The Mermaids Singing Page 15

  “’Tis said that the merrows sing in their sad beautiful voices with the hopes of capturing lonely fishermen,” he told her. “They seduce the man beneath the waves and make love to him, which of course drowns the poor eejit. Then the merrow keeps the man’s soul in a cage in her parlor beneath the sea.”

  In the coves, Seamus made Grace listen to the singing of the mermaids, the moan she believed was wind, which was much like the painful, wordless sound that echoed inside her chest.

  “When I was only a wee boy,” Seamus said, “my Nana told me the story of Muirgen, the dark beauty seduced from her home beneath the water. You see, if a mermaid falls in love, well, then your man has the power to carry her to shore, where her split tail transforms into legs. Muirgen fell in love with my great-great-grandfather, Pádraig, and they married and had nine human children. It is said they were very happy for a time, and devoted to one another. But the pull of the sea was too great, and one morning Pádraig and the children woke and found her gone, her one dress hanging like a shed skin on the hearth. Pádraig never saw his wife again, but they say the children glimpsed her in their dreams, leaning her dripping black hair over their bed.” Seamus laughed and the music of him echoed in the cliff walls. He looked at the dark water and she heard the rhythmic frothing of waves on sand.

  “’Tis supposed to be bad luck for a fisherman to see a mermaid, for it means he will drown that very day. But when I was born, my Nana told Da that I would bring luck to him, because I had the look of Muirgen about me, and the mermaids would spare me from their seductive curse. That is why I still go to sea with my father, though I’ve my own dreams. He likes to think he needs me, especially since I’m his only child and mother died while having me. I don’t mind so much, sure. I love the water.”

  Sometimes, Seamus spoke to her in Irish, which sounded like a sad, powerful chant. Like language that could raise corpses, bring the most dangerous of the mermaids from the sea. Like the untranslatable monologue simmering in Grace’s brain.

  She thought he wasn’t real, this man. She couldn’t take hold of him and watch his reaction. He was only a voice, a glowing face, flawless skin on the back of a neck. He seemed to float slightly above the earth when he walked, and his face was so bright it made her blink. He was like an angel, she thought. Like the father—angel she had imagined when she was a girl.

  On Saint John’s Eve, the night before the summer solstice, Seamus took her to the bonfires. The islanders had been piling them for weeks, competing to see who could build the largest. They used furniture, tractor tires, driftwood, old fence palings. There were no large trees on the island, only gnarly bushes blown low by the wind. They made do, the islanders, throwing in anything that would burn. The bonfires, when lit, were as large as houses. They cracked loudly, shifting and spitting red pills into the air. The sound made Grace ache for Michael and she tried to walk closer to the flames, but Seamus stopped her. She thought they might warm her, but only her face burned with the heat, the rest of her remained damp. Fingers of fire squealed, reaching out toward her from the center. Seamus pulled her along from fire to fire, her face growing moist again in between them. The sunset lingered for hours, daylight still clinging at ten-thirty, and Grace imagined that eventually the island would be void of darkness, the sun exposing her twenty-four hours a day.

  When the sun was finally swallowed, Seamus took her across the harbor in a curragh, the moon shining from behind him like a halo. They went to the castle, walking in their bare feet across the grass carpet. He told her about the adventures of the pirate queen Granuaile, who had ruled the west of Ireland in pagan times. Grace remembered these stories from her mother, but she could not tell him that. He took her to the pirate queen’s bedroom, showed her the mermaid carved above the fireplace. The merrow’s tail split halfway down into two sharply curved fins, and her hair fell over her face in curly ropes of stone. Seamus took Grace’s hand and touched it to the mermaid’s pointy breasts. He told her to make the sign of the cross, and she did, automatically as she’d done at Mass for so many years. Seamus recited along with her motions: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.”

  “That will heal you,” he said. He smoothed the curls away from Grace’s face, tucking them behind her ear. “So they say. It can’t hurt, anyways.”

  “I’m so cold,” she said, and her voice vibrated like pain in her throat. “I can’t stop it. I’m always, always cold.” Seamus sat on the ground, his back against the mermaid’s tail. He pulled her in like a baby to his lap. His shirt wasn’t damp, but warm and dry against her face. He blew fiery air onto her fingers, rubbing them with his own warm hands. She thought it was unnatural, the amount of heat that was coming from his body. Not even during sex had Michael felt like this. Seamus was roasting, like the innermost coals of that bonfire. She drew heat in greedily, until she was dry clear through, and still he seemed hotter than when she’d started.

  When he brought her home that night, Seamus stopped at the door, sweeping her back clean with the frayed end of his scarf.

  “Try not to look like I had you supine in the grass, would you?” he said. Grace laughed. Her laughter, she thought, was like the feeling after vomiting, when your throat hurts and your mouth tastes of bile, but you know the sickness is out of you, and once you’ve brushed your teeth, it will fade into memory.

  CHAPTER 19

  Gráinne

  For the rest of August I waited, on a shrunken, empty stomach, for my father to come.

  “It’s any day now, he’ll be on that boat,” Clíona said. I watched the ferry in the morning as it took the islanders and the mail away, and in the evening, when it brought the mail in and the islanders home.

  In between, I taught Liam how to swim. He’d told me he didn’t know how when we were at the cove, where he wouldn’t go in over his waist.

  “Don’t you go fishing with your Dad?” I said to him.

  He looked out-of-place and nervous in the water, even though he was confident in the curragh.

  “Aye,” Liam said. “He can’t swim either.”

  “How can you live on an island and not know how to swim?” I said. Liam shrugged. His chest was blue and goose-pimpled above the water.

  “Seamus is the one fisherman I know can swim,” Liam said. “Besides him, your mother was the only islander went in the water for pleasure. And the tourists in the summer.”

  “So you’re surrounded by beaches, and nobody swims?” I said. “What a waste.”

  “We don’t see it like that, sure,” Liam said. “The water’s our livelihood, not a playground.” I was treading water, and Liam backed away whenever I splashed a bit.

  “What if you’re out in your curragh and it tips over?” I asked.

  “I’d drown, I suppose. I never thought about it.”

  “Well, if I teach you how to swim you won’t. I was afraid of drowning until my mother forced me to learn.” That was a lie, of course. I rarely went in water where I couldn’t touch bottom. “I’ll show you,” I said. “It’ll be fun.”

  Liam agreed, but he didn’t look too enthusiastic.

  The first day I showed him how to tread water, which he couldn’t do well. He kept sinking, then panicking, and standing up with a splash. I tried to remember how my mother had taught me. I made him float on his back in shallow water, with me holding my hands beneath him so he wouldn’t feel scared. He took that better.

  “I like the way it sounds with my ears below the waves,” he said. “I can hear the whole ocean.” It was nice, holding him up. It reminded me of Stephen showing me piano—an excuse to get closer, anyway. Though Liam never acted like I was making a pass, or like he was planning any moves on me. It was infuriating, really. I’d never had to wait so long for a boy to want me.

  I made him hold his breath and sit with me under the water. I held his hand and watched him. He kept his eyes shut and his cheeks puffed out. His hair floated like soft black seaweed toward the surface. This is how a mermaid wo
uld see him, I thought, if she seduced him into the water. He squeezed my fingers when he needed to go up for air.

  At the end of a week, Liam could dog-paddle clumsily, but he swam underwater with the grace of a fish. I think he was happy I’d taught him, though Clíona and Mary Louise thought we were both crazy. He even got a little cocky, and started charging me under the water and flipping me off my feet. I didn’t mind, because it was like flirting, and we raced and wrestled after his lessons. The sunny weather was holding on, and we’d lay out on the warm rocks to dry. Sometimes, I couldn’t remember ever being so content, closing my eyes and falling asleep to the sound of Liam breathing. Other days, I was going out of my mind. We were half-naked on a deserted beach and all Liam seemed to think about was drying off and getting back for supper.

  “Liam,” I said to him, one hot afternoon on the rocks. He had his eyes closed, and beads of water had dried into salty patches on his cheeks.

  “Yeah?” he mumbled, shading his eyes to look at me.

  “Do you like me?” I said. I felt stupid, but he had reduced me to bluntness. Liam smiled and closed his eyes again.

  “I do, sure,” he said.

  “Like a cousin, though, or a sister?” I probed. “Or something else?”

  “As a friend, I’d say.” Liam opened one eye. “I think you’re good-looking as well, if it’s a compliment you’re fishing for.” I tried not to smile.

  “I’m not fishing,” I said.

  “All right so,” Liam said, closing his eyes again.

  “Are you a virgin?” I asked. Liam sat up.

  “Why is that your business?” he said. He wasn’t looking at me, but turning his T-shirt right side out.

  “It’s not,” I said, lying back down so my hip bones were visible through my suit. “I’m just curious.”

  “Well I am, if you must know,” he said, putting his shirt on. “But it’s by choice. I’ve had my opportunities, sure.” I believed him. There were a lot of girls on the island who had eyes for Liam, and by the way they talked I knew they weren’t prudes. Plus, all the island boys assumed Liam was sleeping with me. Whenever we walked on the road together, someone would jeer: “MacNamara’s off to get his hole before tea.”

  “Don’t you want to do it?” I asked. I thought all boys wanted sex, and a lot of it.

  “Ah, sure, someday,” Liam said. “I’m waiting, though, till it’s right. I’d want to love the girl.”

  “You’re a romantic,” I teased. Liam shrugged, blushing.

  “I wouldn’t think you’re a virgin,” he said.

  “Why not?” I said, and Liam just raised his eyebrows. “Well, I am.”

  “So we think the same then,” Liam said.

  “Not really,” I said. I didn’t think I was waiting for love, just for a boy who kissed right. Who didn’t ruin the moment. Stephen, had he actually kept kissing me that night, would have been perfect. I would have slept with him in an instant.

  “Well, I’m in no hurry, anyways,” Liam said. He stood up. “Will we go for tea?” I put my sweatshirt and shorts on over my suit, wishing he wouldn’t watch me now. Liam had an ideal that I didn’t live up to, and I’d already started thinking that he might live up to mine.

  We walked back to the hotel without talking, and rather than look at Liam, I focused on my hunger. I licked the salt from my lips and told myself: This is all I will ever need.

  When the package came in the mail, I recognized Stephen’s writing instantly. I took it from the table and went up to my room, feeling Clíona’s eyes on my back.

  Inside the box was a tiny pink envelope with my name on it. Stephen had forgotten to add the accent over the a. It was my mother’s stationery; someone at work had given it to her in last Christmas’s grab bag. She’d never used it.

  Dear Grainne,

  I packed up the apartment and gave most of your mother’s things to Goodwill like she asked me to do. These are some items which I thought you might want to keep.

  —Stephen

  P.S. If you came back here, you wouldn’t be happy. It’s your mother you miss, not me.

  I tossed the letter on the bed. He hadn’t even left me his new address.

  There was a manila folder in the box, and when I opened it, I saw the typed quotes I had left for my mother at the cottage. There were at least thirty pages—I couldn’t remember having left so many. There were also all the birthday cards I’d given her since I was five, the letters I wrote the summer I went to sleep-over camp, and a thick stack of my childish paintings. I hadn’t realized she’d kept any of this stuff. My mother wasn’t the hoarding type—anything beyond necessity she tossed in the trash.

  I pulled out the string of rosary beads that had been in my mother’s hands during the wake. You could see the hollows between the miniature Jesus’ ribs. I could only associate this with my mother dead—why would Stephen think I would want it? I dropped it into my bedside table drawer, out of sight.

  At the bottom of the box, wrapped in tissue paper, was my mother’s skintight red velvet miniskirt. Her man-hunting skirt. She wore it to clubs and on first dates. She’d had it on the first night she brought Stephen home. I knew why he’d sent it to me: I’d been begging her to lend me that skirt for two years, but she’d never relented. “Not my magic skirt,” she’d always said.

  I held the brushed fabric up to my face and inhaled. I smelled the cardboard box and old finger-paint from my drawings. Faintly, she was still in the velvet: stale smoke, salty sex.

  I took off my jeans and underpants and slipped the cool velvet up my thighs. When I walked, the soft elasticized lining pulled gently at my pubic hair. It didn’t fit as tightly as it was supposed to, but it was short enough; I was taller and thinner than the last time I’d secretly tried it on. When she was in the hospital, having her breast removed.

  I wondered if my father had ever seen this skirt. I briefly entertained the fantasy of going after him, wearing the skirt to Dublin and showing up at his office. When he saw me he would think of a time when he had slid the skirt down my mother’s legs and brushed his fingers back up her naked thighs.

  Or he would tell me to leave, get out of his sight, never come back. Like Stephen had.

  If Liam wasn’t going to kiss me, I’d find someone else to do it. Not an island boy, because I could see it would be easy for my reputation to get back to Clíona. She was not like my mother, and I didn’t think she’d want to chat with me about sex.

  The night of the August full moon, there was a group of boys from Cork staying in the hotel. I was allowed to go to Marcus’s pub, because Liam was playing his flute with the musicians his father usually led. Liam’s father wasn’t home yet; he was still out at sea and not due home until October.

  I wore my mother’s skirt with a black tank top that hugged my now tiny breasts. My ribs were becoming more visible; there was a furrow of hunger running below each one.

  The musicians played at a corner table without amplifiers or microphones. There was a thin man with a fiddle; a woman, who said she was a cousin of Clíona’s, with a tiny squeeze box; a couple of men with tin whistles; and a huge, smiling man with sideburns that grew in across his cheekbones, who paddled a drum Liam said was called a “bodhrán.” Liam’s flute was not silver like I’d expected, but smooth black wood with finger holes instead of levers. The music sounded like all the instruments were chasing one another around in a complicated dance. One or two at a time, islanders got up to stomp on the wood floor until the sounds of their feet blended with the rhythm of the instruments. Everyone was laughing and teasing one another. There was a lot of laughing on this island, I’d noticed, and people were always winking, like the entire population shared some private joke. Some of the older women had the deep wrinkles like Clíona’s gouging their faces. I thought of my mother’s obsession with moisturizer, the way she used to check for wrinkles under the harsh bathroom light. The wrinkles on these island women weren’t ugly, though. They looked as though they wore maps of their l
ives on their faces.

  I was allowed to sit next to Liam, though Marcus watched to see that no one ordered me anything but Diet Coke. John Patrick, the bodhrán player, kept sneaking me sips of his hot whiskey. It was sweet and fiery in my throat, and I drank half of his three glasses.

  The boys from Cork were going through rounds of Guinness as quick as they could order them. One of them, the cutest one, kept looking at me when he went up to the bar. His hair was too short, but his features were delicate, like Stephen’s, and he looked about nineteen; he had stubble on his cheeks and chin. I watched him without blushing, made sure he saw me holding the whiskey glass. Man-hunting, I heard my mother say. He came over to the table with a Guinness for himself and a hot whiskey for me. I set it beside me on the bench so Marcus couldn’t see it from the bar.

  “How’ you?” he said. His accent was thick and different, more all over the place than the islanders’. “Great seisiún, lads,” he said to the musicians, and sat on a stool in front of me. Liam looked at him suspiciously, but kept playing. I hoped he was jealous.

  “I’m Kieran,” he said, and he shook my hand. “And you’re the loveliest thing in this godforsaken pub.” I smiled.

  “Gráinne,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re from America, are you?” he said. Everyone knew I was an outsider the minute I said more than my name.

  “Yes,” I said. “Boston.”

  “How’d you get a name like Gráinne, so?” he said. He was weaving a little on his stool.

  “I was born here,” I said.

  “Ah, so you’re Irish, then,” he smiled. “You’re just after losing your accent.”

  “If you say so,” I said, but I smiled back at him.

  “Will you go for a walk on the beach with me there, Irish Gráinne?” Kieran said. I felt Liam twitch beside me.

  “All right,” I said.

  “That’s grand,” Kieran said, standing up and chugging down the rest of his beer. I put my jacket on and Liam stopped playing.