Swim to Me (3 page)

Audra was a beauty, judging from the one surviving photograph of her. Every now and then, her mother would say to Delores, as if for the first time: “Have I ever shown you a picture of your grandmother?” Delores would sit next to her on the bed and watch her mother pull a yellowing envelope from the back of her drawer. She'd open it carefully, as if the Constitution were inside. Then she'd pull out a fading photograph with serrated edges and hold it up with both hands. “That's her,” she'd say, her voice lifting. Delores would look at the picture of a woman with a thick pageboy and high cheekbones. Her head was tilted to the side and she had a small smile on her face, as if the person taking the picture had just whispered something vaguely shocking. Each time, Delores studied
the big almond-shaped eyes, hoping that this time they would give something away, but they were cast downward, and whatever they were trying to conceal remained locked there forever.

Delores thought how it must have been for her mom and her grandfather, the rejected ones, licking their wounds together after beautiful sloe-eyed Audra swam out of their lives. If your mother leaves you when you are two years old, there is a whole part of your story that will never be finished. A girl with no mother must learn to be her own mother. It made Delores sad to think of her that way.

Leaving certainly ran in the Walker family.

A little more than two years after their trip to Weeki Wachee, Delores's father had left the family. Now she was going, too.

Her mother was husbandless and daughterless.

Westie would always be a fatherless child.

No, that wouldn't have to be so.

Even though she was far away, Delores would try to be a father to him. She would support him and do for him all the things a father should do. She would be a good daughter and make her mother proud.

Alone on the bus now, Delores realized she had no witness to her vow, only herself. But this was a promise born in love and sadness, and they were witnesses enough.

A
CROSS THE AISLE,
a young couple was making out. They were both long and slender, and their bodies moved together like wheat in a breeze. She had large blue doll-eyes and straight blonde hair down to her waist. Her red, orange, and green striped bell-bottoms hung low on her hips, and, as her mother would say, they were so tight they looked as if they'd been painted on her. He had long, dirty black hair and hatchet-like sideburns. Occasionally, he'd lean over and plant feathery kisses on her forehead. They were
whispering, so Delores couldn't hear what they were saying, only that they called each other “honey.” Sometimes she'd slap his arm and say, “You are too much.” Every now and then they would sing. Her voice was like spun sugar, sweet and airy. His had more of a twang to it. They went in and out of song, and Delores closed her eyes, soothed by their happy sounds. She pretended that they were her parents and they were singing her a lullaby. She thought about how her life would be different with parents like that. Maybe they were in show business. Maybe she would be in show business, too. She'd be popular. They'd travel all over the world, a rich and famous happy family.

Delores knew that the Walkers were not really a happy family. She could spot happy families a mile away. They were always bumping against each other, like puppies in a crate. They told stories about each other that never added up to much, but were constant reminders that they all spoke the language of the family. The dads didn't slouch and snap, “Now what?” whenever the moms called their names. The moms didn't roll their eyes and say, “Ha-ha, so funny I forgot to laugh,” when the dads made jokes. Happy moms didn't hold on too tightly to their daughters' arms and tell them, “When it comes your time, marry for money. There's nothing sexy about a man who can't afford to buy you a steak once a week.” Happy dads didn't talk about feeling “like a trapped mutt.”

Westie's family would be happy someday, she would certainly see to that.

The last thing Delores remembered before she fell asleep was thinking how Westie would like it if she would learn to play the guitar. When she awoke, the sky was misty lavender, as it is at sunrise. Instead of the pine trees, there were palms: the bold royal ones that always look as if their hands are on their hips and their chests are round and puffy. As the morning sunlight blazed its way into
the afternoon, Delores grasped her situation.
I am on my own now,
she thought.
If I eat, if I sleep, if I stay alive—it's all in my hands.
The truth of those thoughts was strangely familiar to her. It mirrored the way she felt when she was under water: alone, propelling herself forward, utterly unafraid.

Twenty-three hours earlier, when she'd stood at the Port Authority bus station in downtown New York, there had been dozens of buses lined up, like horses in stalls. Now her bus pulled into a small yellow building with only one other bus. The young man across the aisle pulled a guitar case from the overhead rack. Then he pointed to Delores's valise. “This belong to you?” She nodded yes, and he swung it over his head and put it by her feet. “All yours, little lady.” He smiled. The girl in the striped pants smiled, too, and said, “Have a good time now, ya hear?”

“Thank you,” said Delores, her lips sticking together from not having spoken for nearly a day. She got a good look at the man and woman. How ridiculous to fantasize that they could be her parents; they were only a year or two older than she was.

Delores waited until everyone left the bus station. She went into the ladies' room and opened her suitcase. She pulled out her suede jacket, then unwrapped Otto, running her fingers around his head. No cracks. What a relief. He would stay with her for a while. She reached inside his skull and pulled out the letter inviting her to audition at Weeki Wachee. She plucked a coin from the bathing cap in which she had stashed her treasured silver dollars and closed the suitcase. The man at the ticket counter seemed surprised when she asked for change, but handed her ten dimes, smiled, and said: “Anything else I can do for you?”

She wasn't used to people being this friendly: the man who lifted her suitcase, the girl who told her to have a good time, and now this man who wanted to know if he could do something else for her.

“Thank you, I'm fine,” she said.

“You take care,” he said, winking at Otto.

Delores found a phone booth. She closed the door and dialed the phone number on the letterhead.

“Weeki Wachee, how may I help you?” It hadn't even rung twice.

Delores asked for the director, Thelma Foote, the woman who had signed the letter.

“Hello, this is Delores Walker. You sent me a letter saying I could try out to be a mermaid if I came here,” said Delores. “Well, I'm here.”

“Delores, sweet thing,” said Thelma Foote. “Where's ‘here'?”

Delores read from the sign in front of her. “The Tampa bus depot.”

“Are you by yourself?”

“I am.”

“Hang on a moment, will you?”

“You stay right there,” she said. “One of my girls will come get you. It'll take about an hour. How will we know you?”

“I'm tall with long, brown hair and I'll be carrying a fringed suede jacket.”

Delores sat on the concrete bench outside the depot and started to reread her copy of
Teen Girl
magazine. The sun made her head pound. She moved inside the stuffy building and sat on a backless wooden bench, too distracted to read. She put her suitcase and the brown paper bag next to her. Otto flopped on her lap. She unwrapped the last of her sandwiches. It was cold sliced liver on Wonder Bread with ketchup. And now, here Delores was, eleven hundred miles away from home, eating liver and already missing it. A little touch of France in Tampa. She polished off the sandwich and decided against buying a drink to go with it. Best to save her money. Who knew where she'd wind up sleeping tonight?

When she was sure no one was looking, she slipped her hand into Otto's flaccid body. “Hey kiddo,” he said in his squeaky voice. He cocked his head, then looked around in the darting way that pigeons do. “We're here. We made it.”

“Otto,” she whispered, staring at the return ticket in her other hand. “What am I going to do if they don't take me as a mermaid?”

Otto leaned his cool face against hers. Then he pulled back and looked her in the eye. “With your looks and talent? It's in the bag, kiddo. Would they drive an hour one-way to pick up just anyone? I don't think so.” With Otto still alive on her right hand, Delores curled up on the bench and fell asleep. She awoke to the sound of a honking car horn. They were here. She gave Otto a quick peck on the cheek, wrapped her pajamas around his head, and shoved him into the suitcase. She ran her hands through her hair, squeezed her eyes open and shut a few times, then walked outside. There was a white pickup truck with the blue letters
WEEKI WACHEE
and a drawing of the two mermaids in front of the clamshell.

“You the girl from New York City?” asked the young woman who was driving.

“That's me,” said Delores.

“C'mon then, let's go.”

The girl behind the wheel was named Molly Pouncey. She was seventeen, just eleven months older than Delores. She had long blonde hair, bluish green eyes, with no whites showing, and there was a tiny crook in her thin, long nose. Molly Pouncey had come from Philadelphia only six months earlier. She swallowed her
l
's, so that “please” came out “plgease” and “delicious” as “deglicious.” When she said to Delores: “You'll love the girls, and the springs. The water is so unbelievably blue and clear, you don't even need goggles,” it sounded to Delores as if she were talking underwater.

They drove by the swamps and marshes that had captivated
Delores a little more than two years earlier. They passed a church with a marquee outside.
BY SORROW OF THE HEART, THE SPIRIT IS BROKEN
, it said in high, bold letters. Had something changed, or, back then, had she not noticed the fried-chicken joints and Jesus billboards that lined the road?

“The food is out of sight,” continued Molly. “Great pizza, corn dogs. We get to eat whatever we want.”

Molly talked as if Delores was already one of them. Delores had read in
Teen Girl
that appearance was a matter of self-esteem. “When you feel insecure, put a smile on your face and a bounce in your voice, and no one will be able to tell,” it said. “After a while, even you will begin to believe that the day's getting brighter.”
Teen Girl
had never let her down; it certainly wouldn't now.

Delores and her best friend, Ellen Frailey, used to spend hours reading
Teen Girl.
Once, they sat in the sun for two hours with wax paper on their arms after reading:
Give yourself a suntan tattoo. Cut out a small diamond or flower shape and paste it on your shoulder while you sunbathe. Small beauty spots are best. Avoid large shapes or complicated designs—you don't want to look like a sailor. Teen Girl
was where Delores learned that “popular people are enthusiastic.” According to her score on the “Are You an Extrovert or an Introvert?” quiz, she was somewhere in between, with a tendency toward “keeping to herself and shying away from others.” By now,
Teen Girl
had become Delores's personal guidebook. She turned to it for advice on how to look and act like other girls her age.

Because she had teeth that stuck out (“braces are a luxury for people like us,” her mother had said), Delores normally kept her lips together and smiled in the shape of a canoe. But as Molly rattled on about the routines and about the hot room where the girls went to warm up after swimming, Delores flashed the most luminous, toothy grin she could muster. “Gosh, that sounds so exciting,” she
said. “I can hardly wait to get there.” Molly gave her a sidelong look: “You look like that actress from
Gigi
that my mother's always going on about,” she said. “Oh, you know, the French one.”

“Well, I have a little French in me,” said Delores. “From my mother.” It wasn't a lie exactly. She had, after all, grown up on liver.

Delores studied Molly's profile: a thin, white scar ran down the side of her neck. She wanted to ask Molly if she'd been stabbed and also how she got the money to come from Philadelphia, but she didn't think it was appropriate to ask those kinds of questions so soon after meeting her. Molly, it appeared, did not have the same problem. “How does a girl from New York City make her way down to this part of Florida?” she asked in her gluggy accent. “Did you run away from home?” “Oh no,” answered Delores. “My parents—they're in the entertainment business—have always encouraged me to do my own thing.”

“Are they famous?”

“Is who famous?”

“You know, your parents. Are they famous?”

“Well they travel a lot,” said Delores, startled at how easily the words were leaving her lips. “They play the guitar. They sing. You've probably seen them around.”

Molly fell quiet, realizing that she might be in the presence of greatness, or at least someone related to greatness. She took in Delores's outfit—a red-plaid miniskirt, a short-sleeved black knit sweater, and white vinyl boots. High fashion for 1972. There was a sudden shift as if, by Delores introducing the possibility of famous parents and glamour, Molly was the one who would now have to try to please Delores. Delores let the silence linger before asking a question of her own.

“Is that scar a stab wound?”

Molly put her fingers to her neck. “Oh that,” she laughed a little
falsely. “I forget that it's there half the time.” Then, in a hurry to change the subject, she said: “What's your sign?”

Delores checked herself up and down. “What sign?”

“Your birth sign, you know, your sign of the zodiac.”

It was as if Molly was speaking Swedish.