The Mermaid's Daughter

by Ann Claycomb

  “Stop that, you,” she whispers as she pulls away.

  I take a drink of champagne and bat my eyes at her over the glass. “I’ll never do it again.”

  As soon as we walk back into the reception, Carianne comes over to congratulate me, fizzing with her own excitement and post-singing high. Behind her, Tom, the tenor who considers it his personal mission to make sure none of us take ourselves too seriously, sighs loudly and declares that now I’m probably going to be even more insufferable than I already was.

  “Listen,” he says, “the only thing that’s saving you from a terminal case of ‘soprano-itis’ is the way you walk, that bouncy thing you do on the balls of your feet.”

  Another moment not to look at Harry. “How is that saving me?”

  “Because it’s not compatible with wilting, darling. I mean, you haven’t got the bosom to sail around like a Wagner soprano, thank God, but if you didn’t have that funny little-girl-in-high-heels walk you’ve got, you’d be in sad danger of permanently drooping, all flower-needs-water, you know?”

  I sigh, shake my head sadly. “I do. I often feel just the urge to wilt and I have to stop myself. But you know what the worst of it is?”

  “What?” Carianne asks.

  I lean in and they all crane forward to hear my stage whisper.

  “Sometimes, when I’m not paying attention, I catch myself wringing my hands.”

  Even Tom laughs at that, then lifts his glass to me before taking another sip.

  “Have you noticed how good this champagne is? Far above the usual swill they serve at these things.”

  “It’s Veuve Clicquot, Tom,” Harry says, amused. “I saw them pouring a tray behind that screen.” She gestures with her glass and we all turn to the staging area from which the waiters have been emerging with trays of champagne flutes and passed hors d’oeuvres.

  “It’s not surprising, really, is it?” Carianne says. “I mean, they couldn’t exactly serve her”—she nods to Ruzena, who’s talking to our program director and two board members—“boxed wine and expect her to pick up cheese and crackers off a big tray, could they?”

  “No,” Tom says thoughtfully. He’s assessing the screens, his eyes narrowed.

  “Tom,” Harry says, “absolutely not. Don’t even think about it.”

  But he just grins at her, tosses back the rest of his champagne, and starts making his way through the crowd.

  “What’s he doing?” Carianne asks.

  Harry shakes her head and I laugh, both of us watching him duck back behind the screen.

  “He’s going to steal some champagne,” I say. “I hope he gets a couple bottles. This stuff is amazing.”

  Tom has a liquid tenor voice and the body of a barely pubescent boy. When we get going, the two of us are insatiable instigators—of parties, excursions into downtown Boston, spontaneous performances of operatic death scenes on the sidewalk. Anything to distract us when we’re not actively singing. Tom is the only friend I have who needs to sing the way I do. When he’s singing he’s not short or slight, his penis isn’t too small to get the boys he wants, his father hasn’t disowned him for being a faggot.

  Tom and I come off the stage like we’re coming down from a drug trip. We need champagne to drink and sprays of roses to clutch, the stems dripping on our clothes, the thorns poking our forearms, the fragrance of the wet petals at once fresh and sharp and deliciously artificial, the smell of a lover who wears too much perfume.

  I watch Tom appear from behind the screen again, this time carrying a case of empty champagne bottles, with several collapsed boxes tucked under his arm and a trash bag in his hand. He’s “helping” the catering staff, who are always panicky and stretched too thin, but I’m guessing that the bottles in the box aren’t all empty. He winks at me as he heads for the back hallway to dispose of the “trash.”

  “Kathleen,” Harry says, “remember you have to call your father.”

  “I will. I’ll call him when we get home.”

  “Well, if we’re going to try to drive out to the Vineyard, we still have to pack, there are at least three loads of laundry to do, and the place is a disaster.” She sets her glass down on the windowsill and I take my cue.

  “Let’s go then. Anyone you need to say goodbye to, or can we just slip out?”

  “Why don’t you go out the back like Tom did?” Carianne suggests. “Maybe if they see all the students leaving that way, it’ll throw them off his trail.”

  MY FATHER WAS a pianist when he first came to Boston from Ireland, twenty years old with a baby and a scholarship to study an instrument he’d never owned. He’d only ever played the piano at school or at church and he’d never even seen a grand piano. For the first few years we were here, he left me with a sitter while he was in class or playing in various nightclubs or Irish pubs to pick up cash. Then when I was four or five, he started taking me with him to work, making a nest for me behind the piano using our coats and scarves, feeding me bar food for dinner. I tease him that it’s his fault I can’t catch even a whiff of chicken wings without gagging.

  When I tell people at the conservatory that my father is Robin Conarn, their eyes widen. He switched from straight performance study to composing when he applied to graduate school, and now he’s one of the most admired composers of contemporary classical music in the country. My first year of college, he was interviewed in the Arts section of the Boston Globe. A composition major down the hall thought he was so cute that she cut out his picture and pinned it to her door, so I got to pass by my father every day as I rushed to class. His smile in that picture is shy, almost apologetic, his blond hair cut long over his forehead and falling close to his eyes. It was the same smile he used to give me when he would notice me watching him play at a bar, as if he was embarrassed to be caught doing what he was good at. Then he’d wink at me, or make a silly face, and be my daddy again.

  I call him while Harry picks up the laundry scattered around the room and sorts it by color. He says hello so distractedly that I can see him perfectly. He can’t be actually composing; he doesn’t answer the phone at all when he’s at the piano. But he’s clearly working through something. I picture him standing at the kitchen counter with a knife in his hand that’s dripping mustard onto the piece of bread he’s supposed to be slathering. When I was living at home, I’d find him like that all the time: frozen midaction, frowning slightly, listening to music unfurling in his head.

  “Oh, Daddy,” I wail, “it was just awful! She was mean to me, said I was the worst singer she’d ever heard, made me stop singing after only a few bars and put her hands over her ears.”

  Busy piling clothes in a laundry basket, Harry snorts with laughter. At the other end of the phone there is a moment of silence; then Robin says dryly, “That’s terrible, Kathleen. Surely she could have let you down a bit more gently.”

  “No,” I say regretfully. “She just told me I had to stop singing right away. She told me I was going to go crazy if I didn’t, or kill myself.”

  Dammit. I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  Harry’s head snaps up and there’s another silence from Robin, this one not amused.

  “Daddy. It was a joke. She was talking about all the roles I was going to play.”

  My father has a musician’s internal ear for rhythm, for pitch and tone, that he usually reserves for music he’s listening to or creating himself. But when he gets frightened for me, he tunes that ear to my voice, my movements, even my breath. Even when I was a little girl, I couldn’t fool him. I’d lie awake in bed with my feet out from under the covers because even the drape of the sheet made them hurt, convinced that if I turned on the light and checked I’d see blood. I couldn’t even hope to sleep. I would concentrate on just lying still and breathing deep the way Robin had taught me—a singer’s breathing—and willing myself not to cry. And all he had to do was pass by my doorway and he would know. He’d come in, pick me up, take me to the bathroom, and run water in the sink, then hold me the
re, in the dark, with water running over my feet until the pain eased enough that I fell asleep and he carried me back to bed, my feet still wet.

  I told Harry about this before she met Robin. After she met him, she said, “I wonder how long he stood there at the sink those nights, after you fell asleep.”

  I don’t know. I don’t remember. But I know what she was telling me, and she was right: he would have stood there all night.

  “I did hope we were still in the joke,” he says now, and I talk too fast, talking over him to fix it.

  “It was her joke, actually. She was very grand, very conscious of herself onstage, you know. And she was praising me, that was her way, by talking about all the roles I’ll play where I die or go crazy . . .”

  I trail off, hoping the explanation has done its work. He sounds thoughtful when he answers, but still tense with that humming silence of his that means he’s listening to me with all his senses.

  “All your roles, hmm? So she wasn’t totally negative about your future as a singer?”

  “Well . . .” I smile, knowing he can hear that in my voice too. “Not totally.”

  “I’m not a fan of Lucia,” he says, “though of course it’s a natural part for you because of the red hair, the Scottish setting. It’s about as close to Ireland as you’re likely to get in an opera. There’s that one short piece about Deirdre, but that’s not a full production piece. It’s a good piece, though.”

  “You’ll have to write me a part, then, Daddy,” I say. “Deirdre’s good. How about Emer and Cuchulain? I could do a good Emer, don’t you think?”

  “I’ll get right on that,” he says. “You know, in my spare time. Maybe I could just do an Irish story for this latest commission. Do you think they’d notice?”

  Robin’s writing an opera based on The Scarlet Letter, which means he had to read the book this winter. Harry was delighted; she’s a fiend for books and kept calling out to me while I was on the phone with Robin to find out what chapter he was on so she could know what he thought.

  “How’s that going, by the way?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer right away. I can hear the muffled sound of another voice in the room, his girlfriend, Tae, then Robin answering, holding the phone away from his mouth. “It’s Kathleen. She did the master class today.” I hear him laugh, say, “I’ll tell her,” then he is talking to me again.

  “Tae got an e-mail from her friend in the Boston Symphony today who was there. What’s this about a standing ovation?”

  “Oh, well.” I flush with pride and mortification now, though I didn’t during the master class. When the audience rose to their feet this afternoon, I convinced myself that it was an ovation for the diva, acclaim for her mere presence. Plus, she was telling me that I was going to go mad.

  “‘Oh, well’?” Robin says. “That’s all you have to say for yourself? The last master class I gave, half the audience fell asleep. One fellow in the front row was reading the paper. And you got a standing ovation? How many people were there?”

  I don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to remember those moments onstage, Ruzena’s hands imprisoning mine.

  “You know,” I say, “I don’t bug you about the whole ‘renowned composer’ thing.”

  Robin laughs. “I tried to get a vanity plate with that on it, but I couldn’t condense the words enough.”

  I hear Tae in the background again, Robin answering her.

  “What?” I ask. “Does Tae have a solution?”

  “No,” he says. “She thinks we both suffer from a shortage of artistic ego. But she knows plenty of conductors who have extra.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yes,” Robin says. “So are you and Harry still planning to try to catch a few days at the Vineyard this week?”

  “Well, if you count throwing things in a duffel bag and driving out there without even a ferry reservation, much less a hotel room, as ‘planning’—then yes.” The impulsive trip was my idea, of course, and Harry is racked with nerves over the possibility—okay, probability—that we’ll end up stranded in a crummy hotel on the mainland or have to just turn around and come home. She’s not big on uncertainties. I know we should just stay in town, but I need to see the ocean. Call it a fix, which is how I put it to Harry when I suggested the trip. Just joking, of course.

  “Can I offer an alternative?” Robin asks.

  “Sure.”

  “One of my board members has a timeshare—”

  “One of your board members?” I find this hilarious. Harry has disappeared with the laundry and I am lying on the bed with my feet up in the air, flexing my toes like a dancer, as if that will help, which it doesn’t. It just doesn’t make it worse.

  “Stop it, Kathleen,” Robin says. “You sound—”

  “Happy? Silly? Manic?” I let my legs fall back to the bed. He’s onto me, as usual.

  “You sound like you need a break,” he says. “It’s a long winter up there—”

  This is also hilarious. “Up here? In the frozen north that is Boston? Is it warmer down there in tropical Philadelphia?”

  “—and one of my board members has a timeshare at a resort on Sanibel Island. He’s been trying to get Tae and me down there. He called last night and tried to persuade us to go this coming week. He and his family were going to but something came up with his kids and they can’t. So the place is going to be empty.”

  “Sanibel Island?”

  “Gulf coast of Florida. A lot warmer than Martha’s Vineyard this time of year. You’d actually be able to go in the water.”

  I sit up. “Seriously? Really? We could go? When?”

  Now he knows he has me. “How about tomorrow? I’ll call and confirm, then make plane reservations. I’ve got enough frequent flyer miles to take several people to Tokyo and back, or so Tae tells me.”

  “I have to ask Harry. Hang on.”

  I leave the phone on the bed with the line engaged, go out to the kitchen to find her. I am manic now, thinking about the Florida sea: warm enough to swim in, clear and blue enough to see through to the bottom where it’s not too deep. My feet burn and the pain inside my mouth flares up. I swallow it back, hold on to the counter and resist the urge to put up a hand to feel for my tongue.

  Harry comes in the front door carrying the empty laundry basket, sees me, and stops. She puts the basket down, goes to the sink, and fills a glass with water.

  “Drink.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t try to talk. You know you can’t; it just makes it worse. Drink.”

  I drink a few sips, then the rest of the glass in gulps. It helps, not like seawater would—will—but some.

  “Robin’s still on the phone,” I say. I can talk if I think carefully about how to shape each word. “He wants to know if we want a free trip to Florida.”

  Harry raises her eyebrows. “And did you tell him yes?”

  I shake my head, still carefully. “I wanted to check with you first. We’d have to leave tomorrow.” My hand hurts, clenched around the glass, a silly, ordinary pain from holding on too tight. Harry leans over the counter and tucks my hair behind my ear.

  “I am frequently surprised that you’re not more of a brat,” she says, “considering how incredibly spoiled you are.”

  She lets her fingertips linger on my cheek. I can’t even register her touch, I’m too focused on hearing her say it’s okay, we can go. Of course she’s going to say it, of course she will, this isn’t a self-destructive impulse, this is a vacation . . .

  “I guess I have to rethink my packing strategy then,” she says, and I grab her hand and kiss her palm, fly back to the phone on feet so light they barely hurt at all, and tell Robin yes, yes, we want to go. I say thank you and tell him to tell “his” board member thank you, feel my tongue working again, though I trip over it every other word.

  I have to pack. Bathing suit, three kinds of suntan lotion for my Irish skin, sandals, sundresses, and ponytail holders for my hair. One more day before I
am in the sea again, for the first time in nearly a year. I sink down onto the bed, shaking, holding a folded pair of shorts in my hands. Just a night in this bed and a ride in a cab, then a plane, another cab . . . one more day.

  Here Below they speak of us—when they dare to speak of us—with scorn like a shell encasing their fear. They call us scavengers, bottom dwellers, scuttling crabs. They deny the value of the things we collect, in jars and nets and sharp-edged bowls of coral, until they need something. A salve for a wound that won’t heal, a glimpse of things that have not happened yet, a swift-acting poison. Then they sidle through our gates, crablike themselves in their clenched longings, their furtive needs.

  We have always preferred it so. We desire many things, but have never wished to be at the heart of a story. Magic collects at the edges of stories, eddies before them and surges in their wakes. We are content—more than content—to lurk, to hover, to come behind and pick up the pieces.

  Nor did we mean to wrap ourselves into this story, though we still recall the beginning clearly enough to know that we could not have avoided our part. We sold a potion to a love-struck mermaid, took payment from her, sent her on her way. Yet since then, seven daughters of seven women—beginning with that foolish, beautiful girl—have been bound to us and we to them. We have felt their pain when they have eased it in seawater, for pain travels swiftly on the coldest currents. Kathleen’s, which must travel a long, long way to us, tastes of the sweet petals and bitter hearts of black anemones, which should be impossible. The flowers grow only in caves on the ocean floor and were once steeped in blood and water by warriors Below for courage in battle.

  We would gladly be free of this story. Instead we must keep telling it—we, who have always kept to the edges, must tell the tale to those who are living it. For years now we have been trying to tell it to Kathleen, but an ocean separates us and there are limits to our power. We have sent dreams and we have snatched at her whenever she has swum in the sea, but it has not been enough. She must know the whole story she is living, so she can see how to end it. And we must give her the knife we made so long ago, the knife we have given them all, the knife that has returned to us seven times now, once for each useless death.