Of Poseidon 02: Of Triton

she dumps sugar into the steaming cup. It’s something I’ve seen a million times; she’s always had a little coffee with her sugar. But I’ve never seen it knowing who and what she is. Before, she was just Mom with a caffeine addiction. Now, she’s Nalia, the Poseidon princess. There is no sugar in the Syrena world. There is no coffee. Galen dry heaves at the first taste of either.
    Mom notices me noticing her. “You might as well ask,” she says, as if any amount of stirring could dissolve the pound of sugar she’s dumped in her cup.
    I unroll my silverware. “I was just wondering how long it took you to get used to human food.” I eye her cup for emphasis.
    “Ah.” Just then, the waitress, whose name tag says “Agnes,” returns for our order. As if to promote irony, Mom orders pancakes with extra syrup. I get a burger. Restaurants like these usually build a decent burger.
    When Agnes leaves, Mom corrals the mug with both hands as if trying to keep it warm. “I don’t drink coffee for the taste. But what’s not to like about sugar, right?”
    “Galen gags on anything sweet. Mostly, he gags on anything not seafood.”
    Mom smiles, as if she’s only tolerating the sound of Galen’s name for the sake of talking about sugar. “It takes some time. I’ve been on land quite a while, Emma.” She leans closer, lowers her voice. “Since World War II. If you think about it, that means I’ve been human longer than I was ever Syrena.”
    She says this as if I actually know the real date of her birth. My eyes are in danger of falling out of their sockets. I already knew that Syrena live to be hundreds of years old. That they age well. Sure, Mom has a few grays streaking her hair. Some wrinkles tugging at her blue eyes. But she doesn’t look like the moldy four years old she’s claiming.
    She presses her lips together as the waitress sets a bottle of syrup on the table. When she leaves again, Mom says, “That’s it? No more questions?”
    Oh, but there are. “How did you really meet Dad?” I realize then that I feel a sense of disconnection with my life. That if Mom isn’t who I thought she was, then Dad couldn’t possibly be, either. The story was always that they met in college and fell in love at first sight. Now that I reflect on it, the whole story sounds like a generic, all-purpose romance. Boring and cliché and BS.
    Mom nods, as if I asked the right question. “We met years after I’d come ashore. I was selling souvenirs on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, and at night I worked at a freak show.” She grins. “As a mermaid.”
    I gasp and she laughs. “Oh, not a real one, mind you,” she says, eyes full of nostalgia. “They dressed me up in this ridiculous costume with a sequined fin and had me swim around a huge tank and wave at the tourists. The ring leader—Oliver was his name—liked that I could hold my breath for a long time.” She shrugs. “It was pretty cheesy, but it was easy money.”
    “So you weren’t in college.”
    “I wasn’t, no.” She takes another sip. “Your father was though. He was visiting for spring break. I mugged him.”
    “You what?”
    “You have to understand I didn’t make very much money, even with two jobs. It hardly even paid for my food. I couldn’t fish, because—”
    “You didn’t want anyone to sense you in the water.” Otherwise, she could have been pretty self-sufficient.
    She nods. “So one day I see this group of cocky college students, spending money left and right. Pulling wads of cash out of their pockets to pay for small purchases, like ice cream.” She rolls her eyes. “They were flashing it. They wanted people to know they were rich.”
    “Doesn’t mean they wanted people to mug them,” I mutter.
    Mom shrugs. “No, but they were trying to attract attention from the ladies, so I made sure to act interested. Your dad was one of them. I’d seen him before. He came to the freak show a lot and just sat there and watched me. Boy, did he make me feel uncomfortable. After a while, he got up the guts to ask me on a date, and all I could think was that a free dinner sounded fabulous. He took me to a nice restaurant and a picture show—that’s what we called movies back then. Afterward, he insisted on walking me home, but since I didn’t have a home to walk to, I made up an address and let him walk me to it. That’s when he told me he’d seen me breathing underwater, in the tank.”
    The waitress interrupts then, setting