The Mermaid Girl (3 page)

Daniel,
she told the keys,
I need to talk to you.
The machine didn't answer. The keys stayed stuck. It was pointless to look for people in places they weren't. She could still have her sequin boxes, her needles, and those stupid bloody costumes, and none of it would summon Michel or fit her carnival inside the house. None of it would make the missing go away.

Michel had said, “The very good thing about traveling as we do is that we make new family, bring them with us, and let them go when we need to.” He'd been straightening his vest, checking the lay of the sequins before a show. She'd felt absurdly fond of him, his silver hair shot with fading streaks of black. “One day you'll let me go when you need to. I'll send you off with a smile, because you'll be ready.”

That July they'd reached Napawset and Daniel. He was warm and solid, and she'd wanted to climb inside him and never leave. It hadn't been letting go so much as feeling her arms stretch until her shoulders dislocated.

*   *   *

Daniel dropped his hand to his son's head, and turned him around like a screw. “Bed. Now,” he said, and gave him a small push down the hall.

“I want another story.”

“You had two at your actual bedtime. Sneaky little boys don't get stories.”

“I'm not little.” Simon dragged his heels on the runner, the plastic feet on his pajamas picking up static, sending off crackling blue sparks. Daniel took his place in the doorway, peeking around the corner into the kitchen, where she sat.

Paulina's back was to him, her hair down. It spread around her, making it impossible to see her shoulders, obscuring her back and the fact that she'd not been eating well. He couldn't see the cards, but he could hear them hit the table, the little tap when she touched them. He'd loved her hair when he'd met her, the extension of her that just kept growing. Every day there was a new piece of her to love. She said it grew a half-inch a month, that the left side grew faster than the right, and he'd filed that fact away. Every month there was a new half-inch of her to discover, and it would be so for the rest of their lives. He hadn't imagined there would be a time when he'd want to cut it off, to shave her head to keep her from hiding.

“It's 2:30, Paulina. Put the cards away and come to bed.”

She didn't answer. He tried again, this time standing beside her. She set cards, cleared them, and set them again, as though no one else were in the room. Frustration made him want to shout,
I'm here.
But he knew himself to be a person who disappeared when his wife walked into a room; it was part of what made him fall in love—a sudden absence of self. He could grab her arm and shake her, but it would make him a man who shook his wife. That was a thing you couldn't take back. He slipped his fingers through her hair, set his hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “It's too much tonight. You've got to come to bed.” He kissed the top of her head, finding the roots, that new half-inch of her, and tried not to scream.

The problem with stealing the magician's assistant from a carnival was that you were always waiting for her to disappear. He expected her to vanish. She had in fact, multiple times, before Simon was born, and just after, too. He'd woken to a note, “Going to check on Michel. Love you.” He vaguely remembered Michel as the kind of man who didn't get old, only more distinguished. Someone who went silver, not gray. Thin, he wore a shiny red vest and bow tie like a second skin. He had the deep wrinkles of a man who made a living with his face. Daniel was certain Michel could take care of himself, and didn't warrant anyone's worry. But it was impossible not to view Michel through envy's lens. Daniel wanted to be worried for, wanted to be missed without doing any of the leaving that missing demanded. When Paulina left, he counted breaths, and thought constantly of the disappearing box. The reappearing was the most important part of the trick. Eventually he stopped living in fear that she wouldn't come back. The more pressing concern was that she was cutting herself in two. She'd started swimming early in the morning, when the kids were asleep, when she thought he was asleep. She didn't know her absence woke him, that the shift in the bed was an earthquake. When she climbed back in, she smelled like salt and seaweed. Sometimes her hair would still be knotted on top of her head. She tried to keep it dry. She didn't want him to know. The problem with marrying the mermaid girl from the carnival was knowing that one day she'd swim away.

*   *   *

The punch press was mindless. The week's contract was for HVAC parts, which entailed forty to fifty hours of punching and probably three torn pairs of gloves. Something would cut through the metal. Somebody would get sliced. Lanney had broken his wrist playing softball, and nobody could get a temp to replace him, so Daniel was on punch until a temp could be found. He'd probably get sliced, just because. It was good overtime, but bad for thoughts. Enola should be sleeping better by now. At her age Simon had been a champion sleeper. His shoes were too small. He was quiet. Quiet kids were okay. He understood quiet. Babies, though, he'd forgotten how sleep deprivation left you drunk. Daniel fed a long strip of steel through the machine, cleared, locked, pressed the button, pulled the lever. Fed the roll down. Cleared, locked, pressed, pulled. Fed the roll down. Hours on his feet necessitated that he rock to keep his back from seizing. He bent his knees and shifted, imagining he was on
Windmill,
mimicking the racing sail's lean.

He could sell the boat. He could ask Frank to buy out his half, use the money to take Paulina and the kids somewhere for a little while. She said she didn't want to travel anymore, but staying wasn't working either. Going in on
Windmill
together was a gift from Frank. Asking to be bought out might make things rough between them, but gifts weren't meant to trap you. The arc welders' bitter stink put him off lunch, so he drank two coffees with Manzo at break, figuring the creamer and the caffeine would keep him going. Manzo had three girlfriends and two kids. The girlfriends didn't hate one another. The kids did.

*   *   *

Daniel woke up to see her dealing cards on the bedroom floor, legs folded like a yogi. He got a good look at the cards this time. A row of muddy color, mostly black. One with a building on it and a misshapen man falling from a window. She was talking to herself, to the cards, barely above a whisper. He listened until it felt wrong. “Paulina?”

“Enola's got a fever. Go back to bed. You need the sleep, and I'm already up.”

“I want to sell
Windmill.
Let's sell the boat. We can go somewhere for a while. You miss Michel, right? Let's find Michel, take the kids, go on the road for a week, a month.”

The first time he saw her he'd had to look up. She'd been floating in a glass tank, suspended in water that sparkled like it was made from night sky. They were older now, he was leaning down, and there was no glass between them, but she still looked like art.

“Okay,” she said.

“I mean it. I'll sell it.”

“Sure.”

“We can see Michel.”

“You don't know much about kids on the road.”

He didn't.

“Your own kids are fine, the group kids, they're okay. You know them, you spend time with them, and you can forgive them almost anything because they're yours in a way. They learn to roll along fast. But other people's kids, it's different. Nobody loves them, because they're outsiders. They're not supposed to be there. Outside kids come for one show and leave. That's the deal.”

“I wasn't saying that we'd stay.” Though he'd meant just that, for a moment.

There was a cough from down the hall. Simon, not Enola. They listened, waiting to see if more would follow. He wished he'd known before having kids that there would always be a tight string waiting to snap. There was no cough. “They're your kids, our kids. They'd be fine. You aren't other people,” he said.

“I am now. It's fine. I have them and I have you. I win.”

He slept, because 5 a.m. felt earlier than time had any right to be. He dreamt that he truly wanted to sell the boat.

*   *   *

Daniel cleared, locked, pressed, pulled. Fed the roll down. The temp showed up drunk and had to be sent home. Daniel took punch press, and the overtime. It wasn't so bad, so long as you let your body do what it needed to. If you kept at something long enough, you'd forget there was ever a time you didn't know how to do it. Punch press was muscle memory, just like anything else. He imagined his hands moving through the cards the way Paulina's did, but he'd never been so nimble. The shine on your spouse was supposed to wear off. He'd seen it in his parents, how they had never really touched, how all their conversations were part of a single soft argument with buried razors. He'd seen it in his friends. Frank and Leah were comfortable. They'd settled into lifelong friendship; like a limb you'd not known you were missing until it appeared. Reliable, essential, but not something you burned for. No one ached; he told himself it was good to ache.

He hurt when he looked at his son and saw her eyes. He hurt when he saw Enola. How she could hold her breath, even as a newborn, and liked to turn her face into the bathwater. It should have made him panic. Any father, any good man, would have rolled his child right over, tapped her back to get the water from her, and kept her out of the bath for weeks. Instead he'd watched, seeing Paulina, his carnival mermaid, time and again in his daughter. He thought he'd see himself in his children, recognize his tics, or the nerve below his eye that jumped when faced with too-bright light. Instead he found his wife in different permutations.

Paulina was sick from staying still, like she was grieving but wouldn't say so. How was he supposed to fix it if she wouldn't tell him? He could try new places. She liked to escape into places. He liked to escape into people, but he could try. He cleared, locked, pressed, pulled, and thought of her new narrowness, how Enola nursing had sucked the fullness from her, how she was lean. Spare. He thought about how twice he'd seen her blossom, and how children could make someone disappear.

Lock. Press. Pull. Feed the roll down.

The metal jammed. He smacked the emergency stop. A knot of curled filings blocked one of the feed wheels. The sheet steel's thin edge cut deep into it; both knot and blade refused to give.

*   *   *

When he came home, she was on the couch, arm draped over her head like a painting. Enola was sprawled across her chest, sleeping. A thick bead of drool rolled off her lip, forming a gray water stain on Paulina's white dress. Simon sat on the floor. Books were piled around him.

“Whisper voice,” she said.

“Headache?”

“Soon.”

“Did you take your pills?”

“Yes.”

“I brought Mom water in a cup,” Simon said. A tiny Dixie Cup was on the floor by the couch leg.

“Good job, buddy.” Daniel bent down, touched his lips to Paulina's cheek, and pulled Enola from her. Paulina brushed his forehead with her left hand, drawing the pad of her index finger across the crags, down his nose, glancing over his cheeks.

“Do you need anything?”

“Just seeing where you start,” she said. “It's easier to feel sometimes. Sometimes it's not.”

*   *   *

Simon carried his books into his room and made them into sloppy stacks on his bed. Daniel found him there, nose pressed inside the pages. He counted, fourteen books in all, none of them children's books. All had been covered in shiny library plastic, which now lay on the floor.

“What are you doing there, Simon?”

“Mom took us to the library today. She wanted to smell the paper. She says the old ones smell best. That they're like vanilla and fungus. I want to see if I can smell how old they are.”

He eyed the titles. Nothing seemed overtly dangerous. “You're going to have to put the plastic back on. The librarians will be very upset with you if you don't. The plastic protects the books.”

His son rolled over and smiled up at the ceiling. “No, it doesn't. It protects people from the books.” He thumbed the pages of the book, still keeping it pressed to his face. “I'm going to own a thousand,
thousand
books and no plastic.”

“How old is that book?” Daniel asked.

Simon sniffed, snot bubbling. “Twenty-eight,” he said.

“Oh yeah? How do you know?”

“It smells like basement and cookies.”

When Simon was asleep, Daniel put the plastic back on the books and stacked them. He checked the inside the cover of the book his son had been smelling. It was, in fact, twenty-eight. Simon might have looked, but Daniel strongly suspected he hadn't.

*   *   *

She woke up when he carried her to the bedroom.

“Oh, you didn't have to. The couch is fine.”

“Yeah, but you won't be with me.”

“You're too good to me,” she said. At some point she'd started saying those words like she meant them, like she needed him to believe them.

“Likewise.”

She threw a leg over his. He fell asleep telling himself the story of how they'd met, trying to find the words, but failing. The girl she was in the mermaid tank, how her hands and lips had sparkled, how the fish tail seemed real, the minutes he'd counted waiting for her to breathe. Her hair had spun around her, like the water had wind in it. He'd held his breath waiting for the strands to part, to show a glimpse of her face. The mermaid tail caught light and water as though it were made from both. It was sewn, surely, but fit her so perfectly it might as well have been part of her. Someone had made it, someone who knew her skin well enough to form it again from cloth and thread. It moved with her so well he could build a fish's spine beneath it, a lithe frame fashioned by fragments of imagination. Her hair had parted just then to show her small mouth. Then her eyes. A soft yellow, like dried flowers. She saw him. The thought was as unexpected as she was.
She's real.
He counted breaths with her. He'd pressed his hand to the tank. A large man had tried to pull him away, but he stayed, waiting for her to breathe, for her hand to meet his on the other side of the glass. He was waiting, still.