Under the water pressure, the bubbles fill the bath in seconds. I can
smell the minuscule specks of metal in the water from the pipes it’s
traveling through. I can smell the chemicals in the soap more than the
rose scent it’s trying to mimic. I can smell Dad’s amazement mingling
with something like regret, like fireworks after they’ve all exploded.
“Say something,” he tells me.
“Something.” I chuckle.
He’s quiet for what are probably seconds but feel like forever.
“Do you remember when I was ten,” I start, “and Vicky Millanelli
had that birthday pool party?”
“You kept wanting to leave,” he says, “because you were the only
boy who showed up.”
“She only invited people she liked, and she didn’t invite Layla.
So all the girls started chasing me around, trying to kiss me. They
were all wearing these matching pink-and-purple arm floats. So I
jumped into the deep end of the pool, where they couldn’t follow me. I
just sat there at the bottom with my legs crossed, watching them
scream and freak out. I don’t remember wanting to come up for air.
Vicky never invited me to her birthday parties again.”
Dad pulls off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Her
dad called me to get you. You didn’t even notice what you were doing.”
“I never liked her much anyway.”
Mom comes back with a Mason jar of sea salt. She runs her hand on
my forearm, which is scattered with slick scales a few shades of blue
lighter than the ones on my tail. She empties the Mason jar in the
tub. We listen to the salt hiss when it meets water, the bubble bath
deflating, and the careful intake of our breaths. Dad takes the jar
from my mother and fills it. He picks up the little rainbow fish
that’s flopping on the wet floor with not enough water and drops him
into the jar.
“Is he for dinner too?” I go.
We chuckle briefly. I want to fix the dark cloud that’s hanging
over all of us. Fix this . I can’t remember us ever being this quiet,
this careful of what we say. I know everyone says their family is
different, happy. When it comes to my family, I really mean it.
Mom and I look at each other. Her cheeks are flushed red, but the
rest of her is still the same porcelain pale she’s always been. Her
eyes are impossibly turquoise. The corners of her mouth tilt downward,
and she’s all trembles. Her lips, her chin, her hands. She wipes at
her forehead with the back of her hand and breathes through her mouth.
I can smell her regret, anxiety, fright. It’s bitter, like dried
lemons.
I don’t know how, but I do. Now, I may be the fastest swimmer in
Brooklyn, but that’s about where my talents stop. Unless dating is
counted as a talent, and recent events are proving me wrong.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she says. She absently dips her
hand in the water, like we’re at Aunt Sylvia’s pool and she’s lying on
the ledge. I’ve never seen her so sad, and my body flushes because I
know this is somehow my fault.
“What was supposed to happen?” I don’t mean to sound so bitter. I
can’t help it. “Why is this happening to me? Why now?” And before I
can think to stop myself, “Who are you?”
She’s Maia Hart, married to David Hart. Who was she before that?
We’ve never met anyone from her side of the family. I’ve never asked,
because I’m so used to it just being the three of us. New Year’s we
spend with friends; Christmas is the three of us; Thanksgiving, it’s
with Layla’s family; and Independence Day is with the rest of Coney
Island. Even if my grandparents were dead, there would be someone ,
wouldn’t there? There would be pictures, no matter how old. People
keep pictures of those they love, right?
“From the beginning,” Dad says. He sits on the toilet with one
hand under his chin, staring at my fins, like that statue of the
thinking guy. “I met your mother when I had just graduated from Hunter
and had moved back to my parents’ apartment. I spent that entire
summer on a little boat off Brighton, hating the world and wondering
if I should take the job with Techsoft. That kind of post-college
thing.”
Mom lets herself chuckle. “It was on one of our visits to Coney
Island. Every fifty or so years, we come back here. That’s what we do.
We spend most of our time visiting beaches all over the world. That’s
why it takes so long between visits.”
I sat it slowly. “We?”
“The Sea People. The Beautiful Deadly Ones. The Fey of the Sea.
Children of Poseidon. Dwellers of the Vicious Deep…” She pauses as if
I don’t already know I’m a moron. I just want her to say it.
“Merfolk.”
“Of course,” I say. It’s not enough that I’m in my parents’
bathtub up to my gills in rose-scented bubble bath, that my entire
world has quite literally slipped right out from under my feet, that I
don’t know anything about the changes in my body-if they’re permanent,
can I eat fish? Is that like semi-cannibalism? That my parents have
been keeping this from me since I was little, which means they’ve been
lying to me my entire life. I can forget all that. But of all the
creatures in my mom’s fairy-tale books, she had to go and be the
girliest? Come on!
Dad’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts. “I’d always wake up with
a bottle of funny-shaped glass seashells or broken pieces of jewelry
on my deck-”
Doesn’t sound much different from the stuff she still collects in
those trunks in their bedroom. “Let me guess. Mom would have her
trusty but endearingly clumsy seagull friend deliver them to you? Am I
right?”
Dad snorts, but Mom doesn’t appreciate my humor. She folds her
arms and sniffs. “Absolutely not. Seagulls are vile, nasty things. And
back then I could control the water.”
“You can’t anymore?”
She shakes her head. “I showed myself to David. I didn’t usually
do that sort of thing-”
“-that’s what all the mermaids say,” he winks.
“-I didn’t! My sisters were the ones always revealing themselves
to humans. It was fine if they wanted to take humans as mates-for a
short while-but they were careless. They always let them drown , and
then Father would be furious at me because he always put me in charge
to watch over them.
“On this last trip, when it was time to leave, I didn’t want to
go. I begged my father. He granted our wish to be together. He
stripped my tail. Then I had you.”
“That’s the SparkNotes version, right?”
“Yes,” she says, “it’s a long story.”
“What’re you, like, a hundred? You’ve got plenty of time to tell
it. Plus, it’s not like I’m going anywhere, unless we toss me back
into the Atlantic.”
They’re both about to protest, their fingers pointing up at my
face, all don’t-you-talk-to-us-like-that. But the faucet comes on by
itself again. Water sloshes everywhere. There’s a soft light coming
from the faucet in the bathtub. Dad keeps twisting the handles to turn
it off, but that doesn’t work. There’s a loud popping sound, followed
by a tiny fish that flows right into the tub. “I hope this isn’t a
regular thing, because the downstairs neighbors are going to
complain.”
The water trembles. Something bumps and pushes against my tail.
The water glows so brightly that I have to look away. There’s a second
splash, and the wind gets knocked out of me by a knee. My tail, with a
mind of its own, knocks everything in its reach onto the floor. I try