I fro,,Anled. "The actress who starred in all those 1950s swimming musicals?"
"Uh huh. Esther. It's a good Bible name, too. You'll make the Baptists happy." She raised her cup. "I christen you-"
"No, I don't want to be Esther. No offense to Esther Williams, or to the Baptists, but I like the classic symbolism of Atargatis."
"Atar-who?" Miriam repeated darkly, and rolled her eyes. "Too late. We christen you-"
"Atar-who!" Lily interjected loudly. She scowled at the others. "If Karen wants to be Atar-who, she should be Atar-who. It doesn't matter what her name is, anyway. We love her."
Lula huffed. "Now, look, June-"
Miriam slapped a hand on her sequined hip. "It's nearly show time. Let's not debate it."
"Oh, all right." Lula looked at me fiendishly. "We christen you Atarwho."
I shook a finger. "No, no, not Atar-who, Atar-"
"Atar-who," everyone chorused. Then, laughing, they poured their cups on me.
Lily smiled with victory, not realizing she was the child who'd just let her brother name the new kitten `Pukey Smelly Butt' because she had no idea what the words meant. "Atar-who! I like it!"
The pleased expression on her face settled the issue for me. "All right, I'm happy to be `Atar-who, the mermaid,"' I agreed hoarsely, and gave her a hug.
Miriam was right. The alchemy of fantasy, of eternal youth and sensuality, shimmered through the water and electrified me. Perhaps Ponce de Leon really had explored these realms. Perhaps his fabled fountain of youth wasn't an elixir but an immersion. Many religions understand the powerful symbolism of bringing forth the sinner, re-birthed, from water.
Re-birthed. Born anew, into a new identity.
Atar-who, the mermaid.
When the music played in my earpiece and the theatrical underwater lights swept over me the first time, goose bumps rose on my arms, and I cried while smiling. Here's a revelation: Underwater, no one can see your tears. Silly though it may sound, I felt like a beauty queen, and, for the first time in my life, like a breathtaking Carnivale princess. I felt sexy. My birth mother had given me a name. My birth father watched me proudly in the stadium seats behind the Plexiglas wall. And so did Ben.
Curl left. Curl right. Kick, one two three, the show's director, a retired mermaid named Josie, from Alabama, directed me in a heavy drawl, via my earpiece. Don't forget to smile, Karen. Sweetie pie? Relax. You gotta make it look easy.
Easy? Nothing about being a mermaid was easy. Of the twenty women participating in the show, I was the only rookie, the only amateur who needed coaching to stay in sync. An ingenue. That's how I preferred to think of myself. All the other performers, including Miriam and Lula, were at least sixty years old, veterans of the mermaid glory days at Weeki Wachee Springs. The audience was there to see them, not me.
I had some large flippers to fill.
But I also had a family. Or rather, this dual entity, Karen Johnson and Atar-who, had one. Only Kara Whittenbrook was an orphan.
Emotions got the best of me. My contributions to the night's show were modest. I performed as a mere member of the chorus, achieving only background status, not a star performer. Several times I dropped my oxygen line, fumbled my watery pirouettes, bumped into fake coral, and was sideswiped once or twice by passing bass. I cast furtive glances at the impenetrable glass wall between us and the world of dry spectators, wondering what the New York Times reporter thought of our quaint show.
During pre- show interviews I'd judged her an aloof, cynical person, attired in dull earth tones and workable leathers, as if her mission included perpetuating cool, New York, urban style in the midst of sweaty, gaudy Florida.
She has no idea what she's missing, I thought. This show is spectacular. Perfect. A nostalgic hit. An homage to every quirky roadside attraction that ever lured a wood-paneled station wagon filled with all-American nuclear families on their way to a heady week at a beach motel with a kitchenette and a charcoal grill. A salute to American kitsch.
Then, the alligator arrived.
Perhaps the ten-foot reptile visited the spring that night in hopes of finding a mate, or was simply curious. Or perhaps it was sad fate. At any rate, as the underwater lights swept a rainbow of pastel hues over us during the show's finale, I undulated my arms in the background while Miriam, Lula and the other veterans lip-synced the words to Bali Ha'i, from South Pacific-how magical. The words bubbled underwater. Music, underwater, becomes a glorious effervescence, as if the song were a glass of champagne.
Meanwhile, the ten-foot alligator glided, stage left, into the fizzing water.
And headed straight for me.
Ignore him, keep goal', Josie ordered in my ear. He's just nosy. He'll leave in a second.
Nosy? Try hungry and murderous. Somewhere in the alligator's walnut-sized reptilian brain, neurons transmitted a simple message: Open jaws. Shut jaws. Swallow the redheaded mermaid.
He clamped his prehistorically designed teeth on my shimmering tail fins and refused to let go. All he had to do was drown me, then drag my carcass somewhere convenient for his dining pleasure.
As a child in the rainforest I'd often played with tiny, exotic lizards, letting them clamp their soft, resolute mouths on my shirt fronts or even my ear lobes. The lizards held on with single-minded obsession, which amused me and the local tribal children no end. And I had never been afraid of their larger cousins.
Until now.
Most of the mermaids swam to safety with no thought of rescuing me, their ingenue mer sister, but Miriam, Lula and Teegee swam to the alligator and slapped him on the head. He didn't even blink.
I'm not certain alligators can blink.
I took a quick suck of oxygen from my air hose then tried to dolphinkick until the alligator let go. But he simply settled on a sandy shelf among the fake coral, pulling me down with him. I fumbled my air hose and dropped it.
I was going to drown. And then be eaten like a sequined fish stick.
A huge swhoosh of human energy plunged beside me, and another behind me. I looked down through a veil of bubbles.
Mac. And Lily.
Lily, her cheeks bulging with air, grabbed my arm and pulled.
Mac latched his big hands onto the alligator's snout, trying to pry its jaws open. At the same time, Ben leapt into the water behind me. He unzipped my tail from waist to knees and pulled me out of it. Thank goodness, I was wearing panties.
Ben, Lily and I shot to the surface, coming up under the same walkway that had been my undoing before. This time, however, an errant nail was the least of the problem. I shoved Lily up the ladder and Ben shoved me up behind her. The other mermaids helped us out.
Ben took a deep breath then dived down to rescue Mac.
"Mac!" Lily screamed, huddling on the platform alongside me. We stared into the swirling water-filled with bubbles from deserted air hoses-and then blood. Lily screamed again. I put an arm around her and held her tightly. Ben and my father were in danger. All that blood in the water.
My father.
And Ben.
Finally, Mac and Ben speared the surface, gasping. Mac flailed like a child; it was only later I learned he couldn't swim. Ben pulled him by the shirt collar and the rest of us helped him out. Lily burst into tears and flung herself at him. He held her and they sat on the platform, rocking. As Ben climbed up the ladder after him, I saw blood oozing from his left hand.
He stretched out, gasping. I studied the gash. A small wound for so much blood. I bent over him urgently, searching his soggy shirt and pants for torn cloth, for evidence of worse wounds. He was covered in blood. As my hands prodded his thighs I said loudly, "Ben, where does it hurt the most?"
Through ragged inhalations he answered, "Right where you're ... poling ... my ball-"
The alligator's body floated to the surface. The handle of Ben's pocket knife protruded from one corner of its jaw. Ben had slit its throat.
Ben sat up wearily, streaming bloody water over the platform. I looked fro
m the dead alligator to Mac and Lily, who had calmed down. Mac smiled at me. This big, simple man had once again come to my rescue. Mac did not hesitate. He did not weigh the risks. He was, simply, my protector.
"You oh-oh-oh-okay, little girl?" he asked.
Nearly crying, I nodded. "Yes. Thank you."
"What about me?" Ben drawled. "Huh?"
"Benji," Joey cried. Bigfoot and Cheech had rolled him to the scene.
"I'm okay, baby bubba. You breathe easy, now. It's okay. Turn up his oxygen, Cheech."
"Si, Boss."
Joey looked at me tearfully. "I knew the gator wouldn't eat you. They don't eat mermaids."
So much faith. So much love. I nodded again, my throat working. "I'm glad you think so."
`Ben wouldn't let `em."
"No, he wouldn't, I'm sure."
I looked at Ben with a tearful smile. Ben had killed a ... a dragon in my honor. Even though I didn't blame the dragon, and, in fact, felt sorry for the dragon, I was relieved.
Every compassionately civilized lobe of my brain regretted the alligator's death, while every luridly uncivilized tingle in my body wanted to cling to Ben and whisper, `My hero. You saved me from the marauding beast.'
The New York Times reporter walked out onto the platform with her miniature tape recorder, a notepad, and a very pale face. "Is this a common problem at your mermaid shows?" she asked. "Alligator attacks?" Miriam and the others assured her it was not, but they looked dazed and disappointed. So much for luring investors, other than the producers of reality TV shows. Maybe we'd get an offer from those.
Smack down: alligators versus mermaids.
"Just bad luck," Miriam said dully.
The reporter scribbled some notes then dropped to her heels beside Ben and me. She held out her tape recorder. "As a native Florida rancher and an expert on local wildlife, Mr. Thocco, what are you going to take away from this experience?"
Ben, unlike the rest of us, wasn't fazed. He watched the dead alligator float past. "I'll take a new, gator-skin hat band for me, some gator-skin boots for Mac, and a mess of fried gator tail for everybody else. Roy! You and Bigfoot grab hold of that carcass `fore it floats downstream. Possum, you get a skinnin' knife outta my truck."
"Okay, Ben," they chorused.
I smiled. Here was a knight who slayed beasts in his lady's defense.
And then recycled them.
That's when I realized I loved him.
"Five stitches, some antibiotic ointment, and he's good to go," said Gloria at the Fountain Springs ER clinic that night. "Maybe you and Ben aren't cut out for mermaid shows, ya think?"
"It was another freak accident. Can I see him now, please?"
"Sure."
I knocked and went in. He sat on my personal exam table, wearing nothing but a large mermaid towel around his waist and legs. After all, his clothes had been soaked with bloody water.
El Diablo's bare chest.
My heart fluttered. It really did.
His chest was ten years older than the one I'd adored. That only made it better. It was broader, fuller, a mature crown for a very masculine torso. Fine black hair curled down the center and disappeared beneath his towel.
His skin was tanned atop a natural olive tone inherited from his father. He had scars and briar scratches, a few freckles and a number of small, healing insect bites. The back of his left hand bore a clear bandage over a sewn gash.
El Diablo had always been groomed and tanned. Blemish-free. Ben had imperfections. But they made him sexier, to me.
I sat down on the same stool he'd sat on when I was a patient, there. "I promise you some delicious fried alligator kabobs for dinner," I said. "I'll batter them in whole wheat flour and soy milk. With a dip of hearty Dijon mustard and saw palmetto honey."
"Yum."
"You're welcome."
"You okay?"
"Me? I'm not the one who needed stitches. Nor am I the one who pried an alligator's mouth open with my bare hands. The kudos go to you and Mac. And to Lily, who would have drowned alongside me rather than let me drown alone."
"You look kinda pale."
I had been worried about him, but I didn't say so. "I'm a failed mermaid. My name is Atar-who. It might as well be Atar-who-cares? The reporter will write some amusing, cynically sophisticated and ironic piece about the vagaries of `old Florida's' attempt at nostalgia, a vain attempt at recalling the innocence of a time before giant shopping malls and six-lane interstates and casinos and Disney parks, a time when a long beach weekend at a tiny pastel motor court was a luxurious family vacation despite a leaky window air conditioner and sand in the carpet, and she'll never understand that it's so much more than that."
"You understand pretty good, for a Yankee," he said gently. "Like you were born here. Like it's in your blood."
"I ... appreciate all authentic places. And all authentic people. And-" I stood, my heart pounding-"all true heroes." I leaned over and kissed him. Lightly and quickly, on the mouth. He reached for me but I backed away. "Everyone from the ranch is outside that door. Listening." I pointed from my lips to his. "This is the only thing they can't hear. Kissing is like crying underwater. A silent joy."
He held out his wounded hand, palm up. "Our secret."
"Fair enough," I said. And I kissed the palm of his hand, in promise.
A week later, everyone at the ranch sat around the big kitchen table while Miriam read the New York Times feature aloud.
"The mermaids of Kissme Woomee Springs are older, heavier and slower than your average svelte mermaid of lore," she read through pinkrimmed glasses with rhinestone mermaids at the temples. "And then there was their young protege, the somewhat zaft q redheaded mermaid, who had to be rescued from a hungry, ten-foot alligator by a bluejeaned, Seminole cowboy. Who didn't bring along his seahorse. All in all, the quaint show proved that not all nostalgic tourist attractions are worth saving, and, in the case of the alligator attack, some retro entertainments depend more on trauma than drama."
"What's a young pro ... pro ... prote-" Mac tried.
"It's a student," I supplied.
"What's zaftig mean?" Lily asked.
"It means sweet," Ben said quickly.
"It means overweight," I corrected, but gave him a grateful look.
Lily studied me solemnly. "What's overweight mean?"
Doh. "Pleasingly normal," I said. "Just right." I was only zaftig if judged by the standards of an anorexic reporter.
Lily smiled. "You're just right. I knew it."
Miriam laid the paper down. "So much for gettin' investors."
"Yankee bitch," Lula intoned, flinging a red-nailed forefinger at the paper. "We shoulda drowned her."
Dale shook her head. "Bitch is a bad word. Jesus doesn't like it."
Lula sighed. "I know, Miss Dale, but Jesus ai1'tworried about paying the utilities for the next mermaid show."
The mood in the kitchen turned darker. Cheech and Bigfoot sidled closer to their forlorn lady, Lula. Possum crept under the table and sat, hugging his knees. Mac, Lily, Joey, and even Mr. Darcy and Rhubarb looked at Ben and me worriedly. Miriam and Lula just moped.
The kitchen phone rang. "I'll get it," I said quickly. I plucked a receiver off a faded yellow push-button console attached to the planks wall by the cabinets. "Hello?" I listened. "Just a moment, please. She's right here." I handed the receiver to Miriam. "It's for you. A gentleman from California. Los Angeles, I believe he said."
Miriam covered the phone with her palm. "I don't know nobody from California."
"Just see who it is!" Lula hissed.
"Hello? Miriam here." I watched her listen. I watched her heavily mascaraed eyes stop frowning and go wide among their tanned crevices, like flowering marbles. "Uh huh," she said. Then, "All right." And finally, "Ohmygawd, I gotta talk to the other gals. You email me all this information and I'll get back to you later, all right? And ... and you ... you tell Mr. Spielberg I sure do like his movies. Well, except for a few of `em. That on
e about the robot boy, that was just weird ... never mind. Thank you. Bye."
She laid the receiver down and stared at it. Ben frowned. "You okay?"
Joey held out his oxygen cannula. "You need some air?"
"Sister?" Lula said loudly. "You're not havin' a stroke, are you?"
Miriam took a deep breath. "Mr. Stephen World Famous Movie Director Spielberg read the story about us in the New York paper and wants to buy the rights to make a movie about Kissme Woomee. For a hundred-thousand dollars."
"Thank you, Jesus," Dale shouted.
Lula chortled. "We can build a concession stand and pave the parking lot and put up an underwater fence to keep out alligators."
Ben and I sat there, looking at each other. He shook his head in wonder. "Who woulda thought?"
"Amazing," I said. I watched a tiny, blue lizard slither furtively along the kitchen window sill. He snatched a gnat off a ripening tomato then disappeared through a crevice between the sill and the window sash.
Stealth, in service to idealistic dreams, has a beauty of its own.
"Very inventive," I said to Sedge that night. "Do we know Mr. Spielberg personally?"
"No, but we know people who know people who know him. And we've invested in several projects of his over the years."
"I see. How appropriate, since what I went through with the alligator might have been a scene from jaws."
"My dear, you are getting in over your head. Literally."
"No. But if I do get in over my head-" I gazed through the soft darkness at daisies shimmering on the wallpaper like happy faces, "-there are people here who will always rescue me."
Part Three
"But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way."
-Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Chapter 15
Ben
"You awake? Ben? Wake up, hoss."
Miriam poked me in the shoulder with a fingernail. Hot summer dawn light slipped inside my eyelids like gold mist. I squinted. On his doggie pillow atop the plank floor, Rhubarb stretched and yawned. Two feet higher off the floor, Joey wheezed in his new queen-sized adjustable bed, which had a motorized head and foot rest plus massage action. He wore his favorite Star Wars nightshirt and hugged a pillow with a Spiderman Three pillowcase. His oxygen concentrator hissed and bubbled in the room's corner. A platter full of medicine bottles waited on a bedside table.