “And amazing!”
“Do tell,” he encourages as they sit across from each other at the little breakfast table. Outside the bay window announces the state of pink on the azalea bushes, the dogwoods wave their white blooms contributing to his welcome home greeting.
“That place is so stark. There is nothing but green grass and stone all the way up the road. The skies are so gray that all the different shades of green become brilliant without the slightest amount of light. Church steeple after steeple, sheep grazing the fields and then you see it, the ocean. It was full of grays and blues that beg to be painted. We hardly ever saw the sun.”
“Did you paint the coast like you talked about doing?” he asks while taking a sip from his mug.
“No, I didn’t have time to do that,” she answers sheepishly knowing he would think doing anything else would be a wasting of time. With a sigh, she continues.
“I’d love to tell you that the dog ate my easel but that really isn’t true. I picked up a new hobby instead.”
“A new hobby? I hope it isn’t expensive,” his voice trails off a little disappointingly.
The shame hits her like a wall. How can she tell him that her new love is the ocean? That her paint brush was dry the whole time while her body stretched within a wetsuit? With her hand propped under her chin, she tells him about meeting her childhood friend. Having talked via email for months, she knew that Silvia would be on the Scottish coast at this time of year. That she would have to see this beautiful dolphin named Pogo and touch him herself. The question was only did she have enough reserve points to make another trip across the pond? Maybe with her frequent trips from one end of the United States to the other. She had pitched in extra cash to make it happen. Who knew that Delta would actually take cash and convert it into points for you? Not a purchase made, she had booked the flight and shoe stringed her way through hostels to meet her childhood friend.
“Did you know that Silvia and I are about the same weight and height?”
“No,” he returns tentatively.
“It seems that she also just got a new wet suit so she was able to share her old one with me. We spent most of our time either on her boat or in the water.”
“I see.” Long pause of awkward silence fills the empty bistro.
“What did you find in the water, miss?” he finally asks, having recovered enough to play along again.
“Oh, we found the cutest lovable creature there, his name is Pogo. He was mostly grey with latex feeling skin. He wears his nose on the top of his head and I swear he sang to me. He took me swimming all about the bay on his dorsal fin. We got along famously. It felt so light in the water like I was flying instead of swimming.”
“Is that what kept you from calling? You were too busy with a new man that you couldn’t call your own husband? I assume that diving lessons are next. More money spent and little time spent working or paying attention to your poor neglected husband.”
She couldn’t help but bristle at the sarcasm. Pogo was better than a man. He never asked for too much.
“I already have certification, Stan. You don’t have to get hostile with me. I got it while I was there and it was so intensive, I was exhausted by the time I was ever by the telephone to call.”
“And email or that expensive iPhone I got you?”
The impatience was showing through his tone. She could evade the inevitable no longer. She wanted to let it all out. She wanted to explain to him for hours absolutely everything they did. To talk at length about the way the dolphin sang and how the song tore at her heart and yet helped her with the loss. It would have been the most sharing she would do with her own husband in months. Instead she remained silent, her head down sipping tea.
He continued, “You can’t imagine how much I missed you. I knew where you were and what you were going through, but you couldn’t talk to me. You couldn’t let me help you with this, you turn to a dolphin instead. What is wrong with you? Am I not worthy of your love?”
By now the tears were falling down his otherwise masculine nose. A husband distraught. She wanted to reach out to him. To explain why she would always turn away. More words would be on the tip of her tongue and then they would disappear the moment he stopped talking to her as if someone had erased them from the white board just before they were to be delivered. She said nothing. All she did was look down at her fingers and pick at her half chipped red nail polish.
Recounting events were easy. Telling him how she really felt and how exhilarating it was to swim with this “knowing being” that was not human and yet seemed to understand her, was not something she could do yet. Maybe it was time to pick up the paint brush, she though, as she glanced at the dry cracked paint blobs on the wooden pallet sitting on the table that served as her work space.
~Regina Holt
