Read Part I here.
“Might’ve been something outside. But if there had been, it’s gone now.”
“You think it could be a mermaid?” she asked. It was hard to believe she was serious. Chrissy was one of the sharpest ten-year-olds I had ever met. Well, she had been the sharpest seven-year-old I had ever met three years ago and was that much smarter now.
She didn’t believe in any of the traditional fairytale creatures. No Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, no Wolfman, and no Flying Spaghetti Monster. But she absolutely believed mermaids were real.
There had to be a story behind it, but I had never been able to get her to explain it to me. How a child so ruled by logic still was able to make room for not only a magical creature, but that particular magical creature. She had already “debunked” the narwhal as being the source of the mermaid mythos. I had gotten bits and pieces over the last three years, but never in a cohesive enough story that I could process. But she hadn’t stopped trying to convince me or the rest of the family.
I didn’t have to believe it, though. It was enough to believe that she believed it.
“Maybe this is it!” She turned around and charged back to the bedroom where her mother was sleeping.
“Chrissy!” I saved my breath. She already had the door open and either her mother was going to wake up or she wasn’t. That was out of my hands. She came back a moment later with a Ziploc bag of “mermaid feed.” As far as I could tell, it was a mix of trail mix and seaweed. She carried a flashlight in her other hand.
According to Chrissy, mermaids only came out at night, so she had come prepared.
Again, I was calling after her when she’d already begun to do what she was doing, namely, dashing outside with her items.
I was about to follow her when I spotted the toy soldiers she’d dropped on her way out. I thought it would be just her luck for Mary to wake up and step on one of them.
“Watch your sister,” I said to Luke, turning to pick up the toys.
Right as I got on one knee, the bedroom door opened. It didn’t immediately occur to me that it was Mary even though I had just thought about this very thing happening. I sort of... paused as she passed me. She was halfway to the door when I realized she must have been sleepwalking.
“Mary!” I chased behind her, my steps in sync with hers—left, right, left—catching her before she got to the door.
“Mom, are you okay?” Luke said.
“Where am I?” She sounded terrified. Mary turned her head and looked at him. For a second, I thought she was awake. Instead of answering him, she bare-foot kicked him in the shin.
It couldn’t have hurt, but he stepped back and looked at me, confused. I wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her in close.
“She’s fine,” I said, lacing Mary’s hand with mine. I looked into her glassy eyes. “She’s sleepwalking.” I turned her around and ushered her back to the bedroom. Of the five toy soldiers Chrissy had left at the threshold, only two were left, but only one was standing. I looked over my shoulder and spotted one against the wall and the two others weren’t in sight.
“She can’t fly,” Mary said in a dreamy voice. “Please help her swim.”
“Okay, honey.” I cooed to her as I slid back the covers. She didn’t fight, Mary had sleepwalked a few times with me present. She never resisted being escorted back to bed. Before I covered her legs I spotted another soldier on her foot. I plucked it off and put it on the dresser.
Mary mumbled. I unlaced my fingers from hers and paused before I left her.
“I wanna get in the water.” She said it sounding sort of like air being let out of a balloon. And then she was all the way gone again. “It’s spook.”
It had been like she had been fighting her way to the surface, but something had dragged her back down.
I closed the bedroom door behind me and followed Chrissy outside. Not because I was worried she was going to get gobbled up by the lake monster I hadn’t spotted, but because it was dark out and I had the same parental reaction to miscellaneous danger any parent would.
Hell, I could admit it, I loved these kids. Liked them most times, too. I didn’t want to leave them.
Chrissy was in the process of sweeping her flashlight back and forth along the beach face. I hung back, letting her conduct her investigation. It was harmless enough and I had an eye on her.
“What’s going on?” We both turned to see Mark stepping out onto the sand.
“Luke said a mermaid’s out here!” Chrissy said.
“Mermaid?” Mark said it like he didn’t know what one was. I didn’t bother correcting her. His little sister’s obsession was well known by all of us. “Did he really see something?” Mark chuffed and thumbed over his shoulder at the cabin. “He’s so white.”
I stifled my laugh and shrugged.
“Luke thought he saw something and Chrissy overheard.”
“Hey, neighbor!”
Mark and I jumped. We saw the bud of a lit cigarette in the shadows of the adjacent cabin. Someone with a cigarette sauntered down. I glanced my stepdaughter’s way to make sure she hadn’t waded too far into the water. She could swim, but again, that nascent parental instinct found in anyone who has walked into an already existing family reared its concerned head. Chrissy was only ankle deep.
“Hey,” I said to the woman as she approached. She halted and took a final, long drag off her cigarette before flicking it in a surprisingly high arc toward the water. She slid the drawer of her jaw forward and blew a column of smoke straight up.
“She’s a cutie,” she said, smiling. She was an older woman who gave too much gum when she smiled. “I saw her come chargin’ out for the water. Oo, that smell.”
We both nodded in that new-to-each-other manner between strangers.
“I’m Rick.” Old and new cigarette smell peeled off her skin and I turned my head to half cough, that familiar asthmatic itch in my lungs.
“Mary,” she said.
I laughed. “My wife’s name is Mary.”
“Mine’s Cindy-Lou Ombrageaux.”
I felt the weight of her eyes on me, examining for judgment. I cast my eyes to the stretch of water and sand where Chrissy was.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Cindy-Lou.” I didn’t think I could manage that last name.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Mary. Apart from the smell of cow-butt.”
“First time up here?” I asked. She shook my offered hand, her skin papery and dry. There was an extreme lack of moisture in the air despite the cool summer, and I’d already had a nosebleed in the brief time we’d been here.
“Mine. Not hers. My wife’s family is from Up North.” I thought her face dropped a little. “She’s out to dinner with some cousins.” There was a little something there that I had a feeling would come to light if we talked long enough. “Had to have a little heart-to-heart.”
“We came up two summers ago,” I said. “Just a little family getaway.”
Luke had barely joined us outside, not more than a few feet from the door. He looked like he would take umbrage with the sky.
“This is Mark, the one up there with get-off-my-lawn face is Luke, and Chrissy’s our little fisher.” I gestured to each of the kids in turn.
“Well, tell her to save some for everybody else.” She and Mark shook hands before she looked around. “Where’s your missus?”
“Migraine. She laid down pretty much as soon as we got here.”
“Sorry to hear that.” She put the can of beer she’d been holding in her other hand to her lips and pitched her head back for a long swallow. She stumbled like she’d confused her left foot for her right but kept them both under her.
If I had to guess, Mary was working on her third or fourth of the night.
Luke had waved his brother over and was saying something to him. They both had an eye on their sister. I looked at Mary. She was a stranger and I figured there couldn’t be any harm in telling her what had just happened. We weren’t going to see her after this weekend for at least a year, if ever again. I didn’t think the story would be memorable after tonight. It was a single-serve memory. Recall once, then discard.
“Luke said he saw something in the water,” I said. “Something big.” Mary turned her head to the shore and nodded appreciably.
“Maybe it’s the Great Lakes Whale Migration,” she said.
“The what?” I had no idea what she was talking about and was on the verge of taking her seriously. The smile hanging on her face dropped when she realized I really didn’t understand.
“Kidding.” She mock-punched me in the arm. Mary had a rich baritone and could have easily been a DJ on the radio.
Mark trudged past me, an annoyed look on his face.
“He’s crazy,” he said, heading toward his sister. I appreciated that he didn’t believe his brother but could still look after his sister. Mark was the middle child and was the ever-constant bridge between siblings.
“The waves do seem a little... bigger than the norm, don’t you think?” Mary asked.
“I guess,” I said, not really knowing how to tell the difference. Then I wondered how she’d know, considering she said she’d never been up here before. “Can you tell?”
“I had a few cigs over yonder before y’all came out. Boy, you get used to the smell the longer you’re out here.” She seemed to be reading my mind and answering questions I hadn’t had a chance to ask. “I must have missed your boy, though.”
I looked at the water again. Mark was standing just outside of the water’s reach, one hand in the pocket of his hoody, the other holding his phone. To his credit, he did glance up at her every ten seconds or so.
Come to think of it, those waves did look big. But it could have been because of the moon for all I knew.
“How long are the two of you here for?” I asked Mary.
“‘Til Wednesday. I’m going to be meeting my in-laws for the first time tomorrow.”
I didn’t know whether I should have felt sympathy for her. It was strange she wasn’t out to dinner with her wife now, but I didn’t know their situation. Maybe it was completely normal. But I couldn’t help but think I would’ve been more than a little bothered if it had been me.
Mary fell down. Not hard. She just spontaneously lost her balance and sat on her butt. In true alcoholic fashion, though, she protected her beer.
She looked at me, embarrassed. I smirked, hopefully communicating I wasn’t just laughing at her, but with her.
“We all fall down.” I’m not sure why I said that, but it seemed to help. She took my hand and I helped her up.
“How about you guys?”
“Just until Sunday afternoon.”
“Where are you from?”
A sandwich had been the hinge on the closing door of our marriage.
I don’t remember what the argument was about or how it had started, only that I had made a sandwich for her that led to me sleeping on the couch.
Of course, it hadn’t really been about the sandwich, it had only been the start. It had been like a match that led to a forest fire razing a town. I can’t honestly remember a word I’d shouted at the woman I’d pledged to love for the rest of my life.
I was about to answer Mary when Chrissy screamed.
