“I’m supposed to be the one who leaves,” Ray says, shaking his head. “That’s going to sting. What about this commercial character she’s dating?”
“Chris. He’s not going to replace you if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He chuckles. Pegged.
“Why don’t you think she’ll come back?” Ray looks at me pointedly, his green eyes electric with fear. “Of course she’ll come back. Right?”
“She seems to be cleaning house and taking stock, and it scares me.”
“Better than kicking butt and taking names,” he says. “No, actually the way you say it is worse.” He pats my knee and sighs. “She’ll come back. If I came back, she’ll come back. This is home. Like it or not.”
I suppose so.
“What about you?” he says. “I’ve been pretty self-absorbed lately. How’s your world?”
“Falling apart,” I say, but offering no details. “And it’s just human nature—being self-absorbed. Don’t sweat it.”
We sit and stare into the darkness of our childhood street. A ghost, a princess, and a Batman run by, and I think of the three of us in easier times when we could throw on a costume and satiate ourselves with sugar and chocolate and make the world a better place. Funny, I think we still do that—albeit the costumes and consumables have changed over the years.
“What fell apart?” Ray asks, not letting me off the hook.
“My illusions,” I say, realizing the truth. “That life would be easy. That marriage would an unbreakable bond. That I’d have tons of kids and none of them would ever want to leave me.”
“Where did you get that illusion?” He smiles understandably at me. “She’ll come back.”
I think he’s talking about Lola, but he corrects me.
“Cassie,” he says. “She’s just lashing out. She thinks she’s making you pay for some injustice. She doesn’t know that life has no rules and reason is mostly unsound. The punishment almost never fits the crime—thank heavens for that.”
“How do you know that’s what Cassie is doing?”
“I did the same thing. Spent way too much time trying to exact revenge—mostly on myself. She’ll figure it out. Especially once she has kids of her own.”
I roll my eyes. “Do I have to wait until then?”
“What else?” Ray asks, sensing that isn’t everything.
“I started dating a priest,” I say, leaving out the “almost” part because I know it will amuse Ray. “It didn’t work out.”
This brings a huge smile to Ray’s face and he laughs. It sounds good—not the raspy, jagged knife sound that he made just months ago.
“I don’t know if you’re joking or not,” he says, “but I think that means you’re not ready to give up on your marriage. People get back together sometimes, you know.”
He reaches his hand out across the small space between us, and I take hold of it. “Life is weird,” he says. “Most of the time I feel like I’m playing one game while everybody at the table is playing something else.”
“What did Dad say to you that night?” I ask, feeling both brave and desperate.
Ray looks at me, and I know he knows which night I’m talking about.
“Did he blame you?” I ask.
The darkness makes a safety net around us.
“He knew it was my fault,” Ray says, nodding. “That was easy enough to figure. Hiding from the world when I messed up didn’t start with that night, you know. I’ve always been good at that.”
“It was an accident, Ray,” I say. “You know that, right?”
“It was still my fault.”
“Is that what he said?” It seems a logical thing to assume. “That he knew it was you?”
“When Dad found me that night,” Ray says, squeezing my hand against the memory, “I knew Lola was hurt. I was afraid of hearing ‘Your sister is dead, and it’s all your fault’ or some version of that. It would have left me to rot in that alley forever. I guess I rotted there anyway, even though that’s not what Dad said.”
“You looked like he’d said the most unimaginable thing to you. What did he say?”
“I knew Lola was hurt bad,” Ray says again. “I knew all our lives had just been yanked out from under us. I knew it was my fault. There was no way to know that Lola was going to make it. Dad knew I was already spinning out of control.”
I squeeze Ray’s hand; I can’t stand it.
“He said, ‘I love you, no matter what.’ Simple as that. I was floored. That he took the time to find me. That he didn’t go off with the ambulance and just leave me. There’s no way someone can love you like that, is there? How did he know me so well? I barely even knew myself. I spent every day after that trying my hardest to prove there was something I could do to make him not love me. I became the most unlovable version of myself that I could. I had to prove to him that I was the bad guy, because that’s how I felt.”
“That’s a risky test to conduct.”
“I ticked him off from time to time,” Ray says. “I got that part right. Man, he could get mad at me. He told me all the time that I wasn’t measuring up to what I could be, that I was making one bad decision on top of the next. Which was true.”
I rest my head on Ray’s shoulder. The fire-breathing devil just under the surface of his sleeve breathes out a puff of smoke.
“Dad sure didn’t mind telling you when you’d made a bad decision,” I say. “But he always loved us.”
“I couldn’t do it.” Ray sighs. “I couldn’t make him stop loving me. I wanted him to. I wanted Lola to. I wanted all of you to.”
“Sometimes we don’t get what we want.”
“I know,” Ray says. “Thankfully.”
We sit for a good while. Trick-or-treaters are long home and high on sugar. A couple of neighborhood teenagers slip around the side of the house across the street. I imagine in the morning it will be wrapped in white paper and the magic of tonight’s mischief will be someone else’s mess to clean up.
I imagine a lot of things will be different in the morning.
“I never said it back to him,” Ray says, barely getting the words out. “I never said it back.”
“Say it now,” I tell Ray. “You don’t need a Magic 8-Ball for him to hear you.”
Ray starts to cry instead.
23
My phone buzzes and, like always, I grab it, hoping it’s Cassie wanting to come home. It’s not.
“What’s up, Mom?” I ask.
“Can you meet me at the cemetery?”
“Why?”
“Don’t play twenty questions, Nina, just meet me there.”
“It was just the one question.”
Silence on her end.
“Ok.”
When I get there, Mom is setting up one of the flower arrangements beside Dad’s redundant grave. I can hear her talking to him. I hang back, but I listen anyway.
“I’ve arranged flowers,” Mom says. “I’ve made masks. I took out the tarot cards but that just seemed silly. I’m running out of things to do, Nate. Your part of my life is over, and I’m at a loss for how to fill my time.”
I feel like an eavesdropper on everyone else’s life these days.
“I know things weren’t always easy between us,” Mom continues, unaware that I’m right behind her. “But they’re harder now than ever. I know you put on a face for me that wasn’t real. I know you pretended I didn’t spend years breaking your heart. I know all that. I hope you know I appreciated it.”
I clear my throat. I shouldn’t let her go on so personally and privately with an audience.
“Oh, Nina,” she says, her cheeks turning slightly pink. “Can you go back to the car and get the rose arrangement out of the trunk?”
“Sure, Mom.”
She starts talking again, and I know she’s talk
ing to Dad and not me. She talks likes he’s sitting right there, but in that way you would talk to someone who was in a coma. The way you would talk when you felt at liberty to say everything you ever wanted to say, just the way you wanted to say it.
A memory of Lola in the hospital rushes up on me, and my legs get wobbly. This was the way Mom had talked to Lola when she was unconscious after the accident and no one really knew whether or not she would come back to us. It was good-bye talk. And it scared me sick.
It was the way I had talked to Dad in the nursing home when I’d pop by to see him and he was so drugged out that all he did was sleep. I sat by the bed and told him all the things that were happening with Jack and our efforts and failures to get pregnant and then about losing the baby.
I told him about Cassie and my job and how I knew even then both of those things were slipping away from me. At the time, I glossed over Cassie. I know now it was because the loss of her was the worst of it all. I could feel her pulling away, and I wasn’t doing anything to grab hold of her.
I told him I loved him and missed him. I said all the things I wanted to say when he was alive but never did, desperately hoping that he could hear me and that somehow, I could reach through the darkness and pull him back.
I open Mom’s trunk; it stinks of flowers. Stop and be overpowered by the roses. The arrangement is actually sort of pretty, and I wonder if maybe Mom has stumbled upon some hidden talent. I lift it out carefully and walk back to her. I set the arrangement on the other side of the headstone.
“So, imagine this—Ray is staying in town,” Mom says, and I almost think she’s talking to me. “He’s got a job and an apartment. I suspect something’s up, but I don’t know what that something is. I don’t care though. He’s here. He wanted to tell me about something he’s done, and one of my friends said they saw him on that internet, but I’m not going to look. It doesn’t make any difference to me what he’s done. He’s here. He’s back.”
Mom looks at me, suspecting that I know what the something is.
“No matter,” she says to Dad. “Ray feels awful that he didn’t get to say good-bye.”
“Mom,” I interrupt. “Did you need me?”
“Just a second, sweetie,” she says. “I’m catching Dad up on the news.”
I turn away, looking into the distance at the old section of the cemetery, out where Oliver had shown me our doppelganger graves. I half-expect Oliver to turn up again, but he doesn’t.
“Lola is doing well,” Mom is saying to Dad. “Keeping the gaps closed for the most part. It was worth it, wasn’t it? Oh, you will never guess who she’s dating—that guy from the insurance commercials. The ones with that ridiculous jingle and all the crazy stunts. Do you remember those? Or did they start airing after the stroke? I forget. He came to the funeral. Nina says he’s good to Lola. That’s all that matters.”
The cemetery is quiet, the way they somehow always are. Even nature seems reverent—or fearful, the difference is hard to negotiate sometimes.
“Speaking of Nina,” I hear Mom say, and I turn to face her.
“Nate,” she says, but she’s looking right at me. “Your eldest daughter is struggling.”
So here it is. This is the way that Mom can talk to me. I shouldn’t be surprised. Dad had often relayed messages and sentiments. Your mother wants you to know that she loves you. She didn’t mean to forget your ball game. It’s just with all the stress from Lola and everything, she gets overwhelmed. She’s human. We all are.
I look at Mom and raise an eyebrow.
This conversation is a long time coming, but now that it’s here, I’m not sure I’m ready for it.
“She and Jack finally went through with the divorce,” Mom tells Dad. “Cassie has been living with Jack. Nina lost her job and started dating that young guy you liked so much at the nursing home. You know the one I mean, that nice one who was always talking to your roommate, Mr. Cole. Sweet boy. She hasn’t brought him around though.”
“Mom?” I interrupt. “Really.”
“She would have told you all about it herself, Nate,” Mom says, still looking at me. “She always told you everything. But she can’t talk to me. I think she needs to get some things off her chest, though. I think it’s time. Maybe with you here for support she’ll be able to.”
Ready or not, the words pour out of me, like all the things I wanted to say have been right on the end of my tongue all these years and now that I have permission, they’re all tumbling out.
“Did you know Dad bought me my first training bra?” I ask, hands on my hips just like Cassie does. “Not Grandma, like he told you.”
I tilt my head like I’ve delivered a good hard blow.
“I knew that.” Mom nods. “Your father always tried to spare my feelings. Your grandmother would have rather taped your breasts down and pretended the whole thing wasn’t happening. The older you got, the closer to death she got—according to her.”
That sounds like Grandma. I want to laugh, but I’m not going to let Mom lighten this moment. She asked for it, and she’s going to get it.
“Do you know when I started my period?” I ask, sounding like a petulant child.
“You were about fifteen,” Mom says, squinting her eyes into the past. “I remember because it seemed a bit late to start.”
Ha, I think. I’ve got her.
“No.” I shake my head at her, and she winces. “I was thirteen. Right on time. Textbook. I told Dad because you were still wearing your Lola-goggles at the time.”
“That’s not fair.” She turns to Dad’s headstone. “Nate, you can vouch for me.”
“Dad’s dead,” I shout at her point-blank. “Talk to me. Take off the blinders, Mom, and see me. That’s all I ever wanted, and you still can’t do it.”
We stand there, staring at each other in the cemetery. The grass is too green and the trees are too perfectly spaced and the whole place seems like a picture of somewhere you’d want to have a picnic—were it not for all the gravestones.
“I saw you,” she says, her eyes filling with hurt and anger—at me or herself, I’m not sure.
“No, you didn’t,” I say. “You saw Lola, and you saw Ray, and I think you noticed Dad from time to time, but I could have been gone a week and you wouldn’t have noticed the difference.”
“That’s not fair,” Mom says. “You know how much physical therapy Lola needed. I was busy, is all. It’s not like she could take herself to her appointments and back.” She stops talking and looks at me as if this settles it. I look back at her and raise an eyebrow.
“Is that all you have? You were busy with Lola—that’s it?”
I click my teeth at her rudely. I want to play fair, really, but if she thinks she’s going to get off easy, she’s wrong.
No, that’s a lie. I don’t want to play fair at all.
Mom shifts her weight around and looks back and forth between me and Dad’s rock.
“Well,” she continues, “I was busy, too, with the meetings and, you know.”
“It’s all in the end of that sentence,” I say, my eyes burning a challenge. “Isn’t it?”
“That’s water under the bridge,” she says, tossing the cliché at me like it’s supposed to close the subject. But it’s more like she’s the troll under the bridge and we’re the three billy goats gruff. “But I know you need to say it. I understand. That’s why I asked you here.”
“It’s not water under the bridge, Mom. It’s a raging flood, and I’m clinging to the railing trying not to get washed away. Do you really not know that? Do you really not know how much your drinking hurt us? We were just kids. How did you think we were supposed to take care of ourselves without you? We needed you.”
Mom looks at me, and I see that she wants to throw out another platitude, but I also see that she knows it’s more complicated than that.
�
�I asked for this,” she says and touches my arm gently. “Go ahead and tell me.”
I could scream, I’m so mad at her for thinking that all I need is to get a few thoughts off my chest.
“Ray and I still mattered,” I say, my rage audible beneath the wavering of my voice.
“Resentment is a useless emotion,” she says and smiles at me. “There is never a way to go back.”
“Why weren’t we important enough to change for? How did you think I could forget about all those years I spent not being as important as the bottom of a vodka bottle?”
“You’re not pulling any punches are you, Nina?”
“No,” I say, firmly. “I intend to land every one of them.”
“Nina,” she says and then offers up the truth of it. “I’m just a person. Being a mother doesn’t stop me from doing things wrong. It doesn’t give me superpowers. The most disheartening thing you realize as a parent is that no matter how hard you try, you’re still just a regular human being. No cape or magic rope or invisible airplane can help you. You will screw up your kids. It’s just a matter of how badly. You see it happening right in front of you, yet you’re powerless to stop it. Life spins out of control, and you are who you are. I guess the best superpower is having the courage to admit you have none.”
“Is that some sort of apology?” I ask. “What are you apologizing for, exactly? Before the accident or after? Because you were just as bad after as you were before—just different. It wasn’t better. None of it was good. None of it was fair.”
For some reason, the memory of our last vacation before the accident comes to me. Mom sat under a huge umbrella stuck deep in the sand. It was late in the day for her to be as sober as she was. Dad and Ray were out in the ocean, out where the water caught the sunlight and sparked it back toward the beach. Lola and I made castles at the edge of the water, laughing at how fast we could build something before the ocean came and erased it away. We looked back at Mom from time to time, like she was a beacon from the shore and we were mapping our place according to her. She didn’t realize she was leaving us to drift aimlessly farther and farther out into the black waters of the open sea.
The Lemonade Year Page 27