The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

by Sarah Ockler

  That told me every last thing I needed to know about them.

  Thankfully, Christian wasn’t taking the bait.

  “Sounds like real good times, guys. But . . . pass.” Christian rose from the table, went to the kitchen for a drink refill. When he sat down again, he said, “Vega’s barely floating, and there’s no time to get her ready.”

  “Nonsense,” his father said. “Take a vacation from breaking hearts this summer. You’ll have plenty of time to get her seaworthy.”

  “She won’t sail past the docks, Dad. I was down there earlier. She’s a wreck.” Christian glanced at me, then back to his father. “What are you even playing at? The houses?”

  “Don’t do it, Daddy,” Sebastian said. “Mama, tell him not to. I like it here.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Mrs. Kane said. “This is your father’s game, apparently.”

  “My great-grandfather built these properties, Meredith,” Mr. Kane said, smug. “I grew up here. They belong to me.”

  “Yes, I’d almost forgotten,” she said. “For a minute there, I thought our marriage was an equal partner—”

  “Hey, kids,” Christian said, “we all know you two are bonkers for each other. No need to blind us with the sunshine of your marital bliss.”

  Mr. Kane cleared his throat. His wife leveled him with an icy stare. One of them was sleeping on the couch tonight.

  “Should I start packing?” Lemon asked. Beneath the steely sarcasm I detected fear. She had to be nervous—I’d felt the shift in her energy, seen it in her eyes the moment someone mentioned “neighboring property.”

  “P and D isn’t interested in tossing you out,” the mayor said. “They simply want to corporatize the properties up here under one umbrella. You’d still lease it, just from different landlords.”

  “Different rent, too,” Lemon said.

  He waved a hand, swatting at her persistence. “Better services, more security. Other than that, not much would change for you. And Kane’s house? It’s empty in the off season. He’s paying a maintenance company for upkeep when he could just let P and D rent it out year round, bring in more families, more money for the Cove.”

  “More money for Parrish and Dey,” Lemon said.

  “I’m sure they’ll keep the rent fair,” he said. “Whatever the market value supports.”

  “Market value will skyrocket if those plans go through,” Mrs. Kane said. “Let’s not pretend, boys. P and D invests in beach communities to make a profit, bottom line. They start building condos, hotels, a Starbucks, more roads. Everything gets more crowded, more expensive. Half this town would be forced to move.”

  “That’s an exaggeration,” the mayor said. “Sure, there’d be changes. Some folks would relocate, move somewhere off the beaten path. But we’re talking about a few sacrifices for the common good. A real chance to save this place. To make it better for those of us who stay.”

  He seemed pretty certain that the plan would work, but it didn’t make sense to me. If everyone was forced out, what exactly was he trying to save?

  “The Jameses are on board,” Mr. Kane said. “Right, Vanessa?”

  Vanessa offered her disarming smile. “Don’t you get me into this mess, Mr. Kane. I leave politics to the politicians.”

  “Neil told me he’d be listing your place this summer,” he said.

  “Yeah, but it’s not for Prop Twenty-Seven. With all their campaign stuff, my parents just don’t have time for long vacations anymore. Mom’s not even coming for this season until next week, and Daddy won’t make it up here at all. But y’all?” She looked from the Kanes to Lemon and Kirby, skipping pointedly over the mayor. “You guys are the Cove.”

  “Exactly.” Lemon nodded. “And what do you think the Cove becomes if we commercialize it, Wes? Take a drive up to Cannon Beach—that’s our future under corporate landlords.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Kane pointed at Lemon with the phone that hadn’t left her hand all night. “Cannon Beach is a perfect example.”

  Cannon Beach was a great place for a day trip—they’d taken me up there a few weeks ago to see Haystack Rock from The Goonies. It had its own charms, but the town was overrun with tourists, a place whose original heartbeat was so deeply buried under the money it was no more than a faint throb. I couldn’t imagine the Cove turning into that, or Lemon and Kirby being okay there.

  Mr. Kane narrowed his eyes at his wife and set his highball on the table, harder than he needed to. “If what Wes says is true, Meredith, we’d make a killing. We could buy a beach house anywhere.”

  “But I like it here,” Sebastian said. “All the best mermaid watching is here.”

  Mrs. Kane ruffled his hair.

  “We come here every summer, Dad,” Christian said. “But . . . you know what? Whatever.”

  For a moment no one spoke. It seemed like Mr. Kane might be backing down, looking out for his family.

  Then the mayor’s eyes darkened. “What’s wrong, Kane? Afraid your boy can’t out-pirate mine? Is he into mermaids too? I hear that’s inherited from the father’s side.”

  Mr. Kane’s jaw ticked, the gesture almost identical to Christian’s, but whatever response hovered on his tongue stayed put.

  I looked at Sebastian, his sweet face unmarred by the mayor’s jab.

  As ever, my heart thrummed with the unsaids trapped inside.

  Christian sighed. “You really are a douche bag, Katz.”

  The mayor laughed, but Christian wasn’t being funny.

  After a tense beat the mayor drained his drink, then got up and headed for the kitchen. He returned with the half-empty bottle of scotch, poured himself a refill. He stretched across the table and filled Mr. Kane’s glass too.

  Mr. Kane grabbed the drink. “I think we both know my son could swab the deck with yours, Wes.”

  The mayor only smiled. “This mean you’re putting your money where your mouth is, friend?”

  “Noah and I have sailed that race together every year for the last three,” Christian said. “Now you’re pitting us against each other? Forget the Vega. Without Noah, I don’t even have a teammate.”

  “A little competition would do you boys some good,” the mayor said. “Plenty of willing sailors at the Cove this summer.”

  I felt Lemon’s eyes on me, but I refused to meet them. I knew what she was thinking—I could feel the impressions forming, drifting across the space between us.

  She looked away, probably talking herself out of it, pushing an unbidden thought aside.

  But not before it reached me.

  My hand was curled on my thigh, and I looked down and read the message on my palm, smudged now with clamminess.

  Something I can do for you?

  Inside I felt an idea take root, bloom.

  I’d been sailing my entire life.

  But not anymore.

  I was probably better than a lot of the sailors here, maybe even better than Christian and Noah.

  But I couldn’t go out there again.

  I crushed my fingers against my palm, made a fist.

  “All right, Katz,” Mr. Kane said. It was like Christian wasn’t even there. “We’re in.” He rose, stretched across the table for the handshake. “Your boy’s finally got some competition this year.”

  It was a strange mix, Mr. Kane’s vibe. On one hand, he treated his eldest with little more than contempt. But the mayor got under his skin in a different way, a way that made him react fast. He bet on Christian, talked him up at the risk of losing his home. Lemon’s home.

  “We’ll see who brings the competition.” The mayor downed his drink, lifted the empty glass toward Christian. “Let the piracy begin, Chris.”

  “It’s Christian.” Christian’s voice was sour as he rose from the table, but he didn’t say no, didn’t back down from his father’s bet.

 
Outside, the clouds that had been threatening all night made good on their promise.

  Lightning pierced the sky.

  Rain lashed the windows.

  From the first moment Mayor Katzenberg had said the word “wager,” it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. A blip, really, but a blip that left a chill in the house untouched by the earlier ­celebratory warmth. Silently I helped Lemon and Kirby carry the remaining dishes to the sink, and then I slipped into the shade beneath the sea glass tree, my favorite sculpture in the gallery.

  Built along the north-facing windows in a dark corner, the tree was made from driftwood, bone-white branches that jutted out from a tall trunk. Tiny pieces of sea glass in blue, green, brown, and white hung from invisible wires like leaves that never fell.

  The jewel-colored bits clicked together softly as Christian exited through the deck door, leaving his birthday party guests behind.

  I pressed my forehead to the window and tracked him down the staircases, down to the sand below. He walked along the shore, past his house, unconcerned about the rain and the blue-white electricity streaking across the horizon.

  I imagined his footsteps in the wet sand.

  Dark, fading. Dark, fading. Dark, fading.

  He disappeared in the mist.

  My throat tightened, a feeling like tears rising, but they didn’t spill. They never spilled anymore; I always stopped them. Crying never brought anything back from the dead. It only felt like the ocean trying to drown you from the inside out.

  The men were back to talking investments, oblivious, but as I watched the lightning gather and spill on the horizon, I knew their bet had set things in motion. Irreversible, impossible things. Dangerous things.

  I also knew how to patch up an old boat. I knew how to sail.

  But inside my head, the only place that could still hear my words, the echo said no. It said that I shouldn’t be thinking about the Kane family, the sticky web of it. I needed to keep my head down, help Lemon at the gift shop.

  Not try to save the house from these dangerous, destructive forces. From men more powerful than the ocean.

  I needed to collect sea glass. Keep my room clean. Do the dishes without being asked. Write poems and lyrics that no one would ever read, pretend I’d one day be able to sing again.

  But maybe . . .

  You’re too afraid, the echo taunted. You’re a fool to even think it.

  I closed my eyes.

  There was a time, not so long ago, I’d take a stage before hundreds of people. Grab my sister’s hand, move the crowd without a second thought. Now, everything in me felt frozen and stiff, the stage bravery no more than a memory.

  Natalie would’ve known what to do. She would’ve told me the truth. Held my hand, caught my tears when I let them fall, even if she’d been the one to put them there.

  But she was gone.

  I was gone.

  Behind me, someone flicked on an overhead light, and I opened my eyes, catching my reflection in the glass. For an instant, a heartbeat, a breath, I thought it was my twin sister.

  I pressed my hand to the window, and her fingertips met mine exactly. We spoke in unison.

  Oh, gyal. What am I supposed to do without you?

  Chapter 5

  “Some say it’s the entrance to hell,” Lemon said, “but you shouldn’t worry too much. It’s probably just a legend.”

  Water surged against the rocks near Thor’s Well, white froth ­sizzling in the wave’s retreat. It was the morning after, and I’d awoken with the realization that it hadn’t been a dream. That my boat was no longer mine and the house that had stood so firmly before the sea could be reclaimed just as easily.

  And now I found myself in Cape Perpetua at church. Lemon’s version, anyway.

  Hell? I mouthed. It was the first time I’d accepted Lemon’s weekly invitation, but it was starting to make sense why Kirby always turned her down. The sun hadn’t even risen yet; the sea was cold and gray, and the jagged black rocks around us looked blue in the soft light.

  “Think of it as a sacred doorway. The entrance to the underneath, the realm below the sea.” Lemon tucked her auburn mane into a ­headscarf and yanked on the knot. “Ready?”

  I glanced at my naked feet. Not wearing hiking boots to traverse volcanic rock was a recipe for injury, but on the drive up Lemon had insisted that the best way to connect with the earth was to feel it beneath your bare skin, sharp edges and all. She held out a steadying hand.

  I pictured Granna and Dad at Sunday services. Natalie probably still went with them too. The remembered scent of frankincense filled my nose.

  I longed for a hymnal and a smooth, firm pew, but, as the saying goes: When in Rome . . .

  I grabbed Lemon’s hand, held on tight.

  At least at Lemon’s church I didn’t have to wear a dress. Granna would probably give me the evil eye if she saw. The thought made me smile.

  I took a tentative step. Then another.

  This stretch of Pacific coast was edged with jagged rock, leftovers from an ancient eruption, and somewhere in the middle lay the hole called Thor’s Well. It was a craggy, bottomless pit into which waves crashed and poured, presumably sucked back out to sea. There was a paved pathway from the Cape Perpetua visitor center and a platform that offered a decent view, but at low tide like this, you could walk out on the rocks and get close to the well itself, depending on your risk tolerance.

  Even with my death grip on Lemon’s hand, when it came to tempting the temper of the sea, my risk tolerance was at an all-time low. I swallowed the urge to vomit.

  Lemon led us to a flat spot in the rocks, still a safe distance from the well, and together we knelt down. Cold water soaked my pants, chilled my legs. With her hands spread flat at her sides, Lemon pressed her forehead to the exposed rock and whispered devotionals to the sea. Even at low tide the surf was restless; I couldn’t hear Lemon’s words, but likely she was thanking the Pacific for its gifts, for its beauty.

  Acknowledging its power in the face of our infinite human ­fumbling. Our smallness.

  I wrapped myself in a tight hug, fought off a shiver.

  The water calmed around us. We sat in companionable silence, watching the first orange rays of sunlight poke through the mist, and I stretched out my fingers to catch them.

  It still had the power to shock me, the lack of warmth here. My skin prickled with goose bumps.

  “So, last night,” Lemon said, finished with her morning prayers. No matter how delicate the situation, she entered conversations like she entered a room, suddenly and intentionally, and I braced myself for whatever was coming. “It was probably a bit much for you, meeting so many people at once. Strong personalities.”

  I scooched closer and shook my head, salt water soaking my clothes anew. Sure, I’d shaken too many hands, forced too many smiles, witnessed more of the Kane family tension than I’d wanted to. But it was a party, stuffed with people, and no one had really tried to talk to me. They’d looked at, but not questioned, the scar. They’d taken in the kinky hair, the dark skin that seemed so rare in coastal Oregon, and possibly wondered about where I’d come from, but no one voiced it. Not even when they looked at me again and again like an exhibit, each time anew. Not cruel, perhaps, but invasive. Invasive enough that I always waited for the questions, and when they didn’t come, I shrank a little more inside.

  I didn’t have the word for it, but when it came to meeting the good people of Atargatis Cove, last night was closer to the opposite of “a bit much.”

  In Tobago, everyone knew everything, and whatever they didn’t know they made up. Neighbors thought nothing of telling Granna she was “gettin’ on in size,” or that it was long past time for Dad to “find himself a new woman.” Carnival before last, Natalie and I had gotten pretty wild, relishing our first time in a masquerade band in Trinidad unsupervised—N
atalie linked up with some guy from San Fernando, giving him a hard wine, boomsie in the air and her hands on the ground, losing her mind as Machel Montano sang his hit, “Advantage.” Natalie was taking advantage all right. As for me, I was doing the same with my last boyfriend, Julien, who was loving his wild, free Elyse. News of our partying had reached Granna before the sun rose.

  After this year’s Carnival, before I’d even been released from the hospital in Port of Spain, neighbors had sent cards full of advice on how I couldn’t let this setback bring me down, how I was still a beautiful girl with lots of prospects. How fate altered our course, and it wasn’t for us to question things or to linger too long in anger.

  Anger, they’d warned, was an invitation for the devil.

  And what were my new plans, they wanted to know?

  I used to hate it, all their macoin’—being nosey. But now I couldn’t decide which was worse—having neighbors spy on me, counsel me like they knew the workings of my heart? Or having them look right through me?

  There, I was a celebrity.

  Here, I felt invisible. Intriguing, maybe. Different. But ultimately unknowable.

  I thought that’s what I’d wanted when I left Tobago. To be left alone, to hunt sea glass in the mornings and write my poems at night, dreaming of the past. To hide out on a rickety old boat that wasn’t mine, unseen.

  But after last night, after seeing all that shared history, closeness and rivalry and dysfunction alike, I wasn’t so sure.

  I was a ghost still tethered to her body, and I didn’t know how to move on. I didn’t know how to explain all that to Lemon, either, especially without a voice. I held her gaze and let my eyes speak for themselves, but when she didn’t question me further, my attention drifted back out to sea.

  A rogue wave lashed the rocks before us, spraying us with mist. I put on my bravest face, not wanting to worry her. When Lemon finally spoke again, she had to raise her voice to outshout Mother Nature.

  “Your granna called last night,” she said, licking sea mist from her lips. “You were asleep. I told her about the situation with the house. She thinks you should return home, that this whole regatta business might complicate things.”