The Paper Palace(94)

“I’m going to get the kids and head off,” I say, backing out. “You’re right, Gina. This place is a furnace. Maybe see you at the fireworks later?”

“We’re skipping it,” Gina says. “I have the regatta tomorrow morning. Six a.m.”

“I might come,” Jonas says.



* * *



—

Driving out of town with the kids, I pass Jonas and Gina outside the grocery store. They are arguing. Gina gesticulating at him, livid. She’s crying. Jonas has a plastic bottle of Clamato under his arm. The appeal of tomato juice laced with clam has always puzzled me. Jonas shakes his head angrily at whatever she is saying. Cars inch forward in front of me. I know I should look away, but I don’t. The yellow light turns to red. Above the low thrum of the air conditioner, through the closed car window, I hear Gina shout, “Fuck you!” I glance behind me to see if the kids have heard, but they are deep in their phones. Jonas says something to Gina, then turns and walks away down the street. Gina calls after him—begs him to stop—but he keeps going. I watch her shoulders slump. I feel like a Peeping Tom. She wipes the dripping snot from her nose with the back of her black shirt-sleeve, leaving a streak of mucus that glistens and shimmers in the sun like a snail trail. There is something so defeated in her posture—a vulnerability I have never seen before—and it makes me sad for her. I look away, begging the light to change before she notices our car. Behind me, Maddy rolls down her window, waves to Gina, calling out. Gina looks up just as the light changes.



* * *



—

“Mom,” Maddy says as we pull onto the highway into an endless line of post-parade traffic, “Gina told us there are alligators in the sewers in New York. Is it true?”

“Did she?” I laugh. “Did she also tell you that when you play the White Album backward it says, “Paul is dead?”

“Who’s Paul?” Finn says.

“I don’t think there are alligators down there, Maddy. Although you never know. When I was four years old I watched my mother’s boyfriend flush a baby alligator down the toilet.”

“How big was it?” Maddy says. “Wouldn’t it have gotten stuck?”

“Like a gecko.”

“What if they climb out onto the sidewalk and kill people?” Finn asks.

“I’m pretty sure you’re safe, bunny.”

“I don’t want to walk to school anymore.”

Traffic creeps along. Bicyclists pass us on the verge.

“You know,” I say, “when Anna and I were little, our father gave us Sea-Monkeys for Christmas. They came with a plastic aquarium and a packet of Sea-Monkey eggs. It said on the box that when you put the eggs in water, they would grow into instant pets. There was a little packet of food with a tiny spoon.”

“They still have those,” Maddy says. “We should get some. They sound cool.”

“Well, -ish,” I say. “They were supposed to turn into creatures that looked like naked sea horses with long human legs and crowns and lived in underwater castles.”

“Can we get some?” Finn asks.

“No.”

“Why not? I want a pet.”

“Because they are bullshit.”

“Mom!” Maddy says. “Language.”

“Fair enough.” I laugh. “Anna and I waited and waited for the Sea-Monkey family to appear. We ran home every day after school to see if they had hatched into little kings and queens. And lo and behold, after about a week these microscopic shrimp-like things began to dart around the water.”

“So, then what happened?” Maddy asks.

“Nothing. They didn’t grow. They stayed that way. It turned out they were just microscopic krill.”

“That’s what whales eat,” Maddy says to Finn.

“I know that,” Finn says.

“End of story: One day we got home from school and they were gone. My mother had poured them down the sink. She said most of the Sea-Monkeys were dead on the bottom of the container, and the aquarium was turning into a breeding ground for mosquitoes.”

“That’s so sad,” Maddy says.

“Maybe, maybe not. We never got to see them grow, but who knows—maybe they finally grew after she flushed them. Maybe there are kingdoms of Sea-Monkeys in the sewers, full of teensy kings and queens and princesses in their minuscule crowns.”

“I hope you’re right,” Maddy says. “That would be the best thing ever.”

“I do, too, sweet pea. Anyway, my point is, maybe Gina is right about the alligators. Maybe they are down there living on tiny Sea-Monkeys.”

“No!” Maddy says. “I hate that. That would be horrible.”

It’s been years since I’ve thought about the Sea-Monkeys. How Anna and I watched that plastic aquarium every day. How we hoped and waited and clapped when tiny things began to move, and felt bitterly disappointed when that was all. The waiting begins early, I think. The lies begin early. But so do dreams and hopes and stories.

I pull off the highway onto our one-lane dirt road, head into the Back Woods, praying I don’t meet another car coming out. I hate backing up, and this stretch of road has no turnoffs.

Every year the town sets off fireworks from an old wooden barge in the harbor, testing fate, sparks aiming for shore as the barge creaks and groans. My favorite place to watch the fireworks has always been from the end of the pier that juts farthest out into the bay from the town wharf. Walking out past the line of briny trawlers, their nets piled damp, tethered to the dock like horses outside a saloon. Past the dinghies, bobbing on their moorings. Out to where the deeper water licks the tops of the pylons, far from the crowds. The smell of fishiness and wet timber. Most people gather at the town beach to watch the display: cascades of color rocketing into the night, illuminating the roof of the sky, comet tails and giant sparklers reflecting onto the bay like a million stars, so that for an instant, the sea becomes the sky. Sitting at the end of the pier, legs dangling down above the dark water, the stars appear right beneath our feet, slipping past us under the pier, into that mysterious world. It was Jonas who first brought me to this spot.