Dreamland Social Club (29 page)

He threw his hands up into the air. “There aren’t any rats!”

“And your father hasn’t stopped paying his rent?”

“That’s just a flat-out lie.”

“Are you sure?”

He was winding the dial on his combination lock. “Your father’s obviously been fed some crazy propaganda. And I mean, seriously”—he pulled his lock open, then opened the locker door—“your dad isn’t the first person I’d trust right about now.”

“It was just a question.”

“Whatever, Jane.” He started putting away books, taking out others. “Why don’t you go back to looking for journals and solving mysteries about keys and teasing Legs and holding carousel horses hostage and whatever else it is you do.”

Jane didn’t like being whatever-ed and liked what came after it even less and, stunned, let herself drift into the flow of kids in the hall and bumped right into Legs, who’d obviously decided to hover.
Had
she been teasing him? Just by being friends?

He said, “Hey, do you have any tickets to the presentation?”

She nodded and saw, on the bulletin board, a flier that hadn’t been there that morning.

“Can I have one?” Legs said. “I’m covering it for the paper and I want to make sure I get in.”

“Sure,” Jane said.

“Thanks,” he said, then nodded toward Leo’s locker. “I hope he apologized.” Legs shook his head. “The guy has lost all perspective.”

“He’s just upset,” she said, not wanting to make things worse. “I mean, it’s his father’s bar.”

“You know what, Jane?”

“What?” she snapped. She closed her locker and Legs looked like he was going to say something really urgent, and then he just huffed and said, “Never mind.”

 

She had been planning on finding the Claveracks that day, to tell them about her decision about the horse. But when she saw them picking on a dowdy freshman between classes, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. And really, it didn’t have anything to do with them—with Harvey and Cliff. It was their grandfather she should be talking to. He was the one who’d made the damn thing. He was the one who cared, if anyone did.

Did anyone really care as much as she did?

 

She went to the meeting of the Dreamland Social Club after school, hoping that the spirit of the club would make everything better. But the mood was icy, at best. Nothing like it was the first time she’d walked in, just last week, and even then, there’d been Minnie’s and Venus’s cool stares to contend with.

“Let’s get down to it so we can get out of here,” Babette said, obviously sensing the tension.

“We need people to take the lead on the funeral bier,” Babette said. “We either need to build something with wheels or we need to find some kind of wagon or cart that we can decorate, because holding something or carrying it that whole time will be too much.”

“I have some ideas,” H.T. said, so Babette wrote his name down, and then Legs said, “Me, too,” so she wrote again.

“Music.” Babette looked over at Leo, who said, “I’ll scare up a dirge band the likes of which you’ve never heard.”

“Excellent,” Babette said, and then she added, “And we need to pick a mermaid.”

There was a moment of silence before she said, “I nominate Jane.”

Venus snapped, “Why her?”

“Yeah,” Minnie said. “Why her?”

“Well, look at the rest of us,” Babette said. “We’re not exactly mermaid material.”

“
I’m
mermaid material.” Rita puffed up her breasts.

Venus snorted. “When’s the last time anybody saw a Puerto Rican mermaid?”

“Same time they saw a mermaid with tattoos,” Rita snapped.

“I’m starting to question the rules of membership in this club,” Leo said from the back of the room, and Jane’s face burned. “Me, too,” she said. “Because the whole idea was that it wasn’t going to become a clique and it is. None of you would really know what to do if someone really different, someone who challenged you, walked through that door.”

“You know what?” Leo said. “I told my mother I wouldn’t be late.”

And he left.

And then Venus followed, saying to Jane, “You really want to be a dead fish, go ahead.”

Minnie left, too, saying, “I wouldn’t want to just lie there the whole time anyway.”

Rita left, then Legs, and Babette said, “Then it’s decided.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jane said, and Babette said, “Unless anyone objects on the record?”

H.T. said, “This seems like a decision for the womenfolk.”

“Then Jane it is.” Babette wrote something down, seeming pleased. She declared the meeting adjourned.

“You should have asked me first,” Jane said to Babette after H.T. skated away.

“Are you saying you don’t want to do it?”

“No,” Jane admitted. “Not exactly. It’s just, I don’t know. My mother went to mermaid camp once. With Leo’s mom. And she had this thing about mermaids, so it all makes me sort of sad.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie.” Babette patted her leg. “But think of it this way. It’s your chance to take back the mermaid. And make it not sad anymore.”

“I guess,” Jane said, though it all sounded sort of dumb. “But it’s a
funeral
.”

“Well, it was your idea.”

“I know. I just didn’t think it through.”

Babette took a small card out of her backpack and handed it to Jane. “Leo gave this to me,” she said, “but he probably meant it for you.”

It read MERMAID AUDITIONS @ THE CORAL ROOM, 4:00 p.m., and it had that day’s date on it.

“You’re joking, right?” she said.

“Not to audition,” Babette said with an eye roll. “To watch. To be inspired.”

“Oh, what’s the point?” Jane said, but she was still studying the card.

Babette looked at her watch. “If you hurry, you can get there in time.”

 

Jane took off toward the Coral Room as fast as her legs would carry her. Leo would probably be there. She didn’t care. Or maybe that was the whole reason she was going. She wasn’t sure. She thought maybe she wanted to apologize for saying the stuff about the rats and the rent in front of everybody. But she’d been provoked. Shouldn’t he have to apologize, too?

The club was packed, mostly with women in bikinis, so Jane shrunk her shoulders and slid through until she was right up behind the people sitting at the bar, right near the tanks. In front of her a pair of twin girls swiveled on bar stools—“Mom is up first,” one of them said, and their small bodies seemed to vibrate with anticipation. Jane felt that way, too.

Buzzing.

Buzzed.

She looked around for Leo but couldn’t see past the people nearest her and, really, she didn’t feel like dealing with him right then anyway.

When the first mermaid drifted down into the tank—the fish darted away in a sudden bolt—the crowd let out a collective gasp and she was there, a beautiful brunette who was waving and smiling, which had to be hard, in a pink and red polka-dot bikini. Was smiling underwater something they taught you how to do at mermaid camp? Had all of these women who were auditioning been to camp? Or did Beth run her own? Was Jane too old to go?

Between mermaids, she studied the glass, looking for that starfish she’d seen, and finally found it stuck to the side of the treasure chest of jewels. For a second she thought the journal had to be in there, but then she remembered: the club hadn’t even been around then. Jane knew that sea stars could grow new limbs when they were hurt and, as she watched mermaid after mermaid take their quick turn in the tank, she wondered if maybe she was starting to regenerate missing parts in her own way, too.

It was sort of heartbreaking how un-mermaidy some of the women were—they were old and misshapen or had straggly hair or wrinkled bellies—but they all got their turn, and sometimes there were surprises. Like right at the end when the skinny old woman with the long white ponytail got in the tank in her black one-piece suit and let her hair loose and swam like she was putting on a mermaid show for real, waving and pretending to be having tea with a blowfish that seemed drawn to the sheen of her floating white hair. Jane would have hired her in a heartbeat.

 

Jane walked over to say hi to Beth, who cleared the room with the announcement that she would be calling three or four women tomorrow, and wished she wasn’t a little bit scared of her, but she was. She was scared of how good that hug had felt, scared that Beth was—besides Jane’s father—the one living breathing tie that existed to her mother’s past, scared that if Beth knew about her father and the Tsunami—she must!—she’d never want to talk to Jane again.

“Did you just come to watch?” Beth asked, pulling her into a hug.

“I did,” Jane said. “It was fun.”

“Leo was just here.” She looked around, as if he still might be in the room.

“Oh,” Jane shook her head. “We’re not—” How to explain? “I just mean, I’m not looking for him. I don’t think—”

“Sit,” Beth said, and she pointed toward a booth; they moved over to sit.

“Here’s the thing.” Beth straightened a tent card for Burlesque Night on the table. “Leo
worships
his father. So the idea that his father might not have done everything he could have to save this sinking ship, well, that’s not so easy for him to accept right now.”

So it was true about the rent, the rats. Jane stole a glance at the tank, where some fish had decided to come out of hiding. “But why is he so mad at me?”

“You’re the messenger,” Beth said. “Never a good role.”

“So what do I do?”

“You wait. Or you move on. Or both.” She took Jane’s hand and said, “Your father is quite a roller coaster designer, by the way.”

“I’m really sorry,” Jane said, and Beth said, “Oh, honey. Don’t be. It’s not about one roller coaster or one amusement park or bar. It’s about how to go about things is all. How to do things so that people feel they’re being heard. That’s all Coney Islanders for Coney is really about.”

“So you don’t hold it against me?” Jane said, almost crying with relief.

“Of course not.”

Jane reached into her bag and took out her keychain and isolated the one labeled “Bath.” She held it out and a smile crept across Beth’s face.

“Do you know what it means?” Jane’s heart thumped wildly.

Beth sat back in her chair. “I know this is going to seem terribly cruel of me. But your mother had a thing about secrets and keeping them.”

Jane wasn’t sure she understood what was happening. “Do you mean that you know what it is and you’re not going to tell me?”

Beth seemed to be considering what to do one more time. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said finally, and then she fake-zippered her mouth shut.

“Please,” Jane said. “You
have
to.”

Beth unzipped her lips and said, “As your mother would have said, where’s the fun in that?”

J
ANE HAD NEVER PLAYED HOOKY BEFORE, but when she woke up Tuesday morning, head throbbing, she told her dad she felt sick and wanted to stay home. He had better things to worry about and so said only, “I’ll call it in.”

She crawled back into bed, and soon the house was quiet and then it turned out she couldn’t sleep. She had the “Bath” key on her night table and she kept turning it over in her hands, as if it might suddenly develop a mouth and tell her what it opened.

Eventually, she pulled on some clothes and went out into the yard and down to Birdie’s Bavarian Bar and started to pull out costumes while also setting aside a few things that would go on her museum list.

Looking at the bird getups, it occurred to her that maybe cutting them up and using them to make a mermaid costume wasn’t the best idea. To help her decide, she put one of them on. She picked a green one—the same color as the mermaid doll’s fin—and then she found the matching headpiece, a feathery plume—and stood in front of the old mirror. She looked ridiculous. And so it was decided that she’d set aside one costume to save for the family—maybe for a Halloween party somewhere down the line—and then another for the museum, just in case they’d want that sort of thing. That left her three costumes to work with. Green. Orange. And yellow. Perfect.

It was possible the whole mermaid funeral would never happen, of course. But if it did she wanted to be ready. She wanted to prove to anyone who ever doubted it that she could be a mermaid.

And a damn good one.

So she put on some old records and found some scissors and pins and grabbed the mermaid doll from her room for inspiration and got to work. Eventually, she moved the operation out to the yard when it was clear that the sequins and glitter could not be contained. Soon the small lawn—which was actually beginning to turn green—sparkled in the sun.

 

Marcus stepped out into the yard after school and slumped into a metal chair that was covered with a layer of green seeds that had fallen off a tree behind the bait-and-tackle shop. Jane had quickly bagged up a lot of the dead vines and leaves in order to have more room to work in and had uncovered, in the process, a white swan, a birdbath, and a two-headed gnome. Marcus rested his hand on the gnome head closest to his chair, as if it were a pet dog.

“So what’s the deal with the Dreamland Social Club?” he said after he watched her work for a while.

“How should I know?” She was cutting a fin, this one out of the green sparkling costume. She’d already made most of the bodice and only prayed it would fit when she actually tried it on.

“I thought you belonged,” he said.

“I don’t know why you’d think that,” she said, and it felt sort of wrong, since her mother was his mother, too, and she wanted him to know, but it was also sort of fun.