Swim to Me (24 page)

These thoughts floated through Thelma's mind like paper scraps on a windy day, hovering around the stone that was weighing her down. Thelma knew from her own experience that, in life, there is always a moment that marks the divide between before and after. For Thelma, that moment came when Ann Blyth was chosen over her to star in
Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid.
As Thelma watched Delores talking with the other girls, casting glances at Armando, she realized these were her last moments of “before.” She would tell Delores about the call from her father and his wish to be reunited with her, and the world that she had pieced together and forced into a whole would move off its axis just enough to make what was in place now, all fall down.

Someone must have told a joke because they were laughing and shouting out things that were making them laugh harder. Thelma would wait until it got quieter, then she would pull her aside. She'd prepare her by saying: “I got a call this morning from someone who knows you. You haven't seen him in a while, but he'd like to see you. And the strange thing is, he's working right nearby.” Delores would figure it out right away.

Thelma followed her plan. She asked Delores to come with her to her office and sat her down.

Delores stared up at her and repeated her words. “Someone who knows me called you?” she said, trying to eke out the logic in them. “I haven't seen him in a while, but he'd like to see me? And he works nearby?”

“Yes, exactly,” said Thelma. “Surely you know of whom I'm speaking.”

“Surely, I have no idea of whom you're speaking.”

“No need to get persnickety with me, young lady.” Thelma's voice got clipped. “I am just the messenger here.”

“Sorry. There've been a lot of surprises lately. I could do without another one. All I want is to be normal, even though at this point, I don't even know what normal is.”

“It's your father.”

“What's my father?”

“It's your father who called me. He's working nearby, in Venice. He saw you on television last night, and he wants to come here and see you.”

Delores puffed out her cheeks. “Oh boy. What am I supposed to do with that?”

“You see him, I suppose. He is your father.”

“What's he doing down here, in Venice?”

“Yes, well, that is the thing,” said Thelma. “He's working at Hanratty's Circus.”

“The circus? Now that's funny,” said Delores. “That's really funny.”

She started to laugh. Thelma was struck again by Delores's teeth: they were huge and zigzagged all the way to the back of her mouth. Nothing an orthodontist couldn't fix, she thought.

Delores was laughing so hard now, there were bug-shaped splotches fanning out across her chest. “Omigod, the circus,” she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I don't know what to say. I'll come back later.”

Delores left Thelma's office and walked over to the amphitheater. Inside, it smelled like wet wool and was as empty as a card store on the day after Christmas. She sat on one of the benches and stared at the Springs behind the Plexiglas. The storm had stirred up the bottom and, instead of its usual limpidness, the water was brown
and cloudy. She thought about all that had happened in the past few days and got that tight feeling in her stomach again.

Lately, she'd had the sensation of having stepped outside of herself. She wasn't gone, entirely, but sometimes she'd hear her voice and wonder who was speaking. She had no recollection of making a decision to swim out and save that kid the night before. There he was and there she was, and all she could remember was the water. Even now, she could feel every wave and the force of the current.

She continued staring at the muddy waters and understood that she needed to go to the one place where she knew exactly who she was. Without bothering to change her clothes, she walked outside to the mouth of the Springs. She slipped into the water and swam, this time with the currents. It was colder than usual, and she became aware of debris floating by her: a tiny address book, a white tube sock, a heart-shaped pillow. She wondered if these things were discarded in anger, or simply neglected. Did the people who dropped them believe that they would never see them again? Would they be surprised to know that, because of the storm, they had resurfaced? Sometimes things that seemed lost forever had a way of reappearing in the least expected of places. Like fathers who vanished, then showed up working at the circus.

Delores swam until her bones ached from the cold. She wondered where the dolphins and turtles went in a storm and hoped against hope that one of them would glide by her. She wanted a sign that they were okay, too, but she was shivering now, unable to stay underwater. She stepped out of the Springs and saw something moving imperceptibly along the shoreline. A rock, she thought, then looked again. It was a turtle taking shelter under a sweet pepperbush. For all she knew, it was the one she called Westie. As she ran back to the dorm, her bare footsteps in the mud took on a
slushy cadence:
lost, found, lost, found, lost, found.
The sound of it, the thought of it, infused her with hope.

After she changed her clothes and dried her hair, Delores caught up with Thelma at her office. “I'll meet with my father,” she said. “I'm curious who he is now. Believe me, there was nothing about the man I knew that even hinted that he would ever work at a circus. But, then again, he probably never thought I'd turn out to be who I am. And my mother! Well, you've met my mother. None of us were like this back home. One thing, though; when I meet him, will you come with me?”

“Of course I will.”

“Thanks,” said Delores. “That would be great. It's kind of scary, in a way.”

Thelma figured that this wasn't the time to tell Delores that she'd gotten another phone call, this one from a very polite gentleman, a Mr. David Hanratty, the man who ran Hanratty's Circus. He also wanted to meet “the talented Miss Torres.”

Roy Walker was too agitated to sit still. He paced around his trailer. This is how the animals must feel, he thought to himself: nothing to do but wait, nowhere to go but here. Roy wasn't exactly an animal lover. He'd never owned a dog, or even a fish, and always regarded people who became overly involved with their pets as kooks. He certainly never expected to feel anything about these circus creatures other than that they were part of a job that needed doing. And yet Lucy and Nehru aroused in him feelings of compassion and protectiveness, which was more than most humans did. It touched Roy how unself-conscious Lucy was about her funny ears and loopy smile. She'd leap onto the furniture, hug you with those snaky fingers of hers, and dare you not to laugh. Lately, Roy stuffed his pockets with peanuts so that he'd always have them on hand. As soon as Lucy saw Roy coming, she'd swagger toward him, knuckles scraping along the ground, then swing herself up and coil around his leg, just high enough to reach into his pocket and pull out the treat. How could you
not
laugh at that?

But at this moment, Roy didn't feel up to Lucy's eagerness. He felt scared about the consequences of his phone call earlier this morning, and he needed solace. Nehru the elephant didn't need attention the way Lucy did; she would just let Roy be. He walked
to Nehru's cage and stared down at the animal's leg. There was a large, rusty shackle around it, tethered to a steel ball that must have weighed five hundred pounds. Even though she was the matriarch of the pack, Nehru looked worn-out and resigned, as if she'd given up any hope of breaking out and living as she was meant to live. Roy knew that feeling. He unlocked the cage door. The smell of straw and rotting potatoes lodged in the back of his throat as he looked up into Nehru's shrewd and canny eye.

Sadness, my friend; it's as old as time and just as unstoppable.

Roy did not actually speak those words, but the thought seemed to pass between them.

Roy dug into his pocket and found some peanuts to feed Nehru. Nehru scarfed them down, then bent her shoulder and head so that Roy could scratch her behind the ear. In this way, they spent the rest of the morning: commiserating in silence.

T
HE CALL CAME
into Hanratty's office just after noon. Hanratty picked up the phone and was surprised to hear Thelma Foote asking for Roy Walker. “Miss Foote,” he said. “This is a pleasant surprise. But if I may ask, why on earth are you calling Roy Walker when I'm the one who called you earlier this morning?”

Thelma was quick to size up the situation and answered, “He must have been calling me on another matter.”

“But I can't imagine,” said Hanratty.

“I'm sure, in time, it will become clear.”

“Odd. But now that I have you on the phone, have you had time to consider my proposal?”

“In truth, Mr. Hanratty, Miss Taurus is exhausted. I thought I would wait until tomorrow to bring it up with her.”

“Yes, I understand,” he said. “So we'll talk then.”

“Absolutely,” said Thelma. “So now, could you please put Mr. Walker on the phone?”

Hanratty found Roy at the elephant cage. “I have a Thelma Foote on the phone,” he said, disregarding Roy's intimacy with Nehru. “She would like to speak with you.” Hanratty was far too polite to inquire how Roy knew Thelma Foote, but he knew something about eliciting information from people who weren't eager to give it. If a conversation stopped dead in its tracks, he felt no need to try to rescue it. He allowed the silence to linger between himself and the other person for as long as necessary. Inevitably, the other person would say things he ordinarily wouldn't, just to fill the uneasy void.

And so it happened with Roy Walker, though he refused to meet his boss's eye. Hanratty waited. Roy could feel the sweat roll down the sides of his neck. Briefly, his mind wandered. Why did his neck sweat so when he got nervous? He needed to say something. Hanratty was watching him. He couldn't just stand there and sweat. So he said the thing that weighed most heavily on his mind, the thing he had no intention of bringing up with his boss. “I have a question for you, sir. Do you think that, by nature, human beings are forgiving?”

“I think that, by nature, human beings are self-protective,” said Hanratty. “If it is in their interest to be forgiving, then they are. If not, then they are vengeful. I am fairly certain that being forgiving is not an innate virtue.”

“I called Thelma Foote because that was my daughter we saw on TV last night—Delores Torres, or whatever she calls herself. Her real name is Delores Walker. I ran out on my family more than two years ago, and, until last night, I had no idea where my daughter was or what she was doing. I called that mermaid place
this morning, and I asked Miss Foote if I might meet with Delores. I imagine she is calling me back with an answer. That's it. That's the whole story,” he said, mopping his neck with a handkerchief.

Once again, a cloud of silence settled between them. Had Roy looked directly into Hanratty's eyes, he'd have noticed that he had the eyes of a man in overdrive.

This time, it was Hanratty who took up the silence. “Perhaps there is some way we could be mutually beneficial to one another,” he said, in his tidy manner. “I've watched your daughter on the news. She has raw talent and hasn't realized even half of her potential. I can help her. Obviously, that would be a boon to you as well.”

“Truthfully, I don't know if my daughter even wants to see me. How about I clear that hurdle first, and then we can talk?”

As he ran to Hanratty's office, Roy thought about the conversation he'd just had with his boss and wondered at its frankness. He thought about the crest of Nehru's head and about how his daughter was a famous performer. Although Roy Walker was no one's idea of an optimist, for one blinding moment, he glimpsed the assumption that all optimists have in common: that everything is possible.

All the while, Thelma Foote's irritation at having to be on hold while Mr. Hanratty fetched Roy had become so great that she'd nearly hung up several times. “In addition to everything else, I am now the secretary around here,” she said out loud to no one. “I am certain that Dick Pope at Cypress Gardens would not play matchmaker to some dipsy-doodle circus performer and his estranged daughter. I have better things to do.” By the time Roy finally picked up the phone, Thelma's voice was bristling with annoyance. “I have no time to talk,” she said, “other than to tell you that your daughter will meet with you. Come to Weeki Wachee at noon tomorrow. That's when she'll be on a break. Ask anyone at the main gate to direct you to my office. Delores and I will be waiting there for you.”

Grateful that he hadn't slid out of his daughter's life completely, Roy accepted the invitation without thinking about how he'd get to Weeki Wachee or, for that matter, what he'd wear. He worried that she might not recognize him. He'd lost a lot of weight—and hair. When she'd last seen him, he'd been a furious man. Now he didn't wake up angry every morning. He liked his work and the responsibilities that came with it. Had that changed the way he looked? Would she notice? Would she even care?

His thoughts raced:
Hanratty could give me a ride. No, I should be alone the first time I see her. On the other hand, if Mr. Hanratty's there, it might make it easier. Either way, it could be awkward. No, it will be awkward. I'll be lucky if awkward is all it is. Hmm, maybe I will ask Mr. Hanratty for a ride.

D
ELORES SHOWERED AND
went to join the others. Most of them were sprawled on the modular couches. Adrienne and Sharlene sat cross-legged on the floor. Sharlene was looking down at something, her hair draped around her head like a tent. Johnny Cash was singing “A Boy Named Sue” on the stereo. Outside, the rain was tapering off and the sky was the yellow color of a healing bruise. Delores squeezed onto the couch between Armando and Molly. Her arms touched theirs, and she could feel the warmth of their bodies. “You smell good,” said Armando. “Prell,” she answered.