The Mermaid of Brooklyn (19 page)

Nell smiled a crescent moon of teeth implying Evelyn had admitted to failure, which had been the point of the inquisition to start with. Then she turned on me. “What about you, Jenny? You seem like you’ve got everything together—do you ever feel like a bad mommy?”

Everything about the question was annoying. The insincere compliment slipped in to disarm me (no one in her right mind would think I had everything together), the shift into cutesy-mommy talk, the fact that it came from Nell, who, let’s face it, fed Sophie only organic, locally grown produce (the kid was snacking on edamame while the rest of our kids inhaled Day-Glo goldfish crackers) but also always had an immaculate pedicure that couldn’t have been ecologically sound. But like I said, it was hot, and I was tired, so as I lazily watched Betty threaten Sophie with a large stick, I said, “Yes, I do.”

“Oh, Jenny!” Julie cooed. “But why?”

The rusalka reared her head and said, “Because last week I almost killed myself.”

Evelyn gasped, but Nell just nodded. “Oh, I
know,
” she said. “All those hot, sticky days? Me, too. We were
climbing
the
walls.
”

The other moms smiled. I didn’t. “No, I mean
really
.”

Nell punctuated her face with a backslash and changed the subject.

Oh, Jenny,
said the rusalka,
I liked that. This is fun, you know this?
She chuckled all the way home.

“Listen,” said Laura, “you have a guilt-stricken mother-in
-law willing to babysit for free. I have a toddler rendered insomniac by her itchy cast. We need to go for a drink.” It was probably the last thing I needed, but she was awfully persistent when she made up her mind about something, and the rusalka loved the idea. It was both what annoyed me about Laura and what kept our friendship alive, her tendency toward lines like “Where have you been?” and “Why haven’t you called?” and the ever unanswerable “What are you doing tomorrow?”—which was always a trick. “Oh, us, too!” would be the answer, or “We’ll join you” or “In that case, hang out with us.” I’d never quite understood why someone like Laura—so universally liked, so socially competent—wanted to be friends with someone like me, the original Debbie Downer. But she’d decided it would be so, and her inexplicable affection rendered me powerless to resist.

There we were, decked out in clean dresses and cute flats (they would have been sandals if we were normal New York ladies with recent pedicures), sweet-smelling strands of our recently washed hair floating into the sticky lip gloss we’d forgotten how to manage, having scored an outdoor table at the wine bar equidistant from each
of our homes—an even six blocks and one avenue for each (the real reason Laura had become my best friend; when I had kids, I’d pretty much broken up with all acquaintances living off the F line)—and feeling completely entitled to take up the table all night. I hadn’t been outside after dark in ages. It had been months since I’d seen a row of streetlamps glowing like giants’ torches, or groups of giggling girls heading off to dance their shoes to bits; I couldn’t get over how many people were out and about post-bedtime. We staked out our table, nursed a bottle of white wine, watched livery cars Indy 500 down the avenue, said hello to familiar families passing by every five minutes or so. “Remind me never to bring my secret lover here,” Laura said, shaking her head after Nell and her husband stopped to chat over the flowerpot barrier.

“No way,” I said, helping myself to a disgusting portion of fries and European-so-therefore-not-disgusting mayonnaise. “It’s perfect. Out in the open like this, no one would ever suspect. Very ‘Purloined Letter.’ ”
You’re thinking what I’m thinking, I know you are. The cute dad and you. Don’t you pooh-pooh me! We’re going to have some fun, whether you like it or not.

After a half hour, we’d exhausted the first round of complaints about our children, lists of adorable things these same children had done, and bitchy gossip. I confided that Betty had bitten a child at the Y day care and been asked not to come back. Laura confided that she’d overheard some moms talking about how Emma’s accident had been due to her own negligence. Here we were, the outcasts of the outer boroughs. I took a deep breath and watched a swarm of gnats shrouding the nearest streetlamp like a mobile lampshade. I knew what was coming. More wine, please. Would I tell her about the rusalka? Of course not. I could never tell anyone, and I had to remember that. It was a dead-giveaway crazy-lady thing to admit to, and no matter how wine-buzzy and friend-cozy I was feeling, it had
to stay inside.
Oh, so now you’re ashamed of me? What’s this? Just you wait. You see what I can do for you. I’m even better than you know.

“So.” Laura leaned forward. “No word, I’m guessing?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you?” I waved my hand. “He’s back! He just got lost on his way home. You know what it’s like when they reroute the trains. Two weeks’ delay is pretty much the norm. Fucking Metro Transit.”

“You can joke all you want, but I know you’re hurting.”

“Oh, no. You’re still watching
Dr. Phil,
aren’t you? Laura, I’m telling you this as your friend, you’ve got to stop.”

She allowed a patronizing smile and poured me more wine. But she didn’t answer. I was terrible with conversation lulls. If she could hold out long enough, I would crack, and she knew it. I pursed my lips, held my breath. “I’m going to pump and dump when I get home,” I said, knocking back my glass. “I swear.” She nodded. Flustered, unable to stop, I burst out, “I feel like I should start mixing lunchtime cocktails and smoking a lot. Don’t you think? This whole Harry thing seems very throwback to me. Doesn’t it? Men aren’t allowed to do this kind of thing anymore. Are they? Were they ever? Anyway, I feel it would help me. Some tranquilizers, maybe. I could become a total fifties housewife. Wait, maybe I mean sixties. My history is not great. Whenever it was that you could park the kids in front of the TV and get all blotto but manage to look polished and together and everyone would think everything was okay and no one would talk about how your husband kept leaving you or whatever.”

Laura allowed a self-satisfied smile. Of course she was smug; her nontorture interrogation techniques had worked. “You should try acupuncture.”

“See? I was born into the wrong era. That sounds so annoying to me. I’d much rather just sulk in a Manhattan. Not in
the
Manhattan, though. Too expensive.”

“Or a therapist. You could try a therapist.”

“Oh God. What’s the point? Trust me, I saw a shrink for years. Why do I want to pay a babysitter so I can go sit in some office, reveal how pathetic my life is, and then weep? That doesn’t sound fun.”

“It’s not supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be helpful.”

“You know what would be helpful? A cleaning lady.”

“I hear that. Or maybe a houseboy.”

“Hmm, I don’t know if I could deal with a man right now. A sympathetic hairdresser is probably about as much as I can handle.”

“Anyway, you would weep and then maybe, you know, go further. Get to the bottom of things. With the therapist, I mean.”

“Can it be a houseboy/therapist?” I sighed, accidentally blowing out the twinkly tea light on our table. “I’m pretty sure I know what’s at the bottom of things. I’m pretty sure I’m sort of bummed out because my husband—” I couldn’t finish.

Laura reached out and rubbed my arm. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” We stared out into the street. On the corner opposite glowed another restaurant with outdoor tables corralled outside. I watched two ladies about our age chatting and laughing. Maybe if we went across the street for our next round, everything would be different. Somehow our lives would veer down alternate, superior paths. We’d chosen wrong tonight, that’s all it was! But no, we ordered more wine and more snacks and settled into our uncomfortable designery folding chairs. “Hey,” Laura said brightly, “maybe we should smoke cigarettes! Would that be fun? That might be fun!”

“Sounds expensive.”

“True. And kind of gross, probably. We’d smell. Will would kill me.”

“You know what we should do. We should go to a real bar, one of those dark places down on Fifth Avenue with an indie-rock
jukebox and everything, and flirt with boys. Make them buy us drinks and stuff.” The rusalka liked this idea. She churned around until I felt carbonated.

“Totally,” said Laura, grinning. Of course we wouldn’t. We’d order more fancy fare here, and besides, we could tell ourselves we were cute moms all we wanted, but once we found ourselves beside actual twentysomething girls, we would remember how slack our skin had gotten, how uncool our hair, how droopy our boobs, how lame our banter, how wrong our jukebox picks. Plus, I had this weird feeling that although it would be fun to be flirted with right now, even the total barroom creepers wouldn’t approach me. It wasn’t that I was so horrifyingly deformed or anything, I just knew that I probably stank of sadness, an inner rot people can sense and want to avoid. I’d been a depressive long enough to know that people steered clear when you were being a bummer. It was like how animals could tell when you were having your period. People’s mood-preservation instincts kicked in, and they kept their distance.
Oh, please. I don’t like this droopy wah-wah attitude you’ve got, not one bit.

I’d fallen silent, studying my wineglass intently, as if I’d noticed a shiny engagement ring drowned at its bottom, trying to block out the rusalka’s voice. I knew I wasn’t being good company. I knew I should rise out of my wallowy sadness, peek out from behind my trauma blinders, provide some interesting conversation. At least ask Laura about her life. If only there were some way to express to her how truly grateful I was for her sympathy and kindness and patience.
I hate me, too,
I wanted to tell her. But I knew it wouldn’t come out how I wanted it to, thankful and commiserating; it would sound whiny and needy and strange. I reached over to pour her more wine, hoping she could read in this gesture all the feeling I meant to express and couldn’t.

“Do Arabian nomads get depressed? Papua New Guineans? Is this just me getting too into the neurotic New Yorker thing? I read once that tribal African women didn’t get menstrual cramps, and that meant it was all in our heads or something. Do you think this is like that?”
Yes.

Laura daintily dissected a mussel. I’d been eating all the fries, and she’d been eating all the mussels. “I don’t think that’s the point. It’s not like you’re feeling whiny for no reason. I mean, Jenny, your husband—”

“I know.” I didn’t want her to say it.

“. . . disappeared.”

“I remember.”

“That would put anyone in a certain—you know. Funk. I mean, what do you do? How long do you wait? It’s not like you can take off and hunt him down yourself.”

“No kidding. I can hardly run an errand.”

“What do you tell your kids? Your family?”

“Trust me, Laura, I know what sucks about it.”

“Sorry. No, you’re right. Sorry.” As much as she tried, Laura didn’t get it. How could she? I was sure she never felt this way—drowning, unable to surface. Even if something awful happened with Will, I knew she would be able to deal. She wouldn’t wonder whether she was fit to care for children, capable of maintaining her daily existence. She would chin up and face the music and whatever else annoyingly cheery people like my mother thought sad people like me should do instead of sulking our way into psych wards.

Laura cleared her throat and tried again. “I’m just— I don’t know how you’re dealing with it so well.”

“Am I?” I laughed. “I’m drunk right now. That’s helping.”
Also, I have a mermaid,
I was glad I didn’t say.

We clinked glasses, laughing, and, as if we’d made an unspoken compact, veered back toward our usual conversation topics. How annoying so-and-so was, how rich so-and-so was, so-and-so was getting divorced, so-and-so had been caught cheating. Also, real estate. Also, alternate-side parking. And Cute Dad, of course our conversations always took a turn toward the Cute Dad cul-de-sac.
Yes! Finally. Now we go find him, right? Make a real night of it.
Laura was sauced enough to say, “How can his wife stand it? He’s around all these lonely women all day!”

“I’m sure she doesn’t think of it that way.”

“She
should
! He’s so flirty, too! Don’t you think? Doesn’t everyone want to jump his bones?”

“Laura!” She was really very drunk. So was I. I surveyed the other tables to assess our eavesdroppers. As if everyone knew who Cute Dad might be, or cared. “I think everyone’s too tired and sweaty all the time to think about anything like that,” I lied.

“Oh, stop!” She rolled her eyes. “It’s me you’re talking to here. Don’t be such a prude.”

“Okay, missy! Time for you to go home! You are getting salacious, my friend.”

Laura laughed but obediently signaled for the check. She would pay and I would pretend to protest and insist I would get the next one although I never would and we both knew it. “Maybe you’re right,” she said, giggling.