Dreamland Social Club(32)
She turned down the block that ran alongside the park and stopped by the Polar Express ride—a series of cars that ran around a circular track with hills—and studied the paintings on it, of skiers in goggles mid-jump and, of course, polar bears with big white hairy bellies. She remembered a joke her brother used to tell, about a baby polar bear who keeps asking his parents, “Are you sure I’m not a brown bear or a black bear?” They always tell him, “No, you’re our own baby polar bear and we’ve loved you and cherished you since the day you were born.” Finally, the parents ask their baby polar bear why he keeps asking this question. He looks around and says, “Because I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing.”
Walking farther down the side of the park, she stopped by the Pirate Ship ride—this park was pretty loosey-goosey with its theme—and wondered what would happen when the park’s lease was up in the spring, as that article had said. In the meantime, she guessed the park would close for the season in just a few weeks, with their fate hanging in the balance. It wasn’t the nicest amusement park she’d ever seen, but she felt a little sad, anyway, when she wondered where the Polar Bears and Pirates might end up. She closed her eyes and imagined walking a pirate ship’s plank, falling off into choppy seas with an Aarrrgh!
There must have been a hundred fish in the tank at the Coral Room. And the tank must have been two stories high. Right as Jane walked into the empty club, a school of something gold swam by and turned in sync, and Jane nearly gasped with surprise. Resting on a seabed that appeared to be actual sand were coral clusters and sea anemones—waving gently like Leo’s hair—and a treasure chest overflowing with costume jewelry.
It was absolutely dazzling . . . at first. But on closer inspection, the rest of the room was less so. The velvet curtains and couches looked a little nubby, and the floor appeared matted, scuffed. There were rips in the leather on some of the booth seats around the room’s perimeter. Jane didn’t care.
Leo and his mother were sitting at a table in a far corner and Jane approached. His mom wore a dress that was sparkly—almost bubbly—and made of something shimmery and pink. With straight blond hair cut to her chin and lips painted cherry red, she looked clean and crisp and inviting, like a cocktail. She was the exact opposite of Leo’s dad, but sometimes, Jane guessed, that worked.
Leo said, “I’ll leave you two alone,” and Leo’s mom looked sad and happy at the same time. She pulled Jane into a hug, and she smelled as fruity and crisp as she looked. “I’m Beth,” she said. “It’s wonderful to meet you.”
Jane just let herself be absorbed and waited, unnerved by how good it felt to be held just so.
“Birdie used to update me, whenever she got letters from your mother.” She pulled away. “I can’t believe it’s you. I mean, you’re hers.”
Behind Beth, in the aquarium, seaweed swayed slightly as a tiger fish swam through it. Up close like this, the gravel sparkled like silver and the sea sponges looked like brains. Jane tried to imagine a woman, dressed like a mermaid, swimming around and waving at people sitting at the bar. It sounded sort of silly and also, well, fun.
“Sit.” Beth sank back into her chair. “We were best friends, your mom and me. For a long time.”
Jane had so many questions to ask, but the one that came to her lips was “What was she like?”
“What was she like. Gosh.” Beth had a faraway look in her eyes. “What was she like.” Her lips softened into a smile. “She was an absolute doll. Sweetest, most thoughtful woman you’d ever meet. And boy, could she tell a joke. And flirt. Oh, the woman flirted like a pro. But she wasn’t fake about it. She just really enjoyed people, you know? She could talk to anyone about anything. I mean, anybody. All walks of life.”
Jane nodded, waited for more.
“I don’t know. She was just . . . fun. Fun to be around.”
The very thing that I’m not.
Beth reached across the table and squeezed Jane’s hand. “It was an awful thing that happened to her.” And released her hand. “To you. I still can’t believe it. You look just like her, you know.”
Jane felt the tears start to generate behind her eyes.
I can’t believe it either. I didn’t know. Or she thought she knew, just from the pictures she had seen. But no one had ever told her.
To keep her eyes from giving in, she focused them on another fish in the tank, this one a really small blue fish with a slash of white on its side.
Beth stood and seemed to shake something off, then said, “You hungry?”
Jane nodded.
“Let’s get some food, hmmm?”
She summoned a waiter and they invited Leo back over, and they sat and ate in the empty lounge, in the rippling light of the aquarium’s spotlights, while Beth told stories about Jane’s mom. Like how they used to piss off the guy who ran the water balloon game that competed with Preemie’s by only ever playing when they were the only two around, so that one of them was guaranteed to win. She talked about their terrible, terrible sunburns, how they would have to spray themselves down every fifteen minutes for hours with something called Solarcaine because it hurt so bad, before people knew how bad the sun really was for you. She talked about winters on Coney, how she and Jane’s mom would eat piping-hot potato knishes from Mrs. Stalz’s in Brighton Beach almost every day after school. She talked about mermaid camp, when they were fourteen. How Birdie had driven them down to Florida in her beat-up old car in a two-day frenzy, and how Jane’s mom had had to be put in the car forcibly when camp was done. She had wanted to stay, had wanted to drop out of high school and train to be a mermaid for real.