Authors: Errin Stevens
“What!” Kate shrieked, this time rolling off the bed to search frantically for her clothes. Gabe huffed and donned a shirt and pair of shorts. He held his hand out to Kate, glowering in the direction of the kitchen. “Let’s get this over with.”
*
Kate would have rather died than leave their room to greet everyone but agreed they should get the meeting behind them. As they entered the kitchen, she glanced at the items on the floor, blushed scarlet and tried to run away. Gabe’s hand on hers was all that kept her from bolting. She closed her eyes, vacillating between humiliation and seething anger, and, somehow, stayed put. She glared daggers at each of the newcomers.
Gabe radiated his own irritation as he visually excoriated all four people in the room. “What the hell are you doing here?”
John’s coughing was no disguise. All of them were trying not to laugh. Cara and Carmen couldn’t even face them, instead clutching each other doubling over. Michael stepped forward to take the heat, managing to contain his amusement to just a smile. “Hi, kids! It appears congratulations are in order!”
Carmen and Cara came to them then, clucking apologies as they approached. The couple stood stonily while their mothers petted them, Kate feeling nothing but annoyance now. She wondered if there was any chance they did not look like they’d been having sex for two straight days, but a glance at Gabe, especially at his tousled hair and swollen mouth, destroyed all hope along those lines.
“Seriously, Mother, I could so cheerfully kill you right now.”
“Indeed,” Gabe intoned.
“Don’t be mad, honey,” Cara begged, laughing as she rocked Kate in her embrace. “This is exactly what we’ve all wanted for you both, from the time you were children.” Her words softened Kate up a little.
“But did you
have
to physically show up here? Didn’t we get you a cell phone a while back?”
“We maybe could have called,” Carmen soothed. “But, we’re all really happy for you two and wanted to tell you in person, and we kind of came for another reason too.” She explained what they knew of the situation with Will and Dana.
“Wow.” Kate forgot her embarrassment for the moment. “A suicide attempt. Is he okay?”
“Some of our watery friends saved Will—he’s unharmed—and we just got here with Dana an hour ago. They’re both, um, sedated, or whatever the right word is for being kept under siren influence.” Kate’s gaze darted to John then, considering him as if for the first time. He smiled back sheepishly. Gabe cleared his throat.
At which point she remembered why she so very much didn’t want her parents—or his—around. As Gabe stood behind her broadcasting his over-ripe intensity, she once again flushed with mortification.
Michael locked onto Gabe’s expression then, comprehension seeming to dawn on him. “How long have you two been here?”
“Not quite two days,” Gabe answered, an unarticulated
scram
hanging from the end of his statement heard by everyone there. He wrapped his arms around Kate so she was plastered against him. She tried to hide her face in his neck.
Their parents all started moving and talking at once. “We’ll be pretty much unavailable for the next couple days,” Michael said as he retrieved spare blankets from a chest. John excused himself to go get Everett, and Cara and Carmen’s comments overlapped one another as one went to a closet for pillows and another fished some fruit from the fridge.
“We’re staying at the Mattegins if you need us,” and, “We’ll be in the water all day tomorrow, so we’ll catch up later in the week,” they babbled. Within a minute, the entire crew had vacated the cottage.
Kate started to complain, but Gabe’s kiss stopped her. As the front door
clicked
behind their parents, he lifted her to him, her feet dangling over his as he walked back to the bedroom. “If they come back, we’re ignoring them,” he threatened against her lips, kicking the door shut behind him. Kate sighed in resignation. At the very least, they would not be interrupted again.
Dana couldn’t remember ever feeling better. She was completely rested—a delicious novelty—and despite a small effort on her part to remember urgent duties she knew waited for her at work and home, she couldn’t muster the tiniest amount of concern.
Unprecedented. Bizarre. Delightful.
She floated through the light-filled water not noticing how she was propelled, lazily contemplating her many smiling female companions. They twisted gracefully around her, their agile bodies and swirling hair moving in a fluid, joyful ballet that seemed choreographed in its complexity. Dana luxuriated in the caress of the warm water against her skin and in the constant backdrop of her friends’ singing, their voices echoing around and within her, soothing and evocative.
As if in a dream, Dana watched her beautiful escorts and was awed by their individual and collective loveliness. She marveled at their figures, both curvaceous and lean, and at the rich variations in color they presented. From the iridescent but discernibly human top halves of their bodies, each woman’s waist faded into large, colorful scales running from gently flaring hips down the impressively long and fish-like lower half of her body, and terminating in a tremendous, diaphanous end fin that rippled and floated in the most mesmerizing way. Most tails were entirely one shade, with a lighter, contrasting color saturating the pelvic and caudal fins, although some sported stripes. Dana saw every conceivable hue represented, from brilliant turquoise to crimson red to lemon yellow.
Eventually, the swirling dance and singing subsided, and quietness settled in and around her. Dana found herself and her entourage stopped in what appeared to be an enormous underwater cathedral. Its massive, ancient walls vaulted to the surface in an awesome display of majesty, inviting the eyes upward, while powerful shafts of sunlight cast rippling columns of light on the floor and reflected sunshine everywhere else. Dana felt the effect within her very soul; the soft, holy illumination washing through her with a cleansing calm she felt was the very essence of grace.
A striking and bizarre fish-woman ghosted into her field of vision, her appearance distracting Dana from her trance. Her slender form was topped with wildly long tendrils of green-tinged, white-blond hair framing her entire body, each section curling and extending as if riding a current of its own. Her emerald green eyes stared out from a delicately chiseled face saved from severity by softly arching brows and a full, generous mouth. Dana was fascinated by the play of sunlight on the woman’s iridescent skin, and awed by her savage, haunting beauty. The woman smiled at her as she guided them slowly toward the top of the cathedral.
I am Xanthe
, the woman told her without speaking
. You are Dana
,
sister of Cara Blake and wife of William Fletcher
.
Yes
.
They drifted, and Xanthe’s hypnotic stare faded from Dana’s view as, by slow degrees, her own thoughts absorbed her awareness. Eventually, she no longer saw or heard the world around her, only images and sensations within herself, where a myriad of sharply defined memories began to dance like a cinema reel through her mind. She sifted through them with forensic concentration to find…something.
Something to refresh her life and marriage, she decided. In a strange voice a little like her own but not, Dana was instructed to examine the hardest things carefully, without judgment or disapproval. She began to think of work, home, and her husband.
Will had reminded her of her father when they met. Not physically, but in his ambition and recognition of her accomplishments. He’d showed her the same kind of appreciation her father had showered her with during childhood, shaping her desire to be a good student, to excel in school, to get a high-paying job. It dawned on her the approval she’d received for her efforts was synonymous with something more important, and this thought tugged at her attention.
Synonymous but not the same
, her voice cautioned.
She thought back on several interactions with her parents, remembering her father’s fervent pride when she’d received an award in elementary school for reading the most books. Melissa, her mother, had smiled at her kindly and ruffled her hair as Norman, her father, boasted about her to the parents of a classmate. She’d wondered why her mother wasn’t as openly proud of her, and she remembered how this doubt was obliterated when her father picked her up and whirled her around. She’d found his encouragement intoxicating and much preferable to her mother’s quiet support. She realized she believed her father loved her more.
She recalled her angst during a lesson in advanced math in high school, when the reserved, skinny boy next to her wrote the answer to a problem in his notebook in one try as he usually did. He’d studied the equation on the blackboard and then confidently written out three lines of proofs, so sure of his answer he didn’t need the instructor to check it. Dana, meanwhile, struggled to identify any pattern that might lead toward a solution. In her frustration, the boy’s facility had offended her.
She’d loosely kept track of him after high school and knew he’d excelled in college, and had gone on to obtain a graduate degree in aerospace engineering. At the last reunion, he was a department head at a highly respected aeronautics company but had mostly wanted to talk about his family and hobbies. His brilliant career was genuinely
not
all-important to him, which Dana did not understand.
She’d come across these cases before, of course, people at the top of their professions who cared more—or even just equally—about other areas of their lives, and she wondered what glitch in their perspectives allowed them to demote accomplishments which had surely required tremendous focus and effort. Her own belief that perseverance could overcome all obstacles, and glory and honor ensued ad infinitum in this context was challenged in these encounters, and she’d never quite known how to think about these people. They seemed relatively happy, perhaps even more so than she and Will. Were they?
As she pondered this situation, not for the first time, she was eventually able to acknowledge two truths to herself. Firstly, some people had natural talents for which hard work by people without them did not compensate. She did not need to feel defensive or regretful as she had talents too. Secondly, she needed to rethink her definition of accomplishment and success. The formula she’d followed since childhood was no longer compelling to her, and she admitted she wanted to think differently, act on something new. She suspected a change would help and allow their lives to expand.
What I want
, she thought,
is a life that feels good, not just one that looks good
.
Excellent
, her voice agreed.
You should seek a broader definition of yourself, reach beyond the realm of work and career. By searching deeper, you will find opportunities for fulfillment and foster true joy
.
Dana thought of her husband. Will was unhappy, she suspected for the same reasons she was. She remembered the many times she’d seen their unhappiness, and because she didn’t know what to do about it, ignored her misgivings. As she continued this contemplation, she saw how they no longer found pleasure in what delighted them once upon a time, their home and their lifestyle specifically. And with growing certainty, she knew neither of them would ever again be enchanted with the life they’d given everything to build.
How could this be? She thought extensively on this question. After a while, she realized how hard they’d both tried to overcome their waning belief in a life they’d outgrown, how they had stubbornly enforced definitions of happiness that had only briefly applied to them. After all, they’d formed their ideas about life and marriage as emotional infants. This approach was doing them no good, she decided.
Yes
, her voice encouraged.
You should not fight against your disbelief
.
So, what if they did something different? How much harder could new choices be versus pretending to want only what they had? The question caused a thrill of hope to blossom in her chest. Usually, she rejected the idea of significant change out of hand. Now, she was able to consider alternatives, such as a new job in her field—
not a meaningful change
, her voice advised—or moving, or switching careers—
better, but keep thinking
.
Coming to the same dead-end she typically did when she considered small, work-related adjustments, Dana ventured outside her usual, comfortable thoughts, to contemplate something entirely new. And with the firm, loving presence of her voice, she felt okay.
She thought of her niece, Kate. Her love of cooking was not market-driven, although her passion was also reflected in her choice of careers. Dana thought of her sister’s love of gardening, and of colleagues who played in community orchestras or studied painting or piano, almost always with the focus and intent she herself reserved only for her work. Cara, she recalled, had chosen her vocation based on flexible hours and only adequate pay so she could garden and cook and be with her daughter. She’d disparaged her sister for that choice.
Life’s value is not transactional
, her voice instructed.
Personal interests and their development are the richness of our time here
.
She could help herself and Will by ferreting out something different to do, something different to care about, she conceded. Which to be honest, they’d discussed many times in a roundabout way and even made a few half-hearted efforts to fix. They’d been mildly involved in several different activities at one time or another, including European travel, wine appreciation, investment clubs and various book clubs. None of these pursuits withstood the test of time, however, and none had been compelling enough to inspire either of them to put in the time necessary for anything like mastery of them.
Their jobs eventually provided their predictable, pat excuse to disengage.
I’m simply too busy at the office right now to participate
, was the epitaph of virtually all of their extracurricular activities. After a time, Dana acknowledged the hunt for hobbies had been little more than a search for distractions they didn’t really want, or ones they knew, somehow, wouldn’t fulfill them. Perhaps nothing could fulfill them, she’d come to believe. But she’d been unable to suppress a consistent, nagging suspicion there
was
something else they could do. She knew Will felt the same way, knew they both wanted change but felt they shouldn’t retreat from the solid decisions they’d made.