Mermaid in Chelsea Creek (17 page)

Sophie surprised herself by kissing the face of the bird on her left shoulder before lifting her off. The bird cooed shyly, dipping her face into her feathers. “I washed my face today,” she assured Sophie. “But I don't know how clean the water was. It's hard to find clean water, you know. Angel leaves us rainwater baths on the tumbler shack roof, but aside from that, it's puddles and the creek, and you know Chelsea is a very dirty city.”

“Dirty cities have dirty pigeons,” Arthur quipped. “The problem is systemic.”

“My name is Giddy,” the bashful pigeon introduced herself.

“I'm Roy,” said the pigeon on Sophie's other shoulder. “Giddy's mate. Mind lifting me down? My wings will make a racket.”

Sophie placed the birds side by side on the sidewalk. They yawned in unison.

“It's really past our bedtime,” Giddy apologized.

“Mine, too,” Sophie said, and climbed the stairs to her home.

Inside, she gently switched the television off. The sudden silence awoke her mother like a noise. “What?” she jumped from her prone position, struggling to sit up in her sleepy disorientation. Her eyes widened as she peered deeply into the room. Her curly hair rose and fell about her head like a disturbed sea. “Am I late? What time is it?”

Sophie was pulled to feel her mother's feelings right then, but she feared it would make her heart too sad. Andrea worked and worked and worked and even when she wasn't working, even when she slept, her body was a clock ticking its way to her next shift, anxiety winding the gears.

“No, Ma,” Sophie said softly. “You've been sleeping with the television on and it was keeping me awake. Why don't you sleep in your bed?” She herded her mom into the bedroom as if she were a sleepy child. Andrea collapsed on the wide mattress with her shoes still on. Sophie plucked the laces from their bows and slid them to the floor. She climbed into bed with her mother. The fan from the living
room spun back and forth, back and forth, filling the bedroom with moments of cool air. Sophie's clothes were gummy from the dried creek water, but she was too tired to change into something better. Plus, the briny smell meant something different now, something new. She knew she'd be grateful in the morning, when she awoke and wondered if it all had been a dream, to feel the stiff salt of the mermaid's cave on her t-shirt. She snuggled backward into her mother, who threw a sleeping arm across her shoulder. It was too hot to cuddle, but Sophie feared that forces more powerful than the humidity would soon make it difficult to seek comfort from her mom. As the sun began to rise Sophie slipped into sleep, the cooing of pigeons outside her window lulling her.

Chapter 13

“D
o you want to come to the dump with me?” Sophie asked hopefully into the telephone.

“You definitely sustained brain damage last night if you are asking me that question,” Ella said coldly. It was the sort of tease Ella could have said in a friendly way—but she didn't. Sophie's stomach swirled.

“I'm sorry about last night, Ella. I didn't mean to scare you. I know you were trying to help me—”

“Sophie, I don't know what's going on with you, but it's freaky, okay?”

“Ella, it's not that freaky, I swear,” Sophie spoke quickly, stalling, lying.
It was wicked freaky
. “Listen, if you just come to the dump with me today you can meet Angel, and I think you'll understand—”

“I've got a lot of work to do at the beach today,” Ella said coolly.

“Oh,” Sophie was surprised. “I didn't know you were getting a job. Where are you working?”

“On my
tan
,” Ella snapped. “I'm sorry you're grounded, but I can't
stop my life just because you're having some weird problem. And you're right, you shouldn't pass yourself out anymore. You can't handle it.”

“Ella,” Sophie said. The more they fought, the more Sophie felt like a kid, just a whiny, pleading kid. The friendly part of Ella felt unreachable. “Well—okay,” she said stupidly.

“Well, okay,” Ella dully repeated, and hung up the phone. Lying on her bed, she pressed her hand to her churning stomach. When she got home last night, desperate for a remedy to the toxins she was certain had gotten into her, she drank half a pint of mouthwash. The liquid had seared a groove down her throat and into her guts and quickly retraced its steps, heaving out from her mouth and into the sink. Ella's stomach muscles still ached from the effort, like she'd done a million sit-ups. It ached with the heaving, with the burn of the mouthwash, and with a painful knot of emotion.

On the other end, holding the dead line in her hand, Sophie's stomach throbbed in sickening synchronicity. She and Ella had fought before, though usually her friend was eager to accept an apology.
I'm sure she'll come around
, Sophie assured herself weakly. She pushed the girl from her mind, vowing to call her again, soon. She had a whole lot of work ahead of her; moping about her room all day was not an option.

* * *

“OH, MY ACHING
neck,” Andrea complained, wincing, one hand kneading the soreness, the other clutching a cup of coffee. The coffee maker
on the counter was full of the vile, brown liquid. Sophie didn't like the burnt stink, but her mother could not function without it. Sophie sat at the table, drowsy, her own body aching. Angel had warned her it would, that she'd been using muscles she didn't know she had, but at the time Sophie was so caught up in the work she couldn't feel it. Now she felt it, a new ache in a new place every time she moved. That plus the weird feeling in her chest, her lungs she supposed, which had been full of Chelsea creek water. Her sinuses too felt clogged. The events of the night before were clear to her, her memory of them sharp, and she had no doubt that any of it had happened, was real. What she was less clear about was what it all meant. The mermaid had danced around a certain point, as had tender Livia the pigeon. Even gruff Arthur couldn't seem to spit it out. Was Sophie meant to save humanity? She was a girl in grimy clothes, drinking orange juice from concentrate that her mom had bought five for a dollar at the supersized supermarket a town over. She hadn't had the time to make good on her promise to arrive at the dump with better grooming; indeed, she was more dusty and tangled than the day before. She swiped a ponytail holder from her mother and lassoed the mess of her hair into a dense bun on her head, checking her reflection in a tablespoon stained brown with coffee. This was humanity's savior?

“Wash your face,” Andrea said, reading Sophie's mind. “I don't want to hear it from your grandmother about how I'm not taking care of you.”

In the bathroom Sophie splashed cold water onto her cheeks and dried them with her mom's leftover shower towel. “Ready,” she
announced. Climbing into the car, she took note of the chalky white pigeon droppings splatting the roof of the car and giggled.

“You think that's funny?” Andrea asked, annoyed. “You think I have time to bring this thing to a car wash? Not to mention the money?”

Sophie felt a wave off her mother. She arranged herself, inside, to catch it. It was like a new set of arms had grown inside her, and the arms opened in a gentle curve and caught the toss of her mother's scratchy feelings. How the state of her car made her feel like a failure. It felt bad to drive around in a poop-mobile. She wanted to tell everyone who looked at her lousy little vehicle that she
knew
the droppings were there; she didn't want anyone thinking she was the kind of person who would be oblivious to such a thing. She knew about it, she didn't like it, and she didn't have the time to deal with it. Or, when a pocket of time presented itself, she did something else with it. She napped, or spaced out, or watched a television program. And later she would think,
I should have brought the car to the car wash. What was I doing, sitting reading the newspaper
? And she would not only feel like a failure, but that the fact of her failure was her very own fault.

Sophie hopped on her mom with her real arms outstretched, her psychic arms still holding the sad bundle of emotion. She hugged her mother tight. “It's not a big deal,” Sophie promised. “I'll wash the car. Don't feel so bad about it. All the cars in Chelsea have bird poop on the roof.”

Her daughter's tenderness was too much for her—too unexpected, too unusual, too tender. Andrea shrugged her off. “It's okay,” she lied.
“I don't feel
that
bad about it.” Andrea worked to harden herself to the onslaught of feelings. The problem with feelings was, first you had one, which was generally bad enough. But then you had a feeling about your feeling, and then a feelings about how you were feeling about your feeling, and then another feeling would pop up at the sight of it all, this teetering pyramid of emotion, and all of it would look wrong to Andrea, all her feelings somehow incorrect, too much or too little, too soft or too hard, and another feeling would emerge at the thought of
that
. It was endless, having feelings. And god forbid someone
noticed
you having them, as Sophie just had. Then you had feelings about
that
, about having been seen, and more feelings still about the other person's feelings. Oh, it was awful. Andrea started the car, her eyes steely on the streets ahead. If she was driving she wouldn't have to feel anything, and Sophie wouldn't expect her to, couldn't need anything from her in those moments but for her to drive the car, bring her safely to the dump. Sophie watched her mother shut down behind the wheel. The ring of her mother's sadness still bounced through her body, fainter and fainter, until it was gone.

* * *

RONALD TRIED UNSUCCESSFULLY
to escort Sophie up the hill and over to the tumbling shack. His ankles caught on the width of his pants and his feet shuffled like he was dancing. Ronald toppled. “Oh, great,” Sophie said aloud. She stood over the man. The booze on his breath
shot up like a geyser with each exhalation. Sophie remembered what the pigeons had said, about dignity. Of all the damage the drinking was doing to Ronald, from the swell of his liver to the blood vessels bursting on the tip of his nose, Sophie thought the corrosion of the man's dignity was perhaps the worst of all. Sophie felt a shame on his behalf as she tugged the man to his unsteady feet, a shame he didn't know to feel at all.

“Going to see your nana?” Ronald hiccupped.

“Sure,” Sophie said, though she wasn't. There was no point trying to actually talk to Ronald, whose very tongue was pickled from all the liquor it had lapped.

“Your nana,” he shook his head back and forth. Sophie thought he was smiling. “She is something else. Whatta lady.” He tugged from the front pocket of his filthy, baggy jeans a bottle of rum. The liquid was clear as water behind the label of a pirate.

“Did she get that for you?” Sophie asked.

“She always does,” Ronald nodded. “That's the deal.”

* * *

THE TUMBLER WAS
silent when Sophie approached the shack, but she could hear intermittent, cacophonous smashes. Angel was busting up bottles. The shack was breezeless, and Angel was sweaty. She wore pants chopped at the knee, but her feet must have been hot, stuffed inside what looked like army boots. Her goggles covered her eyes and
fat earphones were clamped onto her ears to muffle the crashing of the bottles. She whipped of her protective gear when she saw Sophie enter, her stance suddenly eager and nervous, excited.

“Hey there,” she said casually, but Sophie thought,
She knows everything
.

“I saw the mermaid,” Sophie said immediately. She'd been planning to wait, sniff things out, but Angel pretending everything was normal made her start blurting. “And the pigeons came to me, too.”

Angel smacked her forehead. “Crap!” she said. “The pigeons! It hasn't been raining and I forgot to fill their baths on the roof.”

“Well, you better,” Sophie said. “They're getting grimy, and Giddy feels bad about it.”

Angel tossed the goggles and headphones at Sophie, followed with a toss of gloves that smacked her in the belly and fell to the ground. “Finish this bunch of bottles,” she instructed. “I'll be right back. Then we'll talk.”

Angel grabbed the nozzle of a long green hose and tugged it outside. In between deafening smashes, Sophie could hear the spray of water into the glass bowls on the roof. She busted up the bottles with ease; it felt so great to make them smash into pieces, the crunch and spray of the pulverized bottles. It felt fun and destructive, like something she shouldn't be allowed to do, but it was her job. She laughed out loud, crushing the bunch in no time. Sophie pulled off the gear and surveyed her glittering creation, the wider work room strewn with shards and sparkle. In the corner of the shack one of the junkyard cats lay lazy in the heat. It was a big orange and white cat with
unusually long legs, a boxy face and ears chewed from fighting. Angel called it Creamsicle. Sophie sidled up to it.