The Lemonade Year

by Amy Willoughby-Burle

  What moved me the most was that after the accident, she still played that way. At school, in the neighborhood, she kept quiet so no one would know if she slurred a word or said something that didn’t make sense. She tried so hard to hide the braces on her legs, to walk slowly so she wouldn’t need to limp, but inside her room, she would take off the leg warmers, sit in the sun, and let the light gleam off the metal casings on her ankles. When she talked, she seemed sometimes to revere the braces as a friend. I wanted to know what it was inside her that made those polar opposites possible.

  I stand in her kitchen for a minute and read her day-list on the fridge.

  Today is Tuesday

  Put out the trash tonight

  Use oven mitt—always

  I look away from it. I’m used to Lola and the way her mind works now—and the way it doesn’t. She has a complex system that allows her to function in the world. She’s got it under control—most of the time.

  But the list hurts. At the bottom of it, after all the other reminders that I don’t let myself read, she’s written in one more.

  You just drank that tea that you said you wouldn’t get again. Stop getting it. You don’t like it!

  Under a magnet shaped like a tiny spoon is a picture of Chris on a mailer for the insurance company. In what must be his handwriting is a speech bubble drawn over his head. It reads “This is a good guy. You like him. A lot.”

  I chuckle.

  Now, slipping down her hallway, I hear her humming. Today she’s coloring. That’s what she calls it when the subject is so vague it’s all just color and whim. I watch her a while before I let her know I’m there. The room glows like light from beneath the clouds—beams visible and purposeful.

  “I like it,” I say and slip into view.

  “I’m not sure,” she says, not startled at all by my voice. I wonder if she’s always known I was there all these years. “I’m growing a bit tired of what I usually do. I want to do something else. I’m just not sure what.”

  I stand beside her and look at the painting. “I know what this is,” I say, and she turns to me, excited.

  “What is it?” she asks, hopeful about the answer, and I’m struck by the intense black of her hair and blue of her eyes—she outdoes her own work.

  “Disney World,” I say.

  “Yes,” Lola says and tilts her head. “It’s Ray on Space Mountain.”

  “The Magic Kingdom,” I say. “Is this before or after he puked?”

  “Mom told him not to get on,” Lola says. “Remember what Dad said when Ray got out of the bushes?”

  “‘Magic is in the belly of the beholder,’” I say.

  Ray was already growing daring, dangerous, and self-destructive. For the first year after Lola’s accident he barely spoke, and then when words came back to him they were spiked with metal tips. We scattered from him like he was shotgun blast. Dad tried the hardest, staying in the line of fire, weathering the wounds like he wore a bulletproof vest.

  Only in Lola’s presence was Ray softer. At first, he couldn’t even speak to her; he was a pillar of stone when she came near him. Yet they seemed to share a communication to which no one else was privy. She sat by him on the couch when we watched television. She would put her arm around him or rest her head on his shoulder. His body tensed at her touch, and his breathing became slow and carefully measured. I watched the juxtaposition of their bodies—hers at rest and his tensed to the point of quivering like an arrow drawn.

  At first I mistook it for anger, but the more I watched them, the more I saw it for what it was—self-loathing. Ray took responsibility for the accident. Lola couldn’t remember the details of it clearly, and none of us ever told her exactly what happened. But Ray knew. He knew what he had done.

  Back then, she sought out Ray in the house, forcing him to be near her. He never refused her, but it took years for him to turn from stone to flesh at her touch. She became his calming force, but without her next to him, he was all torment and destruction. When he left at eighteen and couldn’t take her with him, I feared he wouldn’t survive.

  Lola sighs, bringing me away from the past. She points to the painting with her brush. “I can always count on you to make out the meaning.”

  “That’s what I was hoping you would do for me,” I say.

  She puts down her paintbrush. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure. Everything feels different.”

  “Every moment you don’t go back in time is different,” she says. “That’s the way it works.”

  “I might have started something I shouldn’t,” I say and walk around her studio, looking at her work like it’s my own private gallery showing, searching for something in the brushstrokes that will make the world make sense.

  “Like Ray getting on Space Mountain?” she asks.

  “It’s exactly like Space Mountain.”

  “I’ll make coffee,” she says and heads for the kitchen. “The good stuff.”

  I stand in front of the Space Mountain painting and try to see what else might be in there. I can’t find anything so I join Lola in the kitchen.

  Chris comes out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. We catch each other’s eye, and I look away.

  “Sorry,” he says, holding one hand out in front of him. “Didn’t know you were here.”

  “Ditto,” I say.

  Lola screams, dropping the mug she’s holding, and points at Chris. “Who is that? Who are you? What are you doing in here?”

  My heart kick-starts in my chest, and I grab hold of her hand.

  “Lola,” I say, managing a soothing voice that quickly escalates toward panic. “This is Chris. You’re dating him. You’ve just forgotten for a moment. Holes, remember? Holes.”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head and looking at Chris. “I’ve never seen him before. I wouldn’t forget someone I was dating.”

  Chris clutches the towel around his waist and looks horrified. “You know me,” he says and reaches out for her.

  “Get away from me.” Lola slaps at his hand.

  My breath catches in my throat, and I look frantically from Lola to Chris and back again.

  “It’s me,” Chris says and starts singing. “‘Your car is broke, and it’s no joke. You got a rash . . .’”

  Then the both of them start laughing.

  I release my breath and my knees get weak. “That was mean,” I yell at them, my heart pounding. “You two are just mean.”

  Chris is laughing so hard he drops his towel, revealing a pair of shorts underneath.

  “I’m sorry, sis,” Lola says, trying to regain her composure. “We’ve been planning that for a while. Just waiting for the perfect opportunity. It was funny, right?” She stands beside Chris, and he puts his arm around her.

  “It was her idea,” Chris says. “I heard you out here and went for it.”

  “Just don’t pull that on Ray,” I say. “Or at least make sure you’re dressed again. Getting into a fistfight in the nude is bound to be embarrassing.”

  “Point taken,” Chris says, nodding appreciatively. “I’ll leave you girls alone. Unannounced visit from the sister usually means girl talk.”

  “Thanks, sweetie,” Lola says and pecks him on the lips.

  I’ve never seen her joke about her forgetfulness in such an open and carefree way. It makes me like Chris all the more. I still want to pound on both of them for taking a few months off my life, but I like him nonetheless.

  “It’s a gorgeous day,” Lola says to me. “Let’s sit outside.”

  I give Chris the eye, but end up smiling at him. Lola and I finish making our coffee and go out onto her patio.

  “I should be ashamed of myself,” she says, setting down her coffee on the black iron patio table. “I’ve been inside all morning painting when it’s this beautiful out.
”

  “You can be French and bring your easel outside. That way you can enjoy the fresh air and still get your work done.”

  “Ever practical,” she says to me. “And when it gets dark, I can put candles in my hat like Van Gogh did and work through the night.”

  “Did he really do that?” I say, picturing it. Picturing Lola.

  “Isn’t that great?” she says. “Can’t you just see him? Explains a lot. Poor guy. I think he was a sweetheart really. Wanted the world to be beautiful and artistic and lovely. But it isn’t. Not all the time, anyway. And thinking it will be could drive anyone mad.”

  “How do you remember all this information about Van Gogh, but you can’t remember which tea you like?” I ask in good humor.

  “Did you see the note?” She shakes her head. “I don’t know how many times I’ve bought that stupid tea. As Van Gogh would concur—the mind is a terrible thing to lose.”

  “I agree.”

  We sip our coffee, and after a bit, Lola waves her hand at me in that “get on with it” motion. She knows I’m here for a reason.

  “Oliver,” I say, and she just nods. “I think it’s turning into something and it shouldn’t.”

  “Are you crazy?” Lola asks like I’ve just told her I’m thinking of taking a job on an oil rig in Alaska. “He’s the Orange Juice Hottie.”

  “Stop calling him that.” I wrinkle my nose at her. “It makes me sound ridiculous. His name is Oliver. And he’s a lot different than you’d expect, actually.”

  “All right,” she says. “Then what’s the deal? You like him, right?”

  “Sure, I like him. But who has the luxury of just liking someone at my age? At his age, you can like and get away with it.”

  “How old is he anyway?”

  “Twenty-eight. But to talk to him, you’d think he was forty-eight.”

  “Well, to look at him, you wouldn’t make that mistake.” She winks at me.

  I giggle, embarrassed, but happily. We sip our coffees and stare into Lola’s yard. The day is bright and easy around us. The flowers in the yard are thick with fragrance and bumblebees. The summer air is sticky-sweet already.

  “I ran into Jack on the street,” I say. “Oliver was with me.”

  “You should have run over him on the street,” she says, looking me straight in the eye.

  “What if I made a mistake?” I say. “I couldn’t get Jack out of my head last night. He made me feel so foolish for being with Oliver, but I think underneath it all, I might still want Jack.”

  “You’re just afraid of what comes next,” Lola says. “Fear. It’s totally natural.”

  “What does come next?” I ask, thinking she has the answer.

  “I don’t know.” Lola shrugs as if not knowing were totally ok.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” I say and mimic her gesture.

  “Well, I never know,” she says and laughs at her little inside joke. “You should try it sometimes. It’s liberating in a weird way.”

  “You think I should suffer a lasting brain injury?” I tilt my head at her to let her know I’m joking.

  “They’re less damaging than what you have.”

  “What’s that?” I ask, completely confused.

  “A lasting heart injury,” she says and puts her hands to her chest.

  I sigh.

  She reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with you and Jack, but you are forgetting the fact that you two are incapable of seeing each other through the hard times. That his idea of ‘working through it’ meant cozying up to his receptionist.”

  “But we could get better at that,” I say. “I’m not innocent in all this either. I wasn’t that easy to live with. I was so distraught about the miscarriage and infertility issues that I pretty much cut him off.”

  “Blah blah blah. I’ve heard all this before. You know you can count on me to listen to a repeat story and not even realize it, but for heaven’s sake, Nina, you can’t go around and around about this forever. What do you really want?”

  “I just think this thing with Oliver is too . . .”

  “Exciting, new, wonderful?” she asks, calling me out. “You’ve just started dating. You don’t even know what this relationship is about yet. You haven’t even gotten past first base, apparently.”

  “Is that strange?” I ask, seizing the chance. “We start kissing and then he pulls away. I mean, even now that we’ve sort of made it official that we’re seeing each other, he’s still standoffish in that, you know, area,” I say, fumbling around saying the actual words.

  “He pulls away?” she asks, wrinkling her brow. “Yeah, that’s a little strange. Gay?”

  “No.”

  “Married?”

  “No.”

  “Neither are you, anymore,” she says. “Just see where it goes. You might be surprised.”

  “But I’m not sure some good-looking, young guy is where I should be moving on to. Maybe I didn’t give me and Jack a fighting chance. What if he wanted intimacy and validation as much as he wanted the sex?”

  “Stop watching daytime talk shows this instant,” she says and points a finger at me. “Do you hear me?”

  “I know.” I slump in my chair. “I just don’t want to make a mistake.”

  “Sweetie, that’s not possible,” she says and reaches over the table to take both of my hands in hers. “Everything could be a mistake. Every time you get out of bed in the morning it might be a mistake. If by mistake, you mean risk.”

  I envy the way she sees the world.

  “Jack invited me out to eat,” I say. “Or coffee. I’m not sure where we landed on that one.”

  “Was that before or after he saw you with Oliver?”

  “After.”

  “Well, there you go,” she says as if it’s final.

  “I know you want to take my side,” I say. “I appreciate that. I really do. But I think I’m going to have to break this thing off with Oliver.”

  “Nina, sweetie,” she says. “I love you, but you have a terrible habit of taking a nice glass of lemonade and extracting the water and sugar. You’re supposed to turn the lemon into lemonade, not the other way around.”

  “Do I really do that?”

  “Yes,” she says pointedly.

  “Are we talking about real lemons?”

  “Your divorce is the lemon,” she says. “Your miscarriage and fertility troubles are a whole bowl of lemons. And now Dad has died, and Cassie is pulling the teenager card for all she’s worth. Lemons on top of lemons. Oliver is the sugar and water. Pour a glass, sweetie. Drink it while it’s nice and cool.”

  Perhaps she’s right. But what about when the ice melts and it’s all watered down? Lemonade seems a drink that’s best consumed quickly.

  Chris opens the sliding glass door and motions Lola inside. She holds up one finger to me to indicate she’ll be right back.

  I sit there feeling like a crazy person wearing a hat made out of candles, not even caring that the wax is dripping in my hair.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Chris has been called back to LA for a reshoot, so I let him have Lola to himself before he has to fly away.

  Still looking for answers, I drop by the nursing home because I know Oliver isn’t there. That’s not why I’m here today. I slip past the nurses’ desk where they have all but forgotten me. They look at me, and I see that they are trying to place me. Am I the daughter of the lady in room 301? No, I’m the niece of the new Alzheimer’s patient. No, am I someone who used to work here? They don’t figure it out and give up, nodding and smiling and turning back to their charts so they won’t have to pretend to know me.

  The door to Cricket’s room is already open, and I can see that he’s in his wheelchair and dressed for the day, but it seems
polite to ask for admission. I knock on the frame, and he looks up at me. I can see in his expression that he expected a nurse or someone else to bother him with some ritual of daily living.

  “Hi, there,” he says and smiles. “Come on in. I’ve just had my meds, so pardon me if I say something crazy.”

  “Hello, Cricket.” I lean down to hug him.

  “You can sit on that bed,” he says. “If those turtles bother you, just put them in the bathtub.”

  “I like turtles,” I say and sit on the edge of the turtle-free bed.

  “I know they’re not there,” Cricket says, “but I still see them. Never mind me—what’s got you spending time with an old man today?”

  I sigh a bit too deeply, and he guesses the reason for my visit.

  “Roller coaster got you down,” he says with quick wit and too much memory.

  “You got it.”

  “Well,” he says and winks, “it’ll do that.”

  I was hoping for something more. Some sort of advice or special lever to pull to make it all come to a halt.

  “I see you have a new roommate.” I gesture to the bed by the window. There are new articles on the dresser, new clothes peeking from the small closet. The pictures on the nightstand are of a handsome young man and a pretty, young girl. The man wears an army uniform, and the girl is dressed in a smart, crisp frock that the fading black-and-white image doesn’t do justice.

  “Oh, good,” Cricket says. “I was wondering if he was a hallucination too.”

  Cricket laughs, and I understand that he’s joking.

  “So, where you got Nate these days?” he asks a question I don’t see coming.

  “Six feet under,” I say without regard for tact.

  “He’s probably not happy with that.”

  “Mom thought it would be a waste of his burial plot not to put him in it,” I say.

  “That’s a darn shame,” Cricket says. “She couldn’t have just thrown an old jar of pickles in there?”