The Mermaid of Brooklyn (23 page)

We stopped in Central Park so the rusalka could see it, and so I could change Rose’s diaper and nurse again before the train ride home and Betty could chase some fancy Manhattan pigeons around for a change before being strapped back in the stroller. It was the big sister of Prospect Park—neater, with prettier and more carefully considered flower beds, more shapely fake lakes, greener grass. Even the birds seemed cleaner. It was a city park dressed up to meet visitors, and today we were the visitors. Betty and I shared a hot dog from a vendor. “Mommy! This hot dog is SO GOOD!”
Betty said rapturously. The poor kid was used to boiled tofu pups. Rose fell asleep strapped to my chest, and a nice businessman carried the stroller down the stairs to the subway platform. I couldn’t remember when I’d been so happy, electrified by a peculiar zinging, my mind cleared like a nose after a cold’s last sneeze. I felt like taking an antihistamine-commercial deep breath, sighing luxuriantly. “AHHHH!”

In the days and weeks that followed, the rusalka had us on the move.
How dare you be bored in this city? You can travel the world in an afternoon! We’re getting dim sum in Chinatown for lunch and lasagna in Little Italy for dinner.
The girls and I went to museums and parks we’d never seen. I found myself trying foods I had never heard of. We marched in the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, the rusalka snorting at all the body-paint scales and Halloween costume fish tails. We dragged Laura and Emma to Brighton Beach, where the rusalka seemed especially happy, compelling me to slurp down ice-cold borscht while Laura watched in horror. “What’s gotten into you?” she demanded. “You seem so, like, normal lately. Happy or something.”

“Do I?” I said as we strolled the boardwalk, the girls skipping among the fat Russian men stuffed into hanky-sized swimsuits, grandmothers looking greasy and brown as rotisserie chickens. “Well, good. I guess I’m just feeling a little better.” It was true. I was. It was as if I’d begun to remember about the world as the rusalka rushed forward to see it; as if, like her, I was seeing everything for the first time.

All of which was very well and good, except that, as Sylvia
reminded me frequently, there was no word from Harry. I was worried. It would have been heartless not to worry. But the rusalka wanted me to stop, and when she wanted something, she had ways of being very convincing. She didn’t care a whit about Harry. She thought I was a fool to pine over him.
What, he was such a prince? Let’s move on, sweetie.

She somehow dredged up my worst memories, excavating from my mind the most miserable moments with Harry: the fights, the gruesome scenes, the protracted fits of bickering. The party at the Village town house of some snooty friends of his where he’d said, “Oh, Jenny’s from the Midwest. She’s practically part cow.” We’d all laughed into the fondue. How funny! How sophisticated we were, that we could be so cruel to each other! Sweating it out later in the subway station at West Fourth Street, I’d said, “Part
cow,
Harry? What the fuck.” He’d exploded. “Why are you always trying to pick fights? It’s like you’re only happy if I’m unhappy.” “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize calling me a cow was such an important part of your happiness!” The A train rumbled overhead, so we shouted louder, attracting the attention of everyone standing around. It was awful, awful.

Or the night he came home drunk and said, “You’re ugly when you nag.” “What nagging?” I’d said, genuinely surprised. “I just asked where you were. You said you’d be home five hours ago.” And he’d waved at me on his way to the bedroom as I slid his gelled hunk of casserole into the trash, playing the part of put-upon movie housewife.

Or the weekend in Atlantic City, before we were married, when I woke up on the beach, sunburned and dazed, to see that he’d abandoned his towel next to me. I’d found him a few hours later in a Wild West–themed casino, down three hundred bucks and flirting with the sad-eyed blonde dealing cards.

I knew he couldn’t have been as mean as all that. I once loved him so much, I’d felt a physical ache in my chest. When we were first together, I’d gone to my doctor, asking about the frequent sudden pains—that’s how much I loved him. I loved him so much my doctor was worried and ordered a scan. I remember wondering what she’d find. An enlarged valentine-shaped heart, thumping like a cartoon’s, bleeding its outline through my shirt? Nothing. She found nothing. Obviously. But this feeling, it was like trying to remember a smell. I could recall only its effects and not the feeling itself.

Oh, please,
was the rusalka’s response.
We are over this. Onward, my dear. The man is gone. His loss. All I want to know is: What’s next?

I have to admit that a large percentage of my brain devoted itself to worrying about money, namely my lack thereof, and about taking care of the girls despite this inconvenient poverty. The rusalka whispered,
Don’t be silly. You can make money. You can make money with your sewing.

How? That’s not going to work.

Such an attitude! It works, of course it works. I’ll show you how.

Somehow, she did. It started with Evelyn, at the place where all important deals were negotiated, in Park Slope, anyway: on the playground. We were pushing our babies slowly, slowly, on the baby swings, vaguely aware of our older kids plopped in the center of the sandbox. Gus loved the swing, squealing and bouncing. Rose hunched in hers, glowering at me. Evelyn sighed. “I have to go to this event for Darren’s work. A fund-raiser thing. And I would be excited about it—you know, a fancy night out on the town without the kids—but I have nothing to wear. And I’m not exaggerating. Nothing. None of my clothes from when I was working fit.” She nodded at Gus as if to indicate why. We were all fatter and exhausted by trying to act like we didn’t care.

I yawned, bored. It was one of those days that stretched out before me, the distance between the present moment and the girls’ bedtime seeming to lengthen as the day wore on rather than diminishing. I squinted at Betty and Charlie, playing nicely together for once, even if they were sculpting a disturbingly phallic sand castle. Sometimes I thought I had the kind of brain that had no right being near kids. The other day at the Y play space, I’d heard a mom call out, “NO LICKING BALLS!” and I’d almost lost it completely. It was terrible. I’m not saying it wasn’t terrible.

Evelyn went on, her voice the bleating blah-blah of a parent in
Peanuts. Her ability to drone on is astounding. Poor Darren! It’s like she’s determined to be a bore.
“Mm-hm,” I said, taking mercy on Rose and lifting her out of the swing. She was happier on my hip, tugging at my hair. “Mm-hm . . . Yeah . . . Wait, what?”

Evelyn looked taken aback, as if startled to remember she was talking to someone. “Oh. Have you seen the one I’m talking about? It’s this really pretty, really simple gray shift dress. Silk, I think. At that little boutique on Seventh and Fourteenth or Fifteenth, I
think, where everything’s so pretty you can’t stand it? I was just saying, the stupid dress is eight hundred dollars, and I’m sure if I could sew at all, it would be the easiest thing in the world to make. But I can’t sew a button. Not that the dress has anything as complicated as a button! Anyway, I can’t spend that kind of money right now.”

I tapped her on the arm, a gesture so unlike me that we were both a little startled. “Buy the dress.”

“Yeah, right. No, I don’t mean like
Oh, I shouldn’t
can’t afford it. I mean like I don’t have the money. Even our credit card is maxed out from our apartment renovations. We have a beautiful kitchen and no money.”

Oh, boo-freaking-hoo.

She’s a spoiled idiot, obviously, but that’s hardly the point. Think, Jenny, think!

“No, I mean, buy it and give it to me.”

Evelyn barked a terrifying laugh.

“No, no. Listen to me. I can sew. I used to be really good. I think I’m really good now again, or I could be. What I mean is, bring the dress and I’ll make you a copy. Then you can return it.”

Evelyn stopped pushing Gus’s swing, causing him to squeal in protest. “Are you serious?”

“Evelyn, I’m always serious.”

“You are not.”

“Okay, but I am now. I can do this. Just pay me back for the fabric and maybe fifty dollars for the time it’ll take. When’s the event?”

“Next Friday.” Evelyn sounded dubious.

It took me a weirdly long time to compute in my head. Math! “Today is Thursday. I think. Okay, so, buy the dress tomorrow and I’ll have it finished by Monday.”

“You’re serious?”

“I told you. I’m always serious.”

The conversation was cut short by a shriek piercing the muggy air. Used to ignoring kid sounds, I didn’t even look. Then Evelyn was extracting Gus from his swing and hurrying toward the sandbox, where my darling Betty had just mistaken Charlie for a chicken nugget in a sunhat. Evelyn was understanding. Charlie was not. Betty grinned psychotically, and I swear I saw blood in her teeth. Just what I needed. As if a normal two-year-old weren’t difficult enough, mine had to go and turn vampire.

The next day Sylvia came to watch the girls so I could ride the F train into the city and prowl the garment district in search of gray silk. It was stunningly hot. I sweated into my calfskin sandals, crossing narrow side streets kept dusk-dark by office towers. Squat Latino men my height and three times as muscular yanked overladen carts over broken sidewalks, in and out of delivery docks the size of modest suburban driveways. Hasidic men hurried in pairs toward the kosher deli. Here and there, neon steam undulated above neon bowls of ramen, advertising lunch spots, but mostly, the storefront windows were bright with rolls of fabric. I felt foreign, wobbly, as if my legs were new and not quite my own.

So
here
is New York! I like this place, I do.
I’d taken her to one of Manhattan’s last remaining sordid corners. Peep-show theaters lit the avenue with kinetic rainbow signs; a man in a filthy trench coat exited the parole station and promptly commenced peeing onto a Dumpster. I started like an out-of-towner when a hunchbacked hag with knobby, chickeny legs staggered out from an alleyway, offering me an enchanted treat, wait, no, mumbling about a conspiracy and holding out a hand for change. I gathered myself and ignored her, strode on. Despite my nerves, I felt elated to be there, to be anywhere, to walk down the street alone, carrying only a small handbag
and on a non-baby-related mission. It was almost as if—could it be?—I had my own life.

I walked quickly down the shrouded side streets, passing by the stores devoted to wholesale and the cheap shops offering bolts of leopard-print polyester, hot-pink rickrack, and stiff, sparkling lace. Spandex World. Cloths 4 U. Finally, I found a decent shop and spent half an hour or so in a kind of tactile ecstasy—fondling linens and silks, holding samples up to the window to examine the colors, testing the weave with a gentle tug, rubbing a peachy satin to my lips and remembering how I first loved fabrics, like this, as a child in my mother’s closet, sniffing and softly gumming the hems of her few fancy dresses. I spent four times as much as I would have had Harry been around to frown at the credit card bill. And I found the most perfect, swingy, pearly, dove-gray silk for Evelyn’s dress. I was going to make that dumpy woman the belle of the ball.