Mermaid (17 page)

And then one evening when the children were in bed, and Mark and Jillian sat watching television together, it happened.

There it was. The boat, the bay, the white-clad fisherman playing his catch as his deep, persuasive voice said, “Our oceans are our most precious resource. Some of the smallest of earth’s living creatures make their home here”—the screen filled with a much-magnified picture of phytoplankton—“as do the largest”—whales moved in stately splendor and the song of the blue whale came from the speakers.

The voice went on, overriding the whale song, outlining the many ways in which the oceans were important to all mankind, while on the screen porpoises dove and played, schools of tropical fish darted here and there, boats bobbed on clean water, and children splashed and played on calm shores and salmon swam upstream.

“And we do not know all there is to know about what lives in those mysterious depths,” the resonant voice continued as the screen filled once more with the stern of the boat and the fisherman in white. All at once, a disturbance on the surface of the seething ocean was the focus of interest, and then a large, silver tail shot with blue and silver, followed by a sleek, golden head emerging from the water appeared, and Jillian Lockstead, Mermaid, was being seen by millions of viewers.

“How can we go on pouring tons of chemicals into these waters? How can we go on risking their purity—their already compromised purity—risking not only the lives of the creatures we know about, but those of whose existence we can only guess?”

As the smiling mermaid came nearer, reaching up to unhook the line from her costume, the camera drifted over her. She waved, flipped her tail, and then dove away out of sight.

“Many of you are saying ‘There is no such thing as a mermaid,’” the candidate went on as the camera panned back to his earnest face. “But I say, do we know that for certain? And if such a beautiful, exotic creature should exist, can we risk killing her and her kind with our own careless acts of vandalism?”

He went on, but Mark heard nothing. He was watching Jillian’s white face, seeing the tension there, the tears running down her cheeks as her shoulders heaved from the force of the sobs she was trying to hold back.

And now he understood.

He didn’t touch her. He didn’t hold her. He couldn’t comfort her. He could only look on in torture as he witnessed her pain.

Finally he said, his voice just barely above a murmur, “It’s not enough, is it? We aren’t enough for you. Being my wife, the mother of our children, isn’t enough. You want...that...back.” He waved at the television screen where the camera was now following the mermaid’s course as she swam back out to sea, turning now and then to wave and smile as if beckoning the world to follow.

They both watched as the scene switched to an underwater shot of the mermaid poised at the entrance to a grotto. She disappeared inside, leaving only an afterimage of magic that slowly faded as the candidate’s voice faded, and a loud commercial came on extolling the virtues of a bathroom tile cleaner.

“You want the adulation. You want the panting, men, faces pressed against the glass, the notes in your dressing room, the thrill of knowing that you’re turning on five hundred men a night, the ego boost of knowing that every woman in your audience is envious of you,” Mark accused.

“God, Jillian! How can I compete with that? What do I have to do to be enough for you? I took that all away from you, didn’t I? And I haven’t given you anything to make up for it.”

He got to his feet and walked slowly to their bedroom, for the first time not reaching out his hand to draw her along with him. And for the first time he was asleep, or seemed to be, when she finally went to bed.

When morning came, Jillian stayed in bed, listening to the children squabbling, to Mark’s shower beating against the wall near their bed, and then slowly got herself ready to face the day. At last alone in the house, she sat at the table in the kitchen, for the first time not leaping up to begin scouring and scrubbing and keeping the house spotless. She stared at the toast crumbs, at the milk splotches on the crisp tablecloth she had so carefully starched and ironed even though the instructions said ironing was not required. She stared at the dirty dishes and thought long and hard about what Mark had said the previous night.

He was right. It wasn’t enough. She had thought that having him as a husband, having their two children to raise, their home to care for, would be enough. She had believed, so wrongly, that all it would take to make her complete was Mark and his love. And now she knew she had been wrong.

She was still as incomplete as she had been—as she had become—the day that double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun had torn half her leg from her body.

She was still as incomplete as she had been while dressed in the suit that gave her the appearance of completeness, that created an illusion of reality, but was, when it came right down to it, only a fantasy, something to hide behind.

For more than two years she had let herself buy into that fantasy because it was easier than facing up to a cruel truth. It was her mind that was incomplete, not her body.

She showered, dressed very carefully, and with trepidation but determination, got into the car Mark had given her as a wedding gift—one with no rust, one on which no rust would ever dare to appear—and pulled out of the garage. At the street she hesitated for another moment, wondering if she could go through with her plan. Then she turned the car and headed downtown.

“Mrs. Lockstead! What are you doin’ here?”

Jillian turned in response to the surprised voice.

She smiled and blinked in astonishment. “Hello, Juan.” She had to look up at him now. In two and a half years he had grown so much. “Still hangin’ in, are you? A senior this year?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Junior again. I screwed up pretty bad and had to do last year’s stuff over again, but this time round, it’s easier.”

“Good for you for sticking with it. I’m happy for you. I always knew you could do it.”

She moved on, haltingly, because so many of the students in the crowded hallways remembered her and stopped to talk, to tell her what they’d done while she’d been away, and to ask about her life. A few had even seen the paid political announcement in which she had appeared and asked if she was going to be on TV all the time.

For several minutes she stood outside the gym, hearing the sounds of a basketball game going on behind the closed doors, the shrill, feminine voices, the slap, slap, slap of a dribbled ball, the thud of feet landing on hardwood. She ached to open the door and watch, but as the halls emptied and classes resumed, she walked on.

Finally she made it to the office. One of the secretaries burst into tears upon seeing her and gave her a hug. The other two were new and didn’t know her, didn’t remember except vaguely. She was a figure from an old, mostly forgotten newspaper story, a thirty-second segment on the evening news. There had been so many other news items, the one concerning her had been buried in the memories of those not intimately involved.

When she was ushered into the principal’s office, he got slowly to his feet.

“Well, Jillian.” He didn’t smile.

“Hello, Peter. You told me—two years ago—if I was ever ready to come back to let you know. That you’d put in a good word for me with the board. Will you do that now?”

“By my reckoning, it’s been closer to three years. Two and a half and then some.”

“Okay, so call me a liar for seven months. It took me a while to make up my mind.”

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

She gazed at him steadily. “I’m sure.”

He continued to look at her, from the top of her neatly combed hair, to her dark blue dress with its stand-up white collar, to her legs which were clad in navy stockings. The hem of the dress hung to mid-calf, but even that and the dark hose didn’t completely disguise the fact that she wore a prosthesis.

“Yes,” he said. And now he smiled. “You’re ready.”

“Are there—do you know if there are any openings?”

“In this school?” She could sense his doubt of the wisdom in that.

“In this school,” she said firmly.

He didn’t reply, only took her arm and walked her across the office to a door, which she recalled led to a small interview room. Opening it, he let her enter then stood behind her, gazing over her shoulder at the sullen, pimply-faced girl who sat slumped in a chair.

“This is Star. Star, this is Mrs. Lockstead.”

“Mrs. Forsythe now,” Jillian said, moving toward the other chair and sinking into its softness. “What’s up, Star?”

“Why ask?” The girl didn’t even look at Jillian. “You don’t give a damn.”

Jillian leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands, and looked the girl square in the eyes. “If I didn’t give a damn,” she said pleasantly, “I wouldn’t be in this room.”

Behind her, she heard Peter close the door quietly.

Just as quietly Jillian got down to business—her business, the business of trying to get through to a child who didn’t want to be gotten through to.

She felt good all of a sudden, equal to the challenge. She felt useful. She felt whole.

“Jillian! Where have you been?” Mark’s face was gray, his eyes haunted. “I came home early because we have to talk, and you weren’t here. No one knew where you were. None of your friends, none of the neighbors. “I was...afraid,” he went on. “Afraid you’d left me.”

“No!” She went to him, slid her arms around his waist, and slowly his came around her. She smiled up at him. “Never. I’d never leave you. I had something important to do, Mark, and I didn’t expect you to be waiting. I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“You did more than worry me. You terrified me. I guess I’ve gotten used to your always being here. You’ve become so important to me that I panic if I don’t know where you are. And lately you’ve been...unhappy. It made me unhappy, too, Jilly, because I thought I was the one making you that way. Last night when I realized that you missed your job, I overreacted. I’m sorry, sweetheart. You have every right to do whatever you want to do. If you want to get another job, that’s fine. I’ll handle it. If it means sharing you with five hundred ogling men, so be it. As long as it’s me you come home to each night.”

She looked up at him and stroked his face, trying to erase the frown between his eyes, the lines of tension around his mouth. He caught her hand and kissed her palm. “I’ll always come home to you, Mark, and yes, I do want to get another job. In fact, I have one.”

He looked into her glowing face, seeing the happiness that had been missing for so long, and something inside him ripped in half. He wanted her happiness to remain on her face, loved to see her mouth curved into a beguiling smile, rejoiced to see the pink color of her cheeks, the light in her eyes.

“You won’t have to share me with five hundred ogling men,” she told him, holding him tightly, her hands moving into his hair, luxuriating in its fullness. “But if you think you can stand to share me with twenty-five hundred high school students, then you’ve got yourself a working wife.”

“Jillian?”

He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the couch where he sat down with her on his lap, her legs stretched out on the cushions beside him. He stroked down one leg then up the other, his calluses catching on navy blue nylon as his hand slid up under the hem of her dress. “Are you sure?”

She nestled into his embrace. “Is the sky blue? Is—” She kissed him for a long time and then leaned her head back comfortably on his shoulder. She glanced at her watch. There was still an hour and a half before Amber was due home from school.

He caught the look on her face and gently tipped her back until she lay on the couch, then covered her body with his own. It was a long time before they stood up and walked together, clothes bundled under their arms, into their bedroom to shower and change before the kids came home.

Standing in the pelting water, Mark smoothed her wet hair back from her face and watched as it clung to her neck and shoulders, wisping in wet curls over her high, proud breasts. Her mouth was curved in a smile, the little freckles on her nose had paled during the winter but her eyes shone, sea-green and glowing with happiness, lit with the sunshine that lived in her soul.

“Welcome back, my magic mermaid,” he whispered as he bent to kiss her. “Welcome back.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1989 by Judy Gill

cover design by Connie Gabbert

978-1-4532-8078-2

This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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New York, NY 10014

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