The Mermaid

It was a frigid February night.  Off a dark, lonely stretch of highway, a car lay on its roof at the bottom of a steep embankment.  A plume of white smoke and steam rose as gas and oil seeped hissing onto the hot engine.  Inside the car a nubile mermaid statuette turned slowly on a golden thread hanging from a dashboard knob, a memento John had given Erika during their trip to Orlando last year on spring break.  An emblem, John had said, of her bright spirit and captivating beauty.

As the mermaid softly turned, blood oozed from Erika’s head, matting strands of her long auburn hair.  She hung limp, suspended by her shoulder restraint, her left leg crushed between the steering wheel and the door.  A cell phone lay just beyond the reach of her dangling arm, its white luminous screen displaying a message, “I’m sorry   sorry   sorry.  I’ve been a jerk.  Can we please talk?”  Followed by the fragment of an unsent response, “You hurt me, John.  But I’m glad you texted.  Yes, we…”

Two weeks earlier, John had phoned Erika to say,  “I can’t see you anymore.”

“What did you say?” she asked.

“Us.  It’s over.  I can’t see you anymore.”

“Why?  What is this about?”   

John’s mind was reeling.  He was being cruel, but he didn’t know what else to say.  What was this about?  His feelings had turned sour.  He wanted to get high and escape.  Erika, school, his career potential, everything was bleak and foreboding.  Even Erika, his anchor, had become a chaffing reminder of his own weakness.

“I’m sorry, Erika.  That’s just the way it is,” John said, as he ended the call.

Erika was shocked.   They had been together for five years, since their sophomore year of high school.  They’re had been difficulties, but they’d worked through them.  She had she stuck with John, even after his arrest, when her parents and her friends had told her to stop seeing him?  And now John was calling off the relationship. 

Erika never saw it coming. 

It had started with a sports injury, when John was seventeen.  He was prescribed OxyContin for pain.  He discovered that the medication helped take the edge off his social and academic anxieties.  Six months later he was busted with a quantity of Oxy, a Schedule II narcotic, without a prescription.  He had enough pills that the district attorney was threatening to charge felony possession with intent to distribute, which meant prison.  John was relieved when the DA agreed to allow a plea of simple possession.  He got two years probation contingent on inpatient drug rehabilitation.  John had spent two weeks in a medical facility to treat him through the chemical withdrawal.  Upon sentencing,  he did a thirty-day stint in rehab.  

When the news broke everyone was stunned.  John had been such a promising young man, intelligent blue eyes, dark hair, handsome and well-built.  He had a pretty girlfriend, was an honor student and a varsity athlete.  No one ever suspected John used drugs, let alone that he was an addict.   But all that had changed.  

John lost Erika while he was in rehab.  His treatment required that he forego any romantic attachments.   “I can’t see her?” John asked in disbelief.  “She’s my girlfriend.  We’ve been together almost two years.”

“I know it’s hard,” the addiction counselor said.  “But your recovery must come first.”

“So I can’t call her and she can’t visit me?”

“No, John.  You need to end all contact.  No relationships until you’ve been clean and sober for a year.”  As the counselor spoke, John’s vision tunneled, his skin felt cold, and his breath came quick and shallow as the weight of the sentence lay crushing on his chest. 

He returned to his room in a fog and began to write, “Dear Erika…”  His tears wet the envelope as he sealed the letter inside.

After rehab, John entered the public phase of  his humiliation.  “I’m sorry, John,” the adviser had said.  “With your record you’re no longer eligible for the National Honor Society.”  These were the first of successive blows that undermined John’s status and ostracized him from his peers.  He was sober, but he had become a loner.

Then in the summer after his high school graduation, John’s family was invited to a pool party at a local country club.  John kept to himself and after a swim he was sunning poolside, incognito under a ball cap and sunglasses, when he heard someone say, “John?  Is that you under there?”

Opening one eye, he looked up.

“Erika?” he asked, sitting up. 

She rested her chin on her crossed arms as she hung on the edge of the pool, her china doll face framed in long, wet curls.  John took off the sunglasses and gazed into her gray-blue eyes.  A warm wave fluttered through his chest. 

Erika had rescued John from his island of isolation.  They spent a happy summer together and John felt less broken and alone.  He began to bud once again, green with fresh promise, basking in the warmth of Erika’s acceptance.   They made plans that fall to stay close as each went off to their respective colleges.  Even though their schools were a hundred miles apart, John and Erika spent every weekend together during that freshman year and life was good.   

The following year, after John declared his engineering major, difficulties arose.  Erika maintained a 3.5 grade point average, which she was delighted with, but John struggled to keep up with course work that seemed beyond his reach.  As the pressure grew John felt a familiar itch at the base of his skull whenever his classmates talked about drinking or getting high.  The last thing I need right now is to start playing with substances, he thought.  But he worried, fearing his old demons were not far off.

John didn’t talk about his substance concerns with Erika.  He had betrayed her trust in high school and he didn’t want to raise that specter with her now.  But they did talk everyday by phone, and in those chats it seemed to John that Erika’s work was always going well, while his was not.  Erika made a point of asking about John’s studies, to convey her empathy and support.  During a few occasions on the phone John was moody, sometimes breaking of the call off when the topic of schoolwork came up.

 While at home for Thanksgiving break, Erika asked, “How’s your poly sci paper coming?”

 “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to snap at me.”

John tried to quash his irritation, “Please, can we talk about something else?”  He hadn’t even started the research for his paper and he was failing advanced calculus.  When he left Erika to return to school, they didn’t part on good terms.  Over the next two months John failed two courses and barely squeaked by in three others.  He was flunking out. 

It was then that John started drinking, first at a pub with his roomy, then at campus parties.  On a Saturday morning, after a frat party the night before, John called Erika and broke up with her. 

At first he felt relieved.  But as days passed, he realized he wasn’t being honest.  His ill feelings had nothing to do with Erika.  He had pushed her away because he’d turned on himself.  In a condemning state of mind, he was driving himself toward that cold, familiar isolation he had felt two summers ago. 

Would she forgive me? John asked himself.  I’ve been such a fool to hide from the one person who accepts me.  Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, he thought.  Maybe it’s not too late.  

He texted, “I’m sorry… sorry… sorry.  I’ve been a jerk.  Can we please talk?”

There was no reply.  That’s not like her, he thought.  She wouldn’t just ignore me.  Still pacing his room, John thumbed another text, “Please forgive me, Erika.  I’ve been very wrong.  I’d like to explain.”  He clicked send.

A pinging sound emanated from Erika’s phone announcing the arrival of a text message.   Her eyes flutter at the sound.  In a groggy reaction to the familiar sound she reached her hand towards the cell phone.  A blast of air blew out of the frozen night, whistling through the shattered windshield and softly tousling Erika’s hair, as the mermaid danced on its string.