The Girl with the Mermaid Hair (15 page)

S
UKIE spent the night at Frannie’s, and then the next. Frannie told her that her mom had checked in with Sukie’s mom to let her know that Sukie was safe.

“Not that she cares,” said Sukie.

Frannie had an unusual bathtub raised up off the floor. It had feet. “Claw feet,” Frannie said they were called. They did look like the feet of a giant bird. Sukie spent an hour each night monopolizing it, doing the mermaid float.

On the third night, when Sukie was feeling especially relaxed, lounging in Frannie’s terry-cloth robe with a towel wrapped around her wet hair, Frannie said, “You’d better tell us.”

“What?” said Sukie.

“Why you’re miserable and angry,” said Jenna.

“I know all about being miserable and angry,” said Frannie. “I fought with everyone for months after my dad died. I hated everyone.”

“She did. Even me,” said Jenna.

“How come?” said Sukie.

Frannie chewed some of her hair, realized what she was doing, and brushed the hair out of her mouth. “I’m trying to stop that.” She laughed. “Let me think.”

“What I mean,” said Sukie, “is I hated everyone too, and I needed them to hate me but I don’t know why. If I’m so smart, why don’t I know why I do anything?”

“Who knows why they do anything?” said Jenna. “Is that some sort of cosmic question?”

“No, it’s just—”

“I think it works like this,” said Frannie. “You feel so awful, you need to feel worse, or you need to make it worse, or you need everyone else to feel awful. The point is, it spreads all over the place. I don’t know why, but it does.”

“A feel-awful epidemic,” said Sukie. “That’s what I’ve been living in.” For a second she got excited at the idea, it sounded almost romantic. “Is that why you
invited me to see that bird?”

“The hawk?” said Frannie. “It wasn’t there and it was freezing; you’re lucky you didn’t come, but yes, when I saw you…well, whenever I saw you at school, I thought, Been there, done that. You’re so unhappy.”

“I really am.” Sukie tried to smile but couldn’t manage it.

“Come on, out with it. Burying it only makes it worse.”

Sukie tried to think how to begin. She sat on the rug and picked at it. She searched the room as if the way to start were printed on the walls or hanging from the ceiling, or the moon whose bright whiteness peeped through the pine outside Frannie’s window might guide her. Eventually her eyes settled on the fish drawing of Frannie’s. The fish was driving. The fish had no hands, but there it was behind the wheel doing the impossible. She considered hiding in one of her voices—the squeaky baby one might gain more sympathy, the sophisticated drawl might dilute their pity, but she had lost the inclination to fakery. She knew that everything would become more real if she said it aloud. These sleepovers at Frannie’s had been a vacation from pain, but she’d left Mikey and Señor.
Thank God for Señor, he would take good care of her brother, but still, Mikey needed her. Telling was the beginning of the journey home.

Sukie’s voice broke as she started but steadied as she stuck to the facts and didn’t embellish. “My mom found out my dad’s involved with someone…” Sukie backtracked, forcing herself to say it. “…involved with another woman. She read it in my journal.”

“She read your journal?” said Jenna.

“Shussh,” said Frannie.

“She blamed me and threw me out. She threw him out too, I guess. I think they’re getting a divorce.” She covered her face with her hands.

Sukie rested a second, blinking into darkness. She wanted to get through this without the jumps. She lowered her hands, testing her calm. “I saw him with her. I was getting a mochaccino, and I turned…He didn’t see me. He doesn’t know. It’s been my secret.”

Sukie pulled the towel off her head and let the wet strands fall onto her shoulders. “I only saw them from the back. And heard him. I didn’t get a good look.”

As she worked up the energy to continue, she tapped her mouth nervously, and then said, “This is probably bad for me.”

“What is?” said Jenna.

“My mom would say something like, ‘Don’t bat your lips, they’ll flatten.’ Can lips flatten? Is that even possible?” She laughed mirthlessly. “You know what my mom calls cellulite? Her ‘shadows.’ ‘Don’t look at my shadows,’ she says. If I’m not calming her down or trying to please my dad, I don’t know who I am.”

Frannie reached over and squeezed Sukie’s arm.

Sukie was beginning to think that Frannie knew more about feelings than anyone she had ever met. She listened in the most intense, unwavering way, but without an ounce of judgment. All confidences were safe, and for the first time Sukie felt that she wasn’t carrying around a seven-hundred-pound burden. God, secrets could simply do you in. For a fleeting instant she wondered if Frannie had been as sympathetic as this before her dad died—Sukie had never known Frannie well enough to know that. Had tragedy softened her heart and heightened her sensors? Possibly, thought Sukie. Did that mean that tragedy could be a good thing—well, not good, exactly, but with a few positive side effects?

“I was frightened about everything after my dad died,” Frannie told her, intuiting that the question was
there. “But Simon helped a lot. He’s fearless.”

“What about me?” said Jenna. “Didn’t I help?”

“You’re always perfect,” said Frannie.

Sukie knew what she meant. Jenna’s cheerfulness and loyalty were necessary, like food.

Sukie scrambled up, dug her wallet out of her purse, and showed them the scrap of paper. “I think this is the woman’s phone number. The other woman. I copied it out of my dad’s BlackBerry. The number was there a whole bunch of times.”

“Did you call it?” asked Frannie.

Sukie shook her head. “Should I?”

With their heads together, they scrutinized the little scrap of paper.

“Maybe I should burn it,” said Sukie.

“We need to eat. We need to go out and eat. After we eat, we’ll know,” said Frannie. She got up and stretched. “I’m really sorry about your dad.”

Sukie’s face fell.

Frannie and Jenna exchanged looks as tears welled up and streamed down Sukie’s cheeks. They put out their arms and swallowed her in a three-way hug.

“It’s okay to cry about your dad,” said Frannie.

“Not my dad,” Sukie sobbed. “Yours.” She broke
from the huddle and tried to catch her breath. “
Your
dad. I never told you I was sorry about
your
dad, and now you tell me you’re sorry about
mine
.” She erupted in a fresh wail.

“It’s okay,” said Frannie.

“No, it’s not.” Sukie sagged helplessly. “I meant to. Every day I meant to, but I didn’t. I’m really, really sorry about your dad.”

Frannie’s eyes teared. Jenna looked at both of them and teared up too.

“Thanks,” said Frannie, sniffling.

“You’re welcome.” Sukie collapsed in a chair. As she sat there silently, all the tears that hadn’t flowed after she’d seen her dad that night, tears from the weight of carrying around the secret, tears from her loneliness and her mother’s cruelty and for not telling Frannie she was sorry when such an awful thing had happened to her poured out. They kept coming and coming and coming. Finally she managed some words. “We’d better eat or I’ll never stop.”

I
NSTEAD of five minutes, it took twenty to get to Clementi’s because Jenna, who had just gotten her license, refused to make left turns. They were too scary. She drove around the parking lot three times hunting for a diagonal spot with no cars on either side. By the time Jenna had managed to park crookedly, taking up two spaces, Sukie had forgotten her tears, and they were nearly doubled over with giggles. Then, instead of turning off the headlights, Jenna turned on the windshield wipers. In high spirits, they bounced into Clementi’s.

All three girls had been coming here for pizza since they were kids, but only Sukie was a regular. Bunched up in front, a crowd of people waited for tables. Sukie
craned over them. “Where’s Issy? You’ll love her. She told me, ‘If I had a little sister, I’d want her to be you,’ isn’t that sweet? We’re going to go shopping. She has the greatest taste. Oh there she is.”

Isabella, in conversation with a couple at a back table, caught sight of Sukie waving, and raised a finger to indicate she’d be right there.

Sukie loved it here, the toasty pizza smell, the warmth of the coal-fire oven, Dominick, the owner, in a big white apron, who still came in now and then to make the pies himself at the marble counter, just as he had when she was little. She looked over at the bar, at the framed photos of Frank Sinatra—“a famous singer,” her dad had told her. “This guy had class.” He’d lifted her up so she could get a good view of a man with a wide, easy smile, looking suave in a pencil-thin black suit. “Class,” he whispered in her ear. When they got home, he’d played her his music, which he’d explained was smooth and syncopated, cool and romantic.

“Sukie.” Isabella tapped her shoulder.

“Issy.” Sukie spun and threw her arms around her. Frannie and Jenna could see Issy’s surprise, the knitted brow, the awkward way she patted Sukie on the back. “I’m sorry,” said Sukie, letting go, stepping back, wiping
her eyes with the back of her hand. “I didn’t expect…It was seeing you and Sinatra.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, “My parents might be getting a divorce.” The tears squeezed out again.

“Oh. Oh, dear.” Issy’s delicate hands danced up and she clapped them together. Sukie could see she was at a loss. “Look, you guys, take this table, no one will notice.” She scooted them to a booth in the back. “So here.” She distributed menus.

“Have you seen him?” asked Sukie.

“Seen him?”

“Has my dad been here?”

“Yes, two days ago. Was it two days ago? Yes, two days ago.”

“Alone?” asked Sukie.

Issy fussed with her hair, which was now a palomino blond, stabbing it with a clip. “He sat at the bar and watched the game.”

“Did he say anything?”

“About what?”

“You know, the situation.”

“No. Not a thing. What do you guys want to drink?”

“Diet Cokes,” they all said at once. “With double
lemon,” said Sukie. “It’s great that way,” she told Frannie and Jenna.

“Okay, I’ll get the waitress. You’re probably starved,” said Issy.

“How’s Richie?”

“Long gone. I’ve got to get back to work. Three Diet Cokes, six lemon slices.”

Sukie examined the rolls in the bread basket, wondering where her dad was staying and if he was with the black-haired lady.

“What are you having?” asked Frannie.

“What?” said Sukie.

“Pizza or pasta?”

“Pizza.”

“I think I’ll have a salad,” said Jenna.

“Salad. Boo,” said Frannie.

“Dancers can’t pig out,” Jenna protested. “Oh, okay, I’ll have plain pizza. A good old margherita.”

While wolfing pizza, they discussed how great it would be to study in New York City next summer. Frannie at the Art Institute, Jenna at City Ballet, and Sukie…Sukie was stumped. “I have no idea what I want to be,” said Sukie. “I used to think CEO, but I never knew of what. What could I do there?” Frannie
and Jenna threw out all sorts of suggestions—interning at a law firm or online for a website, modeling, maybe they need assistants at the big tennis tournament, the US Open. They discussed what was sexy in a guy, and Frannie announced that she’d once been fixated on the frayed cuff of Simon’s shirt. “There is nothing sexier than a shirt disintegrating,” she said. Sukie confided about going to Bobo’s game and getting stuck in the mud and the giant hawk mascot nearly suffocating her, and everyone was groaning and laughing. “Mister le Bobo,” Frannie nicknamed him.

While they were sharing a hot-fudge sundae and Jenna swore, while she licked her spoon, that if she took even one more mouthful she’d be a dancing cow, Sukie laid down the scrap of paper. They tried to decide again.

“Spin a fork,” said Frannie. “If it points toward you, you call. Anywhere else, no.”

Sukie spun the fork. It flew off the table.

“That doesn’t count,” said Frannie, retrieving it. “Spin the knife.”

Around it went twice and slid into Sukie’s lap.

“Oh, no.”

“You’ve got to do it,” said Frannie.

Sukie toyed with her cell, letting her fingers play over the numbers. “It’s probably a bank. Probably just related to some business deal he was making, right?”

“Right,” said Jenna.

She dialed and pressed the phone against her ear. She could barely hear the ring. She pressed her fingers against her other ear to blot out the noise.

She clicked off, sat down, and dropped her cell on the table as if it were radioactive.

“What happened?” said Jenna.

“A bank or a woman?” said Frannie.

“A woman. She said, ‘Hello.’”

“Uh-oh,” said Jenna.

“That’s it for me.” Sukie dug into the sundae. Her cell vibrated. She glanced over. “Oh my God, it’s the number. The bitch is calling back.”

Sukie pushed the phone away, into the center of the table. Every time it vibrated, it moved.

“It’s alive,” said Frannie.

Sukie snatched it and pressed the green button, “Yes,” she said.

“Did you just try to call me? I didn’t recognize the number.” The squeaky, scratchy voice was unmistakable.

Sukie twisted in the booth. At the back computer, Issy had her cell to her ear.

“Issy?” said Frannie.

“That’s impossible,” said Jenna. “Isn’t that impossible?”

Sukie’s scalp prickled. She was on fire.

With a shrug of her shoulders, Issy slid the phone into her back pocket and went into the kitchen.

“She’s like three years older than you,” said Jenna.

“More like eight,” said Frannie, “but still.”

Sukie sprang up, dodged a waiter, split a family of six making their stuffed way to the front, and barged past Dominick and into the kitchen, where Issy was popping a chef hat off a cook.

“My dad,” said Sukie.

Issy gave the chef back his hat. “What about him?”

“Did you see
The Other Boleyn Girl
?”

Issy walked past the giant refrigerators, the boxes of sodas and cans of tomatoes. She smacked the steel door, opening it. Sukie stormed after her into the parking lot, with Frannie and Jenna in her wake. “Was your hair black? Did you dye your hair black?”

“Why?”

“You did.”

“Maybe. So? It wasn’t anything.” She kept walking.

Sukie slapped her arm to stop her. “What wasn’t anything?”

“Maybe it meant something to your dad. It was nice for a while, he’s still into me, but I told him, hey, I’m like in between, I’m not ending up here. I’m considering my options. You’re like sixty.”

“My dad’s not sixty,” Sukie shouted.

“Okay, forty, whatever, calm down. What’s the difference?” She bent to primp in a side mirror. She fluffed her hair, ran her tongue over her teeth, applied some gloss. “Men like me,” she said with a shrug.

“Issy, we were friends.”

“Who?”

“You and I.”

“Not really.”

“Not really! I can’t believe you’re saying that.”

“You’re a customer.”

“A customer? I confided in you,” said Sukie. “You invited me shopping. You said if you had a sister you’d want her to be me.”

“When did I say that?”

“I was in the bathroom and—” Sukie stopped.

“The bathroom?” Issy eyed her curiously, truly baffled.

Frannie and Jenna, whose heads had been whipping back and forth as they followed the arguments, instinctively closed in behind Sukie, correctly intuiting from her strange expression, the slight swaying, and an uncontrollable blink that she was in danger of toppling. She might need catching.

“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” said Issy.

“It’s really freezing out. I’m freezing,” said Sukie. She started forward, backed up, turned. Frannie and Jenna, flanking her, steered her back into Clementi’s.

Nobody spoke on the way home. In the backseat Sukie was lost in thought. Issy wasn’t her friend. She was her friend in the mirror. Sukie had invented her and, judging from everything she’d seen and learned tonight, she hadn’t invented even a reasonable facsimile.

“Do you think you can cause something to happen just from wanting it so much?” she asked.

“I don’t get what you mean. Does this have to do with your dad?” asked Frannie.

“Not really. I’m talking about loneliness.”

Frannie turned around and considered her answer. For a while she seemed to be in a wilderness of her own. “Do you mean that you imagined that Issy was your friend?”

“Yes, so completely that it was real.”

“Oh that can happen. I believe that totally. Loneliness is powerful.”