Arden’s jaw dropped. She turned to watch her mother work the urns.
“Doris, do you mind if my mom takes a break after her next show?”
“Not at all.”
“I think I want to buy her an ice cream cone.”
Twenty-seven
“Scoot your rear over a little more.” Lolly laughed, hitting Arden’s bottom with a cheek of her own. “There.”
Lolly, Arden, and Lauren squeezed onto a teak bench in the rose garden across from Dolly’s, three generations crammed together and eating triple scoop ice cream cones. Sun squeezed through the thick, verdant branches of the dogwood, birch, and redbud trees that canopied the small park.
“After these, we may not be able to fit on this bench anymore,” Arden said, licking a scoop of cappuccino chocolate chunk.
“Hey, this was your idea, Miss Fitness,” Lolly laughed, licking her Blue Moon cone, her tongue and lips turning blue. “What gives?”
Though it was early in the growing season in northern Michigan, sunny daffodils and color-drenched tulips lined the small park’s border, and nuclear-size azaleas and rhododendrons flowered. But the park was known for its roses, and the early varieties in virginal white, deep violet, and pretty pink danced in the breeze for passersby.
Arden took a big lick of her ice cream, wiped her mouth, and put her hand on her mother’s leg. “So, a little birdie just told me about how you masterminded the whole Dolly showcase.”
Lolly stopped licking her cone for a second, craning her neck dramatically to scan the branches above. “Bad birdie!” she said.
“Mom,” Arden said, suddenly very serious. “I want to know: How did that come about? I had no clue. I guess I just thought Dolly’s had always had a Dolly and that you were the latest to be cast in the role.”
Lolly chuckled. “So you actually want to hear one of my stories?”
“Yes … no … well, I mean … I guess I do, Mom.”
A little girl, no more than five or six, wearing the most adorable pink and white dress skipped into the park with a bubblegum ice cream cone as big as her head. Her parents trailed behind, the mother pushing a stroller, the father carrying a camera and cone.
“Rose!” he shouted. “Slow down! We want a picture.”
The little girl, her curly red hair starting to come loose from the colorful barrettes and big bow that held it back, stopped in front of the roses.
Lauren glanced over, and her artistic senses whirred. It was as if the scene had been perfectly coordinated in cotton candy colors, everything washed in pinks and whites. On instinct, Lauren shut her eyes and her hands began to move, to sketch and to paint, invisibly.
Lolly and Arden watched Lauren, until the little girl screamed, “We’re done!” and Lauren opened her eyes.
“Nothing sweeter than a child with an ice cream cone in the summer,” Lolly said. “It was that very simple thing that changed my life, in fact.” She paused.
“Here, hold this,” Lolly said, handing Arden her cone, “so I can show you this.”
Lolly looked through her charm bracelet until she found a charm unlike the many silver ones that ringed her wrist, one that mimicked the design on her apron: A glittery ice cream cone, with one blue scoop atop a pink scoop sitting in a golden sugar cone.
“This sweet little charm gave me purpose, passion, and meaning,” Lolly said, smiling and waving at the family now leaving the park. “This charm made Lolly Dolly.”
Twenty-eight
Memorial Day Weekend, 1985
Fog hung over Lost Land Lake, heavy and thick, like a moving curtain, choking out the daylight and making even the dock and water impossible to see from the screened porch of Lolly’s cabin.
She shivered and pulled a blanket over her body, gripping her warm mug of coffee closely.
Save for the loons, there was not a sound coming from the lake.
Typically, on the first summer holiday of the year, the lake was teeming with people and activity. Summer—like life—was ready to begin again, filled with hope and optimism. Now, however, the world was cloaked in darkness.
The weather matched Lolly’s mood: She was in a grey place, on the verge of depression. It had only been a short time since she found her husband, dead. This was her first Memorial Day without him.
Arden would be leaving Scoops for college in a few short months, and Lolly had a feeling deep down that her daughter would not return.
My whole life has been an endless ellipsis: I have gone, in the blink of an eye, from little girl to motherless daughter, from daddy’s caretaker to wife and mother.
My whole life—nearly every single day—has been spent caring for someone else.
Now, in the blink of an eye, I am alone.
How could You, God? How could You?
Despite wanting Arden to be happy and to pursue her dreams no matter where they led her, Lolly couldn’t help but feel stung by Arden’s rejection of everything dear to her.
Tears came, and a great weight rested atop Lolly’s body. She was exhausted, unable to even sit up and move. Lolly set her mug on the slatted wood floor, propped a pillow under her head, and stretched her body out on the glider, adding another quilt over her weary bones.
The chilly fog seeped through the screens of the porch, almost like sleeping gas, and, quickly, Lolly was unconscious, nightmares of death and loneliness causing her body to thrash on the glider.
In the midst of her nightmares, Lolly was startled awake by the sounds of boat engines and children screaming. She sat up, and the world was gleaming in sunshine.
She squinted at the old, glittery kitty-cat clock she had on the porch—eyes moving left, tail moving right, eyes moving right, tail moving left.
Two o’clock? I’ve slept for four hours?
Lolly shook the cobwebs from her head and walked to the screen facing the lake. The fog had cleared, the skies were now blue, and a warm wind blew. Everything glistened with dew, as if Michigan had been dipped in wet silver. She held her face to the sun.
“Who wants ice cream?” Lolly heard a mother a few cabins down call to her children.
“I do!” they replied, sprinting to the cabin in their wet swimsuits.
I do, too, Lolly thought.
She searched the fridge first, and then the big cooler in the garage, but she was out of ice cream. She was out of everything.
Lolly willed herself to get dressed, put on some makeup, and walk out of her cabin.
She revved the Woodie and pointed it toward Scoops, parking it along a side street on the edge of town in the only spot she could find.
As she strolled, she started to see her hometown through fresh eyes.
Scoops was founded in the mid-1800s, and while the lakeshore teemed with new construction, the hilly town remained quaint: Little, shingled bungalows and white clapboard cottages sat tucked behind huge gardens and walls of rhododendrons.
Lolly inhaled deeply as she walked. Scoops smelled of lake water and wood, pine needles and fudge.
As she neared downtown, her pace slowed as soon as she passed the little hardware store, packed to its wooden rafters with tools, bolts, mowers, and birdseed.
Scoops was filled with fudgies, who had foregone the beach due to the bad weather earlier and flocked to town, instead.
Women trailed into dress and purse shops, while their husbands took seats in the Adirondack chairs that sat outside the stores, patiently waiting until it was late enough in the afternoon to hit the Sandbar Saloon or Old Crow Bar for a happy hour beer.
Lolly headed into the old Scoops drugstore, which had been around forever and was once the epicenter of the tiny town. Resorters loved the drugstore for its cheap sweatshirts and Scoops souvenirs, and locals loved it for Dr. Philbrook, who had been the pharmacist before—the town joke went—aspirin was invented. Few folks knew, however, that way in the back of the congested store—behind the rows of Scoops T-shirts, hats, and mugs, beyond the trinkets and key chains, and tucked behind the pharmacy and
towering rolls of toilet paper—sat a narrow old ice cream counter on a patch of red-and-white tile. The short counter held only eight worn leather stools that rotated slowly even when no one was seated on them, behind which stood two soda jerks, who barely had enough room to turn from griddle to counter. The old-fashioned drugstore served up only a select few items in the tiny space: shakes, malts, phosphates, real cherry cola and homemade ginger ale, along with sundaes, floats, banana splits, hamburgers, onion rings, and French fries.
Lolly used to come to the drugstore with her mom and pick out charms, before they would head to the back for a treat. Lolly had done the same thing with Arden. She thought of her daughter’s suitcases, sitting in her room, already half filled to leave for college.
Lolly looked up and down the counter at the happy people eating ice cream and making the best of what had started as a rather dreary Memorial Day weekend.
An elderly man using a walker slowly made his way to the counter and took a seat next to Lolly, grunting with every effort he made.
“Ma’am?” asked a young man wearing a brightly striped paper hat tilted on his head.
“Could I get a chocolate malt?” Lolly said. “And a cherry phosphate, please.”
The man nodded and went to work, scooping ice cream into a silver blender, before starting work on her drink, pouring cherry syrup into a mineral water glass and squirting dashes of acid phosphate into it, and then topping it with a steady stream of carbonated water, the mixture bright and bubbling. Lolly fidgeted in anticipation, causing her charms to dance.
“That’ll be four-fifty, ma’am,” the soda jerk said, pushing Lolly’s sweet concoctions in front of her.
Lolly reached for her purse, but it wasn’t on her shoulder.
No! You old fool! she thought, embarrassed.
“I … I … I…,” she stuttered to the boy, as a few patrons—chomping burgers and rings, and slurping shakes—turned to stare.
Lolly was suddenly foggier than she had been earlier in the day, more alone than she had ever felt her whole life.
How could I forget my purse?
“I’m so sorry!” she cried, rushing out and onto the teeming street, the little bell on the door tinkling like her charms.
Near tears, Lolly searched for somewhere, anywhere, to hide, but every chair in town was held hostage by a man holding packages for his wife.
Everyone, Lolly realized, had someone.
I have no one anymore, Lolly said to herself. How did my dad do it after the love of his life died?
“I bought your malt and your phosphate.”
Lolly jumped at the sound of a man’s voice. When she turned, the man with the walker was standing beside her.
“We all have bad days,” he said, as the soda jerk rushed up to hand Lolly her drinks. “Some worse than others.”
Lolly tried to respond, but her lips felt sealed shut.
“You have a good holiday, ma’am,” the man said, following the soda jerk and slowly making his way back into the shop. “Make it a sweet one.”
One step at a time, it suddenly dawned on Lolly, as she watched the man. That’s how my father did it: One slow, steady step at a time.
Lolly walked down the street, lost in thought, before coming to a deserted metal bench that was dotted with sticky napkins, empty candy wrappers, hardened chocolate, and dripping ice cream.
“For heaven’s sake,” she said, taking the unused napkins and cleaning a spot big enough for her to sit.
Lolly sipped her malt and phosphate, but they didn’t taste the same as they had in the past. She shut her eyes and let the emotions of her day roll out. She began to cry, then weep, her shoulders slumped.
“Are you okay?”
Lolly looked up, and an angelic little girl—blond ringlets, rosy cheeks, bright blue eyes—was staring at her, licking a pink ice cream cone.
Lolly suddenly laughed, finally noticing that the little girl was wearing a princess costume: A sparkly pink sleeveless top over a glittery silver skirt fluffed with mounds and mounds of pink tulle. On her head sat a tiara that glistened in the Scoops sunshine. In one hand, she held her giant ice cream; in the other, she held a glittered wand.
Lolly’s eyes grew wide in surprise.
“Your eyes are the same color as mine,” the girl said, rotating her cone, and licking every side to keep it from dripping. “Except a little redder. Why are you sad?”
“I’m lonely,” Lolly said, setting her drinks down on the bench.
The little girl plopped down next to Lolly, oblivious to the chocolate and ice cream on the bench, her tulle making her body tilt sideways as if she were sitting on a mountain of fabric. “My mom tells me that when I’m lonesome to ’member that I’m never alone. She’s always with me.”
Lolly’s heart raced. Her mother used to tell her the same thing.
“I do have memories. Great ones! See!” Lolly said, showing the little girl her charm bracelet. “They’re all right here.”
The little girl screamed in delight.
“Lookie!” she yelled, jumping up. “Me, too!”
She held out her delicate wrist, and around it sat a charm bracelet, already filled with many trinkets.
“This is my birthday cake charm!” the girl said, showing Lolly the candles that popped up from the charm when she touched it. “I’m five!”
“Congratulations!” Lolly said.
“And this is my ballerina slipper charm, and this is my diving board charm, ’cause I wanna be in the Olympics!” the little girl said excitedly. “And this is my lucky star charm, so I can wish on it and be anything I dream of being! What do you dream of being?”
The child’s words caught Lolly off guard.
“I don’t know,” Lolly answered honestly.
“Can I see your charms now?”
Lolly held out her wrist, and the girl giggled as she flipped through Lolly’s charms, one by one, asking about them as she continued licking her ice cream cone.
“You know what you need?” the little girl suddenly asked.
“What?”
“An ice cream cone!”
“Oh, I already had some ice cream in my malt,” Lolly whispered to her, nodding toward the drinks on the bench beside her. “And I don’t have any money with me right now.”
“No, not one of those,” the little girl said, nodding back at the ice cream counter through a nearby shop window. Lolly looked, finally realizing she was sitting in front of Dolly’s Sweet Shop. “One of these!” she said.
“Hold this!” the girl finally said definitively, giving Lolly no other option than to take charge of her cone. She took a seat again, her tulle spilling over Lolly’s lap, and removed her bracelet. With sticky fingers, she removed a charm of an ice cream cone as glittery as her outfit, two scoops of blue and pink ice cream atop a sugar cone. “Now, hold out your wrist!”
“Oh, I can’t take that from you!” Lolly said. “It’s one of your special charms.”
The little girl looked at Lolly and said, “You need it way more than me!” Then she lowered her voice into a whisper. “And, besides, I have lots of ice cream charms. We come to Scoops every summer.”
Lolly held out her wrist, and the little girl carefully added her charm to it.
Lolly held it up to her face, her eyes wide. She no longer felt so alone.
“Your eyes look a lot prettier with no sad red in them,” the girl said, before pointing back at Dolly’s. “Hey! You look just like the ice cream lady!”
Lolly didn’t understand what the little girl was trying to tell her, but she smiled and said, “Thank you for this.” While holding her bracelet and new charm to her heart, she handed the little girl’s ice cream cone back to her. “It’s so sweet of you,” Lolly said.
“Good one.” The little girl giggled, finishing off her cone. “Sweet! Now, shut your eyes.”
“What?”
“Shut your eyes! I’m a fairy princess, so I’m going to grant you a wish. But you have to s
hut your eyes.”
Lolly closed them tightly. The little girl lifted her glitter wand and brought it down lightly, touching Lolly on the top of the head with it. Lolly kept her eyes shut, until she heard the little girl giggling. When she opened her eyes, the girl was nestled in the crook of her mother’s arm, who was carrying a big bag of Dolly’s fudge.
“I hope she wasn’t too much of a bother,” the little girl’s mother whispered.
“Not at all. She’s an angel,” Lolly said, still in a trance. “Do you mind if I ask her a question?”
“No,” the mother said, cocking her head.
“What wish did you grant me?” Lolly asked.
“I can’t tell you,” the little girl said very seriously. “But if you believe, it will come true.”
“Well, we best be going,” the mother said. “Have a great day!”
“You, too,” Lolly said, as the two made their way down the street, the little girl’s pink tulle floating in the wind. “Oh! Excuse me! I’m sorry to bother you, but can I ask one more question?” Lolly called, suddenly chasing them down the street.
The mother turned and smiled, a quizzical look etched on her youthful face. “I guess. Sure.”
“What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Honey?” she said, looking at her daughter. “You can tell the nice lady.”
The little girl turned, her tiara shimmering, her face bright. “Hope!” she said.
The mother waved, and the two disappeared into the crowd of fudgies. Lolly felt dizzy and returned to take a seat on the bench in front of the shop. She shut her eyes and felt the top of her head, which she could swear was tingling.
Lolly heard a door chime, and when she opened her eyes, she was staring directly at the big sign on the fudge shop’s front window, where an image of the original Dolly Van Voozle appeared.
The Charm Bracelet Page 16