Swim to Me (10 page)

“It seems that Thelma was stuck. The lid wouldn't come open. She must've been pounding and scratching at it until finally someone realized what was going on. One of the girls pulled off the lid. Thelma was going crazy, flapping her arms and kicking trying to get to the surface. Her fairy wings were all bent and crushed. Maybe because she couldn't see without her glasses, she kept swimming in circles. Finally, the mermaid who was playing Mrs. Santa had to dive in and pull her out. After that, Thelma would never go into the water again. She was so embarrassed, I guess. They gave her this job because everyone felt sorry for her, and she's been doing it for about twenty years. She's pretty good at it, though she's rough on the mermaids, the prettiest ones anyway.” Lester looked away.

Delores sat up and wrapped her sweatshirt around her waist. “There's still no reason for her to be so mean,” she said, tugging the sleeves into a double knot. Before she climbed off the rock, she leaned over to Lester and whispered: “Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. And thanks.”

When Delores got back to the dorm, Molly was wearing her bouffant bonnet hair-dryer. “Have a good time with Lester?” she shouted over the hot air.

Delores shrugged.

“That's not very enthusiastic. Lordy, everyone knows Lester's got the world's biggest crush on you, Delores. He must have thought
he was the luckiest duck in the world having you lie next to him on his rock.”

Delores shrugged again. She never did tell Molly, or anyone else, the story about Thelma Foote getting caught in the box during “Jingle Shells.” If there's one thing Delores Taurus understood about life, it was the importance of guarding secrets.

Christmas was a difficult time for Thelma Foote. Around the beginning of November she began making sneak visits, at odd hours, to the amphitheater. She'd bring a flashlight and a magnifying glass and search every inch of the Plexiglas lest some filament of algae had sprung up since her last visit. At four thirty one morning, she woke up Delores and Molly, screaming that the whole place was going to hell and that nobody cared but her. “Here,” she said, shoving a bottle of ammonia and a couple of sponges into Molly's hand, “You and your little friend can make yourselves useful around here.” So in the muted light of dawn, wearing their pajamas, masks, and flippers, Molly and Delores scrubbed the amphitheater wall and made the world a little safer for all future mermaids.

By the middle of November, rehearsals had begun on the Christmas extravaganza. This year, the owners of Weeki Wachee were insisting on bringing back an old favorite, “Frostie's Snowland.” The costumes were frayed, and some had yellow age spots on them. Thelma argued at first, but it was no use. The owners didn't even live in Weeki Wachee and they barely paid attention to it other than to finance it. Even then, they were so cheap that there was always something that needed repairs. Thelma convinced herself that with proper mending and cleaning, they would be as good as new. But
truly, the costumes looked as discouraged as she felt. What with the new Disney World doing booming business less than ninety miles away, attendance was dwindling. Even Dick Pope down in Cypress Gardens was feeling the pinch, and, rumor had it, he was spending thousands of dollars to beef up his show. She dreaded the small turnout for “Frostie's Snowland.”

Dutifully, the girls and Lester ran through rehearsals every morning as Thelma watched in silence from the director's booth. The show was dated, she thought; it looked like some amateur high school production. She'd read about the Audio-Animatronics, or whatever they called it, over at Disney World. There were eighty-six automated figures in the Mickey Mouse Musical Revue alone. Mickey himself had thirty-three functions built into his forty-two-inch frame: he could tilt his head, wave his baton, turn around. There was a six-foot-four-inch replica of Abraham Lincoln, which could stand up and deliver one of his famous speeches, though it still had some kinks: occasionally, it would double over in a bow, or its knees would buckle. But compared with “Frostie's Snowland,” Disney World was the future, its feet firmly planted in the Space Age. “Frostie's Snowland” was over, yesterday's news.

Thelma watched as Adrienne languidly negotiated an incomplete backflip and watched as Helen lip-synched three beats behind the “Frosty the Snowman” record. She could feel the life ebbing out of her. The air seemed thinner, she felt light-headed. These people are eating up my life, she thought, nibbling away at it day after day. If I stay here any longer, I will be nothing, just the detritus of what used to be Thelma Foote.

She rose to her feet and picked up her microphone. “Attention, attention,” she shouted. “I want everyone to come to the surface immediately. Meet me inside the theater; I have an important announcement to make.”

The shivering cast sat wrapped in towels waiting to hear what Thelma had to say.

“I'm not going to waste any words,” she began. “This show is crap. It's stale and boring and not particularly attractive. Frankly, I'm not interested in doing a Christmas gala this year. If you all want to put your pretty little heads together and come up with a show, be my guest. But don't expect me to have anything to do with it. Good luck.” She zipped up her windbreaker and headed straight out the door.

Lester shot Delores a look, as if to say, “See, I told you about the Christmas thing.” And Lester, who rarely opened his mouth in a group, was the first to speak as they stared at one another in stunned silence.

“People come here just for the Christmas show,” he said. “We've got to come up with something.”

They sat down at one of the picnic tables and started talking about what they might do. Several weeks earlier, on a Friday night, they'd all piled into the Weeki Wachee van, and Thelma had driven them to Tampa, where they'd seen the movie everyone was talking about,
The Godfather.
On their way home, they couldn't stop talking about it: innocent Kay, fiery Sonny, spooky Michael, loyal Tom Hagen, and tragic Apollonia. They played back scenes to each other. The one in which Sonny nearly kills his sister's husband, Carlo, because Carlo beat up Sonny's sister, Connie, was a favorite. All of them had come from families where a Carlo and a Connie were real possibilities.

Of all people, it was Adrienne who came up with the idea first. “Maybe we should do a show in honor of
The Godfather.
Maybe we could do the opening wedding scene.”

“Oh my God,” said Sharlene, shoving a hunk of hair off her face. “That is the most brilliant idea I have ever heard.”

“That's great, Einstein,” said Helen, “but did it ever occur to you that we're all girls except, of course, for Lester. And guess what?
The Godfather
is all about men.”

Everyone turned to Lester, who ran his fingers over his jawline. “I read the book,” he said, trying to change the subject. “It's the best book I ever read.”

“If mermaids can be astronauts,” said Delores, “why can't they also be
family?”
She lowered her voice when she said
family.

Despite an obvious answer, having to do with space suits versus business suits, the logic seemed irrefutable to them.

The people who worked at Weeki Wachee had never been cheerleaders. They had never been part of any cliques in high school. Like the people in
The Godfather,
they were outsiders with no one to turn to but each other. They took heart from how the characters in the movie had created their own world. That it was a world punctuated with loss and violence was overshadowed by the fact that the characters in it were self-made and powerful. The mermaids began talking to each other using a deep, lugubrious Italian accent. Even the Sheilas and Helen played along.

For the next three hours, they sat at the picnic table thinking the idea through. Lester would play Don Corleone; that was obvious. When Helen said it out loud, Lester demurred: “No, that's wrong. You need someone bigger than me to play Vito Corleone.” Always behind the scenes, except when he was behind the counter at his father's pharmacy, lately he preferred not to be the center of attention. He hadn't always been that way. He had been four years old when his parents took him to see his first mermaid show. As the curtain rose, a mermaid in a green tail had swum by and blown a kiss to the audience. Ever since then, he'd wanted to become a merman. When he was six, he began to train seriously by swimming with his legs tied together with rope. A strong swimmer with a handsome face
and the perfect body for a merman, Lester made it to Weeki Wachee by the time he was sixteen. By then, the acne had blossomed, and he began seeking out roles that allowed him to cover himself with masks and costumes. He was the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” the Caterpillar in “Alice in Wonderland.” When he thought about showing his real face, all he had to do was close his eyes and he could see how it would go. People would take one look at him, then turn away. They'd pretend not to have noticed his erupting skin, but, of course, that was all they could see.

“I really think one of you should play the Don,” he argued. “You know, someone powerful and nice to look at.” His eyes darted toward Delores.

Delores remembered the time that Henry had called her “Tiger,” and how just the fact that he'd said it made her feel that her boundaries were not as narrow as she'd always assumed they were. “Lester,” she said, “You'd be perfect as the Godfather. The strong, silent type.”

Blonde Sheila stood up. “Go on, Lester, it'll be good for you to play a real guy for a change instead of that faggot Tin Man. I'm gonna play a guy, too. Johnny Fontane.” She stabbed her chest with both thumbs. “A real ladies' man. I know something about being attracted to the opposite sex,” she said in a leering voice.

“You know something about being attracted to a lamp,” snickered Helen.

Molly suggested that Delores be Connie Corleone. She had the same big, dark eyes as Talia Shire, who'd played Connie in the movie. “You'd get to dance with Don Corleone,” she said, smiling at Lester who was jabbing at a cuticle and not meeting the eyes of the others.

They planned how he and Delores would dance to the opening number until Johnny Fontane came on stage. Then Delores would
swim to him, throw her arms around him and kiss him. (“Don't forget,” Blonde Sheila had teased Delores, “no tongues.”) The other mermaids would form a circle around the Don. They would move in closer until they were at the Don's shoulders, lightly patting his hair. As they plotted out the scene, Lester decided that maybe he could play Don Corleone.

For the next four weeks, they practiced every day for two hours before the morning show and again at night after the park had closed. Although Thelma Foote feigned indifference, occasionally she'd peek down into the tank during rehearsals. One evening, she cornered Delores just as she was closing down the grill in the refreshment stand. “You're holding back a little,” she said. “This is Connie Corleone's moment to shine, to come out from behind the shadows of her brothers and her father. Be showy. Your moves should be aggressive, exaggerated, have a real snap to them.”

A few days later, she pulled Blonde Sheila aside in the gift shop. “You're putting too much swagger into Johnny Fontane. Don't forget: he's broke, his career's in the toilet, and he's come begging. He's a lady-killer, but he's also so scared, he's about to pee in his pants.” Another day, she told Lester how to hold his head just so, in order to convey the Don's polar qualities of tenderness and cruelty.

Eventually, Thelma started showing up at rehearsals, sitting in the director's booth with her microphone, interrupting them every few minutes with her maddening instructions: “Bow deeper. Humility. Remember humility,” she shouted to Sharlene, who was playing Bonasera, the undertaker. “Thrust your chest forward, Delores. This is your wedding day.”

For years, Thelma had been putting money away in a savings account. The money didn't add up to much, ten thousand dollars maybe. She called it her rainy-day fund, available should the day ever come that she was no longer employed at Weeki Wachee. Thelma
sat at her desk one night long after the park had closed and stared at the figures in her bankbook. The money was hers to use freely: there was no one in her life to inherit it or lay claim to it. The steady row of deposits told the story of a solitary life with no excess, no surprises. She ran her fingers down the numbers in the book, then wrote some numbers on a pad. A couple of thousand dollars could lend some real class to this “Godfather” thing. All the nagging and cajoling, all of the emotional toll she had extracted from these girls and countless others before them—maybe this was her chance to pay them all back. Maybe this would help put Weeki Wachee back on the map again, despite all the Disney ruckus in Orlando. Back on the map, as the brochure promised, as “one of Florida's premier tourist attractions.” She closed her bankbook and slipped it into the breast pocket of her windbreaker.

O
VER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS,
press releases about the new show started showing up at newspapers in the area. Maybe because
The Godfather
was such a big hit that year, papers as far north as Tallahassee and as far south as Miami ran every crumb that fell their way. There was an item about Connie Corleone's wedding gown and its three foot tail; Sylvia, the comptroller, was quoted as telling someone that the fake flowers were going to cost nearly five hundred dollars; somebody with no name and a muffled voice phoned the
Tampa–St. Petersburg News
to say that businessman Meyer Lansky, who would be returning to Miami from Israel, had purchased ten tickets for the Christmas premiere.

Christmas came on a Monday in 1972. Tuesday was the premiere. The show was scheduled to start at one p.m. By eleven thirty, the parking lot was overflowing; there were cars on the grass lining Route 19. Outside, it was sixty-three degrees, cool for December. People carried sweatshirts or wore cardigan sweaters. Not since
the time Elvis had shown up, unannounced, had there been such a commotion at the park. People waited in line, trying to figure out whether or not they'd gotten a prime seat. Most everyone brought a camera.