When We Believed in Mermaids

by O'Neal, Barbara

  “And what about you? Who took care of you?”

  “Dylan,” I say simply.

  “The runaway. Like your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he read to you. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

  I smile. “Yes. And many others.”

  “He took care of you and your sister?”

  “Yes. He worked as a sous chef in the restaurant, but he lived with us.” I suck my lip into my mouth, thinking about how to explain Dylan. “He had some problems, but honestly I don’t know how we would have gotten along without him. He was the one who got us up for school, the one who made sure we had shoes when others got too tight. He always looked at my homework right when I got home from school, even if he had a girlfriend there, which was pretty much all the time.” I am filled with the ghost of the feeling I’d had on those afternoons, sitting with Dylan and Josie, who did homework only because she was forced, and whatever girl was hanging around at the time. I grin. “He was very handsome. The most handsome boy in the whole entire world.”

  Javier smiles. “Were you jealous?”

  “Of course! He belonged to us!”

  “How much older was he?”

  “Six years older than Josie, eight older than me.” I incline my head, aware that he’s done it again—eased me into telling my story—and I give him a perplexed frown.

  “What is it?”

  “You seduce me into talking about myself.”

  “Because I want to know everything,” he says, running a hand along my shin. “And if you tell me about your sister, perhaps I can help you find her.”

  For a moment, I wonder if he could be too much. Too emotional, too intense. But I do feel a bit adrift in trying to solve this problem. Another mind on it might help. “Maybe you can.” I straighten. “Okay, let me get it all out.”

  He props his head on his hand. “Please.”

  “So, she was troubled, my sister. She refused to go to college and spent all her time partying and surfing. The last time I saw her, she stole pretty much everything I had, including my computer and all my clothes, and sold them.”

  “Oof. A terrible betrayal.”

  “Yes. I’d just finished my first residency, so I was strapped and exhausted, and I just could not believe she’d do something like that.” I rub my belly again, feeling the edges of my hurt and anger when I returned to the apartment and discovered what she’d done. “I cut her off.”

  “Understandable.”

  “Yeah.” I sigh. “Except that she supposedly died about six months later in a big explosion on a train in France. I never spoke to her again.” I look backward in time, to that moment when I was walking back to my apartment and my mother called. A ghost of the pain from that day runs below my skin. In those howling minutes, I would have done anything to get her back.

  His eyes are kind, but he doesn’t speak.

  “All this time I thought she was dead.” I spread my hands, looking at my palms as if the story is written there. “And then I saw her on the news from the nightclub fire. She was here in the CBD when it happened.”

  “You believed her to be dead until you saw her on the television? All this time?”

  “Yes.”

  He measures me for a long moment. “You must be so angry.”

  “That’s an understatement.” The slow boil of lava in my gut gurgles. “My mother urgently wanted me to come, or I might not have.”

  The large dark eyes hold steady on my face. “For my sake, I’m glad that you did.”

  I give him a half smile. “Oh, you would have found someone to warm your bed, I’m sure.”

  “She would not have been you.”

  “You don’t have to charm me, Javier.” To stave off any protestation he might bring, I shake my head. “Anyway, I guess I should get back to trying to find my sister. My mother will want a report.”

  “What have you done so far?”

  “Not much. I’ve tried to find her by name, but that’s a dead end. I do think that woman at the restaurant knew something, so I might go back there. But also—” I lift one eyebrow. “I’m looking out there at that ocean, and what I want to do is go surfing.”

  He inclines his head. “Not look for your sister?”

  “Surfing is how I think, and maybe I’ll get some ideas.” A thick discomfort rolls through my lungs, making it momentarily hard to breathe, and I straighten my shoulders to create more room. “Do you want to learn to surf?”

  He raises his hands. “No, no. I’m going to see Miguel today.”

  “All right, then.” I eat the last bite of my pastry and brush my fingers off. “I’m going to get out of here and leave you to it.”

  He captures my hand. “You’ll come to our show tonight?”

  I nod, touch his head, his thick, wavy hair. “Who else will protect you from all the women?”

  “It’s true. I will need it.” He captures my hand, kisses my palm. “See you later.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mari

  When I get home from my dinner with Nan, Simon has already tucked the children into bed. I tiptoe into each of their rooms and kiss their heads, then join Simon in the family room. He’s sprawled in his chair, the little dog in his lap, the others fast asleep on the rug. I can tell he’s exhausted. “How was your day?” I ask, running my fingers through his hair.

  He leans into my hands, moving his head, and I rub harder. “Good. Sarah took first in the fifty-meter freestyle.”

  “No kidding! That’s great. And Leo?”

  “He lost to Trevor.” His gaze wanders back to his stopped movie. “I think the lad might have Olympic talent.”

  “Trevor?”

  He nods, and a yawn overtakes him. I smile and kiss his forehead. “Watch your movie. I’m going to have a bath.”

  “How was Nan?”

  “Good.” I think of the strange spill of confession I’d allowed to fall, and I feel a vague sense of worry at the back of my neck. What if she mentions it in front of Simon? Or—

  The only way I can live the way I do is by compartmentalizing everything. “We had tapas.”

  “We’re taking the kids over to the house in the morning, right?”

  “I’ll take them. You sleep late.” I stroke his forehead, his temples. “You’ve been working hard all week.”

  “Thank you,” he says as he takes my hand and plants a kiss on the palm, “but I want to be there when they see it.”

  “Your call. Don’t stay up too late.”

  As I run my bath and strip down, rain is pouring outside. When I first moved to Auckland to live with Simon, we had a villa with a tin roof in another neighborhood, and the sound of the rain was sometimes deafening. This is hypnotic.

  But three hours later, I’m still not asleep, and I finally slip out of bed and head downstairs to make a cup of tea. As the chamomile steeps, I open my computer and allow myself to stalk my sister. She doesn’t spend much time on Facebook, but I can sometimes see photos on my mother’s timeline, which is not private or closed or anything else.

  She looks good, my mom. Her hair is still long. Her face is heavily lined, and I bet she still smokes. I know she doesn’t drink anymore by the millions of references she makes to being sober and to AA.

  But no matter how sober she is or how good she looks, I still resent her. Raising my children has given me an understanding of just how terrible my own parents were.

  A girl without a mother who protects her is a girl at the mercy of the world. How could she have been so blind to the alcohol I consumed at nine years old? Twelve? Fourteen? How could she have missed seeing the abuse that occurred right under her nose? Sarah isn’t allowed to walk on the beach alone, much less spend the night there alone.

  At times I soften, thinking of how difficult her life was then too. My father was a hard man, born in Sicily during the war, and although he loved my mother jealously and protectively, he also took other women on a whim. He thought we were all spoiled and p
rivileged, my mother and his daughters.

  And God, how the two of them drank and partied!

  The Christmas morning after Kit’s tenth birthday, we tumbled down the stairs to find not the gifts “Santa” ordinarily left but a scene of devastation. The Christmas tree blinked in mute witness to overturned furniture, broken glasses, debris scattered all over the rug. Kit stood silently beside me, her big eyes taking in the disaster.

  Dylan came up behind us. “Wow.”

  We stood there for long minutes, completely silent. My heart sank, falling from somewhere in the middle of my chest all the way through my gut and into the floor. I felt tears welling in my eyes. “Why did they do this?” I whispered. “Why did they have to do it on Christmas?”

  Kit did not make a sound.

  Dylan touched her shoulder, then mine. “I have an idea. Go get dressed. Both of you. Something nice.”

  We only looked at him. Not even Dylan could save this.

  “Go on!” he said, and shoved us a little. “Get dressed, brush your teeth, brush your hair. Meet me outside in ten minutes.”

  Kit and I exchanged a glance. She shrugged.

  We raced through our ablutions and ran downstairs and out the front door. Dylan had changed too, into a nice pair of jeans and a long-sleeve shirt with three buttons at the neck. His hair was clean and shiny, combed neatly and pulled back into a ponytail. He was waiting by my mother’s Chevy and opened the door. “Kit in the front seat on the way there, Josie on the way back.”

  Kit’s grin flashed for the barest moment as she claimed the prized spot. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.” He rubbed my head as he went by, and mollified over losing the front seat, I buckled myself in.

  “Did Mom tell you that you could borrow her car?” Kit asked.

  He started the car and headed north on the highway. “What do you think, Kitten?”

  She shook her head.

  “Right. Let’s not talk about that anymore.”

  He drove us all the way to San Francisco, first to the pier, which was quiet except for the homeless people, and then to our true destination, Chinatown. He parked; then we got out and walked, and I was immediately enchanted by the red balls strung overhead and the multitude of shop fronts and signs. A strange smell filled the air, not completely pleasant, but I felt exhilarated by such a different world. I skipped on one side of him, and he held on to Kit’s hand. “How’d you know about this place?” I asked.

  “My mom used to bring me here.”

  “You have a mom?”

  He shook his head. “She died.”

  Kit asked, “How old were you?”

  “Eight,” he said.

  I peered up at him, intrigued by this new information. “Do you miss her?”

  He was quiet for a long time. “That’s a hard question. Sometimes she was okay, but most of the time she wasn’t. I liked coming to Chinatown, though. We came at Christmas almost every year.”

  “Really?” I tested this, weighing the idea of Christmas dinner as prepared by my father against the lure of something so exotic. “Did you like it?”

  He gave me his sideways smile, the one that made his eyes twinkle. “I did, Grasshopper.”

  We walked for a while, peering in crowded windows and dodging foot traffic. In the alleyways, people chattered in a language that sounded like music to me, up and down. A woman in red pajamas walked by and smiled, dipping her head at Dylan.

  I was enchanted.

  Dylan led us to a restaurant tucked at the edge of an alleyway. Inside, it was bright and clean, and a waiter waved us to a table by the window, where we sat down and looked out at the street. Dylan conferred with the waiter while Kit stared out the window and I tried to catalog all the things I could see by just turning my head. Chinese letters looking like houses or snowmen or little people, paintings of houses and fields on the wall. A shelf with red teapots.

  Kit simply looked out the window, not even swinging her feet as she ordinarily did. Looking at her made me feel hollow, made me flash on the mess back in the living room, so I peered toward the back of the room to a window cutout that showed two heads in the kitchen.

  “We’re going to have dim sum,” Dylan said. “And then a lot of sweets.”

  Kit looked at him but only nodded.

  He pulled her chair close to his and put his arms around her, pulling her head into his shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay, kid.”

  Jealousy ripped through me like a lightning bolt. Why did she always get the attention? I stared at them, seeing the mess in the living room, the broken glass, and my fingers tingled with a need to smash something. My ears burned at the tips, and a wild rage traveled through my throat, into my mouth, and I was about to open my lips and scream when Kit burst into tears.

  “Our stockings!” she cried, and sobbed.

  Dylan held her closer, his hand smoothing her hair, murmuring soft words. “I know; I’m sorry; it’s okay; go ahead and cry, Kitten.”

  I slid out of my chair and rounded the table so that I could wrap my body on the other side of my little sister. She was crying so hard that her body rocked, and I bent into her, my belly against her side, and breathed into her hair. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ll get you a stocking, a better one.”

  She cried until the waiter brought our tea, when Dylan said, “Hey, Kitten, look at this. It’s chrysanthemum tea. It’s made with flowers.”

  “Really?” She lifted her head, wiping her tears away almost angrily. I gave her a napkin, and she leaned into me for a minute, then took a breath.

  Steady. Calm now.

  Released, I drifted back around to my place, feeling lost and achy for no reason until Dylan reached over and squeezed my arm. “You’re such a good big sister.”

  A little of the ache eased. “Thanks.”

  “I’m gonna wash my face,” Kit said, tossing her wild hair out of her face.

  Dylan poured tea into my tiny cup. “It’s good for calming,” he said.

  “I’m not upset.”

  He nodded. “Good.” He poured tea for himself, then reached into his coat pocket and brought out a package and placed it in front of me. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Yours is at home!” I cried, but my heart swelled anyway. “Can I open it?”

  “Wait for Kit.” He placed another package, a bigger one, beside her place.

  I eyed the bigger box, wondering if I should be jealous, but I decided not to be. When Kit came back, we both tore them open. Hers was a Rubik’s Cube, which I would never have wanted anyway.

  Mine was a pair of delicate turquoise earrings for pierced ears, which mine were not. I held them up with a question on my face.

  “Your mom said you can get your ears pierced over Christmas vacation.”

  “What? Really?”

  “Yep. She might want to take you, but if she doesn’t, I will.”

  “What about me?” Kit asked. “I want pierced ears too.”

  “When you’re twelve,” he said. “Your sister is older, and she gets privileges you don’t have yet.”

  I sat up straighter and held the earrings to my ears. “What do you guys think?”

  Kit nodded. “Beautiful.”

  “Just right,” Dylan said, and I basked in the aquamarine focus of his gaze.

  The memory runs down my spine as I look at my mother now in her photographs on Facebook.

  I needed her. Every girl needs a mother who protects her with a savage fury. Mine didn’t even meow in my direction.

  On her page, however, I find photos of Kit. Today there is nothing new, just the same ones I’ve seen before. Kit in her scrubs, pale green, in the ER. Kit with a black cat who sits on her shoulder.

  A doctor who surfs. Who doesn’t seem to have a husband or family, because my mom would have posted those pictures. It makes me sad for Kit that she’s so alone, and I wonder how much blame I bear for that.

  I’ve given up guilt over the things I did, the losses I caused. Guilt w
ants erasing in a big bottle of ice-cold vodka. Regret asks for amends, and I wish I could offer them. I wish Kit could see me now, healed and whole. Would she love me again? Or would she still give me that expression of resignation that became so familiar toward the end?

  The rain has stopped, leaving behind a stillness that echoes. These are the times I want to drink and smoke, when all my demons come crawling out of the closets and drawers to taunt me with my past sins. There are so many of them.

  So many. The chambers of my heart feel shredded as I sit in the dark, staring at my lost sister’s face. I miss her so damn much.

  And by the end, I’m sure she hated me for all the ways I let her down. Stole from her, because I was hungry. Stayed away too much even though I knew she was practically dying of loneliness. So was I, but the only thing I knew then was that I had to stomp down the pain. I had sex with everything that moved, drugged myself into numbness. It was the only way. I couldn’t bear to tell her everything that had happened, the things that were out of my control and the things that were not.

  The things I would change if I could.

  But even if you’re suffering, you don’t get to do whatever you want, and even if I could make amends, even if we were living side by side, how could I?

  A well of pain opens in my chest and spills into my gut. Beyond the windows, the water is restless, catching flashes of light, rumbling with intent.

  I close the computer. Wallowing is not just a bad idea; it’s dangerous. I made my choices, and I have to live with them.

  In the morning, while I’m getting dressed, Simon inclines his head. “Will you wear the turquoise I bought a few weeks ago?”

  I don’t think much of it. He likes dressing me, in the best possible way. The dress is a simple sleeveless cotton that makes the most of my coloring, and it’s a perfectly good choice.

  We load up the family and head out first thing in the morning. Leo is annoyed at first, because he’d been hoping to spend the day with a friend with a sailboat, but Simon quashes his rebellion with a sentence. “There will be other days to sail, mate,” he said, “but you’ll never get another chance to join the family for the big reveal.”