The Mystery of Seafoam, by Cheryl Sadowski

Etruscan Mermaid, artist not known (modern Italy) 500 BC. Staatliche Antikensammlungen, CC BY 2.0 DE , via Wikimedia Commons.

The Mystery of Seafoam

Every summer two men meet at an old beach bar twenty miles south of Lewes, Delaware. The bar sits at the end of an unmarked gravel road overlooking the steel gray Atlantic Ocean. It is decorated in the style of a Greek taverna: whitewashed walls, bistro tables, an orange awning that billows in the wind. The tile floor is embedded with tesserae and coquina in the shape of a mermaid. In earlier times the men approached one another with firm handshakes and a warm embrace. These days they nod, balance their canes against the wall, and ease gingerly into their seats. 

The place attracts an older crowd seeking to escape throngs of summer tourists who bend their arms for selfies and loom over glowing screens like hungry praying mantises. The service is bright, the drinks are cold, and no one is recording or photographing anything. For these reasons, the men meet here to talk over the Happening. 

It was some sixty years ago on a strand of beach not far from the bar. Twelve years old they were then, throwing a frisbee and wrestling in the water while their mothers kept loose watch from the deck of a rented bungalow. Pausing to lay down on their towels, the boys see an erratic line of iridescent discs strewn with seaweed and tiny shells. They were scales, weren’t they? 

Following the trail, they find a mermaid lying face up in the shallow fan of a distant sandbar: sea kelp mane, yellow eyes, arms akimbo, angry mouth gaping air for water. The mottled tail thrashes back and forth as it tries to propel itself toward the ocean. The tide must have receded quickly that night.

The mermaid is longer than the boys are tall. Still, they manage to gather it up by the torso and tail, mindful to not snap any scales or bruise the soft, translucent belly. Transporting the writhing creature back into the ocean is arduous, requiring concentration, rhythm of step and breath. They move as one body, wild and vulnerable. The smell, do you remember the smell? Salt, and cinnamon. And so strong. Sharp fins, cut me right here.

Standing thigh-deep in eddies of ocean, the boys ease the mermaid into the water, watching it twist and roll until it recognizes home within cascades of waves that carry it out to sea: their rescue, engulfed in the mystery of seafoam. The moment seems to last forever and end with the breeze. Did it happen? We were so young. 

​One man is an emeritus professor of classics; the other, a retired priest who still receives bedside confessions. They meet at the old beach bar to speak the story aloud, pulling the mermaid from the penumbral shadow of time. They have kept their pact through the decades, protecting one another from incredulity, laughter, ridicule.

Momentarily, their conversation turns to the present. A wife is ill, a sister lives in Florida, a son has a new job, a nephew is taking to drawing dinosaurs. Eventually, they return to the story they share, though it drifts further every year, impossible to capture, like the horizon. All that remains is memory, and mystery: tiny rows of opaline demi-circles around their ankles and thighs that increase with each passing year.

The men sip their beers, looking out at the unknowable, elusive place where sea meets sky. The professor shakes his head; the priest’s eyes brim with watery longing. Through the years and thrum of daily life, beyond the joys and sorrows, they remain certain of only one thing: there has been nothing, nothing like it, since.  
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Cheryl Sadowski

Cheryl Sadowski writes primarily about art, books, landscape, and nature. She is particularly drawn to time, memory, patterns in nature, and the ineffable veil between our world and others. Her writing has appeared in After the Art, Vita Poetica, About Place Journal, and other publications. She returned to school in her fifties to complete a Master's in Liberal Arts from Johns Hopkins University.  cherylsadowski.com.