Once Upon a List

by Robin Gold

  “And you’re the one who just crossed a line,” he said, his voice shaky and gruff, almost a whisper. “Real nice . . .”

  And then, with his head hung low, he walked away.

  “I can’t find your sister anywhere,” said Libby to Leo as she entered the kitchen. “It’s almost dinner time. Have you seen her?”

  “Not in the past few hours,” he answered, feigning interest in The New Yorker spread out before him on the kitchen table.

  “This is the strangest thing. She’s not in the backyard—thankfully,” Libby added under her breath. “She’s not anywhere upstairs as far as I’m aware of. I just came from there. And she’s not down here. I looked in the music room and dining room. All of the bathroom doors are open. Huh.” Her eyebrows pulled together as she tapped her fingers on the kitchen counter. “Clara? Honey?” she hollered loudly, her voice echoing throughout the house.

  “Maybe she’s in the basement,” Leo suggested with his nose still stuck in his magazine.

  “Good idea. I’ll go check.” Libby meandered off.

  She returned to the kitchen several minutes later. “No sign of Clara in the basement. This is very odd. Where could she be?” And then Libby’s brows lifted and she raised an index finger in the air as if she’d solved the mystery. “Her car! Maybe she’s outside getting something from it. I’m gonna go see.” Again, Libby walked off in search of her daughter.

  When she returned to the kitchen a little while later, the look of bewilderment plastered across her face revealed a growing sense of unease. “It’s not like Clara to disappear like this. I’m starting to worry, Leo. I checked the garage and she wasn’t there either. Did she mention to you she was leaving the house? Going out for a walk or something?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” he replied in a deliberately disinterested tone.

  “Will you please stop looking at your magazine for two seconds and help me find your sister? I’m concerned. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re not. Clara’s in a vulnerable place,” Libby stressed. “She’s extremely upset about Sebastian.”

  This got Leo’s attention. “She is?” He closed The New Yorker, surprised.

  “I think that’s why she’s in such a foul mood.”

  “You do?”

  “She’s having a very hard time. She misses him desperately. And she has come so far, Leo. She’s practically like a new person.” Libby sighed. “Of course there are road bumps along the way with grief. They’re to be expected. But I would really hate to see her stumble and fall too far off track now. Not after all the progress she’s made,” she muttered more to herself than to her son. “Do you think she might be in the attic?”

  “Uh . . . I think there’s definite call for concern if Clara’s fiddling around in the attic considering she’s never been up there before in her life.”

  “Well, then we have a problem, son. Because your sister is gone.”

  “No, she’s not,” Leo reassured Libby with unmistakable confidence, rising from his chair. “There’s one place we haven’t looked.”

  33.

  Dusk had fallen, and the low, constant hum of crickets buzzing pervaded the cool, August night air. “Knock, knock!” Leo called out, tapping his knuckles against the old, weathered ladder of Maple Manor as he ascended it slowly. “May I have permission to enter?” he asked before he reached the top and had even confirmed that Clara was inside. Waiting for a response, Leo knocked on the ladder again, his other hand grasping the tree’s thick, gnarled bark.

  “Enter,” replied Clara, sitting crossed-legged on the wooden floor beneath a window where a blue and white gingham curtain that Libby had sewn once hung. Her eyes were puffy and red, and she was fairly certain she had a splinter in her left cheek that was not located on her face.

  “I had a feeling I’d find you here,” Leo said as his head emerged inside of the tree house. He hoisted his tall body inside of the empty, square-shaped room that smelled like ancient, musty forest.

  “How’d you know?” Clara sniffled.

  He shrugged. “Brotherly instinct. Well, that, and it’s where you always hid out as a kid.”

  Indeed, Maple Manor had long been a sacred place of solace for Clara, a special space high up in the branches where she could come to escape the troubles of the mean world below, or to dream.

  Hunching over, for Maple Manor’s roof was too low for Leo—or most grown adults—to stand up straight, he looked around. “Did this place shrink?”

  Clara nodded. “I think so.”

  The brown, wooden floorboards creaked as Leo maneuvered his body across the tree house, taking a seat beside Clara with a muffled grunt.

  A tear trickled down her cheek as she stared straight ahead, exhausted.

  Leo gave her knee a friendly pat.

  “I am so sorry about before,” Clara choked, spilling with guilt as she turned and faced her brother, unable to stand the unbearable feeling of being at odds with him for another minute longer. “I was way out of line. Please forgive me.” Her bottom lip trembled.

  She extended both arms, seemingly desperate for a hug, and Leo immediately embraced her.

  “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “Please don’t cry.”

  “I didn’t mean those awful things I said.” Clara hugged him tighter. “They weren’t true. They weren’t . . .”

  After a moment, Leo pulled away from her. “I’m not so sure about that. I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he admitted, “and you might have had a valid point.”

  “But the way I attacked you was cruel,” Clara adamantly insisted, not about to let herself off the hook. “You were the one who was right about me taking out my problems with Lincoln on the people I love. I acted like a beast. I swear on our siblinghood”—she shuddered, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands—“I’m so sorry, Leo.”

  “I know,” he soothed, offering her a reassuring smile.

  He reached his hand into his sweatshirt pocket. “How about a Fudgsicle?” Producing two sunshine-yellow-wrapped, frozen dessert bars, Leo offered one to Clara.

  She nodded. “Yes, please.”

  Sitting side-by-side in their old tree house while the troubles of the mean world stirred below, Clara and Leo ate their frosty treats.

  “Oh yeah. I almost forgot.” Clara grabbed something from behind her back. “Here’s your recorder.” She handed it to Leo. “I’m sorry I buried it and let you stay punished for losing it,” she quoted from her time capsule list.

  “Not a problem.” He grinned. “Apology accepted.”

  Holding her chocolaty Fudgsicle, Clara took a big, deep breath, bowing her head as she slowly exhaled. “Tough week . . .”

  “It sure was,” her brother affirmed. “It’s gonna be okay . . .” Leo put his arm tightly around her shoulders and didn’t say another word.

  No words were needed.

  • Dig up Leo’s recorder from the backyard & apologize for burying it (& letting him stay punished for losing it!)

  34.

  One week with no word from Lincoln told Clara that he had meant business when he said he took her rejection personally and “couldn’t move forward with someone who was obviously not ready to let go of the past and let him in.” In retrospect, Clara realized this had been Lincoln’s own way of saying goodbye to her. As in, goodbye for good. Adios. Game over. She didn’t know how exactly she had expected him to react when she insisted, out of the clear blue, that she needed her space, effective immediately. At the time, she hadn’t the wherewithal to properly think it through. But, Clara did know one thing for certain: she had not expected to miss Lincoln as much as she did. Not by a long shot. His sudden absence stung, leaving her feeling strangely off kilter. Still, she was determined not to let it get the best of her. She’d made her decision, and now she had to live with its consequences. After all, she’d already inflicted upon Lincoln enough u
npleasant emotional drama and felt strongly that it was selfish and unfair for her to ask any more of him.

  At first, Clara tried to ignore her pangs of sorrow by indulging in good old-fashioned denial, justifying that it was only natural to miss Lincoln in light of the excessive amount of time they’d been spending together lately. They’d practically grown inseparable over the past month. Of course it was normal for her to miss him! She’d get over it, move on, and that would be that. At least, that’s what Clara kept telling herself.

  Suppressing her feelings, she threw herself into the last few remaining items on her time capsule list. Though it wasn’t very big, the judge’s concrete balcony—located off the living room—contained just enough space, and received enough afternoon sunlight for Clara to plant a tiny, aboveground garden. At her local green nursery, she purchased an array of herbs, including parsley, basil, oregano, and mint, which Alejandro—the knowledgeable, apron-clad employee assisting her—stressed was “next to impossible to kill” and “delicious in cocktails.”

  “Sold,” Clara had declared, forcing a small smile, striving to sound cheerful. Since it was already August and the weather would soon turn colder, her options were limited with regard to late blooming flowers that would thrive. Thus, Clara stuck with her old, hearty favorite, the chrysanthemum, choosing two different jewel-toned varieties.

  “The chrysanthemum represents the light of hope in dark times,” said Alejandro, unaware that this was the precise reason why Clara appreciated it so.

  “Maybe I should buy another,” she joked, her voice faltering despite her effort to sustain an upbeat tone.

  After adding autumn crocus and purple ornamental kale to Clara’s cart, he suggested she also try planting asters. “They’re taller than the mums so they’ll add an extra dimension of height to the garden,” he explained.

  “And, just so we’re clear, all of this stuff will actually grow aboveground? In a balcony garden?” The crimped expression on Clara’s face revealed her skepticism.

  “Yes,” reiterated Alejandro. “Absolutely. Why do you look so doubtful?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged, lifting her hands. “I guess . . . it’s just my nature?”

  “Well, you better change that.” He grinned, winking at Clara. “Hesitation and cultivation are not friends. The garden knows . . .” He nodded. “You’ll see. Believe in it and it’ll grow. Simple, really.”

  “Believe in it and it’ll grow,” Clara repeated, suddenly thinking of “Audrey II,” the man-eating, jive-speaking plant in the play Little Shop of Horrors. “Got it. Good advice.”

  “And don’t over-water it. That’s the most common no-no.”

  “I will avoid that no-no. Oh! One last question . . . Do you sell avocado seeds?”

  “We do. But unfortunately avocados can’t grow in this varying climate. They require steady heat.”

  “I hear you. But I have to give it a try, Alejandro,” declared Clara, adding with a lackluster fist pump, “Believe in it and it’ll grow.”

  “See?” He smiled. “You’re learning. But you’re still gonna need un milagro to grow an avocado in Chicago.”

  “Milagro?”

  “A miracle!” Alejandro translated.

  “Terrific . . .”

  Clara spent the next three hours on the balcony with Milk Dud, planting away as the sun streaked westward over the steely city skyline. She attempted, without much success, to avoid thinking about Lincoln, who she imagined was probably busy preparing for his Argentina adventure, looking forward to having the time of his life excavating ancient bones on the other side of the globe. Well, at least one of them would be enjoying themselves, she reflected with her hands elbow-deep in dirt.

  When the last seed had finally been covered with soil and sprinkled with water, Clara wiped her brow, dusted off her hands, and took a seat on the balcony’s only chair. She crossed a thick red line through Grow my own garden with an avocado tree, as the tears she’d been fighting not to shed blurred her vision.

  The next day, after Clara and Leo lunched at a little outdoor bistro in her neighborhood, they returned to her condo to resume their ongoing Memory battle. Clara may have been beaten by love, but she had no intention of being vanquished by her brother at the children’s pair-matching game. No way. Determined to finally show him who was boss and cross off one of the last items on her time capsule list, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, staring at the board with her eyes on the prize—the picture of fierce concentration—when suddenly her cell phone rang. Remembering Lincoln’s theory on the game, she quickly flipped over two of the grid’s “key” corner cards, failing to make a match, shot out of her chair as if her backside were ablaze, leaped over Milk Dud, and sprinted toward her pocketbook on the windowsill ledge. She hurriedly grabbed her cell phone from it, glancing at its display screen.

  And then, like an overcooked soufflé, Clara’s face fell.

  She released a sigh, unable to mask her disappointment.

  “I don’t understand why you don’t just pick up the phone and call him.” Leo turned over one card with a picture of a cow and another card with an ice cream sundae on it. “It’s obvious that you want to talk to him.”

  “I don’t even know what I’d say to Link at this point, Leo,” Clara said sullenly, returning to her seat. “I really don’t.” She hadn’t admitted to her brother that she’d stopped by the Mayflower Café earlier that morning, secretly hoping she might have the good fortune of “coincidentally running into” Lincoln. For two whole hours she’d nursed a cappuccino at the same round table where she and Lincoln had sat seven months ago after she fainted in Grant Park. Each time the little bell attached to the café’s front door jingled, Clara felt a flutter of hope as she glanced toward the entrance as casually as possible. But Lincoln never walked through that door. And eventually, Clara, feeling rather foolish, gave up her table so that an elderly couple holding hands could sit down. Wondering if this qualified her as a stalker, she watched as the white-haired gentleman gallantly pulled out the chair for his wife to be seated, feeling a familiar lump beginning to form in her throat.

  “Go. It’s your turn,” Leo reminded her.

  “Oops! Sorry.” Clara thought for a moment, and then flipped over a card that happened to match one of the corner cards she’d already revealed. She collected the pair and took another turn. “Anyway, it’s been nine days. If Lincoln had something he wanted to say to me, he would have done so by now.”

  Leo took his turn. “Not necessarily. Don’t forget you asked for your space. Link’s a stand-up guy. All he’s doing is honoring your request. Doesn’t mean he likes it.”

  She made a clicking sound with her tongue, frowning. “You’re my brother. You have to say that. Besides, he’s probably so excited for Argentina that I haven’t even crossed his mind. He leaves the day after tomorrow.” Hesitating, Clara stared at the slowly shrinking board, calculating her next move, tapping one of her already-collected cards against the table before she flipped over two more cards, successfully making yet another pair.

  “All the more reason to call him,” urged Leo. “You could say that you know how much the Argentinosaurus means to him, and you just want to wish him a quick bon voyage. Keep it nice and light. Enjoy Dino-Land.” He took his turn. “Happy bone digging.”

  Clara considered it. “Yes, but then what? I wish things were different, Leo, but I still feel torn about everything. I—I really don’t know what exactly I want from Lincoln or what I’m ready for,” she claimed, making her move. She shook her head, dejected, sick and tired of trying to make sense of her conflicting emotions. “That’s the problem. And it’s not fair to him.”

  “Guess what? You don’t need to have all the answers right now.” Studying the board, Leo furrowed his eyebrows. “Who knows what Lincoln might say if you give him a chance to open the floor for discussion?�
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  Clara exhaled, flipping over two matching “bicycle” cards. She took her next turn, revealing two identical “pencil” cards. “Yes! It’s about time I got those stupid pencils considering I’ve been chasing them half the game.”

  “Uh . . .” Leo blinked, appearing dumbfounded as he eyed what little remained of the grid. “You’ve got this. There are only six cards left. You’re gonna sweep the board.”

  Positive she’d misheard her brother, Clara eyed him dubiously. But when she assessed the grid, sure enough, to her own surprise, she discovered that she did indeed remember what each of the final cards was. She actually did have Leo cornered! Her memory had prevailed! At long last! Victory was hers. Wasting no time, Clara quickly turned over all three pairs, her smile expanding with each card she revealed and collected.

  “And, after countless losses over too many years to even count, she finally makes a clean sweep! Better late than never,” Leo announced in his best sports commentator voice. He extended his hand. “Good game,” he conceded as Clara, visibly shocked, shook it.

  “Wait. Are you serious?” She cocked her head to the side, brimming with skepticism. “I swear to God, Leo . . . did you throw the game because you feel sorry for me?”

  “No,” he insisted. “And I hate to break it to you, but I think you might be the one who feels sorry for you.”

  “I won?” she quietly confirmed.

  “You won.”

  “Holy Moses. I won!” Clara victoriously shot both arms in the air. “No way! I did it, boy!” she alerted Milk Dud.

  Raising his only ear, he barked in celebration.

  “Finally! Lincoln was right.”

  Leo folded his arms across his chest. “What do you mean, Lincoln was right?”

  “He said to first memorize the four corners, and then base everything else in relation to them.” Clara grinned. “And that’s exactly what I did!” She pointed her finger at Leo. “I schooled you, butt-face!”