There Will Be Lobster

by Sara Arnell

  “I just told them you left home to go live your life, and I was a little sad.”

  “That doesn’t sound very scary.”

  “I may have also said a few other things. But what I really want to tell you is that I think I’m going to church on Sunday when I get home. I think they may have a point. Maybe Jesus will save me. Someone has to, for fuck’s sake.”

  I used to say my prayers every night before I went to sleep. My grandfather and grandmother stood next to my bed after tucking me in and listened to me recite, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” then list all the names of my relatives, friends, and pets that I wanted God to bless. I said my prayers that night in the hotel room for the first time in years and cried myself to sleep. I used to be afraid not to say my prayers. I was worried that not praying would cause something bad to happen. I don’t know when I stopped praying. I thought it might be why I was in this position. I wanted to pray again. I thanked the sister missionaries in my prayers that night for reminding me of this.

  I came back home from my trip upstate feeling freshly inspired and uncharacteristically unburdened. I responded to Z who had, by chance, texted me to see if I wanted to meet for a drink and said, “YES.” Z was at the bar sipping a glass of red wine when I arrived. He ordered me one.

  “No thanks,” I said and asked for tequila on the rocks. He called me hardcore and said he liked it. I thought I saw him lick his lips. We sat down at a table and ordered. We made small talk. He had never been to this restaurant before. He was definitely coming back. Did I want wine with dinner or was I going to stick with tequila? He was having a party next week that I should come to. He’s usually vegetarian, but the salmon looked too good to pass up. His kids were amazing, and his ex-wife was a cunt. She was crazy. He was in love with her once but not anymore. He dated a lot and hey, why not, he was a single man. Finally, he asked me what I’d been up to lately.

  “I went to church for the first time in a long time,” I told him.

  “Why?” He was shocked. He scowled at me.

  I started to tell him the story of the sister missionaries and how that encounter made me think that I needed prayer, and God, and this kind of hope and belief in my life again. He cut me off.

  “You don’t really believe in God, do you? I mean you don’t believe there’s a guy up there in the sky looking down? Right?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said. I could have told him about how I had stopped the sister missionaries in their tracks, how they had never encountered someone like me before. I could have joked that I was surprised they didn’t call 911 and have me committed to the psych ward. But I didn’t. I wanted to end this dinner.

  He told me that he was surprised that someone like me would believe in God.

  “Someone like me,” I repeated.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Someone smart.”

  I asked him, if his son were in a car accident and it was a life-and-death situation, would he pray?

  “Not to God,” he said.

  “Who would you pray to, then?”

  “Not God. Anyone but God. I don’t know—the earth, the sky. But more importantly, I would get the best doctors money could buy and pray to myself to figure this out. I would save my son. I wouldn’t leave it up to a God that doesn’t exist.”

  I told him that I would pray and pray and pray to God. I told him that if one of my children were on the verge of death, that I couldn’t not pray, that I would not be able to avoid prayer, and, in fact, it would probably take over my existence as I sat next to the hospital bed, holding hands and wishing for a voice to emerge from the silence and say, “Hi, Mom.”

  “Then your kid would probably die,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “No, no, no. None of my children would ever die from prayer, or hope, or wishing, or putting goodness into the world. Yes, I would make sure they got the best medical care, of course, but prayer? Prayer is hope and love.”

  “Can we get the check?” I asked our server.

  Chapter 23

  There Will Be Lobster

  “I would love that,” I said to my son when he called to say he wanted to come home from Utah with a bunch of friends for New Year’s Eve. I didn’t want to end up in a Mexican restaurant like I had the previous year, drinking pitchers of margaritas with hungover revelers still wearing their 2014 glasses from the night before. This is it, I thought. New year, new hope. It had been two years since my daughter left for college. It had been two years of me searching, seeking, and feeling lost and alone. This is just what I need, I told myself, to come back to life. My daughter could return from college to a place that would feel like a home again. She could bring her boyfriend too. It would be a great start. A fresh start. I would make things right. Nice. Normal.

  “I’ll make a big New Year’s Day brunch at the house for everyone,” I told him.

  “I don’t have any plans for New Year’s Eve, as usual, so I can get everything organized.”

  I thought about how I’d behaved when I went to visit him in Utah a couple months prior for Thanksgiving, when I finally had the nerve to go back after my birthday debacle. He still talks about how he found me passed out on his bed that Thanksgiving Day after simultaneously chugging two bottles of wine in a move called “the walrus.” I have to redeem myself, I thought. I can’t strike out a third time. I can be a better, more nurturing Mom and feel good about myself again. This is the perfect way to start things out. The new year would usher in life-affirming redemption. I could put all my sadness behind. I could stop wallowing around in the mud, searching for answers I already had, and reenter the world as a positive and productive human being. I could take off my sweatpants and put on a dress—something celebratory, with sparkles. It had been a difficult two years. I’d lost my business, and I’d lost my self-worth. But it was time I stopped hurting myself and those I loved and looked to the future.

  My now-legendary walrus episode all began as a joke. My son was in his third year of college at the University of Utah. We were in his off-campus apartment in Salt Lake City, which looked every bit like the off-campus apartment of a bunch of twenty-somethings (empty beer bottles, unwashed dishes, strange odors rising from the carpets), and my son was playfully coaxing me on. He was probably waiting for me to say, “No way. I’m not going there again!” But I was determined to show him I could still do anything. I was still up for everything.

  “Mom. Do the walrus,” my son urged as we all sat around the Thanksgiving dinner table, which was actually four folding tables positioned haphazardly across the living room.

  “Yeah,” said a dozen of his college friends in unison. “Do the walrus!”

  To everyone’s surprise, I picked up two bottles of wine, shoved both of them in my mouth to look like tusks, then tipped my head back to chug as much as possible. The red wine dribbled out of my mouth and ran down the front of my shirt. Everyone cheered wildly. I sat upright and removed the bottles, handing them to the kid next to me who proceeded to chug them without spilling a drop. What a pro, I thought.

  I had decided to spend the holiday with my son in Salt Lake City. I made two trays of macaroni and cheese a few days before I left so I could freeze them to pack in my luggage. I had packed more food than clothes. I felt relieved about not having to host a big Thanksgiving dinner. I was happy that there was no fireplace to tend to, happy there were no aromas of scented candles and potpourri or decorations that heralded the holiday season to come. The only festive decoration at his house was the stuffed deer head over the front door. It had lights on its antlers and a cigarette poking out of its mouth. I was fairly sure this was there year-round.

  The lack of tablecloths, linen napkins, and polished silverware were a great relief. I didn’t have to make small talk. I didn’t have to pretend that I was excited that the turkey turned the perfect shade of brown from the red-wine-soaked cheese cloth
I had draped over it while roasting. There were no guests I wished I hadn’t had to invite. There wasn’t even a turkey. There was something else that looked like the science project version of a turkey—boneless layers of poultry meat molded together and pinned into a turkey-like shape. The tables were plastic. The chairs didn’t match. The plates were paper. And I did the walrus.

  “I love you,” I said to my son, across the room. “I’m so glad to be here with you and your friends.”

  “Are you OK, Mom?”

  He stopped me before I could say another word. He sounded worried.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t get weird. Get some more food.”

  “I’m going to,” I said, and took my paper plate to the kitchen for more.

  A vegan girl stood at the stove cooking Brussels sprouts for herself.

  The guy who brought the turkey-like creation was basting it in the oven.

  Someone was opening beers with their teeth.

  The dog was eating food that had been dropped on the floor.

  Someone grabbed a skateboard and started doing tricks on the back patio.

  I picked a twice-baked potato from an aluminum baking pan and placed it on my plate.

  “I made those,” one of my son’s friends said to me.

  “Oh wow, it looks so good,” I complimented.

  “Are you OK?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Great.” I was annoyed at this question.

  “Well, let me know if you need anything. I know where everything is here. I’m sure this isn’t the type of Thanksgiving you’re used to.”

  No one ever understood that I wasn’t above most things and could get used to almost any situation I found myself in. I was not on a pedestal and had no illusions of superiority. I had faith in my self-sufficiency, but somehow it seemed to manifest as detachment. Disdain. Aloofness. Caution. Fear. In actuality, I didn’t care whether I used a paper plate or fine china. I was happy to be out of my house, letting others do all the work of Thanksgiving. I didn’t care at that moment about a roaring fire, flowers on the table, pies on pie stands waiting to be cut and served, or asking people if they wanted tea or coffee with dessert. I didn’t care if I ate with my fingers, wiped my hands on my pants, and let the red wine stain on my shirt just dry there.

  So why did I feel like every five minutes someone was asking me if I was OK? What did my face look like? What expression was I wearing that seemed to cause worry? I didn’t like the feeling that people thought I needed looking after, that I needed to be checked up on as if I was going to dash into the road in front of a car when not supervised.

  “Let’s do the walrus again,” I yelled out to set things right and even the field. But no one wanted to. They looked at me like I might suddenly implode. The rest of the visit was polite conversation. Even my son, who always likes to tease me, treated me with soft words and small talk. And I hated myself for it.

  “I love that you’re coming home for New Year’s,” I now told my son. “This will be fun. I’ll make all your favorite things for New Year’s Day. We’ll have a big, delicious brunch with a ton of food. I’ll be up early to get everything ready. I’ll get fresh lobster. I’ll buy a dozen and we can cook them and eat them warm from their shells with drawn butter. This will be a real celebration. A great start to 2015. I can’t wait.”

  Chapter 24

  Just Breathe

  I walked into the large, open loft in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. It was an all-white photo studio set up with a combination of folding chairs and meditation chairs, which looked like floor cushions with backs. I chose the regular chair. I didn’t want to be on the floor. It felt restrictive. It felt like it would be too hard to stand up and flee if I suddenly felt anxious. A chair, I thought, was easier to get up from for a faster, quieter escape. This was how I had started seeing the world. I always needed an escape route. I was always afraid. My preparation rituals were less about being ready or successful and more about abandonment and evacuation. What if I see someone I know, I thought, someone who hasn’t seen me with this much weight on my bones, someone who watches me struggle to lift myself from the floor cushion, someone who gives me either one of two looks I dread—the “poor you” face or the “fuck you” face. Either was possible, and neither was something I could handle. Aw c’mon, I told myself. You can get up from the floor; it’s not that bad yet. I tried to get the motivation to sit there, tried to convince myself to step outside of the box I had walled myself within. But I didn’t believe in myself enough to choose a floor cushion over a chair. I stuck with the idea that sitting in a folding chair was better. Less hazardous. More in control.

  I picked one in the back row, near the elevator. If I feel overcome with anxiety, or worry, or paranoia, I thought, I can disappear with almost no notice. One step at a time. At least you’re here. At least you’re not sitting in a pool of your own regurgitation and regret. I flashed back to the lobster crawling out from under the kitchen chair on New Year’s Day. I remembered the mess in the kitchen and the mess I had become. I touched my cheek that had been swollen and black from hitting my head against the toilet. A few months had passed since then. My daughter was finally speaking to me again. I knew I had to do something to really help myself. I knew that I had to be like the surviving lobster and crawl into the open to be saved.

  We were crammed in, side by side, all looking ahead at a table covered with a white cloth and several accessories: small brass bowls filled with spices, a small bowl with water, and a candle. I looked down at the people on the floor and was happy I got there early enough to get a chair. We were told to each bring a bunch of flowers and a few pieces of washed fruit. I placed my deli bouquet of mixed flowers and an apple and an orange on the floor next to my chair. Tonight, I was going to get my mantra and become a fully initiated Vedic meditator. My guru said that he was considered the number-one mantra-giver. I felt confident that I was at the right place with the right guy. It was funny to think I now had a guru. I wondered if it was pretentious. “Hey, of course I have a guru. Don’t you?” I imagined myself saying without any hint of humor.

  When my office closed, I joined a shared workspace in NYC—a membership-only place where I could hang out and feign that I had something to do. On one of my visits there for the free 5:00 p.m. happy hour, I saw a young woman sitting on a cushion in the window with her eyes closed. “She’s meditating,” someone said to me as he saw me staring. “She manages a famous meditation teacher, a top guru,” he said and offered to introduce me. He said they were good friends. I told him I’d just finished an online meditation course and thanked him. He pressed on, saying that I should meet her anyway because her guru was the best and that I could learn a lot with him and take my practice to the next level.

  I had just finished Deepak Chopra and Oprah’s 21-Day Meditation Experience online. In my search for psychic healing, I had missed meditation as a practice that could help me until I had a drink one afternoon with an old friend that I hadn’t seen in a while. He was mindlessly snapping a thin, red rubber band that he had on his wrist while he looked me in the eye and told me what was happening in his life. I couldn’t stop looking at the small welt that was forming on his arm. He saw me frown.

  “It keeps me mindful.”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “I don’t snap it that hard.”

  “I can see a red mark.”

  “I’m going to take it off soon. I did a twenty-one day meditation challenge. You should do it. I did it with Deepak Chopra and Oprah.”

  “Wow. How did you get into that class?”

  “It’s online. Anyone can do it.”

  “Oh. And it works?”

  “It’s great. I don’t really need the rubber band anymore. It’s just habit now.”

  So I did it. I logged on and listened to the voices of Deepak and Oprah tell me to breathe, to rela
x, to close my eyes and think about mindfulness, or abundance, or other topics they covered during our twenty-one days together on my laptop. I didn’t want to have to snap myself into mindfulness. I didn’t want pain to be what kept me alert and attentive. I wanted something more peaceful to ground me, and the lulling voices of two of the world’s most famous people did the trick. When I completed the 21-Day Meditation Experience with Deepak and Oprah, my daughter said I sounded different when we talked on the phone. She said I seemed calmer than the last few times we’d spoken. She said she was happy I stuck with it. She said it was the first thing I didn’t give up on in a while. Like the scarves I stopped knitting or the plants I stopped tending or the closets I didn’t finish organizing and on and on. She said she was proud of me. I wondered if the universe was shifting and a gathering storm of cosmic dust was organizing itself in order to whisk me into a new world and a new way of being.

  “I’m good,” I told her. “I actually am calmer than I’ve been in a while, although I still have my moments. I read that if you meditate forty minutes a day for eight weeks, you can reprogram your brain and exist in a permanent blissed-out state where nothing will ever get to you, bother you, or scare you again.” I told her that although I didn’t think this was actually the case, I was going to keep meditating anyway.

  “Good for you,” she said. “I’m glad.”

  The guru began his talk. He sat with one leg tucked under him on a bench or some type of raised platform. He talked about stress and how we, as almost newly initiated Vedic meditators, now had the power to deal with it, to make it go away. He told us that we could learn to breathe so deeply that we disconnect our sympathetic nervous system and separate what we feel in our mind from what we feel in our body. He talked about how we’re all born with a fight-or-flight response. Our nervous system unleashes a cascade of hormones when we feel threatened or highly stressed.