The Mermaid of Brooklyn (28 page)

He laughed again. “All right, now, don’t get all excited. It’s just—ah—well. Old romantic comedies. You know, movies that straight men are supposed to loathe. Chick flicks, I guess, if you’re feeling uncharitable. Especially the old studio ones. Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart. The black-and-white screwballs where everyone has a weird vaguely English accent for some reason and says witty things all day and no one so much as kisses until the end.”

“Oh,
please,
” I said. “Are you kidding me?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“That’s like a joke answer. That’s like a ‘I had my sympathetic sister write my online dating profile so chicks will dig me’ answer. Like the ‘perfect guy who loves kittens and your grandmother and just wants to cook for you and then snuggle’ answer. I don’t believe you at all. Tell me what you were really going to say.”

Sam shrugged, lifting his pawlike hands. “What can I say? I love kittens.”

“Shut up.” I hurled a handful of grass at him. “So what’s your favorite?”

“Kitten?”

“Movie!”

“Now that I’ve come out, I might as well finish confessing my sins. Er, have you ever seen
The Shop Around the Corner
?”

“The one
You’ve Got Mail
is based on? I’ll do you one better—I admit to liking
You’ve Got Mail
. Corny, isn’t it?” I probably don’t need to say that Harry found these movies profoundly boring and unforgivably sappy.

Sam grinned. “Oh, man, I love that movie! Both of them, but the original especially. I want to write something like that—something funny and sad, about people who are in love and don’t even know it.”

I felt as if my face had been zapped with liquid nitrogen, freezing my smile like a wart. My brain abandoned me, so I robotically quoted the movie, which I owned and had watched way too many times to be healthy. “ ‘You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth.’ ”

Sam straightened and, perfectly affecting the prissy manner of Margaret Sullavan, answered, “ ‘Well, I really wouldn’t care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I’d find. Instead of a heart, a handbag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter . . . which doesn’t work.’ ”

There was the truth of me, wasn’t it? Instead of having a soul, I was occupied by pairs of shoes and a cranky water spirit, hardly human at all. “Wow. You really are sick. You know the whole thing. Disgusting. By the way, I would prefer if you would always refer to me as Mr. Kralik from now on,” I said.

He laughed. We talked for so long, it was ridiculous. Rose snoozed in the carrier, face damply nestled into my T-shirt, and
most of our friends had left, and Betty and Maude were loitering in the shade of the slide, listlessly playing a dusty game of shanty-town-house. Who knew what we talked about. He asked questions. He laughed at my lame jokes. I stared at his hands, large and clean and knotty in a way that made him seem older than I had thought. What did we know about each other? But that was what I loved: the current of conversation between two people who like each other but do not know each other well. It was just so easy: “Oh, you have a twin?” (Why was it always such a weird surprise to learn this about someone?) “And where does he live?” “She, actually . . .” She! A lady twin! Who knew?

I felt interesting around him, and it’s so silly, but I felt pretty. Embarrassing to admit even to myself how, in this day and age, after all I had been through, as the married mother of two children, I just wanted someone to make me feel pretty. All he had to do was to look at me. Somewhere along the line, I mentioned my sewing, my burgeoning business, such as it was, and his eyes twinkled and he said, “Oh! Perfect! I’m placing an order right now. There is this blouse Juliet loved but didn’t want to spend the money on—” Who-liet? Oh! Right! I hoped my smile didn’t look as faded as it felt. Still, as I told myself, it’s not like I thought Cute Dad and I were about to ravage each other there on the rubbery playground floor. We were a couple of bored adults trying to remember how to flirt. Er, talk. Just talking. Like me and Laura, like Julie and Nell. Just parents. Chatting. And smiling. Now and then.

Sartorially speaking, there were some new ground rules. I didn’t want to do only copies of boutique dresses; it felt weird to take money from local business run by ladies we sort of knew (and disliked, since they obviously had rich husbands or they wouldn’t be
able to run their expensive storefronts with the gleaming floors and Spartan rows of overly pretty clothing). Out of respect for independent designers, I decided I would copy their dresses only for very special occasions (by which I meant a really large amount of cash). The clothes should come from Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s or someplace like that. I would be paid for the fabric and an additional fee, which I’d adjust based on how fancy the mom in question’s stroller was. A tricked-out Bugaboo like Nell’s got charged two fifty—a fraction of what the dress would cost from a store. Luckily for me, simplicity was in that summer, and the dresses were usually easy to make. Sometimes I got caught on a collar or ruffle, but I always faked my way out. Also luckily for me, these were urban ladies, stalled career people, and while some of them had cultivated a hipstery craftiness, it was largely limited to the cutesy and impractical—knitting knotty scarves, baking the occasional cupcake—so few of them could tell the difference between a perfectly serged hem and drank-some-wine-while-sewing-and-got-a-little-sloppy slip stitch. Within a few weeks, I had more business than I should have been able to handle, except that I was somehow able to drape, pattern, cut, sew, and finish the most complex of dresses in a matter of hours. Somehow.

I remembered enough from my graduate thesis on the intersections of Slavic folklore and Russian literature (which, I wished I could gloat to my parents, was finally proving itself useful) to know that this kind of thing never came for free. You might get the impossible pile of kasha miraculously sorted overnight by a mouse before Baba Yaga came back, but the mouse inevitably wanted a piece of the action. Even enchanted creatures turned out to be mercenaries. Therefore, I wasn’t terribly surprised when, after a couple of weeks, she set out her demands one night.

And so, this dress will be finished in the morning.

Of course. Thank you. I don’t know how I ever can thank you enough.

You’re happy these days, aren’t you, Jenny? You feel more confident,
nu
? The sewing is going well? You’re feeling less frustrated with the kids and less scared at the prospect of being alone? And you’re looking lovely, if I may say so?

She was never this nice. It reminded me of talking to Nell; I felt sure of being trapped but too sleepy to parse it.
Uh, yeah. I do feel much better these days. And the sewing is great. Everyone’s impressed that I’m able to accomplish so much so quickly. Like I said. Thank you.
I pushed my chair back and went into the bathroom to get ready for bed, as if she couldn’t follow me everywhere.

I’m glad, dear. I’m glad you’re feeling better.

Well, spit it out.
I spat out my toothpaste.
What is it?

Bubeleh,
you know that I have certain, ah, physical needs. Having been, you know, dormant for so long. I’m trying to help you out, you know this. Keeping the demons at bay, yes? In return, I need you to help me. I think I’ve said it before. I think I’ve been pretty clear. I need you to let me use your body.

As if she weren’t another demon to keep at bay. I splashed water on my face, feeling her twinge of pleasure at the dampness. I was tired and annoyed.
Honestly, if I’m still going to be pestered for sex, then what’s the good of not having a husband? I never asked you to come here, you know.

Didn’t you?

It’s just sort of unfair, what you’re asking me to do
. I’m
the one who’s going to have to live with the consequences, you know.

I’m asking to be nice. I don’t have to ask. You owe me my due. Besides, I have friends you don’t ever want to meet. Ever heard of Koshchey the Deathless?

Now you’re threatening me? What, are you going to call up some ancient Slavic vampire just to mess with me? Give me a break.

I
am
giving you a break, actually. That’s what I’m saying.

In the end, there was no arguing with her. I did want the sewing business to work out and I did want to make some money and I did want to become a better seamstress, to effortlessly produce dresses without patterns while other stay-at-home moms were falling asleep in front of the television. I did want to keep feeling this way, sane and balanced, confident and capable and entirely unsuicidal. It was an extremely nice way to feel, and as the summer passed with no word from Harry, I was becoming more and more afraid of slipping back into sadness. To be honest, it’s not like I disagreed with her all that much, about Sam, that is, about how a woman deserved some excitement in her life even if she was a wife and mother—which was how the rusalka always seemed to couch it, as if it would be some great triumph of the spirit were I to tumble into bed with my hot neighbor. Maybe I’d read too many novels, seen too many romantic comedies. The truth was that she was going to get what she wanted so that I could get what I wanted. It was the way these things worked, after all, and I’d probably known that from the start.

“You were such a happy baby.” A favorite bon mot of my
mother’s, peppering our conversations almost as frequently as her signature quip, “So, guess who died?” There was no response to either, as I should have learned by now but hadn’t quite.

“I’m not unhappy, Mom.” I had the phone pinched between ear and shoulder while stirring a pot of macaroni with a wooden spoon and pouring a speck of apple juice into a cup of water for Betty. She eyed it suspiciously and wandered off, nearly tripping over Rose, who was sitting, more steadily today than yesterday, on a blanket in the middle of the floor, gnawing on the ear of one Betty’s eighty-seven stuffed bunnies. “I’m fine. I’m actually doing really well. You know, considering.” I
was
happy, that was the thing, but for once my circumstances—the husband situation—seemed to require unhappiness, a psychic black armband out of propriety, if not true feeling. I had to make an effort not to seem too happy, even though sometimes I walked down the street smiling for no reason, sometimes I laughed out loud from free-floating good spirits. It was a problem I’d never encountered before.

“Oh, of course, honey, I didn’t mean anything by it. How could you be happy, with all you’re going through.”

“But I’m not— The weird thing is, I feel fine. That’s what I’m saying. I kind of am—you know.” I couldn’t bring myself to say it, like a slur so shocking I couldn’t even utter the word.
Happy.

She wasn’t interested in listening. She just wanted to say what she wanted to say. I rummaged in the fridge for margarine and milk. Yet another gourmet supper for the littlest Lipkins. “Everywhere I went, people would comment on what a happy baby you were. Your sister was always a sourpuss. But you, all smiles. It didn’t matter where we went or who we were with.” It was hard to imagine my mother and me as a team, toodling around the suburban streets together, like Betty and me now—holding hands, watching each other pee, sharing snacks. Hard to imagine my mother as the person I ran to in distress, as the legs I held on to while learning to walk. I couldn’t believe we’d ever been that way, which made me sad. I hoped Betty and Rose would never feel as wary toward me, the weird lady guarding the repository of questionable tales of their youth, full of anecdotes that didn’t sound like them or like anything that might have happened to them. The tub of margarine had a dog hair in it. All at once I was worried I might weep.

“No one’s happy all the time, honey. There’s no shame in it.”

“Okay, Mom. What are you getting at, exactly?”

“Getting at? Nothing, nothing! I’m happy. I am.” I hadn’t realized that
her
happiness was in question. No wonder she’d been asking. People were always pretending they were talking about you when they were really, almost exclusively, talking about themselves. When I thought about it, I realized I probably did this, too, but I reserved the right to be annoyed by it, anyway. “Jenny, I want to tell you something.”