Two Truths and a Lie

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “I think I do,” she said. “Want to do this again. Yes, please, actually. I really think I do.”

  Now, at the beach, with Sherri, Rebecca said, “It’s been really hard on Morgan. She and Peter were very close. She’s done some funny things since Peter died. She’s become really klutzy, tripping over everything. She wet her sleeping bag at a sleepover! She’s never wet the bed, ever, not even when she was toilet training. And everybody found out about it.” It had been Gina’s house where it happened, almost a year ago now. It had been Gina who had whisked the sleeping bag away to be washed. “So naturally she doesn’t go to big sleepovers anymore.”

  “Oh, that’s awful,” said Sherri.

  Morgan and Katie were at the edge of the water taking turns doing handstands, probably videoing for Instagram. Katie’s handstands were solid but Morgan kept toppling over.

  Two skinny teenage boys, hairless as hippos, were throwing a Frisbee back and forth. Many of the empty spots in the beach had filled in. Colorful umbrellas and their fancier cousins, pop-up beach tents, now occupied nearly every available space. The sand was shimmering with the heat. “Anyway, I’m so happy to see Morgan like this, making a new friend. Playing. She’s still a kid, and I want her to act like a kid.” She paused. “It’s an entirely different story with my older daughter, Alexa. She has a different father.” She paused and reached for a bottle of sunblock and squirted some out, rubbing it on her arms. “So in this funny way her grief is more, I don’t know, complicated than Morgan’s. Less clear-cut. I feel like there’s a wall between her and Morgan that wasn’t there before. Maybe it got too high before I noticed it, I don’t know. I don’t know how to break it down.” She paused again and then realized she’d just spilled at least three-quarters of her life story to a virtual stranger. “I’m sorry! I haven’t talked about most of this with anyone. I guess I had a lot saved up. Am I getting too personal, for a first date?”

  “No!” said Sherri. “Not at all. I’m happy to lend an ear. Two ears!”

  “Thank you,” said Rebecca. “It’s good to acknowledge some of this stuff out loud.”

  One of the skinny Frisbee boys missed a catch and the Frisbee sailed perilously close to Sherri, effectively ending the serious part of the conversation.

  “Is there any chance Alexa babysits?” Sherri asked, after tossing the Frisbee back toward the boy.

  “Are you looking for a sitter for Katie?” asked Rebecca. (Could an eleven-year-old not stay alone? Eleven-year-olds were permitted to take the babysitting class at the Y and babysit for other people’s children!)

  “I know. She’s too old to need one,” said Sherri. “But it’s a new town . . . and our house is old, and sort of creaky, I can see where she gets nervous. It’s all new to us, not having my husband around.” She cleared her throat. “My ex, I mean. It might not hurt to have a name ready as I start looking for a job.”

  “Well, let’s see. Alexa works at the ice cream place out on Plum Island. The Cottage? She has a boyfriend. She’s pretty busy. But if she’s not free or interested, she might know somebody who is. I’ll send her number to you. Don’t tell her I sent you, though. Just tell her it was someone from the Mom Squad. It’ll go over better that way.”

  “Mom Squad,” repeated Sherri, as though she were testing out a foreign language. “Mom Squad. That sounds really nice and protective, like a group of superheroes.”

  Rebecca snorted. “Sort of,” she said. She thought again of Gina and the sleeping bag. “But not really. Anyway. Sorry I talked so much about myself! I don’t know what got into me. I do that sometimes, you know, since Peter died. I used to talk to him, and now I burden other people. I probably drove him crazy when he was alive, with all of my talking, and he was too polite to say anything. I feel bad about it now.” Poor Peter, listening to her for hours on end, pretending to be interested. “Is there anything more depressing than an oversharing widow?”

  “I can think of a few things,” said Sherri grimly, which gave Rebecca pause. Such a funny phrase, giving pause. What did pause look like, anyway, and how did one receive it once it was handed over?

  “What about you?” Rebecca asked. “Was your divorce one of those friendly ones, or an awful one where you only speak to each other when you absolutely have to discuss custody? Are you looking for someone new, or content on your own for a while?”

  When Sherri next spoke there was a new edge to her voice. “No, my divorce was not the friendly type of divorce. And I’m not looking for anyone new. There’s no custody to discuss.” She smiled, but there was something hard in the smile that hadn’t been there before. “It’s just Katie and me, against the world.”

  14.

  The Squad

  Sherri didn’t join us for coffee after barre class. She didn’t even know enough to wipe down her mat and hang it over the barre for the next person! She was out of there so quickly that it was the instructor who wound up her stretching rope, who placed her hand weights in the appropriate bins.

  Obviously Sherri had never been to a barre class in her life. Maybe barre hasn’t made it out to Ohio yet? We don’t know. Oh, her form in the plank section! Not that we could really see, concentrating as we were on our own planks—it was a particularly difficult series, with one of the most challenging instructors—but as we were turning from front plank to side plank some of us did see Sherri topple. Though we all pretended not to. We tried to remember when we too were new to barre, many moons ago, and if the side plank was difficult for us then. But we couldn’t recall. Some of us have naturally strong obliques, and of course that makes side plank easier.

  Dawn told Sherri about the barre class and she said, sure, she’d give it a try. The first class is free. Did we mention Sherri ordered the surf and turf at Plum Island Grille? So maybe money wasn’t an issue for her. Then again, the Laundromat. So maybe it was.

  Come to think of it, we said later, Rebecca hadn’t been at the barre class, nor at coffee after. It had been Gina who switched us from the class we used to take, the 8:15, to this one, the 9:15. The switch was due to a change in the schedule of our favorite instructor. Gina, when pressed, told us she had specifically mentioned the new class to Rebecca in person. We didn’t know why she hadn’t come—with her teaching schedule summer is the only time she can go to the 8:15 or the 9:15. It was yet another example of Rebecca pulling away from us.

  And she couldn’t hide what she did later that day anyway, because Morgan posted on her Instagram story a video of Katie doing handstands on the beach. When the camera swerved we could see Rebecca. Next to her in a matching chair, the new woman. Sherri. Later, a TikTok appeared. And there we were at Jenness, like a bunch of idiots. We planned it after barre class, at the coffee shop. Some of the kids wanted to bring surfboards, and it’s much harder to surf at Salisbury. But we would have been happy to bag the boards! Would it have killed Rebecca to let the rest of us know where she was going that day? The Mom Squad group chat is right there for anybody to add to at any time. It’s not that hard.

  But nobody told us about the trip to Salisbury. I think that’s the important thing you have to remember here. Nobody. Told. Us.

  Some of us didn’t believe it—the new girl? And Morgan? The new mom? And Rebecca? What did they all have to talk about with each other? How did they even know each other well enough to form this little alliance? Those who hadn’t seen the video tried to find the proof the following day. But you don’t have to be eleven to know that an Instagram story vanishes exactly twenty-four hours after it’s been posted. Poof: just like that, it was gone. Like it had never happened.

  Also. We don’t even know how it got out, the thing about Morgan and the sleeping bag. Gina took it away as soon as she noticed. She had that bag washed and dried before Rebecca picked up Morgan. She never told anyone. Why would she?

  Except Tammy, but that was in private. And then Brooke, after Tammy accidentally mentioned it to her, and then one of the girls found out. But we jumped all over Tammy and Brooke and
Gina for that. Morgan had lost her dad! Could we please give her a break?

  After that things were never quite the same between Rebecca and Gina. There was a certain level of mistrust. Which was too bad: they used to be close.

  Looking back at the end of the summer, when everything was over, it was possible to point to that Instagram story from Salisbury Beach and say that that was when the tide started to turn. If you will please excuse our pun.

  15.

  Rebecca

  Rebecca found Alexa in the kitchen, where she was buttering a piece of toast. Bernice was lying directly in front of the sink, as was her wont, so each time Alexa needed to use the sink she had to stand a Bernice-width away and stretch over her. Bernice was a Bernese mountain dog. Peter had named her—he’d been delighted with the play on words.

  “Can you follow me to the service station on Bridge Road?” Rebecca asked.

  The buttering grew more vigorous and Alexa said, “Now?” Bernice shifted her big fluffy body in the wrong direction, closer to the center of the kitchen.

  “Sometime this morning. I’ve got to get that dent repaired—it’s already been over a week.” Rebecca felt suddenly nervous, as though she were asking her daughter out on a date. Alexa sighed prettily and glanced at her phone. “Unless you’re working,” said Rebecca, hurriedly, apologetically. (Why was she apologizing? She paid the car insurance on Alexa’s Jeep.) “I could always ask a friend.” (Could she?)

  “No, I’m off today. I have plans later. But, sure, I can drive you.”

  “Plans with your friends?” Rebecca couldn’t keep the inquisitiveness out of her voice. “With Caitlin and Destiny?”

  “Mom,” said Alexa. She stared at the toast. “Stop. Why all the questions?”

  “It’s not all the questions. I’m just—well, something made me realize how long it’s been since you hung out with Caitlin and Destiny.” It’s really too bad, what happened with Alexa and her friends, Esther had said, as if she knew something Rebecca didn’t. “And I want to make sure everything’s okay.” If she’d been more on the ball, if she hadn’t been wrapped up in Daniel and worried about Morgan, she would have picked up on this a long time ago. It vexed her that it had taken Esther’s pressing to force her to bring up the topic.

  “Everything’s fine. Everything’s better than fine. People change in the course of high school. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me? That it’s okay to grow and change? Evolve. We’re just not as close anymore.”

  Rebecca did say that it was okay for people to evolve, and she believed it. But she remembered Esther’s face at Plum Island Grille, her smug, knowing smile, and she kept on. “But the three of you used to be so sweet together. You were like Betsy, Tacy, and Tib!”

  “Like who?” Alexa was taking very tiny bites of her toast (did she have an eating disorder? Rebecca wondered) and rubbing her earlobe with her other hand (or a touch of OCD?).

  “Betsy, Tacy, and Tib. The books? About the three little girls?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Did I never read those to you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? That’s a travesty. Practically a crime.”

  “If you did, I don’t remember.” Bernice heaved herself to her feet (paws) and moved to another part of the kitchen, as though this discussion of desiccated friendship was irritating her. Alexa took a bigger bite of her toast and said, “Anyway, I have other friends. I’ve got plenty going on. So don’t worry. I’m not pathetic and alone.”

  “I’m not worried,” said Rebecca. She was worried, of course—she was always worried about something. (What did Alexa have going on?)

  “Do you mind if we go right now?” asked Alexa. “I have some things I need to do later.”

  At the service station, after she’d arranged with the owner to call her when the work on the Acura was complete, Rebecca saw the young man who was pumping gas looking sidelong at Alexa from under the brim of his hat. Alexa, a foot on the dash, scrolling through Instagram, noticed him while pretending not to notice. Stop looking at her! Rebecca wanted to cry. That is my little girl, and you have no right.

  It had been a long time since Rebecca had sat in the passenger seat with her eldest child. Since Alexa had procured a driver’s license and the Jeep she’d become so independent that at times she seemed more lodger than daughter. But here she was, her face washed clean of makeup, her hair in a messy bun, wearing pajama shorts that were for some reason designed to look like men’s boxer shorts, driving her mother home, with no shoes on, which Rebecca thought was probably illegal.

  How strange it was: you raised these people from their most miniature, floppiest, most dependent suckling form, and then when they were scarcely grown you helped them get a laminated piece of paper and you sent them off in these hulking, crushable monsters of steel and rubber, and you hoped for the best. (Was Alexa hugging the right side of the road a little more than she should?)

  They were crossing the bridge now, back into Newburyport, and Rebecca looked at all of the boats in the harbors on both sides of the river, the sun glancing off the water. It was one of prettiest sights in the world to Rebecca, the view from this bridge in the summer, and she’d put it up against the sun setting over the Blue Ridge Mountains or the fjords of Norway, although she hadn’t actually seen either of those places in person.

  “It just goes so fast,” said Rebecca. The car sailed over the last piece of the bridge and stopped behind a line of cars waiting to turn toward town. “Do you feel like it’s going really fast? Life?”

  Alexa made a face and said, “Absolutely not. I feel like every day lasts about a week and a half.”

  “One day,” said Rebecca, “you will be being driven around by your own children, and you will see what I mean. I, at that point, will be toothless and infirm somewhere.”

  The Jeep idled. “Don’t be dramatic,” said Alexa. “You’ll probably have teeth.” She flicked her tongue out, lizard quick, as she waited for the last two cars in front of her to disperse, and that made Rebecca think that she could still see her in there somewhere: the girl who used to stick out her tongue in the very same way when she was tying her sneakers at age seven. Further back in time, the girl who, when Rebecca packed her up in the middle of the night to move her out of a situation that was no longer safe, didn’t ask, Where are we going? but instead asked, When will we get there?—a question that showed such a survivor’s determination and such faith in her tattered, shattered mother that Rebecca set her shoulders back and understood at once that she had to make herself worthy of that little girl’s trust.

  “We need to start shopping for your dorm room soon, don’t we?”

  “Not soon. It’s only June.”

  “Still, it’d be good to get a jump on it. I haven’t seen a list yet. Did they send a list? Of what you need?”

  Alexa didn’t know; Alexa didn’t seem to care that much. Rebecca supposed the list, like everything else these days, could be found online.

  “What about a dorm assignment? Did we get that yet?” Rebecca couldn’t wait to drop Alexa off at Colby and watch her get ready to experience everything she herself had experienced. “I wonder if you’ll be put in Hillside,” she mused. “Remember, from the tour?”

  Alexa didn’t answer.

  Rebecca’s phone, which was in her lap, buzzed. A text from Gina. Sry we missed u at the beach yesterday! U should have told us where u were going.

  Rebecca could feel the passive aggressiveness seeping through the screen. “Oh, please,” she said.

  “Drama?” asked Alexa. She found a spot in the traffic flow and shot across Merrimac Street; they were almost home. “Mom Squad drama?”

  “Of a sort.”

  Alexa’s expression simultaneously said, You are old, so your drama cannot possibly be as interesting as my drama and, Despite myself, I’m sort of curious. After a moment the curiosity must have won out because Alexa asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Nothi
ng,” said Rebecca. The phone buzzed again. This time the text was from Monica. Thought we’d see you at barre yesterday. “I mean, it should be nothing. Morgan and I went to the beach with Sherri and Katie and you’d think I gave the nuclear code to North Korea.”

  “Who are Sherri and Katie?”

  “New people. From Ohio. Jeez, try to make a new friend and it feels like high school all over again. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Alexa. “I definitely know what you mean. Remember that time someone called you at one in the morning to find out why her daughter hadn’t been invited to a sleepover with Morgan and four other girls?”

  “Tammy,” said Rebecca. “I remember. I told Morgan she could only have five that time. I can’t always host a dozen!”

  “Remember when World War Three broke out over a barbecue that someone wanted to have on the same weekend as Brooke’s end-of-summer party?”

  Rebecca remembered that too. “Gina,” she said. “Not even the same day. Just the same weekend. That was a kerfuffle. To put it mildly.”

  “So who would be what, then?” asked Alexa. “If you were all in high school?”

  Rebecca thought about it. “Esther would probably be homecoming queen,” she said. “And, let’s see, Gina would definitely be student body president, and Melanie would be the pretty girl who wanted the lead in all the plays but thought she was too cool to hang out with the theater kids. A theater kid in sheep’s clothing, I guess.”

  Alexa smiled indulgently. “Homecoming queen isn’t really a thing anymore, Mom. That’s like super old-fashioned.”

  “Well. Still. You know what I mean.” Alexa granted this statement a slightly condescending nod. “In a way,” Rebecca continued, “in a way it never ends. We’re in high school for the rest of our lives, like it or not.”

  “Please, no,” said Alexa. “I just got out of high school. Whatever else you do, please don’t tell me that I’m stuck there for the rest of my life.” She turned into the driveway and parked neatly, pulling up on the emergency brake just the way Peter had taught her. Rebecca had left the whole of Alexa’s driving education to Peter and the professionals at Hoffman Driving School. She didn’t have the stomach for it herself. As a result, Alexa could parallel park like nobody’s business, and she could drive through rush-hour traffic on Storrow Drive without breaking a sweat.