I Took My Baby Down to Brown’s Lobster Pound

I owed my baby one. She’d said she always wanted to go. These were two different things. Me owing her and us going. In a way. I owed her one and had the answer because I thought of it. Brown’s Lobster Pound. Perfect surprise because I needed to show some sort of gesture right then. Two parts sorry, one part celebration. Her saying she always wanted to go was a different matter. For a while, she’d said she always wanted to go. But I think she forgot about it, or the idea of going. I knew she’d like it. That was obvious. It’s her kind of place. I didn’t forget because I had actually been. She hadn’t. She had at one point talked about it all the time, how I never took her but just talked the place up so much. I’d gone a few times growing up. Best lobster rolls. Everything straightforward. I remember getting steamers there in a big basket as a kid. You’d love it, I told her. She loves steamers and she didn’t grow up with them. I know a lot of people who didn’t grow up eating them and don’t like them when they try them.

My baby wanted to go. My baby’s name is Buggy and so I call her that. I can’t repeat what she calls me. Buggy’ll be my wife one day. To be safe, I’ve got to establish and reestablish, in her eyes, that I can handle that kind of business. Be as provisional as necessary, and that’s tough, and even go beyond that. We talk about it a lot. I’ve been told many, many things that are better to be remembered than forgotten, which, of course, has happened. When we first got together, I told her about the lobster rolls at Brown’s, how it was a short drive even though it was only a state away. She’s from a whole handful of those big states that take a few days to drive through. Half the country. Sometimes I’ll ask, But if you had to pick one to be from? Buggy’s always got Amarillo on the mind. I love that about her. And so Brown’s was kind of regionally exotic to her. Quite the opposite of what she grew up with and in some ways exactly the same. Odd that we hadn't gone. I wasn’t trying to keep her from it or it from her. Kind of felt like sometimes I didn’t even know if I remembered Brown’s the right way. Am I sure it’s Brown’s where I was thinking of? I looked up pictures and was almost certain it was. We just never took the trip. There were times it just didn’t come up for a while. When it did we talked about regional delicacies. My steamers, roast beef, fried clam rolls, baked haddock. Her Jell-O salads, mostly. You have to say something like green-leaf salad if you want a classic lettuce-based garden salad, otherwise they give you all kinds and colors of Jell-O. She also had buckets of ranch at the state fair. I’d tease her frequently about going. I’d say, Let’s go get one of those famous rolls, and really we’d go to the grocery store, get an imitation-seafood roll on the way home at one of the circle-store spots that speckle that mini-region. The stores right in the middle of a rotary. Otherwise, we’d get sidetracked. 

Brown’s is out on the side of this little salt marsh. The water, the marsh grass and sandbars. Blue, green, and gold. I could picture her sitting, sweating beautifully and happily there in the humid sun on the porch of this little seafood cafeteria. On the other side of a little poor man’s Cape Cod looking town. Bars, restaurants, stores for novelty T-shirts and beach miscellany, tattoo parlors. Brown’s was a couple miles beyond all this, right off the main road. Kind of out there but there’s space around it because of that, the ocean and marsh, a big sun-faded, salt-rusted billboard across the street advertising fireworks. 

I wanted it to be a big surprise. I set it up that way. I tried to be sneaky. I wanted to surprise her. I wanted her to be surprised and this would be the hardest to successfully pull off. And I owed her. So we went to Brown’s Lobster Pound. 

For some time before this I’d been acting despicably. I was working through a sort of comparatively logical posture toward the things of my life. At work, to colleagues, to strangers. Buggy told me this. She declared me non compos mentis and I asked how. I was letting a lot of things slip, she said. Eschewing all responsibility. I only made poor decisions and even poorer excuses regarding my decisions. I wasn’t even trying. I had nothing to do and I pretended that whatever it was I was doing was extremely important. Critical. It was an act. 

Brown’s would be the remedy. I’d be off the hook. She would like the drive, too, through little tourist towns on the ocean between Mass and New Hampshire. I love the drive. I’m  always interested in the growing frequency of Live Free or Die license plates. I told her about a couple errands I wanted to do. I had it figured out. I asked if she wanted to come with me. I said I was thinking maybe heading out early afternoon, not too bad, it’s the middle of the week. Because we always like to go out when it’s slow. I threw in that we could think of something else to do after.

She said yeah and asked where we were going, because if we were going to be near the big nice health-food store she wanted to get a couple things to try. So when we left I think she thought, Errands. At any point after maybe twenty minutes of driving I knew she’d ask where we were going because of this health food store request. And Buggy did. She asked how the big nice health food store was going to figure in, if this was the direction we were heading. I always think I’m good at making a surprise for someone. But then I just end up telling the person what the surprise is early because I get too excited. It feels good to think of a really good surprise, a little treat. I thought Brown’s would be a real treat because Buggy’s become such a seafood freak. And we could still do a couple errands after. I tried not to say anything. Brown’s Lobster Pound. I kept thinking to myself not to say anything, let the surprise be a surprise. 

She made a few guesses. She didn’t get it though.

Are we going to see somebody?

No.

Ice cream?

There’s plenty of closer places.

But there’s that new one I heard about. It’s this way, I think. Is that where?

Nope.

Hmm, some kind of big thing to look at? I don’t know. 

... 

She got mad when she thought we were going to get another dog, because I laughed. I started listing off possible names. In the back of my mind I was still half-worried she wouldn’t remember Brown’s. But ultimately it didn’t matter. I was getting points, I hoped, for taking her to a delicious and classic place. I kept changing the radio song and Buggy got pissed. She said, Stop changing the stations but I didn't and she wouldn’t talk to me. I’d let myself get sucked into the argument, forgetting my goal. It started us both feeling slightly sour. So I sang her a song from my Catholic school days called “God Is the Gas in My Go-Cart” and did the accompanying dance motions with my right hand while driving with my left. The last line is “Filled up with God, I can’t fail.” It was good. That was the song we all loved singing when we had to be singing something. Some assembly or spring show. My song turned it all around and I felt briefly but densely confident I pulled it off. It was almost… bad. So I was excited that our moods re-lightened. And obviously I was excited we were going to Brown’s Lobster Pound. It’s not like I wasn't going there to not eat. 

We passed the handful of suburban exits, stands of trees, exits, trees, salt marshes, blank spaces, parking lots, firework stands, beach towns. I took an exit and woods turned to beach to marsh to beach lined with RV parking. Then there’s the permanent slow crawl through the center of town, all due to the high concentration of groups of people in flip-flops, carrying coolers, dragging carts and wagons, beach chairs, pails, kids, and boogie boards. The town turned to parking, back to beach, then a long empty stretch of salt marsh. When we made it through, I elbowed Buggy. I could see the Brown’s sign. I pointed.

Buggy yelled, Oh! 

I remember thinking, I fucking pulled it off.

I said, Hell yeah, baby. 

We parked next to a yellow car with orange-and-red flame graphics on the back window. It wasn’t raining but I smelled or was reminded of the smell of hot and wet concrete. Standing up out of the car, in the tarseal parking lot, I pictured it steaming off in the sun, the mist turning to the little waves of heat distortion. 

We wrapped around the pastel yellow and beige-brown building. I didn’t remember which counter was for which. This is when I start to get really anxious. Situations like this, the etiquette and flow of a place. I was certain I’d been to Brown’s before. I kept thinking, This is the place, yeah, this is the place. We stood in line outside, at the first counter, bickering about which counter to order from.  We ordered from that first counter and it worked. We got lobster rolls and BLTs and a big root beer. I looked for real beer and didn’t see it. And we didn’t really know what next or where to pick up the food or listen for it. We had a number on a torn corner of paper. We went inside and stood around at the lobster tanks waiting. The tanks were in a room just inside the screen door near the indoor counter. Buggy wanted to look at the lobsters and I wanted to see if you just had to buy the beer inside. But then I saw on a sign it was a BYOB only place, and also up near the ceiling along the whole restaurant, shelves of beer. This almost got me too. I sweated over this in the bad way. Cooly. I wanted to drink beer there because I knew I could. I didn’t have beer. They didn’t sell it. I had to walk it off. Walked around the place to get a lay of the land. It’s deceiving from the outside. It feels so big in there. The wood’s much darker inside, not being sun-bleached. A long cement floor. Picnic-style tables, worn soft and splintery like driftwood. There were other salt-hued and faded things. It was really a pretty place. Back in front of the lobster tanks I said, You’re On Camera Smile, in an announcer-like voice, a voice of announcement and warning, like at the airport, pointing to a sign. Buggy thought the lobsters in their tank were so cute. I think we’re about to eat one, I said. 

We sat at a table near a lady with an intercom microphone calling out numbers. We sat down looking at the little torn paper every time to check if it was our number. I sat there sweating, looking at the shelves of empties lining the ceiling. Beers from all over the world. Beers that came to be drunk here with lobster or steamers or a fried-seafood plate. Seven-ninety-eight-B. We took our food from a counter inside that neither of us noticed until our number was called. First we went up to the counter inside we initially noticed, then we were pointed to where we needed to go. We took our food on two orange trays and walked the length of the place and outside. Me and my baby sat around back on a tiled-top picnic bench at the edge of the deck. We sat above the marsh, looked over the water and grass as we ate. We talked about planting strawberries and eating popcorn at the pier back home. She told me she couldn’t believe I’d never noticed that about the guy who’s always at the bar. I never really caught it. We looked across the water. I tried to see something in the water. A fin, a wake, a fish jumping, a boat, a seagull. 

I was listening to Buggy and then I thought about how I tend to talk a lot when we go out, because I only really talk to her. And that’s fine. It’s not even the same kind of communication. 

I said, It’s funny to think how do we be happy now? Like what next? When we're done eating and just drive home.

Buggy said, I’m happy now. 

And now I keep thinking about this other thing from the week after all this. I was happy. I don’t think they’re connected. Buggy went to the ER for stomach pain, everything was fine, she said I could say this. And after, at home, Buggy made me stay in a different room all night because I’d been on a very noticeable few-days-long streak of being funny and making her laugh and it hurt when she laughed.