Before and Afterlives by Christopher Barzak Read Free Book Online Page B

she didn’t hear him. “We should get ours looked at as well,” Paul said. “And soon. I start fall classes in less than a month.”
    “Do it then,” Helena said. She didn’t have time for that. She’d given up on the house to devote herself to the well b eing of this girl, this beautiful girl in the bathtub.
    She ran a comb through the mermaid’s dark, tangled hair. It was a silver comb, an heirloom handed down for generations in Helena’s family. The mermaid seemed to enjoy it. She looked at the comb as though she might lick it. She seemed very partial to beautiful combs, Helena thought. Perhaps she lost her own in the accident?
    The mermaid grinned at Helena, showing those crooked pearls for teeth. She wagged her tail happily at the other end of the tub. She had accidentally knocked a vial of lavender bath salts off of a shelf at the far end of the tub the day before and when they fell in they had clouded through the water, turning it a light purple, perfuming the air. They had been Jordan’s. And now she smelled quite like Jordan used to, Helena thought. A little briny from all of that surfing, and a little lavender as well. Something above and something below.
    The night before, Helena had had another dream. This time she’d been invited to a talk show, by an uplifting, sentimental host—a woman who was soft and fleshy and obstinately m aternal. The show was about people who had disappeared and the loved ones left behind. Paul refused to come, but Helena told the motherly host everything, her whole story, in front of a studio audience. The audience cried at all the sad parts, which made her happy. Somehow, she thought, she’d told Jordan’s story right.
    When Helena had finished, the host waggled her eyebrows teasingly and said, “We’ve searched long and hard, far and deep, and we’ve found someone we think you’d like to see, Helena.” A door opened on the set then, and out walked Jo rdan, young and beautiful, eager to be in Helena’s arms. Tears were shed by all. The audience applauded and applauded again. And when all had quieted down, Helena asked, “Why, honey?”
    But Jordan didn’t answer. Helena smelled something fishy. She held her daughter out at arm’s length. There was seaweed brai ded through her hair. The talk show host commented on how fashionable it looked. She asked, “Where did you have it done, dear?” Jordan opened her mouth to answer, but a scream spilled out instead. The scream spilled out and flooded the studio set, washed over the audience, and shattered the camera lenses. This broadcast was at an end. When Helena woke, her head was filled with static from a dead television channel.
    Helena began to hum a wordless tune, thankful that the dream hadn’t been as futile as the ones that came before it. This one had a bit of hope. The mermaid now had finished off the seaweed sheets and was lounging extravagantly with her head nestled on the lip of the tub while Helena combed through her hair, freeing it of sea substances. Soon it would no longer be encumbered by kelp. A sea gift, Helena thought again. But now, thinking that, something made her afraid.
    What if she had gotten it all wrong? she wondered. She remembered the articles about the merfolk resurfacing. They had said, “You came from the sea and to the sea you shall return.”
    But she’d been thinking of this process the other way around. Jordan had gone into the sea and returned. Certainly a little changed, but returned nonetheless. What if—and she cringed at this thought—what if this beautiful girl in the tub would have to go back? She had come from the sea. Would she have to go back? Helena couldn’t bear that. She’d lost too much already.
    The mermaid had fallen asleep. A mucousy film slid down over her black eyes, clouding them, making her look blind. “I need something from you,” Helena whispered. “Not much. Just something to remember you by, in case you have to go.”
    She stood and padded out of