False Mermaid

Eleanor left the window and sat on the edge of the bed that she and Tom had shared for forty years. She picked up the telephone receiver and dialed, plunging in when she heard the answer at the other end: “Hello, Peter, it’s Eleanor… Yes, we’re fine. How is Miranda? And how are you finding everything at the house?” She heard the strange, false notes in her own voice, as she stared down at Tom working in the garden, watching deadheads as they fell, one by one, into his sack. “And how is Elizabeth? We’re both so anxious and excited to see her. That’s what I’m calling about.”

9

A few minutes before eight, the lights began to blink off inside the Phnom Penh restaurant on University Avenue. Dinner business must be slow. Nora studied the sign on the brightly painted red and yellow storefront, top half in English, the bottom half in curling Khmer script. The fisherman she’d seen down at the river was the last one out, slipping through the side door just before the man with the keys locked up and closed the extra security gate. The men scattered silently, and the fisherman bent to unlock a bicycle chained to the fence.

The place he headed to was not far, a typical old Frogtown clapboard house, clad in terrible redwood siding, with an exterior staircase to the second floor. The fisherman locked his bike to the metal stair rail and had just placed his foot on the first step when Nora ventured to speak: “Excuse me—”

She was about ten feet away from him. He turned, braced for something, and glanced quickly up and down the street—what was he expecting? Better talk fast. She said: “I wonder if I could talk to you for a second?” His avoidance of Janelle Joyner and her cameraman down at the river gave her an idea. “I’m not a reporter, not with the police.”

He started to back up the stairs, and Nora felt a stab of panic. “Wait, don’t go. Please.” She began rummaging in her bag, conscious of the troupe of neighborhood kids down the block who’d started to notice her presence. They were about fifty yards away, pulling a beat-up red wagon along the sidewalk. She didn’t want to make trouble for the fisherman, but need drove her forward. She held up Tríona’s picture. “The person you found at the river. My sister.”

She felt guilty for lying, but couldn’t take the time to explain. Natalie Russo could have been someone’s sister. Frank had mentioned an interpreter. Maybe this man had no idea what she was saying. Her heart leapt when he said: “Your sister?”

“Yes—my sister. The person you found.” She reached back into the bag again and pulled out Peter Hallett’s picture. “What about this man? Did you ever see this man at the river?”

Too much—the fisherman started backing away again, glancing sidelong at the approaching gang of children. One of the older kids called out to him in a language she couldn’t understand. From the tone, it was not a friendly hail.

He spoke under his breath, clearly anxious to get away. “This place—not good. You go now. I fish river, same place every day—very early. Big tree.” His hands suggested a sloping trunk. “You find me there.”

He was up the stairs and gone before she could even react. She tucked Tríona’s photo inside her bag, and turned to find the children swarming around her. She looked down at smudged faces. In the wagon were four squirming puppies, panting from the heat.

“Hey lady,” one of the kids sang out. “Wanna buy a dog? Only five”—a swift kick from one of his compatriots changed his tune—“I mean, ten dollars. Cheap.”

She looked down at the dog he held up, a mixed breed somewhere between a golden retriever and a husky.

“He’s beautiful, but I can’t—”

“Tony’s dad is going to drown them. He said so.”

“Can you keep them until tomorrow?” They looked at one another, shrugging. “Do you know the clinic around the corner? If you bring them over there in the morning, I know some people who might be interested. I’m sorry—I have to go now.”

She climbed into her car, suddenly surrounded by a group of older boys on bicycles, their figures throwing long shadows in the fierce horizontal light of the setting sun. They balanced on their bikes, holding on to the car’s frame so that she couldn’t ease out of her parking spot without fear of doing one of them injury. Wannabe gangsters, too young for the real thing, not much older than the kids hawking the puppies. As if responding to some silent signal, the boys began to pound on the car with the palms of their hands, slowly at first, then building to a thundering crescendo as Nora sat locked inside, debating whether to call 911, imagining the operator’s voice. What is the nature of your emergency?