On Zelda’s seven-and-three-quarters birthday, at the start of the prosperous fifties, she wandered out of her room and into one of our endless dinner parties—a party stilted by that perfect pitch of polite and animated chatter on the economy and the president and how much we longed for the last president, though we had despised that one in his time, too, a party I had spent three days preparing for, the salad, the cheeses, the custard, the candles, the wine, the flowers—to announce the advent of her new age, how close she was to eight, displaying that saddest quirk of youth, a longing to grow up. We applauded dear Zelda and then quickly banished her back to the island of childhood so we could return to clinking our glasses and worrying over our savings bonds. By the end of the night, Simon was drunk enough to pat one of our guests, a lawyer we never saw again, on the thigh one too many times, upon which Mayor Clarke and his wife bade us a polite and knowing adieu, while Simon drew the beloved lawyer out to have a look at the garden and back in to sit for a tune on the piano, saying over and over how much the handsome lawyer resembled an actor whose name he couldn’t remember, until the lawyer and his wife politely excused themselves, too. Simon said farewell to our guests, then poured himself another glass of Scotch, still aglow with the perfume of flirtation. “Well, they were nice, after all, weren’t they? And he was just so refined, so intelligent. I must say I don’t understand what he could see in her.”
I couldn’t bear his maniacal chatter and slipped away from him onto the porch for a cigarette, when I heard my lonely girl talking to herself, crouching between the trees in the garden, telling her secrets to the holes in the bark. Zelda had invented a magical language, one her mother was only sometimes allowed to hear. I remained undetected as I approached, to hear her whisper into the oak: Abracadabra sotto voi shira ba boom. Somehow her seven-and-three-quarters-year-old brain had conjured a language that sounded, at least, like a mélange of Latin and Italian and nonsense.
By the time I reached her pale, slight body, brightened by the full moon, Zelda had turned her attention away from the oak and was holding her arms up toward the sky, casting spells to an ocean fairy she favored, though sometimes the fairy was a mermaid instead. The fairy often had messages for Zelda, which Zelda was not allowed to relay, lest she arouse the anger of the ocean assembly.
The moon was spectacular that night, another world appearing in the atmosphere of our own. It seemed to stir the entire island—the birds burned with chatter, the dogs howled their sad, old song—but most of all my little angel would not hear of going to bed. “Mother, it’s time for me to go to the ball,” Zelda whined.
“And which ball is that, my darling?” I asked. She was very serious about her parties. “It’s past midnight. You are supposed to be sleeping.”
“The ball at the center of the ocean, where all the fairies are going tonight,” Zelda replied.
“Is that right?” Simon chuckled. He had found us in the garden while taking a saunter with his last drink of the evening.
“Yes.” Zelda grew serious. “No adults are allowed at the ball because they aren’t allowed to meet fairies. I’m sorry.” She looked at us sympathetically.
“Isn’t it time for you to be in bed, sweetheart?” Simon asked.
“How can I go to sleep if I’m expected at the ball? Balls don’t happen in the daytime!” Zelda grew very flustered, but Simon was no longer laughing. Zelda’s fantasies often troubled him, as if he sensed in them some obscure ill omen. He had taken to urging her to become more “efficient” and “productive,” even though she was only seven and three-quarters.
“Don’t you want to be productive tomorrow?” Simon asked.
“I’m not tired,” she whimpered. Zelda pulled my arm. “Mother . . .” she said, extending the word so that it seemed to capture more than just our biological relation, embracing some kind of obligation to indulge her. “I have to show you something.”
Simon shook his head and left us to ourselves. Zelda took off in the opposite direction, skipping through the woods ahead of me. “Slow down, dear!” I screamed. “Stay in the garden!”
But she ran on. As the moonlight slivered down through the oak, I felt my way by hand, the moss slipping through my fingers, whereas Zelda knew by heart the path to the sea. The woods’ small movements whispered like ghosts. There were phantoms, not fairies, in every direction.
At last, standing on the white dunes, I saw Zelda’s small body, the size of a fairy herself, beside the black ocean. I screamed her name, but the wind carried my voice in the other direction. I feared she would walk into the sea and I would have to go after her, unable to swim, and, in drowning, find her father.
“You have to come all the way down to the water,” Zelda shouted, already toeing the surf. “For me to show you, you have to come here.”
“Zelda, this game is over. Do not go any farther,” I screamed, running toward her. The sand was damp and cool.
“My fairy friend wants me to tell you that you can go into the ocean without being afraid.”
“I am not afraid of the ocean, you silly girl,” I said. “But you better be afraid of me. You are in a whole lot of trouble.”
“She says just lie down in it, in the shallow water, and let the water go over you. Don’t try to swim,” Zelda said, ignoring my admonitions.
“I’m not going into the water, Zelda,” I said. “And neither are you.”
“But that’s the only way to get to the ball, Mother. We just have to sit in the shallow part.”
Zelda was talking to me like I was one of her dolls. And then she ran out into the waves. My heart leapt. “Come back this instant, Zelda!” But she was walking farther, the ocean up to her calves. She had the blind determination of her father.
“We just have to sit right here,” she screamed. “Please don’t make me miss it.”
Where we were, the sea was flat and soft. The moon cast a reflection like a road out to the Rapture, a pathway knowable for only that one night. My old longing to take it returned—to rediscover that more perfect place, the dreaming ocean.
“Seri voce baboomm kria auria auriqui!” Zelda squealed. “Now lie down in the water so we can go to the ball!”
Her spell had been cast. We lay holding hands as the smallest of waves crested over our shoulders. The salt was all stars, the water silk on my skin. Then, suddenly, it was past us—it was over. We were breathing. That was Zelda’s grand affair.
“Get up, Mommy. Did you dance with any of the fairies?” she asked sincerely.
“Yes, they danced like this!” I said, waving my arms like a pair of wings.
“You’re so silly. The fairies don’t have wings. They fly by using their umbrellas,” Zelda corrected me. “Now that you’ve met the fairies, you get to know the most important secret of all,” she went on. “But I have to whisper it in your ear.” I leaned down into the sweet cup of her small hands.
“The fairies told me that my real father is a fairy king who lives in the middle of the ocean. You were once almost a fairy, too, but you decided to stay human. One day you’ll be a mermaid fairy, though, and you’ll reunite with the fairy king.”
“And how do you get to be the fairy king or queen?” I asked, indulging her.
“It’s simple, really. You have to drown in the ocean.”