Swimming for Sunlight

by Allie Larkin

  Bark started snoring as soon as his head hit the pillow. But I had more ideas. I sketched until the dark outside faded to lighter blue, and then I finally put my work aside and tried to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I’d used Bitsie’s address for the neoprene order, but I forgot to tell her.

  “Uh, kiddo?” she asked when I got to her house to work on the tail prototype. “Did you order this giant box of baby poop colored scuba fabric?”

  “Nope,” I said, working my poker face.

  “Smart-ass.”

  “I’m going to paint it. I swear.”

  “Good. Because it is ug-ly.”

  Before we got down to business, I showed Bitsie my Pinterest board of mermaid inspiration.

  “Oh my gosh,” she said, pointing to a picture I’d pinned of a cherub-faced porcelain mermaid holding a shell full of flowers. “My mother had that vase.” She put her hand over her mouth and stared at the screen, haunted. “So strange to see it.”

  “Not good strange, huh?” I said.

  “My father broke it.” Bitsie flashed a sad smile, and I could tell the vase wasn’t broken by accident. “But it used to be on the table in the kitchen, and she’d fill it with carnations. I thought it was so beautiful.” She stroked her wedding ring with her thumb absentmindedly, like she was checking it was still in place. “I wonder if that’s what started my love of mermaids.”

  “I like the color palette,” I said awkwardly, not knowing what else to say.

  “I’d forgotten all about that vase,” Bitsie said. “What a riot.” Her eyes were still sad.

  “You okay?”

  “I read somewhere that memories don’t adjust for perspective. The visceral ones—that hit like a flash—they trick you. I don’t feel like a seventy-five-year-old woman looking at that vase. I feel like a six-year-old.”

  I squeezed her arm. When the memories of the day my father died flashed in my brain, it was like video recorded in that moment. Nothing faded. Nothing changed.

  “It’s all in there.” Bitsie pointed to her head. “We can’t always get it out or keep it in when we want to.”

  “I’m sorry, for triggering—”

  “Oh, no, no, no!” Bitsie said, messing up my hair. “I think it’s good sometimes to stir up the muck in an old noggin. It reminds me how long I’ve been here to see things.”

  “What color carnations?”

  “Huh?”

  “What color carnations did your mom like to put in that vase?”

  “Red,” she said, smiling. “Always red.”

  “That’s the palette I was thinking about. That turquoise, like her tail, and then a bright red with bluish tones. And the rest of the colors to fit that scheme.”

  “My mother had excellent taste,” Bitsie said, nodding. “She liked things to be beautiful.”

  I remembered what she’d said about her mother telling her she’d never be pretty. “I’m going to turn you into the most gorgeous mermaid,” I said.

  Bitsie put her arm around my shoulder and squeezed. “Thanks, kiddo.” She looked at the picture of the mermaid vase again. “My mother didn’t have a lot of say in her life.” She nodded, like she was trying to coax forward the right perspective. “Not like I did either. That was our narrative then. We waited to be chosen, hoping we’d like the life we got. My mother got a shitty consolation prize. Mine was better, but not quite right until I had more say.”

  “I sort of felt like that.” When Eric asked me to marry him, it was like I’d passed a test. I’d pretended to be normal skillfully enough to go on to the next level. “The thing I liked best about Eric was that he wanted me.” I sighed. “And then, he didn’t.”

  “But you had a say. Even if you didn’t exercise it.” Bitsie smiled at me kindly. “When I was your age, if I didn’t have my father or husband cosign, I couldn’t get a bank account.”

  “Wait! Really?” It sounded like an ancient rule that might have been true for Bitsie’s grandmother, not something that could have been so recent.

  “We’ve come a long way, baby,” Bitsie said dryly. “We used to need men to exist in the world.”

  “I sort of understood the oppression, but I always thought of that time period as pretty dresses and making canapés for dinner parties, and fun Donna Reed stuff.” It hit me that my understanding of Nan and Bitsie’s lives came from movies I watched on AMC.

  “Sure,” Bitsie said. “The fun kind of oppression. Ha!” Her laugh was one loud staccato bark.

  “So this isn’t right.” I pointed to the screen. “When you see this stuff, it makes you kind of claustrophobic, huh?” I took a deep breath. Work over ego. Work over ego. It was my mantra in college to fight the frantic feeling that fuels the urge to throw good work after bad. These costumes were supposed to make Nan and Bitsie happy. They weren’t worth anything if they didn’t. But no one likes being wrong, and it takes time for feelings to adjust. That’s why an artist needs an honor code. Work over ego.

  Bitsie paused for a moment, then said, “I think there’s joy in honoring where we came from. But I want to celebrate who we are now.”

  “What does that look like?” It was a question my favorite design teacher in college always asked.

  “I don’t know. But I think you’ll get there,” Bitsie said, smiling. “Do you have to know to start the tail? I mean, a tail is a tail is a tail, right?”

  “True.” No matter what we did, the mermaids were going to have tails. We had engineering work to figure out. “You ready to help?”

  “Bunny always got annoyed with me when I tried to help her. I’m not good at straight lines.”

  I laughed.

  “That’s not a gay joke,” Bitsie said, grinning.

  “I was remembering when you tried to teach me how to play hopscotch. Nan saw the board you drew on the driveway and thought I did it and wanted the school to do extra testing on me.”

  “Holy crap!” Bitsie said, laughing. “I forgot about that.”

  “I’ll do all the cutting,” I told her. “You be my model.”

  Bitsie put one hand behind her head and jutted out her hip. “Dah-ling, I’d be delighted,” she said in a funny husky voice.

  I traced her figure in the living room so she wouldn’t have to lie on the floor in Bunny’s room. I told her there wasn’t enough space in there.

  “It’s too quiet in here,” she said when we’d finished making Bitsie-shaped markings on the neoprene. “I can’t listen to Bunny’s records and I don’t even remember what I liked that wasn’t hers, so it’s always too quiet.”

  I handed her my phone, and she looked through my music while I pinned fabric.

  “Oh! I love this song!” she yelped, and turned up the sound.

  “Barracuda” by Heart blared at us, tinny on the phone speaker. I laughed. “Good choice.”

  “I think we should do a number to this,” she said, shaking her hips.

  I watched Bitsie dance and tried to figure out what a mermaid dancing to “Barracuda” should wear.

  Eventually, she settled in to help me pin the fabric together. When we’d placed the last pins, I tried to pick up the tail, and we discovered she’d pinned her side to the carpet.

  I laughed, but her face fell. “See? This is why Bunny never let me help.”

  “You have helped me. I needed the moral support.”

  “You’ve always been a sweet one, Kay,” Bitsie said, patting my cheek.

  I repinned her section as fast as I could so it wouldn’t look like much of a setback.

  Three hours later, with minimal trial and error, we had a rough approximation of a tail. Bitsie tried it on over her black and white polka dot tankini, her legs threaded through the slit I’d made in the back so she could still walk once she put the costume on. In the water, legs in place, the neoprene would overlap and stay closed.

  “You look like a million bucks,” I said.

  “Only a million?” Bitsie asked, holding one hand up, the oth
er out to the side, like a game show hostess. “This tail alone knocks it up to at least two point five. If we ignore the color.”

  I laughed. “You’re right. You look like three million bucks. Four, once I paint it.”

  “Let’s try it out!” Bitsie said.

  Panic hit like lightning, sharp and low in my belly.

  “I can’t,” I told her, collecting my stuff. “I have to feed Bark.”

  She could see the terror in my eyes. I knew she could.

  “Oh, honey, wait!” she said. “Let’s have a cup of tea.”

  “No, no. I know you want to try it out. I’ll send Nan over. Don’t test it without her, okay?”

  “Why don’t we go out and get a milkshake?”

  “I’m sorry, Bits,” I said, willing myself to make eye contact. “I need to go home.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I get it.”

  “Promise me you won’t get in the pool with that tail until Nan gets here?”

  Bitsie shrugged. “I’ll wait.” But I wasn’t sure if that was a false promise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I called Nan the second I stepped outside. She didn’t pick up, so I ran all the way home. Her car was in the driveway.

  Bark ran to greet me, tail wagging, Murray in his mouth.

  “Hello?” I called. “Nan?”

  I heard her talking to someone in her bedroom. Was she on the phone? I picked up the house line but got a dial tone. I tried her cell phone again.

  Then I heard a male voice.

  I blushed. She wasn’t expecting me back so soon.

  “Kay?” Nan called from her room.

  “Yeah,” I said. I wanted to leave again, let her have her space, but I didn’t want Bitsie to try out the tail alone.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Are you okay?” I yelled.

  “Bitsie called,” Nan shouted, and I realized Bitsie had been tasked with keeping me busy. That’s why she was trying to get me to go for a milkshake.

  “It’s okay,” I heard Nan whisper. “It’s okay.”

  Nan came down the hall, hair a bit messy, lipstick freshly applied.

  “Do you have a houseguest?” I whispered.

  She smiled sheepishly, her cheeks trembling.

  “It’s okay that you do,” I said. “It’s a good thing, right?”

  She nodded, tears in her eyes.

  “Then you don’t need to cry.” I hugged her.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” Nan said. “I loved your grandfather.”

  “I know,” I said, rubbing her back in small circles the way she did for me as a kid. “I think this is good, Nan.”

  She pulled away and looked at me. “You do?”

  “Of course!” I was more shocked that she thought anyone would be upset about her moving on from a man who’d died twenty-two years ago.

  “At first, it didn’t seem like anything to mention,” she said. “In case it didn’t work out. Then you—when you lost the baby again, I didn’t think that was the time. And then you got divorced—I didn’t want to go flaunting—plus, I didn’t know if you would have a problem with me being with someone other than your Gramps. Or you’d think it was ridiculous. An old woman with a boyfriend.”

  “I can’t believe you thought it was a problem! I’m so sorry.” I hoped I hadn’t done or said something that might have made her think it was. “I want you to have someone you love.”

  “I do,” Nan said. “I love him. I’m quite sure of that now.”

  “Can I meet him?” I asked, shaky in my limbs. I worried if she’d hidden him this whole time, he might not be good for her, the same way I’d kept Eric and Nan apart as much as possible.

  Then Isaac walked in and I broke down in tears.

  “Oh,” Nan said, rushing to hug me. “I knew this would be weird! I’m so sorry.”

  I struggled to get enough composure to say something thoughtful, but it wasn’t coming, so I shouted, “Happy tears! Happy tears!”

  Isaac smiled. I smiled back.

  “You are a ridiculous woman,” I said to Nan, “to think I’d be anything other than thrilled.”

  * * *

  Nan left to help Bitsie test her tail. Isaac made coffee for the both of us from a bag of good stuff he kept hidden in a cabinet over the refrigerator. He assembled Nan’s ancient percolator with ease, completely comfortable in her kitchen. He’d probably been the one to set up the wifi.

  We took our coffee to the dining room and I spread my sketches out on the table.

  “Well, now,” Isaac said, beaming, “you have done a lovely job.” I felt like a little kid showing off my artwork. It was weird, maybe, but it was good.

  “I’m still stuck,” I told him, explaining as much as I could about why my original plans wouldn’t work, without giving away what Bitsie told me in confidence.

  “Being stuck is a part of the process, right?” Isaac asked. “Work is better for the struggle.”

  * * *

  That night, Isaac ate dinner with us at the small kitchen table that was usually just for me and Nan. Nan lit a votive candle. She served some sort of strange millet dish that Isaac seemed to enjoy. We exchanged shy smiles, and talked about Bitsie and the tail.

  “It’s better than the ones we had, Kay,” Nan said breathlessly. “So much better. And I love the overlap you did in the back.”

  “It’s a great safety feature,” Isaac said, nodding.

  Nan looked at him quizzically.

  “I saw it on her sketches. I like the way the dorsal fin hides the overlap.”

  “It looks amazing in person,” Nan said, spooning more millet on Isaac’s plate even though he hadn’t asked for seconds.

  “You taught me that trick, Isaac,” I said. “Embellishment to hide a seam.”

  Isaac blushed. “I think—” he said, and then cleared his throat. “I think I can get some fabric donated.”

  “Really?”

  “I know a few people,” he said, grinning.

  “That would be lovely,” Nan said.

  When we finished eating, Nan stood up, stacking Isaac’s empty plate on her own. Isaac narrowed his eyebrows, giving her a mock-stern look. She sat down again and let him clear the table. He whistled while he did the dishes.

  I made a pot of tea as an excuse to extend the moment a little longer. It was the exact kind of family dinner I’d dreamed about since my dad died. It amazed me that someone else’s love story could make me feel a little more complete.

  Isaac went home after tea. I didn’t know how to tell them it wouldn’t bother me if he stayed. Maybe that wasn’t their agreement. Maybe it would put Nan on the spot.

  After Nan went to bed, I called Bitsie.

  “I can’t believe you knew this whole time.”

  “Best acting of my life, kid.” She laughed. “Hey, the tail works great.”

  “Nan said!”

  “It’s so much better than what we used to have!” She sighed. “Also, kid, I needed that. The whole project. The day with you.”

  “Me too,” I told her. “And we’ve barely even started.”

  “I know!” she said, her voice full of glee.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The conversation I’d planned to have with Nan about how I was fine with Isaac sleeping over probably didn’t need to happen. I got home from work the next night to a note that said, Bowling with Bitsie. Staying at Isaac’s. XO Nan.

  Luca hadn’t called. Not hearing from him meant I could honestly say I didn’t know how to get equipment and we’d have to take photos on solid ground. But I was disappointed anyway. I wanted more of him. I wanted him to want more of me. I made a concerted effort to stay away from Facebook. The risk of sending him a dopey late-night message was too high.

  Nan and Bitsie wanted to start shooting for the calendar in a few weeks. At the theatre in Rochester, costumes were my only job. Now I was committed to working at Isaac’s full-time and helping Mo two nights a week, and I felt a little frantic about al
l there was to do. I decided to take full advantage of the night alone.

  “Okay, Bark,” I said. “What music should we listen to?”

  Bark got excited, like maybe he knew the word music. I didn’t want him to think we were going to dance in the living room and not make it happen, so we started my brainstorming session with a good jump around to “Barracuda.” If Bitsie loved that song, maybe there was something in it that would send me in the right direction.

  I flailed around the room, Bark following in a goofy gallop.

  Rock and Roll Mermaids? Sharp barracuda teeth? Long hair like Ann and Nancy Wilson? Should these mermaids have long hair? Nan and Bitsie looked great with their spiky pixie cuts, and I didn’t want to shove them into the image of youth normally attached to mermaids. I’d never seen a depiction of an old mermaid. Were they were supposed to be eternally young like vampires? Did they have a short life span? Whatever the standing myth was, it had to change. These mermaids were about wisdom, not youth.

  When the song was over, I scribbled Wisdom! in my notebook and underlined it. But wisdom brought to mind flowing gray Earth Mother hair, muted pinks and purples. It wasn’t the right word. I crossed it out and wrote Vitality! Strength! Joy! and something clicked in my head. I always felt self-conscious doing artsy-fartsy, free-thought stuff, but I never got anywhere without it. If I failed to do the inspiration work, I usually got stuck later in the process. The design started to feel false, and moving forward would get harder and harder, like I had to drag along the weight of all the wrong choices that snowballed from the first one. It was more productive to do the amorphous creative thought work first, even if it felt silly.

  I sat on the couch with Nan’s mermaid photo album, flipping through the pages. There was a picture of the ladies in dresses and high heels. Hannah’s A-line dress had bold circles along the hem, like bubbles. Woo Woo had a string of oversized fake pearls. Nan’s hair was in an actual beehive, and Bitsie wore a checkered trapeze dress that showed off her skinny legs.

  The picture made me think of the B-52s video for “Love Shack.” My dad had a bunch of their cassette tapes in his car. I thought the deadpan way Fred Schneider spoke lyrics was hysterical, so sometimes my dad spoke the words to other songs to make me laugh.