Lavinia, Goddess of the Sea
t had become a ritual of summer for the teenagers who lived in
the fertile wine country in Montpelier California. Lavinia Marlin was
just at the beginning of teenage when she saw it happen for the first
time. Sitting on the beach she watched as four boys rushed past kicking
up sand as they carried a giggling Susie Reynolds out to the sunning
rock. Lavinia kept watching, nervously sifting sand through her long
fingers. No one noticed her, though she was over six feet tall. The
boys just hooted and whistled as Susie seductively writhed and wiggled
in her two-piece white bathing suit. The sunning rock became her
throne, and her stage as she became the queen of the beach.
Years later, Lavinia chose the same rock. It was more like a slab, large and flat and big enough to lay her six-foot five frame across. But instead of a bathing suit she wore a white chiffon peignoir and gold sandals, but like Susie had many years ago she spun and danced.
The rock stood about one hundred feet offshore and had been easy to get to when the tide was low. Lavinia climbed on it and stretched her arms out to either side. A warm breeze blew her straight blond hair across her eyes and she pushed it back so she could see the stars. She yelled out into the darkness, "I'm Lavinia, Goddess of the Sea" and though there were no hoots or whistles to assure her she was the summer's queen, she writhed and wiggled as if there were. Lavinia shapely and curvy, danced erotically on the rock and as she danced, she closed her slanted blue green eyes and the ocean splashed her flawless white skin with salt dew.
Lavinia had grown up in the fertile wine country, where the grapes were plump and lush and full. She'd been born to John and Martha Marlin, he picked the grape and she drank it. Martha named her daughter Lavinia, after an actress she'd seen in a drive-in-move called "Lavinia the Leather Queen," cause she thought she might have gotten knocked up that night in the back of an old Ford pick up truck.
John was a farm hand and a hard drinker whose tongue had a cruel twist to it. When Lavinia turned that magic age of thirteen, John started calling her Vinny. He said she had no curves like a woman should, and when she wanted a bra he told Martha not to waste his money on a bra for a boy named Vinny.
So often in the broken down trailer where they lived, Lavinia would hear John and Martha's voices slurred and growing louder and angrier. She remembered the first time he'd said it and the first time she understood, "how ugly Vinny was and she probably weren't his anyway, him being only five foot five."
Today, Lavinia the young woman sat on her throne proclaiming her nobility. Martha, her mother sat crying on the beach near the same spot where Lavinia sat when she was thirteen watching the ritual. The older woman couldn't see her in the moonless night, but looked up as the Queen spoke.
"Vinny, please" Martha said, into the direction the voice came from. "Please, I'm sorry, don't leave me."
But Vinny just laughed. Balancing on one foot and then another, she wobbled back and forth.
"I could fall you know Mama, into this wonderful sea, and if I were a mermaid I'd be home. A goddess of the sea or maybe, a giant bird, a crane, I could fly, fly away." Her long arms flapping like a bird's wings, she twirled around and around.
Martha just kept crying and pleading "No, Vinny please be careful, don't fall, oh my God, don't leave me."
As a child Lavinia was an outcast, as a woman she had few friends. She spent her whole life caring for her mother and father. She took business courses in school and when she graduated she got a job in the small office at the winery.
When Lavinia was twenty-five John Marlin died from the drink, liver disease they called it. And when she was twenty-five she met Gregory Leonard who was six feet four inches tall, a worker from the poor section of lower Montpelier hired to pick the grape and he was black. He'd come in the office to pick up his pay and their eyes would meet and hold. After a while they went out. They'd go to lower Montpelier where no one knew her. In the little valley where she grew up white and black didn't mix, even for someone as ugly as Lavinia. It was a Sunday in Summer when she brought Gregory to meet Martha.
"You stay with your own kind" her mother had said. He was her kind, gentle and Gregory loved her and thought she was beautiful, he called her, his Goddess and she wanted to marry him.
It was 1967 the wrong time, in the wrong place. The prejudice ran free like the wine from the grapes Gregory picked. The good people of upper Montpelier managed to run him off. No one told her why he'd left, so she thought he'd finally seen that she was ugly. She packed away the peignoir set she'd bought for when they were married, and cried for three months.
That had been a year ago. Than one day as Lavinia sat reading the paper, a small obituary jumped out at her. "Gregory Leonard of Montpelier California killed in action In Vietnam had no known survivors." That's all it said, no known survivors. She ran her finger over his name and cried. In the mail that week there was a letter from Danang Vietnam. She had never seen his hand writing, and she kept wiping away the tears with her sleeve as she read it.
My Lavinia, My Goddess,
I have lived with your name on my lips, I have slept with your face in my dreams. I have seen so much death and pain, I know now that I should have been stronger and not let them send me away, from you. I don't care what anyone says or thinks. When I come home, I would be honored if you would be my wife." It was signed Gregory.
A rage never felt before tore through her and she screamed in agony as if stabbed or shot. She clenched her fists, her lovely face a mask of pain and for the first time that face was truly ugly.
"What the hell's going on," Martha asked, awakened from a drunken sleep.
Lavinia stood over her, those wondrous blue eyes overflowing with salt water that slid quietly down her cheeks. "You sent him away, you and others like you sent him away."
Martha rose slowly from her bed, straightening her dirty sweater and pulling on ripped pants. Her hand shook nervously as she lit a cigarette. "Now, now Vinny, it was for the best. You had to stay with your own kind," she slurred the words, her hands still shaking.
"He was my kind Mama, quiet and different, and caring and always out of place, just like me." Lavinia walked out as the sun set carrying her peignoir set.
"What are you gonna do Vinny? Where are you going?"
They didn't live far from the ocean and when Martha reached her daughter, Lavinia was naked, her clothes in a pile on the sand. Martha watched as she put on the snow white peignoir and gold sandals and walked out into the descending darkness. She could hear Lavinia walking through the water but she couldn't see her.
Lavinia stood with her arms outstretched on either side, her head thrown back. She always loved the ocean it was so peaceful and a breeze from the pacific blew her hair across her face. Fine blond hair soft and silky and straight.
The waves lapped against her gold sandals, the tide coming in faster and the water rising steadily higher and higher.
"Vinny," the older woman on the beach pleaded to the voice she couldn't see, "Please come back, please. I'm your mother, I'm sick now, don't leave me by myself," she said as she sat nervously sifting sand through her fingers.
But Lavinia never answered, never moved, just sat motionless, her perfect face getting wetter, as salt, blood of the sea kissed her lips. The waves grew stronger and splashed against her.
"Please come back," her mother said "I was wrong. You're not ugly. You've always been beautiful. I didn't know you loved him, he can come back, you can have him, please Vinny don't leave me."
Tears slid down Lavinia's face and this time mingled with the sea. She turned screaming, "He's dead and I'm his survivor. Do you hear me, his survivor. I can't have him Mama and my name is Lavinia, Lavinia the Leather Queen, Lavinia the Goddess of the Sea, not Vinny. Tell me, was John Marlin my father, or was he right, tell me" she screamed "I'm a twenty-seven year old freak, and he hated me, Mama tell me."
"He wasn't your father, they sent your father away before I could tell him about you. John Marlin wasn't your father."
"Like Mother, like daughter, funny eh, Mama." The water was waist deep now and she stood up again her arms outstretched, her wedding night gown clinging to her like a shroud. She took it off and threw it in the sea. Her body had all the curves a woman should have and she wiggled and writhed naked for the long ago boys on the beach. Her sandals gone, she took a last look at the woman crying on the beach, and then gracefully like a mermaid returning to her home dove into the churning ocean. The water covered her completely, engulfing her, caressing her then freeing her.
Martha heard the splash as her daughter dove and she cried out sad words, pleading words, denying words. The angry tide brought a sandal in to the beach and the older woman picked it up and clutched it tightly against her chest. Sobbing and choking, Martha buried her face in her daughter's clothing then looked to where the voice had been only seconds before and then beyond to where the goddess of the sea, a mermaid now lived.
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