The first time I saw Martin Hale, he was dripping wet and laughing.
It was the summer of 1975. I was twenty-one years old, standing on the edge of a dance floor at the Pier Pavilion in Portland, Maine, in a borrowed blue dress that was a size too big. My friend Dottie had dragged me there. I didn’t want to come. I didn’t like dances. And I especially didn’t like the Pier Pavilion, because it was built right out over the water, and through the cracks between the floorboards you could see the dark ocean moving underneath.
I was trying very hard not to look down.
That’s when the door at the back of the hall banged open, and a young man walked in soaking wet from head to toe. Water was running off his hair. His white shirt was stuck to his chest. His shoes squelched with every step.
Everyone stared.
He just grinned and spread his arms wide.
“Sorry, folks,” he announced. “Got a little too close to the edge of the dock. The ocean said hello.”
The whole room burst out laughing. Except me. I was staring at him in horror.
He saw me staring. He walked right over, dripping all over the floor.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said.
“You fell in,” I said. “Into the ocean.”
“Sure did.”
“At night.”
“It was only about eight feet deep.” He shrugged. “Water’s nice tonight. A little cold.”
I couldn’t speak. My heart was pounding. I felt sick just thinking about it. The black water. Not being able to see the bottom.
He looked at my face more closely. His grin faded a little.
“Hey,” he said gently. “You okay?”
“I don’t like the water,” I said. “That’s all.”
“Can’t swim?”
“I can swim. I just don’t.”
He tilted his head. He had brown eyes and a crooked nose that looked like it had been broken once, and a smile that took up his whole face.
“Well,” he said. “That’s a shame. Because I’m about to ask you to dance, and this whole floor is sitting right on top of the Atlantic Ocean.”
I looked down at the cracks in the floorboards. At the black water moving underneath.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Come on. One dance. I promise I won’t let you fall in.” He held out his wet hand. “If anybody goes into the ocean tonight, it’ll be me. Again.”
I don’t know why I took his hand. I’ve asked myself that for forty-nine years.
Maybe it was the way he said I promise. Like he’d never broken a promise in his life.
His name was Martin. He was twenty-three. He’d just finished his training at the Maine Maritime Academy and gotten his first job as a third mate on a cargo ship that ran from Portland down to the Caribbean. He was leaving in nine days.
We danced four songs. Then we went outside and sat on a bench at the land end of the pier, as far from the water as I could get. He dried off slowly in the warm summer air. We talked until the Pavilion closed.
He talked about the ocean like other men talked about women. Like it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The color of the water near the equator, so blue it hurt your eyes. The way the stars looked from the deck in the middle of the night, a thousand miles from any land. Dolphins racing alongside the bow. Storms so big the waves were taller than buildings.
“It’s the only place I’ve ever felt like I made sense,” he said. “Out there. Just me and the sky and the water. Do you know what I mean?”
“No,” I said honestly. “I really don’t.”
He laughed. “Why don’t you like the water?”
I hesitated. I’d never told anyone. Not even Dottie.
But there was something about him. Something steady. Like a lighthouse.
“My brother drowned,” I said. “When I was nine. His name was Tommy. He was twelve. We were swimming at Higgins Beach, and there was a riptide, and he went out too far. I was standing on the sand. I watched him go under. I was screaming for help. By the time the lifeguard got there, he was gone.”
Martin didn’t say anything for a long time.
“I haven’t been in the ocean since,” I said. “Not even my feet. I don’t go to the beach. I don’t go on boats. I don’t even like baths very much.”
He reached over and took my hand. His was still a little damp.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “About Tommy.”
“Thank you.”
“And I’m sorry I fell in the ocean right in front of you. That must have been awful.”
I laughed, despite myself. “It was a little awful.”
He smiled. Then he looked out at the dark water. The moon was shining on it, a long silver path stretching to the horizon.
“The ocean took your brother,” he said. “I understand why you hate it. I’d hate it too.” He was quiet for a moment. “But I’ll tell you something. It’s also the most beautiful thing in the world. And someday, if you ever want to, I’d like to show you.”
“I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.”
“That’s okay.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m a patient man.”
He wrote to me from his ship.
The first letter came eleven days after he left. A postcard, actually. A picture of a white sand beach in Puerto Rico, with palm trees and impossibly blue water. On the back, in his messy handwriting:
Evelyn — This is the color I told you about. Wish you could see it. Don’t worry, I didn’t fall in this time. — Martin
I put it on my mirror.
Then another one came. Jamaica. Then Barbados. Then Trinidad. Every port, a new postcard. Every postcard, a new color of water.
When he came home three months later, he knocked on my parents’ door at seven o’clock in the morning. He’d come straight from the ship. He was sunburned and unshaven and holding a bunch of daisies he’d obviously bought at a gas station.
“Evelyn,” he said, when I opened the door in my bathrobe. “I’ve thought about you every single day for ninety-two days. Would you go to dinner with me tonight?”
I said yes.
We were married a year later. In June 1976. In a little white church in South Portland, two miles inland. I picked it myself. I wanted to be as far from the ocean as possible.
At the reception, Martin’s best friend from the academy, a big red-bearded man named Gus, gave a toast. He held up his glass and grinned.
“To Martin,” he said. “The only sailor I know who went out to sea and found himself a mermaid.” He paused. “Who only wants to stay on land.”
Everyone laughed. Martin laughed hardest of all. He pulled me into his arms in the middle of the dance floor.
“My mermaid,” he whispered in my ear. “My land-loving mermaid.”
From then on, that’s what he called me. For forty-nine years.
His mermaid.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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