When We Believed in Mermaids(33)

Baking eased my loneliness in a way nothing else did, at least until I saved enough money for a modem and cheap computer, which didn’t come until a little later.

We lived there nearly five years. My mom made good money at the bar. I babysat for the single moms in the complex until I was old enough for a real job. Josie always had money, but nobody looked too closely to see why. Mainly, she devoted herself to becoming the slut of Monterey County, banging pretty much every guy who took her fancy, and they all did. Especially the bad boys, the leaders on the bad side.

And if Josie decided she wanted somebody, it didn’t matter if he had a girlfriend or didn’t go for white girls or what. She crooked her finger, and they came, on more than one score. She was incredible, a fantasy. Long blonde hair to her tiny ass, tanned limbs, tiny waist. She didn’t have much of a chest, but everything else made up for that.

Sometimes she kept a guy for a little while, a few months or maybe a couple of seasons, and then she’d move on to the next. I think that’s why a lot of them liked her, to tell you the truth. You couldn’t keep Josie Bianci.

I didn’t have much of a social life. I’d never really needed one, and as a too-tall, gawky teen with crazy frizzy hair, I was too self-conscious to be able to reach out now. My focus was on getting the hell out of Salinas and into college, out of this world and into one where I had some influence and understanding. I wanted order, clarity, education. I wanted to talk about Big Important Things, not the bullshit all my classmates seemed to want to talk about. Clothes. Boys. TV.

I missed my dad. I missed Dylan, who listened better than anyone in the world. I cooked a lot because nobody else was going to do it. I got a little fat because I wasn’t surfing much.

I was profoundly lonely.

When I finally saved enough for a computer and modem, getting online saved me. I made friends in newsgroups, found like-minded souls on Prodigy, an online service with message boards, and stumbled into a connection with a group of aspiring medical students who nurtured my growing interest and eventually helped me navigate the college application process and find the funds to make it happen.



I’m thinking about those days while I surf, only coming to shore when my driver waves at me. “The storm, she’s coming in. We gotta get back.”

Shaken out of my reverie, I follow the direction of her finger, and a big, ugly bank of clouds are gathering on the horizon. “Not good,” I agree.

Everyone is of the same mind. By the time I get changed and get everything dropped off, the sun has been devoured by the clouds, and a hard wind is pushing onshore. We listen to the cyclone reports on the way back to the CBD, and I ask the driver, “Is this something to be worried about?”

She shrugs. “Maybe. Sounds like it might be this time. You have food and water in your hotel?”

“Not really. Can we stop somewhere on the way back?”

She nods, and a little while later, she stops at a proper grocery store, which is packed. “I’ll come too,” she says, and we wade into the madness together. The water is mostly gone, but I remember something about filling bathtubs, and the one at the apartment is massive. I gather everything I need to bake and to cook a few meals, feeling a strange sense of coziness overtake me.

And yet, it could be dangerous. My apartment has a wall of glass facing the harbor.

I pay the driver and get back to the apartment just as the rain starts to fall. It’s only then, trying to find places for the groceries, that I realize that Josie would never in a million years have given up surfing. I should have asked at the surf shop if they knew her.

Outside the window, a roar of wind and rain slams the little balcony. I cross my arms, shivering slightly. First a shower and a cup of tea, and then I might bake some brownies, just for the pleasure of it. I wonder if Javier is at his friend’s house or if he made it back here. I never thought to exchange numbers with him.

It’s not like I don’t know anything about doing things alone. It will be fine.

But I find myself eyeing the glass nervously, wondering if I should close the doors to the bedroom. Is this a real storm or something I’ll feel foolish about later?

Where is Josie in all this? Does she have PTSD from earthquakes? Does she get frightened at times like this?

How am I going to find her?





Chapter Sixteen

Mari

I find myself pacing after we get home from Sapphire House, stirred up by the weather and the thrashing rain but also the television crew and all the things I have never said to anyone here. Anyone who loves me now, as Mari.

With the storm blowing in, everyone has gone to their corners. Simon and Leo are watching sports, while Sarah is immersed in reading a new book on—what else?—cyclones. Only Paris, the lonely shepherd, follows me down to the kitchen, where I pull out my laptop and restlessly scroll through Pinterest boards on the 1920s and ’30s. A few boards have been collected for Veronica, and I find George on a board of Olympic swimmers, but none of it is new information. Instead, I click through pages and pages of Art Deco furnishings and stylings. I find examples of furniture very like the pieces in the lounge and many examples of the dishes and light fixtures.

Once we get things cleared out, the entire house will need to be rewired, and the plumbing needs to be thoroughly inspected and upgraded as well, though I hope to keep most of the fixtures. We’ve had good luck refurbishing only the internal parts to keep authenticity.

What am I going to do with that kitchen? I click through photos of 1930s-era kitchens, and none is particularly appealing. Cooking is one of my great pleasures, and I’m going to have the right tools. I wonder what’s out there that feels period without my having to give up the pleasure of modern appliances.

My email dings, and I click over to find an email from Gweneth, who has sent a series of links. Thought you might find these interesting, she writes. Everything I could find on Veronica and George from the local media, with a few articles from the States when they first met.

Smiling, I click “Reply.” Blogger’s block?

She writes back with an abashed emoji. We do what we must.

Thanks, no matter the cause, I reply. I’m in need of distraction too, and I click through the links, starting with the material from the Hollywood Reporter, with a short paragraph and a photo of George and Veronica cozying up somewhere. Veronica wears a fur, her lips darkly painted, and George looks utterly smitten.

For a long while, I study his face, thinking about what it must have been like for him to be chosen by a movie star. To find his life turned upside down by not only the opportunity to be an Olympian but also then to fall head over heels in love with a famous woman.

I sip my lukewarm tea. He was married too. That could not have been easy. I click through the various articles, most of them gossipy in nature, more photos, more speculation about the pair.

The last link is to a story about the murder, the morning after. It’s a garish, bold headline with a photo of the mansion and a grim-faced George being led away. Starlet Murder Stuns City, the headline screams, and the article that accompanies it is equally hysterical in tone. Stabbed in her own bedroom, multiple times. Paramour the main suspect.

Which makes sense. Even the details of the bedroom and the multiple stab wounds suggest a jealous lover. And common wisdom says it’s always the spouse.

The computer freezes suddenly, and no amount of fiddling brings it back up. Outside, the storm is taking on fury and power, and I retreat from the doors to the kitchen, where I find myself taking out a cloth bag full of feijoas, a couple of hands of ginger, and a bowl of lemons. I’ve collected a number of beautiful canning jars over the years, and tonight I dig for the Kilner Vintage jars, with their long lines that reflect the light. They’ll make my chutney look jeweled.

The light is mellow over my counter. Settling on a stool with a cutting board and a wickedly sharp Japanese knife, I sense my ghosts crowd around me as I slice each lemon and feijoa with precise care. My father leans on the counter, smoking, a bourbon in his hand. Dylan sits on the floor in tattered jeans, his hand in the dog’s fur. Somewhere is a baby, but sometimes I see her and sometimes I don’t. Maybe she found life when Sarah was born; I don’t know.

My dad rattles the ice in his glass, a big, sturdy man’s man with giant, capable hands and thick black hair on his arms. All his life he wore a gold watch his father had given him before he left Sicily, and he took it off when he cooked, slipping it into the pocket of his shirt. A strip of lighter skin where the watch rested never went away.

I worshipped the very ground he walked upon when I was small. To be granted time in the kitchen with him, I would sweep floors, drag food scraps to the trash, anything. For a long time, he didn’t mind, propping me up on a stool or an overturned box, my body wrapped three times around with a bibbed apron, to teach me what he loved. Cooking. Olives and fresh mozzarella, which we made the old way; squid in its own ink; and simple fresh pastas.

It is because of my father that I slice with such exactitude. My chutneys and jams are perfection. I miss him. I miss Kit. I miss Dylan. Sometimes I even miss my mother.

When I fled France on a stolen passport, I knew only that I had to change my life. I didn’t stop to consider that I’d be lying forever, that I would be the only person who would know my secrets.