Mermaids of Glendale - a novel

Chapter 25

Lorna was holding a paper plate, carrying a dry and flavorless ham sandwich cut into sailboat triangles, something an aunt or an uncle or a friend of the family had made – catering suitable for a wake. The sort of food that isn’t there to be eaten, just to be held, because you don’t know what else to do with your hands. With your hands otherwise occupied, you can’t wave to well-wishers, shake hands, administer pats on the back or dab away tears. You keep your hands occupied as though this is just another party with music you don’t like and people you don’t know, keeping to your own little clique, your private group huddle of pain.

This was Katherine’s wake. Jimmy’s mom’s wake.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Lorna had said, following her transformation a few days earlier in the alley behind her apartment building.

“Well,” said Jimmy, after his initial shock had passed and taking a step toward Lorna. “What it looks like is that you just grew a tail.”

“Oh,” said Lorna. “Then, yes, it is exactly what it looks like.”

Jimmy kept talking, still approaching Lorna step by tentative step.

“I saw it on YouTube,” he said. “I thought it was fake. Clever, but fake.”

Lorna shrugged.

“Does anyone else know this is real?” asked Jimmy.

“My sister does,” said Lorna. “And my dad, and Kitt knows, too.”

“Kitt?” asked Jimmy. “Oh, that’s your boyfriend, isn’t it. Your dad mentioned him.”

Jimmy stood over Lorna and reached down, offering his hand.

“Let me help you,” he said.

Over the past several weeks, ever since her first transformation, Lorna had been helped up the stairs and into her apartment by April and then Marina and now by Jimmy.

“Apparently, this has become a habit,” said Lorna, her arm around Jimmy’s shoulder as she hobble-hopped through the apartment door.

“Sorry?” asked Jimmy.

“Nothing,” said Lorna, as Jimmy helped Lorna the last few feet to the couch.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked.

He had just lost his mom, and yet here Jimmy was, asking if there was anything he could do for Lorna. It wasn’t lost on Lorna that normally in a situation like this, it would be her asking him. But then, thought Lorna, contemplating her tail for a moment, what exactly is a moment like this.

“No, I’ll be okay,” she said. “This will pass, it always does. I’ll be on my feet in no time.”

“That was the last thing I heard her say,” whispered Jimmy, staring off into the middle distance and seeing the ticking cat-clock on Lorna’s wall or maybe seeing nothing or maybe seeing his last moments with his mom at Glendale Memorial.

Jimmy invited Lorna to the funeral at Forest Lawn Cemetery, the interring of Katherine’s ashes in a marbled-facade wall-plot and sealed within by a small plaque with her name, the date of her birth, the date of her death, and a quote from Robert Frost. Later, when walking back to her car to drive Jimmy back home for the wake, Lorna and Jimmy passed a small lake on the cemetery grounds. Perched atop a large stone at the edge of the lake was a replica of the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen. A sign said the statue had been placed there by the British actress Greer Garson in memory of her mother.

Without comment they walked on by.

At Jimmy’s house, Lorna looked across the busy living room to see Jimmy standing alone, looking down at his shoes. Lorna put down the paper plate she was holding and slowly walked across the room, step by tentative step, towards Jimmy. She held out her hand to him and after a moment, without looking up from his shoes, simply sensing her hand was there, Jimmy took it.  He led Lorna into a spare bedroom which had long ago been converted into a home office in the three bedroom suburban home, and they sat together on a small couch covered in green and red tartan fabric.

While Jimmy was working for all that time at the pet store, after high school and during college, Lorna had thought that Jimmy was still always studying, always changing his major, never quite getting enough credits for graduation. Instead, the whole time, Jimmy had been taking care of his mother.

“It had been an accident, years ago,” Jimmy had told Lorna. “Just a stupid car crash.”

Katherine had been profoundly disabled and Jimmy had been caring for her all this time, her health slowly deteriorating over the years before finally, finally, slipping away.

“Our mothers,” said Jimmy as he and Lorna sat together on the couch. “They knew each other.”

“Of course they did,” said Lorna. “We went to school together, Jimmy. Our moms knew each other from PTA meetings and swim meets and the senior Christmas pageant at the high school gym…”

“No,” said Jimmy. “Well, yes, but… I mean, they knew each other before that, before us. They used to be friends when they were in high school themselves.”

“I don’t think my mom ever mentioned that,” said Lorna. “I can’t remember if my dad did, either.”

Jimmy stood up, went to the bookcase in the corner and returned with a high school yearbook.

“Their senior year, they even went on a trip with their science class,” said Jimmy, paging through the year book. When he found what he was looking for, he turned it towards Lorna, pointed at a two-page spread of photographs and captions.

In one photograph was a group of teenagers wearing white lab coats open over their clothes, posing with microscopes and other laboratory equipment. Lorna recognized both Jimmy’s mom and her own, and seeing her mother clutched at her heart like sudden talons. In another posed photograph Cassandra and Katherine are both mugging for the camera, Katherine with her eyes crossed and Cassandra sticking her tongue out.

Young “scientists” of the future on the class trip to Mexico, read the caption.

In another photo, Katherine and Cassandra are on a beach. Cassandra is swimming in the water and Katherine is standing on the shore, waving to whoever was taking their picture.

“I know where this is,” said Lorna and, rather than being confused, she was glad to have solved a mystery.

Senior students Cassandra Cole and Katherine Tully “studying” the lagoon, read the caption.

“That’s the lagoon Dr. Milagros called – what was it…,” said Lorna, then remembered. “La mujer del agua.”

Lorna was looking at a photograph of her mother on Guadalupe Island.

All photos, read the final caption at the bottom of the two-page spread, were taken by resident marine biologist Professor Jorge Villalobos, of the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias.

And it is all coincidence, thought Lorna, closing the yearbook and handing it back to Jimmy. Mom’s name written on the dormitory wall is just like the mermaid statue at the cemetery. None of it means anything.

“And none of it has to,” said Lorna out loud.

“Lorna, are you okay?” asked Jimmy.

Nothing is mystical or mythological. It’s all biological and scientific. Life and death and car wrecks and cancer, the changing of cells from one form into another, like my legs, my skin becoming scales.

“Nothing,” said Lorna, finally. “I was just thinking about coincidences.”

“Oh,” said Jimmy, then added, “Coincidences are stupid.”

Lorna smiled, and hugged him and let him cry against her shoulder.

“Yes, Jimmy,” she said. “They are.”