The Mermaid of Brooklyn (21 page)

Laura held Rose in the air and gave me a look. “Um, hello,
I
grew up in the city. I like to think I turned out okay.”

I lowered my sunglasses over my eyes. “You call this okay?”

“Ha, ha.”

“I mean, look at you. You’re not even practicing as a lawyer anymore.” She shot me an unamused look. “Okay, I’m kidding. But—you know what I mean. That was different. You’re an only child, your parents had money. They were from here, too. They knew how to do it. They knew the right schools to send you to, when it was okay for you to ride the subway alone, all that specialized stuff. You had a country house. I think you need a country house to raise kids here, in all good conscience. Don’t you? Am I missing something?”

“Jenny, it’s okay. It’s not like my growth was stunted because I didn’t have my own personal swing set or spend my teenage years driving to the mall.”

“I object to your characterization of a suburban childhood.”

“Oh? What am I leaving out? The great cultural advantage of the all-you-can-eat Old Country Buffet?”

“Don’t you dare talk about the Old Country Buffet!”

What could I say about my childhood that would explain it to Laura? It was a childhood. I was a child. It was fine. I guess it was weird how little of it I remembered—particularly now that I knew what long days my mother must have weathered, the millions of minute decisions she’d had to try to make correctly, how many hours my sister and I had to be entertained, how many meals eaten, rules taught, boo-boos kissed—and what was there to remember? We drew in chalk on the driveway with the neighbor kids. The street was tree-lined, the sidewalk strewn with sleeping bicycles. Sarah made me stay out of her room. Once my mother burned the roast and Dad went out to get a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken—an especially fond memory. I lay on the cool floor in the basement and looked at books while Mom yelled at me to go outside and play, which I never did because the grass in our yard struck me as offensively scratchy and I despised bugs. I pretended to be a mermaid in the tub. So what? We lived on a cul-de-sac in a manufactured subdivision that was an imitation of other, better cul-de-sacs and subdivisions. The streets were named for the construction workers’ wives—Lisa Lane, Barbara Boulevard. Did that make my present state any easier for me to understand? When I took Harry and the kids home for holidays, Dad told stories about family vacations I’d ruined by being morose about one thing or another. My parents seemed to have condensed the years into a few recycled stories that all sounded slightly off, making Sarah and me eye each other. “Sarah didn’t notice when her cat ran away?” I’d echo, shaking my head. “That doesn’t sound like me,” Sarah would say.
I was tense and irritable on these visits right up until the moment we were about to leave, when I was flooded with sitcom-y sap, loaded with love.

I couldn’t recall any moments of bonding with my father, or any inkling of a sense that he’d processed me as a being any more specific than “younger daughter.” That was something Sarah always wanted to talk about—how our parents didn’t seem to
know
us—but I couldn’t see the point. Did we really
know
them? Did they really
know
each other? Our mother was constantly telling us how our father loved mashed potatoes, but at family dinners, I watched him flatten them with his fork without eating, like a six-year-old. How was it she’d never noticed?

Still, I bristled at Laura’s comments. They seemed uncharitable, coming from someone who was so effortlessly a part of something I was trying so desperately to access. “Well, you know, there’s the little matter of having your own space as a kid. A room to put a ‘keep out’ sign on, where you can hide from your siblings.”

“Hmm, yeah, sounds great.”

No, no.
I jumped a little.
Don’t even start with that. I lived in the country. It was a bore, full of small-minded peasants. You think it’s so great? You want to sleep on hay? You want chickens in your living room? Well, not me, so you can just stop that all right now.

That was a long time ago.

Oh? I didn’t realize you knew so much about it. Never remind a lady of her age, Jenny. Anyway, the answer is no. We stay in Brooklyn. I’ve been hearing about it for years, and now I want to live it for myself. Why do you think I’m here? I didn’t save your life to be bored back to death with dreams of Jersey.

Fine, fine, fine. Just stop distracting me. You make me look crazy when you do that.
I was dimly aware that when the rusalka started chatting, I stopped whatever I was doing and cocked my head, like
someone getting a transmission from a headset. Laura was frowning at me. Then she waved in my direction.

“Sorry. Hello, I’m here. I’m just out of it today.”

“What? I’m not waving at you, silly.”

I rolled to my other side, my skirt falling over my thighs, my hair springing absurdly from its bun. Had my thighs always looked so, well, good? The sunlight mellowed over my skin in a particularly flattering way. I stared, hypnotized by the thought that possibly someone could look at me and find me sexy. It had been a long time since I’d thought of myself that way. Maybe ever.

There he is.

For there he was, Cute Dad, strolling down the path, Maude’s hand in his. He
was
actually cute. I was sure of it today.
But what is this ponytail? On a man? What is this?

Shut up.
I was aware that I had never fully rebuttoned the neckline of my loose shirtdress after nursing Rose last.

It’s fine. Leave it.

I was not so far gone that I didn’t sit up, though, and straighten things a bit. “Hello! Sam!” I called. “Maudie! Come join us!”

I ignored the look Laura shot me. Maude ran up the hill and over to Betty and Emma, immediately changing their game. “What is
this
? Don’t you want to play
house
?” she said, imperious with big-girl bossiness. They stared up at her with open mouths.

Sam approached us cautiously. “Hi, Jenny. Hi, Laura.”

“We won’t bite!” I called out. I turned back toward Laura, who mouthed, “Slut!” But she was laughing. “What has gotten into you?” she hissed.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I whispered back, sucking down a gulp of the tongue-lacerating slush we were calling coffee. I had ordered a large this time. My membranes buzzed with a sugary giddiness.

After a moment of hesitation, Sam perched at the edge of our not quite large enough picnic blanket, closer to Laura than to me. Rose rolled over on her back and blinked at him before reaching out and beginning to inchworm toward him. We were all starved for male companionship.

“So how’s big-kid life?” Laura said. She was sitting in what we always called, whether we were talking to the girls or not, crisscross applesauce, her spine gym-teacher straight. She was obviously uncomfortable, but I didn’t care. This was the luxury of my new life. I just didn’t care. Sam had never joined us before. We had chatted by the swing set, or at the bakery, or at the Y after swimming lessons, but he had never crossed the blanket divide. It was a park-clique coup. We were straight out of a teen movie: the scrappy outsiders who, against all odds, score the attention of the boy who—well, the only boy. We were Molly Ringwalds with stretch marks instead of shoulder pads.

“Pretty good, pretty good. George loves camp.”

“He’s going to Park Slope Day Camp?” Laura had an amazing memory for other people’s business. If you happened to mention that it was your mother’s birthday, the next year your mother would receive a birthday e-mail from Laura hours before you got it together to call. It was extremely annoying.

“Mm-hm. Loves it. Maude is going to the mini-session, mornings only. She loves it, too.”

Oh, no. Is this Cute Dad boring? He better not be boring, I’m telling you,
bubeleh,
I will boot him right off this blanket.

“What about you two? How are your summers going?” Sam looked enormous on the edge of the blanket. Rose had scooted near him and was patting his shoe. He grinned down at her. We forgave him his boringness. He was just so
nice
.

“Oh, fine. I mean, you know.” Laura sort of nodded at me. I hated her.

“Yeah, other than my husband leaving me, mine’s been awesome,” I said. Better for me to say it than her. Better to get it all out in the open. Let it all hang out. I sucked down some crushed ice and chewed it as if my life depended on it, and maybe it did. Sometimes I had to focus on something for a second, something small and tangible—the collapse of ice shards between my teeth, the horizon line of treetops wavering like oversteamed broccoli—and then wait for the rest of the world to refocus around the one thing. A baby. A pair of shoes. Sometimes you needed one thing.

I looked over at Sam, who was nodding with a weird half-smile frozen on his lips. “Yeah, I heard about that. So sorry.” Where were people fucking
hearing
about it? The Park Slope Parents message board?
Je
sus. “How are you holding up?”

I picked up Rose, who had started puffing out her bottom lip in a way I knew all too well. I stood up to sway with her, so that I was awkwardly looking down at Sam and Laura and willing Sam not to notice the downy surface of my unshaved calf. “Oh, fine. You know. It’s very odd. Well, actually, yes, not fine, really, because it’s all so odd.”

So coy. Just get it out so we can all get over it and move on to something more interesting.

No, I’m already saying too much.

Well, it’s too late now. You’ve already begun. Look at them. They’re waiting. Just say it. Go ahead, then.

It
was
too much, I could tell from Laura’s face.
Dial it back, Jenny.
But sometimes once you started, it was hard to stop. Anyway, I liked Sam. I really, really did. And I wanted him to get his information about me from me and not the weird yenta-y grapevine. Plus, as much as I loved Laura, I suspected she was my leak—after all, we gossiped constantly, so why should I be surprised if I was sometimes her subject? I figured I might as well tell her, too,
so that maybe a more accurate version of my story could virus through the neighborhood. If I was so interesting. Which, apparently, I was.

I cleared my throat.

So go for it already.

Fine. I am.

So say it already.

I
am.
Let me speak!
“The deal is that, I, well—” I stole a look at Betty, who sat on a bumped root while Maude braided her hair and Emma watched. Start again. Begin. Go. “The deal is that . . . I mean . . . no one really knows what the deal is. I mean, he didn’t leave me for another woman or anything. Not that I know of, that is. He just— He went to buy cigarettes one night and hasn’t come home yet.” I laughed despite myself. It sounded so ridiculous. It
was
so ridiculous. “But the thing is, he’s taken off before. He’s a compulsive gambler—it’s a real thing, it really is, a big problem, lots of people have it, it’s an addiction like alcoholism—and he goes on these binges. If that’s what this is, it’s the longest he’s been gone. So anyway, I don’t think it’s, like, foul play or anything. If you’re wondering why I don’t seem that worried. I mean, I’m worried, of course. The thing with the compulsive gambling is that it really is a disease, you know? I’ve read about it. It has something to do with serotonin levels in the brain. Anyway, so what I’m saying is I don’t think that he’s abandoned us, exactly. But he may have. He may be really, really gone. But probably not. So, there you go. That’s the truth, the whole truth, accept no imitations, et cetera.”

Sam blinked. Laura blinked. The rusalka and I, we threw back my head and laughed. “I’m sorry!” I burst out. “I know, I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. Don’t feel uncomfortable. It’s really okay. I mean, every marriage has its problems, right?”

I sat Rose down on the blanket. She had the slumped posture of a man you wouldn’t want to end up next to on the train. She beamed up at us. Sam offered her a hand. She took his finger and, tentatively, took it in her mouth and started gnawing on it. We all laughed, relieved to break the tension. My surge of bravado left me, and I felt exactly like you do in the dream where you realize you’ve come to school naked.

“It’s true,” said Sam. Aha. He was so nice that he would even sell out his own wife to make me feel momentarily better. He smiled at me. He had those eyes that gave new meaning to the phrase “puppy-dog eyes.” Now and then something happens that reveals, with startling clarity, the complete truth of a certain cliché, and here was one of those happenings. Love at first sight, puppy-dog eyes. Like, as in, eyes that rearrange something in your chest cavity. As in, seriously as irresistibly cute and open and innocent as a goddamned puppy dog.

“I blame those anti-smoking groups,” said Laura. “They make it so darn hard to find cigarettes anywhere these days.”

Sam laughed. I hated Laura for winning his laugh. Our eyes met, mine and Sam’s, and I looked down at the blanket, and I think he did, too. We all quickly cast around for a new subject, something we could all get into, complaining about the exorbitant cost of preschool, about real estate, about whether or not they used pesticides in the park, about anything but me and Harry.

Then Emma gave us something to talk about: She screamed, because Betty had bitten her good arm. We rushed over, we scolded, we soothed. A biter! Who would have thought? It was the worst kind of kid-on-kid violence—it drew blood, it freaked everyone out, it caused people to ask if your child was disturbed about something. And did I mention it drew blood? I put her in a pointless, misunderstood time-out under a tree, for lack of knowing what
else to do. Sam escaped, Emma cried in Laura’s lap. Apologies were coaxed. Halved grapes were eaten. I was lucky Laura was so understanding and encouraged Emma to be, too. Half an hour later, all was well again, and the girls had gone back to collaborating on a pile of stirred-up dirt by the tree trunk. I fantasized about leaving the girls there with Laura and sneaking a nap in a grove somewhere. I fantasized about sleeping for days.