Swim to Me

by Betsy Carter

  She rose to her feet and picked up her microphone. “Attention, attention,” she shouted. “I want everyone to come to the surface immediately. Meet me inside the theater; I have an important announcement to make.”

  The shivering cast sat wrapped in towels waiting to hear what Thelma had to say.

  “I’m not going to waste any words,” she began. “This show is crap. It’s stale and boring and not particularly attractive. Frankly, I’m not interested in doing a Christmas gala this year. If you all want to put your pretty little heads together and come up with a show, be my guest. But don’t expect me to have anything to do with it. Good luck.” She zipped up her windbreaker and headed straight out the door.

  Lester shot Delores a look, as if to say, “See, I told you about the Christmas thing.” And Lester, who rarely opened his mouth in a group, was the first to speak as they stared at one another in stunned silence.

  “People come here just for the Christmas show,” he said. “We’ve got to come up with something.”

  They sat down at one of the picnic tables and started talking about what they might do. Several weeks earlier, on a Friday night, they’d all piled into the Weeki Wachee van, and Thelma had driven them to Tampa, where they’d seen the movie everyone was talking about, The Godfather. On their way home, they couldn’t stop talking about it: innocent Kay, fiery Sonny, spooky Michael, loyal Tom Hagen, and tragic Apollonia. They played back scenes to each other. The one in which Sonny nearly kills his sister’s husband, Carlo, because Carlo beat up Sonny’s sister, Connie, was a favorite. All of them had come from families where a Carlo and a Connie were real possibilities.

  Of all people, it was Adrienne who came up with the idea first. “Maybe we should do a show in honor of The Godfather. Maybe we could do the opening wedding scene.”

  “Oh my God,” said Sharlene, shoving a hunk of hair off her face. “That is the most brilliant idea I have ever heard.”

  “That’s great, Einstein,” said Helen, “but did it ever occur to you that we’re all girls except, of course, for Lester. And guess what? The Godfather is all about men.”

  Everyone turned to Lester, who ran his fingers over his jawline. “I read the book,” he said, trying to change the subject. “It’s the best book I ever read.”

  “If mermaids can be astronauts,” said Delores, “why can’t they also be family?” She lowered her voice when she said family.

  Despite an obvious answer, having to do with space suits versus business suits, the logic seemed irrefutable to them.

  The people who worked at Weeki Wachee had never been cheerleaders. They had never been part of any cliques in high school. Like the people in The Godfather, they were outsiders with no one to turn to but each other. They took heart from how the characters in the movie had created their own world. That it was a world punctuated with loss and violence was overshadowed by the fact that the characters in it were self-made and powerful. The mermaids began talking to each other using a deep, lugubrious Italian accent. Even the Sheilas and Helen played along.

  For the next three hours, they sat at the picnic table thinking the idea through. Lester would play Don Corleone; that was obvious. When Helen said it out loud, Lester demurred: “No, that’s wrong. You need someone bigger than me to play Vito Corleone.” Always behind the scenes, except when he was behind the counter at his father’s pharmacy, lately he preferred not to be the center of attention. He hadn’t always been that way. He had been four years old when his parents took him to see his first mermaid show. As the curtain rose, a mermaid in a green tail had swum by and blown a kiss to the audience. Ever since then, he’d wanted to become a merman. When he was six, he began to train seriously by swimming with his legs tied together with rope. A strong swimmer with a handsome face and the perfect body for a merman, Lester made it to Weeki Wachee by the time he was sixteen. By then, the acne had blossomed, and he began seeking out roles that allowed him to cover himself with masks and costumes. He was the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” the Caterpillar in “Alice in Wonderland.” When he thought about showing his real face, all he had to do was close his eyes and he could see how it would go. People would take one look at him, then turn away. They’d pretend not to have noticed his erupting skin, but, of course, that was all they could see.

  “I really think one of you should play the Don,” he argued. “You know, someone powerful and nice to look at.” His eyes darted toward Delores.

  Delores remembered the time that Henry had called her “Tiger,” and how just the fact that he’d said it made her feel that her boundaries were not as narrow as she’d always assumed they were. “Lester,” she said, “You’d be perfect as the Godfather. The strong, silent type.”

  Blonde Sheila stood up. “Go on, Lester, it’ll be good for you to play a real guy for a change instead of that faggot Tin Man. I’m gonna play a guy, too. Johnny Fontane.” She stabbed her chest with both thumbs. “A real ladies’ man. I know something about being attracted to the opposite sex,” she said in a leering voice.

  “You know something about being attracted to a lamp,” snickered Helen.

  Molly suggested that Delores be Connie Corleone. She had the same big, dark eyes as Talia Shire, who’d played Connie in the movie. “You’d get to dance with Don Corleone,” she said, smiling at Lester who was jabbing at a cuticle and not meeting the eyes of the others.

  They planned how he and Delores would dance to the opening number until Johnny Fontane came on stage. Then Delores would swim to him, throw her arms around him and kiss him. (“Don’t forget,” Blonde Sheila had teased Delores, “no tongues.”) The other mermaids would form a circle around the Don. They would move in closer until they were at the Don’s shoulders, lightly patting his hair. As they plotted out the scene, Lester decided that maybe he could play Don Corleone.

  For the next four weeks, they practiced every day for two hours before the morning show and again at night after the park had closed. Although Thelma Foote feigned indifference, occasionally she’d peek down into the tank during rehearsals. One evening, she cornered Delores just as she was closing down the grill in the refreshment stand. “You’re holding back a little,” she said. “This is Connie Corleone’s moment to shine, to come out from behind the shadows of her brothers and her father. Be showy. Your moves should be aggressive, exaggerated, have a real snap to them.”

  A few days later, she pulled Blonde Sheila aside in the gift shop. “You’re putting too much swagger into Johnny Fontane. Don’t forget: he’s broke, his career’s in the toilet, and he’s come begging. He’s a lady-killer, but he’s also so scared, he’s about to pee in his pants.” Another day, she told Lester how to hold his head just so, in order to convey the Don’s polar qualities of tenderness and cruelty.

  Eventually, Thelma started showing up at rehearsals, sitting in the director’s booth with her microphone, interrupting them every few minutes with her maddening instructions: “Bow deeper. Humility. Remember humility,” she shouted to Sharlene, who was playing Bonasera, the undertaker. “Thrust your chest forward, Delores. This is your wedding day.”

  For years, Thelma had been putting money away in a savings account. The money didn’t add up to much, ten thousand dollars maybe. She called it her rainy-day fund, available should the day ever come that she was no longer employed at Weeki Wachee. Thelma sat at her desk one night long after the park had closed and stared at the figures in her bankbook. The money was hers to use freely: there was no one in her life to inherit it or lay claim to it. The steady row of deposits told the story of a solitary life with no excess, no surprises. She ran her fingers down the numbers in the book, then wrote some numbers on a pad. A couple of thousand dollars could lend some real class to this “Godfather” thing. All the nagging and cajoling, all of the emotional toll she had extracted from these girls and countless others before them—maybe this was her chance to pay them all back. Maybe this would help put Weeki Wachee back on the map again, despite all the Disney ruckus in Orlando
. Back on the map, as the brochure promised, as “one of Florida’s premier tourist attractions.” She closed her bankbook and slipped it into the breast pocket of her windbreaker.

  OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, press releases about the new show started showing up at newspapers in the area. Maybe because The Godfather was such a big hit that year, papers as far north as Tallahassee and as far south as Miami ran every crumb that fell their way. There was an item about Connie Corleone’s wedding gown and its three foot tail; Sylvia, the comptroller, was quoted as telling someone that the fake flowers were going to cost nearly five hundred dollars; somebody with no name and a muffled voice phoned the Tampa–St. Petersburg News to say that businessman Meyer Lansky, who would be returning to Miami from Israel, had purchased ten tickets for the Christmas premiere.

  Christmas came on a Monday in 1972. Tuesday was the premiere. The show was scheduled to start at one p.m. By eleven thirty, the parking lot was overflowing; there were cars on the grass lining Route 19. Outside, it was sixty-three degrees, cool for December. People carried sweatshirts or wore cardigan sweaters. Not since the time Elvis had shown up, unannounced, had there been such a commotion at the park. People waited in line, trying to figure out whether or not they’d gotten a prime seat. Most everyone brought a camera.

  By 12:55, the auditorium was filled. People stood in the back; little kids crouched in the aisles. The heavy black curtain was drawn across the stage when the seven mournful trumpet notes of “The Godfather Waltz” began to play. As the lights came up, they revealed the words “The Merfather,” painted in the same typeface as the movie logo—only instead of the handle controlling marionettes, there was a hand holding a fishing pole. Slowly, the curtain opened. At first, all you could see were those five-hundred-dollar flowers. As “The Godfather Waltz” swelled to its melancholy crescendo, out flowed Delores in her skintight, pearl-colored gown. The gown was cut low at the bust with a scalloped border. The long sleeves tapered to a V that ended on her knuckles. The tips of the Vs had giant pearls on them. There were sequins sewn all over the bodice and tail so that, no matter where she was, Delores would be as luminescent as a fish in the sun.

  Lester played Don Corleone like someone who knows he’s been given a short-term gift. Loath to squander a second of it, he calibrated his movements so that his Don was dignified, regal even. When Bonasera (Sharlene in a navy form-fitting vest and navy trousers that flowed into a tail) did a triple somersault and then kissed his hand, Lester held his head just as Thelma had instructed. He moved his arms in graceful sweeps; when he took Delores/Connie in his arms to dance, she became a little girl in the strength of his grip. When, along with Blonde Sheila/Johnny Fontane, he lip-synched “I Have But One Heart,” a song that lasts nearly three minutes, he only had to suck air from the hose one time. Such was the power of his performance that he even forgot about his face.

  Years earlier, Delores had saved a clip from Teen Girl called “You Can Be Anyone You Want to Be.” The article said that if you could feel inside what it was like to be, say, Goldie Hawn, you wouldn’t necessarily become Goldie Hawn, but you would be able to project all the things about Goldie Hawn that you admired, such as her good personality and her ability to look at the sunny side of life. The concept always stayed with Delores, although she could never figure out why anyone would want to be Goldie Hawn. And now as Blonde Shelia/Johnny Fontane sang to her, every flip that she did, every plié she executed, belonged to Connie Corleone, not Delores Walker.

  Thelma Foote sat in the back of the auditorium, her elbows resting on her knees. If she felt proud of Lester and her girls, there was no telling from the expression on her face. Her mouth sagged and her eyes were flat. Only twenty minutes later, when the show was over, when the lights went down and the mermaids disappeared and the spotlight went to the surface of the water, where there was a man in a rowboat smoking a cigar, wearing a Fedora and a wide-pinstriped suit and holding a fishing pole with a line that reached down into the tank, did Thelma rise to her feet with the rest of the crowd as the full notes and rueful minor chords of the finale filled the wooden amphitheater. No one was paying attention to Thelma, but if they had been they would have notice that Old Cow Eyes was imperceptibly waving her arms and folding at the waist, the way that she would have if she was in the tank taking a bow with the rest of her girls.

  Nine

  The Merfather” was a hit beyond anyone’s expectations. The Tampa Tribune ran a story in its weekend “Getaway” section headlined: “Glorious Delores Taurus a Splash Hit in Weeki Wachee’s ‘Merfather’” and the St. Petersburg Times had a banner on its arts pages: “Weeki Wachee’s Delores Taurus Swims with the Fishes and Steals the Show.” Over the next two days, radio stations and newspapers from around the country called, wanting interviews with Delores and Lester. But the most intriguing call came from an Alan Sommers, an executive producer at WGUP, the ABC affiliate in Tampa. He was hoping to meet with a representative of the mermaids.

  The latitude and longitude of Thelma Foote’s life was the twenty-seven miles between Floral City and Weeki Wachee Springs. A drive to Tampa meant leaving her world, being judged by a stranger who had no reason to fear or even like her. It also meant she’d have to get dressed up. The morning that she was to meet Sommers, she ironed one of the few blouses in her closet, a light blue cotton Indian shirt with purple smocking, which she put on over a pair of new khaki pants. She’d leave the white windbreaker in the car, just in case.

  The ABC offices were in one of the new beige office buildings in downtown Tampa. Thelma parked in the lot and went inside. As she waited in front of the brushed-metal doors of the elevator, she could hear the humming of the air-conditioning. They were powerful, these new systems. Best not to take a chance. Before the elevator came, she ran back outside to the car, grabbed the windbreaker, and zipped it up to her neck. When Mr. Sommers greeted her in the eighth-floor reception area, he said, “Nice to meet you, Miss Foote. May I take your jacket?”

  “Oh, no thank you,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “I’ll just keep it on for now.” Mr. Sommers brought her into an office with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked over Tampa Bay. “I’ll have my girl get you some coffee,” he said. “Some view, huh? I’m so close to the water, I could almost be a mermaid myself.” He laughed and shook his head. “Sometimes I slay me,” he said. Then he sat on the chair across from Thelma, laced his fingers together, and stared straight at her. “Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush, Miss Foote. I saw the show last week, and those girls are sensational.”

  Mr. Sommers articulated every syllable as if he were speaking into a microphone.

  “Sennn-saaational! And not bad on the eyes, I might say.” He smiled a quarter smile, then tried to sneak a glimpse of his own reflection in Thelma’s eyeglasses. But as Thelma clutched the mug of coffee, the steam from it clouded her glasses. She tried to make eye contact with Sommers, but she might as well have been looking at dough rising, for all she could see.

  “They are very special girls,” she said, placing her cup on the table and staring at nothing. “I handpicked each one of them, and each one of them is a star in her own right.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Sommers, running his hands through his black curly hair. “You and I, Thelma, are obviously cut from the same cloth.”

  As the fog cleared, Thelma studied Sommers the same way she would a new girl auditioning in the bell. He moved with the jerkiness of someone who had memorized the motions of grace but had no understanding of what they meant: the handshake, more like a quick pinch; the smile, more of a wince; the discursive small talk. A short and trim man with a perfectly tailored double-breasted suit and gleaming shoes, he had the look of one of those fish she’d seen darting around the reefs at Weeki Wachee. Thelma knew her fish. This one, with his pointed features and sharp, small white teeth was a “Slippery Dick” if ever there was one.

  Sommers continued, drumming his finger on the arm of his chai
r. “As you are well aware from your business, Thelma—you don’t mind if I call you Thelma, do you?—complacency is death. For us at WGUP to remain new and vital, we are constantly reinventing ourselves, upping the ante if you will. When I read about ‘The Merfather,’ I said to myself, ‘Sommers, there’s your ticket. Get your ass over to Weeki Wachee and see that show. It was almost—and I say this with all due modesty—like divine intervention. After I saw those girls in action, I told my station manager: ‘If we don’t sign up those mermaids right now’” (Thelma flinched as he snapped his fingers for emphasis), “‘then you can bet your bottom dollar that those louses at WTAM will be nipping at their heels before they even have a chance to dry their hair.’ Every now and then, the perfect moment and the perfect idea come together, and the result is, like . . . wow!”

  Sommers threw up his arms into the air like a conductor winding up a symphony.

  “So what I was thinking, Thelma, is this. How about if, every night, we use one of your girls in full mermaid regalia to deliver the weather report? I know what you’re thinking—believe me, we’ve covered the bases on this—mermaids can’t stand up in their tails, right? No problema. Who says you have to be standing to do the weather? First we talked about having them suspended by wires from the ceiling so they’d look as if they were floating. But the lawyers quickly nixed that idea: back problems, injuries, all that crap. But then I had this great idea.” Sommers leaned forward in his chair, and Thelma recoiled in anticipation of more finger snapping.

  “Why don’t we have them reclining in a bathtub? They’d be in water; you know, it would be a little sexy. Well, I can tell you this, everyone loved this idea. Just lllllovvedd it. It’ll do wonders for the station, and frankly, I’m sure you people are feeling the squeeze from that new Disney World in Orlando. With the free publicity you’d get from us, it couldn’t hurt you either. Whaddya say, Thelma?” He aimed his pointy-toothed smile at her.