I realize with a start that I’ve been talking for a while now without hearing any response, and look suspiciously at Mermaid’s head, which has slipped down from my shoulder.
“Hey. You didn’t doze off, by any chance, great lover of stories? I’ve been full of sound and fury especially for you, you know . . .”
“Of course not,” a pointedly alert voice replies, slightly muffled by the sweater sleeve. “I’ve been listening all this time. And thinking.”
“What exactly were you thinking about, sleepyhead?”
She gently pushes away, and I again see that she “remembers everything” in the gaps of her vest.
“I’m thinking how the same story comes out completely differently depending on who’s telling it. And for all that, none of you is really lying.”
“Because whoever’s telling the story creates the story. No single story can describe reality exactly the way it was. I told you that I personally prefer Tabaqui’s version.”
“And I prefer to listen and compare.”
Groaning, she straightens her legs. The sneakers, in service for so long that they’re now uniformly gray, have been darned with thread where the canvas meets the rubber. Baby shoes. So touching I can’t look at them without misting up. When Mermaid shifts, the knots on the vest shift too, exposing a different slogan.
“What’s with the hate?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Just in case. I thought I needed something sinister too.”
“And I don’t think you do. At all.”
The
Mermaid pulls up her knees and hugs them. No slogans, no shape anymore, just a flowing mass of hair.
“You think that I’m not cut out for strong feelings. That they don’t really suit me, right?”
I’ve trodden on the favorite toe. I keep forgetting the Gray Mouse Complex.
“You see, I don’t have a personality. I’m so dull inside. Faded . . .” It’s no use fighting it, and it drives me mad with the unassailability of its tenets. “Take Ginger, for example . . .” That is, take someone for whom controlling her emotions is a daily losing battle, who bursts into fireworks at the slightest touch or even without it, jumps from laughter to tears and back with nothing in between, wears all her loves and hatreds on her sleeve: now that’s beautiful, that’s feminine, that’s attractive, like bright patterns of a butterfly’s wing, it’s a whirlwind, a torrent, a trap; but very few people can stand Ginger’s flamboyant personality for more than a couple of hours at a time, even when her feelings are directed not at them but elsewhere. Long live Noble, Noble’s patience and everything else that he has and I don’t, I guess this is something that he knows and understands, because he used to be that way too, until he went in for a stint where the real crazies live, and yes, they do look great together, this couple always at the point of combustion, fire-haired Isolde and sapphire-eyed Tristan, both on the edge, both wide open, breathe in deeply and hide the breakables, but one thing I don’t understand in all of this is why should anyone envy it and agonize about it, I could never understand this and in my attempts to convince Mermaid rose almost to the Noble-Gingerish heights of passion, except it always ended up the same. “It’s nerves, simply nerves, and in this case they hang out like live wires, so anyone passing by trips them; it’s got nothing—nothing—to do with personality and its richness, you silly little girl!” But instead of a reply I get only pursed lips, and all my gnashing of teeth and banging of head against the wall do nothing, the matter is closed and not subject to negotiation.
And then there’s Rat, a predator, as like Blind as a twin sister, except less friendly, no comparison with Mermaid, thank God, except that my sincere “thank God” is a cold comfort for Her Mousy-Walking Grayness.
I look at her, hidden under hair all the way down to her shoes, then close my eyes and embrace her tightly with my nonexistent arms. Mermaid readily leans on me as if I really did that, and I am struck again by her sensitivity. She always responds to the touch of my ghostly hands, even when she’s upset and has other things on her mind. Like now.
“We’re not going to discuss exceptional personalities, right? Remembering them one by one, marveling at how beautiful and special they are?” I whisper to her. “If you don’t mind, of course. Do you mind?”
“Of course not.”
She shifts, throwing back her head to better read the expression on my face, but I move my chin to block her view, again and again, until she abandons her attempts and curls up in a tender catlike knot, so familiar to my touch. “You must hate me for constantly bringing this up. You had such a miserable voice just now. I’m talking about it too often.”
