The Baddest Girl on the Planet

by Heather Frese

  It had taken time to catch his eye. She’d waltzed past his lair, throwing her pheromones about. Because this lobster was the lobster. The dominant male. The dude. The one all the ladies want. She’d come calling at his door every day until he let her in. She’d surveyed the shag carpeting, the lava lamps, the glittery disco ball, and thought the dude was all she’d dreamed of. So she moved in. She shed her shell, and that’s when everything changed.

  The lady lobster wanted the sex, too, don’t get me wrong. But somewhere in her heart, she also thought the dude would be super into her lady lobster brains. She realizes now, as she watches the weather from the window, that she got duped by pheromones. All that work to get the dominant dude and it turns out he’s just a dude. And maybe there are other dudes out there who’re better. How will she know if she stays in this shag-carpeted lair her whole life? What if there’s a dude lobster out there in, oh, say, Australia, who doesn’t listen to the Bee Gees and insist on feeding her fondue? How will she ever know what Australian dude lobsters are like if she stays with this one lobster dude? She won’t.

  And so she has to go. But before she can leave she has to sit there, waiting, watching the weather swirl outside the window of the lair.

  Waiting for her hardness to regenerate.

  Monet Fairchild. She’s the third woman my brother loved. Monet sported a tattoo of an angelfish on the left side of her neck. She was from Boulder, Colorado, but she said she’d always dreamt of the ocean, so she moved to Avon to work at Seaside Spa, where she created delicate sworls of custom nail color and taught hot yoga. This was just after Stephen left, and at first I blamed my dislike of her on that fact, thinking it was just my general state of gloom mixed with rage. Because Nate pulsated with happiness. He and Monet flounced about the island, arms entwined around waists, eyes gooey and gazing. My dad, who I could usually count on for a solid dose of snark involving Nate’s girlfriends, doted on Monet like she was a baby pygmy goat. He even took a hot yoga class. My mom refused to do the dishes because she’d ruin her tie-dyed manicure, and Austin, who had just turned five at the time, began a sudden obsession with angelfish.

  It was Austin, in the end, who undid things. He came a touch unmoored when Stephen moved to Raleigh, throwing screaming, red-faced tantrums each time I left for work, flailing bonelessly on whatever floor he happened to be near at the moment. He’d kick, he’d bite, he’d throw his Monsters, Inc., folding chair across the room like a hopped-up movie star trashing a hotel. He’d refuse to eat, smearing SpaghettiOs on the carpet or spitting mushy, mangled mouthfuls of peanut butter and jelly on the table. It was during one of these pleasant Sunday lunches that Austin began to unravel Nate and Monet.

  Monet, who was, of course, vegan, reached for the platter of tofu fries my dad had made just for her. The sunlight glinted off her highlights, and she stretched across the table to pat my dad’s arm. “Thank you so much for preparing lunch, Mr. Austin,” she said.

  My dad, no lie, blushed. “Anytime, my dear,” he said.

  Nate rubbed a small circle at the base of Monet’s spine with one hand and ate tofu fries with the other. “These aren’t half bad,” he said.

  I wanted to make a joke about them being all bad, but Nate’s relaxed posture and easy grin stopped me.

  “Can I try one, Uncle Nate?” Austin asked. He’d been on company behavior for a while now because Monet was there, quietly mincing his hot dog into tiny bites and pushing the pink scraps around his plate. He hadn’t thrown a fit in three hours, and I was getting nervous.

  Nate began to hand a fry to Austin, but Monet whispered, “I don’t think he’ll like it.” Nate put the fry back on his plate. “These really aren’t your style, buddy,” he said.

  “Let him try it,” I said. Anything Austin expressed interest in eating those days was fine with me.

  Nate raised an eyebrow. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “It’s not like he wants to eat an entire pan of brownies,” I said.

  “Can I have a brownie?” Austin asked.

  “No,” I said.

  Monet swallowed a bite of salad and said, “Of course, if you think it’s okay. It’s just that Nate mentioned Austin’s been a bit—” Monet lowered her voice. “Delicate lately. I didn’t want something new to—” Again with the lowering. “Upset him.”

  “He doesn’t have consumption,” I said. I couldn’t help it. Austin had been acting like a shit, but he certainly wasn’t delicate. I handed him a tofu fry.

  Nate moved his hand to Monet’s upper back. “Monet just wants us to keep having a nice lunch,” he said.

  Austin, his face a cherubic sheen of placidity, nodded and finished his tofu fry. “It’s nice,” he said. “It’s a nice lunch.” He smiled up at Monet.

  “I’m glad you like it,” Monet said.

  We finished the meal without further incident, but when Nate and Monet said they had to go if they wanted to catch the last matinee, Austin started his meltdown.

  “Don’t go,” he whined, tugging on Monet’s hand with enough force that her shoulder dipped.

  Nate looked at me with a conspiratorial grin, as if we were bonding over how very much Austin loved Monet.

  Monet knelt down. “Sweetie, we’re going to go see a movie. Do you like movies?”

  Austin shook his head. No no no no no. “Don’t go.” His volume hiked a decibel.

  “Uncle Nate and I will see you again soon,” she said. She adjusted her purse on her shoulder and stood up, glancing at Nate. “Ready?” she asked him.

  Austin buckled his legs beneath himself, his knees hitting the floor with a dull thud. He screamed, a throaty wail of anguish, and I moved to scrape him off the floor. Austin thrashed and flailed. The kid only weighed thirty-three pounds, but it felt like dragging a sodden, lifeless body out of the surf. He dug his heels into the carpet, leaving roughed-up streaks as I pulled him away from the door. “Sorry,” I yelled over his hollering. “Have fun.”

  Austin regained his bones and stood straight up, his hands in small tight fists at his sides, red splotches on his cheeks. Maybe he did have consumption. “You can go, but don’t take Uncle Nate,” he said.

  Nate tousled Austin’s hair, and Austin collapsed to the floor again, yelling and banging. “I’ll come see you tonight,” Nate said. “It’s nothing to freak out over, man.”

  “You won’t either come back,” Austin shouted into the carpet. “You won’t either.”

  I splintered then, and Nate looked at me and I could tell he did, too. He sat on the floor and pulled Austin into his lap. “Don’t you even think about biting me,” he said.

  Monet bent over and touched Nate’s shoulder. “We’re going to be late, hon.”

  Austin stopped pounding the floor, and his screaming changed to sobs, fat tears sliding down his face, snot smearing Nate’s cargo shorts.

  Nate rocked him back and forth, back and forth.

  They didn’t break up right then, of course. It took Monet a few months to get over Nate’s pheromones, and it took Nate a few months to realize that one of the reasons Monet taught hot yoga was to have the sweaty, slippery attention of a crowded room three times a week. Monet started having dreams about Tuscany. She got a tattoo of a sunflower on her right calf and broke up with Nate and left not long after that.

  I drive Austin up to Duck one rainy Saturday afternoon a week or so after he baited his first hook. We rarely venture this far north, but my dad wants some specialty cake-decorating tool that he could only find at a kitchen shop in Duck, and I need a strapless bra from the Belk in Kill Devil Hills, so I’d volunteered for the errand. We head up the narrow road, slamming headfirst into a traffic jam. Cars clot the beach highway, a slow-moving snake of tourists trying to get to their posh rentals. We finally pull off at the Waterfront Shops; a fine drizzle mists down, and I throw the car into park. Austin and I’d stopped at Coquina Beach to swim earlier in the day since there’s no public beach access this far north, so we’re both sticky and sa
ndy and wearing ratty t-shirts and flip-flops. We walk across the parking lot, and Austin jumps in a puddle, splashing me and grinning. I kick water back at him. A lady carrying a Burberry umbrella worth more than my car minces across the parking lot, looking at Austin and me with finely arched eyebrows.

  “Come on, kid,” I say, taking Austin’s arm and pulling him to the steps of the shops. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Austin takes the steps two at a time. “Hey, Mom,” he says. He points at a latte-swilling couple dressed in polo shirts and khakis. “Can we get coffee, too?”

  I swat his pointing hand down. I don’t know where he got the idea that he likes coffee. I never let him have it. “Maybe later,” I say.

  Austin shrugs. “Can we go in the toy store?”

  I tell him yes, and it’s as we’re browsing through the aisle of pirate accessories that Austin shouts, “Gee Gaw!” and runs over to my ex-mother-in-law.

  On the scale of things I’ve never understood, hovering somewhere near the very top of the list is why any woman would ever request to be referred to as Gee Gaw. I turn up my lips in what I hope is a friendly smile at the coincidence. Stephen’s mother is the sort of woman who wears polo shirts and carries Burberry umbrellas. “Hi, Mrs. Oden.” I refuse to call her the g-words. Refuse.

  Mrs. Oden gives Austin a side-hug. “Evie, why didn’t you mention that you and Austin were coming up the beach today?”

  I wipe some mud off my right calf with my left foot and kiss her on the cheek. “Oh, it was a last-minute thing,” I say.

  “Gee Gaw,” Austin says, tugging at her hand. “Look at this.” He pulls a pirate hat from the shelf. “I’m going to be Blackbeard for Halloween.”

  “How lovely,” Mrs. Oden says. She looks at me, “Would your mommy think it’s all right if Gee Gaw bought it for you?”

  I protest, and she parries back until I shrug and smile and say that would be lovely. Also high on the list of things I’ve never understood is not only why any woman would request to be called Gee Gaw, but why she would refer to herself in the third person as such. Or refer to herself in the third person at all. “Would you like to join us for coffee or ice cream?” I ask. We walk to the register, and a woman in a polo shirt checks us out. I swear, there must be some inviolable Duck dress code.

  “No, hon, I have to be heading back,” she says. “But it was so good to see you both.” Mrs. Oden pinches Austin’s cheek and tells him she loves him. She starts to smooth down his hair, but Austin steps back to my side.

  “You and Mr. Oden will have to come over for dinner soon,” I say. And I mean it. Ever since we learned that we can’t talk about Stephen, I’ve gotten along fine with his parents.

  Mrs. Oden waves and walks outside, pulling her linen jacket up over her hair, and then she’s gone around the corner.

  Austin’s quiet as we poke around the shops looking for my dad’s utensil. He carries the bag with his pirate hat, careful not to bump it into people. We find the cake tool, and by the time we’re done, the rain has stopped, so we walk along the shops’ boardwalk on the Currituck Sound. There’s a coin machine where you can buy whatever it is you feed to ducks, and I ask Austin if he wants to feed the Duck ducks. He nods, even though he’s too old to really get a kick out of it, so I plink quarters into the machine until he has a palm full of pellets.

  A mallard paddles by, and Austin selects a few grains, throwing them into the water. “Why did you and Dad get divorced?” he asks.

  I blink, disoriented, as if his question has thrown me into a different place. As if I’ve been lurched onto a boardwalk in Brazil or Finland and have to shake my head to return to the northern Outer Banks where my son stands, calmly feeding a quacking herd of gathering mallards. He’s never asked me this before, not so straightforward. “It’s kind of a long story,” I say.

  Austin tosses a pellet. He nods, and again I see Nate. “I’ve got time,” he says.

  I sigh. I put more quarters into the machine until I have a handful of duck food, too. I toss some pellets to a small fawn-and-white duck. “Sometimes, even if they love each other, moms and dads just can’t live together anymore,” I say.

  Austin rolls his eyes. “Is that what PBS taught you to say?”

  “I think it was Dear Abby.” The ducks paddle into one another, beaks opening and closing in a cacophony of quacks. I dump my handful of pellets in the water and turn to Austin. “We did love each other,” I say. I close my eyes to remember if this is true. And yes, somewhere under all my resentment toward Stephen is a flicker of the love I once had.

  “So why’d you get divorced?” Austin asks again. He continues to select pellets one by one to throw to the ducks.

  Dear Abby never covered how to tell your son about how mommy and daddy were nineteen and didn’t mean to get pregnant, and how they otherwise would’ve broken up within a year, and how they each had subsequent affairs. “We were very different,” I say.

  Austin hurls a pellet. “That doesn’t explain anything,” he says.

  “We were young.” I say it without thinking.

  Austin looks at me, oblivious to the flurry of honking and feather-flapping below him. “You were old enough to get married.”

  “But we shouldn’t have. We weren’t ready to be the only person the other would ever be with. Does that make sense?”

  Austin turns back to the ducks. “No. Not really.”

  I take one of his pellets and aim at a little white duck on the outskirts of the duck circle. “It’s like your Uncle Nate,” I say. “He loved other women before he met Aunt Jennie, but he didn’t marry them because he wasn’t ready. If he had, he’d probably be divorced, too.”

  Austin’s thinking crease appears. “Are he and Aunt Jennie getting divorced?”

  “No, that’s my point. They waited until they were both ready to get married, so they probably won’t get divorced.”

  Austin tosses the last of his pellets and dusts off his hands. He leans against the railing. “But then why did you and Dad get married if you weren’t ready?”

  I open my mouth and then close it. “We thought we were ready, but it turned out we weren’t,” I say.

  “Then how do people ever know? That they’re ready?”

  “If you figure that one out, kid, you’d save a lot of people a lot of pain,” I say.

  Austin shakes his head. “I still don’t get it.”

  “Join the club.” I start walking down the boardwalk, then quicken my pace to a jog. “Last one to the coffee shop’s a rotten egg,” I say, calling the words over my shoulder. My feet thud on the wet boards. I look behind me but Austin’s not there, and then he’s swooshing past my side, laughing, running, the bag with his pirate hat bouncing against his legs, heedless of polo-shirted people raising their eyebrows, heedless of love. Running away, for a moment, from it all.

  People think lobsters mate for life. It isn’t true. After the lady lobster’s shell has hardened back up, she tosses her hair over her shoulder, tramp stamps her lower back, and gets the hell out of that horrible retro lair. The dude doesn’t try to stop her.

  She packs her paisley suitcase and is ready to catch the next current to Australia, but something catches her eye. It’s her best lady lobster friend, and she’s all gussied up and prancing past the dude lobster’s lair. Her friend twirls her hair and bats her eyelashes and is all set to pee when the lady lobster stops her.

  “Look,” she says, taking her friend by the arm. “I know he’s the dominant dude, but you should realize that he’s actually just a dude.”

  Her friend doesn’t listen. She jerks her claw away and goes back to prancing.

  The lady lobster thinks about this. The current comes, but she doesn’t take it. Instead, she goes back to her old lair and waits, because she knows her friend will need her in a couple of weeks. While she’s waiting, she thinks a lot. She thinks about why she thought the dude was so great to begin with. She thinks about pheromones. She thinks about the dude lobsters in Austra
lia.

  And then she thinks about how the dominant dude gently caressed her stomach when she was bare. She thinks about how he could’ve just eaten her but didn’t. She thinks about how he could’ve dug in his claws and stripped her naked body into bloody ribbons. She thinks about how, even though she’s over him, maybe he wasn’t so bad. Maybe he wasn’t all to blame.

  A couple weeks later, the lady lobster’s friend steams out of the dude’s lair, hard-shelled and free. The two lady lobsters share some Godiva truffles and merlot, laughing about the way the dude lobster played Marvin Gaye and seemed to think “boobies” was an actual word. They watch as another lady lobster puts on lipstick and begins sashaying past the dude’s lair. And somehow, even though she never made it to Australia to check out the dude lobsters there, the lady lobster thinks that maybe things worked out for the best after all.

  Jennie is the woman my brother married, the woman my brother loves. Jennie, like Charlotte, had vacationed on Hatteras her whole life, only Jennie came from western New York. Like Monet, one day she decided to live here, but Jennie moved with her boyfriend. She’s a pastry chef, and when my dad decided to expand the inn’s repertoire to include catering and selling muffins to local coffee shops, he hired Jennie. I’m the one who decided she and Nate should get married, even when she was still with Darth, a skinny guy with lank brown hair and a penchant for trench coats. Darth’s parents were fanatical Star Wars buffs. That explained a lot, but not enough for me to forgive him for rolling his eyes when Jennie tripped on the carpet or honking the horn eight times when he came to pick her up one night. Really, who honks at all, let alone eight times? A guy named Darth, that’s who.

  I never trash-talked Darth while Jennie and I became friends, just pointed out how nice it was that Nate watched Austin on the nights I had to go up to Nags Head for school, how Nate’s hair was naturally wavy like a sea captain’s, the way Nate knew all about boats and currents and shifting shoals. I figured Jennie could notice on her own that Nate stopped by during nearly every shift she worked. Still, one morning, Jennie showed up in the inn’s kitchen all splotchy-faced. She told me that Darth wanted to move back home. He told her she had to choose between this place and him. And she chose Hatteras.