The Girl with the Mermaid Hair

by Delia Ephron

  “I’m not sure—”

  “Simon’s dropping me. He’s got to write a paper. He still has school tomorrow. His school’s not out for the holidays yet. Come on.”

  While Sukie and Frannie had never been friends, they’d known each other since the first grade. The last time Sukie had been to Frannie’s was four years ago, for Frannie’s eleventh birthday. In those days, when they were kids, when you gave a party, you invited everyone in your class and everyone came. Eleven was also the year of Sukie’s last birthday party. To avoid the embarrassment of no one showing up, she pretended to her parents that there were more adult things she’d rather do, like see a play in New York City.

  Frannie’s place hadn’t changed: a plain box of a house—wooden, two stories—painted a wintry blue and mostly hidden by a giant evergreen. Nothing fancy like Sukie’s brand-new salmon-colored stucco house, no curved driveway or glamorous stained glass windows bordering an oversize front door.

  As Sukie walked up the narrow brick path, she heard Frannie behind her whisper, “Isn’t she beautiful?” Sukie strained to hear his reply.

  “Plant one,” said Simon.

  Plant one? Sukie had never heard that expression, and she swiveled slightly to see Frannie throw her arms around him. They locked lips in a tender way, not hard and rough but hot. By “plant one,” Sukie knew what he was saying: She may be beautiful but I’m interested only in you. Perhaps he was even saying that Frannie was beautiful, although strictly speaking, and Sukie was not being judgmental but simply accurate, Frannie was more interesting-looking than beautiful.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Sukie asked as he drove off.

  “I don’t use that word.” Frannie grinned. “Do you think he’s cool?”

  “Well…,” said Sukie.

  “He’s not. He’s not the least bit cool. I don’t know what he is.” She shrugged helplessly. “But he’s something.”

  “I’m dating this smoldering guy, Bobo Deeb,” said Sukie.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Frannie. “You mentioned him. The guy from Hudson Glen High. Hey, Mom,” she shouted, opening the door.

  In two shakes Sukie was swept into life in the Cavanaugh home. Frannie’s mom and Mel, her stepdad, were in the kitchen making minestrone. Sukie was given a can opener and some jumbo cans of tomatoes, and then instructed to pour the tomatoes into a bowl and break them up with her hands. She didn’t need to talk, a relief, except to answer that her parents were fine.

  There was a plate of large green pellets, which Frannie’s mom said were stuffed grape leaves. Sukie refused them even though she was starved because they looked weird, and stuck instead to the salted nuts and olives. Frannie’s stepdad was talking about the Middle Ages and how people threw their leftovers to the dogs after they were done eating.

  “I didn’t know that,” said Sukie. “What countries are you talking about exactly?”

  “Are you interested in history?” he asked.

  “I love history,” said Sukie, and Mel was off and running about lute music in twelfth-century France. It turned out that he was a professor of history and writing a paper on it.

  Sukie had never hung out anyplace where people talked about anything that had happened before last week. Frannie’s mom, who owned a flower shop, had a few twigs in her hair that Mel plucked out. “You brought home souvenirs from the shop,” he said.

  “Things are very bad there, monsieur,” said Frannie’s mom. They burst out laughing.

  “Oh, God,” said Frannie. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “It’s a line from Casablanca,” her mom explained. “It’s an old movie, and in a scene where Rick tells a poor sad refugee to go back to Bulgaria, she says, ‘Things are very bad there, monsieur.’ We try to stick the line into as many conversations as possible.”

  “They’re crazy,” said Frannie.

  “We are,” said her mom. “Aren’t we, Booper?” Apparently Booper was Mel’s nickname.

  Frannie dragged Sukie upstairs.

  The walls of Frannie’s bedroom were papered with art posters. “I’m currently into Dalí and Duchamp,” she said, neither of whom Sukie had ever heard of. “In my own art, I’ve entered a bizarre period.” There were a few pencil drawings of hers tacked up: a fish driving a car, a book with worms growing out of it, a bleeding wristwatch. Sukie studied them, feeling that she ought to know what to say but didn’t.

  A bunch of odd objects were displayed on a bookshelf: a doll leg, an old phone with a rotary dial, some bits of pottery, a bent silver fork. “What are these?” asked Sukie.

  “Take away use and you have art,” said Frannie. “That’s what my dad always said. He saved all these things.”

  “Everything in my house is new,” said Sukie. “Even my mother’s face. She had it lifted.”

  “Oh, wow,” said Frannie. “That explains it.”

  “We used to have the same nose, but not anymore.”

  “How weird.” Frannie picked up the china-doll leg. It was as pale as marble with pink dimples painted on the knee. Its shoe was in perfect condition: red leather with a strap over a white cotton ankle sock. “Put out your palm.”

  Sukie opened her hand and Frannie laid the doll leg on it.

  There was something compelling about it. It didn’t seem broken, it seemed complete, and then it seemed shocking, evidence of an unknown unspeakable horror. Sukie shivered.

  “Yeah,” said Frannie. “I know. It’s got this fabulous creepiness.”

  Frannie’s face—long and solemn with big, dark brown, expressive eyes—was unpredictable. Sukie had always found that from one minute to the next you could think she was mocking you or being the friendliest. Although Frannie couldn’t stop showing her dimples around Simon, usually she was slow to smile. Sometimes her eyes ached with pain. When that happened Sukie guessed that Frannie was thinking about her dad. Her parents had been divorced. Frannie had stopped by to visit her dad after school. It was she who found him dead. That made Sukie feel especially awful that she’d never said, “I’m sorry about your dad,” and let the whole thing slide right by as if the tragedy in Frannie’s life had never happened.

  Right now Frannie was looking at Sukie so sympathetically that Sukie thought she had X-ray vision right to her heart.

  Sukie carefully placed the doll leg back on the shelf. “Take away use and you have art. How cool,” she said. “My mom kicked me out.”

  Frannie’s door slammed open and Jenna burst in. When she saw Sukie, she went white. Her chin jutted forward, her face tightened into a fist.

  “I can leave,” said Sukie to Frannie.

  “But you’re sleeping over,” said Frannie.

  “I am?” said Sukie.

  “She is?” said Jenna. “Maybe I’ll leave.”

  “Please don’t,” said Sukie. “Please. I shouldn’t have written that stuff about you. Or about anyone.”

  Jenna perched on the bed and let her purse hang between her legs. “Why did you?”

  Sukie threw up her hands and, when she couldn’t think of any words to go with that helpless gesture, clamped her head as if to stop it from exploding.

  “It was mean,” said Jenna.

  “I know. It was an awful thing to do,” said Sukie.

  “Unfortunately you were right about me. I was James’s cheerleader.”

  “Was?” said Frannie.

  “I broke up with him.” Jenna dropped her purse and flopped backward on the spread. “Everything was about him.” She threw out her arms. “He got so irritated because I called buffala mozzarella ‘buff-a-lo mozzarella.’ Then he was scandalized because I didn’t know it really came from buffalos.” She rolled over to face them. “Did you know that?”

  Both Frannie and Sukie shook their heads.

  “But from Italian buffalos, James said, which are more bovine. He actually used the word ‘bovine.’ What does it mean?”

  “Cowlike,” said Frannie.

  “I can’t be with someone who says ‘bovine.’ I can’t
be with someone who thinks mozzarella is more important than me.”

  “For sure,” said Frannie.

  “I can’t be with someone who scolds me about cheese. I can’t be with someone who’s in love with himself.”

  “He reminds me of Léon,” said Sukie.

  “Léon?”

  “The guy Madame Bovary flirts with in Yonville, who later breaks her heart. Léon was more interesting than any other man in Yonville, but not really interesting.”

  “You’re right. James is Léon,” said Jenna.

  “When did this happen?” Frannie asked.

  “An hour ago.” Jenna popped up and looked at them brightly. When neither Sukie nor Frannie said anything, her shoulders sagged and her eyes wandered to an empty spot in the room.

  “I told Frannie I was seeing this guy at Hudson Glen High. Actually I blabbed about him to everyone. But I’m not. He’s not remotely into me. I made it up,” said Sukie.

  For some reason they all burst out laughing.

  Sukie got the coziest feeling because they were all laughing together and not at anyone, and because they shared a wonderful giddiness that none of them could explain. Jenna stuffed her head into a pillow and Frannie clapped her hand over her mouth trying to stop. Sukie gave in to it, collapsing on the floor, loving how her body felt like jelly.

  Sukie

  SUKIE spent the night at Frannie’s, and then the next. Frannie told her that her mom had checked in with Sukie’s mom to let her know that Sukie was safe.

  “Not that she cares,” said Sukie.

  Frannie had an unusual bathtub raised up off the floor. It had feet. “Claw feet,” Frannie said they were called. They did look like the feet of a giant bird. Sukie spent an hour each night monopolizing it, doing the mermaid float.

  On the third night, when Sukie was feeling especially relaxed, lounging in Frannie’s terry-cloth robe with a towel wrapped around her wet hair, Frannie said, “You’d better tell us.”

  “What?” said Sukie.

  “Why you’re miserable and angry,” said Jenna.

  “I know all about being miserable and angry,” said Frannie. “I fought with everyone for months after my dad died. I hated everyone.”

  “She did. Even me,” said Jenna.

  “How come?” said Sukie.

  Frannie chewed some of her hair, realized what she was doing, and brushed the hair out of her mouth. “I’m trying to stop that.” She laughed. “Let me think.”

  “What I mean,” said Sukie, “is I hated everyone too, and I needed them to hate me but I don’t know why. If I’m so smart, why don’t I know why I do anything?”

  “Who knows why they do anything?” said Jenna. “Is that some sort of cosmic question?”

  “No, it’s just—”

  “I think it works like this,” said Frannie. “You feel so awful, you need to feel worse, or you need to make it worse, or you need everyone else to feel awful. The point is, it spreads all over the place. I don’t know why, but it does.”

  “A feel-awful epidemic,” said Sukie. “That’s what I’ve been living in.” For a second she got excited at the idea, it sounded almost romantic. “Is that why you invited me to see that bird?”

  “The hawk?” said Frannie. “It wasn’t there and it was freezing; you’re lucky you didn’t come, but yes, when I saw you…well, whenever I saw you at school, I thought, Been there, done that. You’re so unhappy.”

  “I really am.” Sukie tried to smile but couldn’t manage it.

  “Come on, out with it. Burying it only makes it worse.”

  Sukie tried to think how to begin. She sat on the rug and picked at it. She searched the room as if the way to start were printed on the walls or hanging from the ceiling, or the moon whose bright whiteness peeped through the pine outside Frannie’s window might guide her. Eventually her eyes settled on the fish drawing of Frannie’s. The fish was driving. The fish had no hands, but there it was behind the wheel doing the impossible. She considered hiding in one of her voices—the squeaky baby one might gain more sympathy, the sophisticated drawl might dilute their pity, but she had lost the inclination to fakery. She knew that everything would become more real if she said it aloud. These sleepovers at Frannie’s had been a vacation from pain, but she’d left Mikey and Señor. Thank God for Señor, he would take good care of her brother, but still, Mikey needed her. Telling was the beginning of the journey home.

  Sukie’s voice broke as she started but steadied as she stuck to the facts and didn’t embellish. “My mom found out my dad’s involved with someone…” Sukie backtracked, forcing herself to say it. “…involved with another woman. She read it in my journal.”

  “She read your journal?” said Jenna.

  “Shussh,” said Frannie.

  “She blamed me and threw me out. She threw him out too, I guess. I think they’re getting a divorce.” She covered her face with her hands.

  Sukie rested a second, blinking into darkness. She wanted to get through this without the jumps. She lowered her hands, testing her calm. “I saw him with her. I was getting a mochaccino, and I turned…He didn’t see me. He doesn’t know. It’s been my secret.”

  Sukie pulled the towel off her head and let the wet strands fall onto her shoulders. “I only saw them from the back. And heard him. I didn’t get a good look.”

  As she worked up the energy to continue, she tapped her mouth nervously, and then said, “This is probably bad for me.”

  “What is?” said Jenna.

  “My mom would say something like, ‘Don’t bat your lips, they’ll flatten.’ Can lips flatten? Is that even possible?” She laughed mirthlessly. “You know what my mom calls cellulite? Her ‘shadows.’ ‘Don’t look at my shadows,’ she says. If I’m not calming her down or trying to please my dad, I don’t know who I am.”

  Frannie reached over and squeezed Sukie’s arm.

  Sukie was beginning to think that Frannie knew more about feelings than anyone she had ever met. She listened in the most intense, unwavering way, but without an ounce of judgment. All confidences were safe, and for the first time Sukie felt that she wasn’t carrying around a seven-hundred-pound burden. God, secrets could simply do you in. For a fleeting instant she wondered if Frannie had been as sympathetic as this before her dad died—Sukie had never known Frannie well enough to know that. Had tragedy softened her heart and heightened her sensors? Possibly, thought Sukie. Did that mean that tragedy could be a good thing—well, not good, exactly, but with a few positive side effects?

  “I was frightened about everything after my dad died,” Frannie told her, intuiting that the question was there. “But Simon helped a lot. He’s fearless.”

  “What about me?” said Jenna. “Didn’t I help?”

  “You’re always perfect,” said Frannie.

  Sukie knew what she meant. Jenna’s cheerfulness and loyalty were necessary, like food.

  Sukie scrambled up, dug her wallet out of her purse, and showed them the scrap of paper. “I think this is the woman’s phone number. The other woman. I copied it out of my dad’s BlackBerry. The number was there a whole bunch of times.”

  “Did you call it?” asked Frannie.

  Sukie shook her head. “Should I?”

  With their heads together, they scrutinized the little scrap of paper.

  “Maybe I should burn it,” said Sukie.

  “We need to eat. We need to go out and eat. After we eat, we’ll know,” said Frannie. She got up and stretched. “I’m really sorry about your dad.”

  Sukie’s face fell.

  Frannie and Jenna exchanged looks as tears welled up and streamed down Sukie’s cheeks. They put out their arms and swallowed her in a three-way hug.

  “It’s okay to cry about your dad,” said Frannie.

  “Not my dad,” Sukie sobbed. “Yours.” She broke from the huddle and tried to catch her breath. “Your dad. I never told you I was sorry about your dad, and now you tell me you’re sorry about mine.” She erupted in a
fresh wail.

  “It’s okay,” said Frannie.

  “No, it’s not.” Sukie sagged helplessly. “I meant to. Every day I meant to, but I didn’t. I’m really, really sorry about your dad.”

  Frannie’s eyes teared. Jenna looked at both of them and teared up too.

  “Thanks,” said Frannie, sniffling.

  “You’re welcome.” Sukie collapsed in a chair. As she sat there silently, all the tears that hadn’t flowed after she’d seen her dad that night, tears from the weight of carrying around the secret, tears from her loneliness and her mother’s cruelty and for not telling Frannie she was sorry when such an awful thing had happened to her poured out. They kept coming and coming and coming. Finally she managed some words. “We’d better eat or I’ll never stop.”

  Clementi’s

  INSTEAD of five minutes, it took twenty to get to Clementi’s because Jenna, who had just gotten her license, refused to make left turns. They were too scary. She drove around the parking lot three times hunting for a diagonal spot with no cars on either side. By the time Jenna had managed to park crookedly, taking up two spaces, Sukie had forgotten her tears, and they were nearly doubled over with giggles. Then, instead of turning off the headlights, Jenna turned on the windshield wipers. In high spirits, they bounced into Clementi’s.

  All three girls had been coming here for pizza since they were kids, but only Sukie was a regular. Bunched up in front, a crowd of people waited for tables. Sukie craned over them. “Where’s Issy? You’ll love her. She told me, ‘If I had a little sister, I’d want her to be you,’ isn’t that sweet? We’re going to go shopping. She has the greatest taste. Oh there she is.”

  Isabella, in conversation with a couple at a back table, caught sight of Sukie waving, and raised a finger to indicate she’d be right there.

  Sukie loved it here, the toasty pizza smell, the warmth of the coal-fire oven, Dominick, the owner, in a big white apron, who still came in now and then to make the pies himself at the marble counter, just as he had when she was little. She looked over at the bar, at the framed photos of Frank Sinatra—“a famous singer,” her dad had told her. “This guy had class.” He’d lifted her up so she could get a good view of a man with a wide, easy smile, looking suave in a pencil-thin black suit. “Class,” he whispered in her ear. When they got home, he’d played her his music, which he’d explained was smooth and syncopated, cool and romantic.