“The difference is, I don’t put the gack in my mouth,” I pointed out. “I ate a raw oyster once a long time ago, and all I can say is, I haven’t felt moved to eat another one. Chewy and slimy, that’s what I remember—like a cross between gristle and a loogey.”
“Eww, that’s disgusting.” She grimaced. “Clearly that was not an Apalachicola Bay oyster you had. Probably some inferior product from the Chesapeake or the Pacific Northwest.” She spooned a dollop of horseradish from a tiny paper cup onto the largest of the oysters, squeezed a lemon wedge over it, and then plucked the shell from the plastic tray and waved it in my direction. “Look, this is a thing of beauty.” The oyster quivered moistly beneath the fluorescent lights. Angie raised the shell to her lips and tipped it up, slurping slightly as the oyster slid into her mouth. She chewed a few times and then swallowed. “Yum.” She beamed. “You better move fast, or you’ll lose your chance. There’s only ten more on the plate.”
“And this is it? This is all we’re having for lunch? A dozen raw oysters?”
“Maybe not.” She shrugged. “We might need two dozen. I’m kinda hungry.”
As Angie reached for another oyster, I noticed a thin, faint line on the side of her index finger. “How’d you get that scar? Mind my asking?”
She looked puzzled until she saw where I was looking; then, in the space of a few seconds, her face shifted through half a dozen expressions: amusement, wistfulness, sorrow, anger, confusion, peace. “I nearly chopped off my finger when I was ten,” she said. “My sister Kate—she was seven at the time—was trying to cut down a tree. She was flailing away at it with a hatchet, but not really doing much beyond bruising the bark. So I took the hatchet from her and said, ‘Here, let me show you how to do it.’ I put one hand on the tree, for balance, I guess, and reared back and took a whack. Lucky for me I just caught the edge of my finger with the blade. An inch higher, and my coworkers would be calling me ‘Stumpy.’ As it was, I got off with just a few stitches.” She traced the scar with her other index finger, smiling slightly. “God, I haven’t thought about that in years. ‘Here, let me show you how to do it.’ Famous last words, huh?” She shook her head. “We were so close when we were kids. I was so protective of her. How the hell did I let her down so badly? How’d I let her get in so far over her head?” She jabbed at her eyes with the flimsy paper napkin. “Dammit.” She set the empty shell down on the tray.
I set mine down, too. “I’m sorry, Angie.” Mortified by my clumsiness, I stared down at the oysters pooled in their brine. “I didn’t mean to remind you of it all over again.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. How were you supposed to know? Besides, I don’t want people tiptoeing around, walking on eggshells for fear they’ll say something—who knows what—that might remind me of Kate. I’d hate that.” She fingered the scar again. “This is my reminder of an adventure, a story we shared. It’s a souvenir I’ll carry on my skin for the rest of my life. Like a tattoo, carved by a hatchet. How cool is that? But it gets invisible to me, and I forget it’s there. So thanks for reminding me. I’m glad you asked.”
“Me, too, then.” I looked up at her, no longer mortified. “I won’t tiptoe.” An unexpected wave of memory and emotion washed over me suddenly—a rogue wave that hit me almost hard enough to capsize me—and I turned away.
“What? I thought you promised not to tiptoe.”
“I did. I won’t.” I turned back toward her. “I know what it’s like when people tiptoe around you. Makes you feel invisible but also hugely conspicuous at the same time.” She waited. “My father killed himself when I was three.”
Her eyes widened, and she nodded once, very slowly. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t actually know much about it. He’d invested heavily in the commodities market—soybean futures or pork bellies or something; I don’t know what. Not just his own money, but a lot of money for other people, too—friends who wanted in on what was starting to look like a sure thing. And then the price went into free fall and he lost everything. He went into his office and shot himself.” I shrugged. “That’s about all I know. We never talked about it. That was the one unspoken rule at my house growing up: don’t talk about it; tiptoe around it. ”
“Did your mother remarry?”