O is for Optimisim

(Excerpt from The Lemonade Year, a finished novel seeking representation.  Nina's brother Ray has rented an apartment in the efforts to set up a stable residence so that he might be allowed to visit his 5 year old sin, Michael.)

The next week Ray moves into the apartment in what I call the stalker building. I know he watches them at the park. 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 want it too. The want of it can drive you crazy. The absence of it feels like a weight missing from your body and 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?

 “Are you sure this is a good idea,” I ask, holding my arms out 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 travelled around post prison from no place to nowhere.

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

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

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

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

“Of course not,” Ray says and 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. “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 for 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,” I say.

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.”

Ray goes back down the stairs before I have a chance to say anymore. 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 take-out, 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 long hours, in wait, in hope, in need of just a glimpse of what he fears might never be.

M is for Mom and memories, and making sure no one is forgotten.

(excerpt from The Lemonade Year, a finished novel seeking representation.)

 

Mom had used a cocktail glass to steady herself. It backfired most of the time, but she had meant well. When Lola woke up after the accident, Mom stopped drinking and poured all her need into caring for Lola. I felt left behind. It had been Dad who scooped me up and set me back on my feet. But Mom seemed to have lost touch with the rest of us. Lola saw it though. Lola saw everything.

She knew even then, when she didn’t know more than my name and who I was supposed to be to her, that I was falling through the cracks in the universe, cracks that spread out like spider veins—purple and blotchy, permanent and useless.

Lola was eleven, still using crutches, still in therapy. That part seemed to take a long time. I was fourteen and on the girls basketball team. Lola made Ray drive her to all my games. Mom had no interest in sports, she was just trying to hold herself together. As much as Dad wanted to see the games, he had taken to working the late shift because the pay was better and there were medical bills left over from the accident and more to come. Lola sat in the bleachers and banged the crutches on the wooden seats when everyone else clapped their hands. Already she had begun to cover the braces on her legs with bright colored legwarmers. Making everything art.

At times I hated that she was there. She made my legs ache. Sadness rose up in my throat like bright acid. The squawk and stick of sneakers on the gym floor, the rush of ball through the air, ball through the net, crowd thumping in applause was a sick symphony, an ode to the little girl in the neon green legwarmers who could not run up the court, could not climb the bleachers without help, and could not stop calling out my name and waving franticly to me when I looked her way. Who barely knew who any of us were, but knew we were the world.

Ray didn’t watch the games. He waited for the two of us in the parking lot. He drove home without speaking, dropped us off in the driveway, drove away and did not come back until after curfew, after Mom gave up and went to bed and left Dad awake and worried and me hiding in the hallway making sure that the world did not come to an end while Lola slept.

The morning after those nights, Mom would ask Lola if she had a good time at the game. Lola would tell Mom about every basket I scored, every foul shot I made, every time I looked at her and waved.

Sounds like you had a good time, Mom would say to Lola.

Make sure your sweaty clothes aren’t on the floor, Mom would say to me.

During our last game that year, I broke a school record. I hadn’t told anyone how close I had been to it, but Lola must have been keeping track. That night, after the game, she hobbled into our room with Little Debbie snack cakes and soda and we stayed up late enough for Ray to come home. He had to walk past our door on the way to his room. Lola waited for him in our doorway.

Nina has scored more baskets in one season than any player in the history of our school. We’re celebrating.

She gave him a cake and he stood in the doorway to our room and ate it. He nodded at me. He smelled like beer. There was a store in town that would sell to underage kids for an extra ten dollars. Lola waited for him to finish the cake and then hugged him around the waist. He put his arms across her back and closed his eyes.  She let go of him and for a second they stood looking at each other. When she gimped back across the room to the bed he closed his eyes again. He couldn’t forgive himself for what he’d done and he’s worked his whole life to get the punishment he thought he deserved.

L is for Longing

(Excerpt from The Lemonade Year, a finished novel seeking representation)

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” I say.

“I’m a big boy, Nina,” Oliver says and I know he knows I’m hesitating because of age—his and mine and the years that separate us.

He chuckles and comes back down the steps. I want so much to be that romantic type who throws caution the wind as it were. I imagine said wind, loaded down with the cares of innumerable people caught up in moments too strong for them, too passionate or reckless, desperate and unmanageable. I imagine some French couple at an outdoor café in Paris, sipping their coffee, smoking their cigarettes, being blown right out of their chair by some rouge, heavy laden wind from the other side of the world. Crazy American fools, they would say, righting their chairs, lighting a new cigarette, calling for the garcon to bring new cups of café and perhaps a pastissier while he’s at it.

“Is this really the time to sort out the good ideas from the bad,” Oliver says, taking hold of my hand.

“I think this would be the perfect time,” I say, not turning loose.

“You may be too quick for me,” he says.

“No, I’m too old for you.” I say, letting go. I twist the ring on my finger that despite the paperwork in progress, I still wear. The truth of that statement sparks in the air. “I’ve been there done that, as they say.”

I feel like I’m walking backwards, trying to undo something that I really don’t want to forget.

 “So,” he says, surprising me. “What’s one more time around?”

I shake my head as if to say no, but he kisses me and the wind blows and I wonder if that poor French couple will forgive me the intrusion on their peaceful day. Oliver leads me up the steps to his house. The interior is clean and sparse. The small living room holds a couch and old rocker and a small television. The most predominate thing about the room is a wall of music—song books, more than three guitars that I can see, CD’s, a stereo system and an old piano.

“Do you live here alone?” I ask as he tries to pull me past this area of the house and down the hall that I imagine leads to his bedroom.

“I do now,” he whispers.

I don’t ask for details even though I find myself wanting them. He doesn’t offer any more information. I don’t know if he’s noticed my ring, but if so, he didn’t press and I won’t either.

I let him pull me down the hall and we go inside a small bedroom not far down it. This room, too, is sparse and tidy. A bed, a dresser, closet doors open with clothes arranged neatly, his scrubs at the far right. He goes to the dresser and reaches over it to raise the blinds; the moonlight finds its way in.  He excuses himself from the room and I finger through the clothes in his closet—searching for a tactile knowledge of his everyday life.

He comes back into the room and we don’t speak again. He kisses me like he’s asking permission for something, yet not waiting for the answer. His hands find the small of my back and the nape of my neck again and his fingers twine through my hair like they have been there a dozen times before.

This is far from where I thought I’d be tonight should anyone have asked earlier today. There’s a place in my gut that yells at me for putting Dad aside like this. But the option is this or sleeping in my childhood bed quilted in by the heavy-handed stitching of the way things end up.

So for the moment, I choose the soft brush of lips on my neck and the hard clinch of muscled arm holding me tight to this semi-stranger who may be the only piece of the world that makes any sense to me. I let go of everything that holds me in. Thirty-nine years of everything that means anything collects in the palm of my hands, the shallow of my throat, the escape of my breath.

K is for Keeping Secrets

(Excerpt from The Lemonade Year, finished novel seeking representation.
Ray has come home for his father's funeral bearing the news that he has a five year old son no one knew about, not even him. He trusts the protagonist, his sister, Nina, not to tell anyone yet.)

 

 

I finally make it back out to the living room and Ray is gone.  I find him on the back porch. He’s not participating in the mourning but at least he’s still here. I hand him a Vodka tonic and sit down in a lounge chair beside him and stretch out my legs. We sit for a long few minutes and say nothing. I cut my eyes at him to see what he’s thinking. I can’t see anything.

“He’s five?” I ask, trying to get Ray to talk to me again.

 “Yeah,” Ray says and his tone holds no animosity.

I’m jealous, but I’m trying not to be. I feel foolish thinking about the way Jack and I jumped the gun. I was so ready and so anxious and so sure it would all happen that we moved to a bigger apartment with room for a nursery, painted it a light green to go either way and filled it with all manner of excitement and anticipation. I bought a crib and a rocking chair and even little books and toys.  I was just so sure. Life is supposed to go as planned. Right?

 I don’t really know which questions to ask first. It dawns on me then whose child it is.

“Why didn’t Nicole tell you?”

“Because I was an ass then,” Ray says and smirks a bit, seeming to know what’s on the tip of my tongue. “I know, I know. I’m an ass still.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.” I say, but he’s got my thoughts pegged.

Early evening noises start up across the yard and the cool spring air slips over my black pumps and bare legs. I hear the ice tinkle in Ray’s glass and wish that I had made a drink for myself.

“What’s his name?” I ask.

“Michael,” Ray says. “I guess she didn’t hate me too much.”

Michael is Ray’s middle name and Michael’s mother is the woman Ray left behind when he went to prison for eighteen months for repeated stupidity and grand theft.  The woman he didn’t go back to once he was out. When you add jail to his self-inflicted exile, Ray’s been gone for the better part of six years.

“So she must be talking to you again?” I say, trying to find some hope in the situation, trying to let loose of my own bear traps and let Ray have his time.

“No,” he says and shakes his head, “I think she just needs money. Not that I won’t give it to her. My lawyer says we can have the test done to find out if he’s really my kid. One look at him will tell you that.”

“Do you want to be more than just the money?” I ask, suspicious of the weight this seems to be laying on him.

 “I don’t think I deserve to be,” he says, and when I open my mouth to speak he holds up a hand for me to rethink it.

He’s trusted me with something. This is not the time to talk about old injuries. Inside, the mourning goes on without us. I reach over and take Ray’s hand in mine. I fear that he’ll jerk it away but he doesn’t. Not at first. Our hands seem to grow hot around each other like a transfer of guilt and sadness and when it seems Ray can bear it no more, he gently pulls his hand from mine.

“Look,” Ray says, “don’t say anything yet. I have to tell Mom.” He sighs and takes the photo out again; looking at it with eyes I was not aware Ray knew.

I’m jealous of the photo.

 “Do you think I could just send the kid over here and let him tell her?” Ray asks.

He looks hopeful and pitiful.

“I think that’s a great idea,” I say, feigning support, and aware that we’re almost joking with each other. “We can lose both of our parents to a stroke.”

 

I know why he chose me though. Telling Lola would make him accountable, would demand that he stay, and would make him choose between his love for everyone else and his hatred for himself.

J is for Just Found Out Your Boyfriend is a National Celebrity of Sorts

(Excerpt from The Lemonade Year, finished novel seeking representation, in which Lola, who suffers from sever memory loss due to a childhood accident discovers that her boyfriend is the actor in nationally known, and very goofy, insurance commericals.)

 

Lola answers the door before I knock and puts her finger to lips to tell me to be quiet. She motions me into the living room and picks up the remote. She presses a button and a commercial that she’s TiVoed comes on. The volume is low but I know it well.

Your house is trashed, you’ve got a rash. Your car is broke, and it’s no joke. Call on us so there’s no fuss…

I make a face at her. She punches me in the arm and clicks off the television.

“You knew about this?” she asks.

“He makes you happy,” I say.

She waves her hands at me and presses her finger to her lips again.

“He’s here?” I whisper.

“Three weeks I’ve been going around with the guy,” she whispers to me. “No idea who he was and now he’s my kitchen.”

She points to the kitchen with panic in her face.

“It’s not like he broke in,” I whisper. “You’re dating him.”

“But I didn’t know who he was?” Lola says and she looks terrified.

I take her by the arm and walk her back out the front door.

“Ok,” I say. “Let’s take stock. He’s not a stranger that you just woke up to. He’s Chris. You’ve been dating for almost a month. He makes you really happy.”

“He’s the goofy guy from the annoying insurance commercials,” Lola says, her beautiful face twisted up.

“No,” I say. “That’s a character from TV.”

She breathes in and out very deliberately, nodding her head slowly. I begin to mimic her actions until we’re both a bit calmer.

“Does everyone know about this?” she asks pitifully.  

“That he’s the guy from TV?”

She nods.

“Yes, Sweetie,” I say. “Everyone knows about it.”

“Does he know that I don’t know?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I do know he’s crazy about you. Now let’s go back inside.”

I ease the door open like I’m sneaking up on a bear.

 “There you are,” Chris says, standing in the living room with two, full coffee mugs in his hand. “You ok?”

“She’s fine,” I say and take one of the mugs and hand it to her. “Hi, Chris.”

He gives me that pressed lip smile you give people that means you know something bad is happening in their world and you know you can’t really do anything about it.

“Good morning, Nina,” he says. “Let me pour you a cup. You’re staying for a bit, yes? Cream and sugar?”

I know Lola needs me to hang around for a while until the shock wears off.

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

He turns back toward the kitchen. Lola is holding her mug with two hands, looking down at the liquid like she doesn’t know what it is.

“Is this how I like my coffee?” she asks me, not looking up from it. “I can see there’s cream. Is there sugar? Did I tell him this? Why can he remember how I like my coffee and I didn’t remember who he was?  Why didn’t I recognize him?”

She inhales sharply at a new idea that seems worse.

“Or is this not the first time that I’m figuring all this out?” she asks and panic wasn’t to rise up in her voice again.  “Have I this conversation with myself before?”

She looks at me and I notice that she has blue paint in her hair.

“Have we talked about this before?” she looks so lost and so pitiful.

“No, honey, we haven’t talked about this before,” I say and touch her pitch black hair. “And yes, you like cream in your coffee. Relax. Stressing makes the holes widen.”

“Stressing makes the holes widen,” she repeats her own mantra that I have just said to her. “Stressing make the holes widen.”

She sits down on the couch and I take a spot in the armchair. She’s gotten used to forgetting little things. Even the fact that she keeps buying that same tea with the really cool picture on the box only to rediscover that she doesn’t like it once she’s home and made a cup and hates it and then can’t bear to waste it so she puts it in the “stuff for guests” drawer where there are already four boxes. But finding out that she’s been sleeping with a nationally known persona—and a goofy insurance one at that—is a bit much to take in before noon.

 “It’s good,” she says, sipping the coffee. “I do like it.”

I is for Inappropriate Encounter or the Beginning of Something Exciting?

 (Excerpt from The Lemonade Year, a finished novel seeking representation)

 

 

I want a good stiff drink and to disappear. From my hiding spot in the corner, I watch the motley collection of people out late on a Thursday, in a smoky bar, playing decade old music. College kids and old hippies, people in dress pants and shiny black shoes, no one seems to fit the other and it seems a good place to hide.

“Remember me?” A young man slips into the empty seat in front of me. “Oliver, from Elm Village.”

I take a rather large sip of what is indeed a good stiff drink and nod. It had only been a few days ago that I had hugged him a good minute longer than is socially acceptable and then kissed him full on the mouth. His hair is the color of balsa wood and even in the low light of the bar his eyes are like the liquid flow and pool of the river’s edge, at both times green and blue, murky and translucent.

“You’re name’s Nina,” he says, shifting around in the seat until he appears much more comfortable than I am.

“Yes it is,” I reply and try not to look him in the face again.

“I knew that,” he says. “You know, then.”

The parking lot.

“I’m glad,” I say, fidgeting, endlessly fidgeting. “It makes that whole scene slightly less desperate. Don’t you think?”

“Don’t give yourself a hard time,” Oliver says and dips his head a bit so that he looks me in the eye. “It’s part of my job to comfort people.”

“Yes,” I say, “but do most people cling to you and smell your hair. And then kiss you on the mouth like they’re not a total stranger?”

He shifts again, sitting unencumbered in his seat, back and tilted. The bar walls tighten in and the voices around us grow unintelligible.

“I get that a lot, actually,” he says. “And you weren’t a total stranger.”

“That happens to you often?” I say and finally look at him again.

“Oh yeah,” he says, smiling at himself. “It’s the scrubs. Women go crazy for them in the grocery store. They think I’m a doctor.”

“You don’t tell them any different?” I say, amused and distracted.

“You kidding?” he says and leans forward to take a sip of his drink. He’s drinking a dark beer in a cold glass and I’m relieved that he’s at least of the age of legal intoxication.  “Buys me some time. Much better than what I really do.”

“What you really do is commendable,” I say. “Most people wouldn’t be able to face all that every day.”

“Maybe I ought to stick with the truth.” he says. He leans in closer, puts his arms on the table, levels his eyes to mine.

 “Truth is relative,” I say. I know he’s flirting. I know I am too. “Besides,” I say, “I kiss everybody. I just kissed that guy over there.”

I point at the oldest, ugliest man I can find. Oliver laughs out loud.  I should pull away from this, but the distraction is intoxicating. We both seem very aware of the electricity between us.

“I don’t even know you,” I say to him, trying to pull myself out of this bubble of frivolity.

“Doesn’t that make it easier?” he asks.

He looks different in plain clothes. I’m too close to forty for comfort. If he’s twenty-five I’d be amazed.

OMG-am sitting in a bar with a gorgeous younger man- thinking about to do something really rash.

Do it girlfriend

Send us pictures

How young are we talking?

Like

Like

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Oliver and I sit for a few moments in that uncomfortable sort of silence that’s created by the want of saying something but having nothing safe to say. We watch each other sip at our drinks.

 “It was a good funeral,” he says when his beer is done. “I hope it’s alright that I went.”

“Of course,” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t see you. Not that I would have had the nerve to speak.”

He smiles at me and waves the comment off.

“So how was the family mourning vigil?” he asks. “I hate that part. What the hell are you suppose to say to all those people? How many times can you take someone telling you what a terrible loss it is? No shit, huh. Thanks for forcing me to talk about it over and over to every unearthed aunt and uncle within a day’s drive.”

I laugh. A real deep laugh. One that almost makes me cry, but pushes through into more laughter. I need this release from grief and the weight of mouring. I've been holding onto my sadness like he's an old friend, like I'm showing him around town for the weekend, pointing out all the tourist traps and scenic views. I need to send him home.

“It was fantastic,” I say in answer to Oliver’s question.

“Glad to hear it,” he says and the corners of his mouth turn up.

  I feel an urge to press my lips to his again. I’m like the last of the tulip now. I feel my petals pulling backwards, bending toward something I don’t recognize.

I drink the rest of my beverage and smile at him.

Oliver signals for the barkeep and in about sixty seconds I’m beginning the first Jack and Coke of what will probably be one Jack and Coke too many. This was my Jack’s drink. He thought it was humorous. The irony is not lost on me. I feel yanked back in time to a place much less burdened with responsibility and the knowledge of life’s cruel pranks.

Ok sadness, I say to myself—you sit over there for a while—I need a break.

The longer Oliver and I stay, the closer we get and by the time our drinks are empty again we’re pressed together against the back wall of the ugliest bar in town with no more room between us than the space a heartbeat takes.

I look back once at my sadness. He’s ordered a drink and is talking to the lady at the next table. Just a few more minutes, I signal to him and he nods an ok.

I turn my focus back to Oliver. This isn’t like the parking lot, where I was too caught up in my own grief to notice what being close to Oliver feels like. His lips press against my collar bone and I release a breath I didn’t know I was holding. When he kisses me, I’m aware of nothing but his mouth on mine, warm and unfamiliar. His hands on me feel like coming up out of the water, air hitting wet skin piece by piece, making me aware of the nape of my neck, the small of my back, the curve of my waist as it gives way to hip and thigh. This time it feels like waking up.

G is for Gone Crazy (just for a second)

(Excerpt from The Lemonade Year, finished novel seeking representation.)

At the nursing home no one says the word “dead” to me. They all say “we’re so sorry for your loss” like perhaps Dad has just been misplaced and will turn up underneath a couch cushion. It’s not their fault really. There is nothing good to say and saying nothing would be worse.


A nursing aid named Oliver helps me load Dad’s belongings onto a cart and take them out to my car. We don’t say anything to each other as we walk out into the sunlight and unpack the boxes into my trunk. What a weird job, caring for these people you can’t possibly make well.

I thank him for helping me and extend my hand to shake. He takes it and presses my palm between both of his.

“Nate was an awesome guy,” Oliver says, referring to my father in a familiar way that makes me jealous. “I miss him.

“Thank you,” I say and I mean to press my other hand around his but instead I step closer to him and we embrace.

After the usual “hug time” expires I feel Oliver attempt to step away, but I can’t let go. I’m clinging to him in some pathetic effort to stop time. If I move, the funeral will take place. Jack will move out. My dream of having a baby will never be realized. My life will go on and I’m not sure I can bear it.

Oliver obliges to spare my dignity and steps back in to the embrace. The side of his neck and his shag of dusty colored hair are a hideaway and I have no idea what’s come over me. I breathe in deep to get my wits back about me. I pull back from him enough to be face to face with him and to my own amazement I kiss him. Right on the mouth. What the hell?

“I’m so sorry,” I say, finally pulling away, my face hot with the inappropriateness of my actions.

OMG. I just kissed my dead father’s ex health care worker. BTW he’s completely gorgeous.

This of course will get numerous “likes” and comments of “you go girl” and “living vicariously, more details please.” And inevitably someone will respond with a “OMG, your father died! I’m so sorry” bringing it all back full circle.

I make one of those gestures people give by shaking their head and hands as if the movement can brush away the incident itself.

“Don’t worry about it,” Oliver says, looking me in the eye, making no return gesture of dismissal. “You’re sad. We’re sad too.”

I feel like I should explain myself, my marriage, it’s demise, how desperately I need companionship, how much I want a baby, how awkward I feel around my mother and how losing my Dad feels like I’ve been orphaned. How worried I am that my brother won’t come to the funeral. How embarrassed I am that I just kissed a stranger. And everything else that can’t possibly be voiced.

“Thank you,” I manage say, looking away from Oliver’s eyes and then back up again. “Do they train you guys on the right things to say? I’d like to compliment you to your supervisor.”

“No,” he says with a smile on his face. “I just know how you feel. Sort of.”

I sense a story there, but it’s not one that this relative stranger and I have time to share. He has work and I have everything that comes after this moment.

Oliver nods and I close the trunk over my father’s things.