The Lemonade Year

by Amy Willoughby-Burle

  “Nina,” Mom says, bringing me back. “If there was a way to undo everything I’ve done wrong, don’t you think I would?”

  “Would you? I don’t know. You’re being all pithy and tossing out quotes and it’s ticking me off. The truth is that you forgot us. You let Ray drown in his own guilt, and you didn’t do anything to help him. I think you actually wanted him to suffer.”

  “I did not!” Anger finally boils over in her as well. “You have a child of your own. You tell me that if Cassie did something stupid—accident or not—that you would want her to suffer for it. Would you?”

  “Of course not,” I scream back at her, like she didn’t just prove her point.

  “I prayed for Ray every night,” she says, pointing her finger at me. “Just as hard as I prayed for Lola. I couldn’t do anything but stand by and watch what happened to both of them.”

  I see a chance to bring her down, and I take it.

  “You prayed for Ray. You prayed for Lola,” I say, bobbing my head, revving up. “Did you ever pray for me?”

  She sucks in a breath of air, and I think she’s going to spit something out at me, but she just stands there, looking at me. Beaten.

  “No,” she says, and the honesty of it hits me in the stomach. “I don’t know that I did. I didn’t think you needed it. I thought you were strong enough to handle things on your own. You always seem so strong.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  Anger is quickly losing ground to devastation. I’m one small word away from losing my backbone and crumpling into a heap.

  “I don’t think you understand what you’ve done,” I say. “I needed you to love me too.”

  “Of course I loved you. I do love you,” Mom says, still sounding angry. “You have no idea how much I love the three of you. Yes, I made a huge mess of things. But not for lack of trying.”

  “You call what you did trying?” It’s a mean thing to say and I know it. I feel bad right away. I don’t know that I’m doing any better with Cassie. Honestly, I think I’m doing worse. Everything I’m saying to my mother, I know that Cassie could say to me. In her own way, she already has.

  “Now you stop right there,” Mom says, talking to me like I’m still a teenager. Maybe this is a conversation we should have had when I was. “Don’t you dare doubt my love for you. I know I have hurt you, and you have every right to tell me about it, but don’t for one second think that anything I did was out of any other motivation than to love you and care for you. Even the drinking—and yes, I know that sounds crazy. I drank to take the edge off, so I wouldn’t snap at you kids because I’d had a stressful day. Sure, it was a bad road to start down, and I went down it a lot farther than most people. I got lost, and when I tried to find my way back, I went the wrong direction.”

  “What does any of that mean? What am I supposed to do about that now?”

  “I’m hoping there is a way to salvage our relationship, Nina. Some way to turn this back to what it could have been.”

  “I don’t want to salvage our relationship,” I say, and her face falls. “It wasn’t worth saving.”

  I don’t mean it like she thinks I do, but she starts talking before I can explain myself.

  “Nina, look,” she says and puts her hand on mine. “I know what I put you and Ray and your father through. Saying I’m sorry can’t smooth this over, I know that.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” I say. “You tossed us into this other life and expected that we’d know how to make our way.”

  “But wasn’t it better?” she asks, her face a ball of confusion and expectation. “Without me drinking?”

  I pause in my anger, and my field of vision clears slightly. “It was different. I don’t know that better is the right word.”

  “I see.”

  “It was fragile,” I say, having found the phrase to fit it. “It was brought on by things that had nothing to do with us and dependent on things that we couldn’t control. That’s tough for a kid.”

  Life before Lola’s accident had been a glass bottle that we could see and touch. We could gauge our world by the measure of liquid inside. Not that we wanted Mom to keep drinking—no one wanted that—but life after Lola’s accident was like fog drifting around our feet, vaporous but still able to trip us up. We didn’t know how to navigate that life.

  “There are things you don’t understand either,” she says. “It was a chance for me to be what a mother was supposed to be. That was more intoxicating than any drink had ever been.”

  “You were my mother too,” I say, the anger welling again. “I was just as broken as Lola and Ray. Just because I was better at hiding it didn’t mean I was whole.”

  In the eyes of a child, a mother is infallible. Truth is what she says it is. She’s Wonder Mom, superhero.

  “Will it be good enough if I say it?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know.”

  “I am,” she says and puts her hand back on mine. “I am sorry.”

  “I know,” I say and let her fingers rest on top of mine.

  This is why Lola played along.

  “Is there not some way to save us?” she asks. “I needed help, but I didn’t ask. All I had to do was ask. Even though I failed, I wanted to be a good mother. I wanted it so badly.”

  I’m stopped in my petulant tracks. For all my talk about her not seeing me when I needed her, I realize that I did see her when she needed me, but I looked away.

  “I think you did ask,” I say. I’m humbled and sad and my voice breaks when I speak again. “We just didn’t understand you.”

  “I didn’t ask in a way that you could have,” she says. “You were children. It wasn’t your fault. But I am asking now.”

  “For help?” I ask, tears welling in my eyes. “Do you still need help?”

  “I need forgiveness.”

  I look away. Help is easy. Forgiveness is hard.

  “I don’t understand why you drank, Mom. I don’t understand how you could forget that I still needed a mother. I don’t understand any of it.”

  “Understanding why someone did something doesn’t change anything,” she says. “Forgiving does, and that doesn’t require understanding. We have to start with forgiveness or else there’s no point in trying to move forward.”

  “But how does forgiving you change the past?” I ask, my throat tightening.

  “It doesn’t. It changes the future. That’s all we can do.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.

  “Nate,” Mom says, turning back to Dad. “If you would, put in a good word for her up there. She’s giving up, and I don’t want her to. She needs you right now, Nate, and I know I’m a poor substitute.”

  I shake my head and fight back tears. My throat has jagged rocks in it, and they hurt when I swallow.

  “You’re not a poor substitute,” I eke out, tears spilling over again.

  Mom presses something into the palm of my hand. I know right away what it is. The round, stone beads are still hot with prayer—from this morning, yesterday, years ago.

  “You try too hard to figure things out on your own,” she says to me. “Sometimes you have to give up control. Because if you want to know the truth, control wasn’t yours to begin with. You’re scraping and clawing to hold the reins of a horse that you can’t lead. Turn them loose, baby.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Well,” she says, “I guess I have something to pray for you about now. You start on your end, and I’ll start on mine. You’ll get there.”

  I burst into hot tears, thick heavy sobs, and for the first time in a terribly long time, Mom puts her arms around me and doesn’t let go.

  I finally see that Mom just wanted to be Wonder Woman, but her cape was constantly stuck in the door of the invisible airplane and she couldn’t
see where the door handle was to release it.

  She holds on tight, and I let her.

  “So, did you reach him?” Mom asks after the lull.

  “Reach who?” I ask, pulling out of her embrace so I can look at her

  “Your father,” she says, holding my hand. “On that Magic-8 Ball.”

  “No,” I say. “Well, probably not. How did you know?”

  “You left the game out,” she says and pats her other hand over our interlaced fingers. “And you ate all my chips.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” she says. “I’ll talk to you later, Nate.”

  Mom heads back to her car, and I stand there looking at Dad’s headstone.

  Cut your mother some slack, I feel him say. Cut yourself some too.

  “See you later, Dad.” I hurry to catch up with Mom.

  “What did Dad tell you on the Magic-8 Ball?” Mom asks.

  “We asked him where you keep the mints. In case we got a trick-or-treater.”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “That’s pretty much what he said.”

  I stop at her car and wait for her to open the door.

  “Go make up with your sister,” she says before she closes the door.

  I don’t ask her how she knows things are askew. Mothers just know.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “You want to recast me, don’t you?” I say when Lola opens our bedroom door.

  “I thought about it,” she says with a small smile. “But you really are perfect for the part. I have to think about the greater good of the film.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, sitting down on one of the twin beds.

  “Me too,” she says, sliding down to the floor at my feet. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back out to talk to you and Ray last night. I just wanted to be alone. I thought we all needed a little space to process.”

  “Come up here,” I say, and she wiggles up beside me on the bed.

  “You were right last night,” she says. “I am tired of all the secrets. I should have told everyone when I started to remember things.”

  “To what end? There was never going to be a good time to reveal that. Is that what’s got you upset?”

  “I guess.” She grabs the pillow from the head of the bed and hugs it close to her chest. “Is that why Ray didn’t tell me the truth. Habit?”

  “No,” I say. “Fear. Sometimes saying something out loud makes it too real.”

  “But he told you. All this time, you thought you and Ray didn’t have a bond. But you do. You always did.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Can I ask you something?” she asks but doesn’t wait for permission. “Sometimes I worry about what’s real. Were all the things we shared as kids real? All the things we laughed about and all the stories we told each other? Was the lying just about what happened before the accident, or was my whole life after that make-believe?”

  I angle toward her so we sit cross-legged in front of each other with our knees touching. This has always been our signal of truce, of confidence, of sacred space.

  I take her hands in mine. “This is real. Everything I’ve ever said to you is real. Ray is real.” I squeeze her hands tighter. “You are real. Everything you feel, and the way you see the world, and the things you paint—it’s all real.”

  She grips my hands and I grip hers. We hold on for dear life.

  “I miss you already,” I say, and the thought of her leaving feels much more real than anything.

  She pulls me toward her, and we lay down with our arms around each other. Holding on—blood thicker than anger, than fear, than time.

  “We shouldn’t tell Mom that I know,” she says. “Ray will have to tell her about Michael. And I guess I’ll have to tell her about Peru. Otherwise she’s going to wonder where the heck I am. I guess we all have a part to play in things.”

  “Life is a stage, and all the men and women in it are merely players. Or something like that,” I say.

  I want to ask Lola if Peru is forever, but I can’t. She says it’s just a mission trip, and right now she probably thinks it is. But what about when she gets there and learns how to fly? What if she just keeps going?

  Maybe not today, but one day, I will fly.

  “Do you think we make things harder than they need to be?” she asks.

  “Most of the time.”

  I know I do. Maybe I’ve made everything harder than it needs to be. I decide to make a call in the morning and try again.

  24

  Come home I said, and they did.

  I open the door and there stands Cassie with her purple-and-daisy-patterned suitcase and Jack with his arms folded across his chest. No suitcase.

  I step back to let them in. I want to reach out to Cassie, but I need to let her call the shots. She chooses to slip past me and disappears into her bedroom.

  “Am I too late?” I ask Jack.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I really don’t.”

  He closes the door behind him and stands in the entryway to the living room. His eyes fix on my face like he’s sizing me up.

  “I told Cassie she could go to Teen Swim this evening,” Jack says. “You and I should talk.”

  I’ve said that sentence a time or two and it’s never been pleasant.

  “I thought you wanted to try again,” I say, jumping to conclusions.

  “I do, Nina,” Jack says. “I just don’t know if I can. Those aren’t the same thing.”

  Cassie comes out of her room wearing her swimsuit and carrying a bag of clothes. She looks at me in challenge and puts her hand on her bathing suit-clad hip. “Aren’t you going to tell me I can’t go?”

  “We can go.”

  “No,” she says and actually stomps her foot. “Dad says I can go alone. Zach’s dad is going to be there anyway.”

  “Who’s Zach?” I ask, looking at Jack.

  “My boyfriend,” Cassie says and clicks her tongue at me. Like mother, like daughter.

  I open my mouth, but I hear Jack’s voice.

  “I’ve already worked it out, Nina,” he says. “Zach’s dad will take them back to their place after the swim, and we can pick up Cassie after dinner.”

  Cassie stands so firmly in place that her feet grow roots down into the carpet. Her stare stings my skin, and I sigh out an agreement.

  “I don’t like this,” I say once she’s gone. “I feel like I’ve been out of the loop for years, not months.”

  “You have,” Jack says.

  “Tell me this isn’t better than pizza and a movie,” Jack says across the candlelit table of a local restaurant.

  “Is that what you think it’s like with Oliver?” I ask.

  Jack doesn’t know how things ended with Oliver, and I find that I don’t want to tell him that it’s over. Jack picks up his water, and the gold on his ring finger clicks against the glass.

  “Ok,” Jack concedes. “So, what, he’s the coffeehouse-and-

  book-reading type? Does he quote you lines from some dead poet?”

  Jack smirks to himself and cuts into his steak.

  I can’t talk about Oliver with Jack. I can’t talk about him at all. My phone registers a text message, and I fumble frantically, thinking it might be from Cassie. It’s a note from Carol.

  Saw you go into Limones with Jack. What’s up?

  I don’t answer. I don’t know what’s up.

  “Is that him?” Jack asks, taking a sip of water. “Are you going to tell him where you are?”

  “Is this night about you and me? Or you and Oliver? What if it was Cassie? What if she needs me and I’m sitting in some restaurant eating seared scallops and stone-ground grits?”

  “She’s fine,” Jack says. “And that’s new by the way. I knew you�
��d order that.”

  “Is this your spot?” I ask, bold. “Is this where you took them? Did you come here so often you know the menu by heart?”

  “Took who?”

  I roll my eyes like a teenager, and Jack lets out a chortle.

  “You think I brought other women here. I’m not that suave, I promise you. Who do you think I am, anyway?”

  I’m not sure that I know.

  “So you went straight to the motel, then?” I’m angry, and maybe a little jealous.

  He sighs. “What do you want me to say? Because I’ve told you in these exact words a number of times—I did not have an affair, multiple affairs, or any other loophole of syntax that you’re trying to catch me in.”

  “Whatever, Jack. I don’t expect you to own up to it. Let’s just eat.”

  “What do you want, Nina?” Jack waves his hand in resignation, yet doesn’t answer any of my questions. “Do you want to adopt? Do you want me to apologize for ruining your life? What?”

  “You didn’t ruin my life. I don’t know what I want.”

  “That’s the problem,” Jack says and pushes his half-eaten dinner aside. “You’re always looking ahead for something that might never come. You’re never happy with where you are, what you have, who you have.”

  I look up sharply at this comment. The truth of it is a perfectly round floodlight in a high school play, illuminating the two of us at the table.

  In the play, the “me” character gets up and steps into the darkness. It’s like walking behind a wall the contrast is so sharp. In the play, she will emerge on the other side of the darkness and step into another ball of light where she will deliver an emotional and weighty monologue that changes the course of the rest of the play. But instead of surfacing on the other side like I should do, I just keep stumbling around the stage in the dark, getting caught in the curtain and falling down.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I don’t know what to do about that.”

  “I don’t know either.” Jack takes hold of my left hand across the table, rubbing his finger across the rings I’m wearing. “I don’t know if it’s too late or not. I don’t know if we can get past the things that haunt us. I don’t know if you can let go.”