Two Truths and a Lie

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe he would. But he’s not in charge. I’m in charge.”

  “Well, I wish he was in charge,” said Katie angrily. “I miss him.” Then, more quietly, “Do you miss him?”

  There were a lot of complicated answers to that question. Louise the counselor had said, “Let Katie talk about Bobby on her terms, not yours. She’s going to need that.” Sherri crawled out of the tangled web of her own feelings and said, “Sometimes. What do you miss about him?”

  Katie’s face changed again, became softer. “There was the Father-Daughter dance at the club a long time ago, remember?”

  Sherri had let herself forget about that, a snippet slipping through her fingers and then gone. “I do,” she said, letting the memory resurface. She’d bought Katie a new dress, bright blue, with a dropped waist and small embroidered flowers in a row over each shoulder. Bobby had worn his best suit. Sherri had done Katie’s hair in a fancy updo with curly tendrils hanging down, and when Bobby had seen her he’d said, “Nobody told me I was lucky enough to take the princess to the ball!” Katie had been six then, with one front tooth missing and the other just starting to grow in, a little stub. Somewhere in the houseful of things they’d left behind was a picture of the two of them before the dance, standing on the porch, Katie’s smile as wide as the day was long.

  Katie was now fully absorbed in the recollection. “That dance was so much fun. Daddy was a good dancer. He showed me how to do the tango. Nobody else was doing the tango, but we did. We took up the whole dance floor, and everybody was looking at us. I remember he wore his fancy cologne, and he was the handsomest dad there, and all of the other girls were jealous. Even though they didn’t say it, I could tell. And they served Shirley Temples and these little square cakes that were so small but each one was frosted like a wedding cake.” She sighed. “Are you mad at me for remembering that, now that Daddy is bad?”

  “Oh, Katie-kins,” said Sherri. “Of course not. That’s the hard part, that’s the important part. People who do bad things aren’t one hundred percent bad. Hardly anybody is one hundred percent bad. But what Daddy did was so bad, he had to go to jail for it. It’s okay for you to miss him, and to love him anyway.” It took everything Sherri had to say that.

  Katie took this in. “Okay,” she said finally. “Okay then.” She sighed again, and this time the sigh carried the weight of the world. “But I still want to go to the fireworks. Please, Mom. Please. I didn’t get invited to Casey’s sleepover and not the Boda Borg party either and I did get invited to this, I don’t want to miss it.” Her lower lip began to tremble.

  “What do you mean? What sleepover?”

  “Last week.”

  “How’d you know about it, then?”

  “I saw a picture.” Then in a whisper, “They tagged me.”

  “But you weren’t there. Why’d they tag you?”

  Katie shrugged, and then Sherri got it.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. She opened her arms and Katie went into them. “That was a crappy thing for them to do. I’m sorry.” Sherri breathed in the scent of Katie’s just-washed hair.

  “I know we have to be careful, Mom. I get it. But does that mean we can never be normal again? Can we never just, like, go places without worrying?” Her voice broke. “Can I never go to the fireworks?”

  Sherri sighed. It sort of did mean Katie should never go to the fireworks. “What about if I go with you? I won’t go with you with you, I’ll just stay nearby. You won’t even know I’m there. I promise.”

  “No,” said Katie. “No. Definitely not. The whole point is to go with the girls.” She pushed herself away from Sherri, out of the kitchen, and then Sherri heard her feet go up the stairs.

  As soon as Katie was out of earshot, Sherri called Rebecca. Rebecca said all the right things. She said that she was of two minds about it herself; she said that it did get crowded down there, and that the fireworks drew people from all over. And then she said the best thing of all. “I’ll talk to Alexa. And if she’s free, I’ll have her meet up with them and keep an eye on them. Would that help?”

  59.

  Alexa

  Alexa was perusing the Yankee Homecoming sidewalk sales when she got a text from her mother about keeping an eye on Morgan and a bunch of her friends during the fireworks that night. Old Alexa would have politely declined this offer, but this Alexa, the Alexa who was trying on her Nice Big Sister shoes to see if they still fit after a long time in the closet, texted back No problem.

  Then came another text: Katie’s Mom is worried.

  The bad men, thought Alexa. Her heart thumped.

  I’m on it, she replied.

  It was easy enough to locate Morgan and Company, because there were about a zillion of them clumped up by the playground, doing that awkward in-between thing tweens do. Oh, eleven.

  Then again, what the hell age wasn’t in-between? Twenty-five, Alexa decided. When you were twenty-five you must feel as though you were exactly the age you were meant to be. Alexa couldn’t wait to be twenty-five. She’d live in a funky bungalow in L.A., and she’d decorate it with succulents and tasteful throw pillows, and she’d press her own juice, which she would drink standing on her deck that would overlook some sort of canyon.

  Aside from Morgan and Katie, she couldn’t pick any of the other girls out by name. They all had similar sandy blond hair and short shorts and skinny prepubescent colt legs. The big lights around the baseball field next to the park were all on, so it was practically as bright as daylight in this area even though the sun was almost down.

  Then Katie saw her and waved and Alexa couldn’t help it, that warmed the cockles of her heart, which Alexa had learned in anatomy and physiology junior year were actually just the heart’s ventricles, and which could not actually be warmed by emotion.

  Then she saw Tyler coming toward her down Merrimac Street, weaving in and out of the crowds and the vendors. He saw her; she could tell by the way he picked up his pace. Ugh. No. She didn’t want to see Tyler.

  Her feelings about what had happened at the water stop on Tuesday were complicated and difficult to unwind. She was ashamed that it happened, and she was ashamed that Cam had seen it happen. To make things even more confusing she was ashamed that she was ashamed, because she knew that that was exactly the sort of reaction that kept girls from speaking up when they were sexually assaulted. But the spitting was not assault exactly (was it? was it?). It was just so strange and so hard to categorize, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, so she’d packed the whole thing up in a box and stuffed it into the closet of her mind.

  She addressed the knot of girls. “Hey,” she said to them in general, but more to Morgan than anyone else. She sensed their attention shift. The more fashionable among them took in her outfit approvingly. She was wearing white cut-offs and her Free People Beacon tank, though she brought along a sweatshirt because she knew the mosquitoes would be wicked in about ten minutes. “When the lights go out and the fireworks start, I want you to stay right here,” she said. “So that I can find you when it’s over, and walk you back home, okay?” She was talking to Morgan but looking mostly at Katie. Katie and Morgan nodded and then went back to what they were doing, which was pretending to be engrossed in their phones while stealing furtive glances around at their friends.

  Then Tyler was upon her. He leaned toward her, and she backed away from the girls. “Hey,” he said beerily. “I’m sorry about the other night.”

  The box in the closet of Alexa’s mind began to creak open. “When you spit on me?” she said.

  “That’s not what happened!” He furrowed his brow. He was either perplexed or pretending to be perplexed. A confusing thought crawled out of the box. What if Tyler was right and Alexa was wrong? What if she’d misunderstood? Maybe he didn’t spit on her. Maybe he . . . sweated on her. And she got confused. But if he didn’t spit on her, what was he apologizing for?

  He had her by the arm and he was pulling her behind a tree where
she couldn’t see the eleven-year-olds.

  “Tyler!” she hissed. “I’m supposed to be watching Morgan and her friends. What are you doing?” She turned her head to peer around the tree. The bad men, she thought. There was a thrum of noise and energy running through the park. She needed to make sure Morgan and Company were all together before the fireworks started. She especially needed to keep an eye on Katie.

  Tyler put one hand on either side of her head and turned it so she was facing him again. “I just can’t stand the thought of you with anyone else, Alexa. It just makes me. So. Mad.” With every syllable he squeezed her face a little harder.

  His face was very close to hers; she wasn’t sure if he was going to kiss her or bite her. “Tyler,” she said. “Stop it. Let go. You’re hurting me.” Was nobody seeing this? She was surrounded by hundreds, thousands, of people, yet she felt completely alone. The bad men, she thought. The bad men, the bad men, the bad men.

  Then the floodlights near the baseball field went out. The world plunged into darkness. There was a pop pop pop coming from the river. A bang bang bang. The crowd let out an appreciative ooooooooh. Tyler dropped his hands from Alexa’s face, and as suddenly as he’d appeared, he was gone.

  60.

  The Squad

  The first two weeks of August always go by in the blink of an eye. That’s just the way summer is. You start July thinking the season will last forever, wondering how you’ll fill the days, and then the next time you turn around the nights are longer, the days are shorter, and there are back-to-school advertisements everywhere.

  61.

  Rebecca

  Alexa was lying on one of the loungers on the back patio in her black strapless bikini. There wasn’t much sun left—evening was coming—and the air was cumbrous with humidity.

  “Put some clothes on,” said Rebecca. “And shoes. We’re going out for dinner. I’m buying. Bob Lobster.” She poked Alexa’s leg with her toe. “Come on.” She had exactly one item on her agenda. She’d been holding on to her knowledge of Alexa’s YouTube channel for two weeks now, waiting, as Daniel had advised, for the right time to bring it up. And now was the right time.

  Alexa groaned and said, “Why do you want to go all the way out there?” Bob Lobster was on the turnpike leading to Plum Island.

  “I just do,” said Rebecca. “I like their clam rolls, and I haven’t had one all summer.” She moved toward Alexa like she was going to tickle her, and that got her going. No seventeen-year-old wanted to be tickled by her mother. “Come on. Morgan is at Katie’s. It’s just the two of us.”

  Alexa groaned again and pulled on ripped jeans shorts and a tiny, tiny T-shirt. “Tourists love Bob Lobster because it’s ‘quaint’ and ‘no-frills,’” she said. “But when I go on vacation? When I’m a grown-up? I’m going in the opposite direction. I’m going to go to the Royal Villa of Grand Resort Lagonissi in Athens, which costs fifty thousand dollars a night. I’m looking to embrace the thrills, not avoid them.”

  Is that because you are a YouTube personality? wondered Rebecca. But what she said was, “That will be nice for you, one day. For now we’re going no frills. I’ll drive.”

  The sky over the Merrimack was a delicate pink bordered here and there by orange. There was the sense of summer coming to a close, of days and nights diffusing and re-forming as nostalgia. They rolled down the windows of the Acura and took in the briny, summery smell along the turnpike. They passed the weathered wood-shingled Joppa Flats Education Center, where Alexa had once attended a summer day camp, learning all about the native birds and marine life, and then they passed the Plum Island Airport, where Rebecca had once bought Peter a piloted ride on a WWII fighter plane for his birthday. He’d emerged looking green about the gills, but he claimed to have loved it.

  They ordered their food—the clam roll for Rebecca, chicken Caesar wrap for Alexa—and, once they had it, repaired to one of the outside tables, where they tried to ignore the buzzing flies and concentrate instead on the loveliness of the sky. Alexa was facing away from the road and Rebecca toward it; she could see the light playing on the Pink House. She kept her eyes trained across the street so she wouldn’t have to meet Alexa’s when she said, “I watched your YouTube channel.”

  Alexa put down her wrap. Her voice shook a little. “You what?”

  “You heard me.” Rebecca selected an onion ring from her basket and met Alexa’s eyes. “Silk Stockings. I watched it.”

  “How’d you know about it?”

  “From Morgan. Apparently all her friends watch it. And at least half the Mom Squad.”

  “They do? Are you serious?” Alexa looked the way Peter had after the WWII plane ride.

  “I am very serious. You’re a big local hit, apparently. Morgan told me about it that day we saw you and Cam on Pleasant Street, but I wasn’t sure then how to bring it up. So I’ve just been watching. Catching up. Waiting, I guess.”

  There was a long pause during which Rebecca watched a lot of emotions cross Alexa’s face: surprise, anger, stubbornness, a little bit of pride.

  “Did you like it?”

  Rebecca was touched by how eager Alexa sounded; she was for an instant the eight-year-old bringing home her self-portrait from art class and presenting it to Peter and Rebecca.

  Rebecca poked through the onion rings to find another winner, and she spoke carefully: she’d been preparing for this.

  “You have a great presence in front of the camera, and a way of condensing the topics into a digestible, educational format.”

  “Thank you,” said Alexa.

  “But that isn’t the point. My liking it isn’t the point.”

  Alexa kept her eyes on Rebecca. “What’s the point?”

  “Honey, you’re seventeen years old, and you have a very public online personality. Sixteen thousand subscribers?”

  “Almost seventeen thousand,” corrected Alexa. “I’ve picked up a bunch of new ones recently.”

  “But people don’t have to subscribe to watch, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So anybody can find you. Anybody can watch those videos, and do—whatever they want with them. To them.”

  “Ew. Mom.”

  “Not just people who want to learn about the stock market, but any old pervert or freak.”

  Alexa sighed, exasperated. “I know, Mom.”

  Rebecca felt her voice take a turn toward sharp. “You might not know, Alexa. I know you think you’re all the way grown up, honey. But you’re not grown up. You’re not even eighteen yet.”

  “Almost.”

  Rebecca had done what Daniel had advised. She’d sat on the knowledge of Silk Stockings while she watched a lot of the videos and read through many of the comments. But now she had to speak up. Alexa was about to step into Rebecca’s shoes at Colby—she was about to go off on her own! When Rebecca had matriculated at Colby she’d hadn’t been just wet behind the ears; she’d been positively sopping. She cringed when she thought of some of the mistakes she’d made. And that was pre-social media, when kids had the luxury of anonymity while they were bungling their young lives.

  “Listen, when you go to college I want you to take a break from this. I’m not saying stop it forever, but promise me for at least the first semester you’ll concentrate on school, and making friends, and all of the things you’re supposed to be doing in college.”

  Alexa said nothing.

  “Alexa? I need you to promise.”

  In a very tiny voice, so tiny it could have been coming from a far corner of the eating area, or even from the outer reaches of the marshes, Alexa said, “I’m not going to college.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Rebecca. “What?”

  “You don’t owe that first tuition payment. Don’t pay it. We don’t owe it. I’m not going.”

  “What do you mean? You mean you’re not going as in you want to take a gap year?” Rebecca was against gap years but she tried really hard to be open-minded, the way Peter might have been.

&nbs
p; “I turned down my spot.”

  “You what?” The background noise receded; it was as if both Rebecca and Alexa had gone into portrait mode, with everything around them slightly blurry and unimportant.

  “I turned down my spot. I have a plan. I want to move to L.A.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You can’t tell me absolutely not. I’m almost an adult.”

  “Yes I can. You’re not moving to L.A. No way, Alexa. No way. You shouldn’t have given up Colby without talking to me about it. We should have discussed this.” She couldn’t believe it! Alexa had taken her future, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it in the garbage. How had Rebecca not known she’d given up her place at Colby? She’d been too distracted by her own life, that was how. She’d failed.

  Rebecca watched the old Alexa rear up, the defensive, contemptuous Alexa, the one that these past weeks with Cam had mellowed and calmed, and this version of Alexa spit back, “Oh yeah? Well, you should have told me that you’re seeing someone!”

  Rebecca felt herself flush. “What do you mean?”

  “You are, right? If you’re not, feel free to deny it.”

  Rebecca stayed silent.

  “I knew it! I saw a text on your phone, in June. And ever since then it’s been clear that you’re sneaking around.”

  Rebecca remained silent, marveling at Alexa’s abilities to turn the tables.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Mom?”

  Rebecca sighed and wiped her fingers neatly with a paper napkin, one by one. “Lots of reasons,” she said. “For one thing, I didn’t know if it was something lasting. For another, you know him.”