When We Believed in Mermaids(87)
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 questions 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.”