Swim to Me

by Betsy Carter

  Few people had laid claim to Thelma’s loyalty. Sure, her girls felt an obligation to her while they were in her service, but it was such a tenuous connection that she could count on one hand how many even remembered to send her a Christmas card after they were gone. But not since Newton Perry handpicked her to be one of the Aquabelles had the line ever extended the other way. Oh, she would have gladly given Mr. Perry all the loyalty in China but for the fact that he chose Ann Blyth and not her for the role of the mermaid in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid. He cast his vote for the “prettier girl with the slimmer, more pleasing physique, and the sweeter aspect.”

  Words like that can scorch a young girl’s heart forever and reconfigure her frame of mind. From then on, Thelma covered up, never exposing her body to anyone’s judgment again. And if she wasn’t sweet enough, well, there were things other than a sultry pout and pretty doe eyes that a girl could use to her advantage. Thelma was organized and could get things done. Maybe people didn’t take to her naturally, but once they understood that she knew what was what and could bring out the best in their theatrical and aquatic skills, they usually came around. For all these years she’d managed Weeki Wachee, reporting to no one except for a man named Don McKeene, the accountant employed by the owners. But he was strictly a bean counter, a flabby man with a curious bluish tongue. As far as Thelma knew, he never even watched a performance; he cared only about the bottom line. Thelma was the one who gave Weeki Wachee its pizzaz—as Sommers would say, its sizzle.

  Thelma hoarded her sense of loyalty and obligation to others, as if giving it would weaken her. Besides, no one had ever asked for it. So there it sat like an earthworm cut in half, groping and reaching blindly for the piece that would make it whole again. She saw in Sommers the other half of that worm, not that he’d given any indication that he felt the same way. Through some concoction of indebtedness for dragging her into the real world and a sense that her success was bound up with his, she took all those years of unspent gratitude and dumped it at his pointed, little tasseled shoes. It didn’t change the intensity with which she and Sommers fought their battles. It was just that Thelma liked being a part of the WGUP local news team, and she liked making the girl one of them, too. Delores Taurus reminded Thelma of her younger self, before Ann Blyth had come along, when she had thought that everything was possible and nothing could keep her from becoming the most famous mermaid in the world.

  Twelve

  One evening, just after the WGUP driver dropped Delores off at Weeki Wachee, Thelma called her from her office. Adrienne answered and mouthed to Delores, “It’s Thelma.” Exhausted from having performed two shows and doing the weather that night, Delores made shushing motions with her hands. “I’m not here,” she whispered, certain that Thelma was calling her to clean the tank. “You don’t know where I am.”

  Adrienne said she hadn’t seen Delores all day.

  “Should she reappear any time soon,” said Thelma, “I have some news that might interest her. Enrich her, actually.”

  Ten minutes later, Delores was seated across from Thelma Foote in her office. Thelma had hiked herself up so that she was sitting on her desk with her hands folded and her feet swaying back and forth. Her Keds thumping against the desk sounded like a bouncing rubber ball. The more she talked, the faster they bounced.

  “The bangs are really working for you. The kewpie doll thing you do with your eyes, it’s fetching, but you’ve got to remember to blink. Otherwise you run the risk of looking terrified. Also, when you say someone’s name, stare into the camera and pretend that you’re talking just to them. A little smile would make it even more personal. Personal, that’s the word they like to use. The station thinks you’re doing good work. Mr. Sommers—an effective man, don’t you think?—would like to give you an increase in salary now that you’re having to do all that yakking about people’s birthdays and christenings and whatnot. So in addition to what you’re making here, you’re going to clear another eighty-five dollars a week from WGUP. A nice hunk of change, I’d say. This could be big.”

  Delores knew that there was more money at stake than eighty-five dollars a week. She knew that Thelma Foote was getting some of it, and that because she was a girl—well, barely a girl, a cartoon figure was more like it—she was probably making a whole lot less than everyone else on the show, just as Otto had said. She was beginning to realize how much Thelma Foote depended on her, how much Weeki Wachee depended on her. Even WGUP had gotten better ratings since she’d been on the air. Maybe this was a good time to ask for more money, make some demands. Hers was the only name on the marquee outside. That’s why ticket sales were up.

  Thelma was still kicking the desk and talking about how if Delores played her cards right, there was no telling what could be next. She didn’t seem to hear the phone ring, even though it was right next to her thigh. After about eight rings, Delores stared at it as if she might pick it up herself.

  “Oh, all right already,” said Thelma, annoyed by the interruption. “Yes,” she said, shouting abruptly into the receiver. Delores was close enough to Thelma and the phone so that she could hear the person on the other end: not so much the words as the cadence. It was a woman, and she had a voice that slid up and down like a kazoo. Something about it was familiar.

  A smile sprawled across Thelma’s face. “Well, how are you? Good. I’m fine and dandy, too. Oh yes, a fashion convention. Sounds very interesting. Son of a gun, she’s sitting right here! Yes, life sure is full of surprises.”

  Of course. It was her mother. She was on her way to Boca Raton for that fashion accessories meeting and she was coming through Weeki Wachee to see her.

  “Vice versa, Mrs. Walker,” said Thelma rising to her feet. “No, no. The pleasure is all mine. Hold on please.”

  Thelma passed the phone down to Delores.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  There it was again: “Hay-llo”

  She and Westie would get to the Best Western late that night. They agreed to meet at the motel for breakfast at eight the next morning. “Right, it is hunky-dory. See you tomorrow.” Delores put down the phone, then looked up at Thelma wide-eyed. “She’s on the road, some fashion show. She’ll stop by here tomorrow. She’s looking forward to meeting you.”

  “Oh brother,” said Thelma, “can I not wait to meet her.”

  The next morning, at eight a.m. sharp, as planned, Delores sat in the lobby of the Best Western, waiting for her mother and Westie.

  After not seeing one another for almost a year, Delores and Gail Walker stared at one another for what must have been a full sixty seconds before one of them uttered the other’s name. Only Westie, a real toddler now with plump cheeks, sandy hair, and a gap between his two front teeth, looked familiar. Mother and daughter were glamorized makeovers of themselves. Delores was tan and resplendent with success, and her mother, once sallow with disappointment, looked as if she’d been given a fresh coat of paint. She’d colored and cut her hair. The pockets under her eyes were gone, and her eyes were bright with expectation and a little mascara. Delores could see from her red bell-bottoms and patent-leather red high-heeled boots that she still had her hand in the fashion closet.

  And, of course, there was the way she talked.

  “Well, here we all are again.” She turned to little Westie who hadn’t said a word yet. “Westie, this is where you were conceptualized.”

  “Mom, don’t you mean conceived?” asked Delores.

  “Whatever. The point is, Westie, this is where you started, where your life began. And now look, here we all are.” Her voice went flat again. “Well, not all exactly, but you and me and your sister. That’s close enough.”

  At two and a half, Westie wasn’t a baby any more. Delores recognized the stuffed dolphin she’d sent him nearly six months earlier. It was gray and nubby and had clearly been put through the washing machine many times. He held it to his chest and stared at Delores reproachfully, as if she might try to take it away from him.

  Delore
s knelt before him; he leaned into his mother’s legs. He didn’t recognize her. He had no idea she was his sister, the one who sent him all those postcards and who kept a plastic bag stuffed with cash just for him.

  “Hey, Westie, hey little man,” she said, taking his hand between her thumb and forefinger. “Do you want to come and see some mermaids? And some turtles and maybe even a dolphin?” She wagged the tail on his raggedy stuffed animal and he pulled it away from her.

  “He calls it Dorph,” said her mother. “I tried to tell him that it was a dolphin, but he insists on calling it Dorph.”

  Delores continued in a tiny voice. “I have an idea. Maybe Dorph has a sister. How about you, me, Dorph, and Mommy go to the park and see if we can find her?”

  “Westie, that’s a fun idea, isn’t it?” said her mother. “Dorph would like that, too. C’mon, let’s go.” They each took his hand to walk across the highway, but he pushed Delores away. When they got to the park, the first thing they saw was the sign with her name on it. She wished Westie could read. Her mother walked past the sign without noticing, until Delores nodded toward it. Her mother stared at the chunky black metal letters advertising her daughter’s name.

  “Oh, there you are,” she said, running her fingers over the D and E. “How nice.”

  That’s when her mother understood: People don’t go putting people’s names on signs unless they’re a real somebody. Her daughter had become a somebody. She thought about Avalon and how she and Delores, young as they were, had already surpassed her with their accomplishments. She was thirty-five years old, nearly thirty-six. That was old enough to have polluted her life with failure, but maybe young enough to become somebody, too.

  Westie cuddled Dorph and stared at the sculpture of the two mermaids just beyond them. Delores looked over where Westie was staring; it was the same obelisk that her father had tried to duplicate when he thrust her up in the air for that famous picture more than two years before. She thought back to the odd trio that was her family then. She would have never believed that she would actually miss her mother’s self-pity and whininess. She forgot about her father’s bad temper and remembered the strength in his arms and his loopy Alfred E. Neuman smile. She wondered if he knew of her success. If he did, would it even matter?

  Everything about this morning made Delores want to cry: her mother, all dolled up, barely noticing her, much less acknowledging her success; Westie not even recognizing her. This was her family: three pieces on a chessboard, each going its own way. And the fourth piece, her father, was gone, spilled over into a corner somewhere with no one even looking for him.

  She welled up with dread: the beginning of an awful day. In less than an hour, she would introduce her mother to Thelma Foote. Then she’d meet the other girls and see the show and come with her to WGUP and meet Sommers. All that she had created in the persona of Delores Taurus could come undone today with just one word from her mother—about their dingy apartment in the Bronx, about her jobs cleaning office buildings and working in a supermarket, about Delores’s missing father—about almost anything that she was likely to mention.

  Delores rapped on Thelma’s door at precisely nine a.m. Thelma jumped up and greeted the three of them as effusively as if the Disney family had come to visit. She’d even dressed for the occasion. Her Keds were spotless and Delores thought she could still see the crease marks on what was clearly a brand-new windbreaker. Sometimes, right before the show, Thelma would whip out a tube of Sugar Blush natural lipstick and give it to one of the girls. “It will enhance your natural color,” she’d say. Now, it appeared, Thelma had put on a little Sugar Blush of her own. It was the only color on her unmade-up pale face and made her look as if she’d just eaten a wild cherry Life Saver.

  Thelma took Gail Walker’s hand in both of her own and shook it heartily. “Mrs. Walker—or should I call you Mrs. Taurus?—we are so honored to have you here.” Then, looking down at Westie and speaking a wee bit louder: “And you must be the little brother we hear so much about. How do you do, Westie? I’m Thelma Foote.”

  Westie glared up at Thelma as if he thought she might try to kiss him or kidnap him.

  “Please,” said Thelma. “Have a seat. Welcome to our funny little family. You must be so proud of your daughter’s success. She’s really turned things around here at Weeki Wachee.”

  Gail smiled a new kind of smile. She stretched her lips, lowered her eyes, and, no, it couldn’t be possible, she was sucking in her cheeks just a little so that there’d be two little apples of cheekbones where there never were before. “My daughter has always had an attitude for the water.”

  Oh God, she means aptitude, thought Delores, hoping that Thelma missed it.

  “You should have seen her in the Christmas show,” Thelma continued. “That’s when it became clear that Miss Taurus here was star material, the real McCoy.”

  Her mother’s expression stayed fixed. “I think a flair for drama runs in our family. I’d have liked to be here at Christmas, but things just got so hectic back home.”

  Delores could see that her mother was trying. She looked pretty good. Maybe she had really lifted herself out of the gummy drudgery of her life. With her new vibrant voice and her crispy dialect, who could tell? She’d reshaped her New York accent. “Wawkah” was now “Wahker,” and her vowels had acquired arches: “Westie doesn’t feel abahndoned by his older sister. He knows she adohrs him.” Her consonants had become rolling hills: “I’ll be meeting the woman I work for, Avalon Mandhorr, in Boca Ratone. We’ll be doing the accessories show there.”

  Delores understood that if you behaved a certain way long enough and told the same story over and over, the act of repetition was all you needed to fog the truth. Was her own act as transparent as her mother’s? By now, she believed that she really was Delores Taurus, and she didn’t need to prop herself up with as many lies and inventions. Did her mother still allow herself old private pleasures like watching Glen Campbell, or was that too common for the woman she was trying to become? And what of her father? Had her mother rubbed him out of this version of her life altogether?

  If Thelma wanted to know where the singing Mr. Walker was, or exactly what Gail Walker did in the fashion business, she held her tongue, just as she had done when Delores first came to audition in the bell. She let Delores’s mother talk in that way she did, never betraying by so much as a fumble with her zipper whether or not she bought it. As the two women talked, Delores looked over at Westie. He had thrown Dorph to the floor and was leaning against his mother’s shoulder, looking as if he might cry. Delores felt badly for him.

  “What if Westie and I go off on a little adventure?” she suddenly said. “We’ll meet the two of you at the amphitheater at ten thirty. That’ll give me plenty of time to get ready for the eleven o’clock show.”

  Westie looked to his mother, who nodded at him. “Well now, doesn’t that sound like a treat? Go on. Go with your sister and have an adventure.” The boy seemed dubious, but when Delores smiled down at him and took his hand, he gave it to her. Maybe he did remember her.

  “C’mon, Westie,” said Delores. “There’s someone who wants to meet you.”

  Sometimes Delores would catch tree frogs by the side of the springs. They were tiny creatures with thin, moist skin, and she’d cup them in her hands for just a moment or two. After she let them go, she could feel the sticky residue from the tips of their toes. Westie’s warm hand in hers felt like one of those frogs, and she was careful not to hold it too tight.

  They walked past the amphitheater down to the bank of the Weeki Wachee River. The sun shone high in the sky, and the river was still and shimmery. Delores crouched by the water; Westie crouched next to her. “If you look closely, maybe we’ll see Dorph’s sister. Or remember the sea turtle I told you about? He lives near here, and I call him Westie, after you. If we sit real quiet, maybe he’ll come by.”

  Westie took in a gulp of air and held his breath for as long as he could. A few skinny carp float
ed past, but no dolphins or sea turtles. Westie had on a pair of shorts and a short-sleeved striped polo shirt. Delores wore her bathing suit under her shorts and sleeveless blouse. She stared at him. His chubby little legs had muscle in them now. He would have his daddy’s build, that was for sure. Then she remembered that she had been only a few months older than he was now the first time her mother had thrown her into the lake.

  “Westie,” she whispered. “Wanna go out and find the turtle?”

  Westie nodded his head yes.

  “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You’ll climb on my back and hold on as tight as you can. And together we’ll swim out and find him. Okay?” Westie looked at her, his eyes filled with wonder and worry. Delores stripped down to her bathing suit and took off her sandals. She helped him take off his shirt and shoes, then bent down. “Hop on,” she said, as if she were giving him a piggyback ride. He straddled her back like a little monkey. Slowly, she walked into the lake, the muddy bottom of it oozing between her toes. When she was waist deep, she told Westie again to hold on tight. She let her body fall forward in the warm water and used the wide-arcing breast-stroke and frog kick to propel her forward. They swam this way for a while, the water making slurping sounds against their bodies. Then Delores saw the creature wandering through the murky water beneath them as if he were window-shopping. She could tell by his pale olive coloring and heart-shaped carapace that it was the same turtle that had swum by her many times during the show, the one she had named Westie. She whispered to her brother: “I see him. Hold your breath and keep your eyes open and hold on as tight as you can. Don’t be scared.”

  Reassured by his sister’s ease in the water, Westie did as he was told. Delores dove underneath the water. She swam up close to the old sea turtle and he studied her through his heavy-lidded eyes. Then a curious thing happened. The turtle floated up to Westie and just slightly bumped his round head against the boy’s cheek before swimming away again. Delores swam to the surface again. “Did you see him?” Delores asked. Behind her head, she could hear Westie giggling. “The turtle touched me,” he said. “The turtle touched me.”