"MaryJanice Davidson - Sleeping with the Fishes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Mary Janice)

Davidson, MaryJanice - Sleeping with the Fishes




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 youтАФwhoa. 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. WeтАФ"
"Oh, just stop it, you big baby." Her mother stretched her neck to squint at Fred's exasperated
features. "Why you can't understand how beautiful and natural sex can be and why you have so
many Puritan hang-ups about itтАФhow a child of mine can be soтАФ"
"Mom, now's not the time for the 'Peace and Lurrrv' lecture."
"He had legs like you do, of course," she said, completely ignoring Fred's emphatic backpedaling
five seconds earlier. "I imagine he can grow a tail or not, as he likes. As you like." Moon frowned.
"I guess any mer-person can. I thought you could do it or not because you were half human. But
unless he was also half humanтАФ"
"That'd be super duper for him. So he jumps your drunken bones, you have sand-pillow talk, then
he leaps into the sea and disappears? So you're telling meтАж what? My real father's an asshole?
And you're a slut? Because he owes you for years of child support payments, that's one. And two
тАФ" "Must you always label people?" "Must you shovel truth down my throat?" "As I was
saying," Moon went on with admirable dignity, considering recent events and what she was
hardly wearing, "ten months later and there you were."
"Ten months?" How had she never done the math before? Easy. Her mom had never talked about

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Davidson, MaryJanice - Sleeping with the Fishes


her fatherтАФher real fatherтАФbefore. Just "oh and we met and got married because society will
insist on that silly piece of paper and we've been a family ever since."
And Fred, knowing her mother would answer anythingтАФanythingтАФwas the only kid on the block
who never went through the "where did I come from?" phase. Moon not only would have
answered the question in disgusting and embarrassing detail, she would have surfed pornography
websites with her daughter to investigate different methods.
"It takes longer for mer-people to gestate." Sam was looking at Fred thoughtfully. He taught
Natural Science at 4C (Cape Cod Community College). "Or hybrids. OrтАФ"
"So why'd you marry her, Sam? It was all "Free Love" and all the maryjane you could smoke and
don't trust anyone over eighty back then."
"Thirty," her mother gurgled. "And marijuana? Wasn't on it. Poisons the body. Wine is bad
enough." She winked at her daughter. "Look at the trouble three glasses of bad Chardonnay got