Swim to Me

by Betsy Carter

  He thought about these things as he slathered on shaving cream. He remembered how, as a very little girl, Delores sat on the toilet seat and watched, mesmerized, as he did this. Sometimes, he would put some of the lather on her cheek and pretend to shave it with the dull side of the razor. She would run her fingers across the smooth part of her face, then tell her mother that “daddy shaved me.” See, there were some good memories. He hoped she remembered them as well.

  When he finished, he splashed on some Aqua Velva.

  At exactly ten a.m., Roy showed up in Hanratty’s office. Hanratty had said he didn’t want to take any chances getting caught in traffic. “A twelve o’clock appointment is a twelve o’clock appointment,” he’d said to Roy. Hanratty was dressed in a tweed suit with a matching vest, a yellow shirt, and gold cufflinks in the shape of a top hat. The two men, side by side, were a study in contrasts, like Skit and Skat, two of the clowns in the show. Skit was lean and wore raggedy clothes. He was forever “surprising” Skat by bopping him over the head with rubber mallets and squirting water into his face. Skat was plump and stodgy with a polka-dot bow tie and an oversized pocket watch. Though clearly smarter and better dressed than Skit, Skat could never escape the antics of the more agile clown. Roy thought it wise not to mention the Skit and Skat comparison, but he was certain that Hanratty noticed it himself.

  The two settled into Hanratty’s Chevy Impala. Hanratty drove slowly, with both hands on the wheel, and kept lurching forward as if his body could help propel the car. They didn’t speak, except when Hanratty said to Roy, “Have you thought about what you might say?” And Roy answered, “I’ve never known how to do that. I guess when the time comes, I’ll just say whatever comes to mind.”

  As the two men were driving, Delores was finishing up her morning show, a revival of one of their classics, “The Wizard of Oz.” She was playing the Wicked Witch of the West; Blonde Sheila was Dorothy—“counterintuitive casting” is what Thelma called it. Delores would have only a half hour to wash off all the witch makeup and get ready for the noon meeting with her father. The logistics of it all preoccupied her, which was just as well, since it helped keep her anxieties at bay.

  Nothing could keep Thelma’s anxieties at bay. Everything about the prospect of meeting Mr. Hanratty and Roy Walker made her feel nettled. Being judged, making pleasant conversation, pretending to tolerate a man who’d walked out on his family: Thelma had organized her life so that she could avoid circumstances like this one. She’d figured out how to deal with Alan Sommers, but that was quite enough for her in the stranger department. She sat in the underwater booth, directing the show and fretting about all that was to happen. For a moment, she let her eyes wander to stage left where the witch’s castle stood. Something was amiss. Right above the castle gate there was a bluish, mossy blob, something that had never been there before. Thelma squinted; slowly the realization of what she was seeing came into focus. “God-damn-algae,” she shouted. Her words would have fallen on deaf ears except for one thing: the microphone in her booth was turned on, so that everyone who was underwater heard exactly what she said.

  They were just at the point in the play when Dorothy was about to pour water on the Wicked Witch and make her disappear. Thelma’s voice echoed through the tank, and Blonde Sheila, hearing the Lord’s name broadcast in vain, forgot her buoyancy and torpedoed to the surface. Without Dorothy to dissolve her with the water, the Wicked Witch Delores had nothing to do but swim off to the side and hope that Blonde Sheila would reappear. Thelma had no idea what was going on. “Sheila,” she shouted, “control your breathing. Get back down here. Delores, where are you going? Center stage, now!”

  It was falling apart before Thelma’s eyes. Blonde Sheila tried sculling to get back underwater, but her concentration had strayed so much that it was impossible. As she floated back to the surface, she said a little prayer: “Oh Lord, please know that it was not me who used your name in vain. And please forgive Thelma Foote. Algae makes her nutty as a fruitcake.”

  Unsure of what to do next, Delores swam to center stage and waited for Thelma to come up with something. Thelma shouted for the curtain to come down and the music to come up. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” played as the baffled audience clapped politely and wondered what they’d missed.

  Thelma stared at the empty tank before her. With “Jingle Shells” and Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid permanently replaying in her memory, she had alway been waiting for the other shoe to drop. While Thelma agonized over her demise, Delores sat shivering in the hot room with Molly, who’d played the Cowardly Lion. “I hate Blonde Sheila,” said Molly. “Just because she’s born-again, she doesn’t have to make everything about her.”

  “I felt embarrassed for her,” said Delores. “And poor Thelma. Talk about trying hard—she gets the short end of everyone’s stick.”

  “But Thelma brings it on herself.”

  “Yeah, but think about it, Molly. If she didn’t do all this stuff, who would? I think she gets taken for granted a lot around here.”

  “So, Thelma’s your new best friend?”

  “No, but she is doing me an awfully big favor.”

  “Oh, and like you’re not doing her a big favor?”

  “No, I don’t mean professionally. I mean personally she’s doing me a favor.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “I’ll tell you something if you swear not to tell anyone,” said Delores in a hush.

  Molly drew an X over her heart. “I swear.”

  Delores told her about her father and the upcoming meeting. “I mean I haven’t seen or heard from him for more than two years. I don’t even know if I’ll recognize him. And can you believe the part about the circus?”

  Molly started to laugh. She put her hand over her mouth to stop it, but it was too late. “I’m not laughing at you Delores, but honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up.”

  THE INCIDENT DURING “The Wizard of Oz” had so rattled Thelma that she considered canceling the meeting with Hanratty and Roy. But common sense took the upper hand. The girl needs to meet her father, she thought. This Hanratty fellow is an astute businessman, something that we sorely lack around here. Maybe this is opportunity knocking, not a sound I hear often enough.

  Buoyed by her own pep talk, Thelma rubbed talcum powder into the dirt spots on her Keds and put on a fresh pair of khakis. She brushed her hair behind her ears and slipped into a windbreaker that had just come back from the cleaners. For this meeting, she was manager and agent. Easy, always easy, when she knew her place. She was the first to arrive at her office. She pushed three chairs together so that they would be facing her desk. It would give the meeting a form and a hierarchy, and it would make it clear that all discussion would be funneled through her.

  By 11:57, she had cleared her desk of all papers. A few weeks earlier, a photographer from National Geographic had passed through and asked to take some pictures of the mermaids. One of the shots was of Delores underwater, looking at herself in a hand mirror while brushing her hair. The hair spread out in the water like a jellyfish and Delores wore a self-satisfied, somewhat taunting, smile. Lester had had the picture blown up to poster size (“A nifty photo for last-minute advertising if we ever need it” is how he put it) and now Thelma placed it behind her desk so that no one could miss it. At 11:59, Delores showed up wearing a floral-print wraparound skirt, a white cotton off-the-shoulder blouse, and a pair of straw-colored espadrilles. With her wet hair pulled back into a ponytail, she looked healthy and vibrant, like a girl gobbling up life with not a moment to waste. Thelma wondered if her father would notice.

  At precisely twelve o’clock there was a solid rap on the door. “Come in,” said Thelma, barely disguising the impatience in her voice. Hanratty walked in first, removing his hat and bowing excessively. “How do you do? I am Dave Hanratty. Miss Foote, I presume,” he said, grabbing Thelma’s hand and gazing into her eyes. “Forgive me for staring, but I had pictured someone less—ah, how should I say thi
s?—someone less modern. What a pleasant surprise.”

  Then he turned his attention to Delores. “And you must be the courageous Delores Torres.” He still pronounced it with a Spanish accent, so it rhymed with “Suarez.”

  “Taurus. It’s Delores Taurus,” she said, trying to free her hand from the vise of his grip. His eyes spilled into hers, but she was distracted by a smell, a familiar, sharp licorice odor. Sen-Sen. Her father. She smelled him before she saw him. There he was, his hands cupped in front of him, as if he were about to give someone a boost, and his eyes small and shifty, as always. Yes, she remembered—that, and how watery they often were. He looked different, though he still wore his ratty old Yankees cap. Stronger. Definitely tanner. More relaxed, maybe.

  Roy Walker assessed his daughter. Had she always been this imposing? She was beautiful, achingly so, in her strength and assurance. All eyes were on him as his silence filled the room. Delores stepped into the discomfort by sticking her face in front of his and slowly waving her hand back and forth. “Hey, do you remember me?”

  “You related to Delores Walker?” he asked.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Her father.” He winced as he said it, not sure if he still had the right to claim her that way. He took off his hat and bowed his head. She noticed the bald spot. That had not been there before.

  Thelma slapped the palm of her hand on her desk. “Okay, enough of all that,” she said, impatient with Roy’s inability to look his daughter in the eye. “None of us have any time to waste, so let’s get down to why we’re all here. Hanratty, you look like a man of purpose. What brings you to Weeki Wachee?”

  Hanratty cleared his throat and moved forward in his chair. “Two evenings ago, we, along with everyone else in the area, watched with riveted fascination as Miss Taurus—have I pronounced it correctly?—made her valiant rescue. As a circus impresario for nearly thirty years, I have developed a keen sense for recognizing talent and charisma. It was instantly obvious to me that Miss Taurus possessed more than her share of both. At the time, I was unaware that her father was in my employ—what a great coincidence. When Mr. Walker told me that Miss Taurus was his daughter, it came to me right away that there was potentially a symbiotic relationship between Hanratty’s Circus and Weeki Wachee Springs. It almost seemed preordained, if you believe in such things. Anyway, at first I thought that Miss Taurus could become one of the Hanratty acts, but that didn’t seem substantial enough. With all the shenanigans going on up in Orlando, I asked myself: what could we bring to the table that they couldn’t? How can you outshine a multimillion-dollar theme park with all the modern gadgets and hijinks that money can buy? And the answer came to me, pure and simple. Human beings, live animals: everything we do is real.”

  Hanratty knew when to pause, when to raise his voice, how to hold a crowd. Even the usually irascible Thelma Foote couldn’t take her eyes off of him.

  “While we’re all aware of Miss Taurus’s talents, her father, Mr. Walker, is not without his gifts as well. I have seen him with the animals, the elephants especially, and I can tell you he has a very personal and special relationship with them. Miss Foote, you have created a wildly successful attraction underwater. Wouldn’t it be a boon to your business to develop a spectacle as well?”

  Thelma ran her fingers over her lips before she spoke. “Mr. Hanratty, what you say is not without merit. But my first concern is for the girls, and I wouldn’t want to do anything to distract from their show.”

  “Of course,” said Hanratty, nodding.

  “Then again,” she continued, “anything that increases awareness and business is always a plus in my book.”

  “Let me ask you this: how deep is Weeki Wachee Springs?”

  Delores and Thelma exchanged quizzical looks.

  “The Springs are forty-five feet at their deepest,” answered Thelma.

  “Good,” said Hanratty, then paused for a few moments. He made eye contact with everyone in the room before completing his thought. “I’m sure you all know that elephants love to swim. They give themselves showers with their trunks. And it naturally cools them down, because water gets trapped in the wrinkles of their skin and evaporates slowly. Here’s another thing. They swim with their mouth below the surface of the water and use their trunks much like a snorkel. In fact, there are many who believe that the elephant is the next of kin to the manatee. Some coincidence, huh?”

  Thelma heard the excitement growing in Hanratty’s voice, and it made her anxious. She began picking at a spot on her windbreaker, where there was a flaw in the fabric.

  Hanratty fixed his gaze on Roy, who was looking down at his hands, which he was rubbing together. He hadn’t been aware that his boss had picked up on his relationship with Nehru.

  “I’m sure among all of our creative efforts, we can figure out a way to have the elephants and the mermaids interact in the water in such a way that would draw crowds from all over the state. All over the country, even.”

  Delores rolled her eyes. First that jerk Sommers makes her sit in a bathtub on television, now this yo-yo has her swimming with elephants. There was no way that was going to happen.

  Thelma finally spoke up: “Elephants and mermaids. Honestly, Mr. Hanratty, I think you’re taking this a little too far. Even for a circus impresario.”

  Roy lifted his head and stared into Hanratty’s shoulder as he said, “Nehru’s nearly forty. That would be asking an awful lot of her.”

  Then Delores spoke. “I’m the one who’s supposed to get into the water with the elephant. Does anyone care what I think? I’m not a huge elephant fan. In fact, I think they’re kind of creepy. I’d just as soon stay underwater and leave the elephants on the land.”

  Hanratty closed his eyes. “You can’t see it, can you?” he said, sounding as if he were in pain.

  It was true. Only Hanratty found joy in the far-flung possibilities.

  “Don’t you get it?” he asked. “The mermaid—half animal, half human—and the elephant, the grandest creature in the animal kingdom. It is mythic in its proportion. The mind’s eye will take in the magic; it’s our own dullness and cynicism that turns it away.”

  Thelma rested her chin on her thumbs and held her hands prayerlike against her face. Hanratty’s frustration was palpable to her. Usually it was she who saw what others were too lazy or unwilling to comprehend. It touched her how much he cared. She and Hanratty were cut from similar cloth but for one thing: he was a true showman. She aspired to that, but she knew that her talent lay in being a shrewd businesswoman and a good manager. She thought about Alan Sommers, who seemed so slight in comparison. Sommers was a marketer, a man who understood what was commercially viable. But Dave Hanratty, he was the real thing. She realized that, until today, she had never met anyone like him.

  Roy was lost in the worry that his job was at stake. He could care for the animals and do what was required around the circus. But Hanratty was talking about a performance, a performance that people from all over the country might come to see. He would be working with his daughter, with whom he’d not shared even a single word in two years. Already he had done things beyond his wildest dreams. What more would be asked of him? What more could he ask of himself?

  But it was Delores, now mesmerized by Hanratty’s words, who began to see what he saw and relish the possibilities. Where she was strident a few moments earlier, she now spoke as if waking from a dream. “It wouldn’t just be the elephant and the mermaids,” she said. “There are the turtles and the dolphins and . . .” She paused, finishing the sentence to herself. “This could be the greatest thing that ever happened here!”

  Thelma imagined the headlines in the papers and the pictures they would run. Attendance would increase, as it had after “The Merfather.” Maybe she could finally afford to rebuild the amphitheater, never mind the pump. After all of the years that she’d struggled to keep Weeki Wachee going, this stranger who had suddenly walked in the door could pin this place permanently on the map. If
I were a more sentimental person, I would weep, she thought. But there were the practical issues to consider.

  “Supposing that this could happen,” she said. “What would we need to do to house elephants on the premises? Where would they stay when they were not swimming?”

  Hanratty waved his hand as if he were brushing aside crumbs. “These are details we can attend to. The real question is: how do we make this as spectacular as it can be?”

  There were ten elephants in Hanratty’s Circus. Roy knew that since Nehru was the matriarch of the group, whatever she did the others would follow. Then a thought, as ridiculous as Lucy herself, leapt into his mind. He had often seen the reckless and adorable chimp riding on the back of one of the elephants. Suddenly, he saw a flotilla of elephants and dolphins and manatees and mermaids. If Noah were putting together an ark in central Florida, this would be it. Hanratty, he realized, was encouraging everyone to go beyond their boundaries. Anything was possible. For a man who’d given up everything because he’d felt suffocated and trapped, this was as thrilling as landing on the far side of the moon.

  The four of them sat looking at each other in silence, all of them imagining possibilities they had never imagined before.

  Lost in the tapestry, Delores closed her eyes; when Hanratty clapped his hands together, she nearly jumped out of her skin. “That’s it, now you’re with me!” he shouted. “Have they ever seen anything like this up at Disney? Anywhere else in the world? I think not.”

  They filed out of Thelma’s office, still daydreaming. Roy Walker was the one who broke the silence as he said to his daughter, “This certainly ain’t the Bronx.”

  LATER THAT NIGHT, when Roy went to the Giant Café for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie, Rex asked him how it had gone with his daughter. Roy chewed as he thought about it, then swallowed hard. “We never really talked. Hanratty came up with some fantastic scheme for combining the mermaids and the circus and we were all so overwhelmed by it that the conversation never turned to anything else. Before we knew it, they had to do a show and we had to get back here and that was that. Here’s the strange thing, Rex—she and I may end up working together.”