Swim to Me by Betsy Carter Page B

mermaids would form a circle around the Don. They would move in closer until they were at the Don’s shoulders, lightly patting his hair. As they plotted out the scene, Lester decided that maybe he could play Don Corleone.
    For the next four weeks, they practiced every day for two hours before the morning show and again at night after the park had closed. Although Thelma Foote feigned indifference, occasionally she’d peek down into the tank during rehearsals. One evening, she cornered Delores just as she was closing down the grill in the refreshment stand. “You’re holding back a little,” she said. “This is Connie Corleone’s moment to shine, to come out from behind the shadows of her brothers and her father. Be showy. Your moves should be aggressive, exaggerated, have a real snap to them.”
    A few days later, she pulled Blonde Sheila aside in the gift shop. “You’re putting too much swagger into Johnny Fontane. Don’t forget: he’s broke, his career’s in the toilet, and he’s come begging. He’s a lady-killer, but he’s also so scared, he’s about to pee in his pants.” Another day, she told Lester how to hold his head just so, in order to convey the Don’s polar qualities of tenderness and cruelty.
    Eventually, Thelma started showing up at rehearsals, sitting in the director’s booth with her microphone, interrupting them every few minutes with her maddening instructions: “Bow deeper. Humility. Remember humility,” she shouted to Sharlene, who was playing Bonasera, the undertaker. “Thrust your chest forward, Delores. This is your wedding day.”
    For years, Thelma had been putting money away in a savings account. The money didn’t add up to much, ten thousand dollars maybe. She called it her rainy-day fund, available should the day ever come that she was no longer employed at Weeki Wachee. Thelmasat at her desk one night long after the park had closed and stared at the figures in her bankbook. The money was hers to use freely: there was no one in her life to inherit it or lay claim to it. The steady row of deposits told the story of a solitary life with no excess, no surprises. She ran her fingers down the numbers in the book, then wrote some numbers on a pad. A couple of thousand dollars could lend some real class to this “Godfather” thing. All the nagging and cajoling, all of the emotional toll she had extracted from these girls and countless others before them—maybe this was her chance to pay them all back. Maybe this would help put Weeki Wachee back on the map again, despite all the Disney ruckus in Orlando. Back on the map, as the brochure promised, as “one of Florida’s premier tourist attractions.” She closed her bankbook and slipped it into the breast pocket of her windbreaker.
    O VER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, press releases about the new show started showing up at newspapers in the area. Maybe because
The Godfather
was such a big hit that year, papers as far north as Tallahassee and as far south as Miami ran every crumb that fell their way. There was an item about Connie Corleone’s wedding gown and its three foot tail; Sylvia, the comptroller, was quoted as telling someone that the fake flowers were going to cost nearly five hundred dollars; somebody with no name and a muffled voice phoned the
Tampa–St. Petersburg News
to say that businessman Meyer Lansky, who would be returning to Miami from Israel, had purchased ten tickets for the Christmas premiere.
    Christmas came on a Monday in 1972. Tuesday was the premiere. The show was scheduled to start at one p.m. By eleven thirty, the parking lot was overflowing; there were cars on the grass lining Route 19. Outside, it was sixty-three degrees, cool for December. People carried sweatshirts or wore cardigan sweaters. Not sincethe time Elvis had shown up, unannounced, had there been such a commotion at the park. People waited in line,