The Lemonade Year

by Amy Willoughby-Burle

  “I just feel out of control,” I say.

  “Nothing to do but hold on tight when it gets scary,” Cricket says and coughs. “You got to take a minute and breathe when you can and enjoy the moment, understand?”

  “Thank you, Cricket,” I manage to say through the knot in my throat.

  He squeezes my hand and smiles at me. “You can come back and see me.”

  “I will.”

  “Before this place takes the last of me,” he says.

  I offer a weak smile, not sure whether to hope that his is a slow decline or a quick one. This place seems like a holding tank, and I don’t know if the folks here are looking for the quickest way out or just hoping for another day.

  I decide that my eyes are too red and puffy to seek out Oliver, so I head for the exit. I make it as far as the lobby, and just when I think I will escape unnoticed, the Universe delivers him.

  “Hi,” Oliver says, having seen me first, catching me off guard.

  “Hi,” I say. My hands go up to fuss around my eyes, trying to hide my emotion.

  “What’s wrong?” he says in a very endearing rush toward me.

  “Nothing,” I lie.

  “You look sad.” He reaches out like he means to touch me, but draws back, looking around nervously. “What happened?”

  People in scrubs blur by us, some rushing to the next task, others stopping to talk with the residents trapped in wheelchairs—stuck in a place they never thought they’d be.

  “Nothing,” I say, fidgeting with my shirt. “I’m fine.”

  “Then what’s wrong with your face?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with my face,” I say defiantly. “This is what my face always looks like.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he says and steps closer after all. “What are you doing here? Is everything ok?”

  “Trying to accidently run into you,” I say, sheepishly. “I think I came here to break up with you.”

  “Oh.” He steps back. The look on his face is somewhere between sad and relieved. “Are you still going to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I want to grab hold of him, kiss him, feel him against me. If I’m picking up the cues of electricity correctly, he wants the same thing, but he doesn’t move toward me as usual, and as usual I’m not sure how to read that.

  He asks in a whisper, “Want to come over later and we can talk about it? If you still want to end it, I’ll understand.”

  This is the part of the roller coaster that’s scary, the part that corkscrews around so I can’t see what’s coming next

  “Do you want me to want to end it?” I ask. “I can’t read you at all. I know I’m out of practice with the dating stuff, but you’re a closed book.”

  “I know, Nina,” he says and takes my hand. “I don’t know how to say no to you.”

  “Should you?” I ask, concerned.

  “It’s not about should.” He sighs. “Come over tonight. We’ll talk.”

  We step away from each other as the coming and going of the world corkscrews around us.

  Later, when he answers the door, I can’t help myself, I immediately lean in to kiss him. He pulls us both inside and closes the door with his foot. He kisses me again and slides his hands under the bottom of my shirt, but as soon as his fingers find the skin at the base of my ribs, he jerks his hands away like he’s touched an open flame.

  I lift my hands up and back like I’m being held up. This is not the response I’m used to.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says and runs his hands through his hair. “This is embarrassing.”

  “A little,” I say, feeling my cheeks flush with heat.

  He shakes his head and takes hold of my hand. “Believe me when I say it’s not you, it’s me.”

  “In that case,” I say lightly, “I think I’m supposed to say that I think you’re a bit of a tease.”

  He laughs out loud and then exhales roughly. “I’m just a little confused is all. You’ve got me rattled. This was hard enough without you.”

  This?

  “Should I apologize?” I ask. “Or be flattered?”

  “Flattered.” He lifts my hand to his lips, kissing it softly. “Forgive me?”

  I have no idea what I’m forgiving him for or what he has to be confused about. I want to know, but whatever it is will complicate things—that much I’m sure of. So I let it alone.

  “Chinese food?” he asks suddenly and pulls me away from the door and into the living room.

  “Sure,” I say.

  He points to the couch and rushes from the room. I stand in the middle of the living room at a loss. I blow a slow, hard breath through my lips, causing my cheeks to bulge out in confusion of my own.

  He returns quickly with two white boxes of leftover Chinese food. Again, feeding me instead.

  “I’m sorry,” he says as he sits on the arm of the couch. “This is all I have to offer right now.”

  I sit on the couch beside him, unsure of why what didn’t just happen didn’t happen. Unsure, but oddly relieved. There is still a band around my finger and a man I once loved who is still sort of in my life and a daughter caught somewhere in the middle. Oliver’s uncertainty may be saving me from a huge mistake.

  “I’m starving,” I say and take a box. “It’s perfect.”

  He slides down the arm of the couch and wiggles in beside me.

  We eat, sharing his Kung Pao chicken and my beef and broccoli. He moves in to kiss me and I pull away.

  “I have Kung Pao broccoli breath,” I say and cover my mouth.

  He laughs out loud. Being with him is easy. Confusing, but easy.

  “So do I,” he says and kisses me anyway.

  I see the lines he’s drawn—or perhaps the ones he doesn’t want to cross. Kissing—yes. More—no. For now at least.

  He steals away to the kitchen and comes back with two glasses of lemonade.

  “I can’t stop drinking it now,” he says. “I promise it’s not spiked.”

  We sit on the couch for a long time and I tell him about Ray and Lola—the easy parts at least. I tell him about work and Mom. Cassie. More details about the lemonade book.

  “I won’t touch your lemons from now on,” he says and laughs. “I promise.”

  “I might be a lemon. You sure you want this?”

  “Are you?” Oliver asks, taking my hand. “If you think there’s a chance this”—he twists my wedding ring between his fingers—“could work out, if you want it to work out, I mean, I won’t get in the way.”

  “What about you?” I ask Oliver, deflecting as usual. “What am I up against? Some pretty young thing from work, no doubt. You seem torn, to put it mildly. Who’s my competition?”

  He snorts out a little smile, then shakes his head and looks down. He closes his eyes so it looks like he’s praying or something equally strange in this moment. Then he gently shakes it off, whatever it is, opens his eyes, and looks at me.

  “No pretty young thing from work,” he says. “Do you have to get home soon? Cassie?”

  “She’s at her dad’s actually. I’m sort of dreading going home to the empty condo, to be honest.”

  “Then don’t. Stay here and take more pictures of lemons. I’ll run over to the market and pick some up. I make a mean breakfast. Send you off to work with a smile.”

  Normally, that implies sex. In this case, I really think he means eggs and bacon.

  “You have coffee?”

  “Plenty,” he says.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  I stay. Morning sunlight settles in through the window across the room, licking at the foot of the bed like tickling toes. I roll over expecting Oliver but he isn’t there. We stayed up late into the night talking. I remember that sweet, sleepy feeling settling over me—eyelids growing heavier and heavier, body sinking
deeper and deeper into the couch. The next thing I knew, it was morning. I sit up in Oliver’s bed and wonder what in the world I’m doing.

  “You’re still here,” Oliver says, peeking into the room.

  “As requested,” I say.

  He’s wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt and his hair is mussed. He sits on the bed and kisses my forehead. I’m grateful for his passing over my lips and morning breath. He holds up one finger, asking me to wait, and jumps up from the bed. He doesn’t return in the amount of time that would seem normal to use the bathroom or brush his teeth or whatever else it may be that he left to do.

  “Oliver?” I call out after a while.

  “Just a second,” he answers from the front of the house.

  I hear coffee being ground and made. I slide out of bed and slip down the hall to the bathroom. I take a minute to refresh myself as best I can with no help from products and props.

  I remember the toothbrush I keep in my purse for work and am thankful. I use Oliver’s comb and my fingers to do the best I can on my hair. Yesterday’s work clothes seem a bit too tidy for Saturday morning breakfast, so I return to Oliver’s room and rifle around until I find a shirt and pair of sweatpants. I walk through the house, peeking into the living room where I see a pillow and a blanket on the couch.

  “I couldn’t wait any longer,” I say, joining him in the kitchen. I gesture at myself apologetically. “I took some of your clothes.”

  “They’re a bit big, but you look great.” He points at the small kitchen table. “I had to make it worth your staying.”

  The table is set with coffee and juice and blueberry crepes. There’s a newspaper on the corner of the table. It was worth my staying even without all this.

  “You’re a very gracious host.”

  “Sit,” he says and points to a chair. “You can have the paper first.”

  I oblige, and he joins me at the table, putting too much food on my plate and pouring me a cup of coffee. I open the paper but can’t seem to focus on any of the words.

  “Sports?” I ask him, sorting through the paper. “Funnies? Current events?”

  “Whatever you don’t want,” he says. “Keep whatever makes you stay. I think I know what I want now.”

  I don’t think we’re talking about the newspaper. I wonder if Jack and I had tried harder to make the good times good if we could have made the bad ones hurt less. I take a sip of coffee and a bite of crepe. Oliver nods at me and begins to eat his breakfast as well.

  “So, would this make a good picture in one of your books?” he asks.

  “A breakfast book,” I say. “You know, I never got to do one of those.”

  “You should make it your next project,” he says. “I can make the breakfast; you can take pictures of it.”

  “I don’t think my house is taking on any new projects,” I say. “Makes me anxious actually.”

  “No need to wait for them,” he says. “Do it on your own.”

  He picks up the paper and starts flipping through it. I feel safe here. I wonder how long I could hide away. How long life would go on without me and leave me here in limbo, this blissful purgatory between world and sky. I look at the rings on my finger. This is not a limbo I can live with.

  While Oliver eats and looks at the paper, I hide my hands under the table and toy with the gold on my hand. I slip the rings off, and there is an internal whoosh of letting go. But it’s not just Jack and it’s not entirely a good whoosh. I feel the rushing away of everything I thought would be. Everything I hoped for. Pulling the rings off is like tossing my map out the window. Facing some unmarked road to who knows where.

  What if I had to introduce myself to someone? I would have no qualifiers to attach to my name. Hi, I’m Nina, I’m Jack’s wife, mother of three. We just bought a place out in the country. The kids can’t wait to get a dog. We never let them have one in that little city condo, but our family just got so big that we needed more space. You should come out and visit. I’ll give you a tour of the garden. You should see it. The previous owners really set us up as far as beautiful landscaping goes.

  None of that was going to happen without those rings on. Maybe none of it was going to happen anyway. But without them, I wasn’t sure what to say. Hi, I’m Nina. I take photos of food for a living. That’s pretty much it. Sorry. You always feel the need to apologize to strangers when your life doesn’t work out the way you planned.

  “You ok over there?” Oliver asks, the paper on the table, his eyes on me.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  Under the table I put the wedding set on my right-hand pointer finger. It doesn’t fit that finger, of course. So when I look down, it looks like a couple of rings that don’t belong on my hand. The rings must belong to somebody, just not me. How did I end up with these rings stuck at the knuckle of my right hand? I feel like a person who took a wrong turn a hundred miles back and is just now realizing the mistake, but is so far into the journey that she doesn’t want to tell the other passengers they’re going the wrong way.

  I put the rings on the kitchen table.

  “Are you sure about that?” Oliver asks, looking at the rings.

  “I’m sure. Although it seems strange for them just to sit there while we eat.”

  He nods and picks them up. He walks a few steps into the living room and drops the rings into a blue pottery vase sitting on the piano.

  “There,” he says. “If you change your mind, you know where they are.”

  He says it like it’s an option I’m allowed to take up. I wonder how long it will take those rings to burn a hole in the bottom of that vase.

  11

  Meeting Oliver for lunch at the café where I first got the news of Dad’s was passing is surreal. It’s been two months, but it doesn’t feel like it’s getting any easier yet. The suggestion to meet here was a mix of habit and forgetfulness. My hand on the door brings it all back to me, like meeting myself rushing out, passing at the precipice of hope and knowledge.

  Missing Dad is like waking from a good dream only to remember that something sad has happened, but not being able to place right away what that sad thing is. Then remembering.

  Oliver greets me with a kiss and slides into the seat across from me. He’s casual in his day-off clothes, no scrubs. I wonder if he looks like he could be my little brother, or worse.

  “Bad day?” He doesn’t open the menu but reaches across the table and touches my hand.

  “I was just caught off guard by something,” I say and put my other hand over his, like that little childhood game. His hand is strong and warm between mine—solid against the vapor of memory.

  “Need to talk?” he asks. “I’m happy to listen.”

  I shake my head. Although I appreciate his being sensitive to my mood, this isn’t the conversation I want to have today, so in true fashion, I change the subject as soon as I get a chance.

  “So, tell me, how did you end up working as a nurse’s aide?” I ask, having danced around the subject of his past before.

  “I dropped out of school,” Oliver says. “I just wasn’t sure I was on the right path.”

  “I can understand that,” I say, fiddling with my napkin, looking at my bare ring finger. I’m still getting used to it. Thankfully, being with Oliver is comfortable and things are moving pretty slowly.

  “Have you ever wondered if you were worthy enough for the thing you want?” His eyes are as serious as I’ve ever seen them. “Like maybe you’re kidding yourself that you’d be good at it, or right for it?”

  I think about Ray. Everything he’s done since Lola’s accident has been a reflection of him thinking that he’s not worthy of forgiveness. His hesitation now with his son is not that he doesn’t want to be a father, it’s that he doesn’t think he deserves it, and he surely doesn’t think he’ll be any good at it.

  “I know wha
t you mean,” I say, which isn’t really an answer, so I return to more solid ground. “Were you close to graduating?”

  “Yeah,” he says and bites his perfect bottom lip. “Pretty close. Big-time cold feet.”

  “Sounds like you were headed into a serious field.” I push the menu in front of me to the side. “Doctor?”

  “Not really,” he says, opening his menu—and taking his eyes from mine.

  We enter into the accustomed moments of quiet while we each decide on our order. The waitress comes and writes down what we want, leaving us in need of more conversation.

  “So, if not a doctor, then how did you end up in a nursing field?” I ask again.

  “Fell into it,” Oliver says, moving his flatware around and turning his cup up so the waitress could pour coffee for our wait. “I started looking after my landlord’s father. He has Parkinson’s disease and his wife had recently died. He needed some help around the house.”

  We wait for our food, and I listen to Oliver talk about helping his landlord and her father and there’s something in his face and voice that moves me. Such a sense of peace in his decision to turn his time over to someone else. Such love and admiration in the carrying out of everyday tasks.

  “I started by taking him to doctor’s appointments and stuff,” he continues. “I took a job in town as well, but then his health went downhill fast, so I started caring for him full-time. I did that for about six months.” Oliver pauses, and I see that he’s lost in the memory of it. “After a while, he got a lot worse, and his family had to put him in a home.”

  Dad becomes a white elephant the size of the entire café. I can feel the breath from his trunk and the gentle nudging as he shifts his weight, trying to make room for himself. People come and go, and I wonder how they squeeze by him and whether they feel the need to duck under his belly.

  I’m blindsided for a second by the memory of my father and Lola and Ray and me in a Chinese restaurant. Mom was in the hospital recovering from alcohol poisoning, although everyone said it was a bad case of the flu. Dad had balled up little pieces of the paper place settings with the Chinese astrological signs, and we played baseball at the table with the paper wads and chopsticks.