Off the Dock by Beth Mathison Page A

her seat so that everything was easily accessible.
    They fell into a comfortable silence, casting out and reeling back in. True to his word, David baited the hook for her each time she lost a worm.
    The boat was anchored in a quiet bay close to the shoreline, the water calm away from the open lake. The trees on the water’s edge were lush with summer growth, creating a picturesque setting for their date. The boat sat twenty-five feet from land, out far enough that the lake breeze offset the warm July humidity. An occasional seagull or crane would soar above them, searching for fish.
    The quiet was unusual for them. Not distracted by the demands they faced at home, Frannie shifted in her seat, squashing a desire to check the e-mail on her phone. It was difficult for her to stop the running to-do list in her head. It was a busy time at the office for her, and she was also busy driving the kids to their summer activities every day. She put the urge to check her phone behind her. One of their date rules was a strict no-electronics policy, unless a family emergency arose.
    “So this is what you do when you go fishing with the guys?” she asked. “Cast and reel in, cast and reel in?”
    “Pretty much,” he responded. “It’s nice, isn’t it? The quiet, I mean.”
    “It’s different,” Frannie responded honestly. “I normally don’t have a lot of it. It feels…strange.”
    David baited another hook for her. “Maybe that’s why I like it so much,” he said. “It feels good to get away from all the busyness for a while.”
    “What do you talk about with the guys?” she asked.
    “Well…” David said. “We talk a lot about fishing.”
    “Hmmmm…” Frannie said. She fiddled with her reel. She was starting to feel uncomfortable with the prospect of talking about fishing lures and leeches for the next few hours. It had been almost three weeks since their last date, and their difficulty in relating to each other was obvious. When they spent that much time without meaningful conversation, it was a struggle to get to know one another again. Intimate strangers , they called themselves when they had drifted apart.
    “Ugh,” David said. “I think it’s been way too long after our last date. Want to play association?”
    “Absolutely. You read my mind,” she responded with relief. “You start.”
    They had learned the game early in their marriage from Frannie’s Aunt Darlene and Uncle Bernie, who had been married over sixty years. One person would begin the game by saying a word. The other person would respond with another word, preferably without thinking about their response. For Frannie and David, it filled up the moments when they had trouble coming up with conversation. Although a simple word association game, they always learned something new every time they played.
    “Hemingway,” he said.
    “Ernest,” she replied.
    “Fishing.”
    “Slime.”
    “Nice,” David said.
    “Brittany,” Frannie responded with their daughter’s name.
    “No, I meant the reference to slime. Oh, never mind.” David cast his line out.
    “Cookie,” he said.
    “Snickerdoodles,” she stated.
    “Snickerdoodles? What the heck is a snickerdoodle?”
    “You don’t know what a snickerdoodle is? Have you been living under a rock for all of your forty-plus years?”
    “Apparently,” David said dryly. He paused, looking out over the water. He narrowed his eyes. “Does it have to do with men’s private parts?”
    “What?” Frannie choked out.
    “Doodles,” David said. “Aren’t doodles a code word for…you know. Though I’ve never heard one snicker. They do all sorts of other neat tricks, but never snicker.”
    Frannie looked at him like he was on another planet. “A snickerdoodle is a type of sugar cookie,” she said.
    “Aaaaah,” David said, nodding with understanding. “A type of cookie. See, you learn something every day.”
    “All right,” Frannie said. “Enough about doodles. My turn. Ceiling