The First Time She Drowned by Kerry Kletter Page A

horror movie.
    It groped blindly, searching for escape and then clipped itself upon the rim of the pot and pulled behind it another menacing claw and two angry bulging eyes staring right at me. I wanted to run. I wanted to point to my father and say, “He did it!” But I couldn’t move.
    It stopped there, wearing the lid on the back of its head like a beret. Then in a flurry of spindly movement, the lobster extracted itself from the pot and scampered to the edge of the stove.
    Stunned, I looked at my father and saw that he was setting the table for a dinner that was presently escaping. When I turned back, the second lobster was climbing out. And then the third and fourth. They pitched over the edge of the counter to the floor. Their claws snapped threateningly above their buglike little faces.
    “Holy shit!” my father said, turning.
    “Holy shit!” Matthew echoed as he strolled back in through the swinging kitchen door.
    My mother wandered in. “Holy shit!” she screamed, and pushed me in front of her as a shield.
    “Run free, little sea creatures!” Matthew yelled with delight as we all watched my father chase the lobsters around the kitchen, grabbing at their backs and then pulling away when they snapped at his hands.
    In an instant the entire house had spiraled into madness. My mother’s screams met my brother’s entreaties and the lobsters’ smacking claws and swelled into a wild, ear-splitting chorus of chaos. My father looked around helplessly. He was breathless with humiliation and effort, and his face was as red as the lobsters wouldhave been had he succeeded in cooking them.
    “Jesus Christ,” my mother said with disgust.
    It was Matthew who finally managed to round them all up. He must have taken pity on my father, because at some point he gave up his Save the Lobster campaign and took charge of the situation. With the expertise of an old fisherman, he moved a steady, fearless hand toward each creature and clasped his strong little fingers around their backs.
    The room became strangely quiet, like the still, reverent hush after a snowfall as we watched my brother capture the last lobster and put it in the pot. We were witnessing, after all, a moment of great significance, a moment far more important than the event itself: It was the moment my nine-year-old brother took over the role of man of the house. It was a changing of the guard made final in one singular act, and we all seemed to know it whether or not we could have named it as such.
    “Well, that does it then!” my father said with a too-big smile. “Guess I should have boiled the water first, ha ha! But I’ve taken care of it now.” Then realizing the water was still not at a boiling point, he quickly but nonchalantly reached back his hand to hold down the lid. He kept it there until we heard the lobsters’ screams echoing within the stainless steel walls, and then long after the screams had ceased.
    I stood in the corner and wept.
    My father tried to explain that the lobsters were not actually screaming and that the air escaping from their shells was the real cause of those piercing cries. But the distinction made no difference to me. I was hearing the sounds of death, of a life that hadfought for itself and lost. I only ate the corn.
    • • •
    Tension was palpable throughout dinner, and Matthew and I tried to break it by hurling peas at each other every time my mother turned away from us to glower at my father.
    “By the way, Ed,” she said, eating quickly, as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough, “I think Matthew should sleep in my room tonight. I’m concerned he might sleepwalk.”
    “He hasn’t sleepwalked in years,” my father said, his jaw clenched.
    I looked at Matthew, who, in turn, began walking around the room with his arms outstretched and his eyes closed, bumping into the refrigerator and stove.
    “That’s not fair!” I said, angry that she was taking my brother away from me, angrier still that