Coralie had been a star attraction as a child in Coney Island, but she was a child no more. The tail she wore was made of thin strips of bamboo that were flexible, covered by silk that had been treated with paraffin and copper sulfate so they would be waterproof. The breathing tube attached to the side of the tank could not be seen by onlookers. When she turned to flash her blue tail, she gulped in air from the tube. Her father suspected that the crowds had caught on to their tricks and asked that she use the tube as infrequently as possible. Her childhood training of remaining underwater in a tub had increased her breathing capacity far beyond the abilities of a normal woman. Sometimes she felt she barely needed air. At night she slipped into the tub in the washroom for comfort, settling beneath the warm, soapy water, a balm to her cold flesh and pale hands, which were dipped into blue dye every morning.
Between her fingers there was a birth defect, a thin webbing that the indigo tint emphasized. This was the reason she wore gloves in public, though her abnormality rarely hindered her in practical matters. Still, she despised herself because of this single flaw. She had often imagined taking a pair of scissors to her flesh so she might snip through the pale skin. The one time she’d attempted to rid herself of the webbing with a sharp knife used for coring apples, beads of blood began to fall onto her lap after she nicked the first bit of skin. Each drop was so brightly crimson, she had startled and quickly dropped the knife.
Even when the crowds faded, there were still a handful of faithful admirers who continued to gather beside Coralie’s tank, men whose sexual interest was evident in every fevered glance. No man had ever possessed her, although several had offered the Professor extravagant sums in exchange for her virginity, one going so far as to include a proposal of marriage. All advances were denied with an edge of fury from her father. Coralie was certain these same suitors would have not even glanced at her in her daily life, when she was nothing more than her father’s pale, ungainly daughter dressed in black, stopping at the market stalls on Neptune Avenue to choose turnips and spinach and fish. The men who were her greatest admirers were looking for the depraved and wicked thrill of possessing a freak of nature. They would be shocked to discover how ordinary she was, for her greatest pleasure was to read one of the novels she found in her father’s library, or to sit with Maureen on the back steps to plan a spring garden. She was no man’s dark dream, only a girl forced to swim half-clothed.
This past January, when Coney Island had been dotted with snow and the waves in the murky Atlantic had kept even the most experienced fishermen at home, Coralie had entered the museum to discover that her tank was no longer in the center of the exhibition hall. It had been lifted onto rollers by the liveryman and hauled to a corner, then covered with a tarp. Coralie had always imagined she would be grateful to be released from her obligations, but suddenly she was nothing, not even a fictitious mermaid. Who was she then? A quiet girl no one noticed, invisible to most men’s eyes. She realized that she had formed an attachment to her false persona, for a mermaid was a one-of-a-kind creature that commanded attention, whereas she was nothing of any worth.
Her father, however, was a man of the future. He had no difficulty moving on. He was quick to dismiss employees who no longer drew a crowd; tears and pleading were insufficient once a curiosity was of no further interest to the paying public. Many of the living wonders Coralie had known since childhood had been let go as soon as their popularity began to diminish, never to be spoken of again. The woman covered by bees had refused to change her act to include wasps, for their stings could be deadly. After a heated conversation with the Professor, she was forced to go. Her employer would not even allow her the time to collect her hive of bees, which were left in the garden in a wooden box. Later in the season, when Coralie tried to set them free, it did no good. The bees huddled together in the only home they had known, where they sickened as the weather grew raw, and soon enough died.
There were other wonders who disappeared without a good-bye. The crowds quickly tired of the goat boy with hooves instead of feet and the bird woman who dressed all in feathers and could whistle any song, from an oriole’s trill to a magpie’s fierce cry. The tiny lady who could fit into a set of child’s clothes, Marie de Montague, alternately drank from a baby’s bottle (filled not with milk but with weak Red Rose Ceylon tea laced with gin) and smoked a cigar. But she was soon viewed as old hat, for there were wonders many inches smaller than she. In the end she was employed by a second-rate theater on Neptune Avenue, where the raucous crowd called out insulting names, tossing pennies at her as they urged her to show her small bottom or breasts, which she was known to do on wicked nights when there were no ladies in attendance.