Wish I Might
Authors: Coleen Murtagh Paratore
wish i might
COLEEN MURTAGH PARATORE
To my brother,
Jerry Murtagh,
fellow writer, kindred spirit.
Thank you for sharing your
multitude of gifts with me
and with the world.
Shine on, bright one.
Love you so much, Col
CHAPTER 4: Sprites and Spirits and Sea Cretures
CHAPTER 5: The Bramblebriar Inn
CHAPTER 6: Tina and Ruby’s Beach Treasure
CHAPTER 7: A House for Everyone
CHAPTER 9: American Hospitality
CHAPTER 10: Off to the Vineyard
CHAPTER 14: Bonfire on the Beach
CHAPTER 18: Horrible, No-Good, Awful Daughter
CHAPTER 20: Gifts from My Father
CHAPTER 24: Sand Castles, Sand Castles
Willa’s Summer Skinny-Punch Pix List #2
The Sighting
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
— T. S. Eliot
“It’s a mermaid!” a young girl shouts, and the three of us turn to look.
I am standing on Popponesset Beach, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with my boyfriend, JFK, who is supposed to be in Florida,
surprise,
and a mysterious new boy with a British accent who just shocked me with the startling claim that he is my
brother.
And now that this Alice-in-Wonderland moment cannot possibly get more Alice-y, a little tourist above us on the bluff is pointing frantically out at the waves, insisting she sees a mermaid. “See? See!”
I stare at the ocean, heart pounding.
A brother?
This boy is my
brother?
How can that be? My head is swirling with a hundred thousand questions, but my eyes are drawn to the water.
A mermaid? Of course not. Surely the girl saw a dolphin, a seal, the breach of a whale’s tail, maybe. The wind has kicked up, the foamy waves forming shapes like clouds in the sky. With the sun in her face and the breeze making her eyes water, clearly the girl’s imagination has played a trick on her. Either that or she’s fibbing, a kindergarten drama queen, starlet in the making. Or maybe she simply wants attention. Who doesn’t?
“Look, Mommy!” the girl shouts louder. “She’s right over there!”
“Cute little bugger, isn’t she?” the British boy says of the mermaid spotter.
JFK looks around me at the stranger. I can tell JFK doesn’t like him.
My boyfriend’s real name is Joseph Frances Kennelly. “JFK” is a nickname I use in my head. The beloved American president, JFK, John F. Kennedy, vacationed here on Cape Cod, and I like to make that connection between them. My JFK is smart and handsome like the famous JFK, and he, too, loves this fragile little peninsula jutting out bravely into the Atlantic.
“Somebody’s been watching too many Disney movies,” JFK says of the girl on the bluff.
“What’s off with you?” the boy who claims he’s my brother says, looking around me now to JFK. “You don’t believe in mermaids?”
I peel my eyes away from the waves for a good look at the British boy’s face. He’s sixteen or seventeen maybe, tall and handsome, wind-tossed brown hair streaked blond from the sun like mine. He says he’s come a long way to see me … that he’s been observing me around town these past few weeks to decide if I was “worth meeting.”
Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff.
“Hey, boy.” I reach down to pet Salty Dog’s head. I’d almost forgotten he was here.
The big, old, shaggy golden retriever is poised, huffing at attention, his paws planted between my bare feet and the stranger’s bare feet. Salty Dog (the orphaned dog I recently claimed at the shelter is
my dog,
although this brash British boy just moments ago insisted he is
his dog
) has stationed his golden, polar-bear-smelly self between us on the sand and is staring up at us, big brown eyes searching our faces, back and forth, back and forth, tongue dangling,
huffing, huffing
as if he’s trying to decide which one of us is his true owner, not at all interested in a possible mermaid in the water.
“Willa,” the British boy says.
My body jolts at the sound of my name. Our eyes meet and lock. Goose bumps pop up and down my arms despite the warm July day.
Those eyes … I know those eyes. I’d know them anywhere. They are the same dark blue eyes that gaze out from the photograph that’s on my dresser of my birthfather, Billy Havisham, long since deceased. The same blue eyes reflect back at me when I look in the mirror each morning.
“You have your father’s eyes, Willa,” my mother always said, “sparkling like the sea on a sunny summer day.”
Mother would often say this phrase with a begrudging tone in those years after his death, a reckless accident brought on by his own foolhardy actions. But Mother almost never says it now that she is recently and happily married to Sam Gracemore and seems to have long since forgotten her first husband.
It’s as if William Frederick Havisham never existed.
Other than the photograph on my dresser and the name on my birth certificate, Willafred Havisham — “Willafred” being a cumbersome combination of William and Frederick that I refuse to answer to, as I much prefer the willa-like-a-willow-tree “Willa” — the only links I have to my father are the
candy box full of love poems and letters he wrote to my mother during their whirlwind courtship, and the folder of yellowed news clippings reporting his apparent drowning in a hot-air balloon crash in the Atlantic. His body was never recovered. There is no cemetery monument.
Sparkling like the sea on a sunny summer day.
My body shivers as if the salt crystals in the ocean air have suddenly turned to snowflakes.
“What’s your name?” I blurt the words out to the stranger, turning my gaze back to the water.
No response.
With the wind and the little girl squealing, maybe he didn’t hear me.
“Mommy, look!” the girl shouts. “Did you see her tail?”
From the sounds of the voices behind us on the bluff, the girl is attracting a fan club. I can picture the excited expressions on the people’s faces as they cup their hands over their eyes and scan the water left to right and left again, hoping for a sighting. Surely they don’t believe it’s a mermaid, but whatever it is, they want to see it. Each wants to be the first to see it. It would be like catching a fly ball at a Red Sox game, or finding a pearl in an oyster shell, or spotting the first spark in the Fourth of July night sky.
“What’s your name?” I say, louder now, still looking out at the water.
“Will,” the boy from England says.
“What?” My heart beats faster.
Will, short for William.
Maybe I didn’t hear him correctly. “What did you say?”
“Will,” he repeats, this time clear as a foghorn.
I’m trembling now, holding my breath, ears plugging up as if I’ve plunged underwater.
“Will what?” I whisper.
“Will Havisham.” He thrusts his hand out to shake mine. “Pleasure to meet you, sister.”
I gasp and fall back on JFK for strength.
Impossible Things
“There’s no use trying,” [Alice] said:
“one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,”
said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always
did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
— Lewis Carroll
“No!” I say, my body shaking like a buoy in a storm. “That is not possible.”
Will Havisham? Named after William Havisham? My father? His father, too?
No. I can’t bear to look at the British boy’s eyes. I stare at the water…. Waves waving, waving …
“What are you trying to pull here?” JFK demands in a loud voice. He positions me behind his body and moves toward the boy named Will as if he might strike him, as if Will is a bad guy Joseph must protect me from.
Salty Dog barks, looking from one face to another.
“It’s okay, buddy,” I say, petting him.
Just minutes ago, when JFK surprised me on the
beach and saw me standing here with this handsome older boy, I thought it was sort of fun that JFK jealously thought the stranger might be a threat, a summer wash-ashore wanting to move in on his girlfriend while he was away. Nothing feels funny now.
Clearly Joseph doesn’t believe Will’s wild claim that he is my brother.
Do I?
“It’s straight-up true,” Will Havisham says.
He sounds so believable, trustworthy. My brain is spinning like the twirly teacup ride at the Barnstable County Fair.
Can this possibly be happening?
“Willa,” JFK says, clutching my hand. “I’m sorry, this is crazy but I don’t have much time. My dad’s driving me to the airport in two hours.”
JFK’s words are a sturdy rope pulling me back to shore.
“I wanted to spend some time with you,” JFK says with a sweet smile.
But what about this boy who claims he is my brother?
What about the mermaid?
Salty Dog whimpers and barks, looking back and forth between me and the stranger, me and the stranger.
And what about my dog?
“Come on, pretty girl,” JFK whispers to me. “My girl.” His finger touches my hair and then the heart-shaped locket around my neck. The silver locket I’ve worn each day since he gave it to me on the night of our first fairy-tale romantic Valentine’s dance in the barn at my family’s inn. JFK’s school picture is glued inside on one half of the heart, mine is on the other. When I snap the heart shut, we are kissing.
JFK smiles with that dimple to die for. He’s so beautiful, my heart melts.
“Sure,” I say, “let’s go.”
I turn to the boy, Will. “I’m not sure I believe you, but I think we should talk more. Can you come by my house later to talk? The Bramblebriar Inn. It’s in town next to —”
“I know where you live,” Will says, “but what about your mum?”
Oh, my gosh, Mother. Will is right. Of course. If what he claims is true, it would be a heart-stopping shock for her, and we are booked full with guests. July is our busiest month. I’m on duty to work later this afternoon.
“Okay, then,” I say. “I’ll meet you back here, say seven o’clock.”
I look at my dog. I slap my leg. “Come on, Salty, let’s go.”
Salty Dog whines and barks at me. He whines and barks at Will. Salty looks at me. He looks at Will. Salty seems baffled. Welcome to the club.
“Why don’t you meet Willa in town?” JFK says to the British boy, the icy tone of his voice conveying his suspicions. “The center green or—”
No
, I think to myself. Too many people around. Someone from school will see us; with my luck the biggest gossipers, my used-to-be best friend, Tina, or my still-most-annoying friend, Ruby, will be there and start spreading rumors faster than Cape Cod fog up the coastline.
“No, Joseph. It’s okay. I’d rather meet him here.”
JFK stares down the British boy.
Down, down, down.
Will laughs in an offhand, friendly way, breaking the moment of tension. “Don’t worry, bloke,” he says to JFK. “I’ll take good care of your girl while you’re gone. I didn’t come all this way to hurt anybody.”
“Look!” The little tourist above us is shrieking again. “Don’t you see her?”
I turn my gaze up to the bluff. A crowd has gathered now. A few even have binoculars. The girl who thinks she sees a mermaid is positively glowing with delight. She looks sweet, angelic, not at all like someone who would lie.
“Willa,” JFK says, touching my shoulder. He shows me the time on his cell phone. His thick, wavy hair is so long now, nearly touching his collar. He says he’ll cut it in Florida. It’s much hotter there.
“I’ll see you later, then,” I say to the British boy. “Let’s go, Salty.”
JFK and I walk.
My dog doesn’t follow.
“Come on, boy,” I shout, running up the beach a bit.
Salty barks, but stays next to my possible brother.
JFK whistles. “Come on, Salty.”
“Come on, boy,” I shout, slapping my leg. “Let’s get a treat.”
Salty barks and whines pitifully, then lies down on the sand.
Oh, no.
Please don’t tell me I’ve lost my dog. I just got him! “Salty, come on, please, buddy.”
“No worries, Willa,” Will Havisham calls. He sounds like he feels bad about the situation. “Salty Dog’s not going anywhere. He’ll be here when you come back.”
I call Salty one last time. He’s not budging.
Will shrugs his shoulders at me, palms up in the air as if to say he’s sorry, but he told me so. Salty is his dog.
From the actions of Salty, it seems that claim is true.
Now we’ll just see if Will’s other, more outrageous claim is true, too.