When We Believed in Mermaids

by O'Neal, Barbara

  “She did, back in the day. We were quite competitive.”

  “Who was better?”

  I grin to myself. “I refuse to answer that question.”

  He laughs, low and deep, the sound rumbling through my rib cage. He kisses my head. “I thought it might be that way. She’s a very fit and powerful-looking woman.”

  I slide sideways to look up at him, teasing him. “Did you think she was hot?”

  “Maybe,” he says, and kisses my neck. “But not as hot as you, my one and only love.”

  “Pssht.” I push his hands away, laughing, but he captures me again and kisses me, and then we’re taking it inside, where the kettle has boiled and quit. If Kit comes to dinner tomorrow, this might be the last night I ever have with my beloved Simon. To be sure I don’t forget, I kiss every inch of him, pressing the taste of each into memory—the place where his jaw meets his neck, the crook of his elbow, his navel, his knee.

  As we come together, so sweetly, so perfectly, as if our bodies were carved of one piece of wood, I find myself praying.

  Oh, please, I think to the universe. Give me one more chance to set things right with everyone. One more.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kit

  By the time I get back to the apartment from Devonport, it’s too late to call my mother. And really, I’m so depleted from all the emotions that have been careening around my body all day that all I want to do is sleep for a while anyway. I toss the keys on the table, drop the bag of new clothes, take my bra off through the sleeves of my T-shirt, and fall face-first on the bed. In seconds I’m asleep, shutting out everything.

  Sleep is my superpower. It proved itself over and over and over when I was a child, and when I was so lonely in Salinas, and a hundred times over when I was in med school and after.

  And it doesn’t fail me now. I fall deeply into the nothingness of sleep. No dreams, no sense of anything. For no reason I can name, I wake up almost exactly one hour later. It’s six thirty. Not much time to shower, but that’s how it goes. I dash in, wash away the humid, sweaty day, dash back out. My hair is insane from all the humidity, so big it almost makes me laugh when I look in the mirror. Leaving my skin to air-dry, I calm the crazy curls and frizz with product and water until it’s something like normal-person hair.

  But that’s just about all I can manage. I am suddenly ravenous and nibble on a brownie as I get dressed in my last pair of clean underwear, one of the wrap skirts, and an aqua T-shirt with a fern in copper on the front. I have no taste for makeup, though I dig through my bag for a lipstick.

  Javier is as continental as ever when I open the door to him, and he’s freshly shaved, smelling of some spicy cologne that makes me want to lean into his neck. I’m suddenly awash in nerves. “Sorry. I’m a bit underdressed, but it was so hot this afternoon, I had to stop in a tourist shop and buy something. Come in.”

  He’s carrying a bottle of wine he settles on the counter, and then he turns to take my hand. Just my hand, running his calloused fingertips over my skin. “Are you all right?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I pull away, start looking for my shoes, but I can’t find them, and I stop in the middle of the room with my hands on my hips. “I bought some jandals. I can’t find them.”

  He bends over. “These?”

  “Yes, thanks.” I slip them on. “Ready?”

  “Wait.” He touches the small of my back with one hand, somehow urging me around to face him. “What is the matter?”

  “I’m so hungry, Javier, I’m going to turn into a monster any second. A real live monster with horns and everything.”

  “Mm.” He brushes hair away from my face. “Tell me.”

  I’m standing so close to the door that I can feel a breeze coming through at floor level, and I’m aching to flee those dark, kind eyes, his tender gesture, his willing ear. I start shaking my head—“I’m fine”—and then, to my horror, tears are streaming out of my eyes, pouring and pouring, entirely against my will. I feel six years old, and yet I’m mute, only looking up at him.

  From his pocket, he produces a handkerchief and, without a word, presses it into my hand and leads me over to the sofa. I sit down, and when he sits next to me, I lean into the space he’s made for me against his shoulder and let go. It’s a wordless, seemingly endless wave of emotion, and I’m helpless against it. It rolls out of me, unattached to any one thing but all the things, everything.

  Javier simply holds me, one hand smoothing my hair, running down my back, the other anchoring me to the earth with its weight on my knee. Dozens of images pour through my mind—Dylan running on the beach with Cinder when he was sixteen or seventeen, happy when Cinder tackled him and licked his whole face. I ran after him and licked Cinder and licked Dylan, and Cinder licked me, and then we all ran toward the waves . . . My father teaching me how to slice tomatoes perfectly, always a sharp, sharp knife, you see . . . My parents dancing literally cheek to cheek, so in love, so beautiful . . . Josie bringing me a giant mermaid cake she and Dylan had baked for me, alight with eight candles and more candy glitter than we could possibly eat.

  And more. Curling up with Dylan and Josie and Cinder in the middle of a windy night on the beach, smelling their bodies like the perfume of happiness. Sitting very still so my mom could put makeup on my face for Halloween. Sitting in my dad’s lap while he pressed my hair and told someone I was the very image of his mother.

  And Josie. Josie on the beach in a tiny bikini, always falling off her skinny brown body when she was little. Josie twirling around the dance floor at Eden, her long hair flying out around her. Josie appearing on my doorstep half-starved and unwell, when I swung the door open and let her in.

  Finally, I am out of tears, or at least out for the moment. “I’ll wash my face.”

  He offers me a clean towel, and I recognize the green cross-hatching of the kitchen linens. I’m mortified, but I take it and start mopping up my tears. “Sorry about that.”

  His lips turn downward, and he shakes his head. “No apologies.” Again, that kindly hand smooths my hair, pushes a damp tendril off my forehead. “Do you want to tell me?”

  I take in a long, deep breath. “I found my sister, but here’s the thing: I haven’t eaten all day.” I can’t talk to my mother yet, not until I figure out what to say. He’s been a good listener. It’s always easier to talk to a stranger or, in this case, a temporary lover. “Let’s go to the restaurant, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “All right.” He gives my hand a kindly squeeze. “We’re going to need a lot of wine, I think.”

  I snort and wipe my nose as I stand up. “Amen to that.” His shirt is damp on the shoulder. “Do you want to change?”

  He slaps a hand over it. “No. These are precious tears.”

  A lump forms in my throat. I like him, that’s the trouble. Like his easygoing nature, his ease in his skin. “Do you have any flaws at all, dude?”

  He laughs, spreads his hands in a what can I do gesture.

  It makes me smile. “Thank you, Javier.”

  He winks. “De nada.”

  The restaurant is called Ima. It’s just starting to fill up, and we have seats in the back, tucked into a corner so we can sit at right angles in the booth. It smells so good, my mouth is watering. Javier asks for wine and bread, and the server brings a basket of bread with olive oil and a bottle of Pinot Noir.

  Javier is engrossed in the menu, asking the server questions as she pours water for us both, and I can see that he’s familiar with the kind of food on the menu, which I am not. He orders a roast chicken and an array of vegetables for dinner, then something called brik for an appetizer. “A treat, I promise,” he says, handing the menus over. “Egg and preserved lemons and tuna in a pastry. So nice.”

  “My father loved preserved lemons,” I say. “They’re not traditional Sicilian fare, but he spent some time in Morocco as a young man, and he loved them. He used them a lot in his dishes.”

  “Do you remember any of th
em?”

  I sip my wine. After several generous gulps, I’m feeling the magic on the back of my neck, down my spine. There is again space in my lungs for breath. “He made a roast chicken with olives and preserved lemons that was to die for. It was one of my very favorite things when I was a child.”

  “Most children like blander food.”

  “He didn’t believe in giving children different food from adults. We learned to like things very young.”

  It’s his turn to pause. “Were there things you did not like?”

  “Not really. Josie was pickier than I was. She didn’t like a lot of different kinds of fish. They used to fight about it.” Again, I’m back at Eden, a child trying to hold the center of a dramatic and intense family. “She’s called Mari now. With an I.” I repeat it. “Mari with an I.”

  “Did you speak with her?”

  I nod a bit stiffly and take another tiny sip of wine, suddenly aware that alcohol might not be my friend when I’m in such a state. “More than that. I found her. Saw her.” The moment comes back to me, visceral and more powerful than I’d anticipated. “Briefly. She’s done very well for herself—a mom, wife, entrepreneur. She just bought a big house that belonged to a famous movie star from the thirties.”

  He nods.

  “I tracked her to her neighborhood, and then by chance I ran into her on the promenade in Devonport.”

  “Not by chance,” he says, and nudges the bread plate toward me.

  “No, you’re right.” The moment of our meeting rushes back through me. “She looks so good! I expected something else. I don’t know what.” Dutifully, I dip bread into the dish of oil. “The last time I saw her, I was in med school. She just showed up one day, and she was . . . a mess. Like she hadn’t bathed, and her hair was greasy, and she looked like she’d been living on the streets, which I think she actually had. She wasn’t drunk, but she was desperate, and it broke my heart to see her like that, so I let her in.” I tear the bread and take a bite, remembering. “She stayed with me for a few weeks. I had an apartment, and she slept on the couch, and she made meals for me, which I appreciated so much I can’t even tell you. And then one day, I came home and everything was gone. Just gone.” I shake my head. “I still can’t believe she did that.” My throat is so dry, my voice rasps. “Stole everything.”

  “Was she an addict?”

  I nod. “I’m pretty sure she was an alcoholic by the time she was thirteen, and she was drinking long before that.” A wisp of horror crosses his face, and I wave my hand. “I’m sorry. It’s a sad, terrible story. I don’t know why I’m dumping it on you.”

  “You are not ‘dumping.’” He covers my hand with his own. The weight of it eases the fluttery sensation along my nerves. “I’m here to listen.”

  And really, I’m too tired to dissimulate. “When I was little, she was the star of my life. I mean, the very middle of everything. My best friend, my sister, my—” I halt.

  “Your . . . ?”

  “My soul mate,” I finish, and a welter of tears swells in my eyes. I have to swallow hard to control them. “Like we’ve known each other always.”

  “In Spanish, we say alma gemela. Soul twin.”

  The words sting the raw space of my heart. “Alma gemela,” I repeat.

  “Good.”

  “The thing is, my soul mate abandoned me, over and over again.” I shake my head. “After the earthquake, I was so lonely, it felt like a disease. Like something I could die of.”

  “Ah, mi sirenita.” He picks up my hand, kisses my wrist, holds my palm against his heart. Quietly, he says, “People do. Die of it.”

  It’s such a relief to spill this out, to feel the heat of his body close to mine, the solid strength of his hand. “I just don’t know what to think about any of this.”

  “Perhaps,” he says gently, “it is time to stop thinking and feel.”

  But the very idea makes me dizzy, because I am so very full of lava, simmering, simmering, beginning to boil. If I allow those feelings out, the spew will burn us all to pieces.

  To keep it safely in place, I take a breath and sit up straight, give him a rueful little smile. “All I’ve done since I met you was talk about myself.”

  For a moment, he only looks at me. “Your quest is powerful. You needn’t apologize for the space it takes.” He covers the hand he’s holding with his other. “That you take. You are important too. Not only your sister.”

  I swallow, looking away. Nod.

  Thankfully, the server brings our appetizer just then, easing the mood at the table. It’s an envelope of thin, crispy pastry wrapped around tuna and a cooked egg that spills yellow onto the plate when I cut into it. The taste is sea and heat and comfort. “Ooh, that’s amazing.”

  He smiles, closing his eyes. “This one is very good. I thought you would like it.”

  I spear the fork into the egg yolk and a red paste that’s quite fiery, taste the two apart from the pastry. My tongue rejoices at the mix of heat and fat. “What’s the red?”

  “Harissa.”

  “It’s amazing.”

  “It is such a pleasure to eat with you,” he says. “I think I would like your father, if it was he who gave you such passion.”

  I nod. “Yes. And he would have liked you too, I think.”

  “Is he gone?”

  “Yes. He died in the earthquake.”

  He waits, and I realize I didn’t even know I was taking a breath, bracing myself.

  “The restaurant and the house were on a bluff above a cove, and when the earthquake hit, we were only a couple of miles from the epicenter. Both the house and the restaurant fell down the mountain. My dad was in the kitchen, which is where he probably most would have wanted to die.”

  He swears under his breath. “Were you there?”

  “I was in the house, but when it started, I ran out the front door. They always tell you to get out, so I ran out to the road. It knocked me down, and I just lay on my stomach with my hands over my head, waiting for the end.”

  “Pobrecita.” He touches my back. “You must have been out of your mind with fear.”

  “Yes and no. I was frightened, but I also knew”—I laugh without much humor—“because I was such a geek, that the shaking usually doesn’t last more than thirty seconds or so, and I just focused on the actual experience. You know, thinking about the amazing fact that the earth was moving against itself.”

  His smile flashes.

  “I did realize that this was a big one, and I started trying to estimate what it would be on the Richter scale—definitely a seven. Maybe even an eight, which would be super rare.”

  “And were your estimates close?”

  “They were.” The waiter approaches with our food, and I lean back to allow it to be set in front of us. “It actually only lasted fifteen seconds, officially, at six-point-nine, with seven hundred and forty-five aftershocks.”

  The plates give off a grounding scent—a succulent roast chicken along with a big plate of vegetables, carrots studded with feta, a tomato salad, rice with lentils, and spinach. It smells of everything whole and homey in the world, and I barely notice the waiter taking away the empty dish, refilling our glasses, disappearing again.

  “Allow me,” I say, reaching for the knife to cut and serve the chicken. Some for Javier, some for me. We dig into the vegetables, and then, as if we are puppets on the same string, we both put our hands in our lap and pause. Not a prayer but certainly a moment of gratitude. “It’s beautiful,” I breathe.

  “Yes,” Javier agrees.

  Across the table, my father sits down and plucks a tidbit of chicken from the plate, tastes it, nods happily.

  We all dig in.

  “When I was a boy, I liked disasters,” he says. “Pompeii, the Black Death, the Inquisition.”

  “Cheerful subjects.” I savor a bit of carrot. “Do you remember the details?”

  “Oh, sure. In seventy-nine AD, Vesuvius exploded with a force equal to a hundred tho
usand times the force of Nagasaki—”

  “A hundred thousand?” I echo skeptically.

  He holds up a hand in oath. “I swear. It sent stone and ash thirty kilometers into the air and killed two thousand people where they stood.”

  “Have you been there?”

  “Mm. It’s a strange and haunting place.” He pauses, looking at the tomatoes. “Delicious. Have you tasted them yet?”

  “Yes. Have you tried the rice?”

  He nods, moving things on his plate with the tines of his fork, admires it all. “Miguel told me this place was wonderful, but I did not expect it to be . . . so perfect.”

  A wave of emotional weariness passes over me. I want to let go of all the heaviness of finding my sister, the heaviness of the past, and look forward instead. I suddenly wish that I could sit with him like this many times, over many years. I can almost see a ghostly version of us, sitting in this same place, a decade or two out. His hair will silver by then, but those long lashes will still frame his lovely dark eyes, and he will still eat like this, reverently.

  Cool it, Bianci, I tell myself, and shift the conversation. “Miguel is your ex-wife’s brother?”

  “My brother now; it has been so long.”

  “Does he play with you often?”

  “No.” He inclines his head. “We are . . . not in the same circles.”

  It’s my turn to smile. “You’re being modest right now, aren’t you?”

  He lifts one shoulder. “Perhaps.”

  Helping myself to more of the carrots, I invite, “Tell me about your ex. Were you married a long time?”

  “No, no. We were young when we met and very good together in bed, you know?”

  Jealousy, green and hot, ripples down my spine. Weird. Jealousy is not usually my thing. “I’m sure all women are good in bed with you,” I say, aiming for something light and realizing only as it falls out of my mouth that it’s quite the opposite.

  His eyes glitter. “I will take that as the compliment you have so graciously offered,” he says in a low voice, “but it is unfortunately not true. The chemistry must be right with lovers, or else—” He makes a pssht sound, spreads his hands.