False Mermaid

It was just after five when Nora arrived at her parents’ back door. No one answered the bell, and perhaps it was just as well; she hadn’t yet worked out what to say to them. How could she speak about the shattered skull at the morgue this morning, about her visit to the river, seeing Elizabeth? She still felt peculiar, thinking about that ghostly vision of Tríona through the glass wall in Lowertown, the book turned inward on the library shelf, the way she happened to catch a glimpse of Harry Shaughnessy’s stained sweatshirt. Now, at the end of the day, it all seemed like the addled plotline of a dream. She had considered going to the homeless camp below the power station, but couldn’t convince herself that it would be either useful or prudent. There were probably lots of possible explanations for how Shaughnessy had come into possession of that sweatshirt, how it came to have that rusty-looking stain.

She glanced at her watch. Too late to call Cormac—she’d missed her chance. Pressing the bell again, she heard the old-fashioned ringer echoing through empty rooms. Her parents were probably still at work. It wasn’t exactly as if they were expecting her.

She fished for her jumble of keys, which still included one for this house. Being here brought back dim recollections of the day they’d moved in more than thirty years ago, including the creeping apprehension she’d felt about a new house, a whole new country. Curiosity had quickly supplanted fear as she began to explore all the secret, hidden places here—the cellar and the closets, even an attic—all so different from their home in Ireland, so wonderfully foreign. It seemed so long ago now.

Walking through the kitchen and dining room to the front porch, she could make out the constant, faint hum of the freeway; in the far distance, the river bluffs were just visible through the trees. She suddenly remembered another summer night. The family was out here on the porch, just home from a summer holiday in Donegal. The weather had been unusually fine, warm enough to go swimming among the small, rocky islands in the bay near their rented cottage. Tríona had gone out too far, paddling until she was only a small, bright head bobbing between the waves. Then she disappeared. Their father had panicked, diving in and racing out to the island, where he found Tríona, coughing and spluttering on the rocks. She claimed a seal had rescued her from drowning. Nora had remained unconvinced, choosing to believe that Tríona had made the whole thing up, that she’d only pretended to drown to get attention. She was always doing things like that. Why was it no one else had seen any seals about?

Back home again two days after the misadventure, Tríona lay spread-eagled on the ottoman, rolling her small island around the porch as she paddled her arms and legs. Nora particularly remembered how the hollow noise of the casters against the porch floor had grated on her nerves. “Tríona, would you ever stop making that noise? Mam, make her stop!”

Tríona steered the ottoman to the middle of the room. She said: “I was just wondering what it would be like to be a seal.” She flopped over on her back, looking up, as if the reflections that played on the ceiling were the surface of the ocean above her.

Nora remembered how she had been poised to make some cutting remark, but their mother, busy at a crossword at the other end of the porch, murmured absently: “We can get you a book about seals at the library, Tríona, if you want to know about them—”

“I don’t want to know, Mam—I just want to wonder. Did you know they look like they’re flying underwater? I wonder what they see out there, under the sea…”

Nora remembered feeling another reality rise up before her in that moment: whales and jellyfish and giant tortoises, sea snakes, and water spouts. She could feel the profound silence beneath endless swells. And suddenly she knew that Tríona hadn’t been lying about the seal at all. She didn’t have to lie. The world overflowed with wonders. Just because something was extraordinary or inexplicable—that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Though they were as far from any ocean as it was possible to be, she had been immersed, feeling the pull of salt water half a continent away.

Back in the present, Nora gave the ottoman a little shove with her foot, listening to the hollow noise it made on the floorboards. Tríona had probably never understood what a rare gift she had passed along that night—only the first of many.