no—”
“We’re mermaids !”
Silence. Pearl pressed her fingertips to her indiscreet lips. Mara gave me a slit-eyed glower, while Lilith watched me with quiet concern. Neither attempted to explain, correct, or dismiss Pearl’s claim.
“Oh,” I said. “Mermaids.”
And, moving as casually as I could, I left them there with the fish.
I am not one to accuse others of frail whimsies and lunatic notions, considering my own strange afflictions and tastes, but the Bonavendier sisters were crazy. Not crazy in an evil way, I decided, or even a clinical one, but deluded, gently fantastical, dancing with moonlight. I never doubted that they and I shared the same freakish talents; I never seriously doubted we were blood kin. The difference, I concluded, was in defensive rationalizations and adjustments. I tried to be clear-eyed about my bizarre qualities. I mourned my oddity and went about my life as if it were a daily mea culpa for my unnatural ways. But the Bonavendier sisters were smug, vain, and wealthy, all of which grants lunacy the soft succor of respectability. They had designed a world for themselves in which lovely notions of mythological mermaidhood explained the unexplainable. They had clearly survived by designing their own fairy tale and inhabiting it.
I would not be taken in. Though I wanted to be.
That night, I sat in a small blue rocking chair in the deep-sea-themed living room of my cabin, my head in my hands, not a single light turned on, the darkness of early evening as tight as shut eyelids around me. I had no idea where the magnificent, insane Bonavendier sisters—my half-sisters, I did acknowledge repeatedly on instinct—had gone after I left them in the pet shop. As I rocked, head in hands, mourning the day’s events, I pushed my bare, webbed toes into a pile of seashells one of my e-mail correspondents had sent me. I’d arranged them prettily at the base of a water garden in a ceramic pot. I caressed my conch shells and sand dollars for an unwitting moment, then jerked my feet away.
Mermaid . Then where were my iridescent scales, my transforming flippers and coquettish charm and subverted genitalia? In the water I was still two-legged Alice. And how was it that I came by my mermaid-dom through a father, not a mermaid mother? I shuddered at the Bonavendiers’ nonsense, hugging myself inside a thin white robe over plain white underwear. I was rooted in cotton reality, not silken dreams. The Bonavendier sisters could console themselves with ludicrous whimsies, but the world operated by harsher rules: We were genetic freaks, not mythological marvels.
“My father was not a merman,” I said aloud, just to assure my own intelligence.
The sound of several cars turning into my long driveway made me jerk to attention. I hurried about my dark cabin, changing the robe for an ankle-length denim skirt and oversized denim jacket, the kind of clothing I wore routinely, hiding myself inside a moving tent. I wanted to cry but had no water left in me. My life in Riley was ruined. All my efforts to get along, to be left alone, to be invisible, had been destroyed.
So tell me, would you save that child again, knowing the consequences ?
I stopped stock still in the middle of my own floor. The humming filled my head again. Lilith Bonavendier was speaking to me again . I groaned in defeat.
Yes, I would.
Then you’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Alice. And nothing to keep you here anymore.
You are my family in name only. I don’t believe in you . I began frantically lacing up high black boots on my feet. Since high school, I’d made it hard for anyone to jerk my shoes off. Trembling in denim and Victorian leather, I walked out onto the cabin’s dark porch and pressed a switch. A hooded, tin light fixture cast its glow on the yard and the winter woods beyond. Two dozen steps behind me, below the sloping backyard of my house, the lake waited with dark, quiet appeal. I fought an urge to run down the bank,
“We’re mermaids !”
Silence. Pearl pressed her fingertips to her indiscreet lips. Mara gave me a slit-eyed glower, while Lilith watched me with quiet concern. Neither attempted to explain, correct, or dismiss Pearl’s claim.
“Oh,” I said. “Mermaids.”
And, moving as casually as I could, I left them there with the fish.
I am not one to accuse others of frail whimsies and lunatic notions, considering my own strange afflictions and tastes, but the Bonavendier sisters were crazy. Not crazy in an evil way, I decided, or even a clinical one, but deluded, gently fantastical, dancing with moonlight. I never doubted that they and I shared the same freakish talents; I never seriously doubted we were blood kin. The difference, I concluded, was in defensive rationalizations and adjustments. I tried to be clear-eyed about my bizarre qualities. I mourned my oddity and went about my life as if it were a daily mea culpa for my unnatural ways. But the Bonavendier sisters were smug, vain, and wealthy, all of which grants lunacy the soft succor of respectability. They had designed a world for themselves in which lovely notions of mythological mermaidhood explained the unexplainable. They had clearly survived by designing their own fairy tale and inhabiting it.
I would not be taken in. Though I wanted to be.
That night, I sat in a small blue rocking chair in the deep-sea-themed living room of my cabin, my head in my hands, not a single light turned on, the darkness of early evening as tight as shut eyelids around me. I had no idea where the magnificent, insane Bonavendier sisters—my half-sisters, I did acknowledge repeatedly on instinct—had gone after I left them in the pet shop. As I rocked, head in hands, mourning the day’s events, I pushed my bare, webbed toes into a pile of seashells one of my e-mail correspondents had sent me. I’d arranged them prettily at the base of a water garden in a ceramic pot. I caressed my conch shells and sand dollars for an unwitting moment, then jerked my feet away.
Mermaid . Then where were my iridescent scales, my transforming flippers and coquettish charm and subverted genitalia? In the water I was still two-legged Alice. And how was it that I came by my mermaid-dom through a father, not a mermaid mother? I shuddered at the Bonavendiers’ nonsense, hugging myself inside a thin white robe over plain white underwear. I was rooted in cotton reality, not silken dreams. The Bonavendier sisters could console themselves with ludicrous whimsies, but the world operated by harsher rules: We were genetic freaks, not mythological marvels.
“My father was not a merman,” I said aloud, just to assure my own intelligence.
The sound of several cars turning into my long driveway made me jerk to attention. I hurried about my dark cabin, changing the robe for an ankle-length denim skirt and oversized denim jacket, the kind of clothing I wore routinely, hiding myself inside a moving tent. I wanted to cry but had no water left in me. My life in Riley was ruined. All my efforts to get along, to be left alone, to be invisible, had been destroyed.
So tell me, would you save that child again, knowing the consequences ?
I stopped stock still in the middle of my own floor. The humming filled my head again. Lilith Bonavendier was speaking to me again . I groaned in defeat.
Yes, I would.
Then you’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Alice. And nothing to keep you here anymore.
You are my family in name only. I don’t believe in you . I began frantically lacing up high black boots on my feet. Since high school, I’d made it hard for anyone to jerk my shoes off. Trembling in denim and Victorian leather, I walked out onto the cabin’s dark porch and pressed a switch. A hooded, tin light fixture cast its glow on the yard and the winter woods beyond. Two dozen steps behind me, below the sloping backyard of my house, the lake waited with dark, quiet appeal. I fought an urge to run down the bank,
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