Swim to Me (32 page)

“To what do you attribute . . .”

“I heard you,” said Delores, gaining confidence. “It's just that I have a job to do and I do it pretty well. But how can anyone take me seriously if I'm doing it in a bathtub?”

“You're a star,” he said. “I made you a goddam star. Do you know how many girls like you would give their eyeteeth to be where you are?”

“If I may say, I think it's the other way around. I think Delores has made you a star,” said Thelma.

Sommers bit down on his ring. Beads of sweat bubbled up on his upper lip. Maybe he'd gone too far.

Delores had never known what it felt like to be repelled by someone until this moment. So searing and absolute was her contempt for him that it bordered on pleasurable. Something deep inside of her went cold, and her words, when they came, were crisp and brusque.

“I'll wear a green, fitted dress that suggests a mermaid. I'll keep
the stupid stuff about it being a rainy day for Mr. and Mrs. Jones's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I'll even have my hair wet and slicked back if you like. But that's it. No bathtub.”

“Not a bad compromise,” said Thelma, folding her arms in front of her chest.

“So that's what it will take to keep you on the team?” asked Sommers, sounding relieved.

“That's it,” she said.

“Wet hair, eh? That's a nice touch. Wish I had thought of it myself.” His compliment was meant to breach the gap that had just been hollowed out between them. Although Delores smiled, they both knew that something had changed.

The Aqua Zoo would be the first of its kind—Dave Hanratty wasn't interested in anything that wasn't—and it would change everything that had come before it. The colors of the Springs, the familiar navy and white, had now become aqua and palm-frond green. The Giant Café had been redesigned in the shape of a carousel, with a bright blue and green metal roof.

Over the past three months, boastful new signs had sprung up along the roads nearby promising things like:
THE GIANT CAFÉ: THE BIGGEST AND BEST FOOD IN THE WORLD
and
THE AQUA ZOO: SPECTACULAR AND AMAZING BEYOND YOUR WILDEST IMAGINATION.
Even the gift shop bragged about
NEVER BEFORE SEEN TREASURES FROM EARTH AND SEA.
Its inventory, which had always been skimpy, now overflowed with stuffed blue elephants and yellow chimpanzees with green and blue striped swim trunks sewn on their little bottoms. There were packets of magic flowers that sprang to life when you put them in a glass of water, and wooden pop guns with the words
Aqua Zoo, Weeki Wachee Springs
decaled onto them. The decals went on everything Hanratty could get his hands on: seashells, umbrellas, sun visors, coloring books, and boxes of taffy and pecan delights. There were bins filled with licorice, button candy, gumballs, and all kinds of chocolate treats. The faithful could buy banners and bumper stickers and big, glossy books
with colored pictures of all the animals. Of course there was the mermaid inventory: little dolls stitched by hand, with red yarn for hair and with tails made out of sparkly material, and, for the overly zealous, full mermaid costumes to be spun to order by Barbara and Bobby Wynn, the finest, and only, mermaid tailors in the world.

Hanratty's genius was his ability to create a buzz months in advance of the actual opening without anyone having an inkling of just why they were so excited. As soon as he found out that Delores's mother worked at
Cool,
he began sending her envelopes filled with press material about the Aqua Zoo, “just in case your mother might be interested.” He posted billboards on Route 50 that read:
FLORIDA LIVE, LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE; WANT PLASTIC DUCKS AND MICE? KEEP GOING EAST. FOR THE
REAL THING
, TURN AROUND AND HEAD WEST; FLORIDA FAKE OR FLORIDA WILD? YOU CHOOSE.
All had the Weeki Wachee logo of a mermaid silhouetted against a clamshell, the words
Weeki Wachee Springs,
and the site's address. They were just the kind of provocative messages that would pique a person's curiosity. The folks at Disney protested wildly, but what could they do? These were America's highways, and even
they
didn't own them.

A master of psychology, Hanratty was mindful of the pride and solidarity that uniforms engendered. Even before the Aqua Zoo opened, he made everyone at the Springs wear green camp shirts with blue elephants lumbering over their breast pockets, aqua Bermuda shorts, and white tennis shoes with white socks. No one protested except for Thelma who, with some trepidation, told Hanratty that she was not a clown and therefore saw no need to dress in costume. “Of all people, Thelma, I thought it would be you who would embrace what I am trying to foster here,” Hanratty had replied. “You and I are kindred spirits, what they call old souls, don't you think? I have always savored the understanding we have between
us. But if you don't want to wear the uniform, far be it from me to cause you discomfort. I value your friendship and partnership far more than I do your dress.” By the end of the conversation, Thelma had agreed to the shirt and the aqua pants—only hers would be full-length—and, of course, she retained the option of wearing a windbreaker, even if it did have a blue elephant over the left breast pocket.

One afternoon, as she and Rex were going over purchase orders for new silverware for the café, they got to talking about Hanratty. Thelma said she thought he was some kind of a genius, though she couldn't really get a grip on who he was. Rex said, “He's a man who wears his head on his sleeve and keeps his heart to himself. He is quite conscious of creating his own mythology, and so he will act with his head despite his heart's inclinations. That's good for us.”

Rex had a way of setting things straight in her mind. She'd never thought about anyone consciously creating his own mythology. But, of course, that's exactly what Hanratty was doing. A man like that doesn't construct an empire and leave his ego behind.
Fine,
she thought,
let him do it. Just as long as my girls and the Springs are okay, let him build whatever empire he wants.

W
HAT EVERYONE WOULD
always remember about the summer before the opening of the Aqua Zoo was the smell in the air. It was sweet, like maple syrup. There was no explanation for it, other than that optimism and anticipation give off their own sweet aroma. So who's to say that the trees and the air weren't intoxicated as well? Even Roy, who normally kept his head down and went about his work, now had reason to talk to people. Thelma and Delores decided that, after a brief time living in the girls' dorm, Westie would be better off sleeping on a cot in his dad's trailer at night. Although he spent most of the daytime with Delores, the constant
presence of a little boy on the campgrounds made everyone a little nicer, a little more playful.

The clowns let Westie ride around in their cars with them and taught him how to make rude, honking sounds whenever he lifted his leg. The acrobats taught him how to do cartwheels and to fold himself up into a heap the size of a sand castle. Because Lucy and Westie were roughly the same size, the chimp thought nothing of grabbing the boy by the hand or rolling him onto the ground. And to think that Roy used to worry that Westie would become a mama's boy.

Dave Hanratty had never known a kid like Westie. He liked that he was squat and stubby like his father, and he seemed regular in the way that children of circus performers aren't. Often, he would ask Westie's reaction to things to gauge how they would work in the show. One afternoon, they sat down by the Springs together as the clowns rehearsed a new act. The clowns would squirt the elephants with water from their seltzer bottles until the elephants would get so put out, they would dunk the clowns with their trunks. Han-ratty watched Westie's reaction. “Do you like it when the elephants dunk the clowns?” he asked Westie. “No,” said Westie, who seemed scared by the power of the elephants. “It's stupid.” Later, when they changed the act to the elephants squirting water back at the clowns, Westie laughed so hard he had to lean forward. Hanratty knew the act would work.

Like his sister, Westie couldn't seem to bring himself to say “Daddy.” The best he could do was “Doy.” “Doy, watch this,” he'd shout, before jumping into a pile of hay. “Doy, I need hamburger.” “Doy, let's go see Nehru.” “Doy” was so much more than Roy had ever hoped for that, at times, his heart would jump at the sound of the special name.

At night, Delores and Roy would tuck Westie into bed. Westie
would sometimes cry and say he missed his mom. Delores would reassure him that she would come to visit soon, but often, exhausted by his misery, he would cry himself to sleep. The boy had such a sunny nature, it tore at Roy's heart to see him so sad. One night, Roy got the idea that if he read to Westie at bedtime, he'd get distracted and have less time to fret.

He had no clue as to what kinds of stories children liked, nor could he think of any adults who read books. When he happened to mention this to Rex, Rex told him, “There's one book that I've read over and over since I was a boy, and each time the story reads in a way it never did before. It's called
The Jungle Book.
It's a children's story, really, but I never get tired of it.” Rex told Roy it was about a boy, Mowgli, who was chased into a wolf cave by a tiger and brought up by wolves.

“Sounds scary,” said Roy.

“Not so,” said Rex. “He makes friends with the animals in the jungle and gets to know them not as a little boy would know an animal, but as one animal would know another. Tell you what. Borrow my copy and read him a story about Mowgli, the little boy. See how he likes it.” The next day, Rex handed Roy a brown paper bag. Inside was an orange book with a worn cloth cover and a painting of a little boy in a loincloth surrounded by a bear, a panther, and two wolves. The book was heavy, but the type was big and the lines had thick spaces between them. Roy held it in his hand as he would a can of baked beans. That night, he and Delores began to read to Westie about Mother Wolf and Father Wolf, and Tabaqui the jackal, and Shere Khan the tiger, and how, one night, Father Wolf went out to investigate a rustle in the bushes:

He made his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. The result
was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five feet, landing almost where he left ground.

“Man!” He snapped. “A man's cub. Look!”

Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk—as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf's cave at night.

The Jungle Book
became a nightly ritual. Roy and Delores took on the voices of the different animals, with Delores hissing to impersonate Kaa the python, or speaking in a high child's voice when reading Mowgli. Roy growled when he imitated Baloo the bear, and made the deep hollow sounds of a tuba when he was Hathi the elephant. The book became the common language between Roy and his children. Roy and Delores took to calling Westie “Little Brother,” the name the animals called Mowgli, and Westie began calling Nehru “Hathi.”

All families have their codes and their funny secrets. This wasn't much, but Delores always liked the part when Baloo teaches Mowgli to speak the words “We be of one blood, you and I” in all the languages of the different animals. Despite all that had happened to the disjointed Walker family, this much was true.

G
AIL
W
ALKER SAT
in her cubicle outside the marketing director's office at
Cool.
Her diploma from the Marcie Breitman Learning Center, still new and crisp, was tacked up on her bulletin board above her desk. The certificate was next to a note from Marcie Breitman herself that read:
You, Gail, are a people person. Just remember to keep your sunny side up and your nose to the grindstone, and you'll knock ‘em dead.
It infused her with confidence and a sense of purpose. Today she was charged with finding
someone to construct one hundred crossword puzzles whose clues would lead to the words “The solution is Cool”—favors for an upcoming event in September. She had already spent the morning calling around at party-supply stores and various puzzle companies. So far, no luck, but Gail wasn't discouraged. This was her job. She was earning ten thousand dollars a year and she had her own chair with a gray, cushioned back and metal armrests. She wiggled her toes, feeling the soft leather that lined her strappy white sandals. Avalon worked just one floor up, and, by the end of the month, Westie would be back home living with her. Not bad, she thought, smoothing the pleats of her white Dacron skirt. Not bad at all.

These days, she was allowing herself the extravagance of a daily long-distance phone call. Every night at six thirty, just after she'd get home from work, she'd dial up Dave Hanratty. Westie would be waiting to speak to her. On this evening, Hanrattty bypassed his usual greeting, “Hanratty's Circus and Aqua Zoo, Spectacular and Amazing,” with “Hello, Mrs. Walker, how are you tonight?”