Lydia Millet - Mermaids in Paradise - A Novel

First off, she planned a dive session. She made calls, she sent emails, she hit the streets. She visited every dive shop on the island seeking out scuba adepts, fishing enthusiasts, anyone with even the flimsiest of biology credentials who could go underwater as a part of her expeditionary force.

Unlike Chip I hadn’t gone diving before; you had to be certified to rent gear from any of the shops in town. Yet again, I suspected, I was going to be left out if I didn’t act fast. So while Chip was helping Nancy prepare for the next day’s excursion — she would wait for one day maximum, because she feared losing the mermaids if they proved migratory — I went to the dive shop and hired a pro named Jamie. If I took a beginners’ class, he’d come with me on the expedition, for a fee.

So I practiced with a rental tank in the hotel swimming pool — it was me and some friendly elderlies — and then I met Chip on the sandy drive that led from the resort’s main building to the shop, where he sat waiting in one of the resort golf carts. He drove us back to the cabana while I jiggled inertly.

“We signed on two science teachers,” he reported. “That’s all there are on the whole island . Plus one of them’s just a substitute. But he knows some biology.”

“What did she tell them we’d be looking for?”

“Rare fish. Some kind of huge fish no one has seen for ages. A grouper, I think she said. They weigh four hundred pounds. That’s what she’s telling everyone. She doesn’t want to influence the people who haven’t seen anything yet. Observer bias, or something.”

“That’s smart,” I conceded. “Plus there’s the fact that, if she said you were looking for mermaids, no one would come but lunatics.”

“We signed on one diver who used to be a U.S. Navy SEAL. He bought a house and retired here. We have a bunch of spearfishing dudes — a tourist and a couple of locals. It’s looking pretty good; it’s coming together. There’s a videographer dude, a guy with underwater video equipment, who’s staying at another resort, the other end of the island. He’s coming too. She had to offer to pay him.”

“It’ll be worth it,” I said supportively. “Although — is there a finder’s fee, for something like mermaids?”

Chip had no patience for levity.

The rest of the day rushed past, with Chip functioning as Nancy’s assistant and me functioning as Chip’s. I called dive shops with equipment orders, dive boats for scheduling; I set up an onboard lunch for twenty (on mine and Chip’s credit card, though Nancy claimed she’d cover our expenses. I felt myself doubting that outcome, but hell, it was our honeymoon, we’d said we’d spare no expense). By the time evening was coming on and sun-reddened families were trailing into the resort’s restaurants, Chip was pumped for the next day’s trip and wanted to throw back a beer. Nancy talked on her cell phone nonstop to what were, according to Chip, some of her colleagues. From what I could discern on our end, they were arguing with her but not dismissing her out of hand, as you might assume they would.

She must have credibility capital to spend, I guessed. A less bold woman would have waited till the sighting was confirmed. That parrotfish expert had some cojones on her.

Chip and I let her conduct her business in peace, for the most part, though she didn’t leave our side; it was like a romantic dinner for two where one of the two has a monkey attached to his head. If Chip and I had been a couple of coral outcroppings she would have been the parrotfish, nibbling at our edges and busily expelling grains of sand. She didn’t order food herself but perched on a third chair and picked at what was left on our plates when we finished each course — just reached for it and chewed noisily as she said words like aquatic primate, herbivorous mammals and Sirenomelia into her cheek-parked phone.

“Chip,” I said, to cover the sound of her phone patter over our supposedly relaxing dessert coffee, “what did they look like, the ones that you saw? I know it was fast. But can you tell me some details?”

Chip nodded, swallowed some pie. “The one that was the closest to me was the only one whose face I saw at all. And I have to say, she didn’t look like you might expect. Not exactly.”

“Yellow hair, bare breasts,” I said. “Right?”

“Yeah, no,” said Chip. “That’s true. But she kind of had bad teeth. No dentists in the sea, I guess. No underwater dentistry. The teeth were brownish or yellowish. Like an Englishman.”

“No fluoride,” I guessed.

“And in the background I saw one that seemed to be a guy. He had big shoulders, you know, a general guy shape? Except for the tail. The tail, I have to be honest, on him it looked a bit girly.”

“Maybe it was a butch mermaid.”

“Deb. Are you taking this seriously?”

“I am — really. A butch mermaid isn’t a joke, Chip.”

My husband squinted at me over his fork, sizing me up. Attitudinally. I made my eyes wide. Because I had meant it, about the butch mermaid — it wasn’t a diss. I’ve got nothing against a certain butch quality. Plus if there were really mermaids, I hoped they didn’t look like Ariel. Honestly, if they turned out to be Disney-style mermaids, I wouldn’t like them one little bit. That big-eyed cartoon shit would get on my last nerve.

So I narrowed my own eyes again and lifted the cup containing my decaf, looking past him with what I hoped was a meditative aspect — I was hoping to resemble a person with important, largely abstract concerns. After swallowing my delicate sip, I made my mouth prim. I hoped he got the message.

“Early to bed!” cried the biologist abruptly, snapping her nearly vintage clamshell. She stood up, grabbing a last slice of focaccia from the basket and stuffing it into her mouth, and spoke while chewing. “Got to get up at five to make history! Meet me in the lobby at five-thirty!”

Chip actually whistled as the two of us strode up the Tiki-lit path to the cabin. He held my hand and swung it widely while he whistled a patriotic tune — maybe “La Marseillaise.” Possibly “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Chip, too, believed we might be making history.

I was agnostic where that prospect was concerned, but open to it, certainly; if we made history, then good. A job well done, I guessed.

I WAS DISPLEASED, the next morning, to find the toe man in our party. People milled in the lobby, when we appeared there blearily at that indecent predawn hour, and he was among them. Adding insult to injury, his wife was not among them — I imagined she hadn’t been seduced by the prospect of sighting some goliath groupers. And possibly, unlike him, she was also indifferent to the prospect of ogling other divers as they padded naked-footed around the boat or struggled to pull on fins. A person needed tube socks, I felt, with the man from the Heartland free-roaming.

Or fishermen’s waders.

I wondered if Chip had invited him and prepared to snap at my newly minted husband for the infraction, but before I could open my mouth he assured me Nancy had issued the invite with no input from him.

I didn’t know any of the others, beyond the Bay Areans, though I’d talked to some on the phone; I busied myself carrying a cooler of sandwiches down to the dock, where the dive boat was waiting. I talked to my personal dive pro, Jamie, and then occupied myself with mundane tasks while Chip chatted excitedly with the various divers and fishermen he’d signed on, substituting the word groupers into his enthusiastic narrative of the mermaid sighting.