Water Lessons

by Chadwick Wall

  "Greetings, Jimmy!" Bryce said. A CPA at Ernst and Young, Bryce often met Jim for lunch at Whiskey's for the famous ten-cent wings, lobster specials, and beer. Bryce shared Jim's near-fanatical love for seafood and they knew all the good spots in town.

  "Good to see y'all. Glad we could meet up at 'the club'!"

  "You've got some important news for us, Jimmy," said his friend Duff, an inside salesman and native Bostonian who lived on Bowdoin Street in Beacon Hill. Duff was blind from birth, yet his wizard-like skill at maneuvering through the meandering streets of Boston without a fall or any impact with man or car ranked second only to his zest for meeting and conversing with young women.

  "I've got some news, yes indeedy!" Jim said.

  "Well, Mr. Scoresby," his friend Patrick Brauner said. Patrick was in his residency at Harvard Medical School. Maureen seemed to be one of a handful of young females not impressed with him. Maureen was even repulsed, detecting a womanizer.

  "Cough it up, man," Patrick said. "Alas, you have decided on moving west and pursuing a career as an 'actor' of ill repute."

  "It's a good thing I didn't invite our friend Father Esteban from Saint Cecilia's across the street." Duff was the only friend who did not care for Patrick.

  "Yes, this time the priesthood might actually recruit him," Patrick sneered.

  "Alright, man, enough of the suspense!" his friend Case said, beating a drum roll with his hands on the table. Though well liked by the entire group, Case cut a unique figure there at the table. He was longhaired, six-three, gangly and his face was weathered a bit past his years from mountain climbing and hiking out west.

  "I've told y'all that I've opened most of my firm's new accounts in the last four months," Jim began.

  "You yuppie!" Case said.

  "Of course, Case," Bryce nodded over his chicken wings. "And well done, Jim."

  "Thanks. Walter Henretty has commended me many times. But he's moving me out of the firm. He's transferring me to a totally unrelated side-venture of his, putting me in charge of the Melville Yacht Brokerage down on the Cape, in Osterville. Selling, buying boats, delivering them up and down the East Coast. Wintering them down south! I'll be making out well in terms of pay and benefits, too."

  "That's good stuff, Jimmy," Bryce said. "That's right up your alley."

  "Hell yeah! Whoo hooo!" Case screamed, raising his hands in the air. This day there seemed to be jubilation but no wisdom from Case. He had apparently taken a break from urging his friends to "carpe diem" or offering them gems of Native American and Eastern religion and philosophy.

  "Congrats, my man," Duff said, smiling approvingly. "But who's gonna accompany me to Sunday Mass? And we're losing our trivia partner at the Twenty-first Amendment on Tuesday nights."

  "Hat's off to you, Scoresby," Patrick chimed in. "But… first you settle down with a girl who hates me, thereby destroying our partnership as wingmen. And in the city with perhaps the most single professional women with a combination of beauty and brains. Then you announce you're taking a job with a ninety-minute drive from here. Jim, this is a farewell party. This is a funeral!" He slammed down his glass of water and huffed with mock anger. "I'm gonna take the day off now and get wasted in sorrow."

  "A true New Orleanian!" Jim said. "Now y'all… this is a godsend. I knew all about the old man's operation. But I never dreamed Walter would offer me a spot in it. And to head the thing!"

  "Move down there, but you better come and visit often," Duff said. "And I'll text you during trivia. Some of the history, politics, literature questions."

  "So are they covering your move down there, Jim?" Bryce said.

  "Yeah, when are ya leavin' us?" Case half-yelled.

  A man sitting in the booth behind Case turned around for a moment.

  "My lease ends in three months. Ol' Man Walt is bustin' me out of it, offered to pay the deposit on a place on the Cape. Or I could set up in the condo that's over the boat warehouse, down in Osterville. I'm opting for the latter. That's where McTierney—the pompous ass running the shop—was living before the old man fired him. The stuffed shirt ingrate didn't realize how good he had it. Lived rent-free. Had a great job with tons of perks and did many things that would have made any boss can him."

  "Now you won't have Beantown rents to weigh you down," Duff said. "You can spend that precious money on other things. Like gas to come up to Tuesday night trivia."

  "It'll take a chunk out of your monthly barhopping expenses," Case said.

  "Well, it wasn't the worst announcement," Patrick said. "You could have told us you were engaged to Maureen, had finally developed cirrhosis, or had entered the priesthood."

  "Brauner! Shut it!" Duff said.

  "Or that you had decided to return to the bayou, which I suspect you one day will do." Bryce winked.

  "Now let's stop the shenanigans and order lobsters!" Jim said. "They have two for thirteen, or one for seven. I love their lobster special. Even though the meat's often crumbly, being previously frozen. Lacks the full briny taste. But they're decent, and cheap nonetheless."

  Patrick flagged down the waitress. All chose lobsters except Duff, who ordered his usual fish and chips.

  "Y'all know nearly every day here in New England," Jim said, "I've enjoyed lobsters, chowder, steamer clams, quahog clams, littleneck clams, cherrystone clams, mahogany clams, or a combination of these."

  Even from his first days at Liam's home in Exeter, the novelty and excellence of New England seafood had never waned for Jim, and his friends all ribbed him for his undying obsession.

  "How can we forget the record you set? Captured on video, too," Patrick said. "You men recall the ten pound lobster Jim devoured in my apartment?"

  "Ah, y'all, I'll tell you what I shall miss," Jim said. "Grabbing Whisky's five-thirty weekday pints and wings with Bryce. Meeting up with Case in the ratty East Boston dives."

  Jim turned to Duff. "I'll miss Tuesday trivia nights near the capitol at the Twenty-First Amendment with Duff and his buddies. Eating at Durgin Park." Strangely, Jim loved its tradition: the bartenders and waitstaff openly insulting their patrons, and keeping the performance going, never admitting it was all in jest.

  "And what else?" Patrick said.

  "First Fridays at the Museum of Fine Arts." Jim would join Patrick in doing what all young attendees at that event did: pretend to view the art, but size up prospective dates. At these events, Jim was obligated to "open," as Patrick and his friends joked. Jim would open up conversation with women and then to introduce his young friends.

  "I'll miss strolling with Maureen to Mass, then afterward buying fresh fish and vegetables at Haymarket's outdoor stalls near the North End. And grilling monkfish or halibut or striped bass on the kettle grill on my building's roof."

  Jim was grateful his old Italian landlord permitted this. He learned Jim's great uncle was a famous drummer for Louis Prima.

  Jim knew he would miss his friends most of all. But next in line would be these very traditions of the last four months. And Jim would miss the butter and batter aroma of fried seafood that he could discern in streets throughout Boston's downtown, a scent his friends couldn't detect for all the years they had lived there.

  When it was time to go, the friends all bade their farewell to Jim outside on Boylston. He would probably see them in a matter of days or weeks. But he had resolved to move in the next few weekdays to Osterville and to occupy the condo. He could take Maureen on her word it was a nice apartment. Jim stepped briskly down Boylston with the crowds scampering back to work after lunch.

  Back at his desk, Jim phoned the attorney to take the order for shares as he had promised. Jim then arranged a deal with Dewey to turn his accounts over to the house. Later that afternoon, Jim called his clients to offer the option of either working with another Henretty rep or claiming the balance of the money in their accounts, as he would be "moving on to another position in the coming days."

  When six o'clock struck, Jim joined the workers heading to
the nearest T subway station or commuter rail. Soon most would arrive, he thought, in some lounge or restaurant or bar or bedroom, some as far away as Plymouth, Hopkinton, or even New Hampshire or Rhode Island.

  Jim descended the stairwell of Arlington station into the oldest subway route in America, going from Arlington Street under the Public Gardens and the Boston Common to the Park Street stop. A subway car approached, screeching. It drew to a stop, hissing loudly. The doors opened with the usual rolling sound. Jim stepped inside. Though a seat was available, Jim grabbed the overhead bar and gestured to an approaching middle-aged woman that the seat was hers. The woman made eye contact with him, but neither smiled nor spoke.

  The surging crowd of uproarious students and reserved professionals pressed Jim backward. His spine rested against the window. He turned and looked out of it, keeping his hand on the bar. The reflection of his face exhibited the defined yet somewhat delicate jaw. It revealed the approaching premature grayness about the temples, a product of the events of the last year. Two inches of thick sandy blonde waves preened, like Walter's, upward from his brow. The tight face didn't yet sag with age and world-weariness, despite his recent struggles. But the eyes he could barely discern in the reflection revealed a wounded grimness, a determination—and a certain melancholy.

  Jim turned and scanned the car into which he and the nameless others had crammed themselves. A young man in a navy blue suit sitting across the aisle stared at Jim.

  Jim returned the stare for several seconds, and then looked at the unsmiling woman and the students and the office workers and once again he recalled the shelter in the Louisiana State University Maravich Assembly Center. He remembered the vast crowds, thousands and thousands of children and elderly, many of whom had smiled at him, commended him, looked deeply into his eyes.

  Freddy would have been proud of him in those days in Baton Rouge, and that realization always consoled Jim—though he still felt guilty surviving the storm. In those days, his life had more meaning than ever before. His adrenalin had pumped too much to grasp the overwhelming tragedy. Would it ever hold such meaning again? Would his life just become desultory, full of dead reckoning, to use the Commodore's old term?

  Another thought chased that one upon its heels.

  Though Boston was intriguing, it would be good to be sprung from the man-forged and often cold and rough urban life, and once more closer to nature, closer to the sea.

  Then he shuddered, realizing he would be farther away from Maureen, instead set out frequently upon open water, that most treacherous substance that fascinated him, yet which he so feared. Water might as well have murdered his good friend. The mere sight of it ushered back that hellish day in late August. Would it always be so?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The movers appeared at his apartment that Friday just before dawn. After two hours, they had swallowed all of his furniture into their massive moving van. They had two more loads to pick up that day, but Jim and Maureen would intercept them in Osterville at the tail end of the weekend.

  Jim and Maureen stood idly in the apartment, now empty save for a few balls of lint and pieces of wrapping paper. She winked at him and gave a sigh of satisfaction, yet he stood in silence, surveying the room.

  He had expected Maureen to be on edge—or snappy as she had been as of late. Strangely, she had been even supportive of his move throughout, at times even enthusiastic and high-spirited. Though her passion was understated compared to his, this was an accomplishment. Perhaps it was because, in a way, he would be more under her observation in Osterville than he would be miles away from her in Boston. He would be more of a part of her family now that he would be living amongst them. The Cape was not a world away, and when she had her fill of the variety and excitement of Boston, she could relocate to Osterville.

  They walked down the creaking stairwell of the row house and headed southbound on Atlantic. Jim pointed out the gulls squawking and circling wildly in the morning mist. A foghorn sounded deep and long out on the harbor.

  Jim caught that favorite scent of his, one he had encountered all along the New England coast: seaweed mixed with the ocean's brine, a smell so much stronger on the Atlantic. Maureen reverted to her silent melancholia, but as they turned right onto Hanover for coffee, he hoped he could snap her into conversation. They strolled, as neither was bound for work that day.

  Jim motioned to the Charles Bulfinch creation, Saint Stephen's Church, where Jim noted Rose Kennedy had been baptized. They passed the Paul Revere Mall with its magnificent equine statue of the famous patriot, and the wall plaques listing the North End's generations of war dead. He did not comment on it. She was surely familiar with the Revere memorial.

  They rambled by the Italian restaurant Strega, where they had their first dinner date that winter night some months ago.

  "I need to feed my addiction," Jim said.

  They turned into CafŽé Vittoria and ordered two coffees to go: a tall dark one for him, and a smaller vanilla latte for her. At a marble-top table, they waited for the coffee. This caféŽ was one of Jim's favorites for its history. Built in 1929, it was the first Italian caféŽ in the city, opened when the originally English neighborhood had transitioned from mostly Irish and Jewish to its current Italian phase. Jim admired the mirrored walls, the antique espresso machines, the brass bars framing the marble countertops as an aria coursed from hidden speakers.

  "Aren't you glad I took a day off to help you move?" Maureen said.

  "I sure am, sweetie." He gritted his teeth but said nothing more.

  They walked into a nearby parking garage. Jim kept his truck there—he had named it Betty Sue. His family had balked when they learned he was hemorrhaging three hundred and fifty dollars a month on a parking space several blocks from his apartment. He now half-regretted bringing the truck up a few weeks ago. He refused to drive it through any salty snow during the winter months.

  Jim started the old rebuilt hunter-green '58 Chevy. His granddaddy Scoresby had driven it very sparingly during his years as a TVA officer in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Jim let it warm up for a few minutes.

  "Is the engine supposed to be this loud?" Maureen said as she turned and spotted the thick tongue of black smoke swirling from the pipe.

  As they drove onto Hanover and southward onto Atlantic toward I-93, Jim let rip a roguish cackle. "This baby is perhaps the only specimen of its breed for a few hundred miles, I bet," Jim said. "The rest rusted out long ago."

  As Jim progressed down the interstate toward Cape Cod, he cranked his window down. At ten miles per hour above the speed limit in the rightmost lane, vehicle after vehicle rode his rear bumper one after the next, then whipped around him. Some honked their horns. Every few minutes, a driver would extend a middle finger skyward in a profane salute.

  "Not to fret, James. They really love you," Maureen said with a wry smile. "Maybe they're furious because this antique here is such a gas guzzler."

  "This is ridiculous, Maureen, no matter which way you slice it. You know, this rudeness is a symptom of something larger. I can't understand—"

  "I know, James Ewell! This argument will pertain to the erosion of manners and the family structure in Boston, and will be peppered with various references to the Civil War. And how the city of Boston lost 'the moral high ground' it once enjoyed one hundred and forty years ago, and about how your region was actually not the only racist and racially segregated one in the last century. And let me guess, it may end by touching on the years it took to allow Jackie Robinson to play baseball in Boston. By the way, I don't know if New Orleans has always been renowned for its 'moral high ground'."

  "Well, sure. And especially not the part of New Orleans the tourists frequent, I agree," Jim said.

  "Oh, Jim," she winked at him, her arms folded across her chest. "Why don't you switch to your auxiliary road trip discussion on these Cape drives? You know, your back-up discussion of Squanto and King Phillip's War and the struggles between the Native
Americans and the colonists in southern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, maybe touching on Robert Williams and Anne Hutchinson and some other figures."

  "You're a psychic!" Jim said. "You know me too well. What y'all have put me through! But then again what I've put you through!"

  He was pleased to see her nod and smile. My, she was so sarcastic. He hoped he could endure it. Was there disdain mixed in? Did Maureen truly value him? Jim threw his arm around her neck, pulled her to him, and kissed the side of her head.

  "This move, Jim, I just know will be so much better for you. I'm happy for you."

  And this move, Jim thought, was a strange one indeed. He was leaving the side of his girlfriend to work and live with her father. Jim was shocked she was so fine with the situation—and even first suggested it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Having both agreed to reach Osterville as soon as possible that morning, Jim and Maureen took the direct route. Yet normally, Jim elected the scenic route on his drive to Cape Cod. How he loved that drive.

  Last fall, Bryce had taken them in his Jeep on that route to the Wellfleet Oyster Festival. That scenic way would take him from Boston, through the footsteps of John Adams in Quincy, through Scituate and Duxbury, and then through picturesque Plymouth.

  There he could once again marvel at its famous rock and how small and insignificant it looked compared to how it had loomed in his mind as a schoolboy. He could pass the stately early eighteenth century homes, along tranquil Manomet Beach with its gently rolling dunes and gnarled crabapple trees, over the Sagamore Bridge, then through charming Sandwich.

  The route cut south, away from the Cape's northern coast, through still-thick forests and through Mashpee toward the southern shore, curved east through Santuit and ended in the seaside town of Osterville. Jim anticipated regularly taking the next leg of the route, which wound from Osterville through world-renowned Hyannis, through the beautiful towns of West Yarmouth, Harwich Port, Chatham (with its infamous shoals and the magnificent seaside resort hotel with its porch's rocking chairs). It wound northward through Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, and Truro with their horse trails among dunes, crabapple trees, and cranberry bogs.