“What if she doesn’t want me to?” He looks at me, not like my scary and tortured older brother, but like a man desperate for answers to the questions he doesn’t even know to ask.
“She wouldn’t have told you about Michael if she didn’t want you to come around.”
“Maybe she just wants money,” he says and breaks his hand loose from mine.
“Ray, sweetie,” I say. “She likely heard about Dad getting sick and had one of those good old-fashioned changes of heart. Now drive back over to the park and say hello.”
Ray drives me back home instead.
◆ ◆ ◆
Ray didn’t come home from his first year at college until Christmas. He had wanted to join the Marines, but Dad told him to go to school for a year and think about it. Dad was afraid the service might just be a way for Ray to skip town—to go off some place where someone would yell and punish him for all the things they didn’t even know he held himself accountable for. Dad was afraid that Ray would get stupid and jump in front of bullet and die with a smile on his face, thinking himself even.
But Ray was eighteen and determined to begin his descent into self-destruction. He came home that winter with a tattoo of the devil on his shoulder, fire shooting from its mouth and running down the length of Ray’s arm. Mom cried; Dad asked if it was real and when Ray answered yes, simply shook his head and went back to the newspaper. I asked if it hurt, for lack of knowing what else to say.
“Not enough,” Ray had said.
Lola ran her hand across it like she was touching something beautiful and delicate. She kissed the devil on his fire-breathing mouth. Ray looked at her, his face hard and jaw clenched, but for one moment something pained and yet relieved flickered in his eyes. Later, Lola sketched a replica of the tattoo and hung it in her room.
By the time Lola attended the same college Ray had gone too, his arms were covered in ink and his eyes were empty. He dropped out before he finished, got arrested a number of times, and spent more nights in jail than he had spent days in class.
He visited Lola at school a few times. When he did, she would call me, two states over where I was in school. I wanted to see Ray, but I used the distance as an excuse not to. I was afraid to see what he had become.
I remember one of the first times Ray had stormed out of the house, leaving the rest of us to wonder if he’d be back. I remember Dad sitting on the floor outside Ray’s room. I watched him through a compact mirror I held out around the corner. I could see him in the little circle of silver. He was whispering, and then he made the sign of the cross. We hadn’t been to church in years. I looked at my Hello Kitty clock. It was three in the morning. I heard Ray’s car in the driveway and Dad jumped to his feet. Now there were just legs in the mirror. They started back down the hall to my parents’ room, and then they returned.
The car door shut. The front door opened. I saw legs turn in a circle of indecision. I tilted the mirror up and saw hands ball into a fist, then relax. I heard the whispering again and tilted the mirror back to his legs so that I wouldn’t see his hands cross over his chest again.
I heard Ray walking down the hall. His footsteps were loud and heavy like he could break the house down one step at a time. I saw his legs stop beside Dad’s, and I tilted the mirror up, up, trying to find their faces. Dad reached out to Ray, tried to put his hand on Ray’s arm. Ray jerked away.
“You’re drunk,” Dad had said.
“I’m back,” Ray nearly spat the words out. “So don’t give me a hard time.”
“Give me the keys,” Dad said, his voice as angry as his fear would allow.
“They’re on the kitchen table.” Ray reached for the doorknob.
“Apologize to your mother in the morning,” Dad said.
“Why? She doesn’t even know I was gone.” Ray opened the door and disappeared.
I tilted the mirror up again and could see the side of Dad’s face. His lips were moving, but there was no sound. He slid out of view. I moved the mirror around, looking for him. Down, to the left, down and over. He was sitting on the floor beside the door to Ray’s room with his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking.
10
I reluctantly drop off Cassie at Jack’s office. Another weekend with her dad. I want to say something, but I’m well aware that the less I say right now the better off we’ll all be in the future. Still, Cassie looks like she’s hoping for something when she tells me good-bye. If I knew the right words, I would say them.
“Have fun.”
“Yeah,” she says. “This is real fun.”
This is what they mean when they say words hurt. She sighs heavily and slams the car door once she’s out. I roll the window down to call out to her, but she’s already walking away without a glance back.
I drive over to Lola’s to take her to the airport to pick up Chris. He’s been racking up the frequent-flier miles between LA and Lola. While we’re waiting, she tells me she had a dream where she forgot who he was. Not just that he was the guy on TV, but that when she saw him, she didn’t recognize him as Chris. She said she was searching and searching for him in her dream and even asked him if he’d seen her boyfriend. To which he’d answered, “Of course, yes, it’s me.”
“And then there were huge televisions all around and the commercials were playing on them,” she says as we wait in the baggage claim. “I’m pointing at the screen saying ‘There he is, that’s him,’ but on television, another actor is playing the part and the real Chris was pleading with me to remember him.”
“It was just a dream,” I say, smoothing down her thick, dark hair. “As soon as you see his face, you’ll fly right to him.”
“‘Remember me,’” she says, pleading. “That’s what he kept saying—‘Remember me.’”
“You will,” I say.
“Just don’t let some stranger come up and kiss me.”
“I’d like to promise you that,” I say. “But you know how I am about kissing strangers.”
“Speaking of the OJH,” she says, “how do you feel about Cassie spending so much time at Jack’s place?”
“The OJH?”
“Orange Juice Hottie,” she says and elbows me gently in the ribs.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. And what does that have to do with Cassie going to Jack’s place?”
“Just opening up the door if you want to talk is all,” she says.
I start to tell her what’s going on, but suddenly she’s rereading her flight information and staring at the Arrivals screen.
The baggage claim has always seemed a very anxious place to me. People stake their spot and await their luggage, watching as it circles closer and closer to them. You see them reach out as if to grab it, but it’s still too far away so their hand goes back to their side. Then closer and closer until they jerk forward in a panic to pick it up before it passes them by because what if it doesn’t come back around and the honor system of “take only the bag you brought” breaks down and their underwear is lost forever.
Occasionally a person who can’t bear the strain of it all will weave in and out, looking for their bag, frantic to get it before someone else snatches it up, calling out to no one in particular, “That’s mine there, with the red tag, that’s mine.”
“Oh, look,” Lola says, pointing to a screen and holding up her note page. “His flight is in.”
It’s not long before most of the people standing around us put their cell phones to their ears. All of them, including Lola, getting a call that a loved is now “walking down the hall past the A gates, ok, now I’m passing that panini place I told you about, and I can see the baggage claim sign, ok, now I see you.”
Chris comes into view.
“I do remember him,” Lola says to me and rushes forward to hug him.
I nod at Chris when he sees me, and the three of us stake our spot at the baggage wheel
. Surely between the three of us, we’ll be able to retrieve one bag. Lola and Chris are deep in conversation. I know she’s telling him about the dream. He shakes his head and smiles at her. People across the way look at Chris and then back to each other and whisper to a third person who looks up quickly and then away just as quickly.
“That’s why I should do carry-on,” Chris says, having seen them looking.
Lola pokes him in the side, and he smiles. Bags begin to drop out of the hole and people tense up, ready, shifting slightly on their feet like football players at the line of scrimmage.
I picture Oliver slipping down the baggage ramp, sitting cross-legged on the conveyor belt between a big blue Samsonite bag and the hard black case of a tuba. Who plays the tuba? I imagine him riding around toward me. I see him. He sees me. I’m waiting, anxious. He’s almost to me, and then some beautiful, young weaver comes along, pushing me aside, yelling, “That one’s mine. That one there with the nice hands and soft lips. That one’s mine.”
I imagine that I’m about to star in Baggage Claim Cage Fight, but then I look at her and her young skin and trim waist, her perfect hair and teeth, and I realize she’s right. She grabs Oliver off the conveyor belt and off they go.
Guys—someone grabbed my bag at the airport.
On an adjacent belt from another flight, I picture Jack going around. But he’s walking on the belt like it’s a people mover. He steps over a paisley roller bag and finds his way off without someone having to reach out their hands for him. I picture him waving to me and leaving the airport by himself, without need of me or being claimed by anyone else.
“There’s mine,” Chris says, breaking my thoughts.
He lifts his bag off the belt with no detectable anxiety at all, and we head for the door.
I look back at the conveyor belt, trying to see where the imaginary pretty young thing took the imaginary Oliver. I see him, but not her. He’s standing beside the belt alone. He starts lifting the bags off the belt and handing them to the people they belong to. I wait for him to look up at me. He does, then winks at me, then goes back to his work.
I realize I’m just standing there, looking at the baggage claim while Lola and Chris move away without me. I hurry to catch up.
“Do you remember where you parked?” Chris asks Lola as casually as anyone would ask that question.
Lola unfolds the pink Post-it Note on which she has written the space number and sticks it to her forehead.
“Very funny,” Chris says and takes the note off. “I’m sure Nina would have remembered.”
“Nina’s in la-la land,” Lola says.
“What?” I ask, in that stalling sort of way people do when they know what you said, but they’re buying a few more seconds to think about how to reply.
They ignore me.
We get to the car and Chris loads his bag. Lola hands him her car keys. I ride in the backseat and listen to the rest of their conversation. It takes my mind off people on conveyor belts.
“So, what did you tell you me you did when we met?” Lola asks Chris. “What were you out here for anyway?”
“My cousin’s wedding,” Chris says, circling through the parking garage, looking for the way out. “I figured I’d never get to see you again. It was amazing talking to someone who didn’t know me. Who didn’t see me as ‘that guy from the commercials.’ So I didn’t tell you what I did. I was afraid you thought I was being evasive because I kept changing the subject.”
“You were acting strangely,” Lola says. “Good thing you’re so good-looking.”
Chris reaches over and touches her face. “I figured I’d get one evening with you and then fly back out and never see you again.”
“Seriously?” I feign insult on Lola’s behalf. “One date and then you’d get back on a plane to California with an ‘I’ll call you, babe’ as a good-bye?”
“No,” he says and looks at Lola. “I knew there was no way I was going to get that lucky. Not with someone who looked like you. Not to mention that you had already been introduced to me as the artist who did the mural at the gallery where the reception was being held.”
Chris had been the best man and Lola was a friend of a friend of the bride. Since she had done all the art at the reception location, she was pretty much asked to attend as a name that could be dropped. Local fame has its benefits.
“Why didn’t you try to play the Hollywood actor card?” I ask.
“Clearly, you hadn’t seen the commercials,” he says to Lola. “And that would have been a spin job worthy of D.C.”
“They’re not that bad,” Lola says.
But they sort of are.
“You have to say that because you’re dating me,” he says. “Anyway, I just wanted a fresh start. Then you gave me your number and when I called the next morning before I got on the plane, you answered. I was amazed that the number wasn’t a fake.”
“That could have gone either way,” Lola says. “I must have really wanted you to call if I remembered my number without looking.”
“You’re not that bad,” he says.
But she sort of is, sometimes.
“You’re just saying that because you’re dating me,” she says, mirroring his comment.
We stop at a red light. “No, I say that because I love you.”
I hear Lola inhale sharply. The light turns green, but Lola and Chris are kissing. Horns blare behind us, and I have to tap Chris’s shoulder to get him off Lola and back on the road.
I find myself surprised that Jack crosses my mind when I watch Lola and Chris. We used to be like that. I guess all couples used to be. I feel a pang of confusion that I push aside as fast as thoughts of Oliver will allow.
I realize I need to talk to Oliver and I need to do it quickly. After Lola and Chris are home and I’m set free, I head to Oliver’s house. After a few unanswered knocks on the door, I determine he’s not home. Taking a chance, I head to the nursing home to see if he’s at work.
I tell the front desk attendant that I came to see if all my father’s affairs have been settled, all bills paid. Truth is, I’m like a desperate teenager trying to pull the “I can’t believe I bumped into you here” game with Oliver.
I linger in the hall longer than necessary, trying to see Oliver without being seen. Nothing seems to have changed since Dad was here. Except that I don’t belong. I’m like a character who has wandered into the wrong play. The players look familiar and the set design is the same, but none of my lines match any of the cues.
In a room on the opposite side of the hall from Dad’s, a man in his early fifties is talking to an older woman in a wheelchair. He’s kneeling in front of her like he’s proposing—down on one knee, his hands around hers. He tilts his head at an awkward angle, searching out her eyes buried in wrinkles and unfocused on the present world.
“I just wanted to stop in and see you before we move,” he says very loudly, overpronouncing each word. “It was good to say hello, Aunt Millie.”
What he’s really saying is good-bye. She’s being left behind, put on the shelf of memory like one already gone.
“Hello, Nina,” Mr. Cole says from the doorframe behind me.
I turn toward my dad’s old roommate. He motions me inside and wheels himself back to his corner of the world.
“Hi, Mr. Cole.”
“Cricket,” he corrects me.
I nod and sit on the edge of his bed. Dad’s bed has been stripped, sterilized, and remade with fresh linens. He’s been removed so someone new can take his place.
“How have you been?” It’s a stupid question to ask someone in a place like this but it’s out and I can’t reel it back in.
“Still got the place to myself,” he says. His speech remains jagged, but I can understand him now that I’m listening. “Almost got me a roomie, but his wife wanted him closer to the nurse’s desk. I
t’s not the same without Nate here.”
“No, it isn’t.” I feel my throat tightening.
“Dumb thing to say, I guess,” Cricket says.
We sit for a minute in the pseudo silence of the nursing home—things buzzing and announcements being made. Stand Up is starting in the front room. Whatever that means.
“It’s good to see you again,” I say to Cricket, meaning the sentiment wholeheartedly, but aware that my mind is somewhere else.
“Are you ok?” he asks, seeing through me.
My eyes start to water. No. I’m not ok.
“Of course not,” he answers for me and puts his hand on my knee like I’m a child.
The gesture comforts me and breaks my heart at the same time. I don’t know where to start, what to say, what to leave out. I shake my head and try not to cry, but I fail miserably. He patiently gives me time to collect myself.
“It’s just everything,” I say lamely. “It’s all been so weird. Not just Dad. You know—life.” I’m stammering nonsense. “I just wish I knew something. Anything. Why, when. I don’t know.”
Cricket reaches his hand to mine. The skin on his arm is soft and wrinkled. His knuckles are too big and his veins too blue. Yet, the warm understanding of his palm is, I imagine, the same as it always was.
“No one knows anything, Nina,” he says, “Life’s a ride. It’s a roller coaster, and you can’t really see anything but the twist or drop that you’re on. And sometimes it’s better that way.”
I nod. We sit for a minute while he catches his breath and I process his wisdom.
“It won’t do you any good to complain,” he says. “No good to wish it was different, that it was faster, slower, that you were in the front car, that the people behind you wouldn’t scream so loud.” Cricket breathes deeply; his talking to me is a labor of love.
A nurse comes in to administer his medicines. She smiles at me, tilting her head like she’s trying to remember where she knows me from. So many people come and go that once gone, they’re easily forgotten. Cricket swallows all his medicine, and the nurse returns to her cart.
The Lemonade Year Page 15