The Girl with the Mermaid Hair (14 page)

W
AITING outside the club with Mikey, Sukie slid the tiny wadded paper from her wallet and tucked the wallet back into her tote.
Ask your dad. Ask your dad.
Unable to unfold it with gloved hands, she tugged finger by finger with her teeth and let the gloves fall to the ground. Then she opened and flattened the scrap, smoothing it on her palm. 666 555-7372. The number was barely decipherable, a rushed scrawl right after her dad had rapped on the car window and put out his hand for his BlackBerry.

Her memory of Joe’s Caffeinated was getting fuzzy. Sometimes she imagined it wasn’t her father. She’d barely seen the man, after all. Although he did ask for water as only her dad did, but perhaps that
was a coincidence. “A glass of tap.” Did anyone else say that? Could it be common slang in Minneapolis, where he grew up? Sometimes she tried to construct another explanation for what she’d witnessed, but with her dad’s arm around the woman and their hands tangling, untangling, she always came to the same conclusion. Betrayal, not friendship. She was sure the grim man had something to do with this. “It’s just business,” her dad had told her. But was it?
Ask your dad. Ask your dad.

Mikey snatched the scrap of paper and ran off.

“Mikey!” She chased and tackled him. They hit the hard ground. She held him down, pried open his fist, and got the paper back.

Sukie rolled sideways, unpinning him. “Why did you do that?”

“I felt like it.”

“Jerk.”

She grabbed her tote and tennis racket, which she’d dropped, stuck the paper back in her wallet, scooped up her gloves, and flopped down next to her brother. He was eating.

“What have you got?”

“Peanuts. From Marie. They don’t have pretzel
sticks anymore.” He offered the baggie full.

They sat there munching, waiting for their mom or dad to show up.

“I hate Mom’s face,” said Sukie.

“It’s better if you watch her teeth,” said Mikey. “Her teeth are the same. I watch her teeth.”

With her tote for a pillow, Sukie relaxed back, enjoying the parade of broken clouds drifting across a pale December sky, the sun appearing and disappearing, cutting through the chill to warm her face, then leaving her in shadow again.

“The trees are singing,” said Mikey.

And Sukie, resting, heard the wheezing tune of a breeze strumming the bare branches of an oak.

A car horn interrupted her good feelings. She bounced up expecting to see the Bronco. Instead there was Heather’s little yellow Volkswagen. Heather, Mikey’s occasional sitter, leaned across the front seat and yelled out the window, “Hey, you guys.

“Sunroof or no sunroof?” she asked when they got in.

“Sunroof,” said Mikey.

“How come you’re here?” asked Sukie.

“Search me. Your mom called and said she couldn’t
pick you up.” Heather turned up the volume on her CD player. The Dave Matthews Band blared, and she forced them to listen to a saxophone solo over and over all the way home.

Weird, thought Sukie, as they walked up the path to the front door. Very weird. Both cars are in the driveway. A sudden shiver of trepidation. “Let’s go in the back,” she was telling Mikey when her dad flung the front door open and stopped short at the sight of them.

His face was pale and strained. Every feature pulled toward the center. The up energy that propelled him through the day, that take-charge thing he’d even mustered on the tennis court after he’d been slugged, was absent.

“I’m leaving,” he said, and passed them right by.

Sukie took her brother’s hand. Together they crossed the threshold. Upstairs on the landing Señor watched between the balustrades.

If I can get there, if I can just get Mikey and me to Señor, it will be all right, Sukie thought. The marble foyer seemed huge, a flat plain with no protection. They were walking targets. “Walking targets”—that’s how she thought of herself, how scared she was
that she might find herself in the crosshairs of her mother’s rage.

They reached the stairs and were about to rush up. “I need to talk to you, Sukie,” her mom called, and when Sukie didn’t turn or reply, issued a more demanding, “Sukie, I need you.”

“I didn’t tell about the mirror,” whispered Mikey.

“It’s not about that.” Sukie knew instinctively that it was about something else. She didn’t know what, but something worse.

Slowly they approached the living room.

At first Sukie glimpsed a fragment, her mother’s slippered feet propped up on the coffee table. As she came closer and the angle through the doorway widened, she got the whole picture—her mother slumped on the couch, a pillow clamped against her stomach, a fat wad of tissues clutched in her hand.

Her mother didn’t turn her head to greet them. She gazed toward the window. “Go upstairs, Mikey.” Her voice, hollow and wrung out, flattened to a monotone. “Take the dog with you.”

“What dog?” The second Sukie said it, she realized that Señor had silently scooted down the stairs to her side.

“That dog makes me nervous, and God knows I’m already a wreck. Go on, take him, Mikey.”

“How do I do that?” he asked. “Señor does whatever he wants. It’s not like he’s a remote control. I can’t fix him.” Mikey started crying for what seemed like no reason whatsoever. Sukie knew he was frightened.

“Señor, go upstairs with Mikey,” Sukie whispered. “Please.”

It was undoubtedly the “please” that did it. Please was essential with Señor. He led Mikey out.

“I should have realized when I saw the receipt.” Her mom dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

“The receipt?”

“But I was so worried about you and college. I wasn’t thinking of myself. You didn’t order a DVD, did you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“
The Other Boleyn Girl
. The receipt was in the glove compartment.”

“I never saw that movie,” said Sukie.

“Of course you didn’t.” Her mother slapped the throw pillow aside and straightened up. “All those mysterious nights out. Sit down.”

The second Sukie did, her mom stood and began
pacing. Every so often her shoulders jerked or her elbows flapped or her side twitched. Big scarlet blotches of agitation spotted her face, which was otherwise drained of color.

“Where was Dad going?” asked Sukie.

“Your dad? You’re worried about him?”

“No.”

“I kicked him out.”

“What?”

“I heard from Mrs. Dintenfass today.”

“Mrs. Dintenfass?”

Her mother always did this. She fired a ball at Sukie and, before Sukie could catch it, pitched another. Her dad was kicked out? At the same time, Sukie scrambled to recall what she’d told Mrs. Dintenfass about her mother’s facelift, about her dad being hit on the tennis court—yes, she’d told and sworn her to secrecy.

“Apparently when a student is doing as badly as you are, Mrs. Dintenfass telephones on Sunday. You’re flunking everything. Except AP English, although you did something in that class, frankly I was so upset I couldn’t follow exactly, but as a result, at school, you’re a leper.”

“She called just because I’m flunking?”

“Just?”

Sukie bit her lip.

“What about college?” Her mom’s elbows flapped wildly. At any moment she would take off and crash through the picture window.

“It’s not that big a deal.”

“What’s this?” said her mom.

Sukie walked over for a close look. A pile of Sukie’s hair drifted like tumbleweed across the coffee table as her mom’s flapping blew it sideways. “I found this in your drawer. Are you pulling out your hair?”

Sukie reached into her pocket and dumped on a fistful more. “As long as you’re collecting.”

Her mom blew her nose loudly, left the room, and returned with fresh tissues. “Oh, God, I need ginger, my stomach’s all upset.” She pivoted and left again. Sukie heard cabinets bang in the kitchen. Her mom returned, ripping the paper off some ginger taffy. She gnawed off a piece. For a while she simply chewed, which, with ginger taffy, was an effort.

“What were you doing in my drawer?” asked Sukie.

“You are way too smart to be flunking.”

Was that an explanation? Her mom had a brain
like a maze: Try to follow the logic and you slammed into a dead end. “Why were you in my drawer?” she asked again.

“I was in your drawer because I was looking for your journal.”

Sukie had never told her mother about her journal. “How did you know about my journal?”

“I’m a snoop. You have to be when you have kids, you’ll see. I’m a snoop. Although I managed to miss something right under my nose.”

“How dare you go in my journal? It’s private.”

“Not if you’re on drugs.”

“I’m not on drugs.”

“How did I know that? If you’re getting F’s, what other explanation could there be?”

Her mom sat back down on the couch and drummed her fingers into her arms. “Thanks to you, I kicked your father out. Imagine how awful it was for me to be reading your journal, expecting to find out that my daughter’s on speed or something, and find out instead…” She started quietly weeping, letting the tears flow, too defeated to raise a hand to wipe an eye. Sukie put her arm around her mother, who buried her head in Sukie’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

Her mother’s shoulders trembled as she sniffled and sobbed. She felt so frail. For Sukie it was like cuddling a bird.

Finally her mom raised her head, brushed her hair out of her eyes, and said, “You knew it all along.”

“Sort of. Not really.” Sukie’s hand itched to grab some hair and yank, but she restrained herself. “I didn’t know.”

“It was in your journal. He didn’t deny it.”

“What did he say?” said Sukie.

“Nothing. Not a damn thing.”

“So he didn’t admit it?”

Her mother shrugged.

“Why did you steal a duvet?”

Her mother pushed her away. “What?”

On her life Sukie had no idea why she’d brought that up. If she could have sucked the words back into her mouth, she would have.

“Your dad told you that?” her mom demanded.

“Are you getting divorced?” asked Sukie.

“What a bastard he is. Get out.” She flung an arm toward the hall.

Clueless about why she needed to do this but
nevertheless compelled, Sukie scooped up the pile of her old hair, all those golden strands she’d extracted, mementoes of hysteria past, and carried them out of the living room and up the stairs fast, then faster and faster.

“I wasn’t stealing,” her mom shouted. “I knew he’d pay for it.”

Sukie tore around the landing and into her room. She slammed the door, dumped the hair on her desk, and threw herself on the bed. Her dad was leaving. Her dad whom she hated. Her dad who she wished were with her right here, right now. Her dad was abandoning her to her mom. Dad!

The door banged open.

Sukie flipped over.

Her mom, as rigid as steel, her hands clenched so tightly that her knuckles were white, hissed from the doorway. “I’m not surprised you don’t have friends, the way you talk.”

“What?”

“I want you out of this house. You’re on his side. You’ve known about this. You kept me in the dark.”

Sukie scooted back on the bed as her mother came toward her.

“Up. Come on, up and out. You kept the secret. Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” said Sukie.

“Funny, I always thought he was up to something. But I thought it was something exotic—guns to rebels.”

“Guns to—? What rebels?” Her mom had shifted to an imaginary drama in the midst of a real one.

“All his charm.” She slapped Sukie’s face. “Who?”

“I don’t know.” Sukie rubbed her cheek.

“Well, you’re out too.” She yanked the spread, rolling Sukie off the bed.

Sukie raced out of the bedroom, her mom chasing behind.

“I hate you. I’ll hate you forever,” screamed Sukie.

“Don’t forget a jacket. It’s cold out,” her mother said coolly from the top of the stairs. And Sukie, following one last piece of maternal advice, grabbed her parka off a hook before throwing open the front door and running out.

L
OCUST Park banked steeply down toward the Hudson River. Depending on one’s point of view, it was either amiably untended or wildly overgrown. The ancient locust trees, for which it was named, stripped of their foliage, revealed webs of spidery branches as intricate as snowflakes. Sukie never ventured here except when forced, like on school outings to study plants or bugs. Locust Park reminded her of the scary parts of animated movies where trees came alive, their branches snatching at a fair maiden running for her life. The maiden always had waves of golden hair like Sukie, and in one movie, the more she clawed to escape, the more entangled she became. Sukie still had nightmares about it.

She’d left the house in a burst of rocket fire, running for blocks. When she finally burned out, she found herself near the park. Rather than run away from this place that had always frightened her, she ran into it, an action that can be explained only by madness, the way someone being chased might select a dark alley over a busy thoroughfare.

She descended the narrow and uneven brick steps and then wended her way through the empty woods to one of the few park benches. Its slats were splintered. Only a few chips of brown indicated that it had ever been painted. It was now driftwood gray.

She couldn’t say how long she sat there. She couldn’t wrap her brain around a single coherent thought. She had no one to call. She had no friends. The deep loneliness of being friendless weighed on her. Why had she read that essay in Mr. Vickers’s class? Why had she written it? She couldn’t remember.

She hated her mother. Her mother was right to throw her out. These miseries reigned side by side. It wasn’t that she had done anything wrong, she hadn’t. It wasn’t her fault about her dad. Nonetheless, she was a terrible person. This fate was something she deserved. As the sun dipped lower, she wondered if
she would die from the elements and if everyone at Cobweb would cheer. She wasn’t even sure what that meant, the elements. She dug her hands deep into her pockets and hunched against the cold.

She studied a little red scrap hanging high in a tree. An old balloon, she figured, captured, punctured, dead. Maybe it had suffered endlessly, losing air in little spurts day after day after day. Done in by the elements.

“Help!” A girl’s voice giggled, and coming up the embankment, squealing about how she was going to fall any second, was Frannie. She was being pulled. A big hunk of a guy hauled her with both hands.

Frannie appeared momentarily stunned by the sight of Sukie, her lips and cheeks blue from cold, sitting stone still on a bench alone in Locust Park.

“Hi,” said Frannie.

“Hello.” Sukie forced naturalness into her voice.

“This is Simon. Simon Podansky, Sukie Jamieson.”

“Yo.” Simon stuck out a meaty hand to shake. He was nearly as tall as Sukie’s dad and as sturdy as a ship you could sail into rough seas.

“We were watching the light,” said Frannie.

“Oh,” said Sukie.

Simon ran his hand over his wheaty white hair buzzed nearly to his scalp. “The sky pales, the winter sun burns cool,” he said.

Sukie nodded, having no idea what he was talking about.

“Well, see you,” said Frannie. “Aren’t there steps around here?”

Sukie pointed in the direction she’d come.

“Thanks.”

They hiked on. Sukie pulled her gloved hands out of her pockets and interlaced her fingers.
This is the church
—she raised her index fingers—
this is the steeple
. She stopped the children’s game, remembering her dad’s hand tangling, untangling, and the lady with the black wavy hair.

“Hey, Sukie-Lukie,” Simon shouted. “Want a ride?”

“I like the bumper sticker,” said Sukie, not because she did but because the sticker,
MARRY ME AND BE MY CANOE
, on Simon’s old Toyota was unavoidably strange.

“Frannie made it for me. Where can I drop you?”

“You made it?” said Sukie, ignoring his question.

“When I first met him, he shouted, ‘Marry me and
be my canoe.’ It was so dumb. Also he ate art.”

“What?” said Sukie.

“Not art, a leaf,” said Simon.

“Art,” said Frannie.

They both started laughing. Sukie couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and not just because she was tired and sad. This was definitely a conversation a couple has that only they understand. That was the pleasure of it.

“So where do you want to go?” asked Simon.

“Clementi’s,” said Sukie, thinking of Issy.
If I had a little sister, I’d want her to be you
—that’s what Issy had said. Could she crash at Issy’s place? Suppose that boyfriend Richie was back? Suppose, well, anything, it was her day off or she didn’t have room? Sukie took out her cell and scrolled as if she were considering the possibilities and there were so many.

“Come to my house,” said Frannie.

“I’m not sure—”

“Simon’s dropping me. He’s got to write a paper. He still has school tomorrow. His school’s not out for the holidays yet. Come on.”

While Sukie and Frannie had never been friends, they’d known each other since the first grade. The last
time Sukie had been to Frannie’s was four years ago, for Frannie’s eleventh birthday. In those days, when they were kids, when you gave a party, you invited everyone in your class and everyone came. Eleven was also the year of Sukie’s last birthday party. To avoid the embarrassment of no one showing up, she pretended to her parents that there were more adult things she’d rather do, like see a play in New York City.

Frannie’s place hadn’t changed: a plain box of a house—wooden, two stories—painted a wintry blue and mostly hidden by a giant evergreen. Nothing fancy like Sukie’s brand-new salmon-colored stucco house, no curved driveway or glamorous stained glass windows bordering an oversize front door.

As Sukie walked up the narrow brick path, she heard Frannie behind her whisper, “Isn’t she beautiful?” Sukie strained to hear his reply.

“Plant one,” said Simon.

Plant one? Sukie had never heard that expression, and she swiveled slightly to see Frannie throw her arms around him. They locked lips in a tender way, not hard and rough but hot. By “plant one,” Sukie knew what he was saying: She may be beautiful but I’m interested only in you. Perhaps he was even saying that Frannie was
beautiful, although strictly speaking, and Sukie was not being judgmental but simply accurate, Frannie was more interesting-looking than beautiful.

“Is he your boyfriend?” Sukie asked as he drove off.

“I don’t use that word.” Frannie grinned. “Do you think he’s cool?”

“Well…,” said Sukie.

“He’s not. He’s not the least bit cool. I don’t know what he is.” She shrugged helplessly. “But he’s something.”

“I’m dating this smoldering guy, Bobo Deeb,” said Sukie.

“Oh, yeah,” said Frannie. “You mentioned him. The guy from Hudson Glen High. Hey, Mom,” she shouted, opening the door.

In two shakes Sukie was swept into life in the Cavanaugh home. Frannie’s mom and Mel, her stepdad, were in the kitchen making minestrone. Sukie was given a can opener and some jumbo cans of tomatoes, and then instructed to pour the tomatoes into a bowl and break them up with her hands. She didn’t need to talk, a relief, except to answer that her parents were fine.

There was a plate of large green pellets, which Frannie’s mom said were stuffed grape leaves. Sukie refused them even though she was starved because they looked weird, and stuck instead to the salted nuts and olives. Frannie’s stepdad was talking about the Middle Ages and how people threw their leftovers to the dogs after they were done eating.

“I didn’t know that,” said Sukie. “What countries are you talking about exactly?”

“Are you interested in history?” he asked.

“I love history,” said Sukie, and Mel was off and running about lute music in twelfth-century France. It turned out that he was a professor of history and writing a paper on it.

Sukie had never hung out anyplace where people talked about anything that had happened before last week. Frannie’s mom, who owned a flower shop, had a few twigs in her hair that Mel plucked out. “You brought home souvenirs from the shop,” he said.

“Things are very bad there,
monsieur
,” said Frannie’s mom. They burst out laughing.

“Oh, God,” said Frannie. “Let’s get out of here.”

“It’s a line from
Casablanca
,” her mom explained. “It’s an old movie, and in a scene where Rick tells a poor
sad refugee to go back to Bulgaria, she says, ‘Things are very bad there,
monsieur
.’ We try to stick the line into as many conversations as possible.”

“They’re crazy,” said Frannie.

“We are,” said her mom. “Aren’t we, Booper?” Apparently Booper was Mel’s nickname.

Frannie dragged Sukie upstairs.

The walls of Frannie’s bedroom were papered with art posters. “I’m currently into Dalí and Duchamp,” she said, neither of whom Sukie had ever heard of. “In my own art, I’ve entered a bizarre period.” There were a few pencil drawings of hers tacked up: a fish driving a car, a book with worms growing out of it, a bleeding wristwatch. Sukie studied them, feeling that she ought to know what to say but didn’t.

A bunch of odd objects were displayed on a bookshelf: a doll leg, an old phone with a rotary dial, some bits of pottery, a bent silver fork. “What are these?” asked Sukie.

“Take away use and you have art,” said Frannie. “That’s what my dad always said. He saved all these things.”

“Everything in my house is new,” said Sukie. “Even my mother’s face. She had it lifted.”

“Oh, wow,” said Frannie. “That explains it.”

“We used to have the same nose, but not anymore.”

“How weird.” Frannie picked up the china-doll leg. It was as pale as marble with pink dimples painted on the knee. Its shoe was in perfect condition: red leather with a strap over a white cotton ankle sock. “Put out your palm.”

Sukie opened her hand and Frannie laid the doll leg on it.

There was something compelling about it. It didn’t seem broken, it seemed complete, and then it seemed shocking, evidence of an unknown unspeakable horror. Sukie shivered.

“Yeah,” said Frannie. “I know. It’s got this fabulous creepiness.”

Frannie’s face—long and solemn with big, dark brown, expressive eyes—was unpredictable. Sukie had always found that from one minute to the next you could think she was mocking you or being the friendliest. Although Frannie couldn’t stop showing her dimples around Simon, usually she was slow to smile. Sometimes her eyes ached with pain. When that happened Sukie guessed that Frannie was thinking
about her dad. Her parents had been divorced. Frannie had stopped by to visit her dad after school. It was she who found him dead. That made Sukie feel especially awful that she’d never said, “I’m sorry about your dad,” and let the whole thing slide right by as if the tragedy in Frannie’s life had never happened.

Right now Frannie was looking at Sukie so sympathetically that Sukie thought she had X-ray vision right to her heart.

Sukie carefully placed the doll leg back on the shelf. “Take away use and you have art. How cool,” she said. “My mom kicked me out.”

Frannie’s door slammed open and Jenna burst in. When she saw Sukie, she went white. Her chin jutted forward, her face tightened into a fist.

“I can leave,” said Sukie to Frannie.

“But you’re sleeping over,” said Frannie.

“I am?” said Sukie.

“She is?” said Jenna. “Maybe I’ll leave.”

“Please don’t,” said Sukie. “Please. I shouldn’t have written that stuff about you. Or about anyone.”

Jenna perched on the bed and let her purse hang between her legs. “Why did you?”

Sukie threw up her hands and, when she couldn’t think of any words to go with that helpless gesture, clamped her head as if to stop it from exploding.

“It was mean,” said Jenna.

“I know. It was an awful thing to do,” said Sukie.

“Unfortunately you were right about me. I was James’s cheerleader.”

“Was?” said Frannie.

“I broke up with him.” Jenna dropped her purse and flopped backward on the spread. “Everything was about him.” She threw out her arms. “He got so irritated because I called buffala mozzarella ‘buff-a-
lo
mozzarella.’ Then he was scandalized because I didn’t know it really came from buffalos.” She rolled over to face them. “Did you know that?”

Both Frannie and Sukie shook their heads.

“But from Italian buffalos, James said, which are more bovine. He actually used the word ‘bovine.’ What does it mean?”

“Cowlike,” said Frannie.

“I can’t be with someone who says ‘bovine.’ I can’t be with someone who thinks mozzarella is more important than me.”

“For sure,” said Frannie.

“I can’t be with someone who scolds me about cheese. I can’t be with someone who’s in love with himself.”

“He reminds me of Léon,” said Sukie.

“Léon?”

“The guy Madame Bovary flirts with in Yonville, who later breaks her heart. Léon was more interesting than any other man in Yonville, but not really interesting.”

“You’re right. James is Léon,” said Jenna.

“When did this happen?” Frannie asked.

“An hour ago.” Jenna popped up and looked at them brightly. When neither Sukie nor Frannie said anything, her shoulders sagged and her eyes wandered to an empty spot in the room.

“I told Frannie I was seeing this guy at Hudson Glen High. Actually I blabbed about him to everyone. But I’m not. He’s not remotely into me. I made it up,” said Sukie.

For some reason they all burst out laughing.

Sukie got the coziest feeling because they were all laughing together and not at anyone, and because
they shared a wonderful giddiness that none of them could explain. Jenna stuffed her head into a pillow and Frannie clapped her hand over her mouth trying to stop. Sukie gave in to it, collapsing on the floor, loving how her body felt like jelly.