Sleeping with the Fishes (2 page)

"You did?" Sam asked
,
shifting uneasily as pea water started to trickle down his butt crack.

"Dad.
Sam.
Whatever.
Look at you. Look at me. I'm a mermaid and you couldn't get a membership at the Y."

Her mother threw up her hands. The blanket gaped. Fred stared at the ceiling. "And how such a wondrous creature can have such silly hang-ups is beyond—"

"Mom, ask anybody on the planet: would it weird you out to walk in the front door and see your mom on all fours? I guarantee—mermaid, human, blue whale, marmoset, pixie, leprechaun, zombie—they'll all say yes." She turned to her squirming father.

"Remember that time you panicked in the tide pool and I had to get you out? I was seven, Dad, and the water was only up to my knees."

"There were
things
in there," Sam said, shuddering at the memory.

"Yeah, Sam.
Minnows.
It was the fourth or fifth time I'd had to save you, and I'd never had a swimming lesson in my life. Also, you have brown eyes and mine are the color of
brussels
sprouts. Also, you have—had—brown hair and mine's the color of the ocean. Also, you never grow a tail and you're right handed; while I'm—did you get this?'—a
mermaid
and a
lefty
!"

"No need to scream," Mom sniffed.

"I hate it when you treat me like I'm freaking stupid."

"Nobody thinks you're freaking stupid," her mom soothed in her "I think my kid's freaking stupid" voice. "Everyone in this room is a living creature deserving of our love and respect."

"If you try to hold my hand and make a nurture circle," Fred warned, "I will kill you."

Unfortunately for Fred and her sanity, the nightmare wasn't over yet. Her mother, gripped with the mania of truth telling, coughed up the whole sordid story.

It seemed Moon
Bimm
(nee Moon Westerberg) had been
putzing
around on Chapin Beach, Cape Cod, with a bunch of her idiot hippie friends, high on pot and
le Gallo Jug
, lonesome and wondering what it all meant, got separated from her pot-smoking, Gallo-swigging pals (which Fred would have thought a relief, but Moon didn't agree), and ran into a suave, green-eyed fellow and was
so fucking drunk she didn't notice he was half fish
.

"But if he was a merman, how did you—whoa. Whoa. Forget it. I can't believe, in light of recent hideous events, that I even asked you that. Do not answer. Do
not
answer. We are at DEFCON 3 and rising. We—"

"Oh, just stop it, you big baby." Her mother stretched her neck to squint at Fred's exasperated features. "Why you can't understand how beautiful and natural sex can be and why you have so many Puritan hang-ups about it—how a child of mine can be so—"

"
Mom,
now's not the time for the 'Peace and
Lurrrv
' lecture."

"He had legs like you do, of course," she said, completely ignoring Fred's emphatic backpedaling five seconds earlier. "I imagine he can grow a tail or not, as he likes.
As you like."
Moon frowned. "I guess any
mer
-person can. I thought you could do it or not because you were half human. But unless he was also half human—"

"That'd be super duper for him. So he jumps your drunken bones, you have sand-pillow talk,
then
he leaps into the sea and disappears? So you're telling me… what? My real father's an asshole? And you're a slut? Because he owes you for years of child support payments, that's one. And two—" "Must you always label people?" "Must you shovel truth down my throat?" "As I was saying," Moon went on with admirable dignity, considering recent events and what she was hardly wearing, "ten months later and there you were."

"
Ten
months?" How had she never done the math before?
Easy.
Her mom had never talked about her father—her real father—before. Just "oh and we met and got married because society will insist on that silly piece of paper and we've been a family ever since."

And Fred, knowing her mother would answer anything—
anything
—was the only kid on the block who never went through the "where did I come from?" phase. Moon not only would have answered the question in disgusting and embarrassing detail, she would have surfed pornography websites with her daughter to investigate different methods.

"It takes longer for
mer
-people to gestate." Sam was looking at Fred thoughtfully. He taught Natural Science at 4C (
Cape Cod
Community College
). "Or hybrids. Or—"

"So why'd you marry her, Sam? It was all "Free Love" and all the
maryjane
you could smoke and don't trust anyone over eighty back then."

"Thirty," her mother gurgled. "And marijuana?
Wasn't on it.
Poisons the body.
Wine is bad enough." She winked at her daughter. "Look at the trouble three glasses of bad Chardonnay got me in!" Moon wouldn't take a Tylenol for a broken leg. Sadly, Fred knew this for a fact.

"Anyway—"

"No, no, that's enough," Fred broke in hastily. "I get it now. The gaping void inside me is complete, and filled with truth. No need to—"

"—your mother and I knew each other in high school, and went our separate ways after graduation. When I ran into her, she was just as radiant and glowing as I remembered her."

"Probably all the puking," Fred suggested.

"And we fell in love and Sam loved you long before you were born. We both did. We loved… the
idea
of you." Her morn closed her eyes and took on a dreamy expression Fred knew well. "And the first time I gave you a bath and your legs grew together and your scales came down and you splashed me and broke the baby tub I was so amazed—and so thrilled—"

"Girl turns into fish, news at eight?" Fred suggested. "Come on, Mom. You weren't a little freaked out?"

"I thought you were a miracle," she replied, and the simple dignity in her voice wiped the smirk off Fred's face. "I still do." She turned to Sam. "Thank goodness I had a natural childbirth right here in this house! Think of the mess if all kinds of Western medicine had descended on poor Fred!" She turned back to her daughter. "I was scared to even bring you in for your vaccinations. And I quit once we realized you couldn't ever get sick."

"Well." Fred coughed. "That's—ah. That's nice, Mom.
A miracle.
That's—miraculous. So that's why you called me over? To tell me stuff I already knew?"

"We didn't
know
you knew," Sam pointed out. "And as your mother said, filling out all the paperwork, and all the meetings, got us thinking."

"Why are you adopting?"

Her parents gave her puzzled 'why not?' looks.

Fred tried to explain. "Most people your age would be thrilled to have the place to
themselves
."

"Well, I don't know if thrilled is exactly the—"

"Sam, you don't even have to work—you still get checks from your dad's invention, right?"

"Right."
Sam's father had thought up edible underwear. The family got a piece of every fruit panty or chocolate G-string ever sold. "But we have all this space—" He gestured vaguely to the kitchen. "And it's such a nice location."

Real nice.
Right on the ocean—Fred knew that the four
bedroom
, three bathroom "shack" on the bay would sell for a cool two-point-two if her parents ever wanted to move. But her "earth mother" mother took to Sam's money like a—well, like a fish to water. And they would never sell.

And even with all the donations to the Audubon Society and the YMCA and the Cape Cod Literary Council and the Hospice of Cape Cod and the Hyannis Public Library, there was still plenty left every year.
Every month.

"And you've got your own life now," Sam still droned. "We hardly ever see you."

"Work.
Keeps me busy," she mumbled.

"Honey, it wasn't a reprimand!"

"Sounded like one."

"You're a grown
woman,
you have your own life."

Ha.

"And we have ours and we're just not—we're not ready for it just to be the two of us yet." Her mother reached out and Sam, as he always did, took her hand. "It just feels wrong."

Ah, her life.
Her wonderful life.
She'd last been on a real date six years ago, her boss kept trying to fix her up, the fish at work were deep in rebellion mode, and whatever way you looked at it she was a freak.

Freak.
Abnormality.
Anomaly.
Glitch, Genetic hiccup.

And this was why her folks wanted another kid? Because they thought they did such a hot job on the first one?

Well, maybe it'd be fun to raise one that didn't grow a tail and pick fights with tuna.

"Okay, well, good luck and all." Fred paused, waiting for a response. When none was forthcoming, she continued. "If you need a reference from, uh, someone you raised, I can write a letter.
Or whatever."

"That'd be lovely, Fred." Her mother hugged her. Fred stood stiffly for it,
then
sneezed when the blanket fuzz tickled her nose.

"Mom.
Kleenex."

"Never mind.
Oh, I feel so much better now that the whole story is out! Don't you feel better, baby?"

"Ecstatic."

Before leaving, Fred took a dip in the indoor saltwater pool. She could have jumped in the ocean just outside the back door, but didn't feel like worrying about tourists. And it comforted her parents when she used it. Finally, it felt better than the ocean—no seaweed ready to entwine in her hair, no nosy codfish following her around, and she knew damn well the mercury levels in her own pool were just fine.

Point of fact, she preferred pools to the open sea.

The ocean was filled with horrors and fish shit. The pool was a controlled environment.

Now if she could just get a handle on those rotten angelfish at work—

That thought eventually propelled her back to her legs, and out of the pool, and into her clothes, and out the door. Her parents were nowhere to be found, meaning they had decamped to their bedroom and were finishing what Fred had interrupted.

Excellent.
Well, not excellent, but she disliked good-byes, and her mom always acted like she was hitchhiking across Europe instead of driving to Boston.

With traffic, it was a ninety minute drive to the Quincy T-stop, a twenty minute ride to the Green Line, five minutes to the Blue, and then she popped out of the T at the New England Aquarium stop. It was late enough that she could hopefully slip in the employee entrance and get back to work without anybody—

"Dr.
Bimm
!"

Fuck.

She turned and beheld her boss, Dr. Barbara Robinson, a short woman with a blonde
Valkyrie
braid and almond-shaped brown eyes. Dr. Barb had her lab coat buttoned all the way to the top, as usual. Fred didn't even know where hers was.

Also as usual, Dr. Barb was trotting. Not walking fast, but almost running. She trotted everywhere: meetings, charity functions, feedings, seal shows. Fred couldn't imagine what the "kind of hurry" was. The fish weren't going anywhere. Neither were the tourists.

"Hi, Dr. Barb."

"Dr.
Bimm
, I'd like you to meet our new water fellow, Dr. Thomas Pearson. Dr. Pearson, this is Dr.
Fredrika
Bimm
." She looked up at Pearson, blinking rapidly. "Dr.
Bimm
takes care of Main One for us."

"Fred," Fred said, sticking out her hand. "I keep the big fish from chomping on the little fish." She ignored Dr. Barb's wince. Dr. Barb liked full titles (yawn) and to make people's jobs sound more interesting than they were (double yawn). Fred's job was to jump into the four-story tank, toss dead smelt at the fish, make sure the levels were good, and the sea turtles didn't bully the sharks (sounded out of type, but it really happened on occasion). That was it. "Main One" indeed. The big freaking tank, that's what it was.

Dr. Pearson clasped her outstretched hand, winced at the chill (she didn't take it personally; everyone did), and shook it like a pepper shaker.
"Hi there.
Please call me Thomas."

"
Muh
," she replied. But then, he
was
gorgeous. Tall, really quite tall (she was lanky but he had a good three inches on her), with brown hair—except it wasn't just brown; even in the yucky fluorescent lighting she could see the gold and red highlights—cut short and neat. A lab coat, she noted disapprovingly; but then, he was new, and Dr. Barb probably wrestled him into it.
Brown eyes—but again, not just brown.
Brown with gold flecks.
The flecks twinkled at her and sized her up at the same time.
Strong nose.
Swimmer's shoulders, long legs and narrow hips.
And… dimples?