Sea Change (3 page)

“She essentially made The Mariner a shrine to herself,” Mom went on as she tipped the pitcher over a glass; a waterfall of amber-colored liquid poured forth, along with a cascade of lemon slices and shards of mint. “Lord, was that woman a monster,” she concluded with a sigh.

I flinched as I accepted the drink. Mom had referred to Isadora in similar terms over the years, but now, it felt wrong to speak ill of the dead. Plus, I couldn’t quite imagine the luminous creature from the photo as cruel.

Then again, what did I really know about my grandmother? On occasion, when I was growing up, Wade and I would receive a Christmas or birthday card signed
Isadora Beauregard Hawkins
in looping, stylized script. I’d always been vaguely amazed that she even knew of our existence.

As Mom sat down beside me, I glanced at her profile,
wondering how she had come to feel so harshly about her mother. A week ago, when Aunt Coral had called us with the news of Isadora’s death, Mom’s eyes had turned stormy with tears and her face had gone all splotchy. The sight had rattled me; Mom never cried. But when I’d inquired about the cause of death—I like diagnoses—Mom had snapped back to her usual sardonic self, blowing her nose and saying that complications from being eighty and drinking peach juleps every day had probably done Isadora in.

“What’s wrong, my love?” Mom asked now, pulling me out of my thoughts. She poured iced tea into her own glass, then faced me, her brow furrowed. “I know you’re always pensive, but, lately, you’ve seemed…” She paused, biting her lower lip.

I froze. Mom couldn’t have failed to notice how, over the past month, I’d retreated from the world like a hermit crab into the sand. I used to go to my best friend Linda Wu’s house after school, or have Greg over to the apartment for “tutoring sessions.” But since May I’d been coming home alone and taking long, restorative baths before curling up on the sofa to watch the Discovery Channel.

“I’m fine,” I replied quickly, and sipped my drink, but discomfort stained my cheeks red. I wanted to tell Mom, I did, but I was a little bit frightened that if I started to talk, I’d break down.

“Okay,” Mom said, regarding me carefully. “But here’s something that might cheer you up: Tomorrow, there’s going to be a party on the boardwalk. We should stop by.”

“What kind of party?” I asked, chewing on a piece of mint. My stomach tightened briefly at the memory of the last party I had attended.

“It’s called the Heirs party,” Mom said, swallowing her tea.

“Airs?” I echoed, thinking of the colorless gases that comprise the atmosphere. I pictured a faintly pagan ceremony on the shore involving billowing robes and kites. I couldn’t begin to imagine my mother—or myself—at such an affair.

Mom tipped her head to one side, smiling. “As in, heirs and heiresses. You know…” She twirled her wrist for emphasis, the ice cubes in her glass clinking. “The descendants of those who’ve summered on Selkie forever. The LeBlanc family, one of the most prominent on the island, started the tradition at the end of the nineteenth century. The last week in June, all the summer people meet and toast one another’s wealth.” She rolled her eyes, but there was no mistaking the nostalgia in her tone.

“So we were invited?” I asked, a little bewildered by all the pomp and tradition. I did feel a spark of interest; after the past month, it might be nice to socialize with people again. Not that I had anything to wear to a party; amid the T-shirts and
jeans I’d packed was a sole drawstring cotton skirt with a hole in its hem.

“There was an invitation sitting in the mailbox when I arrived last night,” Mom confirmed, crossing her legs. “Intended for Isadora; she always got one automatically.”

“But do
we
belong there?” I asked, finishing my drink.

“We do,” Mom said quietly, meeting my gaze, and I realized she must have attended the party many times before. “For better or worse, you
are
an heir, Miranda. And so am I.”

My skin prickled and I looked back at the ocean. None of us ask for the things we inherit; they are thrust upon us, willy-nilly. Like The Mariner, I suddenly understood. Mom and I
weren’t
trespassing. This house was ours. This view was ours. And that seemed as absurd and unreal as the stories Sailor Hat had spun for me on the ferry.

R
ight after dinner, I decided to go for a swim. The nearness of the ocean was too tempting to resist, so I hurried upstairs to change into my bathing suit.

The room I’d be staying in was the bedroom Mom and Aunt Coral had shared back in the day. It seemed stuck in time: the wallpaper with its rosy seashells, the pink quilts covering the two twin beds. I was not a fan of pink, and I envied Mom, who was settling into the blue-and-green master bedroom down the hall.

I plunked my duffel bag on one of the beds and began removing my neat piles of clothes, transferring them to the drawers of the wooden bedside dresser. Nothing calmed me more than creating order. It was no wonder that, in my room back home, Dmitry Mendeleyev’s periodic table of the elements
hung above my desk, a sort of inspiration. I was probably the only living sixteen-year-old with that decoration.

Once I’d unpacked, I stripped off my clothes and wriggled into my black one-piece swimsuit. I hesitated for a second before kicking off my Converse. There probably wouldn’t be any other swimmers out at this hour, so I could remain barefoot.

I was born with the toes on both my feet webbed—“like a pretty little duck,” Dad would say. Since my parents are both plastic surgeons, they had a colleague operate on me as early as possible, and the webbing was removed. But my feet still look undeniably odd; scars run like needlework along the skin between my toes, and the toes themselves are slightly curled.
Syndactyly
is the proper name for the condition; I’d done plenty of research on it, reading about babies’ development in the womb. I was the only one in my family with this strangeness, which doctors aren’t sure is genetic.
I
was just sure that I preferred flats to flip-flops.

Wrapping a towel around my waist, I glanced out my window, which faced Glaucus Way. Blush-colored stripes were appearing in the sky, and blinking fireflies danced between the rooftops. A young mother was quickly pushing a stroller under the shadowy branches, and the Spanish moss looked like the spidery beards of old men. I didn’t relish the idea
of swimming in the dark; I had to get a move on before night fell.

I called to Mom that I’d be back soon, then raced down the creaky stairs, through the living room, and onto the back porch. I rubbed my arms, shivering in the evening chill. The porch steps were cold beneath my feet, but the sandy slope that led to the water was warm—perfectly sun-toasted.

And so was the ocean. I waded in up to my shins, my toes sending up small clouds of sand. Coils of seaweed brushed my ankles, and a sense of peace settled over me. I gazed around at the open expanse of dark turquoise. There was a sailboat in the distance, and if I squinted, I could see a fishing trawler chugging toward the island. Other than that, I had the sea all to myself.

What was it Mom had said earlier?
Water, water, every where / Nor any drop to drink.
I’d never been in the position of dying of thirst, but I could relate to such longing. It was how I’d felt for years before I got a boyfriend, when my high school seemed to be a sea of guys, all of them kissable, all of them datable, but none of them wanting me.

I shook my head, pushing away those memories. Then I eased farther into the Atlantic and, holding my breath, submerged completely.

I loved the gray-blue shade of the world underwater, the way the sea grasses seemed to sway in slow motion. As I came
up for air, I stretched out my body and slowly began scissoring my legs. Only swimming afforded me such grace and freedom; not even acing a science test felt as good. And there was something thrilling about floating in the ocean, something primal and natural about the warm caress of water.

For most of my life, I’d had to make do with pools; Mom didn’t like seaside vacations, so when she was able to get off work, we’d travel to cities like Chicago, or to the upstate New York mountains. My father was always up for taking me to the beach in L.A., but I didn’t see him often. Now, I wondered if Mom avoided the ocean because it reminded her of her childhood, of Isadora.

When I felt something slimy brush my leg, my heart skipped a beat. I no longer felt so alone in the water, and, to my annoyance, Sailor Hat’s words about dangerous creatures resounded in my head. Ridiculous. Still, I began paddling back to shore, telling myself that it was time to go inside anyway. The sky was morphing from orange to purple to navy blue.

I toweled off, my ponytail sopping and water running down my arms. It was funny how a swim could transform one so much; I knew I looked very different from the dry Miranda I’d been minutes before. My teeth chattering, I rushed up the porch steps and slipped into the house. The living room was dim, the foyer enveloped in blackness. Save for the constant shushing sound of the ocean and the whir of the ceiling fans,
The Mariner was silent. Mom had told me she might go to bed early, so I took care to tiptoe. Unlike me, Mom was a light sleeper; she said that becoming a mother had made her that way.

I wasn’t ready for bed; the swim had refreshed me, made me just shy of restless, and also thirsty. I began creeping toward the kitchen to see if there was any sweet tea left over. I remembered the kitchen as being behind the stairs, but I navigated incorrectly in the darkness. Somehow I found myself in a tight corridor—and face-to-face with a haggard old man.

I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle my scream an instant before I realized I was looking at a painting. It was a portrait of a white-maned, wild-eyed man in a tattered sailor’s uniform, tattoos on both his arms and a bottle in his fist. He was hideous. Slung around his neck was a thick rope, and from the knot at its end swung an enormous white bird—
an albatross,
I realized, shudders running down my back.

So this was the mariner of the poem, the presiding spirit of the house. Maybe Mom was right; had I been at all familiar with literature, I might have recognized the portrait right away and spared myself my minor coronary.

As though the house had read my mind, a draft in the hallway caused the door next to the painting to open slightly. I pushed the knob and peeked into what looked like a small
study. Flicking on the light, I walked inside. There was an antique wooden writing desk with a high-backed chair, a crimson love seat, and mahogany bookshelves lining the walls. The single slice of wall not covered in books showed off another watercolor portrait, but this one did not scare me.

It was of Isadora, resplendent in a silky green gown. She was posed on the staircase of The Mariner, her bearing regal. The portraitist had added whimsical flourishes: peach blossoms dangled above her head, and she held a fur-lined wrap in her arms that no one south of the Mason-Dixon Line would ever need. The whole look was sort of hilarious, and screamed Scarlett O’Hara. Not coincidentally, the bookshelf beneath the portrait held a copy of
Gone with the Wind.

I scanned the rest of the shelf, curious as to what else my grandmother had considered good reading material. The books weren’t arranged alphabetically, or by subject; the lack of order made my head hurt. There was
Marion Brown’s Southern Cook Book
beside
Romeo and Juliet,
which was nestled next to the
Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot
and a book of Andersen’s fairy tales. Nothing called to me. But when I saw the phrase
Selkie Island
on the lower half of a torn, dark blue spine, I pulled the book out.

The cover nearly came off in my hands, and I did a double take when I saw it bore a reproduction of the warning sign that hung above the Selkie dock. The book’s title,
A Primer
on the Legend and Lore of Selkie Island,
was emblazoned across the top, and the author’s name, Llewellyn Thorpe, was written out in script across the bottom. Turning the book over, I wiped the film of dust off its back cover and read the paragraph that was written in gold leaf:

Many are drawn to Selkie Island. Few know why. Selkie’s essence of mystery surrounds the isle like its famous shroud of fog. But the island’s varied legends—of beasts, of freaks, of shipwrecked sailors—have an undeniable lure. The tome you hold in your hands, gentle reader, is a compendium of these legends. Proceed with care.

I smiled. More tall tales? Maybe Sailor Hat was Llewellyn Thorpe.

I cracked the book’s flimsy spine, and a musty scent rose up toward me. The frontispiece was a grainy map showing Selkie’s location in the Atlantic, but the island was surrounded by drawings of winged fish, krakens, and mermaids. I turned the slippery, yellowed pages until I reached the back of the book. There, I found a pen-and-ink drawing of a reed-thin man wearing spectacles and a suit. Beneath this image it said:

Llewellyn Thorpe was born in 1873 in Savannah, Georgia, and died in 1913, shortly before the publication of this volume. A professor of anthropology, he devoted his life to researching the folklore of Selkie Island.

Okay. So not Sailor Hat.

Holding the book open, I walked backward to the writing desk. I spread my towel on the high-backed chair and sat, thumbing through the book more slowly now. Why was I hooked? Why did I care?

I flipped past chapters entitled “Side-Shows and Cabinets of Curiosity,” “The Sharp-Toothed Serpents of Siren Beach,” “Stories of the Gullah People,” and “Cryptozoology.” Finally, I came upon a chapter called “A Brief Historie of Selkie Island,” and I paused, wondering if this might offer something resembling solid fact. I set the book down on the desk, moving aside a pad of paper and a black oblong box to make room. Then I began to read.

It was the high summer of 1650 when Captain William McCloud, a Scottish pirate sailing to the Caribbean, discovered what is today known as Selkie Island.

The book went on to explain that Captain McCloud’s crew had mutinied and dropped him in a dinghy off the coast of Georgia. The pirate was half mad from starvation when a beautiful green-eyed mermaid with a red-gold tail steered him to land. There, the mermaid, named Caya, shape-shifted into a woman. Captain McCloud promptly fell in love with her, married her, and named the island Selkie—the Scottish word for a creature capable of transforming from a seal into a human. Captain McCloud and Caya had several children, who, like their mother, became merfolk when they submerged
themselves in the ocean, but lived as humans on land. And, according to Llewellyn Thorpe, these merfolk descendants still populated the island.

I laughed to myself, amused, but I kept on reading.

Merfolk such as Caya have been a universal element of lore. The ancient Assyrians told of Atargatis: half-woman, half-fish. And in his
Metamorphoses,
Ovid gave us Glaucus, the lovelorn merman. Many dismiss mermaid sightings as a sailor’s misinterpretation of a manatee or a dugong swimming beneath the waves. But in his journals, Christopher Columbus wrote of spotting Sirens off the coast of Hispaniola, and Henry Hudson swore he witnessed a woman with the tail of a porpoise swimming by the side of his ship. It is on and around Selkie, however, that the greatest evidence of merfolk life exists. The native Selkie merfolk are as much a part of the island as the Spanish moss and the marshes.

Selkie merfolk are usually recognizable by a few key features, such as: a lush, sensitive beauty; a predilection for the colors red and gold; kindness toward visitors and explorers; and homes close to the shore. They can sometimes be spotted at night, when venturing out to—

A sudden, shrill scream came from outside the house. I jumped in my chair, knocking the book off the desk, and leapt to my feet, my pulse thudding in my ears, louder than the
ocean. Every inch of my skin was awake, my nerve endings on alert.

The scream came again, and I pressed a hand to my damp collarbone, taking a deep breath.
Calm down.
I recalled the Sea Islands Wildlife website I’d skimmed before leaving New York. I was probably hearing the call of an American oystercatcher, a bird native to the area. That was all.

What is with you, Miranda?

I glanced at where Llewellyn Thorpe’s book lay, several of its pages loose and scattered. It was the silly book that was spooking me. I looked up at the portrait of Isadora, who stared back at me—her foolish granddaughter, shivering in a swimsuit. Who else, besides me, had come into the study late at night only to find
A Primer on the Legend and Lore of Selkie Island
? Had Mom? Had her siblings? Had Isadora herself? Had any of them fallen for Llewellyn Thorpe’s words?

There was an irrational part of me that wanted to continue reading, to find out more. But I knew that was a bad idea, that there was nothing useful to be learned from the book. And I needed to get some sleep; Mom had said we’d have a big day of cleaning and sorting tomorrow, and there was that Heirs party.

I stuffed the pages back into the book and returned it to its place on the shelf, feeling my usual rationale return as well.
As I shut off the light and left the study, I felt my heartbeat slowing down. Even the mariner seemed benign as I hurried past him now. I made my way to the kitchen, got a glass of water, and carried it upstairs, hoping the moaning of the steps wouldn’t wake Mom.

In my room, I drew the drapes and quickly changed into a blue tank top and my favorite pajama bottoms: They were white and printed with miniature blue whales. I’d purchased them at the Museum of Natural History when I’d interviewed there back in March. My friend Linda, who’d been with me at the time, had laughed at the pajamas and called them “absolutely adorkable.”

I glanced at my cell phone, which I’d placed on the dresser earlier, and I almost reached for it, the muscle memory of my fingers wanting to text Linda, to tell her about The Mariner and Llewellyn Thorpe’s book. But I couldn’t. I shouldn’t. Things weren’t the same anymore. At all.

With a sigh, I slid into bed, my head full from everything that had happened that evening. I thought of the night deepening outside, of my swim in the ocean, of lost pirates and helpful mermaids. Then I burrowed my head into the pillow and hoped I’d dream about sensible things, like in which box tomorrow I’d pack away
A Primer on the Legend and Lore of Selkie Island.