The Mermaids Singing (8 page)

Of course, nowadays they would say this was postpartum depression. It ended when I woke up one morning and Grace, for the first time, was sleeping peacefully in her crib. I suppose I just stopped feeling sorry for myself; I ceased to blame my daughter and began to love her. She grew to be a fierce, dramatic child whom I couldn't help but admire. A fighter, she was. You were the lucky one if you had Grace on your side.

I worried, when she got older and began to hate me, that maybe I had damaged her somehow during those first few months of her life. That she had known, even when it was over, that her mother had resented her, and she was getting me back for it.

She was ashamed of my job, looked at my position in the household as that of a slave. It drove her mad that we ate in the kitchen while the Willoughbys ate in the dining room. That was my doing, though she never believed it. I had told the Willoughbys early on that I would prefer to eat separately. They invited me to join them all the time, in the beginning. I never did it, and not because I “knew my place” or anything degrading, but because it was a job after all, we weren't family, and later because I didn't want Grace to grow up confusing herself as the Willoughbys' child. It would have been more difficult to leave; I still believe that.

Grace tolerated Mr. Willoughby, and Michael was like a brother to her, but Mrs. Willoughby—well, let's say I had a time keeping her from torturing the woman. I myself had always taken to Mrs. Willoughby—not with any great affection, mind you, but she was kind to me in the beginning, and I felt sorry for her, sure. She'd married above herself in Mr. Willoughby, and I believe she was always trying to hide this fact. She never had her own mother over the house, but visited her in Dorchester once a month with Michael. Even with all her nitpicking, I know she appreciated me. But by the time Grace was seven years old, Mrs. Willoughby was already growing ill, and she had changed drastically. Grace could never understand that your woman was sick—she thought Mrs. Willoughby's episodes
were part of her personality—but I knew better and didn't take them to heart.

When Michael was nine and Grace was seven, Mrs. Willoughby gave birth to twin girls, Sarah and Lindsey. It was a difficult pregnancy for her; she was confirmed to bed for the last three months of it, and it was this time that gave Grace her bad impressions. The woman was uncomfortable, and bored—she had never been the one for just lying around. She was very demanding of me, nothing I did seemed good enough—the food was inedible, my cleaning sloppy, I did not come quickly enough when she rang the bell at her bedside. Michael avoided her during this time, and she began to resent me for the time I spent with him. She was going a little off her head already, I believe. Once, when I was sweeping her bedroom carpet, and Grace was in there with me, holding the dustpan, Mrs. Willoughby started glaring at me murderously. Not a word, mind you, but she didn't take her eyes off me. It made me uncomfortable and I tried to sweep up quickly. When I heard the front door slam, I told Grace to see if it was Michael.

“He'll be wanting his lunch. Tell him I'll be down in a minute so.” Before Grace could move, Mrs. Willoughby let out this noise, a growl from what it sounded like.

“He's my son,” she spat. She looked possessed, her eyes red, hair on end.

“Pardon?” I said.

“If you try and take him from me I'll rip your ugly Irish head off,” she yelled. I ushered Grace out of the room, but we could hear her still screaming, all the way down the hall. “You hear me? I'll rip your ugly Irish head off and feed it to the dog!” She'd no dog. I couldn't imagine what had gotten into her.

Grace became hysterical. She was crying, smearing snot all over her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Hesh,” I said, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. “No tears now, it's only joking, she was.”

“Was not,” Grace said. She was angry now, red-faced, on the
verge of one of her tempers. “She tries and I'll rip her head off first,” she sneered.

“God help us,” I said. “Don't be ridiculous.” I went into the kitchen to Michael. He was looking at me like he'd heard it all and was terrified, but I pretended nothing had happened. What stayed with me all that day was an image of this crazed woman and my mean little girl, ripping at each other like lions. I could see it, sure as it was happening before my eyes.

When the twins were born, Mrs. Willoughby almost died. When she'd recovered, the smaller girl, Lindsey, was not expected to live long. She had to stay in hospital for months. Mrs. Willoughby was never the same again, even after Lindsey came home, frail but healthy. Something had loosed in the woman's mind, probably when she was still pregnant. She was not as easy to live with after that. She no longer worked, but shuffled around the house in a robe like a zombie. I was the one looked after the twins, hoping that she would snap out of her mood, but it went on for years. When the twins were eight, Mr. Willoughby had a promotion that made him richer than I think he'd ever dreamed, and he moved us all to a seaside house in Scituate, where they had a private beach, a tog room with a fireplace for changing out of swimming gear, and acres of green lawn and gardens.

It didn't seem to make any difference to his wife. She had strange outbursts—there were a few episodes where she was almost dangerous, but it was not so bad as Grace would have people believe. She exaggerated, because she needed reasons to keep hating the woman. Her first memory of Mrs. Willoughby would always be that uncomfortable scene in the bedroom, and Grace couldn't forgive her that. We had our differences, but the truth is that my daughter grew up fiercely protective of me. She'd never admit it, but she was always my little warrior, a step in front of me with a sword, ready to rip the head off of anyone who stood in my way.

Despite this, or maybe because of it, Grace prided herself on being my exact opposite, in personality and in action. The worst
insult you could bestow on her was to point out some similarity between us. “I'm
nothing
like her,” she'd say. She looked more like her father, with the same green eyes, and the rich red hair that must have come from his copper strands. She certainly was too brash and fearless to resemble my composed demeanor. When I moved her to Ireland, after Mrs. Willoughby's accident, she hated everything about the place. She would have left as soon as she turned eighteen, but by then she was pregnant with Gráinne, and it turned out that as far as our mistakes went, we weren't so different after all.

This is what I want to tell Gráinne, without exposing the whole sordid story: Mistakes were made. Compromises followed. My daughter, as it was, resented me for them. Sure, she made her own mistakes as well. There is nothing that says that Gráinne needs to suffer, no reason that she must hate me as her mother did. We can begin again, this girl and myself; I can give her Ireland the way I tried to do with Grace, who would take nothing from me. Gráinne has the suspicious look of someone who has been lied to altogether, but if I'm careful with what I tell her, this can change.

 

As I drive back to the hotel on Murúch's only road, Gráinne is shivering from the damp; she's too thin to stand this island weather. She glares at me from beneath the jacket draped over her head; she has struggled free from Marcus's arms and is sitting alone by the passenger window.

“We're almost home,” I say, and I turn my eyes back to the dark road, giving her privacy, as she presses her forehead to the glass, trying not to cry.

When she sleeps, she moves. She swims in quiet coves, or in the undertow of the open water, the pain in her limbs a welcome pain, her arms and her heart hammering the same rhythm in her hot ears. She makes love in her dreams to countless, faceless men. She knows them only by the way they touch her, the way they enter her, gentle, teasing, or with desperate urgency. It is Stephen who runs his fingertips and tongue over her body as if she were an instrument, her husband who holds her hips and legs above the sand and pulls her toward him again and again until they are both moaning louder than the sea behind them. Often it is Michael, her first lover, his hands shaking, so cautious, so sweet and terrified.

She knows she is awake before she opens her eyes because the pain is back. She thinks it is the pain that translates to the sensation of movement while she is sleeping. She hates to sleep, fights it be
cause it means she has to wake up and continue dying. It eats at her, this pain, like something ripping at her muscles and organs with sharp relentless teeth. On her worst days, everything is an effort, and she tries not to breathe, not to think, because breathing and thinking fuel the pain. Stephen is a hazy figure to her then, a voice that she resents because she cannot relax enough to listen to it, a touch that sparks like a burn on her arm or her neck. She doesn't take the injections as often as she is allowed because they frighten her, lower her defenses. She emerges from them not knowing how to handle the pain.

When she does allow Stephen to give her the shot, she is able to speak to him for a few minutes. She rambles, trying to fit everything in. It confuses him and this angers her, that he cannot decipher what she knows she means.

“Has my mother come?” she says, and Stephen looks frightened.

“You told me not to call her until…. Do you want me to call her now?”

“No, you're right. I keep thinking I'm dead and you're here telling me how it's going.”

“Grace,” he says, but she has no time to listen.

“Where's Gráinne? Why doesn't she come in?”

“She's out again. She's scared, I think. It would help if you asked her to come.”

“Nope, I'm scareder. That's not a word. I can't help her today. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Listen, Grace, this thing about calling your mother. I'd feel better if you told Gráinne first. I'm in a weird position here.”

“You want my position? You die; I'll tell Gráinne all the dirty family secrets.”

“Grace, don't, please.” She's gotten so mean. She knows this, and it makes her even more mean, the knowledge of it.

“My mother is not a nice woman. I don't want you to call her. But she loves Gráinne; I know she'll take her in. I want you to
keep in touch with Gráinne, write to her. She'll need some…affection.”

“Of course I will.”

“She'll be a queen, my little girl. They'll give her a boat, she'll rule the sea. She'll steal anything she ever needs.”

“Grace, try and get some sleep.”

“You don't know what I'm talking about. You don't believe she can do it. You know nothing of these women, what they are capable of.”

“What women?”

“Island women. Oh, they are hard. Even my mother—and I thought she was the weak one. Now I know she was hard. Gráinne is one. I should tell her. Remind me to tell her when I wake up, okay?”

“Okay, sweetie, go to sleep now.”

“She tried to kill me, you know.”

“Not your mother?”

“No, Mrs. Willoughby. She tried to kill me because I was fucking her son.”

“Who is Mrs. Willoughby, babe?”

“Didn't you meet her? I'd take you by there, by the old house. Except she's dead so there wouldn't be much point in you meeting her now. You can say that about me someday.”

“Shhh,” Stephen says, stroking her head. “Please be quiet, please go to sleep.” She wonders why he wants her to be quiet. She could tell him so much, now that these memories have come back to her. She wants to tell it all, but she cannot remember the order of things, what the beginning is, where to reveal the details that become pertinent later on. The logistics of telling a story have slipped from her, she can only remember images, and whenever she tries to share them. he tells her to go to sleep.

“Stephen?” she whispers.

“Here.”

“Is it me that's dying or is it Gráinne?” He doesn't answer. She
opens her eyes but closes them fast because she is having hallucinations. Michael Willoughby is at her side, looking older than she remembers him. His cheeks are wet, like he's just been swimming, or crying, and has forgotten to wipe his face.

When Grace was fifteen years old, she began to swim. She had learned years before at the YMCA pool, but she didn't love it, not until she found the ocean. The Willoughbys' mansion was right on the beach in Scituate; Grace left her clothes in the swimmers' cabin by the shore and dove naked into the cold waves. She could go for hours, swallowing up the miles of beach with her stroke. She took pride in being stronger than the water, in beating it down with the curve of her arm. She imagined her arms were the oars of a boat, sweeping the pirate queen Granuaile along the water. (Though she rejected most things Irish, Grace had always liked the Irish sea queen. Granuaile was a woman completely opposite from anything Clíona stood for.) Grace stayed in the sea way past the point when she thought she might collapse. Under the water, her mother's criticism
could not reach her; with the waves sloshing over her back, she was not the servant's illegitimate girl. She was a sea creature.

When she wasn't in the water, her legs ached from the restraint, she could not stand still, had to flex her ankles and bend her knees or her muscles would quiver. “Stop that fidgeting!” her mother would snap. “Sure, you can sit like a lady with some effort?”

On the weekends, Grace spent the morning helping her mother with the housework, cooking breakfast and lunch for the twins, Michael, and their mother. The twins were seven and they rarely spoke to anyone but each other and Clíona. Lindsey was a smaller, paler version of Sarah, and they still dressed alike. At the table they looked like two dolls, next-to-motionless and made-up. They were equally afraid of their mother.

For as long as the twins had been alive, everyone had feared Mrs. Willoughby. Everyone pretended to be concerned over her, but only because it contained her outbursts. Grace hated her, and she was sure Michael hated her, too, but he was afraid to show it.

Lunchtime was torture for Michael without his father there. When Grace was in the house she had a habit of fussing over the table, interrupting the meal and giving Michael a secret wink so he wouldn't feel alone. Michael had always been her friend, though Mrs. Willoughby didn't like it.

“Michael,” she said one day, “is it absolutely necessary that that girl come in here every two minutes while we're eating?” Mrs. Willoughby rarely spoke to Grace directly, they'd had too many clashes over the years. Michael tried not to smile.

“I don't know, Mom,” he said. “Grace, could you get me the mustard?” Grace smiled and went through the swinging door to the kitchen, leaving it open so she could still hear them.

“You're very cruel to me, Michael,” Mrs. Willoughby said.

“Mom, it's only mustard.”

“You don't have to pretend. I know how much you hate me.” She spat the words out, her face growing red and dangerous.

“Mom, I don't—”

“I know I've been a horrible mother, I know it well enough.” She began to sob, in that instant, hysterical way that terrified everyone. It paralyzed them when she was like this, when her face played like a film of emotions, changing from threatening to helpless and back again. When Grace came in with the mustard, the tears stopped. Mrs. Willoughby looked at no one, but poured herself more tea. The wet drops that still slid down her cheeks looked out-of-place, like someone had splashed water on her. Grace rolled her eyes at Michael and went back into the kitchen. The twins did not look up from their sandwiches.

“Michael,” Mrs. Willoughby said loudly, startling the girls, “where is your father?”

“Uh, work, maybe?” Michael said, sarcasm slipping into his voice.

“Don't be fresh with me. He's not at work. Your father's the laziest man alive.”

“What's he got an office for then?”

“Deception.” She banged her teacup in its saucer.

“Mom, cut it out.”

“You think that man sits at a desk all day? He's dropping his pants all over the city.”

“What's wrong with his pants?” one of the twins asked. Michael only stared at his mother.

“Just as I thought,” his mother said. “No sympathy from you. You're just a man, after all. Like father, like son. Depraved.”

Grace, who'd been lingering behind the door, walked in and swiped the mustard bottle from the table. Mrs. Willoughby looked at her viciously, intending to scold, but Grace looked back just as fiercely. The woman turned instead to her son.

“You won't need an office, though, will you dear?”

 

Michael came down to the beach at dusk while Grace was swimming. He skipped stones in front of her path until she stopped the crawl stroke to tread water above the sandbar. He walked out on
the dock where she'd left her clothes and towel and climbed into the tied-up motorboat.

“Are you coming in?” Grace said, arching her neck backward so the waves smoothed the hair off her forehead.

“My mother's fucked,” Michael said.

“No kidding.” Grace laughed.

“I'm serious. She's a nutcase. I can't stand it anymore. I keep thinking it's a whole year before I can get away from her.”

“Don't take yourself so seriously. Everyone thinks their own mother is crazy.”

“Your Mom's nice.”

“Yeah, to you maybe.” Michael could do no wrong as far as Clíona was concerned. Grace, on the other hand, was a constant disappointment. She always needed correcting—her clothes, her posture, her tone of voice or vocabulary. She'd been smacked, by hand or wooden spoon, almost every day until she was thirteen. Clíona sometimes looked at her like she was some evil alien child that had swallowed up the fantasy daughter she would have preferred.

“Grace?” Michael said, “Do you think she's right? Do you think my father has affairs?”

“Would you blame him?” Grace said, but she felt bad as soon as she saw his face. It hadn't occurred to her that this would bother him so much. She stopped treading and dropped her feet to the sand. “I doubt it though,” she said. “Your Mom's totally paranoid.” She started wading up toward shore, wringing her hair out behind her, and she felt Michael's stare before she saw it.

“When did you get those?” Michael said, smiling at first but then blushing and turning away. Grace looked down at her naked breasts, nipples puckered from the cold, the water beading where she'd slathered herself with oil for speed. Until that moment her breasts, which had grown quickly over the last year, had been an annoyance. Some days she had to swim in a bathing suit or else her whole chest ached afterwards. The boys at school looked at her
breasts as if they wanted to remove them, take them away for some perverted experiment. With Michael's blush, she knew suddenly that they were an attractive part of her. She was not embarrassed but delighted. She took pleasure in her body, in her flexibility, the definition of her muscles, the smell of her salty skin after swimming, or the new odor, born with her breasts, that left its evidence on her underwear. She hadn't thought how it would feel to have someone share in the admiration.

“Do you like them?” she asked, to get him to look back at her. She was making him nervous, which excited her even more.

“You look like a mermaid,” he said, and she laughed when he threw her the towel.

 

Grace managed to avoid her mother on most days but Sundays. Clíona, whom Grace thought of as fanatically holy, never missed Mass. Grace considered herself lucky because they were too poor for her to attend the local Catholic school. Still, every Sunday since she was four, she'd had to endure Mass and Catechism school through her First Communion, and then her Confirmation at thirteen. After that she was supposed to have earned the right to be responsible for her own religious actions, but Clíona kept dragging her to Mass anyway.

Grace would have liked the church had there been no people or priests in it. The ceiling was a mural of plump, mischievous-looking angels. She liked the smell of candle wax, the stained glass light that colored her hands, the tinkle of the gold bell at the offering. She imagined, though she knew Clíona would think her blasphemous, that the church would be a good place for kissing. While the priest droned out the sermon, Grace had fantasies of boys mouthing her backward onto the smooth wooden pews.

But she despised the girls she'd gone to Catechism with, who'd been rough and catty, made up like little saints in their Sunday best. And the boys—who had tried to push her hand down their pants, their tongues wagging at her in a gruesome attempt at sensuality—
those boys closed their eyes in profound holiness as the priest placed the Body of Christ on those same tongues. Even the priests seemed to be part of the act. They smiled and patted Grace's head on the church steps, after terrorizing her in Confession with judgmental grunts and guilt-inspiring silences. One had gone so far as to call her a “little tramp” before dispensing penance and shutting the screen.

Grace was always trying to get out of the Sunday ritual. She tried disappearing on Sunday mornings, but came back in the afternoon to her furious mother, who would only force her to go to Confession, and to morning Mass the next day.

“The Church is your guardian for when your morals as a young lady are tested,” Clíona said when Grace tried to tell her she was too old for Mass. “Sure, it's time we spoke of the birds and the bees.”

“Oh, please,” Grace moaned. “Mom, don't. I know how it works.”

“Sure, they told you the facts in that school of yours. Did they tell you that relations before marriage is a mortal sin?”

“Give me a break,” Grace said.

“A girl can get herself in trouble on earth, as well.”

“You should know,” Grace muttered.

“I'll have none of your cheek, miss. You'd be well off to learn from my mistakes rather than casting stones. It's hard-pressed you'd be to find a man to marry you when you end up in my position.”

“Michael will marry me,” Grace said.

“It's fooling yourself you are if you think that boy would look at you. He's too rich for your blood. And I don't think his folks would take to his marrying a Catholic.”

“He doesn't care what they think,” Grace said. Her eyes were a wild green anger.

“Even if he fancies you, doesn't mean he'll do right by you.”

“You don't know anything about it,” Grace said.

Every Sunday started with a similar argument. Grace was infuriated by her mother. To her, Clíona was a dinosaur, despite the fact
that she was younger than most of her classmates' parents. Grace promised herself that she would never end up like Clíona, an ignorant slave in someone else's country.

 

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 up
ward. 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.