Water

Peter introduced Alice to water. They fell in love at first sight. They met at a party in the Cincinnati suburb of Springdale, where she had lived all her life. In Springdale, there was block after block of ranch three bedroom houses identical except for the color of the shutters. Alice’s life long friend who was Peter’s cousin brought Alice and Peter together.

Peter was on a three week leave from the Navy, where he was a mechanic on submarines. Within a few days, they married and Peter brought Alice to his one bedroom apartment in Florida. They played in the ocean water, and passionately made love in the apartment.

When he finally reported for military duty, she wasn’t ready to let him go. They kissed and held each other tightly, and then he boarded a bus. She cried and cried – wet crying, dry crying, sore throat, phlegm, swollen throat, headache. She woke up alone, with nothing to look forward to until Peter had another leave.

She woke up early every morning and cried herself back to sleep. She would think of him somewhere in the water far beyond sight from the shore and she would cry some more, go to the bathroom, pass water, take long hot showers and baths. It seemed water was everywhere, but that didn’t bring her any closer to him.

He had given her an address to write to him. He was going to be out in the open ocean, probably in a submarine, and would only receive and send mail periodically. She wrote daily, and took her letters to the Post Office in the early afternoon. She constantly checked the mailbox, even though she didn’t expect to hear from him right away. A few days after he left there was a letter from him.

My Dearest Alice,

We will be going out to sea in a submarine this afternoon, so this is the last time I can communicate to you. We are not going to combat duty, so you don’t have to worry about me. The guys who will be deployed with me seem like a good bunch. They all have a sense of humor and were trained well. That’s important, because living in a submarine is intense.

I miss you and am always thinking of you. I will look forward to your letters when I can receive them. I’m not good with words, so I can’t fully express how much I love you and miss you.

Love, Your Peter

She read his letter over and over, and cried onto it, making the writing smudge and run, so she put it onto a bedside table so as not to totally ruin it.

She couldn’t bring herself to eat, but she drank glass after glass of water, never able to quench her thirst. She lay in a fetal curl on the unmade bed, only getting up to go to the bathroom and drink water.

Peter had set his bank account up for automatic deposits of his pay and automatic payments for the apartment and utilities and car insurance. He made the account in both their names so she wouldn’t be in need. Alone in the water of her salty tears as wet as the ocean that he was under in the submarine, she was alone with no aspirations, no obligations, no connections. All she had was her longing for her husband.

Everything was watery in her eyes full of tears. She remembered from a high school biology class that the human body is more than half water by weight, up to 75% water. There can be no life as we know it without water. Ninety percent of the living space on Earth is the water of oceans. She felt she would float away in her tears of grief, but she always woke up in the same bed, alone. The walls around her seemed too solid, the ceiling seemed too low, the light from the window too bright. Her eyes burned and watered some more.

After a few weeks, Alice was still crying more often than not. She still missed Peter, but in her watery consciousness she could smile at her memories of being with him, as if they were underwater together, maybe scuba diving. When her appetite began to open up, she made meals of beans and rice, not wanting to spend Peter’s money, though she had a debit card.

Alice realized she had missed her period for three weeks, and got a pregnancy test from the drugstore. The test had a positive result. She was overjoyed. There was a little baby in the sea of her uterus. Alice couldn’t separate her love for Peter or for the little life she carried in her from water. She cried brackish tears and sweat salty sea waters while she waited. Elation and depression rose and fell like waves. She wrote to Peter, and hoped he would be as glad as she was. In their time together, they hadn’t talked about children. They hadn’t talked about money, except to make a joint account. They didn’t talk about anything newlyweds are advised to work out before marriage. They talked about the sea, the beaches, the light showers on Daytona Beach at noon, cool baths they took together to soothe their sunburns. They talked about how they were soulmates, and how their lives were complete with each other.

Alice called her mother. “I told you not to rush into marriage like you did. Is it over now?”

Alice sniffled. “It’s just begun. He‘s gone, but not forever. He’s in a submarine, and writes that he loves me.”

Her mother sighed. “So now you’re alone, far from family, no employment. Just waiting. Do you think he’s going to still be interested in you when you’ve got nothing going on but fantasies about him?”

Alice’s mother’s words echoed through her head like waves crashing against the insides of her skull.

“You may be right. I should find employment and interests.”

She hung up without telling her mother she was pregnant.

Alice found a job behind the counter of a flavored ice shop. It wasn’t the most interesting job in the world, but it was near a beach. Ice is water, too. She threw herself into the job like it was what she always wanted to do. She put her checks and tips into the joint account. She searched online for baby things, but didn’t buy anything right away. It was too soon. What if she miscarried? She found out online that as as spouse of a Navy sailor she was entitled to medical benefits.

Days gave way to weeks, weeks to months. She found an Ob-Gyn who had good ratings and who she found trustworthy. The doctor was a middle-aged woman. Alice took the recommended vitamins and went monthly for check ups.

One day, she got a letter from her husband. It was a stuffed envelope with pages and pages of his writing. He went into detail about what his tasks were, most of which Alice couldn’t completely understand. He wrote about the feel of submarine life. He wrote about the characters of the seamen around him. There were no women on that submarine at that time.

Alice wondered if he could understand that she felt like she was underwater. When he was there, she was floating, but with him gone she must have been breathing with gills. The world was watery, as if she saw through goggles deep in the sea.

Peter hadn’t received her letters yet when he sent his letter. He said he would be picking up his mail when he sent his letter. He’d probably be at sea again by the time he read her letters, so he asked for her patience. Alice was still sending a letter a day, detailing her life and her dreams and the water, always water, but what if he didn’t understand the water she was talking about?

The doctor announced that Alice was in her second trimester. Everything looked healthy about Alice and her womb. The doctor asked about Alice’s husband. Alice explained that he was serving in a submarine, and that the correspondence was delayed, and he now had the letters about the expected baby, but she might not hear from him again for weeks or even months. Alice wondered if all of the doctor’s patients felt like they were underwater.

Another bulging envelope arrived from Peter. He understood what she meant by being surrounded and filled with water. While she was on land and felt like she was underwater, he was deep in the ocean yet felt a dryness he found hard to describe. His lips chapped, so he got plenty of lip balm when he had a chance. There was static electricity everywhere. Nobody else seemed to notice it. He was always thirsty and kept a canteen with him, and on breaks from his shift, he always had to refill it. Peter longed for Alice and the watery life they briefly had together. He apologized, but he had to carry all of her letters by hand, and he was almost certain he had dropped some. He would take a pillow case to fetch her future letters.

Peter was otherwise getting along well in the submarine. He was commended for his work and had received a promotion with a higher pay grade. He and the other sailors joked around when they were off duty. They talked for hours about their dreams about when they were on land again. Some of them were married and missed their wife and kids. Some were single and had ideas for business or higher education.

He apparently didn’t get the most important missive, the one telling him she was pregnant and had gotten a job behind the counter of a flavored ice shop. Alice alternately felt elated about having a child, and anxious that maybe Peter didn’t want a child.

Alice continued working at the flavored ice shop until a few weeks into the third trimester. It was busy, and kept her mind occupied during her shifts. She got a few things for the baby – a car seat, a bassinet, diapers, some clothes. She asked not to be told the gender of the baby before birth.

Months went on and it was the week she expected to give birth. One day, she had abdominal pains about an hour apart, then forty-five minutes apart, the thirty minutes apart.

Alice was about to call the doctor and go to the hospital when the door suddenly swung open and Peter came in, wearing his Navy Working Uniform. Alice ran to him and they hugged.

Peter lifted her from the floor. “My little family! I have a week’s leave.’

“Oh!,” Alice pulled away.

“What is it?”

“I just broke water. I have to call the doctor.”

Peter swept her off her feet. She had the cell phone in her hand.

He kissed her cheek. “You can call on the way to the hospital.”