Maw

I saw the opening maw of hell,
With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell—
Oh, I was plunging to despair.

— Moby Dick

I first met Lacy at the tender age of eight, when we were both newly arrived in Brookline. We were both the scruffy daughters of single mothers navigating a grammar school full of girls wearing the latest fashions. Our clothing was all thrifted or handed down. We saw each other as kindred spirits and bonded over our love of books and folly.

I didn’t know then that she would one day try to drown me.

Rose we met in high school. She had come to Brookline via New Jersey and Arizona, and while clever and bookish as well, she was bolder and brasher than we Massachusetts girls knew we had any right to be. We adopted her immediately into our tribe.

As I continued to drift out to sea, I was beginning to regret I’d ever met either of them.

A slight numbness was starting to overtake my arms and treading water was endangering my right foot’s attachment to its jelly sandal. It occurred to me that this might be a serious situation.

And then I heard, coming from my port side, a welcome cry, “would you like some help there?” A dingy-piloting savior was approaching. While still holding tight to the kayak, I turned my head carefully in his direction and yelped “yes, please!”

He piloted closer until he was alongside me. There were handles along the side of his craft. I put my faith in my life jacket and removed my arms from the kayak, gripping a side-handle with first one hand and then the other.

“Hello,” I said to my savior. Gary, I would later learn his name was. Saint Gary, Rescuer of Damp and Salty Women.

“I’ve caught a mermaid!” he said, gazing down at my bobbing head.

It was a ridiculous situation. There was no real hope of me pulling myself up and over the slippery, rounded side of the inflatable dingy, though I tried for a few moments. Gary and I decided that he should try to pilot to shore while I clung to the side. He kindly suggested that I move to a handle farther from the engine, so as to preserve my toes, and off we went, me trailing along side him like seaweed.

Just I became concerned that I wouldn’t be able to hang on long enough, the Harbormaster appeared on his larger boat, a ladder extended down the side. We headed his way, and Gary got me lined up with the ladder. The Harbormaster and his shipmate waited for me at the top.

At this point, the jelly sandal on my right foot was nearly half off, so while I managed to get my left foot onto the bottom rung, my right foot couldn’t get purchase. I extended my leg upwards with instructions, “take my sandal please!” The Harbormaster obliged, rendering me like Cinderella at midnight. I placed my now bare right foot onto the bottom rung. I seemed to be nearly saved.

I had been kicking my legs constantly since I’d fallen into the water, and as I pulled myself up, I felt their weariness. My buoyancy was diminishing as I pulled myself from the deep, increasing the heaviness my tired legs had to bear. My clothes, too, were weighing on me, soaked as they were with salt water. Dependent on my own strength to pull myself out, I found myself lacking.

I got high enough on the ladder to flop my arms over the side of the boat and no further. I looked up at the harbormaster and his mate, embarrassed and apologetic. They reached their hands down, hoping to grab me under the arms and haul me over.

Some days before, I had gone to a routine doctor’s appointment and they had found my blood pressure to be worryingly low. At their instructions, my boyfriend whisked me off to the emergency room where they then tested my various fluids. It was dehydration, they’d found, had caused my weakened state. I was pumped full of IV fluid and made a full recovery, but it was a lesson in how precarious things were in my middle-aged body.

Now, after some time soaking in salt while kicking away, and beginning to panic, I felt my blood pressure dropping. How terrifying to now be on the verge of swooning. I thought of how painful it would be to be dragged onto the boat, the edge digging into my stomach, the ladder rungs bruising my legs. I thought back to my younger days, when I was but a wisp, and the harbormaster and his mate would have had me over the edge in a blink. Misery set in.

Then I felt a nudge against my shins. It was Gary and his dingy floating just behind me. It’s hold was wide and inviting. The weight of me, dragging me downward into the sea, could be used now to assist in my rescue.

I let go of the harbormaster’s boat and kicked my feet clear of the ladder and was thus liberated by reason of my cunning spring. I folded myself slightly to lead with my portentous, white ass and landed thus cushioned in the belly of Gary’s welcoming craft.

He was flabbergasted, though delighted, and the harbormaster and his mate looked on with open mouths. I thanked them for their help and for their ladder. I asked for my sandal back and the harbormaster’s mate tossed it over. I slipped it back on.

I could relax now, safe and reclined, draped as I was sideways across the stern. I turned to Gary.

“Have you got any cocktails on this thing?” He shook his head. “Then take me straight to the dock with the bar, please!”

Buoyed up by that dingy, for almost ten whole minutes, we floated on a soft and dirgelike current, propelled forward by Gary’s stalwart outboard. We chatted for a bit, grinning over our exciting exploits. We detoured to grab my orphaned kayak, which Gary tied fast and towed along.

We reached the dock, near-level with the side of our craft, and I rolled onto it. Rose, similarly soaked and Lacy, dry as a bone, were there already, and I introduced them to Saint Gary. They thanked him for his noble acts and then off he went full of tales for his wife of mermaids and rescues at sea.

Rose and Lacy and I made our way to the bar and its open porch. Lacy bought us lunch and lots of cocktails. And with that, the drama was done, and I escaped to tell thee.