by Betsy Carter
Lorraine, the managing editor with the crossed eyes and chapped lips, and a man she referred to as Le Miserable figured in many of her anecdotes, which always came down to this one thing: that no one recognized Avalon’s true value. Gail would always try to say something supportive and sympathetic, though she had no idea who Le Miserable was.
Finally, she just asked Avalon about Le Miserable. Avalon pointed to the photograph of the middle-aged man in the safari jacket that was sitting on her desk. “That’s him, Jean Claude. He’s the most famous fashion photographer in America. He’s the one who gives Cool its avant-garde look and reputation. They pay him a fortune.”
“Why do they call him Le Miserable?” asked Gail. Avalon nodded toward the blowups on the wall: a woman wearing little else than a studded dog collar; another of a girl lashed to the mast of a sailboat caught in a hurricane, her yellow sweater and pink hot pants nearly blowing off her body. “This was Jean Claude’s idea of a resort-wear story,” said Avalon. “Can you imagine? But the magazine is doing better than ever. The closer to death the models appear to be, the happier the advertisers.”
If Jean Claude was a visionary, she said, he was also a bully who would throw tantrums on the set if the models were not just so. Avalon clutched her head, as though she were trying to keep her brains from spilling out, and in an imitation French accent started shouting: “She looks like caca. The bags under her eyes, I could pack croque-monsieurs in them. She is, what you call it, menopause? Get her out of my sight!”
An odd business, this fashion world, thought Gail, though she was grateful that the Sonia Rykiel body sweater, which ripped at the seams during the sailboat shoot, had been left balled up in the back of the fashion closet. With a little mending, it would be perfect for her or Delores.
During one of their evening chats, Avalon mentioned that she had to go to the annual CFAA meeting in early spring, and how she was already dreading it.
“What’s CFAA?” Gail had asked.
“Council of Fashion Accessories of America,” Avalon had said. “The only reason I have to go is because Cool is doing a trunk show down there, and I’m the slave who has to pack and unpack all the stuff. It’s in Boca friggin’ Raton.”
Gail made a mental note to find out where Boca Raton was.
A few weeks before Christmas, Gail asked Avalon how the show was coming along.
“Oh great, just great,” said Avalon with an edge of annoyance in her voice. “I was supposed to get an intern to come down and help me, and now they’re telling me they don’t have the budget for one. So it’s me and twenty thousand pairs of shoes.”
Later, when she thought about what happened next, Gail would think to herself how accurate the word brainstorm was. Like spontaneous combustion, need and desperation fused in her head and exploded into the question: “Why don’t you let me be your intern?”
Avalon smiled slowly and politely. “Surely, you’re not serious.”
Seven
At the end of World War II, a Navy frogman named Newton Perry came up with the idea of being able to stay underwater by breathing through an air hose supplied with air by a compressor. Perry, who had also been a one-time stunt double for movie Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller, was not ready to put his frogman years behind him. Drawn to Weeki Wachee by the abundance of its natural springs, Perry went there to perfect his hose-breathing technique. Maybe Perry was a showman at heart, or perhaps it was his time spent around the Tarzan set, but for whatever reason, he recognized that the indigenous marine life in the Springs would also be the perfect backdrop for an underwater show. He built a large glass wall alongside the spring, then added an eighteen-seat theater and hired a half-dozen women called Aquabelles to perform an underwater ballet while breathing through the air tubes hidden in the scenery. One of his most promising Aquabelles was a young woman named Thelma Foote, lithe and agile and rigorously athletic.
These were optimistic times in America. In Florida, real estate developers could barely keep up with the rush of promise-seekers flocking to the humid, syrupy sun. On land, dreams were being bought and sold like baseball cards; underwater, fantasies were still up for grabs. So when the industrious Mr. Perry opened the doors to Weeki Wachee Springs in October 1947, the show was an instant hit. The movie Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid was filmed in Weeki Wachee that same year. Ann Blyth had the starring role as Lenore, the mermaid, who couldn’t speak but could only sing her ethereal siren song. Lenore, childlike and silent, captures the heart of an urbane married man, played by William Powell just days before his fiftieth birthday.
By the early 1950s, Weeki Wachee Springs was on the map and Newton Perry had become a local hero. The park was up there with Cypress Gardens as one of Florida’s leading tourist attractions. And following in the steps of Ann Blyth and William Powell came Esther Williams and Don Knotts, who made movies there, as well as countless other celebrities who just wanted to see for themselves what all the fuss was about in the “City of Mermaids.”
EVERY MONDAY MORNING, as she had for twenty years, Thelma Foote would gather “her girls,” as she liked to call them, at the outdoor pavilion next to the tour boat rides. Thelma would stand with her arms behind her back and her legs spread apart. She always wore the same khakis, which bagged around her feet, and the white windbreaker, no matter how hot the temperature. “Good morning, my pretty ones,” she’d begin. She’d give a rundown of the week’s schedule: who would flip burgers, who would take in tickets, who would scrub the algae from the sheet of Plexiglas that now stood between the audience and the Springs in the amphitheater.
The algae, always the algae. If algae was the enemy, Thelma Foote was its chief avenger. After each show, two girls wearing masks and flippers would scrub the Plexiglas windows with a nylon sponge and ammonia. When they finished, Thelma would take a flashlight and inspect every inch of the Plexiglas from one side to the other. If even a smudge of algae remained, Thelma would call them together again. “Have I not made it clear to you how quickly algae reproduces?” Her voice would have a slight tremor. “Left on its own, it could easily overrun the stage, the theater, the whole park. And then where would all of you pretty little girls go? The world isn’t clamoring for mermaids, you know. Right here is the only place that’ll have you. And if right here isn’t right here anymore because you were too slovenly or lazy or selfish to protect yourself from this scourge, well then, pity us all.”
The girls were always talking about Thelma Foote. They wondered how old she was. They wondered if she’d ever had a boyfriend. “Old Cow Eyes?” said Molly one night. “Not on your life, unless Elmer Fudd is single.”
Sometimes, after the girls had already swum in the morning show and done at least one of their other chores, Thelma would make them stand at attention under the midday sun. They were tired and sweaty. Sharlene would bite the inside of her cheek and look up at Adrienne. One of the Sheilas would surreptitiously flip her a bird. Molly would scrunch her lips together as if to make moo sounds. She’d try to catch Delores’s eye, but Delores would stare straight ahead, afraid she’d laugh if Molly caught her looking. Lately, Thelma had been singling out Delores and Molly, telling them to get back into the tank and not come out until they’d used half a bottle of ammonia. Inside of Delores there was a screechy voice insisting that none of this was at all funny. It was Otto: “You want to spend the rest of your life scrubbing the tank? You’re Delores Taurus, not some window washer.”
When she was in the cool, clear water, all thoughts of Thelma Foote and Otto and even her mother’s icy behavior on the phone would vanish. Once, she got close enough to a dolphin to touch it; its skin was smooth, like Westie’s tummy. Life was perfect when she was swimming in the Springs. But on the days when she didn’t swim, she was always in the grip of the clammy heat. It enervated her, in the same way Thelma Foote’s constant demands and magnified cow eyes did. Even the simplest tasks, like making her bed, made her drowsy. Cleaning the tank sapped her of all the dreams and fantasies that had sustai
ned her for the past sixteen years. Lately, she’d even lost her desire to talk with Otto, though his voice was beginning to inhabit her the way she used to occupy his shapeless cotton body with her hand. And that voice was getting more rude and bossy every day.
It was Lester Pogoda who finally opened Delores’s eyes about Thelma Foote.
Lester was out on his rock one afternoon when Thelma had sent Delores and Molly back into the tank. After Delores finished cleaning, she left the amphitheater with a towel wrapped around her head and a sweatshirt over her wet suit. She was tired and hungry, and the chill of the water wouldn’t leave her.
“Hey,” Lester called to her.
“Hey,” she said back, wearily raising her arm.
“You must be exhausted.”
“I’m pretty tired.”
“It’s nice out here.”
Lester looked warm and shiny, like a sea lion basking in the sun. She noticed how his eyes turned green in the sunlight. Without the acne, he’d probably be cute.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked.
Lester sat up, took his towel, and wiped away the pool of sweat around him.
Delores crawled out next to him. Lester moved away, leaving her the good part, where it was concave. She took the towel from around her head, placed it over the spot, and lay down. Curled up in the open palm of the rock, blanketed by the unsparing sun, she fell to the bottom of a desperate sleep. Faces and images swirled past her: Westie, Henry, Otto’s smooth white head, Lester’s pitted red skin.
She slept like that for nearly a half hour. When she awoke, she found that Lester had draped his towel over her legs and shadowed her face with his baseball cap. He was still sitting up.
“You feel better?” he asked, looking down at her.
She was groggy and sweaty, and she kicked the towel from around her legs.
“I covered you up,” he said shyly. “I didn’t want you to look like a lobster, like me.”
Delores sat up and rubbed her eyes. “This heat. How can you stand it?” she asked him.
“I grew up here. I’ve been coming to Weeki Wachee all my life,” he said. “This is home.”
“But still, the heat, the work, Old Cow Eyes. I don’t know.”
“Thelma Foote is from Floral City,” said Lester. “That’s where I live. She’s all right.”
“I don’t think she’s all right,” said Delores. “I think she’s weird and sadistic.”
“She’s had a tough time.”
“Everyone’s had a tough time,” said Delores, instantly frightened that she might have given away too much.
“Yeah, but she had her troubles in public.”
Delores slipped off her sweatshirt, folded it under her head, and lay back down. “What kind of troubles?” she asked.
“You gotta promise you won’t tell anyone any of this,” he said. “She’d kill me if she knew I told you.”
“Don’t worry. I’m great at keeping secrets.”
“Okay, here goes. When Weeki Wachee opened back in the forties, every girl in town went over to audition. Thelma was one of the few they picked. Thelma’s real smart. She could’ve gone to college, out of state even. But the day after she graduated from high school, she came here and did her tryout. They picked her to be an Aquabelle—that’s what they called the mermaids back then—and it was a big deal for her. Let’s face it, she was never great to look at.” Lester covered his mouth as he laughed. “My father always said she looked like that actor Telly Savalas, you know with the big lips and the eyes so far apart. And those glasses! But she was really good, and, believe it or not, she had a great body, so she got the job.
“There was even some talk about a movie, though nobody knows much about this.” Lester told Delores a little-known fact, uncharted by film history. It was Thelma Foote—not Ann Blyth—who nearly starred opposite William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid. Blyth had recently broken her back in a tobogganing accident, and the acrobatic underwater scenes were so painful for her to execute that director Irving Pichel considered replacing her with her stand-in, Thelma. At the last moment, Pichel decided to go ahead with Blyth, who was younger and prettier than Thelma and projected a sweeter disposition. At least that’s what the papers said. “Thelma never talks about her close call with Hollywood,” Lester continued. “But it had to have nearly killed her, don’t you think? Anyway, everything went fine after that until her second Christmas here. They did this big Christmas spectacular called ‘Jingle Shells.’ Get it? As part of the plot, these two children get a bunch of presents. Inside each box, there’s some big surprise. Thelma was supposed to come out of a big old hatbox. She was supposed to be a fairy who sprinkled this magic powder on the children that would take them away to Santa’s secret place underwater. When it was time for Thelma to come out of the box, nothing happened. The people playing the children kept staring at the box and the narrator kept saying her line over and over again: ‘I wonder what’s inside this pretty hatbox? I wonder what’s inside this pretty hatbox?’ Of course, the audience couldn’t hear anything that was going on underwater, but the other mermaids must have heard something because they all turned to look at the hatbox at the same time.
“It seems that Thelma was stuck. The lid wouldn’t come open. She must’ve been pounding and scratching at it until finally someone realized what was going on. One of the girls pulled off the lid. Thelma was going crazy, flapping her arms and kicking trying to get to the surface. Her fairy wings were all bent and crushed. Maybe because she couldn’t see without her glasses, she kept swimming in circles. Finally, the mermaid who was playing Mrs. Santa had to dive in and pull her out. After that, Thelma would never go into the water again. She was so embarrassed, I guess. They gave her this job because everyone felt sorry for her, and she’s been doing it for about twenty years. She’s pretty good at it, though she’s rough on the mermaids, the prettiest ones anyway.” Lester looked away.
Delores sat up and wrapped her sweatshirt around her waist. “There’s still no reason for her to be so mean,” she said, tugging the sleeves into a double knot. Before she climbed off the rock, she leaned over to Lester and whispered: “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. And thanks.”
When Delores got back to the dorm, Molly was wearing her bouffant bonnet hair-dryer. “Have a good time with Lester?” she shouted over the hot air.
Delores shrugged.
“That’s not very enthusiastic. Lordy, everyone knows Lester’s got the world’s biggest crush on you, Delores. He must have thought he was the luckiest duck in the world having you lie next to him on his rock.”
Delores shrugged again. She never did tell Molly, or anyone else, the story about Thelma Foote getting caught in the box during “Jingle Shells.” If there’s one thing Delores Taurus understood about life, it was the importance of guarding secrets.
Eight
Christmas was a difficult time for Thelma Foote. Around the beginning of November she began making sneak visits, at odd hours, to the amphitheater. She’d bring a flashlight and a magnifying glass and search every inch of the Plexiglas lest some filament of algae had sprung up since her last visit. At four thirty one morning, she woke up Delores and Molly, screaming that the whole place was going to hell and that nobody cared but her. “Here,” she said, shoving a bottle of ammonia and a couple of sponges into Molly’s hand, “You and your little friend can make yourselves useful around here.” So in the muted light of dawn, wearing their pajamas, masks, and flippers, Molly and Delores scrubbed the amphitheater wall and made the world a little safer for all future mermaids.
By the middle of November, rehearsals had begun on the Christmas extravaganza. This year, the owners of Weeki Wachee were insisting on bringing back an old favorite, “Frostie’s Snowland.” The costumes were frayed, and some had yellow age spots on them. Thelma argued at first, but it was no use. The owners didn’t even live in Weeki Wachee and they barely paid attention to it other than to finance it. Even then, they were so cheap
that there was always something that needed repairs. Thelma convinced herself that with proper mending and cleaning, they would be as good as new. But truly, the costumes looked as discouraged as she felt. What with the new Disney World doing booming business less than ninety miles away, attendance was dwindling. Even Dick Pope down in Cypress Gardens was feeling the pinch, and, rumor had it, he was spending thousands of dollars to beef up his show. She dreaded the small turnout for “Frostie’s Snowland.”
Dutifully, the girls and Lester ran through rehearsals every morning as Thelma watched in silence from the director’s booth. The show was dated, she thought; it looked like some amateur high school production. She’d read about the Audio-Animatronics, or whatever they called it, over at Disney World. There were eighty-six automated figures in the Mickey Mouse Musical Revue alone. Mickey himself had thirty-three functions built into his forty-two-inch frame: he could tilt his head, wave his baton, turn around. There was a six-foot-four-inch replica of Abraham Lincoln, which could stand up and deliver one of his famous speeches, though it still had some kinks: occasionally, it would double over in a bow, or its knees would buckle. But compared with “Frostie’s Snowland,” Disney World was the future, its feet firmly planted in the Space Age. “Frostie’s Snowland” was over, yesterday’s news.
Thelma watched as Adrienne languidly negotiated an incomplete backflip and watched as Helen lip-synched three beats behind the “Frosty the Snowman” record. She could feel the life ebbing out of her. The air seemed thinner, she felt light-headed. These people are eating up my life, she thought, nibbling away at it day after day. If I stay here any longer, I will be nothing, just the detritus of what used to be Thelma Foote.
