Swim to Me

by Betsy Carter

  “It’s me,” said Delores.

  “I’m not sure it was the smartest thing you’ve ever done, but it certainly sounded brave,” said her mother. Then she dropped her voice. “Hon, I hate to rain on your parade. But it’s about Helene. She’s gone. She died two days ago. Up until three weeks ago, she was still taking care of Westie. Then a bunch of us in the building took turns caring for her. Frail as she was, she was quite the fighter. And remember the big globe in her living room? Westie loved to play with that thing. It’s next to our TV set now. Oh my. Poor Helene. Poor Westie. And me? I’m up a creek here, trying to find someone to take care of him.”

  Delores heard her mother’s voice getting tight, as if she might cry.

  “Mom, how’s Westie? Does he know what happened?”

  “He knows Helene is gone forever. But, then again, so is everyone else in his life so it’s not exactly new to him.”

  Delores hated when her mother jabbed at her like this.

  “Gee, I wish there was something I could do.” The words tasted like sour milk even as she spoke them.

  “There’s not much you can do, unless you know someone who’s available for babysitting.”

  Delores said nothing.

  Her mother continued: “Never a dull moment around here, I’ll say that.”

  “Tell Westie that I love him and I’ll see him soon, okay?” said Delores.

  “Sure, I will. He’s downstairs with the Hellers today. They have a girl around his age. We’ll see. Okay, bye hon.”

  “Bye, Mom.” Delores hung up feeling guilty and annoyed at the same time. Poor Westie, poor Helene. She even felt bad for her mother, though she certainly had rained on her parade.

  Delores came back to the dining room where she found that Blonde Sheila had saved her a place at the table. “He was watching you last night,” said Blonde Sheila, rolling her eyes toward the heavens. “Who was watching me?” asked Delores, looking around the room. “You know,” said Sheila, still staring skyward. “Him.” Sheila had taken to wearing muumuus. Her body was sacrosanct, she said, a gift not to be squandered. Behind her back, Scary Sheila had told the others: “Sacrosanct, my ass. Her body is preggers.”

  Lester sat on Delores’s other side. “Were you scared?” he whispered.

  “Everything happened so fast, I didn’t have time to be scared.”

  “In my opinion, it was a very brave thing to do,” he said with a creak in his voice. “I don’t know for sure, but it’s not the kind of thing most people would do. I don’t even know if I could have done it. My father says it’s the most courageous thing he’s ever seen a girl do.”

  “I guess no one knows how they’ll act until something happens,” said Delores. “You don’t think about being brave, or anything like that. You just do what you do.”

  Lester considered her words and was about to say something else, when Helen stood on her chair and started singing “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” The others joined in, except for Sharlene and Adrienne, who came into the dining room together midsong. On this morning, they looked particularly funereal. Sharlene’s hair was still wet from the shower. She’d taken to walking a few steps behind Adrienne, her shoulders slumped and head bowed as if her hair were leading the way. Adrienne wore a pair of old green thongs that slapped against the floor. There was a budding cold sore on the corner of her mouth. Neither of them even looked at Delores.

  Adrienne rarely looked at anyone. When she first confided to Delores about her twirling debacle, she had said: “Once people laugh at you to your face, you always think that they’re laughing at you behind your back. It’s hard not to feel ridiculous.” Delores had wanted to answer, “I know what you mean. I always feel at the verge of being found out.” But those were during the days when she was still presenting herself as the daughter of entertainment professionals with “a little bit of French” in her, so she let Adrienne bare her humiliation and said nothing. It made Adrienne wary of Delores, since she assumed that her silence was a form of judgment.

  Now things were even worse. Delores was popular, and it had been Adrienne’s experience that the popular ones judged the harshest. It had been the girls in the Pep club who had come up with that dreadful nickname “Sparky” in the first place. If Adrienne wasn’t going to acknowledge Delores, neither was Sharlene. The two of them sat in a corner of the dining room savoring their grudges and pancakes.

  Thelma Foote stood with the rest of them and sang “She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” That morning, she’d been awakened by a phone call. She’d answered with an irritated “Thelma Foote here.” A male voice had said, “My name’s Roy Walker. I’m Delores’s father.” Her first thought had been: oh no, not another one. “What can I do for you?” she’d asked. But this wasn’t the time to bring up Delores’s father.

  She continued singing with the rest of them, and when they finished, she clapped her hands to get their attention. “Okay, first a hand for cook Braunschweiger for these delectable pancakes.” They all clapped, and Helen put two fingers in her mouth and made a loud, cheepy whistle. “And a big hand for Delores Taurus, whose Weeki Wachee spirit and bravery last night made us all so proud.” Everyone clapped again except for Adrienne and Sharlene. “Oh, and let’s not forget Delores’s partner in crime, Armando Lozano.”

  Armando was still wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants that Thelma had given him the night before. His silky hair was shaggy and unkempt, and he looked around the room with the squinty eyes of someone just awakened from sleep. “Armando is an intern at WGUP,” Thelma continued. “He was with Delores through her whole ordeal and drove her back here late last night. Although he is not a merman per se, he seems to me to be of that ilk. So let’s make him welcome here, shall we?” The girls regarded Armando with nods and assessing eyes. He had full, kissable lips and smooth doe-colored skin. He was cute, and it was rare for a cute guy to be among them. Lester noticed the smile that passed between Armando and Delores. It was a little thing, but he saw how it made Delores blush, and how afterward, she looked down at the floor. Lester studied Armando. He had a nice complexion; that was for sure. But he had skinny arms and a narrow chest, and it gave him a stab of pleasure to think that Armando would never be able to hold his breath for two minutes underwater.

  “There’s one more thing,” continued Thelma. “Because of Hurricane Claudia, the park is closed today. That means your time is your own. There’ll be no chores and no practice.” The girls banged their spoons against their glasses and let out cheers of “Yay, Claudia!”

  Thelma folded her arms, put one foot against the wall, and leaned back. She was incapable of watching her girls and Lester without spotting areas that could use improvement. Sharlene had to do something with that hair. Lester’s face was peeling from too much sun. Blonde Sheila still had that damn nun smile on her face and the demeanor of someone preoccupied with noble thoughts. Thelma preferred the old potty-mouthed Blonde Sheila with her stupid crotch jokes and obsession with other people’s virginity.

  If they ever did a mermaid version of Hello, Dolly! Helen would be perfect in the lead role. No inhibitions there. Unlike that Adrienne. My, my, what a mess: always half a beat too slow, and so downtrodden—totally the wrong image for a Weeki girl. Delores needed to cut her bangs. Her feet were enormous, though probably they helped her to be such a fast swimmer.

  These thoughts floated through Thelma’s mind like paper scraps on a windy day, hovering around the stone that was weighing her down. Thelma knew from her own experience that, in life, there is always a moment that marks the divide between before and after. For Thelma, that moment came when Ann Blyth was chosen over her to star in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid. As Thelma watched Delores talking with the other girls, casting glances at Armando, she realized these were her last moments of “before.” She would tell Delores about the call from her father and his wish to be reunited with her, and the world that she had pieced together and forced into a whole would move off its axis just enough to make what was in
place now, all fall down.

  Someone must have told a joke because they were laughing and shouting out things that were making them laugh harder. Thelma would wait until it got quieter, then she would pull her aside. She’d prepare her by saying: “I got a call this morning from someone who knows you. You haven’t seen him in a while, but he’d like to see you. And the strange thing is, he’s working right nearby.” Delores would figure it out right away.

  Thelma followed her plan. She asked Delores to come with her to her office and sat her down.

  Delores stared up at her and repeated her words. “Someone who knows me called you?” she said, trying to eke out the logic in them. “I haven’t seen him in a while, but he’d like to see me? And he works nearby?”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Thelma. “Surely you know of whom I’m speaking.”

  “Surely, I have no idea of whom you’re speaking.”

  “No need to get persnickety with me, young lady.” Thelma’s voice got clipped. “I am just the messenger here.”

  “Sorry. There’ve been a lot of surprises lately. I could do without another one. All I want is to be normal, even though at this point, I don’t even know what normal is.”

  “It’s your father.”

  “What’s my father?”

  “It’s your father who called me. He’s working nearby, in Venice. He saw you on television last night, and he wants to come here and see you.”

  Delores puffed out her cheeks. “Oh boy. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “You see him, I suppose. He is your father.”

  “What’s he doing down here, in Venice?”

  “Yes, well, that is the thing,” said Thelma. “He’s working at Hanratty’s Circus.”

  “The circus? Now that’s funny,” said Delores. “That’s really funny.”

  She started to laugh. Thelma was struck again by Delores’s teeth: they were huge and zigzagged all the way to the back of her mouth. Nothing an orthodontist couldn’t fix, she thought.

  Delores was laughing so hard now, there were bug-shaped splotches fanning out across her chest. “Omigod, the circus,” she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say. I’ll come back later.”

  Delores left Thelma’s office and walked over to the amphitheater. Inside, it smelled like wet wool and was as empty as a card store on the day after Christmas. She sat on one of the benches and stared at the Springs behind the Plexiglas. The storm had stirred up the bottom and, instead of its usual limpidness, the water was brown and cloudy. She thought about all that had happened in the past few days and got that tight feeling in her stomach again.

  Lately, she’d had the sensation of having stepped outside of herself. She wasn’t gone, entirely, but sometimes she’d hear her voice and wonder who was speaking. She had no recollection of making a decision to swim out and save that kid the night before. There he was and there she was, and all she could remember was the water. Even now, she could feel every wave and the force of the current.

  She continued staring at the muddy waters and understood that she needed to go to the one place where she knew exactly who she was. Without bothering to change her clothes, she walked outside to the mouth of the Springs. She slipped into the water and swam, this time with the currents. It was colder than usual, and she became aware of debris floating by her: a tiny address book, a white tube sock, a heart-shaped pillow. She wondered if these things were discarded in anger, or simply neglected. Did the people who dropped them believe that they would never see them again? Would they be surprised to know that, because of the storm, they had resurfaced? Sometimes things that seemed lost forever had a way of reappearing in the least expected of places. Like fathers who vanished, then showed up working at the circus.

  Delores swam until her bones ached from the cold. She wondered where the dolphins and turtles went in a storm and hoped against hope that one of them would glide by her. She wanted a sign that they were okay, too, but she was shivering now, unable to stay underwater. She stepped out of the Springs and saw something moving imperceptibly along the shoreline. A rock, she thought, then looked again. It was a turtle taking shelter under a sweet pepperbush. For all she knew, it was the one she called Westie. As she ran back to the dorm, her bare footsteps in the mud took on a slushy cadence: lost, found, lost, found, lost, found. The sound of it, the thought of it, infused her with hope.

  After she changed her clothes and dried her hair, Delores caught up with Thelma at her office. “I’ll meet with my father,” she said. “I’m curious who he is now. Believe me, there was nothing about the man I knew that even hinted that he would ever work at a circus. But, then again, he probably never thought I’d turn out to be who I am. And my mother! Well, you’ve met my mother. None of us were like this back home. One thing, though; when I meet him, will you come with me?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Thanks,” said Delores. “That would be great. It’s kind of scary, in a way.”

  Thelma figured that this wasn’t the time to tell Delores that she’d gotten another phone call, this one from a very polite gentleman, a Mr. David Hanratty, the man who ran Hanratty’s Circus. He also wanted to meet “the talented Miss Torres.”

  Eighteen

  Roy Walker was too agitated to sit still. He paced around his trailer. This is how the animals must feel, he thought to himself: nothing to do but wait, nowhere to go but here. Roy wasn’t exactly an animal lover. He’d never owned a dog, or even a fish, and always regarded people who became overly involved with their pets as kooks. He certainly never expected to feel anything about these circus creatures other than that they were part of a job that needed doing. And yet Lucy and Nehru aroused in him feelings of compassion and protectiveness, which was more than most humans did. It touched Roy how unself-conscious Lucy was about her funny ears and loopy smile. She’d leap onto the furniture, hug you with those snaky fingers of hers, and dare you not to laugh. Lately, Roy stuffed his pockets with peanuts so that he’d always have them on hand. As soon as Lucy saw Roy coming, she’d swagger toward him, knuckles scraping along the ground, then swing herself up and coil around his leg, just high enough to reach into his pocket and pull out the treat. How could you not laugh at that?

  But at this moment, Roy didn’t feel up to Lucy’s eagerness. He felt scared about the consequences of his phone call earlier this morning, and he needed solace. Nehru the elephant didn’t need attention the way Lucy did; she would just let Roy be. He walked to Nehru’s cage and stared down at the animal’s leg. There was a large, rusty shackle around it, tethered to a steel ball that must have weighed five hundred pounds. Even though she was the matriarch of the pack, Nehru looked worn-out and resigned, as if she’d given up any hope of breaking out and living as she was meant to live. Roy knew that feeling. He unlocked the cage door. The smell of straw and rotting potatoes lodged in the back of his throat as he looked up into Nehru’s shrewd and canny eye.

  Sadness, my friend; it’s as old as time and just as unstoppable.

  Roy did not actually speak those words, but the thought seemed to pass between them.

  Roy dug into his pocket and found some peanuts to feed Nehru. Nehru scarfed them down, then bent her shoulder and head so that Roy could scratch her behind the ear. In this way, they spent the rest of the morning: commiserating in silence.

  THE CALL CAME into Hanratty’s office just after noon. Hanratty picked up the phone and was surprised to hear Thelma Foote asking for Roy Walker. “Miss Foote,” he said. “This is a pleasant surprise. But if I may ask, why on earth are you calling Roy Walker when I’m the one who called you earlier this morning?”

  Thelma was quick to size up the situation and answered, “He must have been calling me on another matter.”

  “But I can’t imagine,” said Hanratty.

  “I’m sure, in time, it will become clear.”

  “Odd. But now that I have you on the phone, have you had time to consider my proposal?”

&nb
sp; “In truth, Mr. Hanratty, Miss Taurus is exhausted. I thought I would wait until tomorrow to bring it up with her.”

  “Yes, I understand,” he said. “So we’ll talk then.”

  “Absolutely,” said Thelma. “So now, could you please put Mr. Walker on the phone?”

  Hanratty found Roy at the elephant cage. “I have a Thelma Foote on the phone,” he said, disregarding Roy’s intimacy with Nehru. “She would like to speak with you.” Hanratty was far too polite to inquire how Roy knew Thelma Foote, but he knew something about eliciting information from people who weren’t eager to give it. If a conversation stopped dead in its tracks, he felt no need to try to rescue it. He allowed the silence to linger between himself and the other person for as long as necessary. Inevitably, the other person would say things he ordinarily wouldn’t, just to fill the uneasy void.

  And so it happened with Roy Walker, though he refused to meet his boss’s eye. Hanratty waited. Roy could feel the sweat roll down the sides of his neck. Briefly, his mind wandered. Why did his neck sweat so when he got nervous? He needed to say something. Hanratty was watching him. He couldn’t just stand there and sweat. So he said the thing that weighed most heavily on his mind, the thing he had no intention of bringing up with his boss. “I have a question for you, sir. Do you think that, by nature, human beings are forgiving?”

  “I think that, by nature, human beings are self-protective,” said Hanratty. “If it is in their interest to be forgiving, then they are. If not, then they are vengeful. I am fairly certain that being forgiving is not an innate virtue.”

  “I called Thelma Foote because that was my daughter we saw on TV last night—Delores Torres, or whatever she calls herself. Her real name is Delores Walker. I ran out on my family more than two years ago, and, until last night, I had no idea where my daughter was or what she was doing. I called that mermaid place this morning, and I asked Miss Foote if I might meet with Delores. I imagine she is calling me back with an answer. That’s it. That’s the whole story,” he said, mopping his neck with a handkerchief.