Erin Hart: False Mermaid

It was also exactly two weeks to the day since she and Cormac had helped to recover the preserved body of a young woman from the blanket bog above the rocky beach at Port na Rón. When she went into the bog, the young woman had been wearing two long black woolen stockings and one high-button shoe, a long skirt and petticoat, along with a shirtwaist and short jacket, in the fashion of the time. Her clothing had been preserved as if she’d dressed in it only a few days before, and not over a hundred years ago. There was still no definitive proof that the body in the grave was Mary Heaney, but Roz Byrne was now on a mission to trace the female line, to see if any link could be established through mitochondrial DNA between Mary Heaney’s descendants and the faceless female from the bog.

Nora turned to observe Cormac, breathing softly, his chest moving up and down in a steady rhythm. How many times had she lain like this beside him, trying to comprehend the lightning storm of thoughts and dreams that crisscrossed his brain in sleep? She put out a hand, feeling the warmth of his breath against her palm, hearing in the back of her head the notes of the melody he’d sent her that first night in Saint Paul. He still hadn’t spoken its name.

Maybe Cormac was right, and Elizabeth would come around. Maybe someday she would want to know the truth about her parents. But what was the truth? Nora knew she had to brace herself for the possibility that Elizabeth might travel the rest of her life on a razor’s edge, on the one hand loathing the creature responsible for her mother’s death, and on the other, feeling affection for the decent human being her father had appeared to be.

The universe had turned out to be a much stranger and more fluid place than she had ever imagined. All the boundaries and borders she had once believed in now seemed to be shifting and disappearing. Nothing was cut and dried. If anything, she felt much closer now to the view she had held as a child, where any eventuality—wondrous or hair-raising—was equally possible. The image of Tríona walking along that street in Lowertown, the book turned backward in the library stacks, how Harry Shaughnessy just happened to be the person who picked up Tríona’s photo on the library plaza. The seal who had delivered Elizabeth from harm. These things could not be real, and yet they were—as real and true as any events in the history of the world.

Nora was beginning to realize that she had clung desperately to her own version of Tríona, much like one of the faithful might adhere to the legend of a saint—though everyone knew that saints’ legends contained only fragments of truth, along with large portions of exaggeration, even falsehood. In some ways, keeping Tríona preserved like a saint under glass was almost as much a diminution as the calumnies Peter Hallett had engineered. Surely the truest remembrance would not reduce her, not make her any less in death than she had been in life. What about the hidden, contradictory sides of Tríona Gavin? They had existed, and might still be discovered—maybe it wasn’t too late.

Rising from the bed, Nora tiptoed downstairs, past the door of Joseph Maguire’s darkened room. He was still in hospital, and would remain there for another few days. He had awakened from forced slumber a changed creature, not himself even to himself, but submerged in a sea of strangeness, speaking in a language no human could understand. Cormac hadn’t yet faced the prospect of what would happen when his father was ready to come home.

As she passed through the hallway, Nora perused a series of silver prints that hung on the wall. Photographs of seals—portraits, really—taken by Cormac’s great-aunt Julia. Perhaps it was the combination of the gray dawn and the waning moonlight, but each image took on the aspect of a ghostly negative: the seals’ eyes glowed white, their formerly white whiskers now looked dark against pale muzzles. She had often wondered what it was that triggered Tríona’s fascination with these creatures. Was it the wordless, soulful eyes—the soft, motherly bodies? Or perhaps the amazing way they could move and hold their breath underwater? Nora herself had always judged seals a little too strange and ungainly, but Tríona had been extraordinarily drawn to them. Evidently the connection had been passed down to Elizabeth.

Nora leaned forward to read the lightly penciled caption beneath the last portrait: A still dawn at Port na Rón—July 1947. More than sixty years ago. The last and most haunting of the pictures showed an animal with a star-shaped mark around its one good eye.

Seized with a sudden desire to greet the dawn at Port na Rón, Nora threw on her jacket and shoes and slipped out of the house. As she pulled the door closed, the latch fell into place with a loud click. She stood still for several seconds, making sure Cormac had not been disturbed.

The sun was not quite up as she made her way over the headland. A thick mist drifted over the harbor ahead, and through it she caught occasional glimpses of the sea, as calm and glassy as it must have been that morning in 1947, with only a few ripples stirring against the pebbled beach. She stood at the top of the ridge, drinking in the fishy scent, while out in the harbor, a sleek form twisted up from the water and landed with a splash, the sign of a creature reveling in its own strength and speed, the sheer joy of sensation.

Nora climbed down to the beach and kept walking, not stopping to remove shoes or clothes, but striding straight out into waves until she was up to her hips, and within ten yards of the seal. It swam closer, only an arm’s length now, its whiskered face raised out of the water. She could see how the features on one side of its face were scarred from some ancient injury. The same face as in the portrait, she was sure of it. How could that be? She reached out a hand to touch its fur, and the creature allowed her. It felt sleek, warm beneath the wetness. She remembered the words of the charm:

The seal regarded her for a few seconds with an air of infinite compassion, before opening its mouth to offer a single rounded vowel of a bark. Was it a greeting or a valediction? As if in answer, the animal twisted away with a flourish of its tail, and sank once more into the sea. Nora took a deep breath, and plunged straight down. She felt compelled to follow. What was it Tríona had seen that day she had been rescued from drowning?

Nora swam forward, eyes wide open, when all at once someone or something caught her by the waist and lifted her clear of the water. Setting her upright in the shallows, Cormac took her face between his hands. “I can’t let you do it, Nora—”

All at once it occurred to her what he must have imagined, following her, watching her walk out into the sea. “Oh, Cormac, I wasn’t trying to—”

“Weren’t you?”

“No—I don’t know what I was doing. But it wasn’t that, truly—I swear.”

“You walked straight into the water, with all your clothes on—”

She looked him up and down. “So did you.”

“But I was only going after you—” He stopped and sighed, resting his forehead against hers. “Why are we doing this to ourselves? You’ve been running from me for nearly two years, Nora. Why do you keep running?”

“I don’t know, Cormac. I can’t—”

“Can’t what? Do you really believe Tríona would want you to suffer as you have? I know you could go on punishing yourself forever—but when will it ever be enough? You wanted to know the name of the tune I sent—I’ll tell you. It’s ‘My Love Is in America.’ Do you understand? Can you not see that I love you? Stop running, Nora. Stay with me. Be with me.”