Cry of the Sea (21 page)

As if in response to that, my phone buzzed
with a message from my mom. Her plane landed. I let the men know,
and we loaded back into the van and continued to her office.

* * * *

Mom was all business. She had her statements
prepared and gave Peña a full account on camera of what happened in
Alaska with the Affron negotiations and the initial results of the
oil spill. After all the preliminary information was given, she
went on to talk about the impact of the possibility of mermaids
being in the Pacific Ocean. She mentioned that she believed the
mermaids were real and she said she wanted to know if there were
more of them, if they communicated, or if they had emotions like
us. She wanted to know how human they were.

“But where are the mermaids now?” Peña asked
when it seemed like she was coming to the end of her spiel. “Can we
go see them?”

I took a sharp intake of breath, but my mom
didn’t hesitate a bit. She had that answer planned. “I can’t share
that information with the press yet because we strongly believe
that there is an organization that would try to eradicate all proof
of these mermaids if they could find them. A company that will not
benefit from the public knowing that there are creatures with human
attributes and perhaps even human minds. That company is Affron
Oil.”

Mom refused to let me say anything on camera
to Juarez Peña, but she did allow for the cameraman to shift away
from her and get me in the picture now and again. Peña thanked my
mom for the exclusive, although he was frustrated that he couldn’t
get
me
talking and that we still didn’t name the location
where we were hiding the mermaids we’d found. That’s what he had
really wanted. As I walked him to the door, I promised him that if
we learned anything else, he’d be the first reporter we called.

After he left, my mom patted me on the head.
“He was a good choice, June. I’m glad you picked him.” She ran her
fingers through my long hair to get out some of the tangles,
something she’d always done to me when I was little. I always
screamed at her back then, but now her touch felt good. I turned to
her with hours’ worth of things I wanted to tell her ready to burst
from my lips. First, I wanted to apologize about the College Night
fiasco and say I’d reconsider some of her choices if she really
wanted me to. Then I wanted to tell her about Carter and ask her
what to do to get him to like me again. She needed to know about my
experience with the mermaid, and I wanted her to make me feel
better about having lost her. I wanted so much from my mom. Her
fingers through my hair made me feel like all of this would happen.
She’d forgive me, and our relationship would be better than it ever
had been.

Her glasses hung around her neck, and as she
cupped my chin sweetly with her right hand, she used her other to
put her glasses back on her nose. Those deep brown eyes of hers
were magnified behind the frames as she looked me straight in the
eyes and raised her eyebrows with expectation. I took a breath to
speak, but she was faster.

“Let’s get to work.”

Just like that her touch was gone, and she
moved across the office to her desk.

She gestured for me to sit in the seat across
from her and wait. With a quick intercom message to her office
assistant Lisa that she was ready, the phone began to ring. For the
rest of the day she fielded calls from reporters. Mostly I just sat
there and watched her. I’ve seen her do this kind of work before,
but she was truly marvelous that day. I’ve never seen her so on her
game. Her responses were fast, well spoken, and to the point. If
any of it flustered her, she didn’t show it. That perfect bob
hairstyle of hers never drooped; her forehead never creased; her
make-up stayed fresh. It’s almost like the effort exhilarated her
instead of exhausting her. I, on the other hand, started fading
just watching.

The only thing that would occasionally break
her coolness was the insisting request from a reporter that they
talk to me directly. It was my face in the video, after all. Oh,
she tried every trick she could think of to distract them, and
sometimes it worked. Several times she failed to divert their
intention, and she’d have to give in. Begrudgingly, Mom then handed
the phone over to me, clearly not liking the loss of control and
hovering until she could snatch the phone back into her safe
hands.

Lisa covered the e-mails from her desk. Each
time she needed a quote or piece of information, my mom jumped in
to give it to Lisa before I could even open my mouth.

By the end of the day, Natalie Sawfeather,
the nation’s best environmental lawyer and spokesperson, managed to
triple the number of editors that had the story. Now the mermaids
would be seen in papers worldwide.
Newsweek
was going to
meet us for a cover story. Dateline and 20/20 were bidding for the
exclusive television rights. The story was hot. Real-life mermaids
had washed up on the beach after the latest Affron oil spill.
People wanted to know more.

At six o’clock we wrapped up and headed home.
Mom turned on the radio, and we listened to a talk show completely
focused on the issue of the mermaids. The main debate was whether
the mermaids were real or not. Could they talk? Could they think?
If they could communicate, what country were they citizens of:
Canada or the United States? Would they be Republicans or Democrats
and could they register to vote? Yes, it was that ridiculous, and
the show host propagated most of it.

Most of all, people wanted to know where the
mermaids were found and how they could see more of them. A few
callers shared that all the hotels, motels, and RV campgrounds were
filling up quickly. A manager of one of the hotels said he was
offering a free night’s stay to anyone who got a clear picture of a
mermaid. One caller, who called himself “Jim”, said that he’d seen
Peter Sawfeather at Grayland Beach in Aberdeen.

“That’s not good,” Mom said with a shake of
her head and switched off the radio. She immediately called Dad and
told him to quit for the day and get home before he got mobbed.

During dinner, Dad confirmed that all the
beaches in the area were packed with people who had flocked to the
shores with binoculars and cameras, hoping for a glimpse of
something large and silver with a tail and breasts. Boats had been
chartered, and the waterways were so jammed with mermaid-seekers
that it looked like a game of bumper boats off the horizon.

“It’s completely ridiculous out there,” he
said as he stirred his soup around in the bowl not eating any of
it. “We can’t get the oil cleaned up with all these tourists.
They’re stomping all around with their trash and cigarettes, making
more of a mess than there was to begin with. All of those boats are
spreading the oil around more.” He slammed his spoon on the table.
“This shouldn’t be allowed. Where is the Coast Guard? Where are the
police?” He lifted his eyes and gave a pretty flat-out mean look at
my mom and me. “Everyone’s so concerned with the mermaids, no one’s
helping with the real problem. There is a lot of oil in the water
killing sea life and vegetation.”

“Honey, the fervor will calm down when no one
finds any more mermaids,” Mom said. “In the meantime, a lot of
attention is being brought to Affron and what they’ve done.”

“Really?” Dad asked angrily. “I don’t see
anything at all being directed at Affron. I don’t see any
information about the oil spill hitting the prime-time news. It’s
just about the mermaids. That’s it. No one cares about Affron or
the oil spill at all!”

“They will, Peter,” Mom insisted. “I’ll make
sure of it.”

“It’s too late.” Dad got up and opened the
blinds to the front windows and revealed the army of news vans out
in the street and the cameras set up on our front lawn. Then he
snapped it shut again. “This is all screwed up now.” Dad stormed
out the room, and I heard him a moment later banging glasses around
in his office as he made himself a drink

Like my dad, I also got up from the table and
went to the window where I pulled the blinds toward me so I could
take a peek. Immediately, lights flashed in my eyes. I flipped
around and leaned with my back against the wall. “He’s right,
Mom.”

My mom cleared the dishes. “No. He’s just
frustrated that things aren’t happening the way he wants them to.
We made the right choice, and it’ll all come out right in the
end.”

“But what about the mermaids?” I asked. “What
if they get hurt?”

My mom actually laughed. “Oh, June. Really?
Do you really think any more of them are going to be found? No one
has ever seen one before. Ever. Odds of seeing one again are so
rare.”

“We found three at once, Mom,” I said. “And
people are looking now.”

“Who knows if they’re even looking in the
right places?” My mom waved a hand like she was erasing me. “You’re
worrying about nothing.”

“Am I?” I stomped up to my room with my mom
calling after me to come back and help with the dishes. I ignored
her. I shut my door behind me and flopped on my bed, burying my
face in my pillow.

Yesterday I thought I could create an
emotional crisis in the people of this country that would make them
help in my cause to defeat Affron. I hoped the unwelcome attention
to their company might make them give up my mermaid in the short
term and in the long term stop them from sending out leaky vessels.
That’s not what happened. All I did was create chaos. Every whacko
in the world was knocking at our door and dialing our phone number.
The rest of the world seemed to be spilling off of planes and out
of cars in droves to see the freak-show that was reported to be in
the waters nearby. So far nobody had spotted a mermaid out there,
but that didn’t mean anyone was going away. It just meant that
these people would start challenging me more. “You told us they
were here, so where are they?” would be the next round of
interviews. It would go on until somebody found one.

I hoped, prayed, that the mermaids were far
away. That they were deep underwater where no scuba divers could
find them. If they did exist out there in the Pacific Ocean
somewhere, I knew that this mermaid obsession could harm them. What
would people do if they saw a mermaid? Catch her? Trap her? Kill
her? Stuff her and mount her on a wall like a prize swordfish?
“Look, Earl! I caught me a mermaid
this
big!”

And if the mermaids were harmed it would all
be my fault.

Not to mention the fact that in all this time
dealing with reporters and talk show hosts, no one had been doing a
single thing to find the one mermaid we knew existed and was alive
the last time I saw her. Dr. Schneider hadn’t called once. I hadn’t
heard from Carter all day, and Dad said he never showed up at the
beach. When I telephoned the Sea Mammal Rescue Center, no one
answered.

We’d all been way too busy creating this
“mermaids are real” buzz, that we’d completely forgotten about the
one that needed us. For all I knew, our mermaid, the one who loved
bubbles and liked having her arms rubbed, was dead.

From outside my door I could hear her parents
talking about me as they climbed the stairs.

“I think it’s too much for her,” Mom said.
“She didn’t expect all this. I don’t think any of us did. I should
go talk to her. Give her a little pep talk.”

Oh no
, I thought.
That’s the last
thing I need
.

Dad seemed to get that pairing mom and
daughter together for a heart-to-heart wasn’t the solution. “I’ll
talk to her,” he offered as a better option.

I really didn’t feel like having a talk-to at
the moment. If there was anyone I wanted to talk to it was Carter,
but he must’ve been really sore at me for the way I behaved in the
car. I wondered how he was taking all this mermaid craziness. Did
he agree with Mom that it was a great political ploy to use the
press? Was he with dad that the issue of the oil spill was getting
ignored? Or was he worried to death that our silver friend was
still missing? How could I get him to know that was my main
concern, too? What could I do to make things better between us
again?

Knowing my dad was about to enter my room to
chat whether I wanted it or not, I sat up. I propped myself up with
pillows and picked up a magazine, trying to make it seem like I
wasn’t fretting at all before he opened the door.

“Not buying it,” Dad said as he entered and
shut the door behind him.

Trying my best to sound nonchalant, I
replied, “What?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he sat down
cross-legged on the braided carpet in the middle of the floor. “You
want to tell me?” he asked.

I looked at him (sitting “Indian style” of
all things) on my floor, his shoulders slumped from a long day and
his long hair still drying from his shower. All of a sudden I did
want to talk to him. I wanted to tell him how terrible I felt.
Dropping my magazine, I stumbled out of my bed, and collapsed in
front of him, burying my face into his shoulder as I sobbed. Dad
patted my back softly. He didn’t say a word.

When I felt like the last shudder had gone
through me, I sat up and leaned back against the bed. Dad reached
over and grabbed the tissue box from my dresser top and handed it
to me.

“Sorry,” I said, wiping my face.

“Not a problem,” he answered. “That’s been
building up for some time. I’m surprised you didn’t break before
now.”

“I kind of wish I had,” I said. “Then maybe I
wouldn’t have wasted so much time.”

“That’s all perspective,” Dad said. “There is
a legend about the great Chinook war hero...”

“Dad,” I stopped him. “You’re not going to
tell me another crazy Chinook story, are you?”

“Just for motivation.”

I shook my head. “I don’t need motivation. I
feel like I’ve lost control.”