Two Truths and a Lie

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “We’re low on napkins, Amazon,” said Hannah severely.

  Alexa rolled her eyes. She had acquired her name seventeen years ago, almost eighteen, could she help it if the world’s biggest online retailer had only recently understood its allure? She dispatched the next family and now she could see that the person after that was her mother. Alexa sighed. Attached to her mother, as usual, was her little sister, Morgan.

  “Hey,” said Morgan.

  “Hey, Morgan. Mom. How was surf camp?”

  “Good,” said Morgan morosely.

  “Annoying,” said Alexa’s mother. “Somebody backed into my car in the lot. So that’s a whole thing I’m going to have to deal with.”

  Alexa’s mother would not order the Ringer, and a touch of imaginary lactose intolerance would also steer her away from Alexa’s favorite flavor, Moose Tracks, in which Alexa occasionally indulged. Rebecca would go for a raspberry sorbet, small, in a cup, no toppings, or she would have nothing at all. Morgan, who was eleven and built like a collection of paper straws stitched together with dental floss, would get chocolate with rainbow sprinkles, and she wouldn’t finish it, but she would insist on taking it home. Alexa’s mother would cover the leftover portion with aluminum foil and stick it in the freezer, and eventually Alexa would throw it away. Morgan would never notice or inquire after it. Predictable.

  Alexa’s mother slipped an extra five into the tip jar, which Alexa found unnecessary, and as predictable as the ice cream order, but sweet nonetheless. She smiled.

  It was on their way back to the car that the unpredictable thing happened: Morgan stubbed her toe on the parking dividers made out of driftwood and shrieked. Alexa’s mother left her phone on the counter to hurry to Morgan, because God forbid Morgan should be uncomfortable for an eighth of a second. The phone beeped and out of habit Alexa glanced at it: most beeping phones in Alexa’s orbit were beeping for her.

  But no. On her mother’s phone was a text from an unknown local number, which was a surprise, because her mother’s in-town social network reached far and wide, like the tentacles of an octopus, and anyone Rebecca deemed worth communicating with she had surely put in as a contact. Before she could stop herself, Alexa was reading the text.

  Thanks for the talk today. When can I see you again?

  Alexa took several seconds to process this.

  Her mother left Morgan sitting at a picnic table and retrieved her cell phone, glancing sharply at Alexa after she looked at the screen, obviously to see if she’d been caught. Alexa made sure her face was a smooth mask. But: was that a tiny smile playing at the edges of her mother’s mouth when she read the message? Oh, ugh. Alexa’s mother was forty-four years old. Certainly past her prime. Double, triple ugh.

  Rebecca slipped the phone into her handbag and indicated with her head that Morgan should move toward the car, stubbed toe or not.

  “Bye, Alexa,” whispered Morgan.

  “Bye, Morgan,” said Alexa. She spoke louder than she needed to, making up for Morgan’s fragile voice. Morgan had always looked like she was scared of her shadow’s shadow, but that had gotten worse since Peter. How in the world was this child supposed to survive middle school in the fall? Alexa should take Morgan on as a project, but she wasn’t sure she had the bandwidth. Even so, she made a mental note to talk to Rebecca about Morgan’s social media activity. Morgan was at a vulnerable age. Too much of a presence could be damaging, but too little could be damaging as well, and Morgan had a remarkably undeveloped sense of self-preservation.

  “Bye, honey!” chirped Rebecca. She was holding her sorbet in one hand and struggling to get the keys to the (dented, Alexa now saw) Acura out of her bag with the other. Alexa tried not to look at the Colby College sticker sitting proudly in the rear window; it made her stomach churn.

  “Bye, Mom.” Alexa’s voice mirrored her mother’s in tone but inside she was slowly dying of horror. Her mother possibly had a paramour. Reason number 472 Alexa couldn’t wait to get the hell out of this town, and not to the far reaches of Maine, either, where Uggs and Patagonia passed for fashion and keg parties for entertainment. No, Alexa had her sights set west and south from there, all the way from Newburyport to the City of Angels itself.

  4.

  Sherri

  There were five words that later Sherri believed altered for her the course of the rest of the summer. It happened when she was picking up Katie from a playdate at Taylor Kearney’s house. The Kearney family lived down a road off Merrimac Street that led to the river; until Sherri punched the address into Waze she didn’t even know there were streets and houses down there. She had a lot to learn about her new town.

  The house was an expanded bungalow with a four-car garage off to the side. In back, close to the water, were a gorgeous tiled pool and a sweeping green lawn that rolled gently down to a private dock. At the end of the dock was a motor boat. Sherri didn’t know enough about boats to know the size or what kind of hull or motors it had, but her sense of the boat was one of quiet opulence. Emphasis on quiet. She was getting used to the way a lot of the wealth in Massachusetts was hidden down streets like this, behind stone walls or fences, more whisper than scream. In Sherri’s old life, when people had money you knew it. When Sherri had money, everyone knew it. Other people saw to that.

  The girls were still splashing around in the pool, so Sherri let herself in the wrought-iron gate. Taylor’s mother, Brooke, was stretched out on a lounge chair, reading the newest Elin Hilderbrand novel. She sat up when Sherri came in and shielded her eyes from the sun with a hand. Katie waved at Sherri and then resumed the handstand contest she and Taylor were having. Good luck to Taylor, thought Sherri. Katie could hold her breath all day long, and into the night.

  “Hi, girls!” she said cheerfully, the way she thought a normal mother in a normal situation might.

  “Drink?” said Brooke. She unwound herself from the chair. She was wearing, very well, Sherri decided, a small black bikini with a strap over one shoulder. A drink? Sherri glanced at her watch. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. She hesitated, and before she had a chance to decide, Brooke had disappeared into a pool house that Sherri had just noticed and, once returned, was pressing a cold glass of rosé into her hands.

  “Thank you,” Sherri said.

  “Summer Water,” Brooke said. “It’s my favorite.” She pointed toward the sweating bottle, which she had placed on one of the side tables. There was a side table next to each chair, along with a pool towel rolled up the way they did them in resorts. Brooke tipped her wine toward Sherri’s and they clinked glasses.

  Sherri took a sip. “Delicious,” she said. The wine was dry and light and Sherri thought she tasted grapefruit or maybe lemon. In her old life she had gone for the hard stuff, and plenty of it. A glass of rosé felt tantamount to drinking a Capri Sun.

  “Sit down,” said Brooke, gesturing toward one of the lounge chairs. It was more command than offer. Sherri sat, then leaned back awkwardly into the cushion. She wasn’t wearing sunbathing clothes; she was wearing an unfashionable set of khaki capris and a plain white T-shirt. She’d left her old wardrobe behind. She and Katie both had. It was better that way, easier. In fact, it was imperative.

  She took in the yard. It looked like it had come straight out of a magazine, all of it, even the two girls in the pool, because they were young, suntanned, and happy. “Is Taylor your only child?” she asked.

  “Oh gosh no,” said Brooke. Her expression said, What a question! Who would have only one child? Her voice said, “She’s my baby.”

  “I see,” said Sherri, waiting.

  “Alton is going to be a sophomore, and Ceci is going into eighth grade. Ceci went to Salisbury Beach with a friend, and Alton, well, who knows. Once they go into high school, you never see them again.” She waved her hand in the air like a magician, whisking her eldest child away.

  High school was only three years away for Katie. The thought of never seeing Katie again in a mere three years filled Sherri with a brutal s
ort of rage and terror. She was not going to let that happen, she had only Katie left in the world. She looked at the pool. There was a diving board and a winding slide. Lined up on the side like soldiers awaiting orders were a series of brightly colored pool floats, not the cheap kind you have to blow up. These were made of thick, expensive foam. They looked like they were floating even when they were on the ground. The pool house had an indoor/outdoor bar with six stools, and Sherri could see an outdoor shower attached to one side of it. This outdoor shower was nicer than the indoor shower in hers and Katie’s current accommodations.

  What she couldn’t see were the heads of two girls. The panic came over her in a flash and she jumped up from the chair and ran to the edge of the pool. The tile was dark gray, so you couldn’t make out what was under the surface.

  “We’re having a contest,” said Taylor calmly, and Sherri saw that she had failed to notice Taylor sitting on the edge of the deep end of the pool, holding a phone. “To see who can stay under the longest. I’m timing her. I already lost.”

  Now Sherri felt foolish. Obviously the girls were okay. And yet. Shouldn’t Katie have surfaced by now? Instead of abating, the terrible panic picked up strength and force. “Katie!” Sherri cried. A distant part of her noted the way her voice went up at the end in a kind of ridiculous shriek. Katie’s head broke the surface and she gasped for air. “Katie, I’m here!” said Sherri.

  Katie was laughing. She was laughing, and Sherri thought she was dead. Sherri had been about to jump in the water after her.

  “Two fifty-one,” said Taylor admiringly. “That’s the pool record.”

  “Yessss,” said Katie, treading water with one hand, fist pumping with the other. “What was the old record?”

  “Two twenty-nine,” said Taylor.

  Sherri put her hand over her heart and wondered if it would ever slow down to its normal rhythm. She turned back to Brooke. Brooke was watching Sherri closely. She looked partly bemused, and partly nakedly curious. She had finished her wine and was pouring herself a second glass. “More?” she asked Sherri.

  “No thank you. I’d—we’d better get going.” Sherri called to Katie to gather her things and say good-bye and thank you. She was suddenly in a hurry to get out of there. She turned back to Brooke and said, “I’m sorry! My manners. Thank you so much. What a fun afternoon for the girls. What a beautiful home you have.” Not that she’d seen the home. She’d have to be more normal next time, see if she could wrangle an invitation inside.

  “Thank you!” said Brooke, in a modest/not-modest way.

  Sherri fumbled in her bag for her keys, and that’s when it happened.

  “Hey,” said Brooke. She hesitated for a second, and then seemed to give herself permission. “We’re all going out to Plum Island Grille tonight. It’s Esther’s birthday.” Sherri waited. And then came those five words. “You should come with us.”

  “If I went out to dinner tonight,” Sherri ventured in the car on the way home, “would you be okay, Katie-kins? There’s Miss Josephine, if you need her.” Their neighbor in the half-house, an elderly widow with a Papillon, had grumpily offered to look in on Katie if Sherri ever wanted her to.

  “I won’t need her,” said Katie. “You should go, Mom. You never go out anymore.”

  Sherri felt a childish excitement, the excitement of being included. You should come with us. Funny how five words could change her mood in a flash.

  Don’t be silly, she told herself. It’s just one invitation, probably because she felt bad for you, or because she was tipsy. That’s all. You shouldn’t even go.

  But she should. She would!

  When Sherri was getting ready for dinner, Katie slipped into her room and watched her brushing her hair in the mirror over the dresser. The mirror was here when they got here, as was the dresser—the whole place was fully furnished. At the time Sherri had been grateful not to have to buy furniture, but now she felt there was something sad about living with other people’s castoffs.

  “Can you dress up tonight, Mom? The way you used to?”

  Sherri kept brushing and said, “I don’t have any of those clothes anymore.” Then, softly, an addition: “You know that.”

  Katie nodded and sat on the bed, tucking her bare legs under her, accepting.

  “I was pretty then, I know,” said Sherri. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail, then fastened it with an elastic. She looked in the mirror, considering. She turned toward Katie, who was looking at her severely.

  “You’re still pretty,” Katie said. “You’re just much less fancy.”

  “You’re not fancy,” said Sherri, smiling now, indicating Katie’s grubby shorts.

  “I know,” said Katie. “But I was never fancy.”

  Reasonable enough. Maybe Sherri could try a little harder. Lipstick, at least. She left the bedroom and padded into their shared bathroom, where she dug around in a drawer to see what she could find. Katie followed her and watched her the whole time: sternly, unnervingly, lovingly.

  5.

  Alexa

  It was your typical summer high school party, except that it was out on the farthest reaches of Plum Island, which was a pain to get to. There was a fire pit on the back deck. Some kids had wandered off to the dunes to make out. Zoe Butler-Gray, valedictorian and resident of the house, was in the kitchen holding forth on Trump’s immigration policy, and nobody seemed to be listening. Zoe didn’t appear to care. She was headed for Dartmouth; she knew her real audience was waiting for her there.

  Alexa, sitting on a couch in the living room, wished she could be elsewhere. How many parties had she attended over the course of her high school career, each one the same as the last and the next? Tyler handed her a plastic cup. She could tell by the shiny look in his eyes that he had been drinking a lot already, or smoking weed, or both, and she wondered how she’d get home. She wondered how he’d get home. The cops had been out in full force on the causeway this summer and Tyler couldn’t risk getting caught. She should take his keys and get them both a ride.

  She took a sip of the drink. Vodka and cranberry. Tyler had been kind enough to put a slice of lime in it for her but even so she could hardly stomach it. The taste of cranberry juice reminded her of a series of urinary tract infections she’d had when she was young, nine or ten, when her mother poured her a glass every morning and wouldn’t let her leave the table until she’d finished it. It was a gesture that came from a combination of love and Internet medical knowledge, no harm intended, but still Alexa was positive cranberry juice was a drink she would never enjoy in this lifetime. She had told Tyler this more than once.

  “You can’t drive,” she said combatively. “And I want to go home.”

  “Let’s just crash here. Come on, babe.” Tyler snaked his arm around her waist. Alexa disliked the word “babe” almost as much as she disliked cranberry juice, and Tyler knew this too, but sometimes when he was drunk or high he forgot.

  She removed his arm and sat back on the couch. “Negative on that,” she said.

  “Why not?” He returned his arm to her waist, tighter this time. “We can sleep on the beach!”

  Nothing sounded less comfortable to Alexa than sleeping on the beach. Her hair was very thick; she would never get the sand out. She removed Tyler’s arm again, and this time he resisted more strongly. Say what you will about the #metoo movement and all the rest of it, tell Alexa that times were changing and women could speak up, she knew it was still a very, very fine line that she was walking, that all girls were walking. The line between being attractive and being a tease. The line between needing and not needing. Between independence and desire. If she could give Morgan one piece of advice it would be, Don’t grow up.

  “I don’t want to stay here, Tyler,” she said. “Just leave me alone.” Besides the fact that she would much rather sleep in her own bed, there was the not-small matter of her virginity, which for some reason, against all odds and contrary to what most people at school and probably in town and prob
ably online thought, she had managed to hold on to for so long that now it seemed awkward and meaningful to let it go. But whatever. It was her body; these were her choices. She stood.

  “I get it,” Tyler said. “Take it easy, Lex.”

  “Don’t call me Lex,” she snarled, sounding like the bitch that she felt like, that she feared, sometimes, she actually was. The next thing she knew, she was steeling herself and knocking back the cocktail, cranberry juice or no cranberry juice. Forget it, she thought. Forget Tyler. Forget Zoe Butler-Gray. Forget everybody. On her way out the back door she grabbed a can of beer, a Riverwalk IPA, which had probably been brought out because Zoe Butler-Gray’s father worked for the brewery and always had stacks of it in the garage. She opened it and carried it onto the back deck.

  High tide and it felt like the waves were going to come all the way up to the furniture. The moon was almost full, but not quite; it looked like somebody squished it between a thumb and a forefinger. Alexa sipped the beer. She hated IPAs—they were so heavy, they sat in her stomach like a stone. She drank it anyway. Her sips got bigger, and they turned into gulps. When she stood, she felt dizzy. Experimentally she lifted her face to the sky and turned around and around. She felt like she was one with the moon. She felt like she was spinning through the night.

  When she stopped spinning, she ran smack into a sweatshirt.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, and the guy inside the sweatshirt caught her elbow and said, “Hey, hey.” Fantastic, was her first thought. Another guy grabbing at her, just what she needed. She lifted her eyes.

  “You okay?” said the guy. The sweatshirt was white, or off-white—she couldn’t be sure under the dim outdoor lights—and said “Saint” in purple and “Michael’s” in gold. It was wildly unfashionable. She had seen this guy earlier, with Shelby McIntyre, who was a year ahead of Alexa, and some sort of cross-country star at UVM. (Cross country was a sport Alexa had never understood—it seemed hard and cold and messy—although the coach at the high school was said to be legendary.)