The Lemonade Year

by Amy Willoughby-Burle

  “I don’t know,” I say exchanging the pizza box I’m holding for the urn in Jack’s hands.

  “Oh, no,” Lola exclaims. “Is that Dad?”

  She looks at the urn and then at me—and then at Jack and Nicole and Michael.

  “Who is that?” Lola asks, nodding to Michael, who is clinging to Nicole’s leg. “Is that him?”

  Awkward silence.

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” Jack says overly enthusiastically, holding out the pizza box. “Bet you didn’t expect to see me again, huh? Yep, I’m back.”

  “This is going to end badly,” Nicole says. “Michael, say hello to your Aunt Lola.”

  Lola gasps. An audible and beautiful gasp.

  Lola steps aside to let us pass. She grabs my hand and mouths “What are you doing?” to me. I can’t answer. I just walk past her. At the dinner table, surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins—all the usual suspects—I put Dad down in his spot, which had been left empty as I suspected it would be.

  “Nina, what is that?” Mom scoots her chair back from the table, standing up as she speaks. “Where did you get that? Have you lost your mind?”

  “We’ve all lost our minds,” I say. “But I think it might still be reversible.”

  “Jack?” Mom nods to him. “Nice to see you. Ray, will you please bring in another chair?”

  “Thanks for having me over,” Jack says, sounding like it’s our first date. He sets the pizza box down on the table in front of Dad. “Hey, sweetie,” he says to Cassie, whose face is lit with nervous excitement. “You look lovely.”

  “Dad?” she asks like he’s a figment of her imagination.

  He winks, and her eyes well up with tears.

  Ray stands up to get a chair and sees Nicole and Michael standing behind us. Ray freezes, mid-motion like an actor in a high school play doing a freeze-frame so the audience will focus elsewhere. But they don’t. The aunts and uncles swivel their heads back and forth like they’re at a tennis match.

  I nudge Ray into motion, and he slips past Nicole and Michael, touching her quickly on the arm. Everyone scoots their chairs and plates and glasses around to make room for three new guests. There is much tinkling of china and glass and silverware. Someone knocks over the bowl of dinner rolls, and one falls to the floor. Jack picks it up.

  “Here you go, Rose,” he says and hands her the roll.

  Everyone looks expectantly at me.

  “Nina,” Mom whispers, “get your father off the dining room table. This is very uncouth.”

  “Uncouth?” I wedge my seat between Mom and Jack. “Is that what’s bothering you? It isn’t proper? Dad doesn’t fit the table décor, maybe. Should I open him up and stick some daisies in there?”

  “That’s gross,” Cassie says. “Can I sit by Dad?”

  “Of course,” Jack says and waves Uncle Paul over a seat.

  Ray comes back with two folding chairs from the garage. He opens the chairs and brushes them off. He frowns at their condition and makes Aunt Rose and an uncle we don’t see very often get up and switch seats.

  “This is just like you to try to bring your father back from the dead,” Mom says and then sees Nicole and Michael for the first time now that they have sat down. “Nicole, I didn’t see you there.”

  “I brought him back from the grave,” I clarify. “There’s a difference. Can I have the sweet potatoes, Uncle Paul?”

  Uncle Paul puts down the glass of tea he’s been holding and reaches quickly for potatoes.

  “Can I have a piece of pizza?” Michael speaks up.

  Ray jumps up and presses himself past the other people at the table to get to the pizza box. He knocks over Uncle Paul’s glass of tea. I see Nicole smile just a bit.

  “Me too,” Cassie says. “After all that hospital food and Grandma’s mush diet, I want some real food.”

  Nicole looks at Cassie, and her eyes widen just a moment before she looks at me, and I know she’s transforming her abstract understanding that Michael has a cousin into the real fact that she and Michael have a family.

  The doorbell rings, and everyone looks in that direction.

  “I’ll get it,” I shout and jump up from the table.

  I know who it will be. He’s already told me he was coming.

  “Hey, babe,” Chris says to Lola when I’ve shown him to the table.

  Lola stands up but doesn’t move away from the table. Heads start swiveling again.

  “I thought you were in LA. Thinking,” Lola says.

  Chris walks over to her, excusing himself to get past the people in his way.

  “Turns out there wasn’t that much to think about,” he says. “Not when it came right down to it. Not when the choices were you or no you.”

  Lola looks at me and all the years between then and now collect in the corners of her eyes and roll gently down her cheek. Chris takes Uncle Paul’s napkin and hands it to Lola.

  “Lola,” Chris says, his voice low but still audible. “Do you know how annoying it is to have people singing that stupid jingle at me all day? I go to the grocery store and the clerk sings it, the guy at the movie theater sings it, the mailman sings it. I hide in the house and wait for him to drive away before I can get the mail. I have moved four times in the same city because each new neighbor thinks they’re the first to sing it to me and they get such a kick out of it I can hear it through the stinking walls. But you—you didn’t know.”

  Chris holds Lola’s hand, twisting her fingers in his like he’s trying to tie the two of them together so she won’t slip away.

  “It was so liberating,” he says. “And then I figured out why you didn’t know. And I felt like a jerk. But I couldn’t tell you. Then you found out, but you didn’t seem to care. You took me for me, not the character that people think I am. You’re the only person I can be me with. I’d be crazy to let you get on that plane and fly away to Peru or Timbuktu or wherever the heck you’re going without me.”

  Chris gets down on one knee and pulls out a little box.

  Lola pulls in a sharp breath, and I see her wings unfurling—feathery and shimmering. She’s going to take off, against all odds—just like that owl from underneath my car—suddenly and surely as if there was never any doubt she was going to be ok.

  I want Ray to see the wings, too, to know he had a hand in helping them spread open.

  Chris takes out the ring and holds it up to Lola.

  “If you don’t love it, we’ll get a different one,” Chris saying. “I got it from the airport. I don’t even know if it’s real. You’re the only thing that’s real. Stay with me, and please don’t let them put that jingle on my tombstone. I will stay with you and make sure you don’t buy that tea that you can’t remember you don’t like. And I won’t let you order the number thirteen special at Chai Pani because it has ginger and you’re allergic. I promise to turn the channel when the scary previews come on because I know they give you nightmares. And if you want to go to Peru, I will go there with you. What do you say?”

  “That’s so romantic,” Cassie says, her hands pressed over her heart.

  “That’s the weirdest proposal I think I’ve ever heard,” Lola says. “But yes, you can keep me from eating ginger and drinking terrible tea and I will stay with you and make sure they don’t put that jingle on your tombstone.”

  “So it’s a yes?” he says.

  “Yes,” Lola says.

  “Peru?” Mom says from across the table.

  “That’s who you are,” Nicole says, delighted, pointing at Chris. “You’re that guy.”

  I look at Chris and expect to see a grimace on his face.

  “Yes,” he says and winks at Lola. “I’m that guy.”

  Michael jumps up from his chair and says, “I like the one where you ride the bathtub down the mudslide.”

  “That’s my favorit
e one, too,” Chris says with a smile.

  Mom looks at Michael and her eyes widen. “Ray?” she asks.

  “Oh, come on, Mom,” I say. “Do you even have to question it?”

  The tennis match restarts, and everyone looks in synchronized swivels from Mom to Ray to Michael and back to Ray. No one speaks. Finally, Jack breaks the tension and serves himself dinner.

  “This looks great,” he says. “Cassie, pass me the potatoes.”

  He scoops a helping onto his plate and begins a conversation with no one in particular as if there is nothing strange about this at all. “So I took a promotion at work. It’s not really more money, but the office is bigger and it’s closer to the break room. Anybody want some potatoes?” he asks, holding out the dish.

  “I love you,” I whisper to him.

  “I know,” he says and smiles. “It’s nice to hear you admit it.”

  Cassie draws in a breath of air and sighs out too deep a worry for a teenage girl. I look at her, and our eyes meet in a way neither of us has allowed in a long time. I see her and she sees me. We see the future.

  Nicole reaches out and takes the dish from Jack.

  “This is Michael,” Ray says to Mom and serves him another slice of pizza. “And yes, there’s a reason he looks just like me.”

  Everyone stares at Michael as he eats his slice of pizza. Cassie looks positively elated. Mom looks like she’s going to cry or dance or burst into a million points of light.

  Ray points at Dad’s jar. “Did you just dig that up?” he asks me.

  “There’s still dirt on it,” Lola says. “Nice to see you again, Jack. Back in the saddle, so to speak?”

  Jack chokes a bit on Mom’s lumpy mashed potatoes. “Hopefully,” he says.

  “Dad,” Cassie says, embarrassment on her cheeks, happiness in her eyes.

  “Uncle Paul,” I say, “will you pass me some turkey?”

  He does, and I take a bite, not looking up at the urn.

  “Mom,” I say, “this is really tender, the best yet.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” Mom says. “I was wondering why you were late, but, well, I wouldn’t have guessed this.” She points at Dad. “Or that.” She points at Nicole and Michael. “Or you either,” she says to Jack. “But I’m glad.”

  I smile and take a sip of tea. “And don’t worry, Mom, we took care of the plot at the cemetery.”

  “You left it empty?” she says, slightly aghast at the thought of the waste of a good plot of dirt.

  “No,” I say. “We replaced Dad with a jar of pickles.”

  Everyone’s fork stops in mid-air. We didn’t really; I left them in the car. Suddenly the ridiculousness of it sets in, and we all break into uncontrollable laughter. For a moment, laughter does one of its jobs. It smooths its hand over heartache, just long enough for you to see through to the other side. Maybe not long enough to get there, but knowing it exists gives you the ability to press forward.

  Thanksgiving dinner goes on with Dad at the head of the table and the requisite clinking of forks on china, laughter, and all the little nothings that make something out of all the chaos.

  During coffee and pie, Ray speaks up. “Where do you think Dad wanted to go?”

  “He wanted to be right here,” I say.

  “You’re right,” Lola says. “Dad was always happiest at home. That was one of the great things about him. He loved being here with us. Even I remember that.”

  “Brush the dirt off at least,” Mom says.

  She can’t keep her eyes off Michael. She talks to him about his friends and his school and all the things that she and he will do now that they’re acquainted.

  I steal a look every now and then at Dad, there at the head of the table. I can’t help but see him as he was before the stroke, before the nursing home, before the shortest passing of a year that I can recall. So much has changed, but looking around the table, I see how much has remained the same—all the truly important things.

  I steal even more glances at Jack and catch him looking at me most of the time.

  Finally, after the usual sighs of contentment and happiness, folks begin to gather themselves to say good-bye.

  “I think we’re going to go, Cecilia,” Aunt Rose says to my mother. “This has been . . . memorable.”

  Mom sees them out, and everyone excuses themselves from the table to mill about the good-byes at the door. Michael seems drawn to Jack and Cassie and pulls them into the living room where the three of them sit on the floor playing a made-up game. For a minute, Dad and I are alone in the kitchen.

  “I’m glad you could be here,” I say, speaking out loud to him at last. “It wouldn’t have seemed right without you. Sorry about the jar of pickles joke. Cricket came up with it.”

  The front door closes, and Chris and Lola, Ray and Nicole come back into the dining room. Nicole and Ray navigate each other’s space, awkwardly but purposefully. It will take some time to sort things out between them. Little moments are easy; the span of time is tougher to predict.

  Lola is gazing at her left ring finger with a faraway look on her face. She and Chris whisper to each other, and the distance between here and Peru seems greater every second, but I will let her fly and be happy for her.

  I spy on Jack and Michael for a moment.

  Mom slips up beside me. “Ok,” she says, “burying the ashes was stupid.”

  “Not as stupid as digging them up,” I say, and we laugh, our signal that there will eventually be a truce, that our attempt at a new and better relationship has passed its first test.

  “I can’t believe I have another grandchild,” Mom says, and the look in her eyes tells me that just his being here makes the world a new place for her. She looks at me. “So, you and Jack?”

  “I’m optimistic.”

  “At last.” Mom puts her arm around my waist and gives me a squeeze.

  “Jack,” she calls over to him. “Could I have some time with my grandchildren?”

  Jack stands up, and Michael takes hold of Cassie’s hand as they walk toward the kitchen.

  “I think we should eat more pie,” Cassie says.

  “More pie,” Michael shouts.

  “You should talk to him,” Mom nods at Jack but speaks quietly so he won’t hear. “So that you don’t run off and leave me in the grocery store again.”

  Jack gives Michael and Cassie over to Mom, and as she passes the kitchen table, she kisses her fingertips and touches them to Dad’s urn.

  “Mom,” I call after her, and she turns back. “You didn’t mess up. You made everything interesting. You still do. All the things that you want me to know—I know them.”

  Mom dips her head and takes a deep breath. She looks up, nods, and walks away with Michael and Cassie. Nothing will be easy, but it will possible. Perhaps the difference in those two things is not as staggering after all.

  “Will you wait for me for a minute?” I ask Jack. “I need to do something.”

  “I’m neck deep already,” Jack says and touches my face. “Just the way I want it to be.”

  I take Dad onto the front porch. It’s nearly dark, and the stars are popping on. Ray comes outside.

  “I’m going to drive them home,” he says. “If I can get Michael away from Mom, that is. Do you think it went well?”

  “Ray,” I say and set Dad on the porch railing, “I don’t think given the circumstances, we could have hoped for any better.”

  Ray nods in agreement and puts his arm around my shoulder. He turns me around and pulls me into a hug.

  “Thanks, Sis,” he says quietly into my hair.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I guess now the rest is up to me. Let’s hope I don’t screw it up.”

  There’s a very real chance of that, and I sense Ray knows it.

  “You know I’d do
anything for you,” I say. “Don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I do.”

  Michael and Nicole come out onto the porch. Nicole gives me a hug.

  “It will be good to have you around again,” I say to her. “We missed you.”

  “Thanks for the dinner invitation,” she says. “It was weird. But I’m glad we came.” She looks at Ray and the corners of her mouth turn up. It’s a start.

  “I’ll pull my car around,” he says.

  Nicole picks up Michael in her arms, and he’s face to face with me.

  “I didn’t really introduce myself,” I say. “I’m your Aunt Nina. I’m glad you came for dinner.”

  “Me too,” says Michael. “Will I see Uncle Jack again? He’s fun.”

  “I’m sure you will,” I say, thinking of divorce papers and wedding rings and new beginnings.

  Nicole meets Ray at the back door of the car, and they situate their son in the car seat I made Ray buy. Ray takes Nicole’s hand. She steps back from him and then steps forward. It’s a hard dance to watch.

  “Do you think they’ll make it?” Lola says from behind me.

  “I hope so,” I say.

  Lola and I sit in the rocking chairs on the porch and watch Ray and his family drive away.

  “So,” Lola says with a smile on her face. “Jack, huh?”

  “Yeah. What do you think about that?”

  “Too much lemonade and orange juice will give you a bellyache anyway.” She kicks her foot playfully against mine. “Jack is a good guy.”

  “He is.”

  “I’m going to miss you.”

  “You can tell me all about it when you get back. Before you set off again on your next adventure.”

  “You think I will?” she asks, and I can tell this is something she’s been thinking about.

  “Come back?” I ask, my heart thudding. “I hope so.”

  “No,” she says. “Of course I’ll come back. I mean, do you think there will be other adventures?”

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

  “Yes,” I say. “I think you’re ready to go.”

  “Where?”

  She looks at me, and we’re little one last time. I see us on this porch—me and her on the steps, young, watching Ray in the yard. Dad is washing the car and Mom is in the kitchen making dinner and everything that ever will be is still out there, somewhere in front of us.