The Girl with the Mermaid Hair (13 page)

T
HANKS to the wonder of text messaging, some of which had taken place during class, Sukie’s mockery of all kids and things Cobweb had spread through school before she even left the classroom. Kids were excited to hate her for a good reason rather than for her simply being arrogant or beautiful or clueless, or because her parents hit each other and consequently, inexplicably but nevertheless, that made her a freak. Excited to hate her, yes, though with some grudging respect and glee for her skewering Vickers on account of his nasty sweaters. Given the nature of text messaging—brief and therefore either to the point or misleading—many texts omitted exactly what or how much Vickers had taken off. Many kids believed he
had stripped to his briefs.

Classmates fell back, repelled by her presence. She had an unobstructed path to the library and headed there in a daze. Original. Vickers had called her original. For once she wasn’t practical, efficient, driven, organized, analytical, resourceful, or brilliant. She was original. She wanted to leap and jump and kick and scream, “I’m original!” For the meanest thing she’d ever done.
For the meanest thing I’ve ever done?
How confusing. Don’t dwell on that part, she told herself, and didn’t until something hit her in the face. Fleur had ripped off a nail and flicked it at her.

“I’m original.” She burst into her house needing to tell someone. Louisa, the housekeeper, was cleaning the kitchen.

“The only reason I didn’t tell your mother is she’ll kill you,” said Louisa before Sukie could say hello.

“Tell her what?”

Louisa shooed Sukie up the stairs. She was chubby but nimble.

“What is it, Louisa?” said Sukie.

“You tell me what it is.” She grabbed Sukie’s hand and pulled her through her bedroom to her bathroom. Mikey was sitting in the sink, his legs dangling in
front of the cabinet below.

“It’s not my fault he’s in the sink. Get your butt out of my sink.”

“I just cleaned that sink,” said Louisa. “Get out, Mikey.”

“No way,” said Mikey.

“Why is he my fault?” asked Sukie.

“He’s not. This is.” She clamped her hands on Sukie’s hips and spun her to the mirror.

“Uh-oh,” said Sukie.

“I never would believe this if I didn’t see it,” said Louisa. “I’ve known you since you were five.”

The mirror had splintered into a patchwork of cracks. Sukie’s broken face stared back at her. A wicked diagonal slashed her mouth into a sneer, a vertical split bumped her nose into her left cheek and isolated her right cheek as if it were an island she might visit. Hairline cracks left her alluring eyes misshapen, one higher than the other, and her forehead as lined as Vince’s, and he’d spent his life playing tennis in the sun. “Señor! Señor!” Sukie waved. “Come!”

“He never comes,” said Mikey, which was true.

Sukie lugged him into the bathroom, all thirty-five pounds. “Señor.” She showed him the mirror.
“What happened? Tell me.”

He refused and appeared not remotely thrown by the broken reflection of his dangling hind legs, giving the impression that he had eight. “Tell me you’ve been screaming.”

“The dog didn’t do it. Get real,” said Louisa.

Sukie knew she was right.

“Such a beautiful mirror. Think of the things it’s seen, and now look what you’ve done to it.”

“Me? I didn’t do this. It’s old. It’s cracking up.”

“You’re lucky I don’t tell your mother anything,” said Louisa. And she left.

Sukie swayed, watching her reflection warp in new and more tortured ways. Had she done it? Was that possible?

“When are you going back to the club?” said Mikey.

“I’ve given up tennis. Leave me alone.”

“If you don’t go, I can’t. Dad doesn’t go anymore.”

“Probably because of the grim man.” Tears welled in her eyes, mercifully and briefly blurring her reflection. “I’m original,” she whispered to the mirror. Yes, but in an ugly way, it seemed to say back.

“Please go to the club,” said Mikey.

“You just want to see Marie’s boobs.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“If you don’t go to the club, I’ll tell Mom about the mirror. How you busted it.” With a boost from his hands he sprang from the sink, took two steps toward the door, which put his sister in striking distance, and bolted past.

H
ER mother alive yet fixed in time, as if someone had hit the pause button. Her mother at the window. From the back. Arms stiff by her side, hair immaculate as always, chopped blunt, and able to swing, every hair in unison, considered an achievement but merely genetic good fortune. But no movement now. Her long neck pale, innocent, exposed. A blouse of silk as light and soft as rose petals.

“I’m going to teach you to cry on command.”

The voice didn’t come from her mother but from somewhere else.

Out the long and narrow window—body length like Sukie’s mirror—out the window, water. Was the window a window or was it a glass? Or was it a bottle? A bottle of what? What a view. Of water, halfway up the window, lapping the pane. Water as
clear and empty as bathwater, and above it a sky of endless blue. No sign of life, no horizon even—how was that possible? Except for, bobbing in the distance, a speck of white. Floating closer. A paper folded in half, in quarters, yet again. A tiny wad. As her mom reached for it, Sukie reached and touched her shoulder. “Mom.”

Her mother turned.

Not her mother, lifelike but not alive. Eyes as vacant as a doll’s. Cheeks as smooth as china, a painted mouth. A hole in the center. A puncture for a nose. “Mom! Mom!” The window splintered. “The mirror cracked,” screamed Sukie. And the water rushed in.

Sukie’s eyes opened, her heart pounded, her body pulsed with electricity. The jumps, a full-blown attack. A terrible dream. “Señor?” Where was his comforting body? The door of her dark bedroom opened.

Her dad tripped over Señor and belly flopped onto the floor.

Sukie vaulted out of bed. “Señor! Señor! Are you all right?”

Her father, sprawled across the carpet, took a while to organize—pull his arms in, tuck his legs under, and sit up.

“Did he hurt you? Did he?” Sukie cooed in Señor’s ear.

“To hell with the dog. What about me?” Her dad grabbed the edge of the bed and, with a groan, hoisted himself to standing. Upright, he rocked unsteadily.

Sukie continued to fuss over Señor.

“He’s fine,” said her dad. “What was he doing there?”

She wondered. Usually he slept next to her, squeezing her into a sliver of space between him and the wall. On rare occasions, lightning storms, he migrated around the room. There was no storm tonight, and was it by chance that he had lain in that spot by the door, on his tummy with his hind legs extending straight behind him and his front paws reaching forward (his most human pose, kind of a dead-man’s float or, considered differently, the way a child might lie while playing with Hot Wheels)? Measured in feet, his longest position, a substantial barrier. Her dad coming into the room would inevitably trip and crash.

“I’ve missed my daughter,” he said.

“I was asleep. It’s two in the morning.”

He pressed his palms against his head, removed them, and waited before speaking, waiting, it seemed, to see if his head might fall off. “Where have you been?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. How’s that quarterback, you still dating him?”

“If I want.”

“Way to go.”

Sukie got up. “Dad, I’m really tired.”

“Gotcha.”

He looked over at the wall, at his own shadow, looming large. Sukie took it in too. A monster in moonlight. “Your mom drinks more than me,” he said. “Come on, admit it.”

“Sure,” said Sukie.

He took an exaggerated step over Señor. Sukie slid back under the covers.

“I thought you were supposed to reject your
mother
.”

“What?” said Sukie.

“You know, girls.” He pulled the door closed behind him.

Morning distressing,
Sukie wrote in her journal.
Hard to keep head up. Couldn’t sleep for hours after Dad woke me. Drunk? Maybe. Regarding my mirror. Trying to figure it out. Trying to push it out of my brain. Both things. Too
upsetting. Could it be my fault? Is that possible? I researched telekinesis, psychokinesis (essentially the same thing), and paranormal happenings. There is no scientific evidence that these phenomena exist, only tales and stories, which means the answer is no.

“Soo-kie.” Mikey smacked open her door. “Five minutes starting now or I tell Mom. No, four.”

Mikey in my face. God.
Sukie slammed her journal shut, went down to the kitchen, and while she shook some granola into a bowl and Mikey watched, dialed Vince’s number.

“Where have you been?” he barked at her. “I heard you quit the team. Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Sukie, pouring in soy milk.

“I believe that,” said Vince.

“Can I come for a lesson on Sunday?”

“You bet. See you at ten, missy, and bring your head.”

“There. Satisfied?” she said to Mikey, who leaped his way out of the kitchen.

Suppose I see the grim man?
She stood at the counter, pressing soggy granola bits down into the milk and watching them float up again.
Suppose he’s at the club? What do I do?

In the dining room, her mother upended a shopping bag. Bottles of nail polish clattered onto the lacquer table. “Whoops.” She corralled them before they spun off. A ray of sunlight so blinding it could trick a person into believing it was warm outside on a freezing winter day made Sukie move slightly left to confirm that her mom’s face was finally done. The stitches in her ripped earlobe had come off last week, and now the last little piece of tape, the one across her mother’s nose, was off as well.

She came up quietly as if stalking prey. “Your nose,” said Sukie.

“The doctor said I could take the tape off. Like it?”

“It’s great,” said Sukie, which was the only acceptable answer.

Technically her mother’s nose was “ski slope,” but for the first time Sukie realized the inadequacy of those web classifications. Yes, her mom had had her “ramp” eradicated, and in its place the doctor had sculpted a narrow scooped protuberance. Protuberance. In the future that’s what she’d call it, a protuberance, as if her mother’s new nose were not even a nose but a site. Something one might view like a bridge or a monument or a curious mound. But while technically it was “ski
slope,” in reality its label should be “gone.”

Because without realizing it, Sukie had pinned her hopes on that taped protuberance. When it was finally revealed, she would find that her mother had preserved the one thing they had in common. Their bond. “I couldn’t bear to change my nose,” her mother would say.

Somehow all these changes—the cheeks as smooth as cheese, the permanently stretched mouth, the empty eyes—all these perfectly beautiful elements that didn’t belong together and would always lack the wonderful interactive mobility that make features a face…none of them would matter if Sukie and her mom still had the same nose. They would still “go together.”

Now that dream was dead. It had been, Sukie realized, a delusion. In its place was her nightmare. Her mother was gone.

M
IKEY’S mad dash out of their mom’s car to hang out with Marie didn’t blunt Sukie’s terror of having to return to the club, but she did feel that she was suffering for a good cause. She’d given him a gift. This lone act of generosity in her self-obsessed life provided a glimmer of hope that she wasn’t one hundred percent hateful.

She entered surreptitiously.

Back to the wall, she jutted her head for a sneak peek into the clubhouse foyer. No grim man.

She scooted past the tabletop Christmas tree decorated as it was every year with shiny oversized red bulbs, halted to peep into the bar, where Mikey was already spinning on a stool while Marie set him
up with a Coke. No grim man there, either, only a table of folks drinking Bloody Marys. Sukie sprinted past, threw a look over her shoulder to see if the grim man might be trailing her, and then approached the card room, where, despite its being only ten in the morning, poker was already happening. The clatter of chips. The electricity of men and women involved in a game of deceit, strategy, and money. Poker is training for life, her dad had told her. Even if the grim man were there, and she didn’t check thoroughly, he would be too absorbed to spot her.

She sped by and into the café.

She’d always loved this spacious room, peaceful and subdued, with walls of glass offering a view onto the parklike grounds, the round tables spaced far apart, the wicker armchairs so large that diners were barely visible. Sukie had lunched here with her parents every Sunday back when her parents enjoyed each other. When was that? She tried to remember. Mikey was in a booster seat then. Her mom picked at a chicken salad, her dad dove into a steak, and Sukie and Mikey ordered from the kids’ menu, grilled cheese and chips. Sometimes they played I Spy or Twenty Questions. Today she walked through
quickly, holding up her racket so the crosshatching of strings obscured her face.

Once she was outdoors where the courts were, a sense of contentment washed over her. Even in the dreary onset of winter, with the clipped hedges bare and the grass dry and stubby, the order and geometry soothed.

A thermometer hanging from a lamppost read forty-five degrees. Only die-hard players, a group that used to include Sukie and her dad, turned out in early December, rubbing their hands together, blowing into them for warmth before seizing their rackets and jogging onto the court. Rain, ice, or snow might keep them away, but a sharp wind that made it necessary to toss up a service ball several times before it didn’t arc out of reach was a challenge they welcomed, proof even of character.

Sukie broke into a run down the path and onto the court. She stripped off her winter gloves. When she was six years old and her dad had first put a racket in her hand, he’d showed her how to grip it like a firm handshake. She felt the same shiver, of an adventure about to begin, as she slipped her hand around the
taped racket handle and held it tight.

How happy she was to see Vince. Bandy-legged and stiff, although improbably quick when playing, he ambled like a cowpoke as he picked up stray balls from his last lesson. He hadn’t changed—not that she expected his face to be “under construction” or anything like that, and it had been only a couple of months since she’d last seen him—but his dependable ignorance of fashion cheered her. There he was as usual in his faded sweatshirt so shrunk that when he raised his racket to wave, a bit of his potbelly showed.

He bounced a ball and hit it over.

Sukie pivoted, took a step, bending her knee deeply, and sent back a topspin forehand that nipped the line.

With that one shot, the pleasure of single focus and the game of tennis consumed her. One thing mattered: getting her shots right. She forgot her dad, the woman with the wavy black hair, the grim man, her mom and how lonely she felt whenever she saw her.
Keep your eye on the ball. Keep your eye on the ball.
Vince’s refrain was a mantra. Soon she had peeled
off her hoodie and sweat pants and was down to a T-shirt and shorts. Her flushed face glistened with sweat.

There was a moment when she chased down a ball and found herself at the sideline facing the court where her dad had played. The court was empty, and for a brief time she recalled her dreamy state, looking without seeing into the sparklingly clear day until the man in the red Windbreaker had punched her dad. One, two. A one-two punch and her dad had toppled as if he weighed nothing at all.

“Missy,” Vince called.

She trotted back to the baseline, and when she slammed the next backhand, a noise burst from her. Loud, guttural, somewhere between a grunt and a roar. Again and again, shot after shot she exploded with these uninhibited, unladylike, grunty, piglike bursts of passion.

“About that marshmallow in your brain,” said Vince when the lesson was over. He poked a finger into her forehead. “I didn’t see it today. Today I saw a warrior. It’s too late now, missy, but get back on the team in the spring.”

“I will,” said Sukie. “Thanks for the lesson. I missed tennis.”

Elated, she ran off the court. In the nearly deserted club grounds, she halted, arched back, spread her arms as if she were greeting the sky, and spun.

She sprinted and, like a hurdler, leaped one hedge, then another, landed with a thump, and stumbled, which only made her laugh. Someone caught her arm to help her up.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Even before she heard his voice, she recognized his grip, his rough strong grasp, his thumb pressing her biceps, and something else she hadn’t remembered before but recognized now, a chrome watch with an accordion band. Up she jerked and saw the thin lips, the eyes deep set under a wide forehead. Looking into his eyes was like looking into a canyon. His voice, mellow with concern, shocked her. She’d expected menace. So there was a disconnect—it was the grim man and it wasn’t. He was young, boyish, that was something else she hadn’t realized. How old was he? She guessed about thirty. Her dad was forty-five. That made what he’d done even crueler, beating up an older man.

“Are you all right?” he asked again.

Sukie nodded.

“Good.” He smiled, which was loathsome. How dare he smile at her? And then he moved right along, resuming his conversation with his friend. She had been a brief charitable stop on the road. He didn’t remember her. He didn’t even remember her hair.

The grim man had passed three courts and was nearly at the locker room when Sukie ran after him. “Excuse me,” she called. “Excuse me, excuse me.”

He swung around. “What is it, sweetheart?”

Sweetheart? That impertinence nearly knocked the thoughts out of her head. “I’m Sukie,” she said, and when he didn’t react, added, “I’m Warren Jamieson’s daughter.”

He turned to his friend. “You go on. I’ll catch you later.”

His friend disappeared into the locker room. The grim man waited for the door to slowly click shut.

“I scared you that day, right? I’m sorry.” He unwrapped a stick of gum and folded it into his mouth. “Want a piece?” he asked, almost as an afterthought.

“No,” said Sukie with horror.

His jaw moved around. Sukie suspected he was
suppressing a smile, but perhaps he was simply chewing.

“Why did you punch my dad?”

“Ask him.”

And he was gone. Into the men’s locker room. She couldn’t follow even if she’d wanted.