The Lemonade Year

by Amy Willoughby-Burle

  I can’t help but fall in love with his outlook. The television is tuned to a program I figure the nurses’ aides like to watch. It’s after lunch, and I can tell that Cricket is getting a bit sleepy.

  “So, tell me about this ride that’s got you in a fuss,” he says, not letting his sleepy eyes have their way.

  “Oh,” I say and shrug my shoulders as if he’s asking about something that I didn’t drive clear across town just to talk to him about, “you know, just wondering if I got on the right coaster is all.”

  “Well, now,” he says, “there’s a question to which there is no answer.”

  I was afraid of that.

  “See, there is no right or wrong to that one. Maybe some bad timing if you just ate a big lunch, but the thing is”—he pauses, taking a few deep breaths, and I’m very aware of how hard every second must be for him—“once that bar comes across you and the ride starts, it doesn’t really matter if you shouldn’t have gotten on. You’re on.”

  I was afraid of that too.

  “I guess you’re right,” I say. I glance at the daytime program that Cricket didn’t choose.

  Had I not run into Jack that day on the street, would I even be doubting my feelings about Oliver? And do I really doubt my feelings or just the appropriateness of them, and who’s making up the rules of what’s appropriate anyway? I’m starting to sound like the voice-over guy.

  “He talks about you,” Cricket says, startling me.

  “Who?”

  “The boy,” Cricket says and winks at me. “Oliver.”

  If only there was a way for people to refer to him without the words “boy” or “kid.”

  “What does he say?” I ask, and my heart beats thick and fast.

  “You know the answer to that,” Cricket says. “The important parts are between what he says.”

  I need to know what Oliver says to other people. I want to see his thoughts about this thing through the telescope of someone else’s perception. I want to know why he keeps his distance from me.

  “I can always tell when he’s planning to see you after work,” Cricket says. “He’s lit up. Makes me remember my younger days. You know, I only knew my wife for a week before we got married. When you know, you know.”

  “I suppose you do,” I say, then I take a risk. “He seems resistant sometimes. Is he coming out of a bad relationship or something?”

  I know it’s none of my business to ask Cricket these things, but I can’t help it.

  “The boy’s got a lot on his heart,” Cricket says. “It makes me happy to see him happy, though. You make him think less. I think he needs that right now.”

  “Think less?”

  “Big decision. Powerful pull that he’s struggling with,” Cricket says. “Come to think of it, maybe you make him think more. We’ll see.”

  I don’t know what that means, but it makes me think too much too. I lean over and kiss Cricket’s cheek.

  “Don’t make the boy jealous now,” he says. “Come back around. Seeing you is like having Nate back. This new guy is ok, but he snores.”

  13

  When I get home , I find Cassie packing her suitcase. I notice that she’s still using the purple-and-daisy-patterned one she got when we went to Grand Canyon years ago. She was nine.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, as if I don’t know the terrifying answer already. “I thought you were at Mom’s.”

  “I’m moving in with Dad,” she says, not looking up at me. “Uncle Ray drove me here.”

  “I don’t think so.” I say it like I’m about to ground her for something. “I don’t remember giving you permission to come and go as you please.”

  I had to work really hard not to finish that sentence with “young lady.”

  “Well, it’s not up to you, now is it?” she says, tossing my own frequent jab back at me.

  I don’t mean to turn into Monster Mom, but she’s brought out by fear and I’m getting really scared.

  “It most certainly is,” I say, feeling Monster Mom’s skin turning green, sensing her getting too big for her britches. “You don’t get to just move out.”

  Cassie tosses a pair of jeans into the case and looks up at me sharply. “Why not? Dad got sick of it here and moved out.”

  She gestures around her room to indicate “here.” I notice new posters on the walls and a picture of the boy from the pool on her mirror. I see that she has turned her bed comforter over so that the blank blue side faces up instead of the hearts and smiley faces that I know are on the other side.

  “That’s not what happened,” I say.

  “Isn’t it?” she asks, obligatory hand on her hip.

  I begin to wonder.

  “Don’t you need to ask Dad about this first?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “I already did,” she huffs at me. She rolls her eyes and grabs another pair of jeans from the now half-empty closet.

  “Dad said yes?” I ask, hoping for a loophole.

  “Of course he did,” Cassie says. “Call him if you want to. You know you do.”

  Now I’m torn between doing the predictable and garnering another eye roll and doing what needs to be done—which unfortunately are the same thing.

  “I am going to call your father,” I say, seeing Cassie’s eyes already starting their circular trip around their sockets. “But not because you baited me to, young lady.”

  Crap.

  “Whatever,” she says and folds a shirt into her quickly filling suitcase.

  Monster Mom clenches her oversized green fists and stomps out of the room. I call Jack’s cell, and he answers already talking.

  “Nina,” he says. “Just let it happen. She’s got a dog in this fight too, you know.”

  “What fight?” I ask, furious. “I’m not fighting.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” Jack says. “Look. I tried to get her to stay with you. I’m not the bad guy here. But she needs to throw a couple of punches, and I understand that.”

  “At me? I’m not the bad guy here either.”

  “At the world,” Jack says, his voice aggravatingly calm. “You’re her world. Sorry, but you’re going be the one that gets clocked in the face.”

  “How long?” I ask, stepping out onto the balcony for some air.

  “I haven’t gotten that far with her,” Jack says. “Let her come with me and we’ll work this out.”

  “You want her,” I say, trying to breathe, but hyperventilating instead. “Why would I think you’re going to work it out for me?”

  “Yeah, I do want her,” Jack says, his voice getting pointy and jagged. “She’s my daughter, and she can stay with me as long as she likes. I’m trying to be accommodating here. I don’t know what else to say.”

  We haven’t talked about the details of the divorce much, but we have agreed on joint custody, fifty-fifty, it’s up to us how to work it out. That was never a point of contention. It’s not about who’s getting more time. It’s about Cassie not being five years old and us respecting that she has a voice. A voice I’m reluctantly trying to respect at the moment.

  “Where are you now?” I look down onto the street as if he might be there.

  “Circling town. She’s going to text me when she’s ready.”

  Monster Mom’s forehead vein is about to pop. I go back inside. “Is this some sort of covert mission that I interrupted? Was I supposed to come home and just find her gone?”

  “Of course not,” he says. “I told her she had to talk to you, but that I would be available when she was ready. I’m not trying to pull a fast one, Nina.”

  If you say my name one more time, I’m going to strangle you.

  “Fine, Jack,” I say and end the call, wishing for old times and a phone receiver to slam into its base.

  I pace around the living room, trying, bu
t mostly failing, to get my wits about me. I don’t want to make this any worse. I go back into Cassie’s room and pretend that I wasn’t just acting like a spoiled brat.

  “You think I’m just being a petulant teenager, don’t you?” she asks, using her annoyingly good vocabulary for a fifteen-year-old. “Do you want to know why I’m really leaving?”

  No.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I’m leaving because you won’t know the difference,” she says, looking me straight in the eyes.

  “What you do mean I won’t know the difference?”

  “You don’t even see me. I’m right here in front of you, and all you can see is the baby you didn’t have or the one you still want.”

  “That’s not true. I see you.”

  “No, you don’t,” she says softly, petulance gone, sadness in its wake. “You don’t even know who I am. You still think I’m some nine-year-old kid. I grew up while you were busy focusing on someone else.”

  My heart races. Cassie is me, and I am my mother. I feel light-headed. I understand her need to throw the punches. How could I have done this?

  “Why wasn’t I good enough?” she says, and I hear my own childhood voice in her words.

  My heart breaks.

  “Of course you’re good enough,” I say. “People don’t want more children because the ones they have aren’t good enough.”

  “I mean now,” she says, determined to get an answer. “When you lost the baby and couldn’t get pregnant again. Why weren’t Dad and I good enough for you? Why were you still sad?”

  “Oh, honey,” I say, unable to explain any of it.

  She stands there with the brokenhearted face of the child she still is, expectant and waiting for me to explain the world and all the pieces of it, and I can’t. I can’t even explain it to myself.

  “I’m your kid too,” she says. “I can’t help what happened. It wasn’t my fault.”

  I move toward her, but she steps back from me. “Cassie,” I say. “Please stay.”

  She looks at the open suitcase, and I think for one crazy moment that she will stay with me, but she closes the top and zips it up. She stalks past me out the bedroom door and through the living room.

  “I’m going to wait for Dad in the lobby,” she says.

  “I love you,” I say. I know I’m begging.

  She looks away from me and walks out. Monster Mom is long gone and all that’s left are a pair of ripped-up pants and a torn shirt. I sit down on the couch and cry.

  14

  Saturday comes and Cassie is still with Jack. Since I’m “free,” I help Ray move into the stalker building. I know he watches Nicole and Michael at the park still. I can’t blame him. He wants the little arms and legs and the tiny laugh, the hair puffing up on the wind, the small hand inside his big one.

  I wanted it again too. The want of it can drive you crazy. The absence of it feels so much like a weight missing from your body that you look down at yourself to see what’s gone. You have arms, legs; your torso is intact. Were you carrying something that you’ve put down and lost? Were you wearing a coat that you’ve left at coat check? Did you lose your purse?

  I felt like that for a long time after losing the baby. It was such an unidentifiable loss for most people. I wasn’t even showing very much at the time. But I had felt the baby move—that small quickening—those first flutters when you know you’ve got a life inside of you.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I ask, holding out my arms for a box.

  It’s an easy move from Mom’s basement to here. Ray doesn’t have much. The back of his car is loaded with things that may have been in there for months, maybe years, as he traveled around post-prison from no place to nowhere.

  “No, but it’s the only idea I have,” Ray says and hands me a box marked “stuff from the bathroom.”

  “Who knows, maybe you’ll like your cellmate better this time,” I say as I walk up the three flights of stairs to his new place.

  “That’s very optimistic,” Ray says sarcastically from behind me.

  “Did you really come to me for optimism?” I note the peeling paint on the steel stairwell.

  “Of course not.” Ray follows me into his new apartment. “I know better than that.”

  “Sorry,” I say and set the box down amid the few other things we’ve taken up the stairs already. “This is a big step for you, and I’m not helping at all.”

  “Of course you are,” he says and punches my arm. “You’re keeping me from having to make double the trips up and down the stairs.”

  “Ray,” I say, suddenly fearful for him. “Do you really think things are going to work out?”

  “I never expect things to work out,” he says, defeated already. “That way I’m a lot less disappointed. I just thought I’d try, for once, to do the right thing. Thanks for the support.” He puts down a box labeled “crap from the closet.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ray comes closer and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Sis,” he says and sighs. “I know I’m being crazy, and I know you’re trying to be helpful, although you’re not very good at it. I appreciate the honesty.”

  He goes back down the stairs before I have a chance to say anything else.

  I walk around his place, getting a feel for Ray’s new landscape. The furnished apartment is suitable—one bedroom and a fold-out couch, a kitchen designed for takeout, a small living area, the usual necessities. At the window overlooking the street, I see the world that Ray is sneaking through the back door of. I watch people pass on the streets below and feel the helpless desire that draws Ray here. This is Nicole’s neighborhood. It’s where she walks to the park and where she and Michael go out for ice cream. I imagine Ray standing here at the window for long hours, in wait, in hope, in need of just a glimpse of what he fears might never be.

  I get a text from Lola telling me to tell Ray she’s glad he found a place and she will see it soon. I had told her about move-in day, but she hadn’t responded until now. I hear Ray’s feet clanging on the steps. He shoulders open the door and drops a box on the floor.

  “I hope that wasn’t important,” I say.

  “None of it is, really.” He looks at my phone where my fingers linger over the screen. “Was that Lola?” He runs his hands through his hair. “Is she coming?”

  I shake my head at him. “What’s up with you two?” I ask, aware that I might just be a stand-in while Ray waits for the star to come back on stage.

  “Old ghosts, I guess. I think she’s afraid of me.”

  “Lola’s not afraid of anything. Least of all you.”

  “Something else then,” Rays says and shrugs.

  It took Ray and Lola a long time after the accident to get comfortable with each other, but once they did, they were inseparable. Almost dependent. This avoidance now is weird. I think back on the times they have been around each other since Dad’s funeral, and I can’t put my finger on a time where they really connected. Not like they used to.

  “I’m not as good as Lola, but I guess I’ll have to do for now,” I say.

  “I don’t feel that way about you,” he says, shoving aside the slightly dented and now-rattling box.

  “What way is that?” I ask.

  “That you’re just good enough until Lola talks to me again,” Ray says. “If I act like that, I’m sorry. It’s not the way I feel.”

  I see the message of truce on his face. I make no snide comment and he relaxes. It’s an unspoken decision in that moment, and Ray seems to receive it. I nod at him and he nods in return, and something in the air around us shifts.

  “I ordered pizza,” he says and drops onto the couch. “Sit and watch some TV with me?”

  “You’ve already got your cable on?”

  “After prison, it’s the only decent vice I’ve got left. Of c
ourse I’ve got cable on already.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Maybe we’ll see one of Chris’s commercials.”

  “Who’s Chris?”

  “Lola’s boyfriend. You’ve seen him. He’s the guy from those insurance commercials. You know, the ones where he gets in all those crazy jams.”

  Ray stares at me, his brow furrowed in confusion. “What?” he finally asks, indignant and all big-brother like. “Lola’s dating a guy from TV?”

  He grabs the remote and flips through channels, presumably searching for Chris.

  “Where?” Ray asks, jabbing the remote at the television with each press of the channel button. “What insurance guy? Car insurance?”

  I can’t help it—I laugh.

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Ray makes the round of channels a couple of times and then tosses the remote on the coffee table.

  “Have you talked to Nicole?” I ask, trying to change the subject.

  “Yeah,” he says and gets fidgety. “She was surprised to hear from me. Wanted to know if I got the papers from her lawyer.”

  “What papers?” I ask, my face furrowed now.

  “Just some legal stuff,” he says, putting his feet up on the coffee table. “Mostly just letting me know she has representation should she need it.”

  I nod. Life seems all about the paperwork sometimes. Paper to prove you are who you say you are. Paper to join you together. Paper to tear you apart.

  “What does she think I’m going to do?” he asks, sounding insulted but not shocked. “Steal him? How do I even know he’s mine? Why would I take some other dude’s kid?”

  “Did you actually say that?” I ask, incredulous.

  “No,” he says and wrinkles his face at me.

  “Good.”

  “I thanked her for the picture,” Ray says, bobbing his head in challenge. “I told her I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. And please, Nina, for the love of Pete, don’t say ‘Be accountable.’”

  “I didn’t say a word.”