“She’s going to live with Jack?”
“Of course not,” I say, unsure. “That’s why she went to Lola’s house.”
“I don’t follow,” Mom says.
I change the subject for real and ask Mom about the dreaded details of Dad’s funeral. Mom talks for a few minutes about florists and caterers and aunts and uncles I don’t really recall. If I didn’t know better, she could be talking about a wedding or perhaps a baby shower.
“See you Thursday, Mom,” I say like Thursday isn’t Dad’s funeral.
“Good night, sweetie,” Mom says, like it is.
2
In the morning, I pick up my cell phone to check on Cassie, but Lola has already left me a message that Cassie decided to go to school today and that she’ll see me at home later. Even though Cassie and I being in the house together creates a fog of tension so thick you can see it, I’d rather have her home than somewhere else.
I think about calling her father, but I have more pressing issues to attend to. The thought of going to the nursing home after work today to sign the final papers is so terribly depressing I’m not sure I can do it. The thought of finishing the conversation Jack and I were having about sorting out the custody arrangements when last we spoke is even more so.
I shake off the owl wings from last night and go into the bathroom to get dressed. That possum was right. The lighting in here is horrible. Not inadequate, mind you, just unflattering. No one should see themselves this clearly. I argh at myself as I get dressed.
I haven’t told everyone at work about Dad. Just those people who know me well enough to see through my “everything is fine” façade. I took off Thursday and Friday for family business, but didn’t say what the business was. Things are touchy at best, and I don’t want to be that emotional, expendable employee when the cuts come—if I can help it. I may not be getting more photography work, but if I can prove myself to be an asset in other ways, perhaps they can keep me on for as long as possible. There will still be paperwork and follow-ups and other tasks I can do. It’s not what I want to do, but it’s something. Maybe everything won’t fall apart. Maybe. I’m not good at the “glass is half full” thing. Maybe I just need a smaller glass.
My phone vibrates, and the screen lights up with a picture of Lola making a sarcastic fish face. My heart skips a bit whenever Lola calls. I slip out of the meeting I’m in, grateful that the lights are off for a presentation, but I feel my boss’s eyes on me. She and I have known each other since we were kids, but that will only help me for so long.
I step into the hallway and answer the call. “Lola,” I start, but she cuts me off.
“I need help,” she says, and her voice is hushed but panicked.
“What’s going on?” I ask even as I’m rushing to my office for my purse, set to ditch the meeting and get to my sister at any cost.
This has happened before. She’ll be out at the grocery and forget how to get home. Or at a gallery showing and she’ll lose sense of the people around her and who she’s spoken to about what, or one of a dozen other scenarios that spell confusion and possible disaster.
I grab my bag and mime to someone else’s assistant that I have to leave.
“I can’t believe this,” Lola is saying in a loud whisper.
I’m running down five flights of steps—no time to wait for the elevator.
“Stay on the line,” I shout over the clang of my shoes on the metal steps. I get to the front door and whirl out onto the downtown street, trying to remember where I parked.
“Where are you?” I ask, spotting my car and sprinting for it.
“In the living room,” she says.
I stop short and someone bumps into me from behind.
“At your house?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, dumbfounded by my question.
I exhale hard, embarrassed at my overreaction, but relieved that she’s not calling from three states over having forgotten where she was going or why she was going there. I want to laugh and then strangle her for having that edge in her voice that made me think she was lost in the wilderness or being held at gunpoint.
“I’ll be right there,” I say to her nonetheless.
◆ ◆ ◆
Lola lives in a bungalow in the artist district a handful of blocks from where I work. Though my office is the business of art, her house is art itself. When I visit her, I feel like I’m walking into possibility, striding alongside what could be. I don’t have a clue what to do with it though.
She answers the door before I knock and puts her finger to her lips to tell me to be quiet. She motions me past a stack of canvases resting on the floor in the tiny foyer and into the living room where she picks up the remote. Her house smells like paint and coffee and flowers. She presses a button and a commercial that she’s TiVoed comes on. The volume is low, but I know it well. Everyone does. A cute, but goofy man wearing taped-up, science-geek glasses and pants that look like a raccoon ate holes in the knees, scratches under his arms and sings while he ambles up the perfectly manicured, neighborhood street toward the scene of a fender bender.
Your house is trashed, you’ve got a rash. Your car is broke, and it’s no joke. Call on us so there’s no fuss . . .
I make a face at her. She punches me in the arm and clicks off the television.
“You knew about this?” she asks.
“He makes you happy,” I say.
My sister is dating a very famous commercial spokesman for a very well-known insurance company. Everyone knows this—except her.
She waves her hands at me to keep me quiet and presses her finger to her lips again.
“He’s here?” I whisper. “Cassie didn’t mention anything when we talked the other day.”
Cassie rarely mentions anything when we talk.
“She mostly stayed in the guest room,” Lola says. “She barely knew I was here. Don’t take it personally.”
I tilt my head at Lola, and she makes an I’m sorry, I know that was dumb face. Then she waves away the discussion of Cassie.
“Two months I’ve been seeing the guy,” she whispers to me. “No idea who he was and now he’s in my kitchen.”
She points to the kitchen with panic in her face. I glance across the warmly lit living room and into the small, colorful kitchen. I remember helping her pick the colors: avocado, perfect plum, mango, and melon. My condo walls are white. Just White—that’s the actual name of the color.
“It’s not like he broke in,” I look back to her and whisper. “You’re dating him.”
“But I didn’t know who he was!” Lola says. She looks terrified.
I take her by the arm and walk her out the front door.
“Ok,” I say, smoothing down her pitch-black hair with my hands. “Let’s take stock. He’s not a stranger. He’s Chris. You’ve been dating for two months. You know him. He makes you really happy.”
“He’s the goofy guy from an annoying insurance commercial,” Lola says, her beautiful face twisted up.
“No,” I say. “That’s a character from TV.”
She breathes in and out very deliberately, nodding her head slowly. I mimic her actions until we’re both calmer.
“Does everyone know about this?” she asks.
“That he’s the guy from TV?”
She nods.
“Yes, sweetie,” I say. “Everyone knows.”
“Does he know that I don’t know?” she asks, her face so pitiful.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I do know he’s crazy about you. And he’s absolutely beautiful—no taped-up glasses, no rashes, no car crashes. Now let’s go back inside.”
I ease the door open like I’m sneaking up on a bear.
“There you are,” Chris says, standing in the living room with two full coffee mugs in his hand. “You ok?”
“She’s fine,” I say. I take one of the mugs and hand it to her. “Hi, Chris.”
He gives me that pressed-lip smile you give people when you know something bad is happening in their world and you know you can’t really do anything about it. Looking at him standing in her living room, I can see how Lola hadn’t recognized him, memory gaps aside.
In character, his sandy-brown hair is forced down with shiny, styling grease into a Poindexter that is the opposite of the loose waves and out-of-place curls he has this morning. With his faded jeans—albeit with a similar hole in one knee—a Ramones T-shirt and no glasses to obscure his thickly lashed blue eyes, anyone would be hard pressed to put two and two together. But it’s there in his voice and in the lopsided smile, and some synapse must have fired just so in Lola’s brain and bam—there the recognition rests.
“Good morning, Nina,” he says. “Let me pour you a cup. You’re staying for a bit, yes? Cream and sugar?”
I know Lola needs me to hang around for a while until the shock wears off.
“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”
He turns back toward the kitchen. Lola is holding her mug with both hands, looking down at the liquid like she doesn’t know what it is.
“Is this how I like my coffee?” she asks me, not looking up. “I can see there’s cream. Is there sugar? Did I tell him this? Why can he remember how I like my coffee and I can’t remember who he is? Why didn’t I recognize him?”
She inhales sharply at a new idea that seems worse.
“Or is this not the first time that I’m figuring all this out?” she asks, desperate panic rising up in her voice again. “Have I had this conversation with myself before?”
She finally looks at me, and I notice she has blue paint in her hair.
“Have we talked about this before?” she asks, looking lost.
“No, honey, we haven’t talked about this before,” I say and touch her face. “And yes, you like cream in your coffee. Relax. Stressing out makes the holes widen.”
“Stressing out makes the holes widen.” She repeats her own mantra that I have just said to her, and then says it once more. “Stressing out makes the holes widen.”
She sits down on the couch, and I take a spot in the armchair. She’s gotten used to forgetting little things. Like the fact that she keeps buying the same tea with the really cool picture on the box only to rediscover that she doesn’t like it once she’s home and made a cup and hates it and then can’t bear to waste it so she puts it in the “stuff for guests” drawer where there are already four boxes. But finding out that she’s been dating a known persona—and a goofy-insurance-commercial one at that, no matter how cute he is—is a bit much to take in before noon.
She sips her coffee. “It’s good,” she says. “I do like it.” She smiles and relaxes.
Chris comes back into the room and hands me a cup of coffee. Lola purses her lips and wrinkles her brow. Chris sits down on the couch beside her and sets his mug on the coffee table. “Sweetie,” he says, “why is your face all turned up like that?”
“Thinking,” she answers and looks at me.
“About your dad?” he says and nods.
I nod too.
“Sure,” Lola says.
She can do this. She’s been at it for years now. There are events that occur in your life from which you can never return, and you see what was as if looking through a foggy window. Everything is familiar, but inaccessible. Your previous life becomes a series of memorable events best forgotten. All you can do is move forward.
It’s not like she’s completely unable to function as a regular human being. She just has gaps and some are bigger than others, but she’s got her systems—her checks and balances—and they work most of the time.
After a while Lola winks at me, and I know she’s gotten her wits about her.
“Are you still going down to Elm Village today?” she asks me.
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I’ll go ahead and get that over with since I ditched work already. I want to get home before Cassie gets out of school. Did she say anything?”
“Sorry,” Lola says and looks like she really is. “I tried to bait her, but she was on to me. She’s just confused. It’s all really bad timing.”
The divorce, the funeral, the conversation about possibly moving in with Grandma. Aren’t all tragedies really bad timing?
“She’ll be ok,” Lola says. “We’ll all be ok.”
Chris puts his hand over Lola’s, and the protective nature of such a small gesture seems to illuminate too many layers of loss.
“Are you ok if I go?” I ask.
“I’ve got her,” Chris says and takes her hand fully.
He thinks we’re talking about Dad, and I’ve got to give him major points for taking such good care of my little sister. I wish I could tell him that she’d figured him out—just to warn him.
“Go,” Lola says. “I’m just being silly. You’re right. See you at Mom’s tomorrow.”
Lola nods her head toward Chris and winks again.
◆ ◆ ◆
There’s so much to do before a funeral that you can get caught up in the tasks and details and forget why you’re doing it. Like going to a movie with so many previews that for a moment you forget what you’re there to see. You can’t even remember if it’s something that will make you laugh or cry. I think it’s a purposeful misdirection, a stalling technique employed by the world at large to help you deal with loss one piece at a time.
It’s too cruel for the widow to have to go to the nursing home to collect the small number of things that once seemed so important and place them into the provided cardboard boxes that will likely never be unpacked. Lola and our brother, Ray, are spared by emotion and absence, in that order. But me, I am the appropriate blend of available, stable, and responsible.
At the nursing home, no one says the word “dead” to me. They all say “We’re so sorry for your loss,” like perhaps Dad has just been misplaced and will turn up underneath a couch cushion. It’s not their fault. There is nothing good to say and saying nothing would be worse.
A young nursing aide named Oliver helps me load Dad’s belongings onto a cart and take them out to my car. We don’t say anything to each other as we walk out into the sunlight and unpack the boxes into my trunk. I suppose he’s done this before, but I haven’t, and it feels like the asphalt is melting under my feet—a quicksand that only I am sinking into.
I thank him for helping me and extend my hand to shake. He takes it and presses my palm between both of his.
“Nate was an awesome guy,” Oliver says, referring to my father in a familiar way that makes me jealous. “I miss him already. I hate this part.”
I forget my own sorrow for a moment in the face of such honest emotion. What a weird job he has, caring for people he can’t possibly make well.
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean to press my other hand around his but instead I step closer to him and we embrace.
After the usual “hug time” expires, I feel Oliver attempt to step away, but I can’t let go. I’m clinging to him in some pathetic effort to stop time. If I move, the funeral will take place. Jack will finish moving out. Cassie might go with him. Someone else will park in Jack’s space, and I’ll be stuck photographing lemonade forever.
Oliver steps back in to the hug. The side of his neck and the shag of his blond hair are a hideaway, and I have no idea what’s come over me. I breathe in deep to get my wits back. I pull away from him enough to be face to face with him, and to my own amazement, I kiss him.
Right on the mouth.
Oh, my! What has come over me?
“I’m so sorry,” I say, gasping at the horror of this thing I have just done. I cover my offending lips with my hands, my face hot with the inappropriateness of my actions.
Guys—I just kissed my dead father’s ex-h
ealth care worker, who BTW is completely gorgeous and way too young for me!
This of course will get numerous likes and comments of You go, girl! and Living vicariously, more details please. But inevitably someone will respond with a Your father died? I’m so sorry, bringing it back full circle.
I shake my head and hands as if I can brush away the incident itself.
“Don’t worry about it,” Oliver says. He touches his fingers to his lips and furrows his brow slightly, but then quickly, he offers a comforting smile and says, “You’re sad. We’re sad, too.”
I feel like I should explain myself to Oliver, about my marriage, its demise, how desperately I need companionship, how much I fear losing my job, how awkward I feel around my mother, and how losing Dad feels like I’ve been orphaned. How worried I am that my brother won’t come to the funeral. How embarrassed I am that I just kissed a stranger.
I don’t say any of it.
“Thank you,” I manage, looking away from tranquil, soft green of Oliver’s eyes and then back up again. “Do they train you guys on the right things to say? I’d like to compliment you to your supervisor.”
“No,” he says with a smile on his face. “I just know how you feel. Sort of.”
I sense a story there, but it’s not one that this relative stranger and I have time to share, even if I did just kiss him. He has work, and I have everything that comes after this moment.
◆ ◆ ◆
When I get home, Jack is at the condo, clearing out the rest of his stuff.
“Is Cassie home?” I ask, looking at the clock over the microwave and realizing I’m later than I wanted to be.
“She’s in her room,” Jack says without making eye contact.
I want to peek in and make sure she isn’t packing too, but I don’t want to seem overbearing. There’s no good place for me to be, so I wander around like someone looking the place over, trying to decide if they want to buy it.
I stop by Cassie’s door, listening in case I can hear her. Kids used to be noisy—music up too loud, yelling into the phone, video game music on high. Now no one actually speaks to each other; music is piped in through earbuds, childhood has gone silent. I decide she must be in there even if there isn’t much evidence of her presence and slink off to the kitchen.
The Lemonade Year Page 2