I smiled, walked over, and dropped them in his hands. “Want some water? Some food?”
He started getting better finally after that. He came down to play card games at the table, and a couple of times, his friends came bearing rum and serious weed, buds so crystallized with THC that they looked like they’d been dipped in diamonds. Even a couple of bong hits knocked me on my ass.
And maybe he hadn’t noticed that I’d grown up a lot, but his friends sure did. One kissed me in the hallway when we’d all been drinking rum and smoking so much that I couldn’t form a coherent sentence. I pushed him away, shaking my head. He was in his twenties, already sporting a pretty hefty spread of hair on his chest. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to let me off the hook with a blow job.
Dylan came around the corner while the dude had his hand on my ass, and he lost his shit. “What the fuck are you doing, man?” He slapped his friend’s hand away. “She’s a kid.”
Dude laughed drunkenly, backing off with his hands in the air. “All right, all right. But, buddy, she’s no kid. Have you looked at her lately?”
In my very inebriated condition, my ears buzzed, and I wanted, suddenly, for Dylan to see me that way. See me as a girl.
And when I looked up, I saw that he was looking at me. It was the two of us, drunk and high off our asses. He didn’t have a shirt on, only a pair of low-riding jean shorts. He leaned on a crutch, just looking at me. I felt it. On my shoulders. My hair. My bare belly beneath the crop top I wore. I was as tan as I ever got, dark as pecans, and my hair was loose, trailing over my shoulders and arms and my braless boobs. For one second, I thought about how easy it would be to take off my top and show myself to him, to that expression that really did, to me, look like the same one I saw on other guys’ faces.
“You’re so pretty, Grasshopper, but you’re still just a kid. You’ve gotta be careful around guys like that.”
He turned around and left the hallway, leaving me with a crystal-clear understanding that the only guy I wanted then or ever was Dylan. It had always been that way. It would always be that way.
I also knew, in some gut-deep place, that it was the same for him.
My parents would be home in five days, so I didn’t have a lot of time. I thought of a thousand ways to seduce him, and some of them I actually employed—I didn’t tie my halter top quite tight enough, so that when I helped him get into bed, a lot of side boob showed. He didn’t seem to notice. I wore a thin blouse without a bra under it, and when I looked in the mirror, I was pretty sure I could see actual nipples, accented by the triangle of white skin that didn’t get tanned. I wore it the whole day, and he never saw me at all.
I read a Johanna Lindsey to him, but he stopped me when we got to the really juicy part, covering his ears with a laugh.
One evening, crickets were whirring and the ocean was singing on the beach. Overhead, stars gleamed like diamonds. “Let’s go to the cove,” I said. “You can make it with a crutch now, can’t you?”
He inclined his head, passing me the bong. “Maybe. You want to grab some tequila out of the storeroom, maybe?”
“Yes!” I took a hit, gave him the bong, and said, “I’ll be right back.”
I gathered up a bottle of tequila, limes, and my secret weapon—a tiny cellophane packet of cocaine I’d found in my mom’s nightstand—and stashed them all in my pack, along with a blanket we could sit on and four sodas to keep us from drying out completely.
“Let’s go.”
He gave me his half smile, and I was so happy to see him being something close to himself. “Wow, dude. It’s good to see you again.”
He laughed, and we made our way down the wooden steps to the cove precariously, me in front in case he stumbled. When we reached the sand, I whooped.
He threw an arm around my shoulders. “Whoo! Whoo!”
We spread out the goods—the tequila and limes and salt, the bong and a bag of weed, and then I produced the tiny envelope of cocaine and lifted an eyebrow.
“You’re kidding, right?” he said.
“Nope. The real thing. Mom’s cocaine.”
“She’ll kill you when she finds out it’s gone.”
I rolled my eyes. “She’ll never know it was me.” Ceremoniously, I gave him the packet. “You do the honors.”
“Have you ever done it before?”
I lied and said, “Couple of times, but only a little.”
He set up the lines, and we snorted them, and it was in ten seconds the best high I ever had. I leaped to my feet and started dancing in the sea breeze, arms over my head. “Wow!” I cried breathily. “Wow.”
He grinned, watching me spin. All my inhibitions were gone. I became my little-girl self, dancing for all the customers in the bar, my hair swinging around me, my head full of songs. Music from the patio reached us, and I embroidered on it. I was wearing a blouse with swinging sleeves and hem, and I could feel the breeze swirling over my middle. It made me horny. On a wave of heat and delight, I fell on my knees, pulled my shirt over my head, and kissed Dylan, all in one movement.
He tumbled backward, driven by the force of my body, and his hands fell on my bare back, on my arms. For a time, a long time it seemed to me, he kissed me back, our bodies rubbing against each other’s. I could feel that he was hard under me, which made me bolder. I sat up, my crotch against his, and pulled his hands to my breasts.
He started to resist, to protest, but I moved against him. “Show me what it’s supposed to be like, Dylan. Just this one time. We never have to tell anybody, ever.”
“Josie—”
I pressed my hands to his face. “Please,” I whispered over his mouth. “What we have is special. Real. Please.” I kissed him again.
And in the darkness of the beach, high on cocaine, he gave in.
In my fantasies before that night, we had sex like in a movie, all soft focus and music playing a romantic score. In real life, it was both better and worse. Touching him and kissing him was a million times more charged than I’d ever expected. It was like we melted together, and I slid under his scarred, wrecked skin and into the blood that still flowed in his body. He swam into my blood, into my soul, and I became something else, someone else. He showed me, gently and slowly, what it should feel like when somebody who loved you touched you in just the right way. I learned to have an orgasm for the first time, and it blew the pieces of my body out into the stars, bringing starlight back when they settled into my flesh again. I learned to please him too, and at that I’d had some practice.
But the actual sex hurt. A lot. I pretended it didn’t, but it wasn’t easy, and he took some time making it work. Finally it did, and I pretended to like it, but I didn’t. At all. There was a lot of blood after, which I hid from him.
We fell asleep on the beach, drunk and high and also sated, wrapped up together like puppies.
One night. That one night.
The end of everything.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kit
When I get off the ferry after meeting Mari, I stop for ice cream and sit on a bench to watch people streaming past. Ice cream is a weakness, the creamy sweetness, the cold, the depth of satisfaction. As a child, I would eat as much ice cream as my parents would let me have—giant bowls of it, triple-decker cones in three flavors. Today I’ve chosen vanilla bean and a local favorite called hokeypokey with chips of honeycomb toffee that is so good I find myself wishing I’d ordered both scoops in that flavor.
With adulthood comes discipline, however, so I give the ice cream my full attention, aware that I’m using food to soothe my aching heart and not caring a bit. Sugar and cream ease my nerves, and the flow of humanity passing by reminds me that my problems, however big they might seem at the moment, are dew in an ocean.
But damn, I feel unmoored.
After Josie “died,” my mom got serious about getting sober. She detoxed in a thirty-day residential program, then dedicated herself to AA, going to meetings every day, sometimes twice or three t
imes. She worked the steps, found a sponsor, and became the mother I wanted so badly when I was five and nine and sixteen—present and able to listen.
Most of all, she put me first in her life.
In the beginning, it freaked me out. I didn’t know how to handle the change. How to talk to her when all she cared about was sobriety and her daughter. I didn’t have time for it, honestly. It was the end of my fellowship, and I had a lot of writing to do in addition to the responsibilities of the work—and even that was okay. She let me know she was available if I needed her. She patiently called once a week or once every other week, and even though I nearly always let it go to voice mail, she left upbeat messages, a little story about something at work or on her long daily walks. For the first time in my entire life, she didn’t have a man, and she didn’t want one, and without the constant struggle of men and booze, she had a lot more time. She threw herself into houseplants, which cracked me up—it seemed such a funny thing for the least nurturing person I knew—but when I saw her orchids, I stopped laughing.
After a while, I started taking her calls. I moved back to Santa Cruz and took a position at an ER there. After a couple of years, I bought my house. A couple of years later, I realized my mom’s sobriety was going to stick and I could trust this new version of her, and although I have never really been able to fully warm up, as is often true of the children of alcoholics after so many years of neglect, I did buy her a condo on the beach so she could hear the ocean at night.
Taking a small bite of ice cream, I think I should call her. It’s evening there. I could get an update on Hobo.
But what will I say about Josie?
I walk back up the hill to my apartment, and it occurs to me that I can probably make arrangements to go home now. I’ve found my sister. I’ll hang out with the kids tonight, maybe take an extra day or two to surf. Hang out once or twice more with Javier. I still haven’t heard him sing again.
A pang cuts through my chest, but I brush it off. We’ve had a good time. Of course I’ll miss him. We can stay in touch through email, and in a few weeks, we’ll forget the urgency of now.
You are falling a little with me, he’d said.
I test the emotion. Am I?
Maybe. Or maybe I’m stirred up by everything that’s happening. The search, the place, the fact that we’ve been having really, really satisfying sex. Beyond satisfying. Fantastic. Thinking about it makes me wish for his solid, naked body right now.
Not love, though. It’s not an emotion I can trust.
The luxe marble hallways of the high-rise are empty this time of day, midafternoon, when all the residents are working and tourists are out sightseeing. I suddenly do not want to go up to my room and stare at the water again. Instead, I turn around and cross the street to a park that climbs a steep hill, a path weaving in long zigzags toward the top.
I pause at the foot of it and loop the strap of my purse over my body; then I climb the first part of the hill. It’s a dense green landscape, dappled sunlight and shadows covering thick green grass. The lushness makes me realize how dry it’s been in California.
As I follow the asphalt path upward, it’s the trees that steal my attention. Giant, old trees, Moreton Bay figs with their improbable span, their very long arms stretching out over the landscape in a most human way. I slow to touch one, running my hand over the bark, and follow it toward the trunk, which is as wide as a small car and full of nooks and crannies. I step over the roots and into a hollow made by the bark, and it’s big enough to live in. I’m sure people did, once upon a time.
As if the trees have cast a spell over me, I find my turmoil calming down, sliding away. I wander through the trees, admiring the shapes the roots and branches make—here is a fairy stretched out, sleeping in the grass, her hair falling all around her; there is a small child, peeking out of the branches.
Around me are students from the nearby university, walking in pairs or singly trudging up the hill with a heavy backpack. A group of young men has strung a thin strap between two tree trunks, and they are attempting to walk it, and the more advanced do tricks. One spies my fascination and invites me to try. I smile and shake my head, wander on.
At last, I come to rest on the cupped curve of a tree trunk, which has clearly been worn smooth by other bottoms over time. It cradles me perfectly, and as I lean back and stretch my legs in front of me, I feel all the sorrow and anger and dismay drain right out of me. It almost feels as if the tree is vibrating very subtly against my body, nourishing and aligning me. I take a breath, look up to the canopy of leaves, and a breeze rustles them softly, touches my face.
It’s like being in the ocean, waiting for a wave. Sometimes I don’t even care about the wave. It’s just so quiet to be out there, in the middle of this ancient body, part of it and not part of it.
That’s how I feel now. Part of the tree, the park, the city that has captured my imagination in such a short time. It gives me the space to think, What do I want?
What do I want from my sister? What did I think I would find?
I don’t even know anymore. I don’t know what I expected.
From the ground, I pick up a twig and turn it round and round, and my mind is full of images. Josie bringing me chicken soup when I had the flu and sitting with me, reading aloud from a book of mermaid stories. Josie dancing wildly on the patio overlooking the sea while adults watched approvingly . . . Josie intervening, as savage as a bobcat, when a guy at our school tried to trap me in a corner and feel me up. She slugged him so hard that he sported a bruise for weeks, and Josie herself was suspended. The guy never bothered me again.
And more—Dylan reading to us when we were small and braiding my hair and waiting at the bus stop with us, and Dylan that last summer, his addiction wearing on him, making a scarecrow of him. I think of his scars, so many of them, and the way he made up stories for each of them.
I think finally of the way the house and restaurant looked after the earthquake, spilled down the side of the cliff like a tipped-over toy box, and my mother screaming, screaming, inconsolable.
Closing my eyes, I rest against the tree. What I want is to go back in time and fix them all. Josie and Dylan and my mother.
I don’t want to ruin Mari’s life. I’ll go tonight to dinner, enjoy the children, and then leave her to it. I don’t know how to work out the business with my mother, who will want to be a grandmother desperately. I feel in my gut how much she’ll want that, and clearly I’m never going to give it to her. My mother. She’s suffered too. Why haven’t I ever told her that I’m proud of her, that I know how hard it was for her to change her life? She’s . . . remarkable, really. Why am I still holding myself aloof from the one person who has shown me that she’ll be in my corner no matter what?
The recognition washes through me like a soft wave. She’s in my corner.
The next wave brings the recognition that I don’t have to sort out all my feelings right now. There’s time. I’ll be kind to Mari and her family and keep the secret. I’ll also tell my mother the truth, and I’m going to let Mari/Josie know that too. They can work it out from there.
Eased, cradled by a mothering tree, I fall asleep in the middle of a park in the middle of a heavily populated city. At peace.
When I get home, I wash the red dress I’ve been wearing so often. With the jandals I picked up in Devonport, it’s passable. I consider braiding my hair, but thinking of Sarah and her wild mane, I leave it mostly free, only weaving the front part into braids to keep it out of my face on the ferry ride over.
I’d texted Javier earlier to ask if he’d come with me, and he solemnly agreed: It would be my honor. He answers the door with a phone to his ear and waves me inside with a mouthed Sorry and one finger held up. A minute.
He speaks Spanish, obviously, but I haven’t heard him do it before. It brings home the fact that I’ve known him only a couple of days. He sounds as if he’s working out a problem, going back and forth rapidly with the caller, ending in ques
tions and then an authoritative tone. “Sí, sí,” he says, and bobs his head back and forth as he looks at me, his hand making a chattering gesture. More Spanish. “Gracias, adiós.” He disconnects and comes toward me, arms outstretched. “So sorry. My manager. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you. It’s the dress.”
He grins, shakes down his sleeves, and buttons them. “I will never see you in that dress without seeing you strip it off, toss it at me, and dive into the water.” He animates the entire sentence with gestures, ending with a whistle and hands pointed down toward an imaginary bay. His hair is tousled, and without thinking, I lift a hand to smooth it back from his forehead. My fingers graze the heat of his skin, and I touch the tip of his ear on the way back down.
“How are you doing?” he asks me.
I think about it for a moment. “Okay.”
“You talked with your sister?”
I smooth the front of his shirt, press the crisply ironed pocket flatter. “Yes.”
He inclines his head. “No more anger?”
“Oh, I’m angry.” I take a breath. “But . . . there’s no point. It’s all water under the bridge.”
“Mm.”
“What? You don’t believe me?”
His hands fall on my shoulders. “Maybe not easy to make it go away so fast.”
I gesture behind us, toward the park. “I fell asleep in the arms of a fairy tree. She probably erased my anger.”
He smiles and kisses my nose. “Maybe. Let’s go meet your Lazarus sister.” He takes my hand.
On the way down the promenade in Devonport, in the soft New Zealand evening, he continues to hold my hand as we walk to her house. “Did you phone your mother?”
“Not yet. She was probably at work this afternoon.”
“Must be difficult to think what to say.”
I glance at him. “Maybe.” I stop. “This is it.”
When We Believed in Mermaids Page 26