I gestured toward the wonderful object.
“Have you seen one before? It’s a Victrola.”
I gestured toward my ears, that he might know I wished to hear it again.
“Again?” He walked over to it. “Sure. Do you, would you like to dance? I’ve got two left feet, but I’ll try.”
I did not know what dancing was, but the truth was, I was happy to do anything he suggested as long as it did not involve talking.
But it was better than I had imagined, for he reached for my arm and drew me toward him. Then we were twirling, turning, stepping around, and each fall of our feet brought me closer, then farther, then closer, then farther, until we moved as one, undulating like the ocean’s waves.
We heard the song again, and then others, and finally, the bell rang again, eleven times now, and he said, “She’ll be home soon. I should go to bed. You should too. But will you meet me back here tomorrow, same time? And we’ll dance some more.”
I nodded.
I returned to my room where Celia lay snoring, and I knew that tomorrow, all the knives and stoves and matches in the world could not harm me. He wanted to see me again!
The next day’s work was little better, for I was sent to the market to purchase some items. With neither voice nor the ability to read the strange symbols on Cook’s paper, I tried to match the symbols on Cook’s list to those on the signs at the grocery. It was hard. Finally, I asked one of the clerks for assistance, pointing to the paper.
“Artichokes?” the boy said. “Oh, those is these strange things over here.” He led me to something that resembled a green nudibranch, a sort of sea slug.
I pointed to the next. “Cantaloupe? That’s this one, always get it mixed up with the honeydew, myself.” He pointed to something resembling brain coral, and I placed one in my basket.
But when I pointed to the next, his face darkened. “Aw, now I know you’re just fooling with me. Everyone knows what carrots is.”
He refused to help me after that, and I had to try to decipher the signs or overhear the conversations of the other customers.
When I finally returned, Cook flicked her dish towel at me. “Four hours, girl. Do that again, and the mistress will fire you for sure, shipwreck victim or no.”
“No, she won’t,” Celia said, “for our little Dorothy was up until all hours with Master Brewster last night.”
“With young Brewster? Whatever were they doing?”
“Not talking, that’s for sure.” Celia winked.
“Funny if he did like her, though,” said Celia, “and it would serve the mistress right, her always acting so high and mighty, if her son was to fall for a servant. Is he in love with you, Dorothy?”
She was being friendly again, and I remembered how it felt with Brewster’s hands upon my waist, my body pulled in close toward him. Still, all I did was shrug my shoulders, which was something merfolk did to show they had no idea of the answer to a question.
It must have been what humans did too, for Celia laughed. “Oh, she’s tricky, but look at her blush.”
“Ain’t it the truth?” Cook said.
I didn’t know what “blush” meant, but I felt my cheeks grow hot as they never had in the water.
Celia said, “You shouldn’t go and see him in your uniform. Don’t you have anything else to wear?”
I nodded.
“Well, good, and I will fix your hair.”
I nodded and smiled.
“But you’ll have to stop dropping things and wasting time.”
That night at dinner, I was careful with the knives and did not cut myself. I let Celia light the gas oven, and I dropped nothing at dinner, which was difficult, let me tell you, for Brewster was there, and at one moment, he began to hum. I did not have to listen long to know that the song was “My Melancholy Baby,” the same song we had heard the night before.
The mistress looked annoyed, but only said, “Don’t forget, Hestia comes Friday.”
Brewster made a noise rather like the bark of a seal. “Yes, yes, I know. You’ve told me. I suppose I will have to attend, though it is hard for me to think of romance after what has happened in the past week.”
I was then refilling the water glasses as slowly as possible, the better to hear the conversation. I knew Brewster had no desire to meet Hestia Rivers. He loved me, I was certain. Still, I had to hear all, even though the sparkling glass pitcher was heavy in my hands.
“Perhaps it is too soon,” Mr. Davis said, his first words in my presence.
“Too soon?” the mistress cried, sounding not unlike a gull. She turned to Brewster. “I am well aware of the tragedy we have faced. Do you think I can forget those terrible hours when I thought you were lost to me?
“Did you not say you had a DAR meeting tonight at seven?” Brewster asked. “Is it not very near that time now?”
Mrs. Davis glanced at her wrist. “Oh, you are quite right. I must be ready and dressed in an hour. Girl! Girl!” She snapped her fingers at me. “Tell Celia we shall have dessert right away.”
I nodded.
Brewster met my eyes and mouthed, “An hour.”
The dishes done, I dressed in my pretty blue frock. Celia brushed my hair and loaned me her ribbon.
“In this,” she said, “he will find you lovelier than any girl he has seen or will, and that will about kill his mother.”
When I entered the sitting room, Brewster sat up. “Boy, you look peachy tonight, Dorothy. Forget the skyline—I could look at you all night!”
Again, I felt my cheeks grow warm, but I bowed my head to let him know that I wouldn’t mind him looking at me, not at all.
“Gee, you’re even prettier when you blush.” He patted the cushion beside his own. “Sorry Mother was so rude to you at dinner. She makes me so mad, talking about matchmaking and stuff. Even in Europe, when we were over there, it was supposed to be an educational tour, but I could barely glance at the world-class museums or centuries-old ruins without being interrupted by her blabbing. The only time I had a minute’s peace was when we were at sea. Those nights, I used to wait for her to go to sleep, fortified by rich food and too many martinis. Then I would sneak out on deck and stare up at the stars or down at the ocean. It was so peaceful with no one speaking or making a sound that I almost wished I had been born to some other life, to be a sailor or even a merman.” He laughed. “You think I’m nuts, right, believing in merfolk?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, don’t lie. You think I’m insane. But when I was a little boy, my tutor used to tell me fantastical stories of people living in castles undersea. Mother accused him of filling my head with nonsense, and he stopped. But I don’t think it was nonsense, do you?”
When I shook my head, he said, “You know, half the earth’s covered with water. To me, it only makes sense that someone would live there, someone besides just fish. There are sailors who say they’ve seen them, and Barnum, the great showman, had one in his museum. Eliot wrote that poem, ‘I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.’ I feel that way sometimes.”
I wanted, oh, how I wanted to tell him it was all true, tell him of my life, what I had seen. I searched around for some way of saying, showing, of demonstrating it. My eyes lit upon a pad of paper, a pad much larger than the one upon which Cook had written her grocery list. Beside it, there were many different colored sticks. I wondered if I could use them to write, as Cook had with her stick called a pencil.
“What is it, Dorothy?” Brewster’s eyes followed mine, and he spied the pad at which I stared. “Did you wish to write me a note?”
When I nodded, he said, “Well, of course. Stupid of me. Those are Mother’s drawing things. She never uses them. She much prefers shopping and meddling in my life. She won’t notice. Go ahead.”
The pad was mounted on a sort of stand so that it stood up. I seized one of the colored sticks, the one that most resembled the reddish-orange coral we used for our homes. I
began to draw our castle. The more I drew, the more memories came back, and I filled in details, the rolling waves, the sea creatures, fish, starfish, octopi, the sandy ocean floor, and finally, my sisters and me. I turned to find Brewster very close, staring over my shoulder.
“Yes,” he said, “yes, that is exactly as I’d pictured it, almost as if you read my mind, Dorothy.” His hand encircled my waist, and with the other, he pulled me toward him. “You and I are so much alike. If you could only speak…”
Then, he kissed me. I knew about kisses, for merfolk kissed too. When a merman kisses a mermaid, it means they will be together forever, and as I kissed Brewster and felt his hands upon my body, I knew that it meant the same in the human world as well.
We kissed and touched and held each other until the click of the key in the lock told us it was time to go to bed.
“Tomorrow?” Brewster asked.
I nodded and was gone, but in my bed that night, I thought of him, his hands on me, lips on mine, and I knew I had done the right thing in coming there, knew I would forever be happy.
The next night, when I entered the sitting room, wearing a pink dress borrowed from Celia, Brewster said, “I got you something.”
I looked at him with a question in my eyes, and he took from behind his back a round disc, the kind he had used before on the Victrola.
Music! I loved music more than anything in the world. Well, anything except Brewster. I jumped up and down and clapped my hands.
He laughed. “You don’t even know what it is yet.”
I gestured that he should put it on the Victrola. He laughed again and did.
A man’s voice filled the room. It sang:
You’ve got me hypnotized.
I’m certainly mesmerized.
I thought I was wise;
Till I gazed in your beautiful eyes.
Brewster drew me to him, and we were dancing again, closer than before, so close I could feel his heartbeat, hear his breath in my ear, and when the song ended, we stood a moment, holding each other, him gazing into my eyes.
I looked away first, nervous. He said, “Do you want to hear it again?”
I nodded. I thought he would go to the Victrola and play the song again. Instead, he gazed deep into my eyes and sang.
You’ve got me hypnotized …
He held me, warm and close, and when he finished, he said, “Your eyes are so beautiful, Dorothy, the color of the ocean.”
His lips were on mine, and then we were falling onto the settee. He was crushing against me, touching every inch of me with his strong hands. “Would you … can I take you back to my room so we can be alone?” When I nodded, he kissed me so deeply I didn’t want it to end. In his room, we were even closer, kissing, caressing, not stopping for anything but the daylight, when I knew I had to leave.
As I stood by the door, ready to go, he called me. “Dorothy?”
I paused, knowing then he would tell me he loved me, ask me to be with him forever.
“I can’t see you tonight. My mother has arranged for some horrible heiress to come to dinner.”
I nodded. I remembered, Hestia Rivers.
“I don’t want to take one day from you, but I have to make the sacrifice. Mother…”
I placed my fingers to his lips and nodded to show I understood. Then, I leaned forward and kissed him.
“Saturday,” he said. “We’ll definitely be together Saturday.”
I nodded again. He hadn’t said he loved me, but I knew he did.
All day Friday, my feelings played shark and minnow with each other. Washing the dishes, I knew he loved me. Putting them away, I fretted that I would not see him tonight. Washing vegetables, I sang inside, “He kissed me!” Turning on the oven, I knew we had held each other. But as the flaming match drew closer to my fingertips, I knew he would see me only as a serving girl tonight.
Yet, as evening fell and the city lights once again became stars, I knew he loved me. He loved me. He only had to satisfy his mother that Hestia Rivers was not the girl for him. I was. I was, after all, the one who had saved his life.
“Oh, you poor dear,” Celia said when Cook told her who was coming. “To have to see him with another girl. Never you worry. I shall do all the serving. You just get things ready in the kitchen.”
Again, my emotions scattered like a school of fish, invaded by a predator. Of course I didn’t want to see him with another girl. And yet, I wanted desperately to see him.
So, while Celia bustled back and forth, carrying plates and glasses, oysters and soup, I stood by and tried to hear the conversation. Finally, as the dessert was to be brought in, I could stand it no longer. I seized a tray of something called crème brûlée from Celia’s hands and practically dove into the dining room with it.
I had hoped to see him perturbed, bored, annoyed. Likewise, I had hoped to see in Hestia Rivers exactly the sort of boorish girl Brewster had described. I was disappointed in both regards. The girl sitting at Brewster’s side was lovely, dainty, and delicate with long, blond, curled hair, much like my own. Her blue eyes sparkled as she spoke. There was something strangely familiar about her too.
And Brewster, he was laughing.
“Miss Rivers, that is the cleverest thing I have ever heard,” he said.
I, who could say nothing, only stared.
“See,” his mother said. “So I was right in making the introduction. You should listen to your mother more often.”
“How could I have known?” Brewster said. “I knew I could love only the girl who had rescued me from the ocean, who held my hand as we waited for Carpathia.” He gazed at the girl, at Hestia, with something approaching adoration.
That was when I recognized her. Of course! Hestia Rivers had been on the lifeboat! She had been the young lady dozing on the other side of it as I pulled Brewster out of the water, as I had saved his life. Then, after I’d left, perhaps she had held his hand, but that was it. I was the one who had saved him. I was the one who loved him, not her. Yet I could say nothing to him, nothing. Brewster thought Hestia had saved him!
I felt the tray of crème brûlée teeter in my frozen hands, and before I could come to my senses enough to stop it, before I could even think to want to, it fell from my fingers and crashed to the floor.
“Clumsy oaf!” his mother shrieked. “You’ve ruined everything!”
I tried, mutely, to apologize, but I could not even see her through the waves of tears.
“Clean it up!” she screamed as her husband tried to calm her. “Clean it up, and then pack your bags and leave this instant.”
“Mother.” Brewster came to my rescue. “It was an accident. Surely it is not necessary to throw Dorothy into the streets at night.”
I stared up at him with something like gratitude even as my fingers worked among the shattered, sticky dishes. He did love me. It would be all right.
“At least let her stay until morning,” he said.
Until morning!
Beside him, Hestia was agreeing. “Yes, Mrs. Davis, it is quite all right. I know a little restaurant on Canal Street that serves dessert. Perhaps Brewster would like to take me there—and then out dancing.”
“I’d be glad to,” Brewster said, “although I was rather hoping to keep you here. I’ve purchased some new records for the Victrola. There’s a swell one called ‘You’ve Got Me Hypnotized.’”
I felt a sharp pain. A shard of china had jabbed my finger.
“Well, perhaps we can do that tomorrow,” Hestia said.
“Yes, tomorrow,” Brewster agreed. “Indeed, I wish to see you every night, now that I’ve found you again.”
I sat sucking my bleeding finger; my tears became a tidal wave.
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, okay,” said Mrs. Davis. “Stop the blubbering, you little fool, and get Celia to help you with that mess. You can stay until tomorrow, but no longer.”
She chased me from the room, so I needed not hear Brewster and Hestia, talking, laughing, making th
eir plans, falling in love.
Eventually, the dishes and every bit of crème brûlée was cleared under Celia’s watchful, unsympathetic eye. Eventually, my meager possessions were packed in an old pillowslip, and I went to bed.
But I did not sleep. Instead, I waited, waited for the turn of Brewster’s key in the lock, and waited too for some answer to the questions that filled my head. What was I to do? Where was I to go? I had gambled, gambled everything like men on ships did in their card games, and I had lost. I not only had no Brewster, no job, no place to live, I had no family. I had no ocean. I had no voice. I had no tail.
I had nothing.
It was well after the clock had rung twelve times when I finally heard Brewster enter the house. Then, I heard voices.
“How did it go? Tell me everything.” That was his mother.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” Brewster said, laughing. “Not only is Hestia Rivers neither fat nor vulgar; she is, in fact, exactly the girl I sought. You shall hear wedding bells within the year, I wager.”
Their voices were low, but they filled the silent house, punishing my ears.
“Indeed,” his mother said. “I feared you were going to run off with the serving girl.”
He laughed. “Oh, that was nothing. Can’t expect me to ignore a pretty girl in my own house.”
And then the doors closed and the house was silent. It was not in my power to break that silence, and if it had been, I would not have screamed and raged, for it would have defeated my purpose. I knew now what that purpose was.
My purpose was to steal as quietly as possible from my bedroom.
To stop once more to gaze out the window and see the human world with its strings of stars, the world I had so long coveted, the world which had betrayed me.
To walk to the kitchen.
To open the oven door without a squeak.
To turn the knob.
To forget to light a match.
To position myself on the floor beside the oven.
To wait for sleep to come.
Then, I was floating, floating high in the air, above myself, looking down at the kitchen and the oven and, indeed, down upon the golden-haired girl in a borrowed white nightgown. At each side, an arm supported me, and there were voices.