The Mermaids Singing Read online

  Michael began to come swimming with Grace. He would walk down at twilight, strip quickly to his shorts, and wade out to meet her. At first he could only manage a clumsy dog paddle; thrashing at the water, he fought it like he was afraid it was trying to swallow him. He arched his chin with a panicked expression that made Grace laugh.

  She had him float on his back and made him believe her open palms were holding him up. She taught him how to give himself to the rhythm of the water, to immerse his ears so he could hear what she heard: the sea speaking over the beat of her heart. She showed him how to curve his arms with a strength that propelled him through waves. Before long, he was letting the swells wash over his face and swimming with a confident, though messy, crawl stroke.

  Every day they swam miles along the beach, and Michael could not conceal his pride at his growing shoulder and arm muscles. At the end of the swim they would rest in a cove that was hidden from the view of the house. The water there was warm and still, the bottom covered with fine sand and soft seaweed.

  One night at sunset, they knelt in the cove so the warm water came up to their necks. Amber rays illuminated their bodies beneath the surface. They had been talking, but as they floated closer they fell silent, watching each other. The beaded water on Michael’s face was glinting in patterns like some sort of coded message. He looked down from Grace’s eyes to her breasts, which were magnified by the water’s surface.

  “Can I…” he whispered, moving one hand slightly forward.

  “Can you what?” she asked, teasing. Michael blushed.

  “You know,” he said, but she only smiled again. She wanted him to say it. “Touch,” he said, his mouth barely forming the word. She floated closer and took his wrist, gliding his weightless arm upward. His palm cupped the outside curve of her breast and he squeezed slightly and moved a thumb across her nipple. Grace swallowed a noise. It was as if his touch was in two places at once, grazing her breast and pressing between her legs. Michael brought his other arm up, closing his eyes and moving his face to her cheek so she couldn’t look at him. Grace put her hands just below his armpits, pulling him closer. For a few moments they held each other like this, Grace’s body careening with sensations in all the places he wasn’t touching. Michael twitched suddenly, letting go of her breasts, and pulled her to him like he was trying to stop her from falling away.

  “Are you okay?” she whispered, and he nodded into her neck. When he leaned back he was blushing, his eyelids heavy, his expression clear evidence to her that something was permanently changed. Michael was in love with her.

  She kissed him. His mouth tasted of salt combined with the flavor she recognized as the smell of him, an odor that was as familiar to her as the scent of her own body.

  That summer, Grace and Michael stayed in the water every day until their lips were lined in blue and their fingers mushy as old fruit. They would swim a mile in case anyone was watching, then hurry off to the cove. At night, they walked around the house blushing and avoiding each other. Mr. Willoughby looked at them oddly, but only Clíona went so far as to comment.

  “Sure, you young ones will find no good soaking in that sea all day,” she said. “When was the last time either of you read a book?” So Michael went to the library and checked out a stack of novels. From then on, he would leave the house with a hardback clenched to his chest. “I’m going to the beach to read, Ooma,” he’d call, and she would cluck praisefully after him. He would abandon the book at the swimmers’ cabin.

  Grace and Michael had barely enough self-control to keep from mauling each other. They held back only because it felt better to go slowly. For the first week they knelt facing each other in the cove, an imaginary line at their waists which they wouldn’t go below. One day Grace couldn’t stand it anymore, the pull to lie down next to him—or even better, beneath him—was too strong. She took his hand and floated toward the shore. They lay sideways in the shallow water, their heads cushioned on a nest of bubbled seaweed. Michael kissed her and whimpered occasionally. She thought it hurt him as much as it did her, not being able to get close enough. So she pulled off his bathing suit. She had to extend the elastic and maneuver it over his penis, which was pushed at a hard angle toward her.

  “Grace?” Michael whispered, looking terrified.

  “Shhh,” she said, moving up to kiss him. She kissed his neck and down his chest until he let his head fall back on the seaweed, looking to the sky in panic like he expected a guillotine. The hair below his penis was softly moving like the locks of a mermaid. Grace put her hand there and his penis jerked like it was startled. She stroked and pulled the way a boy in Catechism had taught her. She had whacked that boy off a few times, never looking at his penis, considering the action repulsive practice for the real thing. Michael was moving his hips now, in a graceful flow that reminded her of a swimming dolphin. It wasn’t long before she felt the snaky throb of a vein at the base of his penis, and she watched as a milky eruption blurred the seawater. She’d never seen this part, and hadn’t imagined semen would look so tasty. She kept her hand on the shrinking penis and moved up to lie next to him. He kissed her, sighing, his embarrassment gone. After a few minutes he rolled her over and, with his leg separating her thighs, stroked until she swelled beneath his fingers, finally settling on a spot which he touched long after she could not lie still beneath him.

  The summer passed quickly and Grace began to dread the beginning of school. She would be starting her sophomore year at Scituate High School and Michael would be a senior two towns away at the boys’ academy. What would happen during those hours they were apart? Grace took comfort in the knowledge that he would rarely meet other girls, but she also knew he was obsessive about his studies and often stayed at the school library until dark. Soon it would be too cold for them to swim, and meeting in the house was too risky. Grace didn’t mention her worries to Michael, mostly because she was afraid he wasn’t worried himself.

  The weekend before school started was Labor Day, and the Willoughbys had their annual party. Since Mrs. Willoughby’s illness, they had entertained less frequently, but the Labor Day weekend was a tradition they held on to. Mrs. Willoughby was a strange caricature of her former self at these parties: she dressed extravagantly but something was always wrong. Her lipstick would be a shockingly ugly color, her hair unwashed, or she would mismatch her once fashionable accessories. The guests were condescending and spoke loudly to her as though she were deaf. She spent most of the party bothering Clíona about imaginary details. Grace almost felt sorry for her, the way the guests reduced her. She hated Mrs. Willoughby, but, after all, it was her party, and they treated her like a retarded dog.

  When they were children, Grace and Michael would sit on the landing in their pajamas during these parties, listening to the clinking, hooting, and gruff laughter below. This year, Michael was forced to dress in a suit and be introduced to the guests. After helping Clíona and the caterers with the food preparation, Grace didn’t have the heart to sit and listen with the twins, so she stayed in her attic bedroom, pretending to read one of Michael’s library books.

  Three hours into the party, Michael came upstairs and knocked on her door. He paced her little room, his hair grazing the rafters.

  “Did you meet any nice young ladies?” Grace said. His eyebrows answered that he appreciated the joke, but he was too distracted to smile.

  “Mom’s in rare form tonight,” he said. “She keeps dragging me into the kitchen to ask me who Dad’s talking to. Then he goes to walk someone to their car or something and she freaks out. She wants me to go find him. Fuck if I’m going to follow him around all night.”

  “She just needs the scheming to keep her busy,” Grace said. “No one else even talks to her.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna help her anyway,” Michael said. “Fuck this. I’ve got her in one ear and some old fart telling me Harvard stories in the other. Then I get introduced to this pig they call a girl, who they want me to show the garden to.”


  “You have better things to do?” Grace asked. It gave her a little thrill when he called that girl a pig.

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “Let’s go swimming.”

  They snuck down the back stairs and took the path behind the swimmers’ cabin in case guests were down at the dock, which was where they usually dove in. Approaching the cabin, Grace noticed that its lights were on.

  “The party’s moved to the tog room,” Grace said. The term was her mother’s, and it always made Michael laugh.

  “What would people go in there for?” he whispered.

  “What do you think?” Grace nudged him. Michael dropped his mouth, exaggerating shock. “Let’s look,” she said, and pulled him toward the window before he could answer.

  Through the small pane they had a perfect view of the couple on the daybed. They were naked, their skin jaundiced in the lamplight. The woman was on top of the man, moving up and down, her torso and loose hair moving in circles, like a dancer’s. Grace was fascinated. She watched closely, clutching at details and memorizing them—the way the woman’s hands kneaded the man’s shoulders, the circular thrust of her hips.

  “Oh, God,” Michael moaned at her ear, and for a moment she thought he was as aroused as she was. Then she looked at the man under the woman. It was Mr. Willoughby. His glasses were gone and his naked chest revealed that he was smaller and hairier than he seemed when dressed, but it was definitely him. He craned his neck toward the woman’s hand and sucked her middle finger into his mouth, rolling it over and under his tongue.

  Michael turned from the window and retched into a mound of beach grass.

  “Hey,” Grace said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “Relax.” But he pushed her away, disgusted.

  “I have to get out of here,” he said, and he ran off, down the path that led to the main road. Grace could have caught up with him easily, but his push had startled and momentarily paralyzed her, so she just watched him vanish in the shadow of trees.

  Michael didn’t come home until four that morning. Grace had helped her mother clean up, and after all in the house had gone to bed, she stayed in the dark kitchen thinking about Michael. She was trying to understand why he’d been so upset. She enjoyed finding out that Mr. Willoughby, who’d always seemed so proper and boring, had a sexy side. She didn’t have a father, so she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to catch her father cheating on her Mom. Maybe Michael felt he should be loyal to his mother, even though he despised her. Really, she thought, Mr. Willoughby should have been inside being nice to his wife, when no one else was willing to do it. Or maybe seeing his father having sex just disgusted him. If Clíona ever had sex, Grace certainly wouldn’t want to witness it.

  But he’d acted like he was mad at Grace, and that wasn’t fair. Even as a little boy, Michael had been like this—easygoing to the point where you thought you couldn’t affect him, and then, without warning, violently against you.

  She decided she wouldn’t get mad about how he’d shrugged her off. She needed to stay on his easygoing side. Michael’s parents would never consent to their relationship; they thought she was beneath him. If Michael really cared what his parents thought he’d have to dump Grace eventually and marry someone like the pig at the party. But if he hated them—and it seemed he was beginning to hate his father as much as he despised his mother—then he would think of Grace as his family, and he could take her away. Grace was desperate to leave that house and Clíona’s suffocating judgments. She figured her only chance with Michael was if his parents kept fucking things up. If he wanted to believe his father was a bastard for sleeping around, then it was to her benefit to encourage him. She didn’t think of it as manipulative, just as the best way to get what she wanted.

  When Michael slipped in the pantry door, she stood up and kissed him before he could speak. She moved her tongue deeply in his mouth, pressed her crotch against his in the way that always hypnotized him. She’d never kissed him in the house before, and she briefly entertained the fantasy of throwing him on the kitchen table and straddling him. Michael pulled away and put his mouth beneath her ear.

  “I’m sorry about before,” he whispered, and she nodded. “Is everyone asleep?” he asked, and she smiled and kissed him again, backing him toward the door. “Where’re we going?” he said, but she signaled for him to be quiet.

  She pulled him outside. “It’s a surprise,” she said.

  She brought him to the swimmers’ cabin. He hesitated at the door but she managed to coax him in. The room was blue with moonlight, the daybed and pillows now carefully fluffed to look innocent. Grace tried to kiss him.

  “This is the last place I want to be,” Michael said, sounding angry. Grace pulled off her T-shirt and stepped away from him. The blue light from the window curved over her breasts. Michael, distracted, leaned forward and ran his lips briefly over her nipple. Grace twined her arms around his neck. When he lifted his face, he looked like he was trying not to cry.

  “Your father would hate it,” she whispered, “if he knew you were here with me.”

  There was a pause in which Michael shut his eyes tightly and a tear dropped off his cheekbone. Then he was kissing her. They didn’t bother to go slowly. They stripped off their clothes so fast their sneakers got tangled in the ankles of their jeans and they had to fall on the daybed to kick off the rest. Grace raised her knees and he was right there, pausing just long enough to ask: “Is it safe?” She nodded, thinking he meant would anyone catch them. It didn’t hurt the way she’d been told it would. There was a brief hot sting and then she was filled with him. Even when it was over, after Michael had mashed his face in the pillow to keep from screaming, she touched and kissed him relentlessly until he was ready to do it again. She rolled on top this time, enveloping him. It came as no surprise to her that, at her orgasm, her insides squeezed and clung. As she watched Michael’s face below her warp with love and misery, she clamped on with every part of her body, with all the strength and determination she’d been saving up.

  CHAPTER 13

  Gráinne

  In the morning, still half-blind from sleep, I thought I was in the cottage again. I could smell the sea, and Stephen cooking breakfast. I’d get up and check for a note from my Mom, then leave before Stephen saw me.

  My eyes focused on an unfamiliar room, my blue suitcase looking like washed-up debris from another life. I was sweating from the heavy comforter and the aftermath of bad dreams. I’d dreamed there was a phone screaming under dark water and I couldn’t find it to answer.

  I got up. Outside of the bed, the air was freezing. I pulled on a sweater and jeans and looked around the room. Twin beds with colorful wool blankets and comforters, an antique-looking wood dresser and desk. Above the desk, hung by a piece of fishing wire, a carved black piece of wood. I looked closer.

  The ridges formed a woman in the bow of a boat, a cloak covering her head, one arm raised and pointing a finger forward. I took the block off the wall. The natural hues of the wood were in just the right spaces to create shadowing in the picture. Scratched into the back was the name Granuaile, and under that, Grace and Seamus O’Flaherty. I wondered if my father had made the carving or just given it to my mother. It was the first object I’d ever seen, besides the engagement ring, that connected me to my father. Proof that he existed.

  I opened the door slowly, afraid of who I might see, or not see, on the other side. I found the bathroom, which was damp-smelling, and wiped away some fog to look at myself in the mirror. I was still shocked whenever I looked at my bristly head. I found some hair spray and plastered down the hairs that stuck out on one side. I wished I could stay in that bathroom, lock myself in until someone came to take me home.

  When I’d dragged myself downstairs, Clíona was baking bread. She took a huge round loaf from the oven and left it to cool on the breadboard. She started, putting a floury hand to her chest, when she saw me in the doorway.

  “You walk as quiet as a ghost, girl,” she said. “Good morning t
o you.” She motioned for me to sit at the table, which was laid out with plates for breakfast. “You’re an early riser, like your mother and myself.”

  I felt lost and stupid in that kitchen, with no notes to tell me what to do. I sat down; at least it was warm in here. Clíona filled a large metal teapot with loose leaves and water from an electric kettle.

  “I’m making breakfast for himself,” she said. “Will you have one?”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said. Clíona wiped her hands briskly on a towel and turned to glare at me.

  “See here, now. I don’t know what you’re after doing to yourself. Starvation, from the looks of it. But you won’t be wasting away while you’re in this house. Three meals a day and tea in the afternoons. Sure now, if the Irish breakfast’s too rich for you, you can have brown-bread and fruit. I’ll put something in that stomach of yours before you leave this table, God as my witness, I will.”

  She seemed mad about the food, but didn’t mention my taking off the night before. It would be like my Mom and Stephen, then. She’d leave me alone.

  “I’ll have some bread,” I said. She slathered some grainy bread with too much butter and set it down in front of me.

  I’d sort of assumed I’d want to eat again once my mother had died. But since her funeral it had remained something to focus on: not eating. Like I was accomplishing something by leaving my stomach empty. I broke the bread into sticky pieces and moved it around my plate.

  “That’s a start, now,” Clíona said, looking suspicious. She started frying up slices of fatty pink meat and a chain of linked sausages. I hid some of the bread in my napkin.

  “You told me my father would be here,” I said. Clíona looked embarrassed.