The Cost of Crab

It feels more like a pleasantly awkward drug deal than a date.

 
I had settled on wearing sweatpants to dinner. It wouldn’t be the first time, or likely the last. But then I thought for Jenny’s sake, for setting this all up, I could probably give a little more of a shit. Maybe he’s a good one. Maybe he’d even court me. Wine and dine me. Not rush me through a burger at Pete’s Diner like the last garbage date.

Jenny had shown me pictures of Liam. She said he drove an Escalade. That he had some money and that they had gone on one or two dates a while back. Knowing Jenny, that number could be way higher because she tends to downplay things. She said something about him being too “engaging.” She tells me that he’s just not her type. I know she’s trying to do me a favor. Whatever, I thought—it had been a while since I had been looked at, and a nice dinner could be… well, nice. I change into a dress with rose magnolias that fall down the sleeve. Just in case.

Liam pulls up at eight sharp. He texts “here” and “come out,” with a smiley face emoji.  It feels more like a pleasantly awkward drug deal than a date. I can tell he’s excited. I know this, because he says it, the words eagerly leaping off the cliff of his overbite. He doesn’t do this kind of thing often, it seems obvious. But neither do I. Not anymore. He’s showered in what seems like an entire bottle of cheap cologne, and his sleeves are awkwardly rolled to his elbows. Maybe he’s not used to wearing dress shirts. Maybe he works with his hands. This could be interesting. Maybe he could be the one. You never know. My own handsome prince, to ride me away on his steed. To put me in a castle with knights and servants. With lots of fucking and silk sheets. When I get close, he steps out of his SUV and comes around to open the door for me. Knightly, yes, but awkward.

From the get-go he wants to talk. Like life story. The whole get to know you thing. The “where are you from” and “what do you do” bit. It feels like an interview. In the 25-minute drive to the restaurant I give the following answers. A small fishing village near the bay. Snowboarding mostly. Moved to Anchorage for bartending, that’s how I know Jenny. Dogs. Weed to sleep but sometimes something stronger. Little sister, Aurora. Still there. Accident. White wine.

Jenny was right, Liam is engaging. I keep my answers short, close to my chest. But it feels okay I guess. Someone asking.

It feels more like a pleasantly awkward drug deal than a date.

We stayed home and we tried to heal, whispering and crying under blankets, away from the Sea.

As Liam talks about the mileage on his Escalade, my mind drifts to how close I held Aurora after it happened. We stayed home and we tried to heal, whispering and crying under blankets, away from the Sea. We were quiet so that she didn’t hear us speak ill of her, as to not anger her again, afraid that she would rise and take another one of us, to pull us beneath with her. Mom just kind of wandered through the village in a half-drunk state. She said she visited her friends to talk and told us not to worry “because everyone’s Sad is different.” She said to give her time. Time to sit up at the same bar she used to go to with Dad every Friday. Time to drink until the place shut and she made her way home, however she could. We stayed up to make sure she stumbled in safe. We wrapped her in a blanket when she did.

 

The restaurant is gorgeous and I’m happy about my wardrobe choice. Giant crystal chandeliers dangle from the ceiling. There are rows and rows of packed dining hall-style tables and lots of exposed brick. It is not a diner. Far from it. We’re guided to our table by the hostess. She pulls us in like a siren. She suggests communal seating, but before Liam can open his mouth, I opt out with a polite smile and a clumsy hand movement. I want to enjoy this experience without the drunken interruptions and invasive elbows of strangers. Without the community. “This place is nice,” I say, a little louder than I had wished.

 

Aurora and I had been the daughters of a fishing community. One that meant that our Dad, along with many other fathers and brothers, left for war with the Bering Sea. If they beat her, they’d come back to us salty and tired with their clawed, rusty-red bounty. I once read in one of those touristy travel magazines our community described as “salt of the earth.” Mom hated the expression, but Dad took it as an opportunity to tell everyone “I’m not worth my weight in gold, I’m worth my weight in salt!” I thought this was corny, until I learned the value of salt back in the day. We weren’t simple people; we worked hard, we had grit, and we had each other’s back.

Dad was proud that year because he was finally able to buy his own boat. “Owning the boat is how the real dough rolls in,” he said one afternoon, smiling and clutching a beer, rubbing his fingers together. His crew never knew that Mom helped him out with the purchase. She’d never forgive herself.

We all used to play this family game in the kitchen leading up to crab season. Dad pretended to listen to who would be the best men for his crew. To live on the boat with him, to fill in our absence. We chose characters from our favorite cartoons, like Buster Baxter. “Could you imagine Buster on Dad’s boat? Arthur would have to come save him eventually from something stupid and ridiculous that he did.” We cut faces from books and magazines and made crafts of them all crammed up on his boat. Mom smiled as Dad indulged us.

 

When the server arrives, he looks like Achilles, with his chiseled jaw, V-shape middle, and long hair tied in a bun. Like a hipster superman. He introduces himself as Diego, of course, fixing his gaze a little, and then looks over at Liam. Liam bolts up, knocking his chair backwards and nearly tumbling down with it. Diego catches him out of the air. He holds him there like a prized trophy. “We used to work the rig together!” Liam shouts to me, smiling ear-to-ear. It all makes more sense. Liam is an oil man.

Diego tells us not to even bother looking at the menu. He’ll set us up with something special. I wonder if Liam has planned this. I can’t tell—they look a little too happy in each other’s arms for it to be rehearsed. And whatever, Diego has been free-pouring a good pinot grigio. Even if this is all fake, I’m not complaining.

Liam relaxes. He tells me how he misses the rig and his brothers. The thrill of it. How he thinks he’ll go back out there when the time’s right. He liked the hard work as a roughneck and how it made him feel like he was doing something important. That though he would be gone and isolated for several weeks, sometimes even months at a time, he still felt attached to a bigger world “the colors you didn’t know existed until you saw them out there.” Nostalgia, he says.

It hurts me when I respond: “I understand what that means.”          

Through the view finder they looked like bearded giants. Sea gods in their own right, arms intertwined over each other’s shoulders, hope deep in their bones.

Dad eventually settled on a crew. Ten crab men. Some he had worked with before. Others recommended by his friends. “Guys I trust as my deckhands and greenhorns,” he said. Greenhorns—I thought that was the coolest name ever.

Mom didn’t like the idea of me or Aurora around the boat crew too much, except for saying goodbye. She said it wasn’t a world for us, yet. I begged her for two days to let me on to snap a picture of Dad and his crew with my disposable camera. Through the view finder they looked like bearded giants. Sea gods in their own right, arms intertwined over each other’s shoulders, hope deep in their bones. I got the pictures developed as quickly as possible. Aurora and I stuck them all on the fridge.

 

Liam is a nine o’clock poet and his cologne doesn’t seem as offensive anymore. I start to relax, too. Maybe it’s the pinot or the pretty shade of green his eyes have turned. When Diego returns he’s pushing a cart with a silver tray and cover. He’s smiling even larger, excited to show us what he’s brought.

“You two are lucky tonight. I asked the chef to do me a solid. Said my rig buddy is at table four, with a good-looking date he’s got to impress.”

He glances over at me and fixes his gaze again. I grin back this time, just a little. He then places the clunky utensils on the table in front of us both.

“Your tool set for the meal. And… Voila!” he cries, as he lifts the silver cover and presents two giant, steaming Alaskan king crabs. My heart drops into my stomach.

Wasting no time, Liam picks up the largest crab. I begin to panic. He breaks the legs free from their sockets. I shudder, feeling my chest start to break open, too. I regret this. All of it.

“People often forget the shoulder meat, you know? Watch, you just gotta pull these pieces back.” I want to puke as he moves to shove the implements into his leg of choice. Cracking away at the shell. At me. My ears ring and I feel faint. I need to reach my baby sister. The Sea is crawling back into me, back into us, reaching to pull me beneath. He sucks at the piece, his mouth directly on the leg.

“Hey, you really gotta try this.” That familiar cold is back again. I’ve hid from Her so well. We all have. I get up and run to the washroom, leaving Liam with the split carcass. My legs barely carry me through the bathroom door. I lock myself in a stall and call Aurora.

 

Mom pulled us out of school on a Tuesday morning. We were so excited when they announced our names over the intercom. We rarely got to skip school, except when Dad would take us on adventure days. When we got to the front office, Mom was there quietly shaking like she couldn’t get warm. Her eyes were a weaker blue from crying. She grabbed my hand and Aurora’s and walked us out to the car. Her hand was freezing. It took her five minutes to break the silence, to say the words: Dad’s boat was missing. She kept on adjusting the heat dial, blasting hot air on us. Aurora didn’t understand why we weren’t driving off to somewhere fun or why the car was a furnace.

The Coast Guard called the search off after a few days. No one survived overboard longer than a few minutes. By Sunday, everyone had lost hope. Mom kept Aurora from the memorial service. Her shell was still soft. A woman wailed for her son the entire time, like she was trying to reach him. He was 18 and had been really proud to be a greenhorn on my dad’s boat. She touched my shoulder as she told me. Her hand was cold, too.

One night about two months after the accident we got a call from the bartender at the Rusty Line. Mom had been acting different, buying people drinks, dancing, singing, and carrying on. “She even tried to order a piña colada. Your Mom and Dad, god bless his soul, were beer folk.” I was 16. I had never had a drink before. I told the man “thank you” and held my tears back. Mom hadn’t come home. Aurora and I put on our full snow suits and went looking. I prepared her for what we might find. I couldn’t keep her in the dark anymore. I couldn’t afford to be there alone.

When we found Mom by the pier, she was delirious. Tears frozen under her eyes. Fingers and lips blue. She had cracked open and the Sea was coming for her. We screamed and screamed until Mrs. Coleridge’s husband heard us from his car. He wrapped us in a blanket and blasted the heat on us the whole way to the hospital. When we got there, they took Mom away. Mr. Coleridge stayed and refilled our hot chocolates. When the doctor came out, it was to say that Mom would be staying for a while. I took my jacket off and placed it around Aurora. She was quietly shaking the way Mom was the day she pulled us out of school. I worried about her shell. We made a pact to stay away from the Sea forever.

In time, we removed our pictures and crafts from the fridge. We did this as a family. What was left of it. We blamed Her and cursed Her. We were allowed to hate Her, because She was once so good to us. I whispered to Aurora that I’d keep her warm at any cost. That we can never let the cold in. That we can never let the Sea in. She looked up at me, her eyes a foggy blue and responded, “And we can never eat crab either.” I grabbed her hand the way our mother would have.   

I try to explain how Jenny set me up with a guy and how the ripped pieces of crab hung off his overbite and I could feel the cold of the Sea coming for us and that—

On the third ring, Aurora picks up. She can tell that I’m in a panic, noticing the erratic breaths that I’m taking. “It’s been almost a month,” I say apologetically, upset with myself for failing to check in. Her boyfriend is carrying on in the background, laughing at the TV. She tells me he loves the show COPS and gets all excited when they chase the bad guys down the street and into other people’s backyards. I try to explain how Jenny set me up with a guy and how the ripped pieces of crab hung off his overbite and I could feel the cold of the Sea coming for us and that—

“Hey sis,” Aurora interrupts. “You know that I’m okay, right?” she says. “You did good. You’re doing good.”

We both take a long, deep breath.

“What does he do for work?” she asks, switching subjects.

“He works on a rig, he works with his hands.”

“What’s his name?”

“Liam,” I reply.   

“Is he nice?” she asks.

My breath slowly steadies.

“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I think so. I think so.”

Feeling the blood fill back into my legs I stand up and fix my dress.

“Call me when you’re home, okay,” Aurora says firmly.

“I will,” I reply quietly.

“Make sure you do.” She insists.

“I promise.” I unlock the stall door, wipe under my eyes, and fix the rest of my face in the mirror.

 

Liam offers to get me an Uber home. I’m not sure if he understood what happened, or what is going on. How could he, really? I feel that maybe I should try and explain myself, explain to him my relationship with crab. But in the time that I ran to the bathroom and came back, the table had been cleared and a large takeaway box with a pretty red bow had been neatly placed where my plate had been. “I ordered you a steak and fries to bring home with you—you might get hungry later.” I say thanks, allowing the smallest curvature of a smile to show, then ask if he can drive me home instead. He waves enthusiastically to Diego and the kitchen staff as we leave.

I follow the steps that Liam breaks into the icy snow to his car. His cologne perseveres, filling the air. He comically spins around every few steps to make sure I’m still behind him, like some sort slapstick routine. It’s his goofy way of giving me space while making sure I’m still around, still fine.

On the road home he mostly keeps silent. The bright restaurant finally disappears in the rearview mirror. I drift back to Dad, and Mom, and Aurora and her shell. And then I think about my own. How it must’ve cracked too. I figure that it’s not the right time yet. To unload my full story on him, my entire family trauma, so the silence is fine, somewhat comforting. As he pulls into the driveway, exactly where he had texted me from a few hours earlier, he breaks that silence.

“I know I can talk a lot but if you ever need someone to listen, I can be a good listener too. With all that time out there on the rig that’s sometimes all I did. People always had a lot to say.”

The moonlight illuminates Liam’s eyes. They are liquid sapphires floating in the night. Part of me dreads that he will go in for a kiss but he doesn’t. Instead he blows into his hands, rubs them together quickly and then put his arms around me. He holds me there in a big bear hug. He feels so warm. He holds me long enough that his warmth starts to transfer over. And for a moment I allow myself to think that, if not forever then at least for now, the Sea and her cold might not come for me.