When We Believed in Mermaids(70)
The thought gives me shivers.
I have to go to her. Filled with a stuttering, overwhelming adrenaline, I pull on the same red dress I’ve been wearing for two days and realize that it smells of ocean water and sunshine, and the skirt is ridiculously wrinkled. The only other things I have clean are a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that says A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN MEDICINE. As I look at them hopelessly, I realize my hands are shaking.
Okay, breathe.
They’ll have to do. I shower and leave my hair loose to dry as crazy as it wishes in whatever way it will go, slap on some lipstick and drop the tube in my bag, and carry my hat down to the ferry dock. Because we had to wait awhile before, I’m prepared for that, but the Devon shuttle runs more regularly, and by the time I make my way to the waiting area, the ferry is boarding.
This time I don’t go up top but sit down inside and watch the city center recede. Businesspeople read newspapers, which bemuses me. It’s such an ordinary thing to do on such a breathtakingly gorgeous ride. A gaggle of teenagers talks too loudly. Tourists from every continent on Earth crowd the seats.
All I can think is, Josie, Josie, Josie.
I’m too riled up to do much of anything. My phone map shows me that the address I found is only a few blocks down the sea walk, but I’m buzzing with the kind of emotion that will do no good if I confront her.
To get a handle on myself, I walk up the main village street toward a path that leads to a volcano, trying to get enough oxygen into my system that I can stop hyperventilating. The walk works up a sweat, and the air is heavy and humid from the storm the day before, and within a block I’m feeling so overheated in my jeans that I have to stand still in the shade for a few minutes and let people pass me. I thought I could make the jeans work, but I’m going to faint of heat exhaustion.
Just ahead is a boutique with dresses hanging outside. Mostly they’re touristy T-shirts with New Zealand and Kiwi logos emblazoned across the front, but to my vast relief there are also a number of wrap skirts in soft cottons. Mindlessly, I grab one of the longer ones and hold it up to me, and it’s fine, hitting just at my knee. Taking it off the hanger, I test the wrap length, and it works too, so I gather three others in various chintzy prints and carry them into the store. “All of these, please,” I say, dropping them on the counter. “And . . . I guess I need some T-shirts.”
The woman behind the counter is a tiny English thing, with shoulders the width of a dragonfly, but she moves with a no-nonsense attitude. “Turn around,” she says, and measures a T-shirt against my shoulders. “You’ll want that rack over there.”
“All right.” I glance at the colors of the skirts—turquoise, red with yellow, yellow with blue, and a striped green and blue that’s really quite pretty. I toss through the shirts, find some that are acceptable, and add them to the stack.
“You’ll be wanting some jandals too,” she says.
“Jandals?”
She points to a wall filled with flip-flops.
“Yes.” I point to them. “Jandals,” I repeat. “Like sandals?”
“Japanese sandals.”
“Ah. Got it.” I select a pair, try them on, find the fit is fine. “Great.”
She rings me up. I pay with a card. “You can change over there if you like. But if I were you, I’d wear the medicine shirt. Everybody has the New Zealand ones.”
I smile. “Thanks.”
“Are you a doctor, then?”
“Yes. ER.”
“You’re not the one who saved that boy?”
For a moment, I’m so surprised I hardly know what to say. “Uh. The one who jumped off the pilings?”
“That’s him. They’re all talking about you, you know. Heroic to jump in and save him.”
I tuck my card back in my purse. “That was the ten years of lifeguard duties, not the ER,” I say. “Hope he’s doing all right.”
“Wouldn’t be your fault if he’s not. Lunatic.”
I head for the changing rooms. Peeling off the jeans is one of the best experiences of the day, and I tie the skirt with pleasure. The sandals are soft and squishy, the toe hold covered with synthetic velvet.
The whole normal interchange has calmed me. I take a deep breath, blow it out. In the mirror I look like someone else, with my wild hair tumbling down my back, and the high color of a lot of great sex and sunshine, and my bare legs.
Shoulders back, I wave at the woman and head out into the day, carrying a bag with the clothes in one hand and my city purse tossed crossways over my body. I’m fortified now. I can face her.
I cross the street and round a Moreton Bay fig that spreads arms out across a massive area. The trunk has many parts, making it look like a tree that would be populated by fairies. I can see my sister and me crouched on the beach, making tiny furniture for the fairies who lived around the cove, and stole sweets, and switched sugar for salt.
The thought makes my heart ache.
But there is only one reason I am here in this place at all. With the focus that saw me through twelve years of study, I shove away my emotions and look at my phone for directions. From here to my sister’s house is, by Google Maps estimation, a nine-minute walk, straight down the waterfront.
The houses must be the same era as the Victorians in San Francisco, and again I’m reminded of that city. Pedestrians stroll along the sidewalk, fit retirees in pastel golf shirts and white pants and mothers with children and—