I clutch the pool bag tighter. I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready for this.
“Put some clothes on, kid,” I yell across the pool at the boy.
Cassie rolls her eyes and says to me in overly pronounced disgust, “You are so embarrassing.”
Cassie stomps away toward the locker room, leaving me feeling strangely satisfied. When Swimming-Pool Boy looks over at me from the other side of the pool, I point at him sharply. He points at himself in return, and although I know I should quit while I’m ahead—if I am—I can’t help myself.
“Yeah, you,” I yell, like a tough guy, like a thug.
Some of the other parents are looking at me now, and there’s nothing left to do but take my useless polka-dotted bag and run for safety—wherever that is.
I feel like I’m gasping for air, and it reminds me of Dad teaching me how to swim.
“What if I drown?” I had asked. I was in water over my head. Dad was holding me up under my belly, my hands and legs sticking straight out like Superman in a wet sky.
“Life is full of what ifs,” he said, not really answering me as he moved me through the blue-green water.
Up on the shore, Lola was helping Mom set up a picnic lunch. Ray pitched rocks into the lake. It would still be years before one of them would be broken and the other would be lost to his guilt, but in that moment, such things were impossible.
“It’s about time you learned to swim,” Dad said.
He moved one hand out from under me. He smiled, and I wasn’t sure if he thought I didn’t notice the difference or if he was just encouraging me. Either way, I was a little less supported and a little freer to sink or swim. My legs began to lower, and I kicked them out a little harder.
“It’s all in the effort,” he said.
Again my legs lowered. Again I kicked out. Continuous effort. One attempt does not automatically propel you forward. Sinking is still an option.
Leaving the pool, Cassie tries to get in the elevator without me, but I stick my hand between the closing doors and force them to reopen. She sighs at me and takes a call when her phone rings. I can tell that it’s Jack, but I don’t ask her about it. Once we’re back inside our place, she tosses her things on the living room floor and speaks to me.
“That was Dad,” she says. “He wants to know if I can spend the weekend with him. He wants me to help him pick out furniture for his new place.”
I feel like I’ve stepped into another dimension where my worst nightmares are par for the course.
“I guess that’s ok,” I say.
“Especially since all you let him take was his recliner,” Cassie says. “He doesn’t even have a bed.”
I want to say that sleeping in someone else’s bed isn’t a problem for him, but she doesn’t know why we split up. Besides, that isn’t the whole story anyway, so saying it wouldn’t be fair. But not saying anything leaves her to choose sides, to make uninformed decisions, to flail around her own life trying to figure out why things changed.
“So, he really did rent a new place,” I say, setting my things on the table by the door and closing it slowly behind me. He said he had, but I figured it was just a ploy.
I thought he wanted us to get back together. Perhaps he took my shutting the office door on him as my answer.
“All I know is he moved out of his friend’s house and has a new apartment,” she says, going into the kitchen and leaving me in the living room.
I sneak in after her.
“What did he say?” I ask. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know.” She pulls out a box of Lucky Charms and some milk. “He didn’t say anything.”
“Will he be living there by himself?” I ask, trying not to sound like I’m asking what I’m asking.
“I’ll be there,” she says and stuffs her mouth with cereal.
I thought I was worried about some other woman, but this is worse.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “You mean for the weekend? Right?”
“I don’t know,” she says between bites. “We’ll see how it goes.”
I am so still that I stop breathing.
“You wanted to take time for yourself, right?” she asks. It’s her voice, but they’re Jack’s words. “You should do that. Me and Dad will be fine on our own. If you want to kiss some young guy you don’t even know, it’s not our place to stop you.”
She stares at me while she eats her Lucky Charms. I guess I was wrong about Jack wanting me to reconsider. Jack knows that she will challenge me with his words. He wants me to yell at her and drive her away.
“Sure,” I say, infuriated and sick to my stomach. “You can stay with Dad this weekend.”
“Great,” she says. “I might go ahead and take some things over to his place. Did you let him take enough dishes and things for me too, or should I pack those?”
I’m on a high-wire tightrope being heckled by someone who thinks I like it up here.
“I’m not in charge of your father,” I say. “He makes his own decisions. He’s the one who decided to leave, Cassie.”
She stands up abruptly from the table.
“No, he didn’t,” she says, her anger suddenly spilling over her cheeks in wet streaks. “I heard you tell him to get out. You did this. You did it. I heard him say he didn’t want to go. I heard it, Mother.”
She stands there with her hands on her bikini-clad hips, waiting for me to respond. Daring me to.
“Cassie,” I say, hating this for her. “You don’t know the whole story, sweetie. I don’t want things to be like this either, but they are.”
“You know what else I heard?” she asks and I’m fearful. “I heard Dad crying out here that night when he was sleeping on the couch. Did you hear that? Did you even care?”
My foot slips off the tightrope.
“Guilty people cry too, Cassie,” I say, knowing I’m about to go too far. “And your father’s got a lot of room to talk about kissing other people.”
She looks at me and then down at the floor. I know she knows what I mean, and I hate that I’m going back on my agreement with Jack to keep the details private—but I’m not the one who threw the first stone here. I’m just lobbing them back is all.
“I love you, Cassie,” I say. “I’m sorry about this. I really am.”
“Whatever,” she says and pulls out her phone. She taps a message to someone and her phone chirps a reply. “Dad will be right over. I’ll get my things and wait for him out front.”
She stalks off to her bedroom. In a few minutes she comes back out, dressed, and carrying a duffel bag packed so tight it won’t even zip closed.
8
I imagine posting on Facebook: Today we are burying my father’s ashes.
What?
Aren’t you supposed to sprinkle them over the ocean or something?
This was your mother’s idea, I take it?
I pick up Cassie from school, promising to take her shopping later if she agrees not to make a fuss. Mostly, I’m just thankful that she came home after the weekend with Jack.
“Which includes not rolling your eyes,” I say to her as we park the car in the small lot outside the iron gates. Why do cemeteries have such security measures anyway? Are they trying to keep people out or in?
Cassie exhales purposefully and rolls her eyes.
“Will Uncle Ray be here?” she asks.
“Supposedly,” I say and kill the engine. I turn toward her before she can pull the door handle. “Your Uncle Ray is good guy. I don’t want you to make assumptions based on what you know about him.”
“How could I?” she asks, her face set to challenge whatever I say. “No one talks about him, so I don’t know anything at all.”
“Well,” I say, searching for an excuse, “you were really young when he went to prison.”
“He existed before h
e went to prison, you know,” she says.
Yeah, he did.
“Ray usually chose to keep a low profile,” I say, deciding there’s nothing I can explain right now. “He could have come around. He didn’t.”
“Did you ever stop to wonder why?” she says, as if she knows.
“Always,” I answer, not trying to be snotty, but not appreciating the tone I’m getting from my teenage daughter concerning things she doesn’t understand.
Cassie reaches for the door. “Well, I think he’s cool. I like all the tattoos. I like that he broke free from this family. I wish I could.”
“I don’t think I’d call what Ray did ‘breaking free,’” I say.
“You’re not in charge of everyone else’s perception,” she says.
She gets out of the car and closes the door. I roll my eyes, but only to counteract a very mature observation that frightens me a little.
Mom, Lola, and Ray are already at the gravesite. Mom looks perfectly presentable, apart from the men’s tie she’s draped around her neck like a scarf and the urn she holds in the crook of her arm like a cradled baby.
“This is weird,” Cassie says, loudly enough to be heard. “Do I have to be here?”
“If I have to, you do too, kiddo,” Ray says and folds his arms in front of him. He winks at her to let her know he’s just joking.
Cassie bites at her lip and steps closer to Ray. She doesn’t know him, not really. She hasn’t seen him since she was about seven years old. All she knew then was that her uncle had been in jail, and then he’d disappeared and now he was back. She was right—she deserved more of an explanation.
“Hey, Cass,” Lola says and pulls Cassie into a side-by-side hug.
“Hey, Aunt Lola.” Cassie nuzzles into her side.
The May sky has given way to spring full stop, growing a deeper shade of blue each day as if it’s remembering what it once was and could be again.
“Why are we doing this?” I ask, deep in a corner of the cemetery, far from the living sounds of traffic and car radios, deep in the world of the dead and gone away.
“This is your father’s burial plot.” Mom sweeps one hand around like she’s showing off some fabulous gift on a game show. And what do we have for Nate? That’s right; it’s a hole in the ground. In her other hand she holds Dad’s ashes in a copper urn.
“Dad was cremated,” Ray says matter-of-factly.
“I know that,” Mom says, placing her free hand on her hip. “It’s just that we have these plots. Mine’s over there.”
She points to the grass to the side of where we’re standing. There’s a large tombstone that bears both of their names, each of their birth dates, a dash, and then nothing.
“I don’t like that,” Lola says. “You don’t have one for us out here somewhere do you?”
“Be reasonable,” Mom says and sighs.
I look at the burial crew waiting nonchalantly off to the side.
Ray looks uncomfortable—his arms folded in front of him, tattoos washing down his arm like a waterfall that trickles off his fingers. He’s shifting his weight back and forth, as if ready to sprint into the distance as soon as no one is looking.
“Anyway,” Mom says with a weird permasmile across her face. “I was thinking we should bury the ashes here. That way everyone gets what they want.”
Ray shoves his hands deep into his pockets. “Let’s get this nightmare started.”
Thankfully it’s just us at the cemetery—just us and the grave digging crew, of course, and a couple of other folks who must have something to do with this sort of thing. The guy with the shovel jabs it into the grass by his feet, probably eager to get this over with as well.
Dad always loved this time of year. The time when the world decided to start again. He looked forward to turning the earth over and sowing seeds. This was not going to be like that. This is not what Dad would want. He didn’t want to be trapped in a body that didn’t work, and he wouldn’t want to be trapped in a plot in this place of never after.
“Are you taking anything?” I ask Mom, not really sure how to ask such a question in a tactful way and wondering if I should be on something myself.
“Of course not, silly.” She bends down to pull a stray weed. “You know how I feel about drugs.”
“I didn’t mean are you on something,” I say and sigh and wonder if her slipups in the days leading to the funeral have not come to an end. “I meant like— Never mind. I don’t like the idea of burying the ashes. It seems redundant at best and weird at worst.”
“Nina,” Mom says, sounding perky, but looking a little off the deep end. “You’re too opinionated for your own good. Besides, it’s a lot less digging this way.”
“Grandma,” Cassie says, sounding appalled.
I reach out to comfort her but Ray has already put his arm around her. For a moment, I think about Ray and Lola and the tight little unit they made back then. The unit I wasn’t a part of. I try to make myself angry at Ray for trying to steal Cassie, but I can’t. She needs something that neither Jack nor I can offer her at the moment. Stability. If she finds it in the thought of Ray, then I suppose that’s good for both of them.
“Well, poo,” Mom says, still cradling Dad’s urn in her arms. “I didn’t think about having Reverend Mason out to say a few words.”
“I’ve got a few words I could say,” Ray says.
I suspect he might have stopped by the local brewery before meeting us here. I can’t fault him.
“Nina,” Lola says, innocent and devious at the same time, “why don’t you say something?”
“Yeah, Nina,” Ray says and winks at Cassie. “Let’s hear what you have to say.”
I step forward, nodding at the cemetery crew who are both amused and uncomfortable. Ray whispers something into Cassie’s ear and she smiles. She looks at me and wipes the emotion off her face.
“Here we are,” I say, frustrated. “At Dad’s hole in the ground. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. A little redundant, but good and disposed of nonetheless.”
“Nina,” Mom scolds like I’ve said a curse word during a Christmas prayer.
Ray laughs, and Lola nudges me in the arm. But I’m irritable. Here Dad is, thrown down a hole at the end of it all.
“Say something nice.” Mom dabs at a tear that isn’t in her eye.
“Ok.” I think for a moment. “Here’s to Dad’s new resting place. There wasn’t enough room for him on the mantel anyway.”
“Here, here,” Ray says in an imaginary toast.
Cassie giggles. I know she’s reacting to Ray, but it was my unintentional joke so perhaps there’s a little warmth in her smile for me, too.
“This is good,” Lola says, holding her hands out, making a mock frame with her fingers like she’s deciding what part of this atrocity to capture on canvas.
“Children,” Mom snaps at us. “Take this seriously.”
Cassie looks at me, gleeful that I’ve been scolded.
The cemetery crew shifts around, and the guy with the shovel spades a new spot in the dirt. They look away when my eyes move over to them. Mom nods and hands the urn to someone official-looking.
“Should we say a prayer or something?” Mom asks the cemetery representative.
“I’ll do that for you,” he says.
The man says some words, and I feel like the hole is widening, not just for Dad, but for all of us. The air around my feet tugs at me like an undertow. It’s like standing on the seashore at the edge of the waves where the water is pulling the sand out from under your feet. You look down as the wave recedes and you’re standing in two little holes, your toes gripping the wet earth, holding you in place.
After a few minutes, the ceremony is over. Cassie skips back down to the car where she and Lola giggle about something unknown to me. Ray sighs loudly and walks back toward
his car parked at the other edge of the cemetery. He gets in the driver’s seat but just sits there. I glance at Mom. She looks concerned but not anxious.
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll leave?” I ask.
“No,” she says with certainty. “I have the keys.”
“You don’t think he can hot-wire that thing if he wants to?” I ask.
“Not all people who have been in prison can hot-wire cars, sweetie,” she says, seriously. “Don’t make generalizations.”
I look over at the car sitting quiet in the parking space.
We’re all walking on eggshells around Ray. No one wants to be the one to scare him off. He looks out the car window and catches us looking at him. Mom waves.
“Your brother seems to have something on his mind,” Mom says. “Do you think it’s just your father’s passing? I guess he must feel strange being back after all this time.”
“Probably,” I lie and try to change the subject from the myriad reasons Ray looks upset.
“I’m sure it will all work out,” she says and winks at me.
Mom thanks the crew and then turns away. I watch her sidestep the gravesites as she makes her way to where Ray is sitting behind the wheel. She grows smaller and smaller as the laws of perspective dictate, yet she doesn’t seem to be getting any farther away.
“Have you ever done anything like this before?” I ask one of the diggers.
“Honey,” he says, “you wouldn’t believe what’s buried out here. Got a guy who had himself buried with a monkey. Monkey was already in there.” He laughs and turns away.
Cassie comes sprinting back to me to ask if she can go to Lola’s house for the evening.
“I thought you wanted to go to the mall,” I say, hopeful that she’ll remember our plans and still want to keep them.
“Aunt Lola can take me,” she says. “Or maybe we’ll just hang out and watch Netflix. I’ll call you later. Tomorrow is Saturday anyway.”
“Ok,” I say and bob my head up and down like my throat isn’t burning and my chest isn’t aching.
I miss you. Don’t leave me. I want to scream out. Choose me, choose me. It’s childish, but I can’t help it.
The Lemonade Year Page 11