Swim to Me

by Betsy Carter

  Five

  Most days, the mermaids performed two shows. Although they were twenty minutes each, it took them at least another twenty minutes to warm up and then another twenty to recover from the physical exhaustion of their performances. On the days they weren’t performing, they would practice in the morning and serve as ushers in the afternoon shows. At lunch, they would man the refreshment stands, flipping hamburgers and cooking hot dogs. Every now and again they’d get to work in the gift shop, but that was a rare treat. Aside from the amphitheater, the gift shop was the only air-conditioned building at Weeki Wachee; because of their seniority, Scary Sheila, Blonde Sheila, or Helen worked there most days. On Sunday mornings, Thelma demanded that they all go to church nearby in Spring Hill. Blonde Sheila thought the preacher was cute, so she went happily, wearing her shortest baby-doll dress and strappiest sandals. Scary Sheila hated the services, rolling her eyes through most of the sermon. Helen loved the singing part and would join in, singing louder than anyone in the choir. The rest of them went as dutifully as they flipped hamburgers and cleaned the tank.

  In her spare time, Delores would write postcards to Westie with pictures on them that she thought he would like. Once, she bought him a card with a picture of a sea turtle: There’s a turtle in the Springs that I’ve nicknamed Westie. Every time I swim he comes around. I think he knows me.

  Whenever she ushered, she would search the theater for a family that might be hers. Even when she swam, if she got really close to the glass, she could make out the figures in the first two rows of the audience. A couple of times, she saw a man with a navy blue cap and each time, she could have sworn it was her father. Then the man would stand up and she’d see that he was bent over or very tall, or she’d notice that he had a large dog at his feet. All men made her wary, even the ones who might have been her father.

  In the Bronx, Delores had never been on a real date with a boy. She’d never played a kissing game at a party. Here, men—not even boys—said strange things to her. After the show, when she’d be available to pose for pictures in her mermaid outfit, they’d lean in and whisper things to her: “I sure would like a piece of that tail,” or “Meet me for a beer when the park closes, eh?” They’d sometimes say these things within earshot of their wives and children.

  Late one afternoon, she swam with Adrienne, Scary Sheila, and Molly in “Carnival in Rio.” Her costume was a low-cut blouse with green and orange ruffles and the bottom half of a two-piece swimsuit. After they’d done a Ferris wheel, where they’d grip their feet onto each other’s neck and spin around, she could see a man running toward the stage. He put his mouth on the glass and started licking it, right in front of her. One of the ushers tried to pull him away, but he shoved her away and kept doing it. Delores could see the slippery pinkness of his tongue pressed up against the glass. It was disgusting and it made her lose her concentration and forget to control her breathing. She started to rise to the surface, away from the others. Thelma Foote, who was directing the show, as always, from an underwater booth, got on her microphone and shouted urgently: “Delores Taurus, you need to equalize. Delores Taurus, you need to equalize.”

  She was still shaking a half hour later as she and Molly walked back to the dorm together. She told Molly about the man with the tongue. Molly just waved her hand. “That stuff happens all the time,” she said. “Let’s just put it this way. You’re lucky it was his tongue and nothing else.”

  This was the kind of thing Delores would have usually told Otto, but Otto was packed away under her bed. She and Molly were the first to get back to the dorm, where they sat on their beds in silence. Delores longed to feel the reassurance of Otto in her hand, to see his cool ceramic head bobbing around like a fish that’s been hooked.

  “You still depressed about the guy with the tongue?”

  “Not him,” said Delores. She studied Molly’s eager face, and Molly smiled one of her moonbeam smiles. “When you were a kid, did you ever have an imaginary friend, someone you talked to when you couldn’t talk to anyone else?” Delores asked, without waiting for an answer. “I still do.”

  “You do?”

  “Here, I’ll show you,” she said, reaching under her bed and pulling out her suitcase. As she unsnapped the latch, Otto’s sad, bejeweled head popped up. Molly started to laugh.

  “What?” Delores asked, already regretting what she’d done.

  “That’s a funny-looking thing.” Molly looked up at Delores. “Oh. Is that him?”

  “I know. He looks like a hard-boiled egg. But he was the only one in my house I could talk to. Now I never get to see him. I mean, how would it look if anyone caught Delores Taurus talking to a puppet?”

  “You’re lucky you had him.” Molly looked around the room. It was still empty. “Go on,” she said. “Take him out. I’ll guard.”

  She walked to the doorway where she stood with her arms folded, her eyes searching. Inside, Delores was whispering to Otto: “I miss him,” she said. “I know it was a terrible thing he did, leaving us like that, but I miss him anyway.”

  Molly took her watch seriously, making sure no one would come upon Delores and Otto. From then on, any time Delores wanted to visit with Otto, Molly would stand guard. She told Delores that the moment she heard footsteps or voices, she’d whisper “lollapalooza” in time for Delores to put Otto back under her bed.

  “Lollapalooza? Are you sure?” asked Delores.

  The two of them doubled over laughing as Molly shook her head yes and said it over and over again. “Lollapalooza, lollapalooza.”

  THE NIGHT AFTER the tongue incident, Delores called home.

  “Hay-llo.”

  Her mother sounded like Lily Tomlin doing her telephone operator routine.

  “Mom?”

  “Oh yes, hello, Delores.”

  Her mother’s voice seemed controlled, almost angry.

  “Mom, it’s me, Delores. Are you all right?”

  “I’m perfectly all right. Why do you ask?”

  “Mom, why are you talking like that?”

  “Like what? I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You sound a little, I don’t know, mad or something.”

  “Why on earth would I have any reason to be mad? So how’s it going in mermaid-land?”

  “It’s good. They like me. How’s Westie?”

  “He’s with Helene at the moment.”

  “Yes, but how is he?”

  “He’s just fine, thank you.”

  “How’s work?”

  “Work is going real well, I’d have to say.”

  “Mom, have you heard anything from Daddy?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  The conversation continued this way, her mother’s words floating over Delores’s head like dandelion seeds. She finally gave up. “Gotta go, Mom, I’ll try to call soon.”

  “Sure, call whenever you want.”

  Delores hung up. She considered that her mother might have gone crazy or, even worse, that she hated her own daughter.

  “How’re your parents doing?” asked Molly, when Delores came back to the dorm.

  “Um, they’re really far away this time,” she answered.

  Six

  In fact, Gail Walker was blossoming in her new life. Sometimes at night when she was cleaning the offices of Cool, the fashion magazine, she would sit at one of the gray metal desks in the maze of cubicles and stare out at the city below. The office was on the thirty-fifth floor and from some of the windows she could see the length of the Hudson River from the Statue of Liberty all the way up to the George Washington Bridge. When the bridge was lit at night, it looked as if angels had gathered around it.

  Her favorite cubicle was the one with a desk that was covered with tiny ceramic figurines of dogs, as well as a plastic egg filled with Silly Putty, and a Pet Rock. All around were old photographs taken on sunny days in the country. In one of them, a young woman with tight blonde curls was squinting into the sun. Next
to her was a young man with dark features. In the crook of his arm he was holding a baby who was no larger than a cantaloupe. An older woman was walking toward them. She was smiling and carrying something in her hands, a basket of muffins maybe.

  In another, more contemporary, photo, the young woman with blonde curls was standing barefoot on a beach. Behind her, the sky was streaked with the colors of sunset. There were pictures of a golden retriever and someone blowing out candles on a birthday cake. In another, the young woman with the curls was being smothered in the embrace of a middle-aged man wearing a safari jacket. There were pictures torn from magazines, shoes mainly, that were stuck on her bulletin board with pushpins. But the curly girl’s personal pictures were much more to Gail’s taste. She particularly liked the one of a little girl sitting on the beach. The little girl wore only a diaper, which stuck up in the rear like a duck’s tail. She had tight blonde curls and small dark eyes. In another, the same little girl was sitting on the woman’s lap, their cheeks pressed together, their profiles obviously cut from the same template. Gail figured these were pictures of the curly girl and her mom. She couldn’t imagine Delores putting up a picture of her anywhere. This Curly Girl, as Gail came to think of her, seemed to have a life that was filled with love and adventure, and sometimes when it was dark and empty outside, and chilly and airless inside, Gail would stare at those pictures so long and hard that, for a few moments at least, she could pour herself into them.

  She’d let Delores go to Florida because she was broke and scared, and now her daughter was gone. Delores was on her own, and doing fine, it seemed. Gail knew she ought to be proud of that, but the only feelings she had were jagged, resentful ones. She stared again at the smiling woman in the photograph. That woman would be repelled by me, she thought.

  One evening, as she wheeled her broom and trash can around the magazine’s offices, she heard some shouting coming from Curly Girl’s desk. She looked through a space in one of the partitions and saw a tall woman wearing leather pants and green glasses standing over the curly young blonde. The woman was screaming: “Do you have any idea what you are doing to our bottom line?” she yelled. “You fashionettes with your fancy degrees, what do you know about running a magazine? This isn’t shopping. This is the real world, for chrissakes!”

  The woman shook her head and walked away. Gail waited a few moments before she came toward Curly Girl’s desk. “May I?” she asked, reaching down to pick up her garbage can.

  “I’m so sorry, it’s quite a horrid mess around here,” said Curly Girl, bending down to scoop up a piece of paper that had missed the trash can.

  Gail bent down at the same time. “It’s okay, I can get it,” she said, finding herself face-to-face with the girl under the desk.

  “I might as well do something useful around here,” said the girl, wiping tears from her cheeks. “Apparently I’m a failure at everything else.”

  They stood up again. Gail pointed to the pictures on Curly Girl’s desk. “Judging from these,” she said, “I’d say just the opposite is true.” Curly Girl smiled a grateful smile, and Gail continued with her cleaning.

  It gradually became a routine. On the evenings that Curly Girl worked late, which seemed to happen more and more, Gail would come by and they would say hello and exchange small talk about the weather or new stains on the carpet. “Red wine,” said Curly Girl one night, pointing to a brownish-gray blob in the shape of an owl.

  “I know a little something about food stains,” said Gail, trying to sound professional. She bent down and began scrubbing.

  On another night, as Gail dusted around Curly Girl’s desk, she accidentally knocked over one of the framed photographs. “I’m so sorry,” she said, righting it. At the same time, both of them stared at the photo of the little girl playing in the sand at the beach. “Is that you?” asked Gail pointing to the baby in the diaper.

  “Yup. That’s me,” said Curly Girl.

  Gail studied the picture more closely and pointed to the woman. “She’s really pretty. Is that your mom?”

  “Mmmm. She was really beautiful,” said Curly Girl, staring past the picture. “She died when I was six.”

  Gail let out an involuntary groan. “Oh God. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

  Curly Girl waved her hand in front of her face. “Anyway, I inherited her curly hair.”

  “And her good looks,” added Gail.

  After that, Gail had a feeling that Curly Girl looked forward to her visits. She always made sure to be friendly and reassuring. From time to time, she thought that Curly Girl recognized familiar items from fashion shoots dangling from the handle of her trash bin. They were little things: a tank top, a red suede belt, a tie-dyed scarf. One night, as Curly Girl eyed a familiar looking halter, she said to Gail, “You have good taste.” There was no malice in her voice; she actually seemed pleased at Gail’s choices.

  Some nights, Gail would eavesdrop on the girl’s phone conversation. She’d throw around words like “far out,” “lovely,” and “amazing,” as if the world revealed itself to her in images and depths of feeling that Gail had never experienced. One night Gail came by just as Curly Girl was hanging up the phone.

  “How are you doing tonight?” asked Curly Girl.

  Gail reached for an answer that would convey the kind of purpose and enthusiasm she’d heard in Curly Girl’s voice. “I’m just fine and dandy,” she said. “And you?”

  “We’ve got this photo shoot tomorrow. I have to be at Jones Beach by seven a.m. The insane photographer has got it in his head to do a shoot on sunken treasures. I’ve got less than twenty-four hours to come up with a mermaid’s tail. A friggin’ mermaid! Can you imagine?” For the first time since they’d met, she extended her hand. “By the way, we’ve never exchanged names. I’m Avalon,” she said, in the same firm voice she’d used on the phone.

  Unaccustomed to handshakes, Gail became aware of the girl’s slender bones and squeezed her hand gingerly. “Oh, I’m Gail.” She leaned her elbow on top of the partition. “This is some coincidence,” said Gail, trying to sound dignified. “I have a daughter who’s a mermaid. You know, not a real mermaid, but as close as it gets. She swims down in Florida, in Weeki Wachee.”

  “Super,” said Curly Girl, wrapping a sprig of hair around her finger. “If it’s not too impertinent of me to ask, how do you come to have a daughter who’s a mermaid?”

  Gail laughed, unsure of how much to say. “It’s a long story. She’s a very talented swimmer.”

  “I’ll bet she’s that. What’s her name?”

  “Delores.” Gail paused, and said, “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?”

  Curly Girl let the piece of coiled hair drop to her shoulder. She put both of her hands on the seat of her chair as if she were about to rise.

  “I’ll tell you if you promise to keep it between us,” she whispered, turning to see if anyone was nearby.

  “Who would I tell?” asked Gail.

  “It’s really Evelyn. Evelyn Mandor. I changed it when I was at Vassar.”

  Gail smiled down at Evelyn. Avalon. “Can I make a long-distance call?”

  Minutes later she put the phone down. “Lycra,” she announced. “The secret of the tail is lycra and flippers.”

  GAIL WALKER AND EVELYN MANDOR were improbable friends; the difference in their ages and their stations in life left too many spaces between them. But each recognized in the other something missing, something gone wrong. Both had lost mothers when they were very young, and both were striving for things that were still unarticulated. Avalon was thin and cultivated and had a job at an established magazine. Avalon, thought Gail, was everything Delores wasn’t, everything Gail wasn’t. And though Gail knew it was an ugly thought, Avalon was sweet revenge against Delores. So it was important to her that Avalon trust and respect her as much as she feared that her daughter didn’t. In trying to win the girl’s affection, she found herself acting in ways that were, at times, unrecognizable. Gradually,
her speech became peppered with words like “super” and “friggin’.”

  Avalon confided in Gail, and the older woman absorbed all of her minor triumphs or perceived slights as if they were her own. After some time, Gail started asking questions about Cool magazine. Avalon found she liked explaining fashion to her, enjoyed spinning out her version of office politics.

  Shoes were Avalon’s jurisdiction. Or, as she explained to Gail, “I do footwear.” Six years out of college, she was stuck in the bowels of the fashion department, calling in boots for fall photo shoots, wrapping them up when the shoot was over, and making sure the messenger service delivered them back to the proper designer. She would point out scuff marks to Gail and complain to her about the haranguing phone call she was sure to get from the designer’s rep. Maybe she’d send conciliatory flowers or, in the worst cases, she’d have Cool reimburse the company for the product. When she told Gail about the time the kleptomaniac stylist made off with a pair of three-hundred-dollar red Tony Lama cowboy boots, they exchanged looks, as if to acknowledge that Gail would never pinch something that expensive.

  As she told Gail these stories, they would fall into a routine in which Gail would help catalog the merchandise after Avalon called it in. Sometimes, she would come in a little early to help Avalon pack up for photo shoots. More and more, the job of unpacking fell strictly to Gail who was becoming well versed in footwear.

  Avalon said she knew how the editors at the magazine called all the girls in her department the “fashionettes” behind their backs. It was a deprecating sobriquet they used to distinguish themselves—the real journalists—from those they considered to be the princesses. “I spent four years at Vassar and graduated with an art history degree,” she said. “Surely that’s gotta count for something.” Avalon’s father owned Mandor Farms, the largest dairy company in New Jersey. That was the thing that everyone at the magazine knew about Avalon. It probably also explained why Avalon was no longer Evelyn Mandor.