False Mermaid

Yesterday already seemed like a dream, waking up to the sound of the sea outside at the Donovans’ house, then the long drive to this place, and stopping at that spit of land where the one-eyed seal came swimming up to her. It was just as if they had never been apart. Her brain said it wasn’t possible—her old friend from Useless Bay couldn’t have followed her all the way to this place. Ireland must be at least halfway around the world from Seattle. But how many seals had such an identical star-shaped spot? And the way it had watched her, too—bobbing high out of the water, just like her friend back at Useless Bay. She wanted to call out to it in that strange, inhuman language she had sometimes heard it use, but she had not made a sound.

A dull pressure in her abdomen said it was time to find the bathroom. She slid out of bed and crept down the hall, holding her breath when her foot set off a loud creak from one of the floorboards. The bathroom door had a rippled glass window; inside was a deep bathtub with feet, and one of those high, old-fashioned toilets with a chain for a handle. She slipped inside and shut the door, imagining that everyone downstairs could hear her moving about. Each embarrassing noise—the click of the latch, the squeaking hinges, and especially the hollow splash as she emptied her bladder—seemed magnified in the echoing room.

While washing her hands, Elizabeth examined her newly shorn head in the mirror, pulling at the uneven tufts, remembering the weight of each handful of long hair as it was cut, how it looked at the bottom of that wastebasket. She had never held any desire to be part of the secret, grown-up world, and had focused all her energy the past few months on refusing to be dragged over that threshold. But the transformation was happening anyway, against her will. She didn’t know the person who looked back at her from the mirror. At times it felt like there was someone else, something else inside her—a dangerous, wild creature who might come screeching out if she opened her mouth.

She opened the bathroom door and stood listening to a pair of voices from downstairs. One was Cormac—was he Nora’s boyfriend? From the way he’d acted last night, she thought he might be. Elizabeth tiptoed to the top of the stairs and saw him in the hallway below talking to Roz, the woman they’d met last night. Cormac was speaking to her now in a low voice, as if he didn’t want Nora to hear. “Please don’t go, Roz. You don’t have to leave.”

“I do, Cormac. I can’t stay here.”

“He could come back to himself anytime.”

Elizabeth wondered who they were talking about.

“Please, Cormac—we both know he won’t. I‘m not sure I can take that look in his eyes, day after day.”

“What about your work here—do you not want to go back to the selkie cottage?”

“I’ve finished all the interviews I had planned. I’m never going to find Mary Heaney, Cormac. She just became an excuse to stay on—”

Roz began to cry, and Cormac put his arms around her. Elizabeth’s stomach began to squeeze tight. Maybe he wasn’t Nora’s boyfriend after all. She went back to the bedroom, unsure whether she should go downstairs, and remembering another conversation she’d overheard three days ago. Her dad hadn’t known she was on the landing, but she had heard every word they said.

“I can’t believe you don’t see what she’s up to. All this acting out, trying to get your attention, just when we’re supposed to be going away? It’s her way of getting Daddy all to herself again. That’s what she’s wanted from the beginning.”

“She’s only a kid, Miranda.”

“You really don’t see it, do you? I can’t believe you’re so blind—”

“That’s enough. Something could have happened to her down at the river.”

“Nothing happened.”

“All right, maybe nothing did happen, but what was she doing, running off like that? Did you say something?”

“Oh, that’s rich. The kid runs off, and naturally I’m to blame. Maybe it had nothing to do with me. Maybe she’s more like her mother than you thought—”