In 1721, before Torch Night when Tristolde’s mother, Nimuë the Mermaid, came to Mackerel Sky and wreaked havoc on her shores, before baby Tristolde, with Burrbank his father, touched the soft sand of Crescent Beach, Boylston Townsend walked to the water’s edge. He had a painful case of gout, an escalating case of syphilis, and a half bottle of rum. He had left his sweet plump wife, Brocelaide, sobbing and black-and-blue on their floor and then had been tossed out of the Ink and Crane, the tavern at the cusp of the Lone Dock and the land. He left with his jug swinging, and stalked to Crescent Beach, where he pissed into the incoming tide.
That was when he saw the thrashing merman in the net washed ashore, the verdant light of the pearl in his necklace a bioluminescent firefly. The pearl called to Boylston, charmed him. He walked toward it, listing, mouth agape. As the merman wrestled his chest free from the net and set to his tail, Boylston reached for the necklace, and the merman struck him. That snapped Boyle’s nose and his temper. Boyle dove on him and smashed his pretty face into the wettest of sands, held him down where the land dissolved into the sea, and he waited until the tail stopped flapping.
He cut the necklace from the body, wrapped the body back up in the net, and pushed it back into the water. He knew those net knots, that netting; the net belonged to the Terror in the Night; he would be blamed for the death of the merman. The body floated off into the dark.
As Boylston walked farther from the water, the verdant light faded. The pearl was still beautiful, if dimmer.
When he returned home he fought with his wife again because he wanted to fight. The pearl fell through a hole in his pocket to the floor, whereupon he slipped on it and fell; his head snapped with a final crack in the angle between wall and floor.
The pearl then passed to his wife and their baby daughter, now fatherless, though that was arguably for the best. They kept the pearl content and safe and loved for many years. Time and again it glowed, usually coinciding with sightings of mermaids offshore. The pearl passed through Brocelaide’s daughters to her granddaughter’s granddaughter’s daughter, who founded Mackerel Sky’s only orphanage, the Locust House. There the pearl lived joyfully among children for a century until the house burned down, some said by witches. The stone was taken by the constable, who had it split in half to be made into pearl earrings, which he gave to his mistress, who parted with them when her house was robbed by a thief in the night. The thief was an alleyway drunkard who passed out against a wall a fortnight later, and the pearls were stolen again, this time by a barefoot boy; the pearls loved the boy and stayed happy in his pocket until he was a fisherman with boys of his own. When he died, his eldest gambled the pearls away during the war to one Bernard Kelley, who gave them to his wife on their wedding day.
“What happened to the pearl I gave you?” Derrick asked Ricky, the day he was leaving the hospital for good, leaving for home. They were waiting for his father to pick him up.
“I don’t know how you will ever believe me.”
Derrick cocked his head. Derrick did believe him, for he had mermaid tales of his own. He told them to Ricky. And when they were alone, he kissed Ricky. Over and over.
“My dad’s here.” Derrick’s view from the second floor was of the parking lot and the maple trees behind it. There were pops of red among the green, those leaves diving first. Derrick had written about it in his mother’s lost journal, which Stéphane had given him in the hospital the second day he was awake. Derrick had read the journal, cover to cover, again and again—the story of his darling mother, the mermaid Stéphane rescued in the sea, and their love, and their love of him. She had left him space to add his own writing.
So he did.
fall teaches us red
in its trees tipped with winter
shows us how we die
like a sunset edging into cold
it is a forgetful season
leaves us a bit nostalgic
and mourning somewhat with crows
And he wrote:
Dock
End.
this
is where I was born
here
the ocean leaks inside by osmosis
transforming one into salt rock
white savage storm
recurring ripples
this
is where I was born
here
my ears always cold
breath always moist
cries erupting like the gulls in winter
moaning like the rigging
ceaseless attack
and recession
of sea
“I’m gonna get us coffee,” Ricky said. “I’ll be here, for after. I love you.” He kissed Derrick, quick, full, solid. “Tell him I’m your boyfriend. I want him to know.”
“I will. I love you. Here goes.”
Ricky was in the cafeteria when Stéphane walked into Derrick’s room. He hugged his boy.
“You ready? Duke is in the truck. We can stop—”
“Dad, I’m gay.”
A reflex, the words with their own volition, and Derrick covered his mouth like he was trying to catch them. And then, “Oh shit, I had a speech.”
And then heavy silence, so much so Derrick shrank under its weight. He had had a whole plan, practiced in front of bathroom mirrors and in car rides with Ricky and written down in hundreds of different ways. But his army of words ignored all strategy and stormed the field.
So Stéphane did what any good father would do, should do, and hugged his boy, his man, his son, again, because he was his son, and because Stéphane needed Derrick to know that nothing was different about him, nothing was wrong with him.
“When you were born, I was scared to hold you, to drop you. You were so precious. You were so perfect. You still are, and always will be. I love you, Derrick, as is. My son.”
The strength of his son’s shoulders was forged in his father’s arms. They hugged for a long time; Derrick saw a single leaf flutter to the ground in a first fall.
As Derrick pulled away his dad asked: “So, Ricky, is he your…your boyfriend?”
Derrick smiled like a sunrise, a new day where he was now talking awkwardly with his dad about his love life, the gravitas of coming out burning off like morning fog. “He is. He wanted you to know.”
Stéphane patted Derrick on the shoulder. “He’s a good boy, a good man. He saved your life that night, you know.” Stéphane saw his pale son in memory, his lips unnaturally blue, bloody and drowning in an inch of water. In that memory, that night would always be so dark, the only light the moon, the stars, the lights in the mermaids’ eyes. He had almost lost him. How could it ever matter who his son loved?
“I know. I know about that night. I know about the mermaids.” Derrick looked directly into his father’s eyes, looking for a glimmer of recognition, of memory of his mother.
“Mermaids. I had heard stories, but never in my life…” Stéphane’s voice trailed off, lost in the disbelief. Derrick nodded, a mild defeat in a day of victory. His father did not remember, and Derrick had learned that he could not force his father to remember by opening the book with him.
He would keep trying. They would talk more. The world was so much bigger than he ever thought. His father had to remember. Myra Kelley would know how to help get Stéphane to remember. Derrick and Ricky planned to visit her in the next weeks, when summer faded in a sunset to fall. But right now he was headed home.
Ricky came in with bad coffee. As many before him, he had had a panic attack under fluorescent lights in the hospital corridor. In the past few weeks, Ricky had heard nothing from his family, which suited him just fine. He knew his brothers were locked up, and they would be for a while, which also suited him just fine.
Ricky felt and saw the relief in the hospital room but still treaded lightly. Though ready to flinch, to defend, to fight, he stood in his skin. He saw wet eyes, both turned to him. Then both sets smiled identically at the edges, and he found himself smiling back.
Stéphane drove them home along the coast in the truck as the day’s colors rusted. Ricky was coming over for dinner. Derrick sat in the back, leaning against Ricky, a window open. He held his mother’s journal like a bible, comforted both by its warm leather under his fingers and his mother’s written words: I promise to see you both again someday.
He thought of his own words, how the secret of his sexuality, moored in fear, had bolted out of him so fast, as if his body could not hold in who he was anymore. And he now basked in the afterglow of the release, the relief of taking that leap. Perhaps when one almost dies for love it becomes much easier to declare it, Derrick thought, holding Ricky’s hand, playing with his fingers.
Duke’s head was out the window, his tongue lolling, his eyes blinking blissfully. The gentle drone of the radio and the road lulled Derrick in and out of a doze, and the coast whizzed by, sparkling, as they came closer to home.