The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd Read Free Book Online Page B

standing on the bloodstain,” she said.
    I looked down. We all did. The dark, spattered edge of it was visible beneath Kat’s shoe. I pictured the frenzied dash they must have made to the ferry dock, the ride across the water, Mother’s hand wrapped in a JC Penney bath towel.
    Kat slid back her foot, and we stood in the late afternoon, in a moment of perfect stillness, and stared at my mother’s blood.

    C H A P T E R
    Five
    pq
    We piled onto Kat’s golf cart, parked at the end of the pier. Benne sat on the back with my suitcase, and I climbed into the front seat, glancing warily at the air horn, thinking of the last harrowing ride in her cart.
    “Don’t worry,” Kat said. “I won’t use the horn unless someone is crazy enough to step out in front of me.”
    “I hate that odious thing,” I said.
    “Yes, well, hate it all you want, but it has saved the lives of countless tourists.”
    “Mama used to aim for tourists,” Benne said.
    “Oh, I did not. ”
    “I believe it’s impossible for Benne to tell a lie,” I said, and Kat huffed as she pulled onto the narrow pavement.
    Overhead the sky was turning orange. I had the sense of darkness pressing in, pooling behind the brightness. As we swept past the island shops, no one spoke, not even Benne.
    The storefronts all had window boxes gorged with lavender pansies, even the tiny post office. Shem’s Bait & Tackle had been painted the color of persimmons, and the carved wooden pelican outside Caw Caw General Store now wore a pony saddle, I imagined so that children could sit on it. We passed a handful of 40
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    tourists in front of Egret Expeditions, signing up for boat tours and bird walks. Even at the nadir of winter, the place seemed alive.
    I pointed to a small store wedged between Max’s Café and the Island Dog B&B. It had a blue-and-white-striped awning and a sign in the window that read the mermaid’s tale. “Didn’t that used to be a fish market?”
    “It went out of business,” Kat said.
    “That’s Mama’s store now,” said Benne.
    “No kidding? You own it? That gift shop?” I was surprised.
    I’d known Kat my whole life, and she’d never shown the least interest in shopkeeping. After her husband died—which had to be twenty years ago at least—she and Benne had lived contentedly off his pension and a little Social Security.
    “I opened it last spring,” Kat said.
    “Who’s minding the store right now?”
    “When I’m there, it’s open; when I’m not, it’s closed,” she said.
    “I like the name,” I told her.
    “I wanted to call it ‘Fin Fatale,’ but your mother nixed that.
    The woman has no sense of humor.”
    “She never did.”
    “That’s not true. Once upon a time, she had a great sense of humor,” Kat said.
    She lit out down the road, heading into the tinted light. I watched her lean forward as if she were willing the cart to surpass the eighteen-mile-per-hour speed limit, and so many things swam up to me—scraps of my mother’s laughter, times when we were still normal and happy. Kat was right—Mother had post h e m e r m a i d c h a i r
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    sessed a great sense of humor once. I thought of the time she made coconut shrimp and served it wearing a hula skirt. That time Mike was eight and got his poor penis stuck in a Coke bottle while urinating into it—for reasons none of us ever understood. His penis had, shall we say, expanded somewhat after entry. Mother had tried to act concerned but broke down laughing. She told him, “Mike, go sit in your room and picture Mother Teresa, and your penis will come right out.”
    “The biggest sellers in the shop are yellow signs that say
    ‘Mermaid Xing,’ ” Kat was telling me. “Plus our mermaid booklets. You remember Father Dominic? He wrote up the story of St. Senara for us, and we got it printed in a little booklet titled The Mermaid’s Tale, same name as the store. We can’t keep them in stock. Dominic is always coming in wearing that damn