Beware the Mermaids

by Carrie Talick

  “Claire Sanford was at the club flaunting her augmented breasts all over Roger, and he ate it up like key lime pie. I just thought he was getting back at me for my small mutiny aboard. I didn’t think … because he was flirting with everyone, even Rita.” Nancy felt her face grow hot, embarrassed. He had made a pass at their waitress that night too. “And then we all walked on the boat and there they were, naked and humping on Bucephalus.”

  Ruthie shook her head, her anger palpable. Lois slurped down her margarita and went to make more as Judy nervously started making little cheese-and-cracker sandwiches.

  Nancy slumped down into her chair, her anxiety on high alert.

  “Okay, we’re ordering Thai food. Get comfy. We’re going to be here awhile,” Ruthie announced as she headed into the kitchen.

  Judy knelt down next to Nancy, took her hand, and held it to her cheek. Judy’s skin was warm. “That’s the saddest thing about betrayal: it never comes from your enemies.”

  “I’m such an idiot,” Nancy said quietly.

  Lois walked back in with another pitcher of margaritas and said, “How’s our girl?”

  “One margarita down and knee-deep in self-loathing,” Judy answered.

  Nancy looked up at Lois and nodded at this assessment. She held up her empty glass as Lois poured more of the tart tequila concoction into it.

  Thirty minutes later, the Thai food had arrived and Nancy was camped out under a blanket in an Adirondack chair on Ruthie’s back porch. The sun had begun to sink slowly into the Pacific. Otis was curled up on her lap, offering up all the emotional dog support he could muster, which consisted mostly of napping and the occasional affectionate snort.

  Judy opened a bottle of white wine as Ruthie came out with two bowls of Thai food from the local place in the village, renowned for its green curry. Ruthie offered one to Nancy, but she simply took the bowl and set it down on the side table, untouched. Ruthie dug into her curry as Nancy studied the horizon as if a missing ship would appear.

  “I feel like an asshole,” Nancy finally said.

  Ruthie nodded as she nibbled on a carrot slice and said, “You are entitled to feel like a trusting, loving fool, but you are not permitted to feel like an asshole. You did nothing wrong.”

  “It’s true,” Lois added. “He’s the scumball here, not you.”

  Otis was awake now and torn between offering continued emotional dog support and the bits of chicken curry Ruthie kept dropping on the deck. He leaned his head over Nancy’s knee so he would be in the perfect position to catch a piece if it fell.

  “I should have seen this coming.”

  “Oh, for shit’s sake, Nance. You’ve been a people pleaser your entire life. Of which I have been a great beneficiary, I’ll admit. But I cannot allow you to sit here and stab holes into yourself with the sharp blade of hindsight, only to have you rewrite history so that somehow Roger’s Viagra-fueled sexcapades with that gold-digging tramp are your fault. That man has never deserved you.”

  Nancy nodded. But there was something Ruthie and Judy didn’t know. Roger had done this before. She hadn’t been totally blindsided by his philandering behavior. She acknowledged that she’d thought his age would stop him, or at least stifle his urges.

  Lois asked, “Any word from him?”

  Nancy shrugged. She had turned off her phone the minute Roger called, which was approximately three minutes after she left the boat. That was roughly four hours ago. Nancy handed her phone to Lois, who turned it on.

  “Whoa. You have fourteen missed calls and thirty-two text messages. All but one of them are from Roger. The other is from Stella.”

  “Read the one from Stella,” Nancy said.

  “Hi Mom. Just heard from Dad. WTF. Call me.”

  Nancy sank deeper in her chair. She wondered how long she could stay here on Ruthie’s deck, letting the weeks go by in hiding, having wine and food delivered to her chair. It wouldn’t be so bad. She had Otis. She could send for Suzanne the Cat.

  Lois raised her wineglass and nodded to Ruthie, who poured her some and said, “So, the charity committee saw Roger and Claire going at it like two middle-aged rabbits? Those women must have been appalled.”

  “I bet that’s the most ass Faye Woodhall has seen since women got the right to vote,” Ruthie said as she fiddled with a sugar snap pea.

  Nancy couldn’t stop a slow smile from appearing on her face. “You are not going to make me laugh.”

  Ruthie smiled and said, “Can’t hurt to try.”

  “What was the reaction of the charitable society ladies anyway?” Lois asked.

  “Well.” Nancy thought about it for a second. “The two ladies that accompanied Faye were both stunned at first, and then they gasped. But Faye was silent. She didn’t say a word. Didn’t even raise her hand in shock or anything.”

  “Well, it’s possible she’s half-dead, being kept alive by vodka, calcium tablets, and pure, unfiltered disdain,” Lois said.

  “Oh, stop. You’re just being mean,” Nancy interrupted. “I just got the feeling that Faye felt it was beneath her to even be there, witnessing someone else’s melodrama.”

  “I can see that. Melodrama is typically reserved for the lower classes,” Ruthie said.

  “Speaking of melodrama, I have some news too,” Judy offered.

  “Oh, thank god,” Nancy said. “Please take the attention off of me. My story has grown tiresome.”

  Judy took a deep breath and said, “I got a call today from the park ranger’s office up in Kings Canyon. They found Gordon.”

  The three women sat there, stunned.

  Lois tentatively asked, “Is he … alive?”

  “No.” Judy had tears in her eyes. Ruth and Lois both reflexively went to Judy’s side to console her. “After all this time …”

  For two long years, Judy had sat grieving as a pseudowidow after her husband Gordon went on a hiking-and-camping trip alone in the High Sierras, a mountain range five hours’ driving distance north of Los Angeles. He had never come home. He had been a man of the woods, trails, and national parks his whole life, but he was also a sixty-two-year-old hiking alone above twelve thousand feet. An unnecessary risk that Judy still hadn’t quite forgiven him for.

  “The rangers believe he tried to find a safe place behind some boulders to keep himself out of the wind, but it got down to eighteen degrees that night. He was wearing a cotton T-shirt and jeans.” Judy shook her head. “They think he lost consciousness when his body temperature dropped. And he just fell asleep. It makes me feel better to know that he wasn’t crushed by a boulder or mauled by a bear.”

  Nancy had a lump in her throat but managed to say, “I’m so sorry, Judy.”

  “Same,” Lois said.

  Ruthie nodded.

  Judy took a deep breath and wiped her face. The girls slowly went back to their own seats and gave Judy some room.

  She regained her composure. “The other piece of news is that I can claim his life insurance. Without a body, life insurance is void. My agent put in the claim right after he heard.”

  Considering Judy was still working two part-time jobs to make ends meet at the ripe old age of fifty-seven, Nancy hoped the sum was enough to help her.

  “He left our boys a nice sum. And I will get a check for five hundred thousand.”

  “Whoa.” Lois muttered.

  “Holy Moses,” Ruthie added.

  “Thank god, Gordon,” Nancy whispered.

  Judy said, “There is a certain amount of relief, I suppose. When we had his celebration-of-life ceremony, I knew he was gone. I could feel it. This brings the last bit of closure, I guess. And now this money.” She sighed. “I’d give it all back to spend another day with him. It’s more than I know what to do with. I don’t even know where to start.”

  In light of Judy’s chronically indecisive nature, Nancy and Ruthie gave each other a knowing look. “Champagne is always a good start.”

  Judy nodded.

  “Great idea.” Lois headed
to the kitchen.

  Judy piped up, “I brought three kinds.”

  The girls talked about their favorite memories of Gordon over the years and toasted to his memory. As the night passed like a warm ocean breeze, Judy shed a few more tears, some from relief, some from sadness, but enough to begin to wash away the pain and gently usher in a kind of peace. Nancy, in a flash of wistfulness, wondered if she would have felt that way about Roger if he had unexpectedly died in the wilderness. Then it occurred to her that the only way Roger would be caught dead on a mountain was if an avalanche plowed through the cocktail lounge at the Deer Valley Lodge.

  * * *

  It was a little after nine PM when Nancy finally put her blanket aside and sat up in her Adirondack chair. Margaritas, Thai food, news of Gordon, and time spent with her best friends had done its job, at least for now.

  “Well,” Nancy said slowly, “I have to go home.” The statement pained her. She didn’t want to be anywhere near Roger. Didn’t want his hands pawing at her to get her to listen to his excuses, and boy, she couldn’t wait to hear this excuse. She didn’t want to fight against his demands that she forgive him. Didn’t want to face the untouchable truth.

  “Why do you have to go home? I have plenty of room here.”

  “The cat will die.”

  “Bring the cat.”

  “Otis hates cats. Plus, Suzanne would kill Otis with one swipe of her agile, lethal paw if given the chance.”

  “Hey, Otis can handle his own.”

  Otis looked up at Nancy from his prostrate position and snorted softly, as if knowing he had no chance in hell against that cat.

  Lois offered, “Come stay with me and Chris. The kids are long gone, and it’ll give me a reason to sell Chris’s hideous beer stein collection on Facebook Marketplace.”

  “I have my guest suite perpetually made up. With the good sheets,” Judy said.

  “Thank you. All of you. But you know I have to go home.”

  Ruthie put down her wineglass and sighed. Judy took her last sip. Lois shook her head.

  When Nancy emerged from the chair, she felt like she was climbing out of a mud bog. Her body felt heavy, as if actively fighting against her intention to go home. The girls helped her gather her things, looks of deep concern etched on their faces. Nancy knew what she was facing there. The girls did too.

  She took a last swig of chardonnay for courage, wiped her mouth, and headed back to Hermosa Beach and her cheating shithead of a husband.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE THING ABOUT ROGER

  Roger was accidentally conceived on the bucket seat of a Buick Skylark after a prime rib dinner at the Red Fox Bar & Grill in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1961. Unbeknownst to his soon-to-be mother, Abigail, he grew in her womb for two weeks while she and her ambitious boyfriend, Wayne, took off in that same Buick for California with dreams of a future as aeronautical engineers living in a coastal cottage by the beach.

  So, when Abigail missed her first period and the knowledge of Roger’s existence became clear to her, she told Wayne, who sat dismally drinking whiskey in their beach house full of moving boxes. They came to a quick and united decision. There was no room in their plan for a baby. Roger was unplanned and unwanted and regretfully had to be dealt with. After all, Abigail wasn’t just a farm girl anymore. She hadn’t become the first female engineering graduate of Michigan State University just to get pregnant and become a housewife. Hell no. Her ambitions far outweighed her humble beginnings and meager circumstances. She had dreams of designing jets and propulsion systems. She was born to exceed every expectation anyone had for her. She was driven and smarter than most men, with the ability to keep her emotions in check. Even as a child, Abigail had exhibited little to no emotion at coming-of-age traumatic events, including the death of her favorite chicken, Chuckles, to a hungry weasel. Her stoic father told her he saw it as her strength, which only served to further tamp down any emotions that might crop up. Sensitivity and empathy were simply not part of her makeup. This helped immensely in the male-dominated world of engineering, where, just as there was no crying in baseball, there was no place for feminine qualities such as, say, feelings. She understood data, numbers, physics, and cold, hard facts. Motherhood, especially the loving and nurturing aspects of this particular endeavor, were far too messy and not at all part of her plan.

  As for Wayne’s feelings on the matter, Roger’s existence was a cataclysmic monkey wrench in his plan for world domination. He and Abigail had a shared dream and a solid plan for becoming fabulously wealthy, traveling the world, and perhaps even sailing around it. Wayne’s way of dealing with the matter of Roger was to simply act as if he didn’t exist. So, with a simple nod to Abigail when she talked about ending her pregnancy, he eliminated Roger from his consciousness.

  On a Saturday morning in June 1961, Abigail found herself driving to a private clinic in Beverly Hills known for certain procedures and absolute discretion. She sat in the waiting room with three other women, each seemingly bowing her head in quiet shame, which she couldn’t understand. She filled out the paperwork, used a false name, and had cash on hand for the procedure. She wanted no paper trail, no record of the event. When her fake name was called, she walked back into the sparsely furnished room that held a single gynecological table with stirrups. The nurse instructed her that the doctor would be in soon. She sat down and waited for the attending doctor to come in. At least, she hoped it was a doctor. She really didn’t have any idea. As she sat there, she stared at the gestation photos on the wall. How big a baby was in the womb at six, ten, and twelve weeks. She studied the posters with an engineer’s brain, noticing the changes in the fetus over time, but she applied no emotion to the observation. Instead, she looked at her watch and wondered if she’d be able to meet Wayne for dinner.

  The door opened, and a middle-aged man walked in. Abigail noticed he had a warm handshake and kind eyes. He looked at her with a sad smile.

  “Jane, is it?”

  Abigail nodded at the use of her fake name.

  “Tell me about your situation,” the doctor said.

  “Well, I want to end my pregnancy.”

  “I see, of course. You’re on your own?”

  “No.”

  “So, you know the father?”

  “Of course I know the father; I’m with the father. What kind of loose woman do you think I am?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that many women who come here are under rather difficult circumstances. So, I take it that it’s a financial decision?”

  “No, we’re both engineers. We live in a lovely cottage by the beach,” Abigail answered confidently.

  “I see. So, if you don’t mind my asking—and by all means, you can tell me to mind my own business—but why is a perfectly healthy young woman in a happily committed relationship with the father of her child, who is also financially able to raise a child, choosing to end a pregnancy? The only reason I ask is that sometimes it’s not as easy as it seems to do something like this.”

  Abigail sat there for a second. Something inside her stirred. It wasn’t an altogether foreign feeling, but it wasn’t common either. Doubt crept into her consciousness as she struggled to find an answer the doctor could accept. Or perhaps she was trying to find an answer she could accept. Wayne certainly didn’t want to father a child. And he would be severely disappointed if she came home pregnant and, worst of all, with the intention of becoming a mother. She wondered if her dreams of achievement would have to suffer for her to have a child. Motherhood was just not part of her mission. But she looked up at the poster of the six-week-old fetus, and for the first time she felt connected to the growing baby inside her. She looked at the doctor, then down at her belly, and sighed. “I don’t think I’ll be needing your services after all.”

  The kindly doctor helped her up and rested his warm hand on her arm. “Good luck, Jane.”

  Abigail bid him farewell and drove home to Manhattan Beach.

  Seven months la
ter, Abigail and Wayne were married three short days before Roger was born. He was a bubbly, healthy baby boy clocking in at a little over eight pounds, with a hearty appetite and an ability to cry so loud dolphins could hear it from a mile offshore.

  Roger’s mother and father engineered ways around the hardest parts of parenting. Abigail found a family in the neighborhood who could watch Roger while she worked full-time. Wayne also worked full-time and was quickly promoted year after year, a direct consequence of becoming a “family man,” as his supervisor put it. Abigail was certain this was the chief reason Wayne liked being a father.

  Their small family prospered, and as soon as Abigail could have it done, she got her tubes tied to prevent any more children from cramping her promising career and social lifestyle. Roger grew up in a stable if not exactly loving home, and he flourished in school. He clearly had inherited the brains of his mother and father. But he had also inherited something else from them. Something he would find out about years later, quite by accident.

  * * *

  Back in the late eighties, brain mapping, genomes, and gene therapy were little-known theories shrouded in mystery and confusion. If discussed at all, these topics were relegated to the likes of science fiction authors. Or quacks. But there was a small malfunction in Roger’s DNA. The combination of Abigail and Wayne’s DNA had come together to make a perfect physically healthy baby boy but with a slightly mutated gene affecting the middle of his brain.

  Roger stumbled upon this biological detail when he was two weeks shy of his fortieth birthday. He had gone in to the UCLA medical center at the urging of Nancy to, as she had put it, have his head examined—stress headaches had been recurring. While there, he saw his physician talking to a man he recognized, Dr. William Holm, a professor at the university and an old college fraternity brother. They got to talking, and Dr. Holm asked Roger if he could take his brain scan, as he was putting together a study on brain functionality. He explained that Roger and a few others would be the baseline for his working hypothesis. Roger obliged, took his fifty bucks, and fell asleep in the MRI machine.