by Kelly Harms
I don’t tell him how much that thought scares me. Or how very likely the scenario is, sooner or later. “I think…”—I mentally start tap dancing—“that I’ve been waiting to see how things go here, yes. But I do like Maine.”
“Say you love it,” J.J. says, starting the car back up slowly.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“SAY IT.”
“Fine, I love it. I love the ocean, and the silly accent, and the smell of birch trees in the morning. Are you happy?”
J.J. brings the car up to a normal speed and nods happily. “Yes, ma’am, I am. I knew you’d come around. And if you think you love it now, just wait ’til you’ve had a lobster boil.”
* * *
We pull into a long driveway and up to a big building surrounded on all sides by forest. The sign reads “Darcy’s on the Water” in swirly script. When we get inside, I find myself in an enormous and elegant dining room filled with dark oak and burgundy booths. Soft classical music is playing. I thank the heavens I wore my good flip-flops. The place looks like that scene from Point of No Return, when a feral Bridget Fonda starts her new life of ass kicking. I wonder if I will be called upon to shoot someone during the dessert course.
“Reservation for two,” says J.J., looking cool and utterly comfortable despite the grandeur. He’s been here before, that’s for sure. I note with relief the slight hesitation in his voice when he adds, “I requested a table outside?”
We get shown to a small glass door at the back of the restaurant, and through it to a wide wooden deck filled with tables and diners. Out here, people look casual, and a few are actually wearing bibs as promised. But even in jeans and plastic bibs they have an expensive look about them, like they eat lobster all the time and think nothing of it. I see big diamond rings sparkling and handbags out of Sex and the City draped on the back of chairs. “Look good?” J.J. asks, as he pushes my chair in and takes his seat across the little round table.
I look out at the dark ocean and the big sky in front of us—nearly the same view I’d see at the house—and try to forget the fancy white tablecloth and the array of wineglasses and candles and flatware stretched out atop it. Just like sitting out in the backyard with Aunt Midge eating ham sandwiches, I tell myself, and nod. “Looks good.”
I start to open the leather-bound menu in my hands and J.J. says, “Order whatever you like, but I strongly recommend the lobster boil. They’ll only do it during summer, and only then if you’re sitting outside. Too messy for the dining room.”
Okay, then. I close my menu and tell him the lobster boil is it. But not before I get a peep at the prices for the appetizers. Jesus H. Christ.
He orders a bottle of wine (I don’t want to think about how much that costs) and the lobster boil for two, and then I get up and hit the toilets, trying not to look panicky. He suggested this place, so he should pay, right? I’ve got seventeen fifty to my name right now and I was feeling pretty flush about it until I discovered that my sum life savings won’t even get you a shrimp cocktail in this place. Even the bathroom is posh. There are tampons just sitting on the counter for anyone to take—the good kind too, with the Satin Touch applicators. I think of pocketing a purseful, but if they have a security system in here they’ll see how uncouth I am.
But wait. Who cares if they see me? It’s not like the guys from security are going to call down to the table and tell J.J. I just ripped off a pile of tampons, are they? Bolstered, I shove about twenty into my purse and then toss in a bottle of hand lotion and two handfuls of mints for good measure. I wash up and head back for my table, reminding myself that I have every right to be here, and J.J. wouldn’t pick a place where he wasn’t comfortable. And if he’s comfortable, I should be comfortable too. It’s just J.J.
Encouraged, I sit down and find myself starting to relax and have a good time. J.J. is being awfully cute tonight, what with his standing up when I rejoin the table and then pushing in my chair. I wonder if he’s been watching that dinner scene in Pretty Woman on repeat, the way I did when I was little and still convinced that knowing the right fork for snails would get me where I wanted to go in life. I ask him if that’s where he got his manners, and he laughs and tells me he hopes he can do as well as Richard Gere on a date with a beautiful woman.
“Well,” I say. “She was a hooker.”
“I was talking about you, stupid,” J.J. says, and I flush bright pink. This is a date, isn’t it? I mean, look at this place, these flowers on the table, this view. I’d have to be an idiot not to realize this is a date.
But just as I’m thinking this, the waiter arrives back at our table holding a pair of thick plastic bibs. He ties the first around my neck, and then hands J.J. one to fix himself, and when he’s done, I see that he’s got a giant picture of a happy dancing lobster on his chest. Suddenly it’s not a date anymore. I unclench.
“This is a really good look for me, I think.” I pull the edges of the bib down, to show off the lobster to his best advantage.
“It is. It really is,” J.J. replies. “In fact, I’d like to see you in just the bib.”
I pull my head back and give him a shocked look. It’s easy to pull off, because I’m truly shocked that he just said that. “J.J.!” I say, scolding, wondering if I should be reading him the riot act or if we are still the innocent flirtation territory. “Are you being fresh with me?” I deliver this with all of the overwrought primness of Marion the Librarian and purse my lips to boot. Keep it light, I tell myself.
“Maybe I am. Have some more wine.” He slides the base of my wineglass toward me. I hadn’t even realized we’d been served yet. All this time the wine’s been sitting there glowing a rich creamy yellow in its crystal vessel and I’ve been too busy with J.J. to notice. I take a mighty swig to make it up to the wine’s feelings. Thus fortified, I launch into the story Aunt Midge told me earlier about how she met her husband—after all, I think old people in love should be a good distraction from the sexual tension I’m trying desperately to ignore. I explain to J.J. that I’ve never seen Casablanca—he hasn’t either—but that there’s some guy with a tan-colored fedora in it, and that hat proved very important in Aunt Midge’s life.
“What if it had been a fez?” J.J. asks. “After all, Casablanca is in Morocco, isn’t it? Think how different Aunt Midge’s choice of husband would have been. She’d have married a Shriner.”
I laugh. “Or a monkey who can play the accordion.”
We lose a lot of time contemplating the different hat-related fates Aunt Midge could have had. J.J. is just theorizing on how elegant it would have been if Rick from Casablanca had worn a top hat (if Aunt Midge married Uncle Scrooge, would their children be called cousins?) when the food comes—two large traylike plates, each with a waxed paper liner under a whole lobster, a few clams, a half-ear of corn on the cob, and some little potatoes, naked and rolling around among the seafood like starchy pinballs. In the middle of the table the waiter sets up a miniature Crock-Pot with a burning candle underneath it. This, J.J. tells me, is full of butter.
Outstanding.
I tuck in with enthusiasm. J.J. shows me how to get into the lobster, and I do my best to extract every bite of bright white meat I can, loving the creamy sweet taste and, let’s face it, the butter delivery system it provides. He doesn’t laugh too hard when I break open the tail too vigorously and shoot green lobster pus across the table. He’s very polite when he wipes a little of it out of my hair. And he eats all of my clams when, after choking down just one, I admit that their somewhat, uh, sweaty texture is more than I can bear.
Then, when all the food is gone and the vat of butter has dwindled to nearly nothing, J.J. gets really quiet. I get myself ready, knowing the admission of love is coming and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. My mind starts racing with excuses for why we can’t be together. I get my face prepared to rearrange into a surprised and flattered, yet dismayed expression. He clears his throat and then speaks.
“Janey is suppose
d to be your cousin, right?”
Well, that’s not what I was expecting. “What do you mean, supposed to be?” Maybe it’s the wine, or maybe I’m a little bit disappointed about the turn this conversation almost took and then didn’t. Either way, I get defensive right away.
“You told me on the first day we met that Janey is your cousin. Doesn’t that make Aunt Midge your aunt too? But when you first introduced us, that morning I came to clip the hedges, you said she was Janey’s Aunt Midge.”
I pause, knowing there are plenty of outs to this. “She’s from a different side of Janey’s family,” I say, and then refill my wine, helping myself to the last of the bottle.
“What side exactly? The paternal side?”
I take a big swallow. The wine tastes too dry now, and my mouth feels like I just licked a tree. I try to think back through the last month of conversations. Has anyone ever told him that Janey never knew her father, or is that something only I am privy to? Does he know that Aunt Midge only had one sibling? “Why do you care?” I ask him at last. I want one of those smoke bombs that ninjas are always using to escape dangerous situations.
J.J. doesn’t back down. “It just seems like, if you were part of the family, per se, you would have heard Aunt Midge’s story about how she met her husband before this afternoon. I mean, she’s already told it to me twice.”
I gulp. “She has?”
J.J. leans back in his chair and takes off his bib. “I know you think I brought you here to put the moves on you, but you couldn’t be more wrong.”
Ooh—that burns.
He goes on, ignoring my flinch. “What I’m really after is some kind of straight story. One that bears some sort of scrutiny. It really bugs me that after hanging out every day for the last month you still don’t trust me enough to tell me, say, your full name.”
I look down at the tray where my battered and broken lobster carcass lies. It’s disgusting now, and my stomach turns over and I think for just a moment that I’m going to be sick. Is this how Janey feels when she talks to strangers? Like she is utterly cornered, with no place to run and hide? If it is, it’s no wonder she hangs out alone in that kitchen all day. Utter seclusion is far preferable to this.
I start digging for something funny to say—for a sarcastic response or a way to turn this conversation around on him. But my smart-ass self deserts me. I can think of nothing but the string of lies that I’ve left in my wake. I start following one strand backward to the place where it rejoins some semblance of truth, but it just dovetails with another lie, and then another. I keep unraveling and unraveling backward, looking for one solid truth I can tell J.J.—one true thing I can tell him that will make him believe in me again so we can drop this nonsense and get back to the fun part, to the talk of hats and innocent flirtations and breaking open lobster claws and pulling out long strips of delicious meat. I will the lobster in front of me to become whole again.
In the end I come up only with this: “My full name is Janine Diana Brown, and I really did live in Iowa.”
J.J. lets out a deep breath. Does he know I’m telling the truth? “Okay,” he says, leaning forward in his chair again like Matt Lauer with a particularly reticent guest. “Janine Brown of Iowa. It’s a start.” He sounds understanding and encouraging—too much so, like he is expecting me to unleash some pitiful life story and sort of looking forward to hearing it. “Go on.”
“It’s a finish, too, okay?” I throw my napkin down over the mangled lobster body. I’ve got to get out of here now. Now, before I make a scene. Before he gets disgusted with me and leaves first, sticking me with the check. “Sorry, but I don’t really feel like going to confession right now.” I stand up, knocking my purse off the chair and onto the floor with a crash.
It empties its contents. First a paper-clipped wad of dollar bills, the change I’ve been squirreling away from errands for Aunt Midge. Then, along with the detritus of my life—cigarettes, matches, lipstick from a five-finger discount, and two AA batteries—spills out what seems like hundreds of tampons and mints, scattering themselves across the deck, covering every available inch of space between our table and the railing with pink paper and blue cellophane. The tables go silent as everyone’s heads swivel toward me, then to the array they must all know I lifted. At last the large bottle of hand lotion—just a drugstore brand, I now realize with shame, something I could have asked Janey to pick up for me any day of the week if I’d wanted it—comes rolling out and makes its way to the railing between two tables of gaping diners. It rolls under the railing and falls to the rocks far below silently. I feel the urge to roll myself out of here the same way.
“Fuck it,” I say, under my breath, but I might as well scream it. I know every person on that deck is watching me now, has seen the unmistakable movements of my lips forming the words even if they haven’t heard. I lean down to the deck and grab up the money, the shrimp cocktail’s worth of cash, and throw it on the table right in front of J.J. Then I head for the hills.
* * *
The walk home is easier than I would have guessed. The cove curls back on itself, so by keeping the full moon above my right shoulder—I remember where it was from the backyard last night—I manage to stay on course while keeping far enough from the road to avoid J.J. running me down like the dog that I am. As punishment for my horrible behavior, I try to imagine the bill coming at the restaurant. Everyone would be whispering the moment I left the deck, and then the waiter would discretely approach the table to make sure J.J. didn’t join me in my runner, leaving one of those vinyl wallets right in front of him with a polite cough. What would the total be? Seventy-five dollars? A hundred dollars? And will they also bill him for all the crap I stole? I wouldn’t blame them if they did. The shame for sticking J.J. with such a huge tab sits on my chest like a fat five-year-old.
But there’s nothing I can do about it now. And really, he shouldn’t have cornered me like that. He led me on—made me think that he was into me, when he really just wanted to figure me out. Like a puzzle you buy at a garage sale and then get annoyed with when you see how many of the pieces are missing. I am not some garage sale puzzle, I tell myself, and it’s only by replacing some of my shame with righteous indignation that I am able to keep walking, instead of lying down right in the middle of the road.
When I finally get to the house, his truck is there, so I keep going. I remember the way to the farm pretty well, even in the dark. I pick my way down the road and think about what he must be telling Janey and Aunt Midge about what I did. The jig is so seriously up now. There’s no way Her Righteousness Janey Brown is going to leave this alone. At first she’ll be totally pissed and tell Aunt Midge it’s the last straw and I have to go. Then, that decided, the three of them will open a bottle of wine and laugh about how crazy I turned out to be and pour strawberry sauce over the shortcake biscuits I made this morning and tuck in. I hope they taste like bile.
At the driveway to the farm I start choosing my steps more carefully. I still don’t know the people who run this place, even though I’ve skulked around here more than a few times on farmers market days to visit Nana and Boo Boo. The lights are off in the whole house except for the telltale flicker of the TV on the right side of the house. Looks like it’s movie night. They won’t notice a few llama footsteps with that kind of distraction.
With my arms full of onion tops I make my way to the llama house and start cooing. Boo Boo comes out first and makes right for me, letting out a weird bleat that makes me freeze for a moment. The TV keeps flickering and I relax and give him the booty he’s after. He lets me stroke him and I sigh deeply at the touch of his fur. It really does feel the way clouds look. Only warmer, and with more of a surrounding odor. Quietly, I start telling him about the evening. With Boo Boo I find it easy to stick to the facts. I tell him the worst part of the whole night is realizing that J.J. is not quite as madly in love with me as I’d convinced myself he was. In fact, he probably doesn’t like me at all anymore. Boo Boo lea
ns his head down as I tell him this. My head sags too.
I don’t know how long I’ve been communing with Boo Boo when I hear footsteps on the gravel. My gaze shoots to my left and then my stomach sinks. It’s J.J., of course. Who else would it be? He looks utterly annoyed, and I can hardly blame him. I rest my head for a moment on Boo Boo’s long thick neck and sigh. Why can’t there be more flying llamas in this cruel world? Escaping Maine on a flying llama would be so sweet right about now.
“You’re trespassing,” J.J. says, in a hissy whisper.
“You’re a dick,” I say, matching his tone of voice.
He shrugs, damn him. “How’s Nana?”
“This is Boo Boo.”
He pauses, takes a closer look. “So it is. We’ve been having a little trouble with identity issues today, haven’t we?” I hear the smile in his voice but it doesn’t stop my wanting to punch him in the junk.
“I’m sorry,” he says, after a long silence during which I’ve contemplated the possibilities of hiding a body in a llama hutch.
“For what?” I ask. It’s a fair question: besides being a dick, he hasn’t actually done anything wrong but bear witness to my humiliation.
“For buying you lobster and asking you to be honest with me?” he tries, making it clear that he knows he shouldn’t have to apologize for this, but he’s doing it anyway.
“You are forgiven,” I tell him sanctimoniously. I wave my hand in a quick little “wax on” circle to show he can go with God. When he doesn’t turn to leave I add, “What did you tell Janey and Aunt Midge?”
“I told them that we had a nice dinner and I dropped you off by the road so you could see the stars away from the light of the house.”
“Wow,” I say. I am impressed enough by this masterful lie to soften a great deal. “Did they buy it?”
“Janey will believe anything.” So true. “But Aunt Midge had that look. She told me you had been, and I quote, ‘a crabby patty’ earlier today.”
