Meredith
Present Day
After they finished clearing what they could out of the light room, Meredith invited Art over for dinner.
“It’s the least I can do,” she said.
He shook his head. “Appreciate the offer, but I don’t think your mom would like it much.”
“So?”
He laughed once, but it quickly became a frown. “Seriously. Probably not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.”
“What isn’t with her?”
“I don’t think you give her enough credit.”
“Pot, meet kettle.” She smirked. “Come over. Have dinner. Please.”
She knew she’d won when he shrugged, all out of excuses.
They said a brief goodbye, and Meredith went straight to the house, desperate for a hot shower.
Her mother and Alice were back from the beach, probably had been for a while. Meredith doubted her mother would’ve lasted longer than an hour that close to the water, but she wanted Alice to spend time outside, to enjoy the place a little, even if it was only for a short time.
She found her mother in the living room, flipping through a book without really looking at the pages.
“Did you two have a good time?” Meredith asked.
“It was fine.” Judith turned the page.
“Great.” Meredith was rooted to the spot, unable to leave, but with nothing else to say and therefore no reason to stay put. Maybe she was just expecting something more out of her mother. She wanted to tell her what she found in the lighthouse, but she wanted her mother to ask first, to at least pretend to be interested. It was like being thirteen all over again.
She noticed the wall behind the chair, full of pictures, none of which had Meredith in them. There were several of her stepdad, posed proudly in front of the lighthouse, the garage where he worked on stuff for the museum, and others with his arm draped protectively around her mother’s shoulders, her mother sunken in with a tight smile on her face. In the far corner was a picture of her parents in front of the lighthouse, a tall man with slicked-back, black hair between them, his smile all teeth and bloodred gums. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the guy who was shouting outside the museum.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
Judith grudgingly turned in her chair to follow Meredith’s pointed finger. “You don’t remember Vik?”
“The name sounds familiar.”
“He was around more when you were little. Couldn’t get enough of you.”
“Huh.”
Judith rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t anything inappropriate, Meredith.”
“I didn’t say it was.” But now that her mother had brought it up, she couldn’t help but wonder. He gave off a creepy vibe. She couldn’t imagine being drawn to him as a kid. “He still live around here?”
She nodded. “Farther inland, I think.”
“You don’t talk anymore?”
“He…helps me sometimes. He’s a good man.” She closed her book. “What’s this sudden interest in my life?”
Sudden? She’d been trying to probe the past out of her mother for decades. “I saw him down by the museum today. He was freaking out over something. I don’t know…”
Frowning, Judith glanced back at the photograph. “You must’ve been mistaken. Vik isn’t the type to freak out.”
“Everybody freaks out sometimes, Mom.” This conversation, exhibit A. “It’s not a big deal.”
“This is just like you, Meredith. Telling stories to get attention.”
“What are you talking about? I was just wondering—”
“Vik is a good man. He was there for me at a time when no one else was.”
You said that, Meredith thought. She didn’t like where this conversation was going. “What about Dad?” Having never known her birth father, her stepdad had always been Dad.
“What about him?”
What was Mom looking for? Did she want Meredith to spell it out? Wilting under her mother’s steely gaze, she couldn’t do it. “Nothing. I… Nothing.” After a long minute, she added, “Sorry.”
The tension never left Judith’s shoulders, but she sat back in the chair and reopened her book. “Leave Vik alone. Understand?”
Anxious to end the conversation, Meredith nodded. “Where’s Alice?”
“Upstairs somewhere.” Judith flipped a page, and Meredith noticed a slight tremor. “Hiding.”
Meredith’s stomach dropped. Hiding?
It took a minute to find Alice, who’d sequestered herself in the hall closet and didn’t answer Meredith when she called for her. She’d taken most of the towels down and stacked them around her body, like a half-built igloo. Meredith didn’t notice she’d been crying until she clicked the hallway light on.
Ignoring the stench wafting off her own clothes, she knelt and pried Alice from the towel structure and hugged her. “What happened, sweetie?”
Sobs bubbled up from Alice’s chest like hiccups. “G-gr-grandma. She hates me. S-she…”
That was it. Judith could torment Meredith all she liked, but Alice was off-limits to her mother’s barbed tongue.
Standing, Meredith grabbed Alice’s hand and half dragged, half carried Alice from the hallway into the living room. Judith looked up from the book, still holding the page, midturn.
Meredith nudged Alice forward, her tear-soaked face an accusation. “What did you do?”
Judith’s gaze went from Meredith to Alice and back again. Her expression faltered into something like confusion before hardening.
Meredith turned to Alice. “What happened, baby? Tell me.”
“Is that what you do at home?” Judith asked. “Put your child in the middle?” Then, “What’s that god-awful smell?”
Heat slashed through Meredith’s body. She ignored the dig—she’d had years of practice—and focused on her daughter. Alice’s lip trembled, and she kept snatching looks at Judith, like she was afraid of getting in trouble. The thought that there might be a whisper of truth to what Judith implied rose and was squashed just as quickly. Meredith was a good mom. Better than Judith had been.
“You stink, Mom,” Alice whispered.
Meredith smiled thinly. “I know. I promise I’ll shower as soon as you tell me what happened.”
Alice sighed and it seemed to take everything out of her. “I found a shell. It was pink and pretty and had little spikes on it. It looked like a hedgehog.” She paused.
“And you love hedgehogs,” Meredith said, urging her on.
Alice nodded. “They used to be called urchins, but hedgehog is cuter.”
“Totally cuter,” Meredith agreed.
It was enough to earn a small grin, but it quickly dipped. “Grandma took it and threw it away.”
“I saved her life,” Judith interjected, her voice shaking with frustration. “You should thank me.”
“God damn it, Mom. Not this shit again. Please.”
“You cuss in front of her too?”
Her mother had never been violent, but she had a way of verbally cutting at Meredith that stung just as badly as a slap. Sometimes it was outright criticism; other times she slung carefully crafted remarks like arrows. She had excellent aim.
“Mommy, you’re hurting me.” Alice pulled on her hand, which Meredith quickly released.
“Go upstairs,” Meredith ordered.
Alice’s lip quivered, driving a stake through Meredith’s heart, before she ran for the stairs.
All her frustration—the shit in the light room, the itchy feeling she got from being in her mother’s house, the little voice in the back of her head reminding her that her marriage was all but over—came pouring out. “You will not screw up my kid, okay? It’s bad enough that I had to pull her out of her home, away from her friends, while Kristin and I sort out our shit. I don’t need it coming from you too.”
“Your shit, as you so eloquently put it, is your own doing. Everything I do, everything I have ever done, has been for your own good.”
Meredith laughed. “My own good? You’re out of your mind.”
“It’s going to happen again.” Judith’s voice cracked. “You know it will.”
Meredith balled her hands into fists at her sides. All she wanted to do was shake her mother. Judith was so wrapped up in her made-up threats she never noticed the real ones. Alice loved her grandmother, but Judith drove a wedge between them every time she did something like this. Pretty soon that wedge would be impossible to remove, like the one between her and Meredith. Lowering her voice, she said, “Are you listening to yourself? When’s the last time you went to a doctor? Or spoke to the therapist I found for you after Dad died?”
Judith’s cheeks puffed and reddened. “You don’t—”
“There is nothing out there. There is nothing coming to get us. There’s just me and my daughter. You’re the one who scared her. You’re the one who made her cry.” And then, because she couldn’t stop, “You’re the monster, Mom.”
Tears pooled in Judith’s eyes. Out of habit, Meredith started to apologize but quickly closed her mouth. Just because she was too exhausted to keep arguing didn’t mean she had to say she was sorry. She wasn’t. She’d meant everything she’d said. Maybe this time Judith would apologize first. She doubted it.
Leaving her mother in the living room, she dragged herself to the bathroom. She still needed a shower, and remembering she’d invited Art over, she probably needed to get to the grocery store. Like Meredith, her mother lived on TV dinners, frozen pizza, and bananas.
Booze, she added to her mental list, turning on the shower.
Steam filled the room, fogging up the mirror. Though her reflection was mostly obscured by the Thalias living in the sink—roots tangled down the drain and around the faucet—she noticed how purple her skin had become under her eyes, which were bloodshot. Her black hair had come away from the ponytail in Medusa-like tendrils. She released her hair, undressed (ignoring the soft pooch of her belly and the thick purple veins in her legs), and stepped under the stream.
It was hard to believe her life had ever been so uncomplicated that all it took to set her right again was a long, hot shower. Now, letting the water pummel her face and neck only pushed her deeper into her head.
She wondered what Kristin was doing now. If she was thinking about Meredith at all or if Meredith leaving had been a relief. Did she wander around their apartment and feel Meredith’s absence? Or did she hardly notice? Back when they were just fighting, when separation wasn’t a word either of them had dared use, Meredith had fantasized about taking herself out to dinner, to a movie Kristin would hate. She’d daydreamed entire weekends filled with doing things she loved, with no one there to tell her how stupid or repetitive or childish it was. She would spread out on the bed and drink coffee on the new duvet and brush cookie crumbs on the carpet. At the time, it’d sounded like heaven.
The first night after they talked about separation, Kristin stayed in a hotel. For all of her fantasizing, all Meredith could do was curl up into a ball on her side of the bed, trying to make herself as small as possible.
So she’d left. She could have gone anywhere—savings account be damned—but the pull to the cape was too strong. She needed to be here. She just didn’t know why.
She couldn’t stay, though, if her mother kept up with her make-believe monsters.
She lathered up a loofah and scrubbed at her skin. If she scrubbed hard enough, maybe it would all go away. If she scrubbed hard enough, maybe she’d dissolve, disappear down the drain and end up somewhere in the middle of the ocean where a small voice once told her she belonged.
***
The dining room table was covered in boxes of Dad’s things that neither of them had ever been able to go through, let alone get rid of. Rather than move them—Meredith’s biceps twitched just with the effort of lifting the pasta pot—they settled in the living room: Alice on the couch with a TV tray in front of her and about a million paper towels laid down around her; Art in the rocking chair, heels tucked beneath the runners; Judith in Dad’s chair (once a deep green, now a dusty gray), perched on the edge of the flat cushion to keep from disturbing the indent of his body, wearing one black pearl earring despite an exhaustive failure to find the other; Meredith on the other side of the couch, her plate balanced on her lap and a large glass of cheap red wine on the coffee table. She shook a saltshaker over the wine, swirled the glass, and sipped, earning a queer look from Art, but no question. There couldn’t have been more than ten feet between any two of them, but it might as well have been miles. Conversation was all slurps and nods and forced smiles. To Art’s credit, he pretended to be enjoying himself so much that Meredith almost believed he didn’t hate being in the same room as her mother. Made it easier to believe he and her mother were cousins and, once, friends.
“Great sauce,” Art said, mercifully breaking the silence.
Meredith slurped a tail of spaghetti. Chewed. “Ragú.”
He nodded. “Right. Pretty sure that’s what my wife used to use. Though it could’ve been Prego.”
“Prego’s good too.”
“Mmhmm.”
Meredith inwardly challenged her mother to bring up her lack of cooking skills, but she seemed just as worn out by the earlier argument as Meredith. Her back was hunched forward at an old-person angle, giving her the impression of a hump. As she chewed, her cheeks trembled, a premonition of jowls to come. In Meredith’s head, Judith forever existed as the dark-haired, slightly wrinkled, straight-backed woman of Meredith’s preteen and teenage years. The woman who forbade Meredith from going near the water when her friends held Friday night bonfires and swam until the cops kicked them out. The woman who didn’t hug or kiss but jabbed and bit. But faced with this old woman, Meredith couldn’t reconcile the two. This woman was soft, her bark worse than her bite. Meredith almost felt shame for what she said. She almost apologized. Instead, she shoveled the rest of her spaghetti in her mouth, so much she almost choked on it.
“Chew, then swallow,” Alice said, parroting Meredith’s own words.
Meredith tried to grin around her sauce-stained teeth, earning a giggle.
“Good manners, Alice,” Judith said. An olive branch of sorts.
“Say thank you,” Meredith said after finally swallowing.
“Thank you,” Alice singsonged, then pushed her plate away. “I’m full. Can I have ice cream?”
“Sure.” Meredith mopped Alice down with most of the paper towels and heaped them all onto her plate. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll help.” Art stood before she could protest, piling Judith’s plate on top of his. “Judith? Ice cream?”
She shook her head, frowning at him, though not in her usual I really dislike you kind of way, but in a more I’m not sure what’s happening kind of way. Maybe Meredith would call that doctor. From what little she knew of memory disorders, the earlier they’re caught, the better.
“Mom?” Meredith asked.
Light flared in the woman’s eyes. “I’m going upstairs.”
“Oh. Um. Okay. Good night, then.”
Judith strode from the room, her arms wrapped around her chest like she was struggling to hold her insides together.
“Night, Judith,” Art called after her.
Meredith met Art’s glance with raised eyebrows.
“With chocolate syrup!” Alice added, in case they’d forgotten their oh-so-important ice cream expedition.
The kitchen was a wreck, but Art went at the dishes like a soldier going into battle—rolled sleeves and a small prayer—while Meredith unearthed the ice cream.
“Thanks for that,” Meredith said, nodding at the pile of dishes. The suds were bloody with spaghetti sauce.
“You know me. I like to keep my hands busy.”
She did know. When the fights got really bad between Meredith and her mom during Meredith’s sophomore year, she’d packed a bag and walked the three blocks to Art’s house, where she watched TV, did homework, and harassed him into making her weird taxidermied creatures. She had a particular fondness for crossbred creations: an octo-carp, a crab-obster, a cat-flounder. For a graduation gift, he’d given her a replica of the Fiji Mermaid, the scales painted silver and jewels glued in place of the monkey’s eyes. To this day, it was her favorite gift anyone had given her.
He continued, “You know you and Alice are welcome if things get too hard with your mom.”
She nodded. “Thanks. Really.” It wasn’t like she hadn’t considered it. Alice would have a blast going through Art’s creations, same as Meredith had. He had a boat that he never took out but wouldn’t begrudge Meredith and Alice a day on the water. He’d never do to Alice what her mother did. “But I need to be here. You saw Mom. Something’s off.”
He nodded.
“And I just want to figure some things out with us. I want us to be okay.” Because, she didn’t add, if they weren’t okay, then she and Alice might not be okay. If she’d learned one thing from those journals and logs her father had shown her back when she was younger, it was that the women in their family had difficult relationships with their mothers. She desperately didn’t want to be that kind of mother—manipulative and angry and accusing—and being here was a way to prove to herself that she wasn’t. That she was a good mom. A good daughter.
Thinking about the journals, about the women, made old thoughts surface. She used to tell herself that she and her mother might not have gotten along, but at least Judith wouldn’t run away, wouldn’t disappear into the water the way so many women in their family had. Mom called it a curse, and maybe, in a way, she was right. Except Meredith didn’t think anything waited in the water to lure them away. It was inside them. For all her faults, Mom was fighting it. Maybe that was enough to keep her close. To stop the cycle before it got to Meredith. Before it got to Alice.
The ice cream was rock hard, so she set it on the counter to thaw. When she was sure Art wasn’t looking, she slipped her phone out of her pocket. Kristin hadn’t called or texted once. She had to have noticed them missing by now. Had to have read her note. But there was nothing. Nothing to check on Alice, to make sure they’d arrived okay. No wanting to talk. I’m not happy wasn’t an explanation. It was a cop-out. Meredith still clung to the notion that, once Kristin had had some time to think, she and Alice could come home.
“Is that Mama Kristin?” Alice slid around the corner in her socks, wobbling at the stop.
Meredith stuck the phone in her pocket before Alice could ask to see it. “Yep. She said she misses you.”
“Good.” Not I miss her too. Meredith didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
She bent two spoons scooping the ice cream but managed to fill three bowls—one with enough chocolate syrup to drown a cow—and carried them back into the living room with Alice on her heels. They ate on the floor, in a circle, knees touching.
Halfway through, Alice asked, “Is it true that if you catch a mermaid, she has to give you a wish?”
Art rolled his eyes. “I can’t escape.”
Alice frowned.
“Art doesn’t like the mermaid,” Meredith said.
Alice’s jaw dropped open. “That’s stupid.”
“Alice.”
She slouched, digging a trench in her melting ice cream. “You just don’t know the story. You would if you did.”
“Do you know the story?” Art challenged.
“Yes! The mermaid came to visit the people and gave them gifts. Someone caught her, and she gave them a wish and they lived happily ever after. The end.” She crossed her arms. “See? I know it.”
Art nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a great story, I’ll admit.”
“Where’d you hear that one?” Meredith asked.
“Grandpa’s book.”
Meredith frowned. Then she realized Alice was talking about the kids’ book her stepdad had self-published. He’d wanted something new for the museum gift shop, so he wrote a book about the cape mermaid, complete with simplistic illustrations. He’d dedicated it to Meredith. A copy of it sat on Alice’s bookshelf at home.
Alice’s shoulders sank, her enthusiasm waning.
“I know we didn’t bring your book, but I bet I could find another copy around here somewhere,” Meredith said.
Alice swirled her spoon around the bowl. “It’s not that.”
“What is it, then?” Stones shifted in Meredith’s stomach. “Did Grandma say something to you while I was in the shower?”
She shook her head.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“The girl told me another story.”
“What girl?”
“Red-haired girl.” Alice sniffed. “It’s not true, right? What she said?”
Meredith and Art shared a look. She’d never seen Alice this worried. She gently grabbed Alice’s fidgeting fingers, already scratching at the cuticles so much they bled. “Whatever it was, baby, I’m sure it’s not true.”
“Yeah,” Art added. “Nothing to worry about, kiddo.”
Alice nodded, but tears dripped down her red cheeks into her ice cream bowl. “She said I’m gonna die.” The dam broke, and her whole body shook with the force of her tears. “I don’t wanna die.”
A chill snaked down Meredith’s back as she gathered Alice up in her arms, pulling her into her lap. Seeing the fear on her daughter’s face flipped a switch inside her body, pulling every muscle tight. She ground her teeth to keep from yelling. “Of course not, sweetie. You’re not gonna die. No one’s gonna die. Everything’s fine.” She rocked Alice, pressing her against her chest, but Alice only cried harder. She stroked Alice’s hair and planted kisses all over her, but it seemed like nothing could stop the trembling.
Whatever this red-haired girl had said to Alice had terrified her.
After a long time, when Alice had calmed a little, Meredith tried to get her to tell her more about the red-haired girl, but every question was met with a frustrated I don’t know.
Finally, Alice got so huffy she crawled out of Meredith’s lap and started for the stairs. Her daughter’s emotions were fraught lately, flipping between impossible calm and at the edge of a meltdown at the drop of a hat. She blamed herself. It couldn’t have been easy trying to keep a brave face on for her sake. Meredith stood to follow when she spotted her mother at the top of the stairs. She wondered how long her mother had been standing there.
“I was just going to put Alice to bed,” Meredith said.
“It’s getting dark,” Judith said. “You should get up to the light.”
“I will. After I deal with this.”
“Let me.” Judith’s voice was firm, then softened. “I owe her an apology anyway. Let me do it.”
After a moment, Meredith relented. “Okay.”
“Thank you.”
Meredith nodded. Then, thinking about what Alice had said, “Did you see a red-haired girl while you guys were on the beach today? Did she talk to you?”
Something flashed across Judith’s face she couldn’t quite read. “No.”
“You’re sure?”
Her expression hardened, defensive. “My memory isn’t as bad as you keep implying, you know. I’m perfectly fine. Everyone is forgetful every now and again, and I don’t like that you keep—”
Meredith threw her hands up in surrender. “Okay, Mom. I wasn’t trying to accuse you of anything. I just…” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
“Can I go tuck my granddaughter in now?”
“Sure. Just be nice, okay?”
Judith pushed Meredith’s hair behind her ear, an unexpected gesture of affection, as her expression softened, an almost frighteningly quick transformation. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of everything. I promise.”
Cheeks burning, Meredith offered a small smile. “Okay. Thanks.”
Judith nodded, then turned, heading back upstairs.
Art joined Meredith in the hall and patted her back. “Everything will be fine. You’ll see.” Then, “You’ve got a good kid.”
“She’s all right.”
“Can’t abide that mermaid business, though,” he joked. “Gonna have to take care of that.”
She offered a weak smile. “What about you? You know any red-haired girls?”
“Wish I did,” Art joked, then shook his head. “Probably just some kid thinking it’s funny to scare the little one.”
“Probably.” Then why didn’t her mother say anything when she’d asked? She sighed, glancing in the direction of the stairs. “It was a bad idea to come here.”
“Why did you? I’ve been trying to get you to visit for ages now. Not trying to make you feel any sort of way, but I figured you had your reasons for keeping away as long as you did.”
“I did. I do.” She rubbed her face. “The short answer is I don’t know.”
“And the long answer?”
She wanted to tell him about what happened in the lighthouse. The urge to jump. The jar of water. They were nothing, really, but a lot of nothing could turn into something. If she told, she worried she’d start to sound like her mother.
“It sounds stupid,” she finally said, “but there’s something about the cape that’s always stuck with me. Like a bad itch or a splinter I can’t get to. I do my best not to think about it, but when I do, it’s all I think about. I came over the ridge and saw the lighthouse and heard the water and…” She struggled to put the feeling into words. It wasn’t relief, not even close. “I felt…connected. In a way I don’t feel anywhere else.”
“That was a long answer.”
Meredith laughed. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He patted her shoulder. “It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”
Coming from Art, she almost believed it.
***
Casting a quick look up in the direction of the lighthouse, Meredith held the door for Art while he left. She doubted she’d find the answers to anything up there—to why her marriage was falling apart, why her mother had never treated her like a daughter, why being at the cape did things to her…things she couldn’t name—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to look. She had to believe she’d come back to the cape for a reason. She had to believe that the answers were here somewhere, because she knew now that she couldn’t leave again without them.