When We Believed in Mermaids: A Novel by Barbara O'Neal

Author:Barbara O'Neal [O'Neal, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781542004527
Published: 2019-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

Decades later, I stand on the beach at Piha, New Zealand, clad in a rented short-sleeve wet suit and holding a rented board, and I think about how much he smoked weed and drank with us. We idolized him then, but as an adult, I’m appalled.

Taking my measure of the waves, I feel the ghosts of Dylan and Josie, eyeing the waves, eyeing the sky with me, all of us quieting as the sea weaves her fingers through our hair. I find myself humming “The Mermaid Song”: “We there did espy a fair pretty maid, With a comb and a glass in her hand, her hand, her hand, With a comb and a glass in her hand.”

It had not been an easy undertaking to get to this beach, but the more trouble I encountered, the more desperate I was to surf, which is often the only way I can think clearly.

Or maybe it’s my drug.

Either way, in the end I hired a driver to drive me the forty kilometers to the west coast of the island, and I rented the board and suit right up the road. Once I got to the shop, they spoke my language, even if it was not always exactly my language, given the accent, and I was golden. The dude running the joint could tell I knew my stuff, and when I asked the right questions, he got me the right equipment. My driver, a chubby Maori woman, bought a hat so she could sit on the beach, happy to sit and watch for the money I paid her to stay so I wouldn’t have to call anyone else when I was finished.

The guy at the shop told me there is a cyclone up north, which is whipping up better waves than would be found ordinarily at this spot at this time of day, and I’m eyeing the line with pleasure. Clusters of waves are rolling in, some up to five or six feet, and it isn’t crowded. I paddle out politely and take my place, lifting my chin as a guy acknowledges me.

One by one, the surfers take their rides, and I see this is not a serious crowd. There are some decent riders in there but only one I’d call an expert, a sturdy, dark woman with hard-braided black hair and a red-striped wet suit. She rides easily, relaxed, until the wave carries her all the way home.

When it’s my turn, the waves have risen to six feet and hold their shape like they’re carved, the wind pushing them to shore. I catch my wave, find my center, and ride. The air is hot, the water cold, the view completely different from my Santa Cruz vistas.

The wave ripples downward, downward, and I slide home to shore, realizing that my mind is completely empty. Exactly what I wanted.

Carrying Dylan and Josie with me, I head back out to the line to meditate some more in the sunshine and the water.

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