Fathoming

A Modern Fairy Tale

A Mermaid by John William Waterhouse

Unlike the story of that other mermaid—the one I tell my children over and over in sign language—my story has a so-called happy ending, for although I, too, fell in love with a beautiful man

(the sight of him windsurfing on the bay in a sleek, black wetsuit, his long, blond hair whipping across his exquisite face cracked my heart in two)

and, like the other mermaid, I gambled my tail and my voice for a pair of legs and the chance to win the heart of the one for whom I burned, all it took was the sight of my bare white breasts, the auburn tresses streaming down my back, and the impassioned look in my eyes, and the man fell right into my arms, and that is how I came to live—for the rest of my life—on the land

(only to become someone I had never dreamed of being—a Marin county housewife, in a two-story house with oak trees and a swing set in the backyard and a hybrid SUV in the garage, who spends her day going to the supermarket, running loads of wash, driving the children to their lessons, and sharing a pot of herb tea with a neighbor)

and returning to the sea only in the night

(in my dreams, I swim again through the briny kelp beds, the slick brown strands swirling, silver fish darting by in quick flashes—in my dreams, I rest again on the gentle surface of the water, the waves rolling and lapping, the little ones splashing all about me—in my dreams, I plunge again, and dive, and twist through the blue-green sea down to the sandy bottom, and then up, up, up, bursting through with a great surge of joy)

for it is the swimming I miss more than anything, not the faces of my childhood companions or even my old songs, but the swimming, but the feeling of the sea as I flip my sleek silvery tail, and during the many nights when I cannot sleep, and cannot dream, I lay in bed, hot and restless, and listen to the fog horns in the mouth of the great bay sounding and sounding, and how I long to be out there, embraced by that cool, white mist, because no matter how often I wash the sheets, our bed is warm and wrinkled and smells of humanity, and the breathing of my husband at my side and of the three children down the hall brings me no comfort, for they are all strangers to me, these sleepers.