88.
Sherri
In the late afternoon the day before the day before the first day of school, Sherri got home from work early and called up the stairs to Katie, “We’re going to dinner!” Katie didn’t come down immediately and of course Sherri’s heart started up the old ticking of alarm, so she called again, trying to keep her voice steady.
And here came Katie, holding a book, her finger tucked between two pages, acting as a bookmark. “Sorry,” she said. “I fell asleep reading.” She held up the cover of the book, which featured a pair of legs in blue jeans and the titleThe Second Summer of the Sisterhood.
“That looks like a nice book,” said Sherri. “Where’d you get that?”
“Morgan,” said Katie. “It’s a series. This is the second one. But we’re not allowed to read past book three yet because then there starts to be sex and stuff.” She yawned as though the whole idea of that was terrifically boring. “That’s what Morgan’s mom said.”
“Grab your shoes,” said Sherri. “I’m taking you out to dinner to celebrate.”
“To celebrate what?”
Sherri wasn’t exactly sure. To celebrate the fact that they were still alive? That Katie would have someone to eat lunch with? Thatover the course of the summer Katie’s nightmares had abated, so Miss Josephine stopped complaining about the noise?
“To celebrate the first successful summer of our new lives,” Sherri said finally.
“Okay.” Katie shrugged, maybe unimpressed, and got her flip-flops.
Brown’s Lobster Pound in Seabrook was one of the many places Sherri had driven by this summer and said to herself,We have to try that! That happened to her all the time—the hazard and joy of a coastal town in the summer.Try me! called the taco truck that parked at the Plum Island Airport.And me! pleaded the gelato shop downtown.Don’t forget about me!The food stands at Yankee Homecoming. The oysters at Brine. The sandwiches from Port City Sandwich Company. The whoopie pies at Chococoa Baking Company.
They took Route 1 toward the Salisbury Bridge, stopping at the hideous intersection where Merrimac Street and the bridge traffic came together and invited all the cars into a giant game of chicken.
Rebecca’s Acura had been totaled in the accident, and, obviously, that poor boy’s family had been totaled as well. Sherri hadn’t gone to the funeral because that felt presumptuous—she hadn’t known the boy. But she felt somehow responsible that anybody had died in this beautiful town this summer. Had she unwittingly brought darkness to a place that knew mostly light?
Brown’s was a low tan building, unassuming except for the fact that the building extended into the water, so you sort of felt like you were on a moving boat. You ordered at the counter and brought your food to a table. Sherri stood for some time looking at the menu. Katie took her hand and looked very seriously into her eyes and said, “Mom. It’s time.”
“Time for what?” Sherri felt her heart jump with a familiar terror. Katie was going to say something that would shake Sherri to her core—something about Bobby or the other men, something she’d seen or heard that Sherri thought she had kept her safe from. Something unspeakable.
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 Sherriwould 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.
