When she was young, she thought she was a mermaid who’d been stolen from the sea. Something like Ariel in The Little Mermaid, except she was sure she wouldn’t have taken any potion that would turn a mermaid into a human being. No, the drink must have been forced upon her by an evil sea witch.
The reason she couldn’t remember her watery beginnings was that she’d been taken too young. But sometimes, in dreams, she looked out at the old, wavering world with her true, ocean eyes. Everything blurred just beautifully down there. There were no edges, just suggestions of endings. If only she could bring those eyes to the surface of this world, where the edges were hard and hurt.
Then she grew up and put away childish things, because for one, mermaids weren’t real, and two, it turned out she sucked pretty hard at swimming, having never gotten lessons as a kid.
Her name was Hope, by the way. This was another cruel joke the world had decided to play on her. By which she meant her parents.
Her mom was mostly okay, though. A little sad sack, and prone to storms of self pity that could drown the whole house in their wake, but she loved Hope and Hope’s brother, Noah, and if they weren’t as close as some moms and daughters, they rarely fought, either. Mother and daughter were careful with one another, and each probably appreciated that carefulness in the other. Because they knew, subconsciously, there was a lot to protect.
Hope’s father was another story.
All her life she’d tried to please the man. And all her life he’d resisted her efforts.
He wasn’t a particularly impressive person himself. The man had a sales job he hated, few interesting hobbies to speak of, and as a physical specimen, let’s just say that there was a lot of room for improvement there. Oh, and he also had the wrong politics, though they were right enough for the town they lived in.
None of that mattered, unfortunately. Because Hope loved him, and was stuck with him, and couldn’t see a way out of caring what he thought about her.
The awful truth? Her father hardly thought about Hope at all.
What she didn’t know, and would only find out at the man’s funeral, decades after the events of this story, was that her father had had a second family the entire time she was trying so hard to impress him within the confines of her own. With a woman he loved more than Hope’s mom, and one skinny, blonde daughter.
But that’s not this story.
This story is Hope’s.
***
“When you gonna make up your mind?”
“About what?” Hope said, with her foot pressed against the car’s back window.
“You know,” Braden said, practically panting now.
She did know. Knowingness was sort of unavoidable after the shirt and bra had been discarded. Braden was a moment past sucking on her nipples, while also kind of humping her leg. Which was all difficult to achieve in the backseat of a Toyota Corolla that smelled like pot and clammy boy bits.
“Maybe next week?”
He groaned.
She wasn’t trying to be a cock tease, really. It’s just that none of this meant that much to her. Up until it did. She knew what was expected, and would like to oblige, if for no other reason than that Hope was an obliger. It was just that something in her always stopped short at the big reveal.
Who was this person with his mouth on her breasts?
What were his dreams and fears?
She tried to imagine asking him that. But she also wasn’t a total idiot.
His dream was to fuck her in the backseat of his Toyota Corolla. His whole body strained toward that end. His fear was that she wouldn’t let him. She also knew, somehow, that he wouldn’t insist, though that was just her dumb luck. In a way, Hope was so grateful to him for not insisting that she almost decided to let him do it, anyway. It was all so stupid when you stopped and thought about it. Sex, that is.
Except that it wasn’t.
In the end, she compromised:
“If you take it out, I’ll give you a handjob.”
He accepted because he was seventeen, and panting.
***
“When are you going to make up your mind?”
Hope blinked up at Pastor Morgan, who stood amid a circle of reverent teens in the basement of the Apostolic church, staring down at his sheep called Hope.
Who had no idea what he was asking her because she’d been busy thinking about his double chin for the last little bit, and picturing him as a cartoon rooster with a bright red wattle.
“Sorry, Pastor Morgan. What did you say?”
The others tittered. It was weird, maybe, but Hope didn’t mind playing the fool. There was a certain power to not caring. Most girls she knew cared too much, and that’s where the trouble lay.
Though her cheeks still reddened, annoyingly.
Pastor Morgan, who really preferred to be called Pastor Dave, a fact which Hope knew, and ignored, because he really was a sanctimonious little guy who liked to strut and preen around that church basement like God Himself had anointed him Assistant Manager of Heaven, sighed now. “I’m asking, Hope, if you’ve made up your mind to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior. Since you were kind enough to ask,” he added, which made the others titter anew.
Hope tried to look like she was thinking about that.
But what she was really thinking was: what do those words even mean? And: how am I supposed to answer a question that I can’t understand?
In the end, she said that sure she would.
Which Pastor Morgan really couldn’t argue with, but was nonetheless not super jazzed by, so that later that evening, during the activities portion of the Young Life meeting, when they were all set to perform a little skit for which Hope volunteered to be the comical Grandma character, informing Pastor Morgan that she already had this funny, old-lady shuffle that would be pretty perfect for the role, he looked past Hope’s head and said that he’d already assigned the part to Haley McGill, who was pretty much the last person in the world anyone should expect comedy from.
Hope was assigned the part of “Crying baby #2.”
Being the second of two crying babies made her think that Pastor Morgan probably in actuality hated her a little.
The next week, Hope begged off from Young Life, so that Noah, already pretty practiced at pretending she wasn’t alive, went out of their house’s front door without looking back.
She really did have the cramps, though.
She wasn’t a liar. Except about Jesus, maybe. Who she thought should understand.
She wasn’t even averse to his being her savior, she said to the Jesus guy in her head. If he were so inclined, sure he could be.
If he could just let her know?
***
“When are you going to make up your mind?”
“This time tomorrow, Mr. Yannity. I swear.”
“Young lady, I hope you mean it. Colleges don’t extend their application deadlines just because you want them to. If they say February first, at the very latest, they mean February first—at the very latest.”
“I know,” she said, looking away. Unfortunately, Yannity (the Man-a-tee) had a whacked out thyroid, and his eyes sort of bulged out at a person. Laughing wasn’t an option. There was a time and a place for seriousness, and a high school guidance counselor’s office was probably it.
“If you’re going to apply, Hope, then you really ought to consider which schools are strongest in your major.”
She dared a glance at him, as his pause seemed to hold within it a question.
He cleared his throat, suggestively.
She raised her eyebrows, wonderingly.
“Do you have an idea, Hope,” he said, his whole body kind of whistling out his weariness with her, “of what your major might be?”
“Oh.” She shook her head. “Not really, no.”
This did not seem to come as a surprise to the man.
“Well, what are you interested in?”
She thought about that.
The way you could kind of become someone else, depending on the person you were with.
And: how she could love her brother one day, and hate him the next.
Also: why sunlight through a stained glass window sometimes made her want to weep, when a second before, she’d been bored to tears.
“Music, maybe?”
“Music.”
“Yes.”
“Do you play an instrument, Hope?”
“No.”
“Sing?”
“Not very well.”
“Write songs?”
“Oh, gosh, no.”
“Okay, then.” Mr. Yannity was clearly mustering up superhuman reserves of human patience now. Hope leaned in, helpfully. “Then what aspect of music were you hoping to explore?”
It was then that she remembered this thing she’d seen on YouTube once.
“Music therapy, I guess?”
Mr. Yannity was surprised, and pleased, with this answer.
Hope was pretty chuffed, too.
While he was busy looking up programs, and pulling out brochures from various desk drawers, Hope tried to imagine herself as future music therapist person.
Let the healing begin! she announced to the imaginary group of children in her head, handing out maracas and bongos and whisking out a flute she’d somehow managed to learn how to play.
The kids laughed and cheered and started to play together (what a racket!) and marched themselves around the room, including the sad little boy with the hairy mole on his cheek who all the other kids usually shunned.
Hope’s father appeared, too, sort of beaming with pride at the lot of them, and winking at Hope like a character out of one of his old-timey movies.
She got tears in her eyes, thinking about it.
Actual tears.
***
“When are you going to make up your mind?”
This was her dad talking now.
“About what?” she said. He’d been riding them all throughout supper, and she’d sort of lost track of the basic gist.
“When are you going to make up your mind to become a serious person, Hope?”
“Oh,” she said, picking at the peas on her plate. “Probably soon, I guess.”
Handjob Braden had broken up with her, when Blowjob Braden had failed to materialize.
She’d kind of stopped going to Young Life, which nobody seemed to mind too much.
All the application deadlines had come and gone, though community college was still in play, poor Mr. Yannity had told her in the hall earlier that day, without a lick of conviction in those sweet, goggly, slightly deadened, eyes of his.
But this wasn’t what her dad was asking her about.
What was he asking her again?
“You look like a freak.”
She sort of nodded at this.
Cool, cool.
“No boy south of the Mason-Dixon line is going to want to touch a girl with pink hair, I assure you.”
It was kind of amazing that Hope’s mother continued using cinnamon to season their peas. It had really taken an extraordinary leap of culinary imagination on her part. Too bad they made her want to barf.
“Noah works out, at least. Why don’t you work out, Hope?”
She had the sudden urge to say that she was a lesbian. Except that she wasn’t.
“And if I have to lend you money for one more goddamn piece of clothing that doesn’t fit you right—”
Noah, who’d been sort of clenching his silverware throughout the meal, rose at this. He pushed back his chair. Everyone stopped.
Hope’s dad, mom and Hope all watched this other Noah emerge from the Noah they’d known all their lives. This new Noah stepped decisively over to their father’s chair. There was something slow motion about the whole proceeding, Hope would think later.
Her brother pulled up his father by the scruff of his shirt. And socked him.
With his fist!
It made a sort of crunching sound.
Hope inhaled the whole room with her eyes.
Her dad cursed and spluttered and wound back an arm to return the favor, when Hope’s mother shouted “No!” and stepped in between them.
“No,” she said, putting her hands on her husband’s chest. “Kenny—no.”
So nobody else got hit that night.
But Hope’s dad called it quits on them the next day.
***
Hope had bought both their tickets. It was her brother’s birthday, so.
School was on recess that week because of spring break. Some of their friends had gone down to Florida, and one was even snorkeling in the Bahamas. But not the Meeks. Hope and Noah were in downtown Atlanta, at the Atlanta Symphony Hall.
Hope had been waiting all her life to see Tori Amos in concert.
That’s what it felt like, anyway.
Execpt that now that she was there, it didn’t feel real.
“These people are weird,” Noah hissed in her ear, as they settled into their seats.
She smiled at him. Her hands were shaking. Their seats weren’t that good but that was okay. She was here. And the people were weird. And her pink hair meant that she was one of the dear little weirdos. And—
The lights dimmed. The concert began. Tori, her hair lit like a torch, strode out onto the stage and everyone whooped and clapped and right away she started playing that piano like the instrument was both Jesus and a guy she was fucking. Even Noah was struck by the power of it. Hope knew he was because every once in a while she would look at him from the corner of her eye, and she could see it for herself: he was mesmerized.
Mermaids were mesmerizing, it turned out.
Hope, levitating, also felt a tension squeezing in on her as the concert wore on. In fact, the tension got stronger and stronger as each song ended and the next few notes of the next song began. Like all fans, Hope was waiting for that one song, and at first she didn’t think Tori was going to play it. But then she did, at the very end of the concert, for the encore, actually, which was pretty perfect, as it turned out. The song was “Winter.”
It was a song about a father and his daughter.
About a daughter and her father.
It was a song written before Hope was even alive.
“When you gonna make up your mind?”
Tori asked this question again and again as the song went on.
“When you gonna make up your mind?”
And each time it ripped out a goddamn piece of your heart.
By the last time, she was sort of whispering the words into the microphone. Everyone in the hall had the same lungs, and held the same breath.
“When you gonna make up your mind?”
. . .
“To love you as much as I do?”
Of course Hope was crying by then.
Because it was a song about a daughter and her father.
But not her father.
And yet she was in it, anyway.
When the lights came on, and Tori had taken her final bow and left them all buzzing in their seats, and everyone else started filing out of the concert hall, and Noah had hugged her to his chest, and asked her if she was okay, and she had collected enough of her breath to say, very shakily, “N-n-n-o,” so that he’d kissed the top of her head and told her she was being a spaz but that he loved her, okay?, only then did Hope kind of laugh and realize, like a drowning person rising to the surface of the water and gasping in that first big breath—
Art was a life raft.
That was it, wasn’t it?
Art was a life raft.
She smiled at her brother, who she loved.
“You ready?” he asked her, kind of patting her on her arm.
“Yes. Ready.”
For the first time in forever, she felt like Hope.
