Swim to Me (26 page)

The matter of what he'd wear was simple enough. He'd pick out the cleanest white T-shirt in his cubby and a pair of newish blue jeans. Of course he'd wear the Yankees cap. She'd probably remember that. Funny, to worry so much about impressing his daughter when, for the first thirteen years of her life, he had to admit, he'd hardly taken notice of her. Gail had once called him a self-absorbed SOB. At the time, he had had no idea why she'd said that.

As a boy, he'd been moved around from one unwelcoming relative's house to another, none of them having the desire or inclination to
try to rein him in. Then he'd met Gail, who'd also come from a loveless legacy, and they'd recognized in each other the possibility of breaking the cycle. When she became pregnant with Delores, four months after they met, they decided to have this baby and get married. He would go to trade school and become an electrician. Everyone said he had the aptitude for it. They'd be a happy family. But after Delores was born, money was scarce. Roy dropped out of school and took a job at a grocery store. Gail barely had the energy, or interest, to make love when he felt like it. The more she loved the new baby, the more volatile he became. When he left, there was still the stain on the bedroom wall from a cup of coffee he'd thrown when she came home with a three-dollar pinafore from Alexander's she'd bought for two-year-old Delores.

He thought about these things as he slathered on shaving cream. He remembered how, as a very little girl, Delores sat on the toilet seat and watched, mesmerized, as he did this. Sometimes, he would put some of the lather on her cheek and pretend to shave it with the dull side of the razor. She would run her fingers across the smooth part of her face, then tell her mother that “daddy shaved me.” See, there were some good memories. He hoped she remembered them as well.

When he finished, he splashed on some Aqua Velva.

At exactly ten a.m., Roy showed up in Hanratty's office. Hanratty had said he didn't want to take any chances getting caught in traffic. “A twelve o'clock appointment is a twelve o'clock appointment,” he'd said to Roy. Hanratty was dressed in a tweed suit with a matching vest, a yellow shirt, and gold cufflinks in the shape of a top hat. The two men, side by side, were a study in contrasts, like Skit and Skat, two of the clowns in the show. Skit was lean and wore raggedy clothes. He was forever “surprising” Skat by bopping him over the head with rubber mallets and squirting water into his face. Skat was
plump and stodgy with a polka-dot bow tie and an oversized pocket watch. Though clearly smarter and better dressed than Skit, Skat could never escape the antics of the more agile clown. Roy thought it wise not to mention the Skit and Skat comparison, but he was certain that Hanratty noticed it himself.

The two settled into Hanratty's Chevy Impala. Hanratty drove slowly, with both hands on the wheel, and kept lurching forward as if his body could help propel the car. They didn't speak, except when Hanratty said to Roy, “Have you thought about what you might say?” And Roy answered, “I've never known how to do that. I guess when the time comes, I'll just say whatever comes to mind.”

As the two men were driving, Delores was finishing up her morning show, a revival of one of their classics, “The Wizard of Oz.” She was playing the Wicked Witch of the West; Blonde Sheila was Dorothy—“counterintuitive casting” is what Thelma called it. Delores would have only a half hour to wash off all the witch makeup and get ready for the noon meeting with her father. The logistics of it all preoccupied her, which was just as well, since it helped keep her anxieties at bay.

Nothing could keep Thelma's anxieties at bay. Everything about the prospect of meeting Mr. Hanratty and Roy Walker made her feel nettled. Being judged, making pleasant conversation, pretending to tolerate a man who'd walked out on his family: Thelma had organized her life so that she could avoid circumstances like this one. She'd figured out how to deal with Alan Sommers, but that was quite enough for her in the stranger department. She sat in the underwater booth, directing the show and fretting about all that was to happen. For a moment, she let her eyes wander to stage left where the witch's castle stood. Something was amiss. Right above the castle gate there was a bluish, mossy blob, something that had never been there before. Thelma squinted; slowly the realization
of what she was seeing came into focus. “God-damn-algae,” she shouted. Her words would have fallen on deaf ears except for one thing: the microphone in her booth was turned on, so that everyone who was underwater heard exactly what she said.

They were just at the point in the play when Dorothy was about to pour water on the Wicked Witch and make her disappear. Thelma's voice echoed through the tank, and Blonde Sheila, hearing the Lord's name broadcast in vain, forgot her buoyancy and torpedoed to the surface. Without Dorothy to dissolve her with the water, the Wicked Witch Delores had nothing to do but swim off to the side and hope that Blonde Sheila would reappear. Thelma had no idea what was going on. “Sheila,” she shouted, “control your breathing. Get back down here. Delores, where are you going? Center stage, now!”

It was falling apart before Thelma's eyes. Blonde Sheila tried sculling to get back underwater, but her concentration had strayed so much that it was impossible. As she floated back to the surface, she said a little prayer: “Oh Lord, please know that it was not me who used your name in vain. And please forgive Thelma Foote. Algae makes her nutty as a fruitcake.”

Unsure of what to do next, Delores swam to center stage and waited for Thelma to come up with something. Thelma shouted for the curtain to come down and the music to come up. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” played as the baffled audience clapped politely and wondered what they'd missed.

Thelma stared at the empty tank before her. With “Jingle Shells” and
Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid
permanently replaying in her memory, she had alway been waiting for the other shoe to drop. While Thelma agonized over her demise, Delores sat shivering in the hot room with Molly, who'd played the Cowardly Lion. “I hate Blonde Sheila,” said Molly. “Just because she's born-again, she doesn't have to make
everything
about her.”

“I felt embarrassed for her,” said Delores. “And poor Thelma. Talk about trying hard—she gets the short end of everyone's stick.”

“But Thelma brings it on herself.”

“Yeah, but think about it, Molly. If she didn't do all this stuff, who would? I think she gets taken for granted a lot around here.”

“So, Thelma's your new best friend?”

“No, but she is doing me an awfully big favor.”

“Oh, and like you're not doing her a big favor?”

“No, I don't mean professionally. I mean personally she's doing me a favor.”

“What's she doing?”

“I'll tell you something if you swear not to tell anyone,” said Delores in a hush.

Molly drew an X over her heart. “I swear.”

Delores told her about her father and the upcoming meeting. “I mean I haven't seen or heard from him for more than two years. I don't even know if I'll recognize him. And can you believe the part about the circus?”

Molly started to laugh. She put her hand over her mouth to stop it, but it was too late. “I'm not laughing at you Delores, but honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up.”

T
HE INCIDENT DURING
“The Wizard of Oz” had so rattled Thelma that she considered canceling the meeting with Hanratty and Roy. But common sense took the upper hand. The girl needs to meet her father, she thought. This Hanratty fellow is an astute businessman, something that we sorely lack around here. Maybe this is opportunity knocking, not a sound I hear often enough.

Buoyed by her own pep talk, Thelma rubbed talcum powder into the dirt spots on her Keds and put on a fresh pair of khakis. She brushed her hair behind her ears and slipped into a windbreaker
that had just come back from the cleaners. For this meeting, she was manager and agent. Easy, always easy, when she knew her place. She was the first to arrive at her office. She pushed three chairs together so that they would be facing her desk. It would give the meeting a form and a hierarchy, and it would make it clear that all discussion would be funneled through her.

By 11:57, she had cleared her desk of all papers. A few weeks earlier, a photographer from
National Geographic
had passed through and asked to take some pictures of the mermaids. One of the shots was of Delores underwater, looking at herself in a hand mirror while brushing her hair. The hair spread out in the water like a jellyfish and Delores wore a self-satisfied, somewhat taunting, smile. Lester had had the picture blown up to poster size (“A nifty photo for last-minute advertising if we ever need it” is how he put it) and now Thelma placed it behind her desk so that no one could miss it. At 11:59, Delores showed up wearing a floral-print wraparound skirt, a white cotton off-the-shoulder blouse, and a pair of straw-colored espadrilles. With her wet hair pulled back into a ponytail, she looked healthy and vibrant, like a girl gobbling up life with not a moment to waste. Thelma wondered if her father would notice.

At precisely twelve o'clock there was a solid rap on the door. “Come in,” said Thelma, barely disguising the impatience in her voice. Hanratty walked in first, removing his hat and bowing excessively. “How do you do? I am Dave Hanratty. Miss Foote, I presume,” he said, grabbing Thelma's hand and gazing into her eyes. “Forgive me for staring, but I had pictured someone less—ah, how should I say this?—someone less modern. What a pleasant surprise.”

Then he turned his attention to Delores. “And you must be the courageous Delores Torres.” He still pronounced it with a Spanish accent, so it rhymed with “Suarez.”

“Taurus. It's Delores Taurus,” she said, trying to free her hand from the vise of his grip. His eyes spilled into hers, but she was distracted by a smell, a familiar, sharp licorice odor. Sen-Sen. Her father. She smelled him before she saw him. There he was, his hands cupped in front of him, as if he were about to give someone a boost, and his eyes small and shifty, as always. Yes, she remembered—that, and how watery they often were. He looked different, though he still wore his ratty old Yankees cap. Stronger. Definitely tanner. More relaxed, maybe.

Roy Walker assessed his daughter. Had she always been this imposing? She was beautiful, achingly so, in her strength and assurance. All eyes were on him as his silence filled the room. Delores stepped into the discomfort by sticking her face in front of his and slowly waving her hand back and forth. “Hey, do you remember me?”

“You related to Delores Walker?” he asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“Her father.” He winced as he said it, not sure if he still had the right to claim her that way. He took off his hat and bowed his head. She noticed the bald spot. That had not been there before.

Thelma slapped the palm of her hand on her desk. “Okay, enough of all that,” she said, impatient with Roy's inability to look his daughter in the eye. “None of us have any time to waste, so let's get down to why we're all here. Hanratty, you look like a man of purpose. What brings you to Weeki Wachee?”

Hanratty cleared his throat and moved forward in his chair. “Two evenings ago, we, along with everyone else in the area, watched with riveted fascination as Miss Taurus—have I pronounced it correctly?—made her valiant rescue. As a circus impresario for nearly thirty years, I have developed a keen sense for recognizing talent and charisma. It was instantly obvious to me that Miss Taurus
possessed more than her share of both. At the time, I was unaware that her father was in my employ—what a great coincidence. When Mr. Walker told me that Miss Taurus was his daughter, it came to me right away that there was potentially a symbiotic relationship between Hanratty's Circus and Weeki Wachee Springs. It almost seemed preordained, if you believe in such things. Anyway, at first I thought that Miss Taurus could become one of the Hanratty acts, but that didn't seem substantial enough. With all the shenanigans going on up in Orlando, I asked myself: what could we bring to the table that they couldn't? How can you outshine a multimillion-dollar theme park with all the modern gadgets and hijinks that money can buy? And the answer came to me, pure and simple. Human beings, live animals: everything we do is real.”

Hanratty knew when to pause, when to raise his voice, how to hold a crowd. Even the usually irascible Thelma Foote couldn't take her eyes off of him.

“While we're all aware of Miss Taurus's talents, her father, Mr. Walker, is not without his gifts as well. I have seen him with the animals, the elephants especially, and I can tell you he has a very personal and special relationship with them. Miss Foote, you have created a wildly successful attraction underwater. Wouldn't it be a boon to your business to develop a spectacle as well?”

Thelma ran her fingers over her lips before she spoke. “Mr. Hanratty, what you say is not without merit. But my first concern is for the girls, and I wouldn't want to do anything to distract from their show.”

“Of course,” said Hanratty, nodding.

“Then again,” she continued, “anything that increases awareness and business is always a plus in my book.”

“Let me ask you this: how deep is Weeki Wachee Springs?”

Delores and Thelma exchanged quizzical looks.

“The Springs are forty-five feet at their deepest,” answered Thelma.

“Good,” said Hanratty, then paused for a few moments. He made eye contact with everyone in the room before completing his thought. “I'm sure you all know that elephants love to swim. They give themselves showers with their trunks. And it naturally cools them down, because water gets trapped in the wrinkles of their skin and evaporates slowly. Here's another thing. They swim with their mouth below the surface of the water and use their trunks much like a snorkel. In fact, there are many who believe that the elephant is the next of kin to the manatee. Some coincidence, huh?”