by Julia Drake
There was a paper pocket in the back cover of Guide My Sleigh that held my parents’ wedding invitation, Sam’s birth announcement, and a receipt for a fur coat cleaning from years ago—yup, classic Sterling Rudolph II. There was a note, too, on Lyric Aquarium letterhead.
Sterling, Thank you so very much for the wedding photograph, as well as your other generous donations—these will make the perfect addition to the exhibit! Do let me know if you track down those letters. I’d love to include Fidelia’s own words, if possible. J.
The letter was dated over eight years ago, but maybe Joan remembered. My new shellfish blood-brother anagram would love Fidelia’s own words, too.
Who knew? If we looked, maybe Liv and I might find some treasure.
SAPPHIRE OF THE SEA
First thing Tuesday morning at the aquarium, I found Joan in her office, deeply engaged in what appeared to be an archaic form of book balancing. I was nervous to interrupt, especially because I hadn’t spoken much to her since that time she’d scolded me for calling myself “inept.” Joan was always shooting around, either in her office on the phone, or rushing to help guests interpret exhibits, saying things like “prebiotic soup” or “geologic time,” showing off sea stars in the palm of her hand.
Now, with a pencil clamped between her teeth and a red pen tucked behind her ear, she stabbed at her calculator so violently that her desk shook. Eraser shavings pebbled her yellow legal pad; she blew them clear to make a note with the red pen, which she then regarded, scowling. Sam’s poem hung on the wall behind her, green construction paper with blue marker letters and a kid’s drawing of a snail. Boris snoozed beneath her desk, oblivious to her labor.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said. “Do you have a moment?”
Through her pink reading glasses, Joan’s gaze was startled and blank, like she didn’t recognize me. I knew this look well. If you interrupted my dad in his study, he’d blink at you, adjusting slowly back into the known world. My mother reminded us, over and over, of what a hard worker he was.
She pulled the pencil from her teeth. “Of course! Come in, come in. What can I do for you?”
This warm invitation was just like my dad, too. He’d move a stack of papers from his extra chair and run lines with me while his computer pinged and his phone buzzed. He probably lost hours of sleep as a result. Just another kindness I’d taken for granted.
“I found this the other day.” I passed her the note I’d found in Guide My Sleigh. “I’ve gotten interested in Ransome and Fidelia. Or, at least a friend has. I’m helping her.”
“Wow. Ancient history,” Joan said, adjusting her glasses. “But believe it or not, I do remember writing this. Supposedly, your grandmother was in possession of Fidelia’s letters—ones she’d written to Ransome and to their sons. We were redoing the History of Lyric display at the time, and Eliza thought I might be interested.”
“Nothing ever came of it?”
“No, the letters never materialized. Sterling was a bit flighty. I’m sure you know.” She gave me a wry smile and stood from her desk. Boris, awake now, yawned and stretched his front legs. “Let me see what I have here, though. Eliza never came back for the files, I remember that, because I reminded her about twelve times….” She opened a drawer in the filing cabinet across her office, and I stole a peep at her legal pad. A scribble of cross-outs and dollar signs, red numbers being added to more red numbers. A lengthy to-do list columned down the right-hand side of the page. In the margin, Joan had doodled a ship being dragged down by an octopus.
I didn’t even realize it was possible to work this hard for an aquarium. Boris shot me a look that said, very plainly, Of course you didn’t, you dope.
“Aha!” Joan cried. She pulled a file loose and raised it above her head, victorious. “This is what we’d dug up. A lot of it came from your grandmother, actually. Did you know that Ransome was an amateur artist? She even had some of his sketches.”
I flipped open the folder: there were enough newspaper clippings and photographs for a bona fide primary resource document bonanza. Liv was going to be so happy. I couldn’t wait to see the look on her face.
“Thank you so much,” I said. “I’ll look for those letters.”
“Wonderful. Anything else I can do for you?”
I stared at the ring of lipstick around her pencil. Boris raised his eyebrows at me, expectant.
“I want to help more around the aquarium,” I blurted. “I know I’m new. But if you can think of anything I can do. I want to be more useful.”
She broke into an enormous smile. “That would be lovely, Violet. I’m sure we’ll think of something.”
Downstairs, Orion was being trailed around the touch tank by Andy, our most loyal patron. Since the day I’d failed to properly explain the gender practices of the potbellied sea horse, he’d come nearly every day, often carrying a tome as thick as his torso. Andy, to quote his mother, was “a handful.” Andy, to quote Andy, “preferred a good book to a playdate.” I had little patience for him (in fact, sometimes I hid from him behind the gift shop counter), but Orion was good with him. Today, though, Orion seemed as wilted as Joan.
“Were you up all night dreaming of Liv?” I asked.
“Ha-ha. I’ve been here since five. Joan called. One of the filters on the turtle tank broke, so I was dealing with that all morning….”
“If the odds of finding Louise were one in two million,” Andy said, “what are the odds of finding six? In a six-month period?”
“But now I think one of the turtles is looking a little peaked, so I might have to take her to the vet….”
“Or the odds of finding ten in a year?”
“But who knows when I’m going to do that, because we’ve got this camp coming in today—”
“Orion! I’m asking you a question!” Andy said.
Orion blinked down at Andy. “I don’t know, Andy. That answer involves a lot of math.” He looked at me. “Can you drive the turtle to the vet?”
“I don’t have a license.”
“Shoot,” Orion said, and he looked so peaked I wanted to take him to the vet.
“Aren’t you a grown-up?” Andy asked me.
“Not a very good one,” I admitted. I thought of Joan, the pile of eraser shavings. Of the easy and stress-free day that stretched out ahead of me—arguably about as easy as Boris’s, sleeping at her feet. Why hadn’t anyone called me to come in early?
“I can manage the floor today, if that helps.”
Orion hesitated. “Are you sure? The camp’s a nature camp. They wanted a talk. Something science-y. I was going to give my usual spiel about Louise.” Ah, yes. The usual spiel. How did he normally start that? What’s more uncommon: a blue moon or a blue lobster? Surely the answer was lobster. Right?
“Can you handle them? Camps are good business for us, but most of them have been going to the other aquarium. Joan really wants us to start rebuilding our educational model. Especially since we can’t afford penguins.”
Those fucking penguins. They’d be my undoing.
“Sure,” I said. “Not a problem.” My palms were already starting to sweat.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Orion said.
“You’re in trouble,” Andy said as soon as Orion had left.
“What did I just volunteer to give? A talk?”
“A science-y talk. To a nature camp,” Andy clarified, blinking up at me through his thick lenses.
“Dammit.”
“Language.” Andy put his hands on his hips and eyed me like a stern grandmother. “Have you ever even left the gift shop?”
“No, Andy, I’m actually a troll and the gift shop’s my home and at night I sleep in a fort made of stuffed animals and sweatshirts.”
Andy giggled, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Orion had taught me some things, true, and the training manual had been way more interesting than I’d originally thought, but I still kept my interaction with visitors to a minimum. It was one thing to recit
e lines, it was quite another to teach someone about how starfish regenerated arms.
I was totally and completely sunk.
“Quick, Andy. How much do you know about Louise? Enough to give a talk?”
“I’m eight,” he said.
Someone shrieked. A squadron of children in Day-Glo T-shirts barreled through the doors, their counselors dragging themselves in behind, wearing sunglasses and carrying vats of Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffees: 1000 percent hungover. The kids scattered, pressing their palms against the glass of different exhibits, dunking their whole hands in the touch tank. My poor, sweet urchin friend.
“Where are the penguins?” one screamed.
“How are you saving manatees?” said another.
“Dumb shirt,” one said.
“Cool hair,” said another, and only then did I realize they were talking to me.
“Guys, c’mon,” said the boy counselor lamely. The girl slumped against the wall and arranged her arms in a pillow for her head. It was like looking into a past-life mirror.
“Two fingers in the touch tank,” Andy murmured.
“Two fingers in the touch tank!” I yelled, too loud.
“Violet, please don’t yell, it startles our sea friends.” It was Joan and Boris. The kids swarmed Boris, petting and petting, and he reveled smugly in the attention.
“Where’s Orion?” Joan asked, gesturing to the chaos.
“I’m actually gonna talk to them.”
“Oh,” she said, in a way that managed to convey extremely polite disappointment. “You were really serious about pitching in, weren’t you?”
“Serious as a heart attack.”
Joan grimaced.
“Sorry. Bad joke.”
“Why don’t I stay and watch?” she said warily.
“That’s okay.”
“No, really,” Joan insisted. She pointed to the touch tank, where one kid appeared seconds away from diving in headfirst. “You might need a hand.”
“All right, chickadees,” I called, “circle up! Andy, can you help? Circle up!”
With help from Andy and Joan and no help from the counselors, I managed to corral the group into a circle in front of Louise. There were about twenty kids, and they couldn’t have been older than twelve, the same age I was when I’d played a Lost Boy on Broadway. I’d been a good kid then, at least at the start of things. I’d listened to adults. The Broadway director had always said I was so well-behaved, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d had other options.
“Good morning,” I said formally. So much for being myself.
“Why are you so tall?”
“Shhh,” hissed Andy.
I took a deep breath and pretended I was Orion. I imagined my eyebrows growing as shapely as his; my smile suddenly gap-toothed; my brain inclining toward the ocean. I understood tides. I loved Liv. I donated to Save the Whales and was steeped in the secrets of lobster pigment.
“Why are her eyes closed?” one kid asked.
I squinted. Twenty fidgety heads looked anywhere but at me: at their nails, their split ends, the rays circling behind them. With my index finger, I wiped off a mustache of sweat. A girl in pigtails mouthed, Ew, to her friend. Guess that one was watching.
Joan cleared her throat. Boris growled. All I could think about was Orion serenading Louise with “Moon River.” I had to say something. Anything. The spiel. Just remember the spiel.
“Did you know,” I started, not entirely sure where I was going with this, “that periwinkles come out of their snail shells if you hum to them?”
“Yeah, right,” the pigtailed girl said. Someone else giggled. God, I was surely not this difficult as a Lost Boy. Joan glared at me over the preteens. This was not off to a good start at all.
“Okay,” I started. “Maybe not. But lots of animals communicate with each other. Whales talk to whales, and dolphins talk to dolphins. We know a lot about lobsters, and one thing that we know is that they emit low-frequency vibrations—a humming sound, though the jury’s out whether it’s for self-defense or chatting.”
I straightened up. I paused. I gathered.
“A demonstration,” I said.
Then I did the only thing I knew how to do, even though I hadn’t done it in years: I sang.
I wasn’t planning on it. I started out just humming, easing my way into the notes. I focused on Louise for signs of life, a twitch of an antenna or a click of her blue claw. But the words just seemed to bubble up from somewhere inside me, from an ancient, prehistoric place. I strummed an imaginary a guitar, channeled my finest Holly Golightly, and sang to the tune of “Moon River”:
“Blue lobster
Sapphire of the sea
Marine anomaly
With claws
Oh, crustacean,
You…”
The only thing that rhymed with crustacean was bus station. I opened one eye.
“Keep going!” Andy shouted.
“I’m out of rhymes. You. Help me out.”
I gestured to the pigtailed girl, who ducked behind her friend.
“Anyone? Anyone?”
“Vibrations,” shouted a kid toward the back.
I launched back into it:
“Oh, crustacean
With vibrations
A-humming and buzzing
You crawl ’cross the sand….”
I stopped singing. All eyes were on me. No one was fidgeting.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” I said. “We’re gonna make our own songs.”
A collective groan rippled through the crowd.
“Ugh, I know, it’s so miserable, to engage your mind creatively!” That, at least, elicited a minor chuckle from Joan. “Bribe time: winner gets a super-sweet prize from the gift shop.” I’d fund it myself. My mom had always said that bribery was a useful tool.
That got them moving. They broke off into pairs, and I passed out pens and spare crosswords as scratch paper. I assigned everyone to an exhibit that served as the basis of their song, then visited each group to guide them, helping rhyme Gulf of Maine with overfishing drain, or squeezing phytoplankton into the meter. The whole exercise was decidedly more vague than science-y. But it was working. The kids were having fun. So was I.
We gathered outside by the picnic tables, using one as an improvised stage. A trio of girls sang “Ode to Koi” to the tune of “Ode to Joy.” Two kids actually wrote a rap about “Reeds & Plant Life of the Marine Coast” (these eelgrass fields are dying off / the clam population is feeling the loss). Joan even wrote—and performed—“Baleen” instead of “Jolene.” Orion returned with the turtle just as the last group, two boys, climbed up onto the picnic table to present their work.
“Our exhibit was Sea Monsters of Old,” the larger boy said, looking out at the audience. “And for our song, we used ‘Don’t Stop Believin’.’”
“How’s the turtle?” I whispered as Orion joined me in the audience.
“Clean bill of health,” he whispered back. “How’d things go here?”
The boys on the picnic table started singing:
“Just a small-town fish
Swimmin’ in a deep, deep lake…”
“What is this?” Orion asked.
“This,” I said, “is vaguely science-y.”
“Shhhh,” said Andy.
The boys sang on:
“Just some city folk
Tellin’ us it isn’t true…”
“I did what I knew best,” I said, “which, as I warned you, has very little to do with fish. But the show had to go on, so…”
“They wrote these?” Orion said.
“Yours truly made some liberal suggestions.”
“Violet! Stop talking!” hissed Andy.
He loves me now, I mouthed at Orion. Orion elbowed me, grinning, and I elbowed him back. He elbowed me, and I elbowed him, and we elbowed and elbowed and elbowed, our clumsy arms half dancing to this song that encouraged us to believe in the unbelievable.
“We
could do a whole musical series,” Orion said that night as we walked across the parking lot. We’d stayed late cleaning, and then just talking. Before we’d realized, the sun had set. I sent Toby a quick text that I was on my way, and he texted me back six donut emojis, which was a great sign for dinner.
“You write the lyrics,” Orion said, “and I’ll provide factual accuracy and harmonica accompaniment. Move things from vaguely science-y to actually science-y. Better than penguins.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” I said.
“C’mon. You got any other song titles in there?”
“‘Twist and Trout’?” I offered.
“‘Cod Only Knows.’”
“‘Kelp!’”
“Like ‘Help!’?”
“Uh-huh. Kelp! We love sea otters…” I trailed off. “Needs some work.”
“‘Earth Angler,’” Orion said.
“Like ‘Earth Angel’? That’s terrible.”
“That’s why you’re in charge of lyrics,” Orion said. “Lyric’s own lyricist. Didn’t you say you sing? You’ll have to sing for me sometime.”
“Maybe,” I said, climbing into the Apogee. The passenger-seat trash heap was so deep now it reached past my ankles. “Orion, have you heard of a recycling bin?”
“I know, I know. It’s bad.”
“I’m surprised you don’t use a thermos, given your whole eco-friendly vibe.”
“These aren’t mine. I pick them up from the side of the road. Or the beach.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You’d do the same thing if you knew how all this trash messed with habitats.” I wasn’t sure I agreed, but was flattered he thought so.
We were the only car on the road, and it was dark, dark, dark, away from the light pollution. Through the windshield, the stars were bright.
“So,” he said. “I heard you broke Liv’s foot.”
“Wow. Some go-between I am. She beat me to updating you.”
“She did. She liked you. I could tell.”
The fish was in my stomach again, flashing his tail.
“I feel really dumb even asking this,” Orion said, “but did you two…uh…talk about me?”