Lovesick Little Page 11

  “That’s impossible, Gabey,” said Demetra, matter-of-factly. “My major growth spurt isn’t even due for another two point five years or so. But enough about my impending pubescence, who’s your friend?”

  “This is . . . actually, I don’t really know!” he said as he pat the mermaid on the head. “We haven’t been able to figure out her name yet but I found her on the beach, she’s staying with us for the night, and she can cut a rug like no dancer I’ve ever seen!” Then he turned to her and said, “This is my sister Demetra.” The mermaid excitedly kissed the lovely child on the cheek.

  Demetra blushed. “I love your necklace,” she said, noticing the veritable wreath of trinkets around the girl’s tiny neck, and marveling at the big, smooth fossil that dangled heavily from it. She noticed that tied into the girl’s hair was an ivory caviar spoon hanging right next to an aluminum soda can tab, which hung next to a giant antique emerald ring. “Where did you find all of these amazing treasures?” she asked. “Some of this stuff has got to be worth a fortune!” The mermaid smiled at her and wondered what ‘a fortune’ meant to humans. She wished so much that she could tell them about the hundreds of sunken ships she’d scoured and all the reefs she’d combed to find all of these wonderful sparkly things and of her dear old grandmother, who gave her the necklace. “Oh yeah, you can’t talk. I’m sorry, that must be rough,” said Demetra. “’Suppose, it could be worse, though!” she offered sweetly. “Not being able to talk is definitely better than being one who talks too much!” The mermaid bowed in gratitude for the kind comment, and Demetra, never shy or bashful, even in the presence of complete strangers, reached out and traced her index finger along the round edges of the large fossil stone. “That’s an ammonite; I learned about them in school. They’re, like, millions of years old!” The fossil dangled between her modest breasts and laid flat under them across her stomach. The shell pendant was the only thing on the necklace that saw its origins in the ocean, for the rest of the treasures on it were pieces of human jewelry and so they never imagined that most of it was procured from grand shipwrecks at the bottom of the seas.

  Gabriel held the pendant in his hand and remarked at how heavy it must be around her delicate neck. And it was even heavier, she noticed, than when she wore it under water, for the gravity of the upper world made it a burden she never used to notice. Right now, though, as they stood close enough that she could smell his sweet breath, the only gravity that concerned her was the one pulling her towards him like he was the very center of the Earth. She closed her eyes and went back to the day she saved him, when she felt his breath on her cheek as she held his head to her chest. Every inch of her thin, lithesome body was braced in anticipation of his touch, for she wanted him to touch her so badly. She opened her eyes as she fell forward and right into him, and he caught her easily, reflexively. “Watch yourself!” he said as he set her back on her feet. “You aren’t still dizzy, are you?” Indeed she was dizzy, but not for the reasons he thought.

  “I’m going to go in and finish unpacking before people start showing up,” said Demetra as she spun to head to the house. “I’ll see you guys in a bit!” And with that, she skipped back to the house, leaving the mermaid alone once again with her prince. He turned to her with a suggestion.

  “So I’m thinking I should take you into town for a bit and stop by the police station, just to make sure that no one’s looking for you,” he said. “How would you feel about that?” She gave him an unsure look. “We can take the drop top!” he added. She didn’t know what that meant but it sounded fantastic, so off they went in his convertible Jeep to drive swiftly down tree-lined roads, where gusts of warm wind all woody and fresh made her feel like she was finally home.

  They pulled into the quiet police station in the middle of town and she could sense right away that they were at a place filled with the sort of uniformed men and women who could be your salvation or foil your plans completely, depending on what you’re up to. Gabriel asked if there were any runaway alerts or missing persons’ reports, but the officers on duty said there hadn’t been any in months. It became apparent that there was nobody looking for this girl, at least, if there was, they didn’t know where to search for her. The police said they’d be in touch if they heard anything so with no apparent urgency to reunite her with her familiars, they drove back to the house to help set up for the party.

  When they returned, they found the Von der Klaasen family’s Hummer parked in Gabriel’s spot. In classic Von der Klaasen style, they were unfashionably early by about two hours, and right behind them a huge white delivery truck blocked the driveway so Gabriel had to park out on the road. The two skinny deliverymen began wheeling out a large ice sculpture centerpiece carved into an orca whale, dramatically breaching. “Where do you want it?” the first one asked, wiping sweat from his forehead with a sports wristband. It was quite sweltering out that day; there was no way an ice sculpture would survive for long.

  “Do you like it?!” asked a very self-pleased Veronica in a singsong voice to her friend Lucia who was walking out to greet her. Veronica stepped out of her yellow Hummer like a pageant queen, her orangey hair and pale ginger complexion clashing hilariously with the bright crayon-coloured truck. Her husband Martin, a furry little hedgehog of a man, had jumped out the passenger side door before the truck had even stopped rolling, headed for the beach like an overly-excited child. His greyish-red hair was combed and oiled back aristocratically, and he wore a paisley ascot tied around his fat neck in colours that matched the lining of his black velvet blazer. It was painfully obvious that his wife had styled him, and that it would have been an arduous process but still he ran, off to wreck his look like a hyper kid on picture day. Waddling swiftly with his toy helicopter and its remote clutched in his sweaty hands, it was like he was a mildly retarded adult. Which wasn’t completely untrue. And their relationship was quite inexplicable, until you found out that Martin was an incredibly wealthy accidental jackpot winner.

  Veronica had been the clerk on duty the day he went in to redeem the possible winnings from a ticket he found stuck to a sewer grate. Twenty-four million and change, it was. She was excited, for she had never checked a winning ticket before. Feeling lucky, he asked her to marry him on the spot and she decided to let the fact that he now had mountains of money overrule the fact that he was an odd, childish and generally useless-seeming man. This was back in ’82.

  “I commissioned this sculpture with Andre LeGould,” said Veronica, ignoring him as he ran off, and ignoring their thirtysomething son Reginald who snored deeply with his mouth wide open in the back seat. “Mr. LeGould, as I’m sure you know, is the local sculptor-slash-Reiki masseur. The piece cost about a thousand dollars but you really can’t put a price on divinity!”

  Lucia got a closer look at it. “Yes, it certainly is handsome, Veronica,” she said as she admired the piece of art. “And this is very thoughtful, but I wish you didn’t spend a thousand bucks on something that will be little more than a wet spot on the tablecloth by midnight. . . ”

  “Oh poppycock!” said Veronica, for whom money was no object. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever! Even if it does melt.”

  “Well it was a lovely gesture and it will fill the empty spot on the salad table nicely!” said Lucia as she gestured the deliverymen towards the table on the end.

  “Oh no, darling. No, no, no!” countered Veronica. “A piece like this absolutely must be on the middle table. Why do you think they call it a centerpiece?” she said smugly, ushering the delivery guys toward the middle table.

  Ava interjected from where she sat in the corner of the patio in the shade. “A centrepiece is so-called because it’s meant to sit at the center of a table. Any table, really, and definitely not necessarily the very epicenter of the most central table, Mrs. Von der Klaasen.” Ava spoke even more smugly than Veronica ever could, and, as per usual, a hint of venom could be detected in her voice. Veronica narrowed her eyes at the brazen, outspoken girl. It bothered he
r very much that her arch-nemesis was less than a third her age, but Ava had made sure to rub her the wrong way every chance she could ever since, at the tender age of six, she dropped a handful of mud onto the seat of Veronica’s camping chair the day she wore bright white culottes to the Canada Day picnic. When she stood up to sing the national anthem in front of everyone, laughter erupted in the crowd and she had no idea why until her own son, eleven years old at the time, started everyone chanting Diarrhea mudslide! Diarrhea mudslide!, until she noticed the brown stains across her butt that looked convincingly enough like she had soiled herself. Absolutely mortified, she knew it was all Ava’s doing when she looked up to see the tempestuous brat waving at her with muddy hands, grinning proudly and cruelly. Ever since then, Veronica knew to keep her eye on Ava, who loved so much to make enemies, and for whom bullying adults brought a satisfaction rarely felt from bullying her peers.

  Gabriel came out onto the patio with a tray full of martinis. “For the ladies!” he said as his mother, sister and Veronica gratefully received their frosted glasses full of shaken vodka and dragon fruit nectar. Lucia tasted hers, and a euphoric look crossed her face. “Mmm,” she cooed. “Son, you are officially exempt from dish duty this evening!” Lucia was kidding, of course; they had hired people for the after-party cleanup that evening. She winked at Veronica, who had just guzzled her martini in one gulp across the table. Veronica smiled politely and thanked him but behind her oversized sunglasses she scowled, for she’d always been envious of Lucia’s relationship with her charming son. Her own son Reginald, still snoring out in the truck, had been a screaming, colicky baby who grew into a whiny, spoiled child who grew up to be a lazy, fat and entitled young man. She, his own mother and a woman very aware of the fact that her husband was an imbecile, could still never understand how her own son could have turned out so awful. Reginald was about a decade older than Gabriel but even someone as young as Demetra found him to be petty and immature.

  Veronica, beginning to fear that her dud of a son might never give her grandchildren or worse, never move out of her home, had recently made it her mission to find him a suitable bride. She knew it would not be easy, was prepared to lower her standards and was willing to make offers too good to refuse. It was her mandate to get a girl to agree to mate with Reginald. So when she caught sight of the lovely, waifish blond that had followed Gabriel out onto the patio, she jumped up to meet her. Veronica was not a woman to let a prospective daughter-in-law slip by, un-propositioned.

  “Well hello darling, it’s an absolute pleasure to meet you! I’m Veronica Von der Klaasen but you can just call me Mrs. Von der Klaasen.” Veronica wore her married name with the pride of an heiress, but the truth was, the Von der Klaasen clan her husband belonged to were blue collar through and through. It had been widely speculated that Martin was the peculiar way he was because of the factory fumes both of his parents were exposed to around the time of his conception, and the prescription pain-killers his mother gratuitously took for a sprained toe while she was breast-feeding him.

  Veronica looked the girl up and down. She knew that whoever would agree to the lackluster honor of marrying her awkward, socially inept son would have to be someone with a dire few options, and the mute, albino-esque and seemingly family-less girl Lucia had just filled her in on was sounding like a viable candidate. Gabriel sat her down in a patio chair next to Ava and ran inside to grab some more wine glasses. Ava stared at her silently and coldly from behind blacked-out sunglasses.

  “Aren’t you serene looking,” said Veronica, her voice dripping with saccharine. “You’re like a little porcelain doll. You must meet my son Reginald, he’d simply adore you!”

  “I’m sure nothing would thrill her more . . .” snickered Ava coldly. The mermaid smiled kindly but unsurely at Veronica, then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something poke out from behind a trellis, shaking the vines. When she turned to look, it retreated, and then slowly a pair of eyes and a shock of unruly red hair poked back out again, only to once again retreat. Several seconds later, a ginger-colored, chunky freckled man in a pink polo shirt and white linen shorts sashayed out from behind the house with one hand casually in his pocket while the other held his flashy, high-tech gadget of a cell phone to his ear. Pretending not to notice her sitting there at the table, Reginald proceeded to feign an entire conversation in which he acted the role of a sort of power player, calling shots and running his non-existent empire like a baller CEO.

  In his contrived exchange that went on for a solid eight minutes of bull crap and tragically exaggerated bravado, he had his imaginary secretary/manager/bookie character throw down eightyfive grand on a Blue Jays game, move thirty per cent of his net worth into a Russian ballistics company and, a second after looking up and catching eyes with the mermaid, had the assisting figment cancel all of the fictitious “dates” he had lined up for that week (all with “eager” and “attractive” women, as he made sure to mention loudly.) He also had his investments pulled out of a Helsinki deal, sent a private jet to Switzerland for a case of his favourite artisanal chocolates and scheduled a racetrack test drive in a new McLaren GT. It can only be speculated that Reginald carried on like this because he thought he was being impressive, but his act was so painfully transparent and unfeasible that if he actually thought he was fooling anyone, there was legitimate cause for concern. So much about Reginald was legitimate cause for concern.

  Once he’d ‘hung up’ the phone, he wiped his breath from the shiny chrome receiver and, going for the gusto, threw a big wink at the pretty blond stranger on the porch who, with even her limited knowledge of human communication and its tools, could quite easily tell that there had been no one on the line with him. Everyone on the patio was his captive audience, observing his performance like an amusing train wreck they just couldn’t look away from. While he attempted to peacock, walking a very rehearsed, very pathetic strut over to the wooden armchair at the head of the patio table, Ava made a long, slow, digusting fart noise in the background. The sound effect was meant, of course, to illustrate and draw attention to the sheer, lame, and all-around malodorous presence of Reginald, on the whole. It was effective. Ignoring her, he slowly pulled his orange Wayfarers out of the pocket that sat above his left man-breast’s permanent nipple erection and slipped them onto his chubby face, where they sat awkwardly on the bridge of his upturned piggy nose. Realizing everyone was looking at him and that they were all on the brink of uproarious laughter, he attempted to change the subject and take the attention off himself “Look at that swamp cow!” he said crudely, pointing to a larger lady in a pink muumuu walking her dog down the beach.

  “Please don’t make fun of Mrs. Hufton,” said Demetra, unimpressed. “She’s a very active lady, but suffers from a lazy thyroid.”

  “Well she looks like a slothful swamp cow,” he chuckled, looking to the mermaid for agreement. She smiled politely at him, at a loss for how else to respond. He looked her up and down before asking her in a deepened voice, “So . . . they say you’re a mute, how’s that treatin’ ya?” She frowned and looked away, praying Gabriel would come out and rescue her from this abrasive and ridiculous person. “No, no . . . don’t be offended,” he said with a snicker, “In all honesty, I’d be dazzled if I never had to hear the high-pitched, nasally voice of the weaker sex ever again!” All the females at the table looked at each other amusedly and then burst out laughing at his ignorant comment. The mermaid sat with her eyebrows raised, confused as to why all the girls thought his inappropriate comment was funny. “No, that came out wrong,” he continued. “What I meant to say is that, while a woman’s voice can be, on rare occasion, quite pleasing, a woman has nothing of interest to speak of. Just a lot of bikini waxes, tampon troubles and The Bachelorette, ha ha. But you, you rare beauty, pale as a white rose . . .” he said, eyeing her up and down creepily, “YOU have got life all sorted.” Wink.

  Veronica, mortified as she was to admit this creature lived inside of her for nine hellish
months, decided to attempt damage control, or some version of it. She stood up beside her son and with her hands on his wide, low shoulders, made his introduction:

  “Dear, this is my son, Reginald. I know he doesn’t look or sound like much but I promise that if you marry him, we’ll build you a very large house; so massive and so luxurious that you’d hardly have to run into each other, ever! Unless, of course, you wanted to . . .”

  “Okay, easy does it, Ronnie!” interrupted Lucia, smiling and shaking her head at her pushy friend. “The big introduction should really be more of a soft sale…”

  “Your bedrooms could be on separate wings,” Veronica continued unabashedly. “We could install a grand partition! You’d only have to visit his side when you’re ready to impregnate--”

  “Alright, Von der Klaasen! Give the girl a minute to mull it all over!” said Lucia, amazed at the boldness of her friend. The mermaid was hardly able to compute the things she was being told.

  “Of course, this is the age of in-vitro!” Veronica continued, persisting. Lucia gave up, and just let her friend get it all out. “No one will blame you if the sight of my son makes you want to dryheave. I just want a grandchild; it cannot stop with Reginald, it simply cannot!” With a panicked look on her face, she grabbed and slurped back the rest of Lucia’s martini and then sat down.

  “Mom, you’re psychotic,” Reginald droned, then invited Demetra to play a game of Bocce in the sand with him. (She really didn’t want to, but, like a good host, she obliged him.) Sheepishly, Veronica grinned. She knew she was being intensely gregarious but found it difficult to help herself when it came to such matters. The little mermaid was wide-eyed and taken aback by her aggressive, obsessive energy. Once the silence had gone on long enough and the table started chatting about other things, Veronica leaned in toward her and whispered one last thing: