Her mother frowned and continued. “And I was so happy to see him again and he—”

“—had a thing for knocked up blondes who puked in the morning?”

“Fred, I don’t think you’re—”

“Mom. I appreciate you getting this off your chest and all—” Fred tried not to stare at her mother’s boobs. Fred wished the woman would get something on her chest, like a turtleneck. “But I had that one figured out by the time I was five. Not, by the way, that it makes it any easier to pretend his tongue wasn’t where it was ten minutes ago. But yeah, I knew.”

“You did?” Sam asked, shifting uneasily as pea water started to trickle down his butt crack.

“Dad. Sam. Whatever. Look at you. Look at me. I’m a mermaid and you couldn’t get a membership at the Y.”

Her mother threw up her hands. The blanket gaped. Fred stared at the ceiling. “And how such a wondrous creature can have such silly hang-ups is beyond—”

“Mom, ask anybody on the planet: would it weird you out to walk in the front door and see your mom on all fours? I guarantee—mermaid, human, blue whale, marmoset, pixie, leprechaun, zombie—they’ll all say yes.” She turned to her squirming father.

“Remember that time you panicked in the tide pool and I had to get you out? I was seven, Dad, and the water was only up to my knees.”

“There were things in there,” Sam said, shuddering at the memory.

“Yeah, Sam. Minnows. It was the fourth or fifth time I’d had to save you, and I’d never had a swimming lesson in my life. Also, you have brown eyes and mine are the color of brussels sprouts. Also, you have—had—brown hair and mine’s the color of the ocean. Also, you never grow a tail and you’re right handed; while I’m—’did you get this?’—a mermaid and a lefty!”

“No need to scream,” Mom sniffed.

“I hate it when you treat me like I’m freaking stupid.”

“Nobody thinks you’re freaking stupid,” her mom soothed in her “I think my kid’s freaking stupid” voice. “Everyone in this room is a living creature deserving of our love and respect.”

“If you try to hold my hand and make a nurture circle,” Fred warned, “I will kill you.”

Chapter Three

Unfortunately for Fred and her sanity, the nightmare wasn’t over yet. Her mother, gripped with the mania of truth telling, coughed up the whole sordid story.

It seemed Moon Bimm (nee Moon Westerberg) had been putzing around on Chapin Beach, Cape Cod, with a bunch of her idiot hippie friends, high on pot and le Gallo Jug, lonesome and wondering what it all meant, got separated from her pot-smoking, Gallo-swigging pals (which Fred would have thought a relief, but Moon didn’t agree), and ran into a suave, green-eyed fellow and was so fucking drunk she didn’t notice he was half fish.

“But if he was a merman, how did you—whoa. Whoa. Forget it. I can’t believe, in light of recent hideous events, that I even asked you that. Do not answer. Do not answer. We are at DEFCON 3 and rising. We—”