Remember the giant squid, Mom, from the movie?”
“I remember,” Paige said without taking her eyes from the road.
“Up periscope,” Charlotte said, gripping the handles of that imaginary
instrument, squinting through the eyepiece. “Raiding the sea lanes,
ramming ships with our super-strong steel bow–boom!-and the crazy
captain playing his huge pipe organ! You remember the pipe organ, Mom?”
“I remember.”
“Diving deeper, deeper, the pressure hull starting to crack, but the
crazy Captain Nemo says deeper, playing his pipe organ and saying
deeper, and all the time here comes the squid.” She broke into the
shark’s theme from the movie Jaws, “Dum-dum, dum-dum, dumdum, dum-dum,
da-da-dum!”
“That’s silly,” Emily said from the rear seat.
Charlotte turned in her shoulder harness to look back between the front
seats. “What’s silly?”
“Giant squid.”
“Oh, is that so? Maybe you wouldn’t think they were so silly ùf you
were swimming and one of them came up under you and bit you in half, ate
you in two bites, then spit out your bones like grape
“Squid don’t eat
people,” Emily said.
“Of course they do.”
“Other way around.”
“Huh?”
“People eat squid,” Emily said.
“No way.”
“Way.”
“Where’d you get a dumb idea like that?”
“Saw it on a menu at a restaurant.”
“What restaurant?” Charlotte asked.
“Couple different restaurants. You were there. Isn’t it true,
Mom–don’t people eat squid?”
“Yes, they do,” Paige agreed.
“You’re just agreeing with her so she won’t look like a dumb
seven-year-old,” Charlotte said skeptically.
“No, it’s true,” Paige assured her. “People eat squid.”
“How?” Charlotte asked, as if the very thought beggared her
imagination.
“Well,” Paige said, braking for a red traffic light, “not all in one
piece, you know.”
“I guess not!” Charlotte said. “Not a giant squid, anyway.”
“You can slice the tentacles and saute them in garlic butter for one
thing,” Paige said, and looked at her daughter to see what impact that
bit of culinary news would have.
Charlotte grimaced and faced forward again. “You’re trying to gross me
out.”
“Tastes good,” Paige insisted.
“I’d rather eat dirt.”
“Tastes better than dirt, I assure you.”
Emily piped up from the back seat again, “You can also slice their
tentacles and french-fry ’em.”
“That’s right,” Paige said.
Charlotte’s judgment was simple and direct, “Yuck.”
“They’re like little onion rings, only squid,” Emily said.
“This is sick.”
“Little gummy french-fried squid rings dripping gooey squid ink,” Emily
said, and giggled.
Turning in her seat again to look at her sister, Charlotte said, “You’re
a disgusting troll.”
“Anyway,” Emily said, “we’re not in a submarine.”
“Of course we’re not,” Charlotte said. “We’re in a car.”
“No, we’re in a hypofoil.”
“A what?”
Emily said, “Like we saw on TV that time, the boat that goes between
England and somewhere, and it rides on top of the water, really
zoooooming along.”
“Honey, you mean ‘hydrofoil,”
” Paige said, taking her foot off the
brake when the light turned green, and accelerating cautiously across
the flooded intersection.
“Yeah,” Emily said. “Hyderfoil. We’re in a hyderfoil, going to England
to meet the queen. I’m going to have tea with the queen, drink tea and
eat squid and talk about the family jewels.”
Paige almost laughed out loud at that one.
“The queen doesn’t serve squid,” Charlotte said exasperatedly.
“Bet she does,” said Emily.
“No, she serves crumpets and scones and trollops and stuff,” Charlotte
said.
This time Paige did laugh out loud. She had a vivid image in her head,
The very proper and gracious Queen of England inquiring of a gentleman
guest if he would like a trollop with his tea, and indicating a garish
hooker waiting nearby in Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie.
“What’s so funny?” Charlotte asked.
Stifling her laugh, Paige lied, “Nothing, I was just thinking about
something, something else, happened a long time ago, wouldn’t seem funny
to you now, just an old Mommy memory.”
The last thing she wanted was to inhibit their conversation.
When she was in the car with them, she rarely turned on the radio.
Nothing on the dial was half as entertaining as the Charlotte and Emily
Show.
As the rain began to fall harder than ever, Emily proved to be in one of