Mermaids in the Basement

by Michael Lee West

  The late-afternoon sun fell in long, burnished strips along the shore, and a cold March breeze was blowing from the south, twirling what remained of my hair. I tried not to think about Esmé Vasquez and her glistening black curls or her expressive, heart-shaped face; but it was impossible not to. She had a way of lowering her chin while simultaneously glancing up through her eyelashes. She had worked with A-list actors, married and single, and each one had found that look irresistible.

  Three years ago, the day before Lent began, I had found Ferg Lauderdale irresistible. I’d gone to a small party at my mother and stepfather’s house in Malibu and spotted a tall, redheaded man standing on the deck, staring out at the ocean. I pulled my stepfather aside and pointed. “Hey, Andy, who’s that guy?”

  “Ferg Lauderdale. He’s the director of Just Walk Away, René.” Andy bit down on his cigar and peered down at me. “Wish you’d work on the screenplay.”

  “I’ll think about it.” I gave Ferg another look, then headed over to the bar. The house was filled with VanDusen executives, and one of the vice presidents stepped over and said, “Andy tells me you’re going to write the screenplay.”

  “Well, I—”

  “Congratulations,” he said, shaking my hand, then bustled off.

  An older woman with red hair turned and nodded in Ferg’s direction. “Honey, he’s gorgeous. You should grab him before Hollywood ruins him.”

  “Good idea.” I wandered outside to the balcony and leaned against the metal railing, which was built to resemble the railing of a cruise ship, with long, lacy bromeliads trailing down. When it came to flirting, I was a failure, mainly because I couldn’t get past my shyness. Tonight, however, I was bolstered by a stiff vodka tonic, along with a makeover, courtesy of my mama. Knowing my tendency to underdress, she’d bought me a black Oscar de la Renta dress and four-inch Manolo Blahnik heels. Everything matched, by the way. She’d made me sit on a stool for twenty minutes while she’d arranged my hair into a messy knot, securing it with diamond-encrusted mermaid clips.

  Now, I leaned into the wind, and a mermaid clip loosened. A panel of hair swung forward, tumbling over my forehead. With one hand I reached up, smoothing back my hair, fastening it with the clip. From the corner of my eye, I watched Ferg Lauderdale push away from the rail. As he stepped over, the white wine swayed in the oversize goblet.

  “You’ve got stars in your hair,” he said. Behind thick eyeglasses his irises were an intense blue, spangled with cobalt; the colors reminded me of a van Gogh painting.

  “Better in my hair than in my eyes.” I gulped down my drink and leaned into the wind, hoping he hadn’t seen my flushed cheeks.

  “Ah, you’ve got three of them.” He said “three” with an Irish lilt—dree. He lifted his hand and pointed to each clip. “Here. And here and here.”

  “Are you Irish?” I smoothed back my hair, feeling the vodka buzz.

  “No, Scottish.”

  “Sorry, I’m terrible with dialects; but I shouldn’t be, considering that I’m a native southerner—and I don’t mean the southern hemisphere. I’m from the kudzu, choke-you-with-kindness American South.” I looked into my glass and cringed. It was the alcohol talking.

  “I’ve never met a southern girl before.” His lips parted, showing a slightly crooked eye tooth. “By the way, I’m Ferguson Lauderdale, but everyone calls me Ferg.”

  “I’m Renata.” I looked up into his eyes.

  “Wait, are you Andy VanDusen’s stepdaughter?”

  I nodded.

  “Fine man, he is.” Ferg lowered his glass, clinking it against mine. “Here’s to southern women and their alluring voices. Sirens of the modern world. Hard to handle and even harder to resist.”

  Now I reached inside the tote for my phone and called Ferg’s hotel. It was 4:30 p.m. in Nags Head, so it would be 10:30 p.m. in Dublin. At the sound of his sleepy hello, my throat tightened. “Hey,” I said.

  He didn’t respond, and I had the feeling that he hadn’t recognized my voice. So I added, “It’s me, Renata.”

  My plan was to chitchat for a minute, and then calmly ask about the tabloid. Instead, I blurted, “What the hell is going on with you and Esmé?”

  “Me and who?” He yawned.

  “The article in the National Enquirer. You and Esmé are on the cover.”

  “What article? I’ve no bloody idea what you’re talking about.”

  I reached into my tote bag, pulled out the magazine, and read the headline and first paragraph. “Shall I continue?” I said.

  “This is unbelievable, isn’t it?” He sneezed. “It’s simply not true.”

  “The picture’s graphic, Ferg. She was groping you!”

  “Darling, please listen to me. The whole cast was at that pub, and Ms. Vasquez had too much to drink. She was grabbing everyone. Renata, nothing is—or was—going on. Absolutely nothing. Except I left my sweater at that pub.”

  “Why did you take it off in the first place?”

  “I was sitting next to a rip-roaring fire—”

  “I’ll just bet you were.”

  “—and it was stuffy,” he finished. “You know how hot-natured I am.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.” All my life I’d been waiting for a man like Ferg. He was everything my cold, selfish father wasn’t. Or so I’d thought.

  “Damn that bloody tabloid,” he said. “Damn the paparazzi.”

  I leaned over and picked up a broken scallop shell. I almost believed him; at least, I wanted to. He’d never lied before, not that I knew of, anyway. Besides, if he were embroiled in an affair, wouldn’t he have called her Esmé, and not Ms. Vasquez? Or maybe that was his strategy. My head filled with giddy, S-shaped alliterations, and I thought, Somewhere in the haze a skanky starlet is stealing my sweetheart.

  “Renata, maybe you should fly over and see for yourself. I’ll put you to work—I could use your help on the script.”

  “That’s not terribly romantic.” I dragged my toes through the sand, making giant X’s.

  “Sorry, it’s too early. My brain hasn’t woken up.”

  “Then go back to sleep,” I said irritably, tossing the shell into the water.

  “No, I want to—” His words snapped off as a wave rose up behind me and slapped hard into my rear end. I lurched sideways, knocking the phone out of my hand. The water took it with a slap, then the phone dropped off into the swirling blue.

  Chapter 4

  A SACRIFICE TO CUPID

  When I reached the cottage, I mixed a vodka tonic. I hadn’t eaten since early this morning, so I fried a pound of sugar-cured bacon. These days, cooking was the only thing that soothed me. I’d been preparing meals with a Celtic twist: lamb stew, steak and Guinness pie, corned beef and cabbage; but this afternoon, I was in the mood for a BLT, just the thing for a botched haircut.

  I fixed another drink and assembled the sandwich—curly lettuce, bacon, glistening tomatoes, all laid out on French bread, which I’d slathered with Duke’s mayonnaise. Next I set the table, adding one of my mother’s checkered seafoam napkins. I set the tabloid next to my plate, studying the picture, then I dipped my finger in mayonnaise and drew a mustache across Esmé’s eyes. My own eyes were nearly swollen shut from crying.

  Halfway through the sandwich, the bread stuck in my throat. I put one hand over my mouth, then ran to the bathroom and threw up. Ferg’s possible defection was just the latest trauma. I had been working on a screenplay for Caliban Films, and the executives kept asking for rewrites. It was that most dreaded of subjects—a coming-of-age story about a southern girl overcoming her fear of water. The working title was Hydrophobia. The studio had offered sound advice, including a new title, but in my present mind-set, I just didn’t know how to fix anything. I’d just completed my fifth revision. It was sitting on the knotty pine desk, but I was closer to a breakdown than a breakthrough.

  I wrapped my arms around the base of the toilet, tucking my legs to my chin, waiting for the nausea to pass. Somehow I managed
to pull myself off the blue tile floor and stagger into the kitchen. In the back of the refrigerator, I found a box of Phenergan suppositories. The name on the prescription label was “Andy VanDusen.” I couldn’t make out the expiration date, but the directions were clear: “Take every six hours for nausea.” So that’s exactly what I did.

  Later, while I cleared the table, the Phenergan collided with the vodka. I gripped the counter. Outside the window, past the checkered curtains, I couldn’t see the moon, but it must have been full or three-quarters because I could make out the heaving sea, all black and silver. In my confused state, it reminded me of aluminum foil, something you’d peel off a barbecue grill.

  As I passed out of the room, I snatched the stolen National Enquirer, thinking I’d do a little bedtime reading, and search for overlooked clues that would exonerate my sweetheart. The last thing I remembered was slipping a Counting Crows CD into the player, then crawling up the stairs, into my room, falling face-first onto the bed.

  I woke up at daybreak. Pulling the sheet around me, I propped myself up on my elbows. Through the long windows, first light was breaking over the ocean. Above the dunes, smoke drifted toward the water. The wind picked up, bending the sea oats, and the smoke blew in the opposite direction. Then I remembered the tabloid and how my emotions had set off a gastronomic storm.

  I slid off the bed and knelt beside the window, pressing my face against the cool glass. My mother and I had spent many summers here together after she’d married Andy VanDusen back in 1979. Since my real daddy, Louie DeChavannes, owned the Gulf of Mexico, it only seemed fair that my mama got to claim the Outer Banks.

  Andy had bought her the cottage to celebrate their first anniversary. In those days it was an old, unpainted house named “Chambres de Sirene.” At first I was frightened of the water because it was different from Honora’s place on Mobile Bay, with its scruffy, driftwood-strewn beach and oyster-colored water. Here in Nags Head, the Atlantic seemed athletic and unpredictable, even more subject to the whims of nature. I would climb up to the widow’s walk and watch the surf zigzag. There were no trees, just wind, sand, and water. Mama said it reminded her of her favorite movie, Summer of ’42.

  Every summer we left the glass house in Malibu and came to Nags Head. In those days the Outer Banks were quaint and unpretentious, wild around the edges. By the time Mama and Andy died, they had been married twenty-one years, and they not only thought alike, they had started to resemble each other—the same beaked noses, thin upper lips, and gray-blond flyaway hair.

  I hunkered beside the window for a minute longer, holding back tears. Then I padded down to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. The headache had worsened. While my temples pounded to the beat of “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida,” I rummaged the cabinets for the Excedrin. I had always found this room soothing, but when Mama had redecorated, she’d added a bit of whimsy along with the modern culinary touches. In addition to the six-burner Viking cooktop and Sub-Zero refrigerator, she’d set a concrete alligator next to the back door. Seven white scalloped dishes hung in a pleasing arrangement on the celadon walls. Arranged on top of the creamy glazed cabinets were antique sailboats, baskets, and an old aqua jar filled with shells.

  While the scent of coffee curled in the air, I wondered if anything that smelled this good could be healthy. I leaned across the counter, breathing the alluring fumes, musing about discipline and impulse control. If I couldn’t resist a cup of coffee, how could I expect Ferg to behave himself around a world-class man-eating beauty? Then again, just because I loved him didn’t mean he’d stopped looking at the opposite sex.

  I picked up the pot and started to pour coffee into a mug, but my aim was off, and hot brown liquid splattered onto the counter. Throwing a tea towel over the mess, I grabbed another mug and promptly dropped it. As I blinked at the shattered crockery, I heard three short raps on the back door. A moment later, Edna Pierce, my elderly next-door neighbor, poked her head into the kitchen. Edna reminded me of my paternal grandmother—both were elegant, mannerly ladies with gravelly southern voices and a penchant for snooping.

  “Hi, sugar,” Edna said brightly. She squinted at my lopsided hair and then pointed at the side window. “I poured a little water on your bonfire. It was still smoldering.”

  “What fire?” I leaned toward the window, pushing back the curtain. The morning sky curved, all pink-tinged at the edges. The beach was empty, except for a pile of charred wood.

  “Why, the one you built last night on the beach,” she said. “I just figured you were roasting clams or S’mores, and my feelings were kinda hurt that you hadn’t invited me. You’d been right neighborly up to that point. Anyway, when I carried out my trash, I saw you wandering around in the dark, holding two big FedEx envelopes. You couldn’t find your car. Even if you were a little tipsy, the car was parked in a funny spot. You were in no shape to drive. So I offered to take the packages to the FedEx drop box. I went to the one by the bank.”

  “Hold on a minute, Edna. What packages?”

  “Maybe this’ll jog your memory,” said Edna. “One packet went to Ireland, and one went to California. I couldn’t help but see what you’d scrawled on the California envelope. I’m no prude, but I doubt if FedEx will deliver something with profanity written on it. The one to Ireland wasn’t much better. You wrote ‘SKANK’ on it. It was addressed to Esmé Vasquez, in care of the Grand Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. Isn’t she an actress?”

  “Yeah. But why would I send her anything?” I pulled out a chair and sank down.

  “You didn’t say. But the envelope felt kinda powdery and had a burned smell. I sneezed my head off. The second package, the one you sent to California, was squishy and smelled like homemade yogurt. And you kept talking about Ozzy Osbourne, something his wife mailed to somebody, maybe? You weren’t making good sense.”

  I shut my eyes. Ozzy Osbourne’s wife, Sharon, had once placed excrement into a blue Tiffany box, then sent it to a rival. I was far more timid than Sharon, and less original; but I would have loved to send Esmé a package of poop. I glanced at the desk where I kept FedEx envelopes, my laptop, and the latest—and only—version of my new screenplay. I kept it in a sea-grass basket. From here, the basket appeared to be empty, but I could only see one edge.

  “Honey, you look pale,” said Edna. “Can I do anything for you?”

  “I just need a little rest,” I told her.

  After she left, I tore my desk apart looking for my manuscript, but it was gone. I thought about the bonfire and cringed. Nothing could have made me burn that screenplay. It was flawed, to be sure, but I had done an old-fashioned edit with a lead pencil and hadn’t yet keyed in the changes to Word-Perfect.

  I pulled out the drawer; wedged in the back was an aqua envelope. Across the front, in my mother’s back-slanted handwriting, was written “Do Not Open Except in an Emergency.” If this didn’t qualify as one, then I didn’t know what would. I slit open the envelope with my fingernail and pulled out the engraved stationery. Mama had died on October 31, 1999, to be exact. This letter, dated a week earlier, had been written at the knotty pine desk in Nags Head, days before she and Andy had left for New York.

  Shelby VanDusen

  October 24, 1999

  Nags Head, North Carolina

  Dear Renata,

  If you’re reading this letter, I’ll be dead. And I didn’t get a chance to tell you my dark, dirty deeds before I became the divine Mrs. Andy VanDusen. Okay, stop laughing. If you are reading this and I’m alive, then I just forgot to tear up this letter. Chalk it up to bad housekeeping or menopausal forgetfulness. Seriously, I’ve written you a letter before every trip that Andy and I have taken. But I’ve always made it back to dispose of them.

  In fact, I’ve come to see these missives as talismans. So here I am, writing you another letter that you will (hopefully) never read.

  As you know, Andy and I will be flying to Egypt, and on the off chance that we’re run over by stampeding camels, I thought I’d better m
ention a few things. First, your inheritance (Andy says to tell you to please buy furs, diamonds, and Gucci—with his blessings). Second, I promised I’d tell you the truth about me and your father. Just on the off-off chance that something does happen in Egypt, and I take my secrets to the grave, I want you to call Honora and Gladys. They can fill in the missing pieces—and no, it won’t be as juicy, but maybe that’s a blessing. Of course, I plan to defy the Fates and to personally tell you all of my dirty secrets.

  I will always love you. And if I really am gone, don’t eat chocolate and mope. Just know that wherever I am, my thoughts are with you, and that I am thankful for every day that your beautiful soul touched my life.

  Mama

  Inside, a smaller envelope held a few black seeds. Written across the front in Mama’s handwriting was “Zinnias.” Picking up her letter, I read it again, trying to imagine my mother writing the note at this rickety oak desk, then fitting in the seed packet and sticking the whole thing way back in the drawer.

  Foul weather blew in from the Atlantic, and while I searched the cottage for my screenplay, a heavy mist settled over Nags Head. In every room the celadon walls turned muddy green. I couldn’t concentrate; my thoughts finned off into the gloom.

  I grabbed a teal-plaid mackintosh and an umbrella, then bolted to my Jeep. I drove over to Something Fishy This Way Comes, and a waitress led me to a blue booth. While I waited for slaw and crab fritters, I sipped hot tea and thought about my mother’s letter. What did she mean, call Honora and Gladys? What did they know?

  I drove home and stepped into the kitchen. A red light blinked on the answering machine. My finger trembled as I hit the replay button. The first message was from a Caliban executive, threatening to report my vile, unsanitary package to the authorities, adding that I would never again write a screenplay for their studio.

  The next message was from Ferg. “Renata? Are you there?” A pause. “Well, I guess not. Please call when you get home, love. I just got a frantic call from Ms. Vasquez’s assistant. Actually, I laughed about the skank business…but what’s with the ashes? How many tabloids did you burn? Still haven’t seen the offensive article.” Ferg laughed. “I’ll be waiting for your call, my little firebug. I love you—do not forget that.”