Two Truths and a Lie(104)
But Katie was grinning. “It’s time to eat a whole lobster,” she said.
The relief that flooded through Sherri felt almost like a warm liquid poured over her head. “It is? No lobster rolls?”
Katie nodded firmly. “It is. We’ve lived here almost a whole summer, and we haven’t done it yet. No lobster rolls.”
“Okay,” Sherri said. She was weak with relief, and the relief made her feel silly, almost drunk. “Okay, Katie-kins! Anything you say!” They ordered two lobster dinners with the works, and they found a seat at one of the picnic tables on the outdoor deck.
The lobsters overran the edges of their paper containers. Around Katie and Sherri the other tables held a low, celebratory hum. Sherri would have ordered a stiff drink but she saw now that people were carrying in wine bottles and cans of beer in paper bags: it was BYOB, which somehow made it seem that much more festive. Truthfully, Sherri didn’t need anything to drink.
“Did you know they used to feed these to prisoners?” Katie said. She was holding up her whole lobster and considering it.
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.” Katie shrugged. “People in the olden days.”
“What olden days?”
“Not sure.”
“Who told you?”
“Google. Or maybe Morgan. I can’t remember which.”
“I’m not sure what to do from here,” said Sherri. She held up her lobster and looked at its creepy, incomprehensible eyes.
Katie said, “I got you,” and took out her phone and loaded up a YouTube video on how to crack a lobster. Normally Sherri would not have allowed the phone at dinner, but she needed the help. Katie moved the phone to the center of the table and they both watched, trying to be surreptitious about it so that the other restaurantgoers wouldn’t know what novices they were. Apparently you were supposed to twist the tail off before you did anything else, then the claws. You could use a small fork to reach up into the shell and pull the meat out of the claws; the meat in the tail normally came out in one big piece, and was firmer than the meat in the claws. They dunked the lobster meat in butter and stuffed it into their mouths like it was the first meal they’d had in weeks. They ate corn on the cob and coleslaw and onion rings. They ate all of it.
Katie hadn’t even finished the last of her lobster when she said, “After dinner can we get ice cream? There’s a place right across the street, Dunlap’s? It’s supposed to be good. Morgan told me it’s good.”
Sherri hesitated. Now that fall was here, she’d have to cut back on her spending, cook healthy food for her and Katie, maybe find some way to exercise regularly. (Definitely not barre class.) “I don’t know—”
“Please? It’s the second to last day of summer! It’s the last night of summer, because tomorrow is technically a school night.”
“Okay,” said Sherri. “Of course we can, sure.”
The day after tomorrow Katie would walk up Olive Street to High Street, where she would meet up with Morgan and a few other girls from the group to walk to the middle school, and Sherri would clean up from breakfast and take a shower and get in her car and drive to her job, where she would do all of her usual job things, which were boring but not mind-numbingly so, and she would try not to think about the fact that Katie was out of her sight and out of her control, and that, sure, the school had some sort of intercom system or whatever, but was it really safe, was it really secure?
Would anything ever be secure enough to satisfy Sherri?
Sherri hoped Katie never knew how close she’d come to real danger in those early days before they’d become safely ensconced in the program. She hoped that in time she’d forget all about the time in the motel and the bad food and the bad television and Louise the counselor with the velvety brown eyes, and also about the life they’d had before that. But not all of it, maybe, because that life was part of Katie’s history, the only one she had.
The sky was becoming paler as the sun began to drop. It wasn’t sunset yet, it was more like sunset’s appetizer. Sunset’s calamari. Sherri’s favorite part of the day. She breathed in the briny smell of the water.
She would never not be scared for herself or for Katie. But maybe the fear would become a low thrum in the background of their lives instead of the crashing cymbals in the center of the stage, in the same way that Rebecca had explained to Sherri that her grief for Peter never left, would never leave, even as she fell in love with Daniel.
They cleared their plates and placed them in the appropriate bins; they walked across the street to Dunlap’s. They were an ordinary mother and daughter on the penultimate night of summer. The line for ice cream was long, so they had a good amount of time to peruse the menu.
“What are you going to choose?” Katie asked.
I choose life, thought Sherri. I choose happiness. I choose the light.
She looked down at Katie, her forthright, strong, vulnerable, invincible, vincible child. She thought about a girl named Madison Miller who had probably gone out for ice cream with her parents dozens of times, never knowing that one day she wouldn’t.
After Brooke’s party one of the dads to whom Sherri had been talking had asked around for her number. (At the time she hadn’t known he was divorced.) His divorce was new and shiny, just out of its packaging, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He’d registered on Tinder, but it scared him, so he never used it. He had been impressed, he told Sherri, by her “bravado” at Brooke’s party. Sherri thought what he really meant was that he’d been impressed by her breasts. Or maybe both. She was still deciding whether she was ready to date—whether she’d ever be ready to date. Right now her priority was getting Katie settled in school and doing a bang-up job at Derma-You so she could get more hours. Apparently, with the rapid expansion they’d be seeking a manager for some of their new locations. Jan said she’d told management that Sherri had a solid work ethic and a natural discreetness about her, which was a necessity in their business.