Mermaid in Chelsea Creek (5 page)

* * *

“
I KNOW I
shouldn't do it,” Sophie mumbled. Maybe if she sounded really down on herself everyone would leave her alone.

“Now, now.” Dr. Chen shook her head, her smile an easy thing on her face. “So many of the kids do it, you shouldn't feel bad about it. It's natural to be curious. It is quite a sensation.”

Sophie and Andrea both started at the doctor's sly admission, Andrea in scorn and Sophie in surprise.

“You mean… you did it, too? When you were my age?”

“Yes, I did,” Dr. Chen affirmed. “I did all sorts of foolish things. The important thing is—I stopped before I hurt myself. And you must promise me that you will stop now, too.”

“Okay.” Sophie nodded. She just couldn't imagine calm, sophisticated Dr. Chen, so cool and crisp with her bright white coat and perfect hair, clutching her throat and rolling on the ground. She nearly blushed at the thought, and Dr. Chen caught her.

“It is silly to think of, isn't it? But most girls do such things. Andrea?”

Sophie sucked in a lungful of air at the suggestion. As strange as it was to visualize Dr. Chen, it was simply impossible to conjure an image of her own uptight mom, her almost-always-angry mom, her scornful-at-most-everything mom, letting go with the gasping huff-and-puff, allowing herself to float away. She honked out a rude little laugh.

But, when Andrea was thirteen years old she had spent six months fascinated with this dream state her body could create. She didn't know if she was more insulted at Dr. Chen outing her before her daughter, or at Sophie's smug assertion that Andrea could never have done something so reckless, so childish, could never have been a
child at all, that she had come onto the earth full-grown, the stressed-out single mother of a back-talking nerd.

“Dr. Chen,” she began, her tone pissed.

“Andrea.” The doctor held out her hand. “I mean only to bring you and your daughter together here. The truth is, Sophie, this is a dangerous game to play, and you should not do it again—but sometimes it seems to me that every adolescent girl is playing it.”

“And if every adolescent were smoking pot, would you suggest I remain calm about that, too?” Andrea challenged.

“There are a lot of similarities.” Dr. Chen rubbed her chin, ignoring the question. “They both kill brain cells, get you high, trigger a false euphoria.”

“What would produce a real euphoria?” Sophie asked.

“Sophie!” Andrea snapped. “Don't act smart.”

“It's a valid question.” The doctor nodded. “Real euphoria. Falling in love, those sort of feelings trigger euphoria. But then, often the love that triggers the euphoria isn't ‘real' love, if by real we mean requited, or lasting.” She sighed. “Runners, people who train for marathons, often experience euphoria, as do people whose bodies are enduring the first stages of starvation. Dieters, fasters, anorexics.” The doctor seemed confounded by her own thought process. “Perhaps all euphoria is false. Or, what we understand from euphoria is false. Because it makes us feel happy, we think we
are
happy, even if something terrible is happening to us. It's purely chemical.”

“Dr. Chen. Is Sophie okay?” Andrea was brimming with impatience.
The philosophical, chatty kindness she shared with her patients seemed sweet enough from a distance, but annoying firsthand.

“Sophie's going to be fine!” Dr. Chen crowed, clapping the girl on her leg and standing up from her chair. She stretched her body into the air with a yawn and a groan. “Sophie, be suspicious of anything that gives you a quick rush of good feelings. True good feelings should be earned.”

“But my brain's okay?” Sophie asked earnestly.

“Better than average brain.” The woman winked. “Keep asking questions, even if they drive everyone crazy. Especially if they drive everyone crazy.” She winked again, this time at Andrea. “Now, who do we have out there today? Victor Perez, is that who I saw carrying on in the corner? Victor Perez is the most arthritic man in the whole world,” she told Sophie.

“Really?”

“To hear him tell it, yes. So I have got to come up with the most powerful arthritis remedy in the whole world.” She shook her head and wrapped her hand around the doorknob. “It's a tough job, I tell you. Andrea, I hope you take the rest of the day off, spend some time with Sophie here. And Sophie, I'll see you for your checkup before you start high school in the fall. Where are you off to, hmm? One of those preppy schools in Boston?”

Dr. Chen could not have known of the tender spot she'd hit with her small talk. Sophie was dying to go to a one of the preparatory high schools across the big green bridge that arched into the city. There
she would learn things that were real and true, things like art and psychology, and about all the different kinds of people in the world. Her classmates would have sophisticated hairdos, and her teachers would spend their days off feeding homeless people and protesting wars. Sophie had heard of these schools, but Andrea had shot her down. “Designer schools,” she had snapped. “They're no better than the public high school. You're just paying for the name.”

“It's better for getting into college,” Sophie had suggested, her voice cracking a bit. It was the first time she'd brought up such a possibility. College. If her fantasies about the prep school were vivid, the story Sophie had told herself about college life were positively wondrous, full of rolling lawns she would lounge upon with her clever, witty, new best friends, girls with shining ponytails and smart skirts. They would share with one another their latest thrilling opinions; they would gossip, have crushes, be moved by poetry and pass among them a contagious interest in the world they'd just become a part of. Around them would rise Gothic buildings containing dusty books that explained the secrets histories of everything. College. But Andrea had only replied, “There's got to be room in this world for the ditchdigger.” Sophie didn't know any ditchdiggers, unless her mother meant the men in giant yellow construction trucks who broke up chunks of concrete when a road needed repair. Is that what she was supposed to do with her life? She was confused. But when Andrea ended the conversation with a quick jab, “You should have been born a Kennedy,” Sophie finally understood what was being said: Andrea didn't have the money, and Sophie didn't get it.

“She's going here, to Chelsea High, just like her mother,” Andrea told the doctor, phony pride stringing her voice tight across her throat.

Dr. Chen nodded. “I went here, too. Wherever you go, there you are.”

Sophie watched her mother and Dr. Chen watch one another. Dr. Chen's coolness felt open, friendly, as if there wasn't any reason, ever, to
not
be in a totally awesome mood. Her hair lay on her head perfect as a doll's wig. Sophie couldn't imagine anything ever mussing the sleek bob, especially not Dr. Chen, whose strides and motions had a fluid grace.

Andrea, on the other hand, seemed like she had burst through a wall to get where she stood. The heat affected her, keeping her flushed, keeping the fine curls at her temples wet and flat against her skin. She shone. The bobby pins she used to keep her hair in line looked jammed into the mass of curls haphazardly. Her dark eyes bounced in her face. They held a certain edgy sparkle, always in motion. Andrea exuded a strange combination of urgency and exhaustion, as if she'd been saving babies from a burning building all day. And it wasn't because of Sophie's seizure. Sophie's mother was always like this.

As the doctor twisted her wrist to swing wide the door to her office, an ethereal whistling sound became audible; a high-pitched, mysterious ringing growing louder, fuller, melodious, and ending with a violent smack on the doctor's curtained window. The glass shook with the impact, and everyone jumped.

“Oh, dear,” murmured Dr. Chen. She moved swiftly toward the window and, pushing aside the yellow curtains that filled the room with lemony warmth, flung open the glass. Immediately there was a fluttering, and something feathered and gray filled the space—a pigeon, soot colored and stocky, with the strangest contraption affixed to its tail feathers. Perched on the windowsill, it tucked its wings tight to its plump side, and fixed an eager, orange eye on the doctor.

“Oh, no,” Andrea grumbled. “They've got to net this building. These things are going to make sick people sicker.” Andrea switched into work mode and stepped toward the bird, making to shoo it away, but it only waddled sideways, ducking her flapping hand.

“No, no.” Dr. Chen smiled. She laid out her fingers like an elegant invitation and the bird accepted, daintily wrapping its skinny feet around the doctor. Andrea gasped. It was as if Dr. Chen was brazenly picking her nose, or scratching her bum, or plugging her thumb into her ear and smearing fresh wax onto her desk. Surely, she had lost her mind. The doctor gazed at the animal with a sort of reluctant admiration, possibly pride. She brought her arm up so that the others could witness the bird's full form, including the strange cluster of tubes fixed to its backside with threads of glinting copper wire.

“This is Livia,” Dr. Chen introduced.

“You
know
that pigeon?” Andrea asked.

“This pigeon is a friend of mine. I guess you would call her my pet, though she's a bit more independent than a dog or a cat. She lives in a dovecote on my roof.”

“What's wrong with her?” Sophie peered at the object stuck awkwardly to the tail feathers.

“Nothing is wrong with her.” The doctor stroked the bird's iridescent neck the way one would pet a docile cat. Andrea flinched as she watched the doctor's sterile fingers rub the greasy feathers. “This is bamboo.” She touched the carved tubes lightly. “Bamboo whistles. When she flies, it makes the sweetest sound. Perhaps you heard it right before she smashed into the window. Silly bird,” she murmured, pecking the pigeon's smooth gray head and leaving a bit of red lipstick on the feathers there. “You're too smart to fly into a window! What was that about?” As if in answer, the pigeon shook itself all over, lifting from the doctor's hand and taking to the air, there in the cramped office. Andrea cried out and backed away from the commotion of feathers, but Sophie remained still, even as the bird clumsily advanced and then settled on her head. She could feel the bird's sharp claws tapping her scalp, sliding into her hair. She stayed very, very still.

“Oh my god,” Sophie said, feeling like a strange statue in a park, a girl with an animal perched on her head. She thought briefly of Ella. If her friend could see her now, she very likely would end the friendship for good, judging Sophie contaminated beyond repair.

“Dr. Chen!” Andrea scolded. “Please, get your bird off my daughter!” But Andrea made no move to brush the bird away. Its status as the doctor's special pet had elevated it above the common pigeons trolling for scraps in dumpsters around the city. It wasn't wild—it
belonged to Dr. Chen. Andrea felt it would be rude to swat it. But what kind of pet was a pigeon? A grimy one, she imagined. Still out there flying around in the muck, tucking germs into its dingy feathers. “Please!” she snapped again.

Sophie rather liked the bird settling on her head, though she feared its droppings. Its claws brought a roll of goose bumps down her neck, and her hair felt alive beneath its movements. The doctor shook her head at the scene and snapped her fingers at the pigeon. With a push off that stung Sophie, Livia jumped back into the air, flapping onto the doctor's outstretched hand. Dr. Chen walked the animal to the window, stretching her fingers like a bridge for the bird to waddle across.

“Go home,” she said firmly. And the pigeon did. With all the world before it, its take off was powerful and smooth. It glided into the sky, pulling air through the whistles on its tail, leaving a flute of sound in its wake. “Listen to that,” the doctor said, smiling, and Sophie rushed to the window to see her new friend disappear, straining her ears to hear the last of the music as it faded. Like the thin, fragile tone of a finger on a ring of glass. Like the subtle vibrations of something gently, artfully struck. Andrea followed her daughter to the window, inspecting the girl's head for fleas and bird poop. She found nothing but kept digging. Sophie allowed it. Her mother's scratchy fingernails reminded her of the bird, its comforting heaviness and skittering claws.

“Did you do that?” Sophie marveled. “Give it that whistle?”