The Vanishing Season by Jodi Lynn Anderson Page A

into the trees on the other side of the house, out to the very tip of their tiny spit of land, and watched some Horned Grebes land on the water, mist rising from the lake against the cold air and ice creeping out from the shore inward across its surface. Pauline said if it got cold enough the lake would freeze completely, but that was still hard to believe, considering its vastness.
    That weekend Pauline demanded they get out of town to the thriving metropolis of Green Bay to see the sights.
    “There’s a botanical garden. We should go to the railroad museum. Have you ever been to a casino?”
    In the end Pauline chose an indoor theme park called Pirateville. “They have mermaids,” she said matter-of-factly, reading from the website. “They’re open all winter.” They had a show there where women swam underwater and breathed through tubes and did acrobatics in fish tails.
    “You know mermaids are imaginary, right?” Maggie said.
    Pauline blinked at her innocently and then held her hands under her chin like Ariel. “They’re doing The Little Mermaid .”
    Pirateville—which on the map had looked huge, with a Pirate’s Cove and a Marauder’s Cavern—was tiny and poky. The log-flume ride, which had been drawn as a raging river, was closed, a miniature wave lagoon lapped against its cement walls forlornly, and the mermaid theater smelled weird. They entered at ground level and climbed down into old, upholstered movie seats, facing a curtain that, Maggie assumed, concealed the glass walls of the large water tank.
    The curtains opened. The water was lit Day-Glo blue from above, and the Little Mermaid was there, swimming around and breathing through her tube, dancing in the water and lip-synching to the sound track. Maggie looked over at Pauline, who was captivated.
    The production ended up being really good. They did the original Hans Christian Andersen version of the story—the tragic, non-Disney-fied one, where the prince marries another woman and treats the Little Mermaid like an adopted daughter, causing her to stab herself with a dagger made of her own hair.
    “Well, glad we saw something cheerful,” Maggie said, on the drive back.
    Pauline looked crushed. “My dad used to read the real story to me. But I guess he left out the bad bits.” Pauline dabbed at the corner of her eye with a pinkie.
    “You are not crying.”
    “No.” Pauline shook her head. But sure enough her eyes were wet with tears. She snorted with embarrassed laughter, and then Maggie burst into laughter too.
    After a while of driving in silence, Pauline spoke. “You know, I thought about inviting Liam, but things have been weird with us lately.”
    Maggie thought and then steeled her courage. “Pauline, why haven’t you ever . . . you know? Liked Liam, like that?”
    Pauline looked over at her thoughtfully. She lolled her head to the side, then fiddled with the visor. “I’m not into anyone that way. I don’t know. I just, I don’t see why everyone has to pair off and fall in love and everything anyway. Why can’t we just stay the way we are?”
    Maggie picked at her fingernails while Pauline went on.
    “My mom, she’ll never get over that my dad died. She’ll hold on to it forever. It’s like, her treasure, like she’s a dragon and missing my dad is all these giant rubies she’s guarding or something. I mean I love her. It’s just, she’s consumed by it.” Pauline inscribed smooth semicircles around the steering wheel with her hands, from the top to the bottom then the bottom to the top. “That’s what it’s like to love someone.”
    Maggie studied her. She usually seemed so completely carefree, but at this moment she looked sad and lost and older. Pauline seemed to come back to herself, suddenly self-conscious. She waved a hand like she was shooing a fly. “I just don’t feel that way about him anyway.”
    Maggie nodded. Pauline didn’t have any reason to lie. So she didn’t know why thinking of Liam felt secret.