Dreamland Social Club(33)

“Your mother went back after high school. To audition.” Beth shook her head. “But they didn’t have any openings. That’s when she sent that postcard. Then I went away to college and she went to art school and got married and took off, and we lost touch.”

“What does this mean?” Jane pointed at the LYLAS.

“Love you like a sister,” Beth said sadly.

They were done eating, and she sat back in her chair. “We used to do crazy things. Your mother was the troop leader.”

“What kind of crazy things?”

“We used to break into the amusement parks at like two, three in the morning.”

“You did?” Leo said. It was the first he’d spoken the whole time.

“Sure. We used to climb to the top of the Thunderbolt after dark and smoke cigarettes.”

“What?” Leo said. “You’re kidding me.”

“What’s the Thunderbolt?” Jane asked.

“An old roller coaster that got knocked down.” Beth seemed to be enjoying the memories now. “And we’d try to climb the Parachute Jump, but we never got very far before we either got scared or got caught.”

Leo was shaking his head and smiling.

“Your mother was a bad influence.” Beth smiled. “In the best possible way. Sneaking beers onto the Wonder Wheel. She had keys to everything. I don’t even know how.” She turned to Leo. “But don’t go getting any ideas.”

Then sadness tugged at the corners of her eyes. She took the postcard into her hands and studied the little drawings. “She used to doodle all the time. She had this crazy journal she carried everywhere and she was always writing stuff down. Lyrics and quotes from poems, but mostly doodling. My God, the doodling.”

A deliveryman had come in, carrying some boxes. “I have to take this,” Beth said, and got up. Leo and Jane got up, too. “But please. Come and see me again. We’ll talk more. Okay?”

Jane nodded, and Beth went to sign for the delivery.

Stepping up close to the aquarium now, Jane looked up at the tallest kelp plant, a deep orange underwater tree that stretched high to the top of the tank. Just above her head she noticed a starfish clinging to the glass and she put her hand up, pressed it against the glass, against the five points. She thought she saw one of them twitch.





Jane looked under the mattress and up on that high shelf of the closet and behind all the drawers in the dresser and then under the bed, by the springs, but didn’t find a journal anywhere. She went down to Birdie’s Bavarian Bar and looked in the chest of clothes, and still nothing. No journal.

She brought her mermaid book into bed that night and reread the inscription. My dear daughter, I used to be a mermaid once so I know that mermaids are good at a lot of things, like keeping secrets. I hope your life is full of them. Love, Mom.

It was such a weird inscription. But mostly, it was a ridiculously weird book. A book full of pictures of mermaids.

The Mermaid’s Secret.

Who publishes that?

Who, besides her kooky mother, would actually buy it?

The pages were mostly filled with illustrations, of course. Mermaids didn’t really exist. And some of them were ridiculously over the top. Because would mermaids really find it practical to have hair that long? Would they really wear makeup? For the first time Jane regretted that this was the one book her mother had left her, the one book she’d come to cherish above all others. It was possible mermaids were good at keeping secrets, but this book held none. There were no life lessons to be learned in its pages, no inspiration to be found. It was story-less.

She flipped and flipped until she found what she suddenly knew she’d find: the same photo that appeared on the postcard her mother had sent Leo’s mother.

The seahorse.

Being kissed by a mermaid.

Right there on page 45.

She remembered, when she was younger, not understanding why there were regular women in old-fashioned bathing suits pictured in a book about mermaids, but she’d never bothered to read the captions before. This one said “Mermaids at Weeki Wachee, 1959.”

Setting the book aside, Jane picked up the mermaid doll and wound it and still no music came out.

Song-less.

Only then did she study the underside of the doll and discover the stitches—a rip that had been repaired. Thinking that odd, she got out a pair of scissors and snipped the thread away. Because maybe the doll could be fixed, made to sing, after all.

Reaching into the mermaid’s innards, she felt something hard and was able to hook her finger on it. The keys she pulled out hung on a small silver hoop, and each one was labeled with a small taped-on piece of paper. One said “Jump,” one said “Thunder,” a third said “Wonder,” and another “Bath.”

We used to climb the Parachute Jump.

We used to smoke on the Thunderbolt.

She held them in her hand and felt a sort of completion in her heart, like her body had been trying to draw a circle for years and had finally connected two points.

Thunder. Jump. Wonder. Bath.

Mermaids were good at keeping secrets after all.

Under the too-white lights of the Rite Aid, it’s hard to know what time it is, let alone what kind of makeup will look good on me. At a party. Tonight. If tonight ever gets here. A check of my watch reveals that only a minute has passed since I last checked.