When she hit the water, there would be a moment of panic when the water flowed into the car, filling it, weighing it beneath the surface, but then the mermaids would come. They would swarm around the car like large breasted dolphins, and blow on conch shells that would rend the metal of her car apart. Then they would place a different shell over her face, allowing her to breathe, and invite her to become a mermaid, tell her that she’d always secretly been one, but now she could become one for real, forever.
“The fuck you doing, dumb slut?”
Beddy is startled by the voice. She looks over to her left to the beige BMW next to her. A boy is standing with his driver side door open, glaring over his roof at her.
“Duh, your door’s against my fucking car?”
She looks at her door, which is very much against his car.
“Shut your door, so I can leave,” he says, gesturing vaguely where he could leave to with his thumb. “I’m not getting in till you shut it, ‘cause then my paint job will get fucked. I’ve seen it happen. She’s got a fresh wax.”
“Sorry,” she says, and grabs at her mouth as if she could still keep the word from becoming audible. What is her deal with that word? Why is it so easy for her to say?
She smiles at him, gingerly drawing her door away from his car and closing it, as he watches the whole time. It’s a manic, feral smile. She waits for him to back out of his space, then starts her engine, puts on her seatbelt, and exits the parking lot, trying not to drive over the stern officer’s feet since he’s left so little room to pass. Taking one final look at The Grove, she drives up the pier back to shore.
“’Sorry,”” she mimics herself. “’Sooorry,’” she says, this time with more whine.
She is tired of the word. Of its implication of responsibility. Its transference of guilt. She learned early and she learned deeply that her world has no patience for people who feel the way she feels. It wants to be as fast and rough and thoughtless as it wants. It cannot be taught otherwise, or halted. Not in the name of Progress. To its credit it tries for civility, but makes the fatal mistake of holding it above fairness. So she has had to smile tightly as the gratuitous cretins of her world have bent her over, even accept it with generosity, though the pain congealed into jawbreakers in her throat. Apologize when she whimpered too loudly.
“Sooooorrrrrrrryyyyy,” she says, now sounding like those same cretins.
She winces when she thinks of all the times she said she was sorry and didn’t mean it. When she had to apologize to kids that teased her and made her wish she were dead. In those situations, she had lost her temper, had escalated a situation her bullies had started. Usually, her temper would be the only punishable offense. Her feelings were her responsibility, the adults would say, and so were her reactions. But if the teacher or authority figure were generous, they’d make the bully apologize. This was delivered with various insincerity signifiers: eyes rolling or on their lap, spoken into forearms or cupped palms, feet twitching or kicking or kick-drumming. It always sounded one of two ways: drawn out and sing-song, or flat and muffled. And there was nothing worse than hearing her hateful apology, made only to hear the bully’s, parroted back to her.
She knows they could have learned it from anybody. The Wades of the world are legion. She’s seen them on TV. They are politicians and public figures, waging hollow contrition campaigns. “I’m sorry if anyone was offended by my actions,” they will say. People who want to keep their jobs, partners, or status, without having to own their indiscretions or devastations. The forgiveness they ask for is transactional. They want the apology to reset everything to the status quo before the apology.
The difference between her and the Wades of the world is that she knows apologizing is the right thing to do. What would it take for her to do the wrong thing on purpose?
When she reaches the guard kiosk she rolls down her window and hands over the ticket.
“Ah!” the guard says. “The girl who went into enemy territory and came out the other side!”
His eerie specificity throws her, but then she recalls their conversation. He looks at the ticket, then back at her, then places it out of her sight in front of him. “What happened?”
“Still no one’s told you?”
“They just hit their sirens and lights, and I’m supposed to hold the gate open. No real opportunity.” He sounds petulant.
“It was ugly,” she says.
He still hasn’t lifted the gate.
“A girl got hit by a car,” she continues. “Some say, she got what was coming to her.”
She stares frostily at him. He opens the gate and lifts his cap.
“Have a good’n,” he says.