My girl is full of shit. She spouts all sorts of wild fabrications. She lies to me half the time she opens her mouth, but much of the other half of those times she is kissing me, so I cope well enough. My girl, she’s full of pride. Always saying she is the best at this, amazing at that. Arrogance, I call it. Reverence, she corrects. Admiration for the self.
My girl is full of ideas, and when they’re not founded on lies, some of them are pretty darned good. Like the time she had the idea to walk through the Hardee’s drive-thru to save on petrol. Or the time she figured to bribe the mailman to bring her more mail, more birthday cards from relatives filled with crisp twenty dollar bills, or fifties, that she’d make it worth his while. She did her best to make it worth his while. Did it right there on the spot. But no extra mail ever seemed to show up. No birthday cards. No dollar bills.
My girl’s got a name, so I’ll stop saying my girl and say Maureen, ‘cause that’s her name, my girl’s. Maureen had this really bad idea recently. It was one of her really good ideas, she told me. She said she was going to find the best tide pool on the coast and sit in it. Sit in it for a long, long while. How long? She thought about my question for a while, concentration all over her face in the form of a wrinkled-up nose. She looked just like a rabbit in that moment, which is fitting ‘cause this tide pool business was one hell of a harebrained enterprise.
One year, she finally answers.
So I figure she’s lying, what, with all the lying she’s prone to as it is. I write it off as one more big, bad fib. It’s just in her nature. Pathological, they call it. And besides, what she’s telling me is bonkers. It’s nowhere near as convincing a truth as the other lie she told me earlier that morning; that she got two prizes in her Happy Meal instead of one as we pulled out onto the road from the Hardee’s we had just had lunch. I’d put a crisp twenty on it. Make it a fifty. I’d call that a safe bet. My girl, Maureen, was lying.
For the next ten days she scoured the beaches, she waded the shallows, she endured cuts and scrapes, collected countless abrasions on the rocks and shells and barnacles. She had been searching, all this time, for the best tide pool on the coast. She had grown emaciated, having hardly eaten anything during this time, little more than a handful of clams that she had to pry open with her skinny fingers using all of her strength, the odd crab that wasn’t fast enough to dodge her downward fist, her stomping heel.
Maureen had gone pale, all goose flesh and bone, so I rushed to the Hardee’s and brought her back a Triple Bacon Beast Burger. She said the clams tasted better, but this was either a joke or another one of her lies. When she finished the thing, droplets of grease dotting the pristine clarity of the shallows at her knees, she said to me What? No fries? So I rushed back to Hardee’s.
Under the glow of a yellow star with a smiling face I walked the drive thru, saving on petrol. I took the fries from the window, took the dirty looks too. The fries I took in my hands, the sneer, on the shoulder. I smiled back up at the golden Hardee’s star beaming down to bath me in its friendly glow. I studied it in the mirror of my car. Looked just like a big ol’ starfish.
Happy Meals. I shook my head thinking of the damn things. Can’t get those at Hardee’s. Just good meals. No way Maureen got two toys when she couldn’t even have gotten one. She must think I’m as dumb as a mollusk, a seafaring invertebrate.
When I got back to the best tide pool on the coast, Maureen had undergone some sort of aquatic transformation, some strange oceanic transmogrification. In the moonlight it was hard to tell, but it looked like she had merged with the tide pool wall, had become fixed to the shell-studded seabed. When she reached for the fries, still steaming in the chilled, night air, a starfish slid from her shoulder, a pink conch rolled off of her thigh, strands of seaweed waved and parted and Maureen was Maureen again, still my girl, not some prune-fleshed hag of the sea.
I have work in the morning, I explained to her.
Go, was all she said.
So I did. I went home to a warm bed and dreamed of sea hags tugging at my ankles, maniacal grins on radioactive starfish. When I woke I went to work, the details of which would be more boring to narrate then the details themselves, which are plenty boring. When work was over I was too tired to make a trip to the grocery store, make dinner, then bring some down to the best tide pool on the coast. So instead, I swung by the Hardee’s, picked up a burger for myself, a beer-battered fish sandwich for Maureen. Fish, I thought. She’ll like that.
It was sunset when I arrived at the best tide pool on the coast. The sky was aflame with orange, amber and pink, bruised with violet. It wasn’t the most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen, but it wasn’t far off either. The whole thing kept my eyes away from Maureen for maybe a minute, which was a minute well spent, a minute better than the next.
When I turned to hand Maureen her fish sandwich I looked into the sunken eyes of a husk of a girl. My girl. Or is it? Maureen? I asked. She smiled and nodded, meagre and blue-lipped. Get on out of the water, I urged. But she just shook her head, pushed away the sandwich even after I explained that it was fish. I’m full on crab, she lied. Or, I don’t know, maybe she didn’t this time. I took a look at the rocks around Maureen, little islands here and there wreathed in wilted sea lettuce. Among them, scattered in profusion, dented, concave crab armour. Discarded, vacant carapaces, hollowed out exoskeletons drained of their jellied interior.
Come home, I begged her.
I am home, she professed.
I sat beside her, my trousers damp with sea water, and together we watched the sunset fade into night. The pitch sky was a jet black teenager with the worst case of luminescent acne known to man. Thousands of stars, a sliver of moon, lit up the coast line, reflecting brilliance on the rising tide. More than my trousers were now getting wet. It was time for me to go.
I don’t have work in the morning, I told Maureen. I’ll be back in the morning, I reassured her.
Don’t bother bringing breakfast, she said, water up to her collar bone. At low tide I will have a feast, she tells me.
I turned to go. Under the glow of a yellow star with a smiling face I drove past the Hardee’s. Under the glow of many thousands of faceless more, I ventured home. I crawled into a warm bed with more wiggle room than I am used to. I slept diagonal because I could. I dreamed of The Little Mermaid, but she looked like Maureen, black hair, brown eyes, no resplendent crimson locks, no cheery baby blues. I dreamed of lapping waters, the lick of the cold. I dreamed of coral, the underside of gulls on water, sea slugs, and hunger. I dreamed an assortment of aquatic nightmares.
In the morning I made do with toast and jam. I couldn’t resist; I made another round and wrapped it in a paper towel. Something for Maureen. She was lying about the feast. Either that, or it’s delirium. My girl has gone completely bonkers.
When I made it to the best tide pool on the coast Maureen was looking pale and smooth, almost blue, but less hollow, even a little bit plump. Bloated, I thought. But it wasn’t that. She looked okay.
Toast, I offered.
I couldn’t eat another bite, she told me.
Clam shells were everywhere, crabs too, but that’s nothing new in a tide pool. Both of her breasts were perfectly centred by a starfish. They hid her nipples and looked like two grasping hands having a good feel. Suddenly, I wished to do that myself, but settled for a kiss. I took off my clothes and entered the water, flinched at the bite of the chill, and recoiled from Maureen after embracing her. One of my arms bled at the wrist, the other at the elbow.
What the hell? I looked at Maureen, probably more accusingly than she deserved. Did you scratch me? I asked. I didn’t care if it was done in passion, it hurt like fucking hell.
She shook her head, then dunked it beneath the water, buried it in a curtain of undulating seaweed that looked like the hanging strands of cloth that dangle down in a car wash. It felt like three whole minutes went by, and maybe they did, when Maureen came back up for air.
No, she said. I didn’t scratch you. These did.
I looked to where she indicated. I squinted, searching for something that was supposed to be there in front of me. Then, when the water went completely still, my probing gaze penetrated the static surface to see the enormity of her appalling affliction. They were everywhere. They were all over her, a part of her. Maureen, my girl, was covered in what appeared to be pale rock shards shaped like anuses, each with a tightly pursed mouth, a prodding parrot beak. She was bedecked with maritime arthropods hitching a free ride on her flesh. She was decorated in nautical livery, dotted in crusty, coastal baubles. All over her back, her shoulders, her neck, her arms, Maureen was festooned with barnacles.
Maureen… I had no further words beyond her name.
Do not look appalled, she commanded of me. And do not dare for a moment to pity me. This is my best idea yet. This is me at my best.
We passed the day in silence. We hardly exchanged a word. We let the tide pool do the talking. Tide pools have a lot to say if you care to listen. They have a lot to share, to show, if you are patient enough to open up to their slow motion way of communication. In the time I could have watched The Godfather trilogy, I watched instead echinoderms cross modest spaces, sea cucumbers pour themselves forward like spilled molasses, sand dollars weakly pulsate, the only sign to show an observer that they are alive.
The sun crawled across the blue sky, rocks casting shifting shadows, each hour a new angle of umbra upon the water. Tides came and they went. Maureen hardly moved an inch. Somehow, I managed myself to limit any fidgeting, to ward away the worst of malaise. Sooner than I would have imagined, night was upon us, the tide pool active as ever.
Her ankles and toes looked pretty in the moonlight, even if she did look like a corpse. Gentle, gelatin-soft tendrils caressed her toes, her well-proportioned calves. The curve of her hip, kissed by little tickling limbs, grazed by the slick spaghetti noodle tips, alien-like anemones having a good feel. Investigative, rapid legwork, hurried footsteps, a blue or black crab skirted Maureen’s navel before returning to attempt to burrow within it, ultimately, perhaps disappointed, departing to scurry under some porous blob that may or not be a living creature.
I had work in the morning, so that was that. I left Maureen to her frigid pool. One more night, I thought, under the many stars, hidden away from the electric one with the bright smile that casts a Hardee’s drive thru aglow.
I slept in a warm bed. The novelty of sprawling diagonally was wearing thin. Limbs akimbo, I dreamed of the Loch Ness Monster, of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, of Bruce, the animatronic great white shark from Jaws. I dreamed of wading through a living flotsam of jellyfish. I swam to the shore through a stinging sea. I dreamed of Maureen, my girl. I kissed her and tasted fish oil. I pushed her away by her shoulders, I looked into her eyes, except now I was looking into the eyes of a fish failing to breath out of water.
I awoke, drenched in sweat. Salty fluid, like sea water. I drove to Hardee’s for a Hardee Breakfast Platter and a cinnamon roll. I don’t often dine in, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to the best tide pool on the coast. I took my time. I mulled it over. I thought about bringing Maureen some Hash Rounds but in the end knew she’d just say no, throw them to the placid water. Some greedy bastard of a fish or a daring crab would benefit from my gesture. I wasn’t about to fork over $1.39 for some fucking crustacean.
When I got to the best tide pool on the coast Maureen was Maureen. She was limp and aquatic and covered in sea critters. I sighed. I accepted it. I sat by her and felt my trousers go damp. I felt my ass go numb with the cold. I kissed her on the top of her head, which was balding, turning into some greasy, oily cue ball with flakes that fall freely at the slightest of touch.
We talked about this and that. We started to name the barnacles on her shoulders. Barney was the first name offered, as you can imagine. We laughed at the simplicity of the joke. We held hands and I endured the cuts and abrasions, the prodding of tide pool parrot beaks.
Clouds came in and it started to rain in earnest. The thing about being completely wet, head to toe, freezing your ass off in the biting shallows of a tide pool; a little bit of rain, a whole hell of a lot of rain, none of it matters. It falls down upon you, but you’re already wet.
I kissed Maureen goodbye. She tasted a little like fish oil. But not like in my dream. I didn’t mind. That night, I actually put off brushing my teeth so it would last. The taste of Maureen, who, by the way, is a Pisces.
This went on for weeks. Me visiting Maureen. Visits to Hardee’s. Me, getting a little fat. Maureen, getting a lot oceanic, covered in barnacles, draped in seaweed, starfish sucking at what little exposed flesh remained. Weeks turned to months, and then for all I know it was coming up on a year.
It got to the point when Maureen couldn’t leave even if she wanted to. Not unless I called the fire department or broke every fingernail and finger bone I had trying to pry the crustaceans from her flesh, the ones welding her to the rock. Immobile, well anchored, attached to the seabed itself, Maureen was as happy as a clam. Me, I was a little worried. But I came around. I saw it at last. The truth of what I thought first was another one of her lies. I saw it for face value. For what it truly was; one of her better ideas. A very, very good idea.
One day I came, fresh from Hardee’s and a grin on my face, but she wasn’t there. Maureen, my girl, was missing. But then the sea itself spoke. It whispered my name. A familiar voice. It sounded just like Maureen. Then it called out again. A littler louder, then louder still. I searched, and finally, I found it. The voice. I found her, Maureen.
There was nothing left but her lips. Her sweet, kissing lips. The rest of her, covered in barnacles, in slow crawling starfish, in anemones with their gelatin grace, in basking, burrowing crabs, in sea grass and sand. I bent low, the waters advancing toward her neck, and touched her exposed lips, blistered and sunburned. She spoke my name, feebly, and I cried out to her. I curled over her sessile form, I pressed my lips to hers, my girl, my Maureen. Though I wouldn’t have expected it, an adventuresome appendage, a lubricated tentacle, entered my mouth, massaged the back of my throat. I wrapped my own tongue around Maureen’s and tasted fish, this time stronger than ever.
I retreated, allowing my girl to breath. I vowed not to brush my teeth that evening. I vowed to abandon brushing my teeth for a year. I would match Maureen’s fervency. I’d do it to honour her.
Her last words were spoken in bubbles, through cold, briny water, the ebbing tide, as it crept up her chin, into her ears, over her lips. She gurgled one final lie, or perhaps a truth — I’ll never know which. Her message was brief, cut off by nature’s impatience, Poseidon’s restlessness, his relentlessness. Her last words were for me, spoken in a whisper. She said simply, I love you.
Sometimes I come to the very best tide pool in the whole of the coast. I take off my shoes and enter the cold water. I sit among the abrasive barnacles beside slick rocks and purple, five-pronged starfish. I allow the tide to come up, slowly, without moving an inch, lying recumbent but not at all comfortable, in no way relaxed. I wait to be engulfed, slow and steady. I offer myself to the sea, to join Maureen, who I have assigned the pet name Marine, which I think is fitting. I sit and wait for Neptune to carry me away, for mermaids to take me by the ankles and drag me down, deep into some eerie, echoey grotto where I can hear my protesting screams doubled, tripled, quadrupled back at me, quieter and quieter a quieter and quieter. I allow the tide to caress me with cold and embrace me entirely, all but my nostrils.
Sometimes I come near to allowing the ocean to finish me off. Sometimes, for a mere moment, I brandish that very resolve. But in the end, I rise, coattails and epaulettes of drenched seaweed cloying over my shoulder, clinging to my hips. I rise. I abandoned the tide pool. I marvel at how close I had come to going through with that crazy notion, that very bad idea. I shake my head, brittle with salt, and head home — a far, far better idea — after I stop at Hardee’s along the way.