When We Believed in Mermaids
Page 29
“Oh.” There’s amusement in his voice.
“It wasn’t funny. She was one of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen, and—”
He chuckles, bending to kiss my shoulder.
“James was furious with my sister, and they got into an actual fistfight too, and that was that. We broke up. He quit Orange Julius, and when school started, he was back together with his old girlfriend, and he never spoke to me again.”
“He was a pig, that one.”
“No, I think that was you, wasn’t it?” I turn, teasing him.
He laughs, sliding his hand around my ribs. “But I was never so cruel.”
“No,” I say quietly. I suddenly and urgently wish I could stay right in this room forever. I pat his stomach. “I like your tummy.”
He laughs. “In the winter, there is more of it. You wouldn’t like it so much then.”
“I think I would still like it.”
He sighs sadly, pats it. “That fat little boy is always ready to take over. I might be a fat old man someday.”
I place my hand on that belly, soft over the muscle beneath. “Still.”
“You can find out how it looks in the winter if you wish.”
I look away.
He touches my chin and slides down so that our faces are close. I can see the way individual lashes grow and the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. “So your heart was broken, and you cannot bear to let anyone in now.”
“It wasn’t just that. It was everything—the earthquake and my dad and Dylan. All of it.”
“I know.” He leans in to kiss me, gently, and pulls back. “I need you to listen for one minute without saying anything in return.”
Something flutters in my chest.
“You think I am only flirting when I say that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, but I am not. It is not extravagance. It is not a way to get you in my bed . . . though I see that it may have been a good tactic.”
“I need to remind you that this is my bed, señor.”
“Well, either way.” He touches my mouth. “When I saw you, I recognized you, like I’ve been waiting, all this time, for you to show up. And there you were.”
My heart aches. “We live on different continents.”
“Yes.” He bends and kisses me, longer this time, and I find myself kissing him back. “But I think you also have found feelings for me.”
I take a breath, and for once in my life, I am honest. “Yes, I have. I might actually have been falling in love a little bit.”
“Have been?”
“I’m leaving in a few days.”
“Mm. That is true.” He kisses my throat, and flutters move elsewhere. “Unless I convince you that you should stay longer.”
Burying my hands in his hair, I pull him closer. “You can try, I suppose.”
I find myself memorizing the feel of him. His shoulder blades and the tip of his ear, his voice in my ear, murmuring in Spanish, the feel of his thighs between mine, the taste of him on my mouth.
For remembering later.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mari
I drive to Sapphire House, which draws me like a siren. I’ve never been there at night yet, and the view is astonishing, even more magical than I imagined. Standing on the bluff, looking over the glittering spread of the city, I think of the day Simon brought me here for the first time.
My husband, back when he adored me and bought me a legendary house. A hole tears in my heart as I think of it.
I let myself into the dark, empty rooms. I turn on lights as I go, trying to bring in warmth, but it’s just so very empty. I’m never alone at night. My family is always with me.
Is this how it will be, going forward? The possibility is agonizing. I had no idea how much I needed and wanted a family or how good I would be at it.
In the kitchen, I set the kettle to boil and lean against the counter, waiting. The light in here is green and unpleasant, and one of the things I want to install is better, warmer lighting. Did Helen not mind it? I think of her here with Paris and Toby, alone in the giant house for decades and decades and decades. Why did she stay? Why not sell the house and find some more appealing bungalow somewhere? There’d have been plenty of money. It’s the first time I’ve thought about it, and now I wonder why it hadn’t occurred to me sooner. Was she hiding something? Doing penance?
Carrying my mug of tea to the lounge, I let myself out the French doors and sit on the deck. The sound and smell of the sea ease the tension in my neck.
What a disaster. Had I really believed that I’d get away with it forever?
Yes. I mean, why not?
And yet now that it’s all out in the open, I’m relieved. Everything in my life is turned upside down, but I can finally tell my real story. The people I love can know me—on both sides of the line. The people who knew Josie, and by that I guess I mean Kit, and the people who love Mari. Sipping my tea, watching the half moon skim the surface of the water, I try to imagine how Nan will take it. Gweneth.
Mom.
I’ve carried a torch of hatred for my mother for so long now that it’s hard to even see beyond the straw woman I’ve made of her. With moonlight and sea wrapping me in the same light as childhood, I remember another side of her, the one who so tenderly took Dylan in, who gave that lost boy a home. It’s startling to realize that she was younger than I am now when all that was happening. I was born when she was only twenty-one, so she wasn’t even thirty when Dylan washed into our world. The sexy young trophy wife of a much older man.
Leaning back against the wall, I wonder what that must have been like. My father was almost fifteen years older than her, and at first totally obsessed with her.
When had he started taking lovers? When did she find out?
It makes me sad.
Out of nowhere comes a memory of when I was only four or five. My mother and I sat together on the vast patio of the restaurant and watched the ocean. She sang to me, a ballad about a mermaid who warned sailors of a shipwreck. A knot in my chest aches as the vision unspools—the waves crashing, the quiet moon, her voice and her arms around me.
Mama.
The day of the earthquake, we were in downtown Santa Cruz. She bought me ice cream, not because I liked it but because she did. I was stunned and sad, my uterus cramping after the violent cleansing it had just undergone, and she was uncharacteristically silent. “Are you okay?” she asked at last.
I shook my head, fighting tears. “I’m so sad.”
She reached over and took my hand. “I know, sweetie. I am too. One day, when the time is right, you’ll have babies, and I’ll be a grandmother who spoils them rotten.”
The pounding ache in my chest spread through my body, pulsing hard in my throat with an almost unbearable pressure. “But this one—”
“I know, sweetheart. But you’re barely fifteen.”
And that was when the earthquake started. It wasn’t like we’d never experienced one before, but you could hear this one coming, rumbling beneath the surface of the ground, coming toward us. The first wave hit the building with a slamming bang, knocking cutlery and glassware and baked goods from the counter onto the floor. Almost at the same second, the plate glass window next to us shattered, and my mother grabbed my arm and yanked me violently out of my chair to haul me toward the door. Before we got there, the ceiling started falling down, crashing around us, and a big chunk smashed into my head, knocking me down. My mom’s hand was ripped out of mine, and I screamed for her, feeling like I would faint, like my heart would stop beating.
She bent down and hauled my arm around her neck. “Hold on!” She dragged me to my feet, and we staggered outside, but even there, it was loud, and people were screaming, and things were breaking, falling, groaning all around us.
Blood spilled into my eye, and I pressed a hand to the throbbing spot on my head. It was a big cut, and blood was soon leaking down my arm. My mom was holding on to me, hard, as the world shook itself apart ar
ound us. It was violent and loud, and I was trying not to pass out. It seemed like it went on and on and on, though later they said it was only fifteen seconds.
When it finally slowed to a stop, my mom let go of holding me so tightly as she looked around.
She said, “Jesus wept,” and I had to see too.
The air was filled with dust and debris, making it dark, and it looked like a bomb had hit, with the front of buildings crumbled into individual bricks on the sidewalk. One building looked like it had imploded. People were crying, and somebody howled, and I saw a man who was so dusty, he looked like he’d walked into an exploding bag of flour. Alarms were going off. I smelled gas.
My head hurt loudly, with a noise to it, and the blood dripped to the ground from my elbow. A woman hurried over and tugged off her sweater. “Sit down before you faint,” she ordered, and pressed the sweater to my head. “Mom, you need to sit down too.”
“Oh my God!” my mom cried, and she was literally crying, shaking so hard that when she reached for me, it made me think of the shivering of the earth, and I moaned, ducking away. She sank down beside me. “You need to go to the hospital.”
“We need to call Kit!” I cried. If it was this bad here, what happened at Eden? Panic squeezed my lungs so hard that I couldn’t catch my breath, and I grabbed my mom’s wrist hard. “Kit!”
“I will; I will.” Mom stood up, stared around her, looked at me. “You’re bleeding so badly, I don’t want to leave you.”
The woman lifted the sweater. “Yep, you’re going to need a bunch of stitches. Can you walk?”
I tried to stand up, but another wave of noise and shaking overtook us, knocking me down. Someone started screaming again, in little bursts. My mom was on her hands and knees. “The hospital is too far away. We need to call an ambulance.”
“Every ambulance within a hundred miles is going to be busy.”
“Let’s just stay here. They’ll be down here soon enough.”
The woman had the air of someone who was used to getting things done. She hesitated, looking around us, then sank down beside me. “You’re right.”
A roar filled my head. “Kit and Dad! We need to call them!”
“Yes. Right. I need to call home,” Mom said. “I’m going to try to find a phone.”
I nodded, but I was feeling dizzy and sick, and only lolled against the planter. I was covered in blood, and my gut was cramping in rhythmic waves that mimicked the earthquake or maybe the ocean.
My mom came back, looking sick. “No answer.”
And there was nothing to do but wait. Wait while people staggered by, while they tried to drive cars that couldn’t go anywhere because the streets were broken into waves, while little kids screamed at the top of their lungs. While the smell of smoke filled the air and increased the darkness, and sirens finally wailed into the space, carrying police and EMTs who assessed the injuries of the people scattered like more litter around the area.
We leaned into each other. I wondered how we’d even get home.
It was hours before anyone could clean and stitch up my still-bleeding cut. By then I was incoherent with pain and terror, and to this day, I don’t remember getting to Eden. A stranger in a Jeep helped us, our Good Samaritan.
There were no lights as we drove up, only blackness and emptiness where the buildings had once stood. After the long trauma of the day, I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.
And then I did. My heart shattered a thousand times, over and over and over. I jumped out of the car and screamed, “Kit!”
She ran into the light of the headlights, her face a mess of tears and dirt. I hugged her so hard it made my head ache.
“Where’s your father?” my mother asked.
Kit shook her head. Pointed.
On the beach of the cove were the remains of our house and the restaurant, a wreck of lumber that looked as incoherent as my mother became in seconds. She screamed and then screamed again, falling to her knees on the rocky ground.
Chapter Thirty
Kit
Mari picks me up right on the dot of six. She looks exhausted. “Hey. I brought you coffee.”
“Oh my God, it smells so good.”
“I didn’t know how you took it, so I figured milk, and you can add sugar if you like.” She points to a thick stack of sugar packets in one of the cup holders.
I laugh. “I’m not eight anymore, you know.”
“Once an addict, always an addict.”
“Takes one to know one.” I realize too late that it sounds mean. “Sugar addict, I mean.”
She glances at me, moving into traffic smoothly. “I get it. And I am the worst. Taste this.”
I take a sip, and she’s right—it’s like a milkshake. “Too much for me.”
We ride along in the quiet until I gather my nerve and ask, “How did it go after we left?”
She shakes her head. Sips her coffee. “Simon is a proud man, and he’s cut of old-school cloth—men are meant to be men, manly and strong.” She sighs. “I have no idea what will happen.”
For the first time, I reach for her, squeeze her arm. “I’m so sorry for my part in this, Josie.”
“It’s not your fault. None of it.”
“Still. I’m sorry.”
She nods, changes lanes. “I was going to take you down to Raglan, but the surf forecast for Piha is awesome, and it’s not so far.”
“Crazy how you always know now, isn’t it?”
“Right? Just call up the reports, and Bob’s your uncle.”
I laugh. “What did you just say?”
“Bob’s your uncle, mate.” She laughs. “Best slang in the world, right here.”
“I get why you love it here. It’s amazing.”
“It is. I’m never leaving.”
It’s an overcast morning, and the traffic is heavy as she makes her way through town. The radio plays a local pop station, modern top-forty stuff. “When did you start liking pop?” I ask. She was always into the heavy-metal bands of the ’80s and ’90s, Guns N’ Roses, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and the doomed Kurt Cobain.
She shrugs, easy in herself in a way she never was back then. “Heavy metal makes too much noise in my head,” she says simply. “I start disappearing, and then I make bad choices.”
I nod.
“What do you like?”
“The same things I always have, really. Easy things to listen to.”
Her sideways smile is sly. “Like flamenco?”
The word gives me a flash of Javier playing last night, his body and the guitar becoming one thing, lighting every nerve center in my body. “I never knew I liked flamenco before, but yeah.”
“How long have you been dating Javier?”
I laugh slightly. “‘Dating’ is overstating it a bit. I just met him.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he sat down next to me the first night I got here, at this little Italian place in an alleyway by my apartment, and we struck up a conversation.”
She’s quiet for a minute. “It doesn’t look like a new relationship.”
“Again, ‘relationship’ is overstating it.”
“He looks at you like you created the earth and heavens all by yourself.”
It jolts me. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you kidding me? You don’t see it?”
“No.” I sip the coffee. “We’ve had a great time, but it’s just a holiday romance. He lives in Madrid.”
“So you’re not that interested?”
I shrug. “I don’t really get involved.”
“That’s a nonanswer.”
Something in me snaps. Irritably, I say, “It’s none of your business, actually.”
“You’re right. Sorry.”
The exchange reminds me of the reality here. We can’t just pick up our relationship as if nothing has ever happened. I feel myself lifting my shell, protecting myself against her long knowledge of me, her insight into things I work hard never to reveal.r />
Except with Javier. I frown.
We head off the highway to a smaller road. At a red light, she looks at me. “Have you had a serious relationship, Kit?”
She knows about James, and maybe she thinks that doesn’t count. I sip my coffee, look out the window. “Too much drama.”
“Not always.” The light turns, and she pulls forward. “Not every relationship is like our parents’.”
“I know.” I keep my voice light, unconcerned, but on the sidewalk is a man walking with the same liquid grace that marks Javier’s movements, and I’m aware on some distant plane of a low howl of yearning. That, it says. Him. Without rancor, I say, “Don’t try to fix me, okay? I’m fine. I love my job. I have a cat. I have friends and go surfing. Take a lover when I want one.”
“Okay.” She shrugs, but I can tell she has more to say.
I sigh. “Go ahead. Say the rest.”
“When I was watching you and Javier last night, I thought about what beautiful children you would have.”
And suddenly I can see them too. Sturdy little girls and plump little boys, all wearing glasses and collecting rocks and stamps. A welter of tears strikes the backs of my eyes. I have to look away, blink hard. “Stop it, Josie,” I say quietly. “You have what you want, but I don’t have to want the same thing you do.”
“Mari,” she corrects, and nods. “You’re right. Sorry. I guess old habits die hard.”
“I’ve done just fine without you, sis.”
“I guess you have.”
“Wow,” I say as we carry our boards to the beach. “Look at those waves.” They’re rolling home in steady, strong crests. A few riders are on the line but not as many as would have crowded the ocean in Santa Cruz. “Where is everyone?”
“Tourist season is heavy traffic,” she says, yanking herself into her wet suit, a high-end version with turquoise stylings, “but the rest of the year it’s pretty mellow.” She points out a bunch of cottages scattered on the other side of the road and up the hill. “Those are baches, holiday places. It’s amazing how many people have them here.”
She’s wearing a T-shirt over a bikini top, and I see her once-flat, once-tanned abdomen is networked with substantial stretch marks. Not surprising for such a small person.