Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilience (17 page)

“Gag me with a spoon,” I said to Liz.

“Out to lunch,” she added, with a roll of her eyes, but Liz was the chosen bridesmaid from our family and she was secretly “psyched as hell” about this wedding.

We were no strangers to competition among in-laws. As Catholics, our mothers ran the Charity Ball. Specifically, our Aunt Eleanor chaired the Charity Ball, for years. Each time Mom would see Eleanor’s name in the society page, she’d say, “Welp, I guess that Eleanor is at it again.” Of course she envied Eleanor’s success, and we hated to admit it but we envied our sister-in-law’s flawless Irish Catholic daughter-in-law persona. We even envied her monogrammed swimsuit.

Then we had to contend with Bridget: Bridget and her “Eye-talian” in-laws with grandparents who spoke in Italian accents—Sicilian, we decided, as if we knew the difference. They made wine from their own grapes. Bridget was looking more like Diane Keaton every time we saw her, blue-eyed and satin-skinned. Now we all wanted Italian husbands. Damn these marriages! They would put every girl in our family under pressure to marry a Catholic man right out of college. And worse, we would have to race into pregnancy and give birth exactly nine months later. Now Mom would look at us girls as traitors to the family team if we didn’t meet that honeymoon-baby standard.

On this one point Mom was no different than the other mothers from the broader Catholic circle in which we traveled. The dances and parties we attended might have seemed innocuous on the surface, but they were serious business. Marriages were meant to come from these follies, and all by the age of twenty-two. At fifteen I swished away those worries. My priorities included the accumulation of sweaters and friendships, second only to finding out who had parents going out of town and were therefore most likely to throw a party. At one such party, I met James Cabrera.

O
n an October night, Claire and I sat on a stone embankment, shivering as rusty leaves skimmed the driveway in the chilly breeze. I had to keep patting my nose with Kleenex. There was this guy sitting to my right but we were under a floodlight, which made his face a silhouette. I tried to get a look at him but it was impossible to do that in a subtle way.

Meanwhile, Claire had taken up a conversation with someone on her left. I glanced over the shoulder of the shadowy guy to my right to see who else was around, but there was no getting past his nest of curls. I scooted closer to Claire. David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” was drowning out her conversation. Finally, I turned to the guy on my right and said, “Hey.” A flash of white teeth blinked and disappeared. He said nothing, although he did shift slightly so that I could see his face, which included a bulbous nose and intelligent brown eyes.

His face was what kept me there. I would not have called him handsome but when he grinned, his face twisted into a half-sneer, and something about that face posed a dare. My voice has always been either too soft or too shrill. “I’m Eileen,” I finally said, too softly under the music. I couldn’t hear what he said back, so I said, “Please?” And he screamed, “I said, ‘I know.’”

“Okay!” I said, shrilly.

“You okay?” Claire asked.

“Sure,” I said, even as my eyes sharpened into a face that begged, “Don’t leave me alone with this guy.” She grinned and whispered, “He’s kind of cute.” Then she went back to her conversation.

I thought about taking my chances and leaping to freedom, but I might lose a leg or break it in half on the landing. The guy’s shoulder brushed mine. I smelled fresh-scrubbed boy, all soap and musk. Being from an all-girl school my capacity to smell a boy was extraordinary. My senses were tuned to a pitch so keen it almost hurt, and coupled with that, my curiosity about people often trumped social protocol. In my crowd, a girl would only speak to a boy once he had made the first move. “What’s your name?” I asked bluntly.

He straightened up and in a reasonably affable tone he said, “James.” He offered his hand, a warm and welcoming palm. His arms were still tan and he wore a golf shirt.

“Aren’t you cold, James? James who?”

His eyes shot off in the distance, as if he felt ambivalent about saying more, but he added, “Cabrera.”

I’d heard the name from Phoebe, which could either mean that he was very cool or that he was trouble. “You know Phoebe?” I asked.

“Ooooh,” he said, stretching his neck as if he’d just set down a sack of potatoes. “I might know a Phoebe.”

“You said you knew me.”

“Did I say that?”

“You said you knew my name.”

“Is that all there is to know?”

I hope not, I thought. Instead I said, “Maybe.” This was my attempt at mysteriousness, but I couldn’t hide my grin or the fact that I was anxious because of the lingering silence. He seemed comfortable just sitting there, and the more content he looked, the more I talked. “I like to write,” I said. What an absurd thing to blurt out, I thought. My claw hand shot up to hide my face. But he asked, “Write what?”

“Poetry!” I shouted, throwing out my arms as if confessing to a crime. Then I started giggling a bit crazily. He turned to face me head on, so that I could see his features. He was trying not to smile. “What kind of poetry?” he asked in a more serious voice.

“I don’t know,” I said, coming down hard from his seriousness. Besides, I really didn’t know. I was distracted by his mouth, which he hardly opened, but I guessed that he’d had braces. Straight teeth mattered, according to Mom, who said that my teeth were straight because God is always fair. If I complained about my legs, she said, “But you have those teeth ...” Suddenly I remembered one type of poem. “Haiku,” I said. “We had to write one in class and I wrote a bunch of poems for my friends to hand in because they hate to write them. Most people do.” This launched more frantic chatter until I concluded, “Our teacher gives them As and she gives me Cs.”

“Hmm,” he said, folding his arms. “Sooo misunderstood, eh?”

“Oh, forget it,” I said, looking away. I was such an easy read.

“Maybe your English teacher knows they’re your poems. Maybe she’s
playing
with you.”

I hadn’t thought of that. We bantered for a while. I kept thinking that maybe I’d ask him to our sophomore dance, which was coming up in a couple of weeks, but my ride beckoned me to leave.

At home, I asked Frank about James. Frank’s friends were all the same boys from our neighborhood, Chief Taylor and Stilts and the whole gang. He’d never left them. To him, James was just another of those Hyde Parkers, our “cross to bear.” He said, “He’s a snob.”

“I bet you don’t even know him.”

Frank had this way of tilting his head and pushing out his lips, as if to say, “Granted ... but ...”

“What?”

Now he shook his head disapprovingly. “Why do you hang out with those people?”

“I choose friends based on how they treat me.”

“Well, how did he treat you?”

When I thought of it, there wasn’t much to say. I’d done most of the talking. “He’s nice. Quiet.”

Frank pursed his lips and nodded. “I could see that. I mean, from what I know of him. But he’s
on the golf t
eam
.”

“Yeah? So?”

“I don’t know.” Frank rubbed his chin where a few hairs had sprouted. “Isn’t that kinda weird?” he asked. “A kid who golfs?”

On Monday, I asked around at school about James. “James Cabrera?” said a girl from his neighborhood. “That boy is always grounded.”

“Grounded?” That seemed an odd detail. “Anything else?”

“Only that he’s Cuban.”

“Cuban!” Lucy and Ricky—already I had us married with baby Ricky on the way. A Cuban boyfriend, what could be sexier than that? And in Cincinnati!

I remembered that there had been one Latino boy in my grade school. We called him the Frito Bandito. Beaten up on a regular basis, the boy was completely ostracized. In the middle of a class in third grade he slipped me a note saying, “I love you,” and I slapped him hard across the face. I’d left no doubt in anyone’s mind about where I stood, which was as far from Frito as possible. Now, the thought of my cruelty horrified me. I could never apologize enough because of how deeply it hurt me to be treated that way. And of course, my esteem for James Cabrera only benefited from my remorse.

But James Cabrera was an altogether different story. If there had been trauma in his past, there was not a shred of it to be found in his demeanor. More importantly, the fact that this boy, this
golfer
, was somehow different, well, it made me crazy with anticipation. Immediately my mind went to work. Was he inquiring about me? If so, what would he hear? “Cronin? Which Cronin? One with legs?” Would he fight that all-too-obvious joke that his friends might make about “I-lean”? And what, exactly, made a boy
choose
the golf team in high school? This last one tore me up: a boy who golfed. He did not play football, basketball, or baseball. My father was going to hate him; I was already falling in love.

I decided that if I wanted to ask him to our dance, I’d better act quickly. Word was that he’d dated a cheerleader from my school, who might ask him to the dance. A year earlier that news would have shut me down, but competition now escalated my resolve. I was less afraid of rejection than I was of dialing a telephone and asking for a boy. How would I get the words out? He would hear the tremors in my voice. My throat would dry up, or I’d start blathering again. Aside from that, I was about to do the one thing that Mom always said was
as low as a girl can go:
“Only a desperate girl would call a boy.”

On the smoking patio, I explained my dilemma to a friend. I had wanted to ask Claire to call and pretend she was me, but Claire’s voice was steady, deep, plodding. Mine raced from high-pitched to a shrill birdcall. Besides, James had met Claire.

On the other side of my friend was a girl named Tracy, who strummed a guitar and sang church tunes. I had to raise my voice over “Blowin’ in the Wind” to ask my friend if she would call for me. Tracy silenced her guitar and said, “He’ll think you’re a coward.”

I scowled at her and turned back to my friend. “Look, just pretend you’re me.”

“Huh?” This friend did have my voice. In one syllable she’d just gone from merely high to an inaudible shriek.

“Come on,” I begged.

Tracy butted in again. “Why don’t you just do it yourself?”

“Please,” I pleaded. This high-pitched, shy girl could possibly pull it off, but she stared at the tip of her cigarette and said, “What makes you think I can do it any better than you?”

“I can’t do it. I’ll fold. I know it.” I tried to think of something to entice her. “I’ll call someone for you.”

“Naw,” she shook her head. “I might not even go. It’s just a dance. And what if he says no?”

“I won’t blame you if he says no.” I held up my right hand. “I swear. But at least I’ll have tried.”

“No,
she’ll
have tried,” said Tracy, pointing at my friend.

I shifted my back toward Tracy, who retreated into her strumming. Then I badgered my friend until she capitulated.

I hardly slept that night. Before class the next morning I raced to the smoking patio, bursting through the cafeteria doors. The group of smokers started giggling.

“What’s so funny?” I said, jittery from a lack of sleep. The air was nippy, and smoke made me nauseous in the morning.

“Tracy was just out here,” said a sophomore provocatively. This girl reminded me of Faye Dunaway, with her high cheekbones and red hair. She was the epitome of cool.

“Okay,” I said, resigned. “What did Tracy say?”

They were all silent.

“What?” I tried to sound put out rather than terrified.

“Tracy was the one who called James,” said this girl. She even had Faye Dunaway’s monotone voice.

“No!” I slapped my forehead.
Kumbaya Tracy?
“Oh, God.” Everyone laughed while this miniature Faye Dunaway tilted her head and smirked. She was laughing with me, and if it weren’t my problem I’d have been laughing, too. After all, if there was anything to soften the blow at this, my most degrading moment, it was that Faye Dunaway was recounting my nightmare with smoke curling up from her nostrils.

“I guess that’s it.” I tried to sound accepting. “Did he give a reasonable excuse?”

“Well,” said Faye, wincing. “It gets worse.”

I had to ask. “What happened?”

She cleared her throat. “He said no to Tracy. He said ... what’d he say?” she asked another girl, and bit into her fingernail.

“Come on!” I said.

“I think he went along with it. At first. He let Tracy ask him to the dance, but then he said, ‘You’re not Eileen Cronin.’” She made her voice go deep, like a man’s voice. “‘You tell Eileen Cronin if she wants to ask me to her dance, she’ll have to call me herself.’”

Everyone doubled over in laughter. For the rest of the day I sulked.

That night, I went into Liz’s room and collapsed on her bed. I was holding my head, rocking and groaning. She’d heard the story. Everyone had heard the story. “Oh, stop it,” said Liz. She lit a cigarette and handed it to me. “Smoke this before you call. It’ll calm your nerves.” She opened the window and put a Cat Stevens album on the turntable.

We sprawled on her bed, blowing smoke out the window. The nicotine kicked in. I was wired. My throat dried up. “I can’t do it.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No.” I shook my head and dragged so hard again on the cigarette that it crackled before I handed it to her. “Will you?”

“Do you want to piss this guy off?”

“That’s just it,” I said, hugging my stomach. “He’s already pissed.”

“No he’s not,” she said, irritated.

“He’s not?”

She waved off the cigarette. “Just finish that thing. You always hotbox.” She imitated my bent fingers holding a cigarette—not my claw hand but my normal hand. “Would you take a hit from that?” she’d say, holding up my double-jointed fingers. Then she said, “You’re giving up when he never said he doesn’t want to go. Why would he tell Tracy to have you call him?”

“So he could yell at me?” I said, throwing up my hands.

She tossed her hair back and sighed. “You’re
such
a loser.” She handed me the yellow phone that we fought over constantly. It was as if we were the only people living in the house. Now and then someone would pick up from the kitchen and say, “Not you again!” Or one of the “babies”—now in elementary school—would listen in from the line in the basement and start giggling.