It was where Tom and I had marked so many occasions, marriages, births, graduations, deaths. And while not all of them were easy to recall, the bar punctuated them with warmth and friendliness.
The most recent event at the bar was the funeral reception for Tom’s father. Lloyd passed away about a year earlier from lung cancer. The disease riddled his body, metastasizing from his lungs to his bones quickly, and he was taken within six months of his diagnosis.
Devastated, Tom’s mother Nancy decided to move to Arizona to be closer to his sister Jeanie, her husband and their four kids, the only grandchildren. When she left, Nancy turned over the bar to her sons. That left Tom and his older brother Eric, who lived in Maine, deciding what to do with The Mermaid’s Den.
Their dad inherited the bar from his father in the early ’70s and everyone in the family worked there at some point. Jeanie had actually been born in the storeroom behind the bar when the roads closed due to a blizzard. Flynn blood and sweat had built the place, and Eric and Tom agreed that it should continue that way. But running The Den was out of question for Eric and his partner as they owned an architecture firm a little more than an hour away. That left me and Tom. Four or five months before Lloyd had his first biopsy, we bought the Colleen Marie from George. We were on track to turn a profit with the boat finally, but I’d been working the bar for our entire married life and knew the ins and outs better than anyone besides Lloyd. It didn’t take long for the decision to be made that I would run the bar. Each of them owned one quarter, so they paid me a nice salary and split the rest of the profit equally. It worked out well for everyone and the bar stayed in the Flynn family.
I couldn’t imagine a non-Flynn taking over The Mermaid’s Den with the door jamb covered in height marks showing how quickly children change into teens and then adults. Tom and his siblings, as well as Lloyd and his four brothers, moved up the wall each birthday. And while not as old or as sentimental, Lloyd notched a small mark in the bar over the ice well each time he witnessed a fight. There was one mark for the fist thrown after the Elk vs. Moose Lodge softball game, and another from the McGuire baby shower when the mother-to-be threw a drink on her husband’s ex-girlfriend after hearing a comment about her swollen ankles. Each piece of the place told a story, and I saw Tom in everything that caught my eye. Maybe that’s what made me love the bar.
Two
Murdock met me as I opened the apartment door. He managed to slobber on my shoes and shirt at the same time. It was quite the feat for a 17 inch tall dog.
“Hey, buddy,” I cooed as I scratched his head. We picked him from a litter of pups when he was a chubby ball of fur. He’d grown into a large-shouldered, typical bull dog, and his wrinkles deepened to give him a serious face. But as soon as I tousled his ears, he was all puppy again.
Mandy, George’s granddaughter, came by after school every day to walk him, but he was ready for another trip outside. Finding his leash, I grabbed an umbrella and shrouded myself in one of Tom’s old deck coats. The jacket swam on me, and I probably looked like a little girl playing dress up. I didn’t care what I looked like. I wasn’t facing the continuing downpour without the yellow slicker.
Murdock gave me a quick bark, encouraging me to get moving, and we walked down the back steps and out into the rain.
There was a nice patch of grass between the back of the building and the sea wall, but the weather obscured my vision to the point that I only saw the Southern Point light marking the breakwater through the haze.
“Okay, Doc, hurry it up. Momma is getting wet here, ya know.” I urged him to make haste as the rain soaked through my Converse. As much as I loved him, I loved the thought of being warm and dry more at that point.
Cleaning up after Murdock, I looked up and saw jetty light flash quickly three times. It happened at 9:32 p.m. each day. Town myth claimed that was the exact time a young woman, mourning her husband who was lost at sea, jumped from the rocks and into the cold ocean water in hopes of reuniting with him. But it wasn’t a myth. The only one in town who knew what actually happened 75 years ago, I let people throw the story around with varying levels of belief, never admitting my own knowledge.
I’d seen the woman jump from the rock. I watched her throw herself into the arms of the crashing waves, plunging into the ocean and bobbing halfway to the surface. She saw me, too. She reached for me, fear in her eyes, realizing what she’d done. But I didn’t help her. I swam away. As she sank to the sea floor, her face relaxed, softened in a way, and peace overcame her. Whether she was united with the love of her life I’ll never know, but I do know she was united with the sea and the sand.
“Woof,” Murdock barked, tired of the rain and ready to get dry.
“Sorry, Doc. Let’s go.” We trudged through the puddles in the dark since I forgot to hit the light on the way out.
Opening the door, I heard the apartment phone ringing and hurried myself and a drenched dog up the steps.
“Hello,” I said breathlessly before I had the receiver to my ear. “Hello.”
A dial tone answered back.
“Dammit.” I huffed and dialed Tom’s cell phone just in case. Never being one to sit by the phone and wait for a call, I quietly cursed myself for spending so much time outside.
His voice mail message made me smile, but I was upset to have missed the call if it had been from him. We hadn’t bothered with getting a decent phone or new services for the apartment line. No caller id for us, and no voice mail either. We still used his parents’ push-button, corded version. Since no one ever called that line, it seemed useless to change anything. But tonight I felt differently. I’d have loved to hit a button and dial whoever had called.
Instead, I filled the 1950s pink bathtub with hot water and bath salts. I’d kicked off my shoes at the door, but stripping off my wet socks went a long way towards feeling warm again. The rest of my clothes, minus the bottoms of my pant legs, were dry, but I was ready to shed those, too. Splashed beer, french fry oil, and dredges of soda made their way to my shirts daily, and I always ended my shifts feeling sticky.
Slipping into the water felt luxurious. It glided over my skin as I sank into it. The light fragrance of the salts wafted upward. The jasmine and lavender immediately relaxed me. I closed my eyes and leaned back, sinking to my shoulders in the warmth. And, as I sat lingering in the water, I began my transformation to my real self. Small, ink-blue dots began darkening near my knees, changing the color of my skin the way a chameleon might. The spots would completely cover my bottom half in another 10 minutes, moving across my legs from the center point. Next the scales would form and merge my human appendages at the ankle.
“Brring, brring,” the phone sounded again.
Moving quickly from the bath, the wet tile caught me off balance and I stumbled to the bathroom door. Grabbing a towel, I continued my ungraceful exit and snagged the phone mid-ring.
“Hello, are you there?” a voice sounded through the line. “Hello?”
“Yes, I’m here. I’m here.” I was almost shouting.
It didn’t sound like Tom, but I didn’t know who else would be calling.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” The line crackled, breaking up with almost every word.
I pressed the phone to my ear desperate to make out the caller’s voice and to have him hear me.
“Tom, is that you? Tom? I’m here. Tom?”
“If you hear me, we’ll be alright. Laura, are you there?”
The line crackled some more and went dead.
Convinced it was Tom, my mind started going. Why would he call if there wasn’t a problem? Whoever it was, he said they’d be alright. That meant there was a problem.
I decided tea wasn’t going to be enough, and I opened a bottle of Pinot Noir instead. Sipping the wine, wrapped in Tom’s favorite Patriots sweatshirt with my hair in a towel, I wondered why Tom would say what he did on the phone. They would be alright. I played the call over and over in my mind. They would be alright. But why weren’t
they alright now?
Three
I woke up in the morning with the empty glass in my lap and a painful kink in my neck. Murdock slept soundly at my feet as I worked to escape the chair without toppling over. The rain had stopped, but thunder still sounded. The slow rumbles resembled waves more than the low, barreling noise from the day before.
Listening, I heard something else. The wind seemed to carry a higher pitch, almost like a cry. I couldn’t make out a voice or words, but the fact that I listened so intently put me on edge.
I went to the sliding door leading to our second-floor deck and looked out over the water. The whitecaps rolled across the sound and the jetty light could just be made out if I looked far to the south. Everything was as I’d left it the night before. Nothing seemed out of place in the apartment, on the deck, or in the yard. As for the sea, everything was as I’d left it there, too. Fifteen years had gone by quickly, but I knew the sea would remain the same. The tides would roll, the waves would shift, and the currents would move. Nothing ever changed in the sea, and I had known that when I left it behind.
Tom hadn’t known my secret for the first months of our relationship. It was ironic really. Despite him literally catching me in his fishing net, he had no idea I was a mermaid.
My friend Holly and I had been walking along the wharf, heading to a boat to get something from her boyfriend. Laughing at something long since forgotten, I hadn’t paid attention to where I stepped. I tripped over a bait bucket and landed in Tom’s net. It took about three seconds for me to tangle myself up enough that I needed help to get out of it.
“Look what you caught, Flynn,” George called out when he saw me fighting the nylon wrapping itself around me.
Raising his head from his work, Tom caught sight of me struggling and started to laugh. His laugh, when he really gets going, is more of a guffaw than a laugh. He waves his arms and stomps. His eyes fill with tears and everyone laughs along with him, even if they don’t know why.
At that point, I stopped struggling and joined him. The two of us were laughing as he tried to help me out of the net. Unfortunately, disentangling takes some concentration, and instead of getting free myself, we merely succeeded in entwining him in the net, too.
So, there we sat. Two strangers laughing together and playing a strange real-life Twister game.
George and Holly helped us find freedom again, but it took some time. Meanwhile, Tom and I bumped into each other and awkwardly grasped one another trying to right ourselves.
“Maybe you didn’t catch her after all,” George said. “Maybe she got you, man.”
“I’m not complaining either way,” Tom replied, grabbing my hand purposefully, but not to remain standing.
I could feel my face redden with something other than embarrassment. The exciting feeling ran through me and I knew I wanted more of Tom Flynn.
As cliche as it sounds, we were basically inseparable after that. We met later that night at The Mermaid’s Den where he bought me a drink and let me win a few games of darts although he denies losing on purpose.
We had moved into the bar apartment together within three months despite his mother’s concern. I knew she had a point when she told him we hadn’t known each other long enough.
“Who are her people, Tom? You don’t know any of her family,” she said to him one Sunday night after the family dinner. Jeanie and I were in the kitchen washing dishes.
“I told you this. She told you this, Ma. Her parents are gone, died years ago. Her grandmother raised her and she’s gone too.”
“But don’t you find that odd? Shouldn’t she have someone left?”
“Not all of us have such wonderful families, you know. And if she doesn’t want to know hers, there must be a reason. Not everyone has you, Ma.” He grabbed her hands warmly and kissed her cheek trying to ease her concern.
But what I wasn’t willing to tell Tom, Nancy had already figured out.
“Thank you. But it still worries me. There is something she doesn’t want to deal with, Tom, and that could come back at you one day.”
“I know, I know,” he’d said, not really believing her.
She couldn’t have been more right, though. I was hiding things from him, and he found that out a few weeks later.
Tom walked into the small bathroom one night while I was in the tub. I hadn’t heard him knock over the music playing, or else I would have covered up or asked him to wait. After knocking a few times, he gave up and came in. He opened the door and came face-to-face with his girlfriend, the mermaid.
Hollywood hasn’t gotten much right when it comes to my kind, but the scene in Splash where Daryl Hannah’s character unfolds her tail in the oversized tub is on the money. Tom stared at my tail, in all its beautiful and freak of nature splendor. My fins are long, almost like a betta or angel fish, and truly lovely. My tail, covered with scales, shines with a deep metallic blue. But my fin, is variegated with turquoise and black. I’ve always loved my tail, and keeping it hidden takes a toll on my anxiety level and my pride. But I wasn’t prepared for Tom to find out that way.
“Uh, Laura, honey, what the hell is that?” he asked in a tone his active attempt to control his voice.
“Don’t panic. It’s alright. I promise it’s okay,” I urged, trying to keep him calm. Our bathroom truly wasn’t big enough to accommodate the break down he probably felt building.
“How do you figure that? I walk in and my gorgeous fiancée is in the bath,” he began explaining, “ and has a tail. Is that okay? Is that really, alright, Laura?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” I kidded, trying to ease the moment’s tension.
“Laura, what the hell? Seriously. What’s going on?”
He stared, shaking his head back and forth, attempting to piece together the situation.
“I have a tail. That’s all.”
“That’s all? That’s freaking all?”
“Well, I have a tail because I’m actually a mermaid.”
“A mermaid? Oh, so that’s it. Nothing big going on here. Just a mermaid in my tub.”
He was taking it far better than I anticipated, but I knew he could become overwhelmed if I said the wrong thing next.
“Why don’t you go sit down. I’ll dry off and come explain,” I said.
“Dry off? Like become human again?” he asked.
“Kind of. When I’m not submerged in water, my tail turns back to legs. I’ll explain everything in a minute.”
“No, no. I don’t want to go sit down, Laura.” Instead, he put down the toilet seat and sat there. He reached out to finger my fin the way someone would try to touch a butterfly wing.
“Go ahead,” I urged. If he wanted to know, I’d tell him. If he wanted to see or touch it, I’d let him. Anything to keep him calm and in my life.
With his voice low, quiet, he asked, “When were you going to tell me?”
This man amazed me. He sat there, stroking my tail, moving his fingers over my fin and scales, and his only concern was when I was going to tell him.
“Honestly, I wasn’t sure you’d even want to know.”
“Want to know? This isn’t the kind of thing I wouldn’t want to know, Laura. This isn’t the kind of thing that I should have a choice to ignore. Or that you have a choice not to mention.”
“I understand, but I couldn’t decide how you’d react, Tom. And once you knew, you couldn’t unknow.”
“So, were you going to tell me before our baby was born with a fish tail? Or were you going to avoid water the rest of our lives?”
“Our baby? We don’t have a baby.”
“No, but you have a tail. You have a tail and that’s what you fixate on, the idea that I want us to have a baby?”
I decided the tail was enough to figure out. Now wasn’t the time to discuss the impossibilities of interspecies reproduction and why we wouldn’t have that baby.
“You’re right. And you know now, so let’s start there. Ask whatever you want?” I wante
d him to stay right were he sat, to keep talking to me about it. Suddenly, now that he knew, I wanted to tell him everything.
“Questions. Yes, I have questions.” He continued to stroke my tail. It seemed to lull him.
After a minute, he looked into my eyes, and the spark that normally sat there was even brighter. It was as if he realized he held a great treasure.
“Where did you come from?”
“The ocean,” I joked unsuccessfully. He frowned, not ready for jokes. “Okay, too soon I guess.”
“Yea, a little.”
“Well, mer lives in tribes across the globe. Most live in the oceans, but there are freshwater mer, too. My tribe, the Lunaria, lives off the coast of Massachusetts, basically in your fishing zone.”
“Tribes? What makes a tribe?” he asked.
“There are different types. My tribe is a female faction. All mermaids, no males at all. A true matriarchal society. But others are blended factions or all men.”
“And you live in the same water I fish? Why doesn’t anyone know? I mean someone must have seen or even caught a mermaid.”
“You caught one,” I laughed, and at that, he laughed too. “But I guess you meant that a little differently.”
He smiled at me, and I continued. “We’ve been in the seas for thousands of years, so we’ve watched humans explore, evolve, and expand. We’ve see your species grow and take over more and more land and sea. But we’ve also figured out ways to avoid you. I mean there are still areas of the ocean you can’t explore after all.”
“That’s true, but I figured with all the guys around here, all the fishing, someone would have told a story about mermaids somewhere.”
“I guess you haven’t listened hard enough. Don’t you remember the story your mother used to tell you about the mermaid who towed in the ship during the Revolution?”
“What? You mean the kid’s story? The one where the ship is under attack from the British?”
Falling in Deep Collection Box Set Page 45