Stay Sweet

by Siobhan Vivian

  “I need to go out for a while, but I left the front door open if you need to get in.”

  “Thank you,” Amelia says coldly.

  “Amelia . . .” But Grady doesn’t say anything more. Because what is there to say?

  Once he’s gone, Jen knocks on the door. “Amelia? Someone’s asking for the Head Girl outside.”

  Amelia stands up, straightens her shirt.

  There’s someone at the left service window. An old lady with a cane, dressed up in Sunday clothes, buttons and stockings.

  Amelia walks to the window, unhooks the latch, and slides it open. “Can I help you?”

  The old lady doesn’t answer her. Instead, she looks past Amelia into the stand and clicks her tongue. “Not a thing has changed.”

  Not yet, Amelia thinks.

  “I used to work here a long time ago.”

  “Oh. Well, welcome back.” Amelia leans forward on her elbows, forcing a smile to her face. “I’m Amelia.”

  “I’m Theresa Wolff, but the girls used to call me Tiggy. I was Molly’s best friend.”

  Amelia’s mouth drops open. Tiggy? She’s always assumed Tiggy was dead.

  “Oh my gosh, it’s so nice to meet you.” She reaches out for a handshake. Tiggy’s skin is loose and cold, and though Amelia tries to hold her gently, she clings to her with excitement. But as she lets go, that excitement gives way to dread. Amelia worries that Tiggy might not know that Molly has died. That she’ll have to be the one to break the news. She forces a swallow. “I’m not sure if you heard, but—”

  “Oh yes. My granddaughter sent me the obituary. I got ill and couldn’t make the funeral. If I hadn’t promised my friends here the best ice cream they ever tasted, I don’t know if I could have gotten a ride out today.” Amelia didn’t realize before, but Tiggy’s brought a nurse with her, a short man with dark hair and a mustache who is carefully and gently assisting her. And there’s a white transport van from a nursing home parked off to the side, near the picnic tables, where a woman is standing watching them. She waves when she sees Amelia looking.

  “I figured this might be the last summer of Home Sweet Home. Can I have a small cup?” Tiggy shuffles backward a little so she can take in all of the ice cream stand.

  Amelia grabs her scoop and opens the dipping cabinet. Even though Tiggy asked for a small, she gives her two big scoops, and makes chocolate sundaes for both Tiggy’s aides.

  Tiggy tries to pay, but Amelia waves her off. “On the house,” she declares. “And Tiggy, I hope you don’t taste a difference. I’ve been making the ice cream myself since Molly passed.”

  Tiggy closes her eyes and takes a lick off the top. “It’s like I’m seventeen again.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  “And you’re Head Girl?” Tiggy asks.

  “I am.”

  “Where’s your pin?” Tiggy asks, suspicious.

  “Oh,” Amelia says, looking down at her collar. “I guess I forgot to put it on.”

  This is a lie. But Amelia didn’t feel right, putting it on after firing Cate. As if that were the reason she’d done it, simply to take the power back.

  “What a shame,” Tiggy says.

  Amelia thinks at first that Tiggy is referring to her missing pin, but then she feels something on her shoulder. Tiggy has lifted her cane and stuck it inside the stand. It rests on Amelia’s shoulder, as if Tiggy were setting up a trick shot on a pool table. Turning slightly, Amelia sees that Tiggy’s got the rubber tip lined straight up with the photo of Molly and Wayne.

  “Yes, it’s very sad,” Amelia agrees.

  “Sadder than you know,” Tiggy answers cryptically.

  Except Amelia does know. She’s read Molly’s diary, cover to cover.

  “Well . . . ,” Amelia says. “I’m glad you decided to come to visit. You heard right, I’m afraid. This is going to be the last summer of Meade Creamery.”

  “Well, you ought to take that picture down, now that Molly’s gone.”

  “Do you want it? Nobody will mind if you take it.”

  Tiggy laughs heartily. “Me? Want that? Lord no.” She looks over her shoulder to make sure no one is behind her. “Molly would kill me for telling anyone this, but I never forgave that son of a bitch.”

  Amelia’s eyes go wide. And Tiggy’s eyes, old and watery and cloudy as they are, twinkle. She leans in close. “Have you ever held on to a secret for so long that you nearly burst?”

  “Yes,” Amelia answers without hesitation. The fact that she is in possession of Molly Meade’s diary.

  For Tiggy, this seems to be the right answer. “The story of this place, of those two right there, it’s not what you think it is.”

  Amelia feels unsteady. She knows the story. She knows it straight from Molly’s own pen. So what could Tiggy be referring to?

  Tiggy shakes her head, puts a finger to her lips. “I’ve already said too much. You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But I’ve always hated that she kept his photo hanging up, after everything that happened.”

  “She did it because she missed him,” Amelia answers automatically. “Because when she was making ice cream, it was as if . . .”

  Amelia’s rote performance comes to a halt as she sees Tiggy rolling her eyes, almost bored. “Yes, yes, dear. I know that story.”

  That story. As if there were another one.

  “We didn’t know her,” Amelia says apologetically. “Not really.”

  “People knew what she wanted them to know. Being a war widow is very good for business.”

  It feels almost crazy to say out loud. “So . . .Wayne didn’t die in the war?”

  Tiggy looks around again, the secret almost on the tip of her tongue. “Aw, heck. I might not live to see another summer, and what good is a story this delicious if you don’t share it?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  TIGGY ENTERS THE OFFICE AND settles onto the yellow love seat, rubbing both hands across the fabric. Amelia pulls up a chair close to her, and they sit across from each other, one of the first Meade Creamery girls opposite one of the last.

  And as Tiggy relays the story, Amelia is easily able to picture it, playing like a movie in her mind. How, at first, Molly did think Wayne was dead. How depressed she’d been, how she blamed herself, how guilty she felt that they’d been fighting.

  “The strange thing is that no official word ever came. But we thought it was only a matter of time.”

  But near Christmas, Tiggy and Molly had been together in Molly’s basement, listening to records and wrapping presents. And Wayne came in through the side door.

  “I don’t know where he spent those months since the war ended, but he’d clearly been injured,” Tiggy says. “He was walking with a limp.”

  Molly was so shocked she clung to him. And Tiggy, even though she and Wayne had had their differences, rushed over to him too. But Tiggy could tell right away that something was wrong with Wayne. “He had wild eyes,” she says.

  When he saw Molly’s setup in the basement, it was as if he’d caught her cheating. He told her in no uncertain terms that he wanted her to give up the ice cream stand. He wanted one normal thing back, the life they were supposed to have together.

  Tiggy continues, “She thought he was joking at first. We both did. And Wayne took great offense at our nervous laughter. He said Molly didn’t have to work anymore, now that he was back. Perhaps it was because he and Molly had been out of touch so long, but she told him no straightaway. She said, No, I will not, and I think he just about fell over because she’d never spoken in such a way to him before. There was more argument, and they were both struggling to keep their voices down, and eventually Molly stormed out.”

  Wayne followed her. Quick, like a hunter. “That’s when I began to get scared,” Tiggy admits. “I was grabbing him and begging him to please calm down. He lit a cigarette and they continued to fight and he threw his cigarette aside. A few minutes later we saw smoke. The barn had caught fire.”

  Molly screamed,
“Wayne! Help me!” Because all the Meades’ dairy cows were inside.

  And Tiggy says Wayne just stood there, frozen.

  “Do you think he did it on purpose?” Amelia asks.

  She sighs. “I’m not sure. I ran up and put my hand on Molly’s shoulder, to let her know I was there. Come on, I said, pulling her back to the house, saying we needed to wake her dad and her brothers, even though I knew it was already too late. And Molly looked at Wayne and said, Go. And that’s just what he did.”

  Amelia holds herself. She can imagine how scared Molly must have been. But also, she’s in awe of Molly’s strength. Her presence of mind.

  Tiggy stares off, unfocused, for a second or two. “I once asked Molly what she felt, seeing Wayne go, and do you know what she said?”

  Amelia can barely breathe. “What?”

  “She said, Tiggy, I felt free.” Tiggy shakes her head wistfully. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what people thought of her. Molly certainly didn’t care. It’s just my pride in her, getting the better of me.” She looks down and touches her ice cream gently with her spoon. “Did you know she traveled the world? She took me on my first trip to New York. It was after my second son was born. All expenses paid, on her dime. For a week. We visited all the museums and sights. We went to the top of the Empire State Building. We saw Once Upon a Mattress on Broadway, and I got my Playbill signed by Carol Burnett about a month before she was nominated for the Tony. It got thrown out somewhere along the line, probably by one of my kids. But that was one of the best weeks in my life.”

  “Wow.”

  “And before I moved into the home, I was in Florida, and she came and stayed with me every winter.”

  “We thought she was alone up at the house all those winters, mourning him,” Amelia admits, almost embarrassed.

  Amelia feels dizzy, getting these glimpses of Molly’s life. For so long, she’s been immersed in Molly’s past. And that past is what defined what people thought of her.

  Tiggy doesn’t appear at all surprised. “She didn’t care that people pitied her or thought Wayne was some hero.” Tiggy groans. “I just wish more people knew that. Molly lived exactly the life she wanted.”

  Tiggy takes her last spoonful of ice cream and then gets up. Amelia helps her to the stand door, where Tiggy pauses, holding up a finger to tell the aides lingering at the picnic table that she’ll be a minute. “You said you forgot to wear the Head Girl pin today. But you do still have it, right?”

  “Yes. Right here, actually.” Amelia fetches it from the desk drawer. She thinks of Cate when she holds it in her hands.

  “Make sure you don’t lose track of that. It’s a real diamond in there, you know. Her engagement ring.”

  Amelia reels as Tiggy hobbles over to the picnic table and, with the aides’ help, climbs back into the van.

  Amelia heads up to the house.

  Grady’s not there. She goes right inside and heads for Molly’s bedroom—not the childhood one, but the one Molly stayed in most recently, down the hall from the kitchen—the one where Grady looked on that first day for the recipes.

  She has never gone into this room before.

  Inside, there are pictures of Molly and Tiggy on a beach in what must be Florida, taken maybe twenty years ago, from the style of their bathing suits. Another of them at an outdoor café, stucco in Easter egg colors: Miami. Molly’s bookshelves are lined with travel books, books about places she’s been. Inside the travel books are receipts—for meals, for souvenirs, for hotel rooms.

  It seems there were two Mollys: one before Wayne went off to war and one after.

  Amelia takes the diary out of her tote bag and flips to the final entry, the announcement in the newspaper for Wayne’s memorial service.

  The opposite blank page, she now realizes, has a ghostly impression of writing on it from someone pressing through the page before. Amelia sees that several sheets have been carefully torn out.

  Using a pencil, she rubs the tip over the grooves and a missing entry appears.

  December 29, 1945

  Yesterday, sweet Mrs. Duncan broke into sobs when I passed her on my way out of Blauner’s. She melted into me when I hugged her, her head resting against my shoulder, her tears dampening my coat. What a tragedy, to have lost the barn. She promised to pray for my family, and especially for me and for Wayne, along with the other lost young men, and for the countless other girls in the same situation, forced to pick up the pieces of our shattered dreams and find something to keep living for.

  When she said that last bit, I did well up out of sheer gratefulness that I escaped that fate. What would my life have been if I hadn’t figured out what I did? And just in the nick of time, too?

  I played the part. I solemnly thanked her, and my mother thanked her too.

  I can never tell Mother the truth. Now she thanks God for my ice cream. Without our dairy, my brothers will need to find work elsewhere and it will be left to me to care for Mother and Daddy.

  This will be my life through winter, and I am resigned to it. Grieving someone lost to me. In some ways, I can do it honestly. I do miss Wayne. Or the man I hoped he was.

  In spring, I can begin to smile again in public, delicately, modestly.

  And then, next summer, I will bloom.

  Molly didn’t stop living when she lost Wayne.

  She started.

  Ice cream didn’t save her.

  Molly saved herself.

  Everyone thought the stand was a way for Molly to hold on to Wayne, a way to avoid moving on with her life. But it was just the opposite. It wasn’t a consolation prize, a thing she settled for.

  It gave her exactly what she’d wanted.

  Amelia had hoped Grady would save the stand as desperately as she’d hoped Cate would be picked to be Head Girl. Why? Because she didn’t think she could do either on her own, couldn’t rise to those challenges, despite the fact that she desperately wanted to.

  But maybe the only things stopping her were the limits she put on herself.

  Amelia goes upstairs and returns the diary to its place under the mattress on Molly’s childhood bed. Now she understands why Molly left this room. Not for the reasons Amelia thought, but because the room belonged to the old Molly.

  Before Amelia leaves the farmhouse, she takes something else.

  Grady’s business school textbooks from the trash. She’s due for some new reading material anyway.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  AMELIA CRAMS LIKE IT’S SENIOR year finals all over again, only for classes she didn’t know she was enrolled in. The textbooks are more conceptual than practical, but she still does her best, trying to soak up relevant information as fast as she possibly can. The math is a little over her head too. There are, obviously, a million things she’ll need to learn.

  She’ll get there.

  She is at the library when it opens, pulling business books off the shelf. Making photocopies of pages, highlighting more paragraphs than not.

  Hours pass and she’s not even aware.

  Whenever Amelia watched Grady study, his posture was hunched; he’d groan like reading was physical labor. But every sentence she absorbs gives Amelia energy, motivation.

  She does her best to put together a business plan. What she might need to get set up and running. How much things are worth—from the equipment to the recipes.

  So Meade Creamery can’t survive in its current form.

  That doesn’t mean it needs to fail.

  Instead of being rigid, holding on so tightly to the way things have always been, Amelia now focuses on the fresh. The possible.

  The ice cream will never change. But why couldn’t everything else?

  There’s only one thing standing in her way.

  Money.

  * * *

  Over dinner that night, she shares her plans with her parents.

  “I have some news. Grady Meade has decided to sell the Meade family farm. But I’m trying to find a way to keep the ice cream stan
d going.”

  Her mom and dad share a look.

  “I want to buy the business. Molly’s recipes, her equipment, and an old food truck that Grady bought at the beginning of the summer. I thought he was nuts, but now I think that could be Meade Creamery’s new home. All I would need is a space to produce—”

  “I’m sorry,” Mom says. “I’m confused. You want to buy the ice cream stand?”

  “What about college?” Dad says, baffled. “Are you dropping out of college?”

  Amelia laughs. “Of course not! This isn’t going to derail anything. I can do it just like Molly did. In the summers. And actually, I might even try to take some business courses at Gibbons.” From her bag she pulls out Grady’s dog-eared textbooks. “I’ve been working on a business plan. Mom, I’d love you to take a look at it. It’s probably not formatted correctly, but maybe you can help me with that.”

  Amelia pushes the papers across the table. Her mother glances down briefly, hesitant to really look.

  “This is a thing that I love and I’m good at,” Amelia says. “I thought you’d be happy for me.” In fact, she’s stunned that they clearly aren’t.

  “But there’s a whole wide world out there, Amelia. Why stay tied to this place? What if you find a great internship?”

  Amelia knows it’s true that she’ll be giving up something to do this. Some of the freedom of a “typical” college experience, because she’ll be dealing with the real issues of running a business. But that doesn’t scare her. “This is what I like. This is what I’ve always liked. And I have the chance to make it mine.” She’s pleading, and they are giving her nothing. “Come on, Mom. I know you do this for a living. You help people who need money. I need you to help me.”

  Instead of leaning closer, her mom sits back in her chair. “Sweetie . . . I’m sorry, but this is a little half-baked, don’t you think?”

  Amelia’s dad stands next to her mother. “Do you know how hard it is to run a business?”