Swim to Me

by Betsy Carter

  THEN SHE WENT into her room, closed the shades, and pulled out the bathing cap filled with silver dollars. There were sixty-nine left. After she paid the five-dollar hotel bill, she’d have sixty-four dollars to her name. Delores brushed her hair and packed her bag. Just as she was about to close the lid on Otto, he said: “Hey, kiddo, don’t forget about me.” She tucked the bus ticket into the pocket of her suitcase, pleased with the thought that she wouldn’t be needing it anytime soon.

  It was after two by the time Delores knocked on Thelma Foote’s door at the administration building.

  “I’ve discussed it with my parents,” she said. “They think this is a good opportunity for me, so yes, I’d be happy to be a mermaid. Can I put my stuff in the dorm now?”

  Thelma Foote’s wink was magnified a dozen times behind her thick lenses. “Child, someday I would like to meet those entertainer parents of yours,” she said. “In the meantime, let them rest assured that we will take good care of you here. So c’mon now, let’s get you fixed up.”

  Delores would never want for water again.

  Three

  There was never enough water in New York City. Delores craved the water the way a boozer craves drink. Out of it, her large bony limbs were all edges and jerky movements. Under it, her arms made graceful arcs and her long legs rippled. For seven dollars a year, she got to swim in a small, crowded pool at the Bronx YMCA every day after school. Delores would make up stories in the water and act them out. Mostly they had to do with her being a beautiful princess who lived in a castle. She’d turn somersaults and invent little dances to show off to the fish and turtles who lived down there with her. One time, Henry, the cute older guy who taught swimming, even shouted: “Go, tiger!” after watching her wallop across the pool doing the butterfly stroke. He couldn’t have known that, the whole time, she’d been pretending to ride on the back of a dolphin.

  The lady from Baltimore had sent the Walkers two pictures of Roy holding Delores over his head in front of the obelisk, as she had promised. The pictures were folded into a note-card with a painting of a sunflower on the front of it. In a generous scrawl, the woman had written: Splendid memories of your time in the sun. You make a beautiful mermaid.

  When Delores had shown the photograph to her friend Ellen, they noticed how her father was staring into the camera with his lopsided gap-toothed grin. “He looks like Alfred E. Neuman,” Delores said, and laughed. MAD was her father’s favorite. He kept back copies of it in the bathroom. In fact, MAD magazine was the only magazine she’d ever seen in the house. “God, he does look like Alfred E. Neuman,” said Ellen. “I wonder if he knows it?”

  “He must,” said Delores.

  Her mother had seemed to accept her father’s disappearance as another of life’s inevitable disappointments. For the first few weeks after he’d left, she’d say to Delores, “He’ll be back. He always comes back,” as if she were talking about a runaway cat. Sometimes, she’d stare at the phone, willing it to ring; it never rang. “There’s probably someone I should call,” she said one night, “but I’ll be darned if I know who that is.” As the weeks went by, her husband’s absence seemed to inhabit her. Dark circles, like pits, formed under her eyes. She developed a nervous cough. Some days she didn’t even bother to put a comb through her matted hair. She’d forget to buy food for dinner. If Delores didn’t bathe Westie, he’d go to bed unwashed. Then late one afternoon, about six weeks after her father took off, her mother began to settle into an unsteady peace. “The son of a bitch is really gone,” she said to Delores. “But the real pisser is, he took the car.”

  West didn’t seem to notice his father’s absence. The house was quieter, that was for sure. His mom was distracted, but Delores played with him, fed him, and kept him clean. Delores had assumed that her father would send for her and West as soon as he got to wherever he was going. She felt a little guilty for imagining that life might be easier with him, that away from her mom he’d be more relaxed and kind of fun. She imagined he’d driven the old Pontiac somewhere out west. He’d settle down in a private house. The house would have a screened-in porch and a swing in the backyard. He would be tanned and happy, no more bad temper. He’d lose weight and grow honey-colored sideburns, and he’d still wear his Yankees cap everywhere. Behind the house would be a pool. Nothing fancy, just big enough for her to swim laps. There would be a barbecue in the backyard. He’d cook steak and baked potatoes. It would be sunny all the time.

  To make ends meet, her mother took on a second job at night. During the day she worked at the checkout counter of a nearby Gristedes. After that, she’d go to her job cleaning fancy offices in a steel and glass office building on the west side of Manhattan. Often she would bring home souvenirs. Once it was the suede jacket with fringes that she found at the fashion magazine in the building. “It was in the corner by the trash,” she explained to Delores. “I’m sure they meant to throw it away.” Another time she brought home a clock that had an airplane as a second hand and showed the time in places all over the world, like Halifax and the Azores. It had fallen off someone’s desk at the insurance company, she said, though remarkably it hadn’t broken. She kept the clock on top of the television and seemed to take some pride in always knowing what time it was in Zaïre. Over the next few months, she brought home a leather briefcase, a pair of Biba suede boots, a man’s Timex with a slightly bent catch, a Betsey Johnson dress, and two pairs of bell-bottom jeans. “God, those people at the magazine are such slobs,” her mother would complain, pulling the scavenged items from a Macy’s shopping bag. She’d try on all of the clothing first, and anything that didn’t fit (which were most things), she’d hand off to Delores.

  Every morning before school, Delores would bring Westie to the woman who lived three floors beneath them. She was pale and thin and slightly stooped. She had no kids and no husband. Delores only knew her as Helene. Helene wore her hair in braids pinned to the top of her head. She was of an indeterminate age and never wore makeup or perfume. The most distinguishing thing about her sparse and spotless apartment was the giant globe that sat in the middle of the living room. On one of those mornings, Delores spun the globe and arbitrarily stuck her finger on a spot somewhere outside of Guatemala. As she squinted to see where she was, she turned to Westie, and said, “Don’t worry, no matter where I go, I’ll always take care of you.” Helene studied the globe while Westie wriggled in her translucent arms. “You’ve got moxie, dear,” she said to Delores in a thin voice. “And moxie will get you a long ways.” Delores didn’t know what moxie meant, but liked the sound of it. It sounded foreign, and vaguely aquatic.

  Just before school was to let out for the summer, and with no sign of her father, her mother said to Delores: “We can’t go on like this, hon. I can’t support the three of us on what I’m making. You need to get a job. Maybe you could wait tables or bag groceries, something to cover some of the bills we pay around here.”

  Delores considered her skills and came up blank. She lay on her bed and looked at her feet. Size 10. Would she always feel like this, she wondered, trapped in this small house, with her sad mother, her baby brother, and these big feet? Then she remembered what Helene had said to her. She had moxie. She wondered what a girl with moxie could do. She thought about the thing she loved the most. Her body flushed with pleasure as she imagined diving into the deep end of the pool. Just thinking about the smell of chlorine made the back of her throat tingle. Maybe she could get a job at Miramar pool. No, no, of course she couldn’t do that. She didn’t even have her Senior Lifesaving Certificate.

  Under her bed in an old Miles shoebox, Delores stored her “treasures.” Aside from Otto, there was the picture of her father and her at Weeki Wachee and a birthday card with the face of a black bear that glowed in the dark with the words: “Goodness gracious sakes alive, can it be that you are five?” It was signed: “Your mother and father.” Delores had kept it these past eleven years because it was the only birthday card they had ever given her.
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br />   And then there were the sacred pamphlets from Weeki Wachee Springs. Printed on thick glossy paper with colored pictures of the mermaids in various costumes, the pamphlets promised “crystal-clear blue waters,” and “the most beautiful women on land or sea.” The paper was limp now, and the creases were nearly slits from the many times she had bent the brochures this way and that to study the photographs. As she stared at them again, she noticed something she had never seen before. Down on the bottom, under the driving instructions, was a telephone number and address. Because Weeki Wachee occupied such a large part of Delores’s imagination, it had never dawned on her that it would actually have an address and a phone number. It would be as if, by calling information, you could actually dial up Oz.

  A phone call to Florida was out of the question. Her mother talked about “long distance” as if it were an ermine coat. “Well, I’m glad she can afford long distance,” she once said, after a neighbor bragged about calling her son in California. Delores would have to write a letter, which was another skill she most certainly did not have. She went through her back issues of Teen Girl, because she remembered that they’d once run an article on how to write a letter. The article had eight tips for good letter writing including: “Be dignified.” “Be courteous.” “Be friendly.” “Avoid sounding too self-centered.” “Make your points quickly.” She tore out a page from her loose-leaf notebook and began to compose.

  How do you do, Sirs,

  My name is Delores Walker. Ever since I visited Weeki Wachee nearly three years ago, I have wanted to become a mermaid at your park. I am a good swimmer. My coach says I am good enough to become a professional, no bragging intended. Please advise me about what I have to do to qualify for the position. I am nearly seventeen, which seems to me a perfect age for a mermaid. I look forward to hearing from you.

  It occurred to her that maybe they’d want to see her picture. She rummaged through her box of treasures and came up with one taken two summers earlier at Orchard Beach. She had on her white bathing suit with the strawberry print. At the last minute, she’d put her father’s Yankees hat askew on her head. The brim of the hat obscured her face enough so that you couldn’t really see her teeth. She lay on a blanket, elbow propped in the sand, chin cupped in her hand. Her father was standing above her and his shadow lay by her side. Delores was just over five feet nine inches. She had breasts that jutted out like Dairy Queen ice-cream cones, and her high waist made her long slender legs look even longer than they were. When her father had seen a flamingo at Cypress Gardens, he’d turned to her mother and said, “Delores looks like one of them things.” The way the camera caught her that day at Orchard Beach made her look taller and leaner than she was. Delores was pleased, and thought she looked as much like a mermaid as any civilian could.

  P.S. Here is a picture of me that I hope will be useful. Before she sealed the envelope, she kissed her picture and crossed her fingers.

  Two weeks later, a letter arrived addressed to her and postmarked Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida. Delores sat with the envelope in her lap and ran her fingers back and forth across it, as if by doing so she could divine its contents. It was four thirty in the afternoon. The days were longer now, and it was the time of year when the soft light and gentle air held promise. She closed her eyes and thought about what her life would be like if they said no. She pictured herself working alongside her mother, sweeping popcorn kernels off of office floors and filching a cardigan here, an umbrella there. “Please let them take me,” she whispered as she ripped open the envelope.

  Dear Miss Walker,

  We appreciate your enthusiasm and your interest in Weeki Wachee. We are always interested in new applicants and would be happy to interview you and observe your swimming skills. Let us know when you will be able to visit us at the Springs, and we will set up an appointment.

  Sincerely,

  Thelma Foote

  Director

  As hard as she had wished for this, it had never occurred to her that it would really happen. Now what was she supposed to do? She had no money, no way of getting to Florida, and besides, how could she abandon West? Still, she called up the Greyhound bus company just to find out how much the fare would be to Weeki Wachee Springs.

  “Wow, there’s a first,” said the man on the other end. “Lemme see.”

  The man seemed to be talking to himself as he read the names of cities on the map. “Orlando, St. Petersburg, Gainesville. Ah, here we go, Tampa. Round-trip, New York to Tampa, fifty dollars. One way, thirty bucks.”

  Delores barely had the composure to thank him. Thirty dollars? Might as well be three hundred dollars. Three thousand dollars. She could never lay her hands on that kind of money. She thought about her father and how he was wily that way, always having enough money to buy the clothes he wanted or take himself off to a Yankees game. It was odd, him being gone for so long and still not a word from him. She missed the familiarity of him.

  She went into her mother’s bedroom and opened the closet. His clothes were still hanging on the left side, same as if he were still there. She touched the sleeve of one of his white shirts, gone a little yellow with time. Maybe he had left some money in his pockets. Sticking her hand inside each of his trouser pockets, she came up empty, except for a half-full box of Sen-Sen. Suddenly, she could smell the sharp licorice candy. It was his smell. She pushed the pants to one side and started to go through his shirt pockets. Behind the pants were some shelves where her parents kept things like suitcases and hats. She’d often snooped into those shelves hoping to discover a secret, something in the house that she didn’t know was there. She’d never found anything, and it had been years since the last time she’d looked.

  She moved aside the suitcase and her mother’s collection of hats. There was a box filled with old papers, official-looking envelopes with glassine oblongs where the address was meant to be. She found her mother’s fox stole with the pointy face and beady eyes of an animal in flight.

  Tucked into the back corner of the shelf was something purple, something she never remembered having seen before. She pulled it from the shelf. It was a bag, a heavy purple bag with gold piping and the faded words SEAGRAM’S CROWN ROYAL written across it. Delores took the bag from the shelf and wiped the dust from it. Then she sat on her mother’s bed and pulled open the yellow string. The bag was filled with silver coins that were thick and heavy. She shook them out of the bag, and they made a jingly sound before rolling across the bed and falling on their faces. She studied them all: the bald eagles, a man who looked like President Eisenhower, a woman whom she took to be Lady Liberty. They were silver dollars from as far back as 1898 and there had to be close to two hundred of them. This had to be her father’s sack. If her mother knew there was a bag of coins in her closet, she would have already spent every one of them.

  For nearly sixteen years she’d seen her father every day and night and knew what little she knew of him. Now in his absence, she saw a whole other side of him. She imagined him holding one of the coins in his hands, maybe flipping it in the air a time or two and enjoying the weight of it, and how it felt smooth and cool as he closed his fist around it. It got her wondering why he hadn’t taken the coins with him when he’d left. Had he forgotten they were there? Or maybe he’d left them, knowing that someday she’d find them and this would be his parting gift to her and her brother.

  She’d take what she needed, plus a little more, and figure out how to leave the remainder of it for West. Delores went into her bedroom and found one of her old bathing caps. She brought it back into the bedroom and filled it with a hundred of the coins. She held the cap by the chin strap; it must have weighed as much as her own head. That reminded her of Otto and his empty head. That’s where she’d hide the letter from Thelma Foote at Weeki Wachee. She put Otto and the bathing cap in the valise that she stored under her bed, then stuck the now half-filled Crown Royal bag behind her mother’s fox stole and the hats and the boxes full of paper.

  When her moth
er came home from the grocery store that night, Delores met her at the door. They would have two hours together before she had to report to her other job.

  “I have a surprise for you,” said Delores, smiling.

  Her mother’s eyes lit up. Surprises of a positive nature didn’t often come her way.

  “Why don’t you relax and take a bubble bath? I’ll run it for you, and keep you company. Then I’ll make dinner.”

  “To what do I owe this honor?” her mother asked, slightly embarrassed by the attention.

  “You’ll see,” said Delores, as she turned on the faucet. Her mother undressed in the bedroom, then tiptoed naked into the bathroom. As she slid into the warm bath, she sighed: “Ahh, my feet.” It always came down to her feet, to standing all day in the grocery and at night in the office building. Delores could see how red and crusty they were at the heel. And her bunions, big as doorknobs. Her breasts floated to the surface as she lay back. Delores was always surprised by the sight of her mother’s nipples. Her own were tiny and rosy; her mother’s were cocoa-colored and the size of saucers. But she recognized how much she and her mother looked alike. They both had the same big hands, feet, breasts, and teeth. They were both tall with long faces like stretched rubber bands. Delores’s eyes were big and nearly black, just like her mother’s. Her mother closed her eyes and relaxed her head against the porcelain. Delores recognized that with the tension and exhaustion gone from her face, her mother might be a pretty woman.

  “Thanks, hon,” said her mother. “This is just what the doctor ordered.”

  Delores crouched next to the bathtub and put her face close to her mother’s. “I got a job today.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s great,” said her mother, eyes still closed. “How much does it pay?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “When do you start?”