Little Mermaid Today

When Suzanne fell in love with Peter, she didn't know what to do. She had thought she was in love before, many times. The names would roll off her tongue at the speed of thought, each capturing an image that she held in her mind's eye for a moment, before she tossed it out, with a list of his flaws. Each time she had "fallen in love" her recovery had been met with the "falling in love," with someone new, and it had happened instantly. Therefore, she was confused as to what she felt for Peter.

Peter, tall and fair, with eyes that smiled at what ever she said, for she found that her sense of humor carried him to her and kept him near her, did not love her. He loved Bella, as beautiful as her name, with hair cut short and sharp around her pixie face, eyes large and staring almost ethereal in their ability to mirror ones' image back at them. Bella who had little to say with her mouth, but could say mountains with her face and body, was not threatened by Suzanne, who carried a mountain of flesh upon her frame and peered at the world through her thick tresses of dusty hair.

Suzanne caught in a pool of confusion confessed one night to her Aunt Anne what she felt. It was her Aunt, who told her that she was in love with Peter, not the puppy dog love that she had felt for the twenty other boys that she had hardly known, but the true love one feels for another when it is born out of knowledge and friendship. Suzanne caught off guard dropped into a puddle of tears, the truth of what her aunt told her, sunk into her deep and for the first time in her life, she realized true loss.

For one week Suzanne did not leave the house, or even her bed. She lay staring at the ceiling or drenched in sleep consumed with a loss of something she had never had. The phone rang, unanswered and the mail grew large by the front door, until it was knocked down in a flurry of advertisements and bills by Aunt Anne breaking in to find out what was wrong.

The house was dark with the odor of sweat and must when she charged in, her purse slung over her shoulder, her designer clothes slashing past her swift high heeled shoes as she clipped into Suzanne's room pulling back the curtains with a snapping motion.

Suzanne startled by the noise and swiftness pulled herself up, one hand blocking her eyes from the sudden sunlight. Her Aunt Anne stood staring at her, arms crossed and one foot tapping impatiently waiting for an explanation.

In stuttering words, Suzanne who could flash out jokes and clips of humor with little thought, attempted to describe what she felt. By the time she had finished her Aunt Anne held her in her arms crooning words of knowledge and pity for her.
"What should I do? What can I do?" Suzanne whimpered into her Aunt's shoulder. Aunt Anne, tentatively patted the back of her head, sweeping her hand down the long expanse of Suzanne's hair.

"We need to make him want you!" She said after a long pause that was filled with the gulping croak of Suzanne's sobs.

"But how? He loves her!" Suzanne sat back, pushing her hair out of her face and staring hopefully up at her Aunt.

Anne staring at her niece knew what had to be done and she gently took her hand and led her to the mirror. "We need to change this." She said, sweeping her hand at the reflection of her niece. Suzanne stared at herself for a long moment before nodding.

It took five months for Anne to complete her job of changing Suzanne. Anne took it seriously, just like she did everything else in her life, and she left no part of Suzanne unchanged and Suzanne hopeful with innocence did as she was told and emerged, Anne's butterfly. The once heavy girl, had been sculpted and starved into a curvaceous woman, dressed to please others with her appearance. She wore shoes with heels and skirts that edged on the border of appropriateness. Her blouses were form fitting with plunging necklines and bright colors. Her hair, that had once swept the bottom of her back was gone, cut short and sharp revealing her long neck, and dyed a reddish blond to accentuate her eyes, that had lost their brownness behind bright blue contacts. Aunt Anne had taught her how to change her rather plain face to one of mystery and contrast with twice weekly tanning, charcoal eyeliner and bright pink lipstick. This was her new daily uniform, her new face for facing the world.

Anne had not stopped just on personal appearance, she had also delved into Suzanne's personality, picking through what she knew to find what would most attract another to her. She had found Suzanne somewhat lacking in small talk which Suzanne had mostly filled with jokes and funny stories, now Anne had convinced her to speak only if necessary. "Your body and face will speak for you!" She said, putting the finishing touch ups on her niece. With these words she had decided to put Suzanne into dance classes to learn grace and movement and surprisingly Suzanne and taken to it, like a fish to water.

Suzanne returned to the world the week before Fourth of July a new woman. Her sisters hardly recognized her, and while Suzanne had thought they would be more open and accepting to her she found that it was almost the opposite. They were skittish and reckless, attempting conversation and then discomforted their eyes shifting they would leave her side. Her Aunt Anne, simply placed a hand on her shoulder and told her they were jealous.

The day she was to meet up with Peter for coffee came. She started to get ready at noon for her four o'clock meeting with him. Every inch of her must be perfect she decided and by the time her Aunt Anne showed up to inspect her at three thirty she was flawless. Aunt Anne pressed her hands to her heart and tears appeared in her eyes. "You are lovely!" She said, her voice a soft whisper and if it wouldn't have destroyed some part of her flawless perfection, Suzanne would have thrown herself into her Aunts arms. "Now remember, " her Aunt Anne reminded her as she was getting into her car, "Let your body and eyes speak for you!" She nodded and slipped gently behind the wheel.

She arrived at the coffee shop first, and chose a back table so that she could watch him come in and towards her. He was late, as always, and slightly rumpled looking as if he had just rolled out of bed, but he always looked like that. He came in and looked around, looked at her and then away. "Peter!" She called, making her voice sing song, like Aunt Anne had taught her.

He turned and stared, "Suzanne?" He walked towards her, haltingly and then realizing it was her hurried towards her. "Wow! You have changed!" She smiled, like she had been taught, her lips curling back slightly to show her white teeth but not enough so that her lipstick might come off on them.

Peter sat, almost falling into his chair, his eyes searching her present person, trying to compare it to a past memory. At first, he said little, simply staring at her and she wanted to take control of the conversation, make a joke or tell the story of what had happened to her, but she couldn't. It was not part of the role she was now playing, not part of the elaborate come hither game Aunt Anne had taught her to play.

She sat, wordlessly staring at him, her eyes gazing her complete devotion at him, and he gave into her silence by filling it with his words. He began to talk, telling her stories in a voice she had never heard before, one that seemed to toss and curl like ocean waves that held depths and mysteries she had not yet imagined. She found that her silence gave him the opportunity to speak, to fill the void she offered like an empty seashell with the music of his words. She drank him in with her eyes, as she never had when she was partaking in the dance of their conversation and she was able to see him clearer, as he was as one without a voice to interfere with the train of his thoughts.

He spoke into the evening, at one point taking her hand and leading her away from the coffee house and back to his place, up the stairs and into his kitchen, where they poured days old wine into tumblers because all the wine glasses were dirty and sat out on his deck watching the stars careen across the heavens.

To Suzanne it was work to play the role she was cast in, to give up such a piece of herself in order to be able to sit beside him and listen to him throw his words out like a hook searching for its fish. His hand on hers was hot, sweaty and clasping possessive. At first when he had reached for her, it had been dry and gentle, an invitation or question and she had slid her fingers around his, speaking her consent, but now as the night became oppressive with his words, Suzanne began to place titles upon him she had never imagined she would. Shallow, slight, possessive, demeaning. She attempted to thrust these thoughts from her mind, but the more he talked, the more they seemed to shriek the truth at her.

"Well?" She jumped slightly, realizing that Peter was looking at her, head leaning forward, his eyes questioning the lids drooping over in a somewhat hooded fashion. "Want to see my bedroom?"

The old Suzanne would have chided him, teased him for such a stupid line, but the new one was expected to be charmed and respond with all the elegance of affirmation that he sought. She could not take her eyes off of him, watching his face crease into a larger smile, that leered his teeth at her.

"Where, where is your bathroom?" She finally muttered at him, stumbling to her feet in a clumsy fashion, knocking over her tumbler on to the porch table and splattering it with the remains of her wine. He smiled up at her then, larger and covetously, as if he had sought his victim and found it. "Down there, first door on the left." She stumbled away, following the direction of his long pale finger.

In the bathroom, filled with crooked wet hanging towels, she gazed at herself in the small oval mirror and frowned. The vapid beauty who gazed back at her was not Suzanne, but some fool who would compromise herself for love. That was not her, but someone Aunt Anne felt she had to be. Aunt Anne who changed herself monthly to climb the corporate ladder of life, reaching the glass ceiling with different styles and different lovers and attempting to break it, but never quite succeeding. Suzanne knew that was not her, that she could not contain who she was within the confines of her body for even an evening to be what someone else demanded of her. Picking up one of the less dirty looking towels she doused it with water and then slashed it across her face, killing the image that stared back at her as if she had slashed it with a knife.

She knew who she was, and nothing could change that. If someone didn't want her for who she was, there was nothing there for them to have. She ran her wet hands through her perfectly coiffed hair, making it stand on end and grinned at herself. Opening the bathroom door, she made her way out to the kitchen where she retrieved her purse and with a backwards, "So Long!" to a startled Peter, she stepped out the front door and into the brisk night air.