The Charm Bracelet

by Viola Shipman

  Arden shook her head, tugged nervously on her earlobe, picked up the melting gallon of Scoops County ice cream, and headed inside the cabin, where she ran directly into her mother, grinning from ear to ear.

  “What’s so funny, Mom?” Arden asked.

  “Life,” Lolly replied. “Life can be very amusing.”

  As her mother turned to finish getting ready for work, she began to hum—Frank Sinatra? “Summer Wind”?—and Arden couldn’t help but wonder what her mother was up to now.

  part six

  The Loon Charm

  To a Life Filled with a Love That Always Calls You Home

  Eighteen

  Lolly Lindsey allowed herself only one moment of melancholy every day.

  After she had retired to her bedroom for the evening, Lolly removed her wig, makeup, lashes, and Dolly costume, every bit of plumage—save for her charm bracelet and her wedding band.

  She put on soft, flannel pajamas and positioned her body in the middle of the big, birch bed that took up most of the nook overlooking the lake.

  Lolly’s nightly routine never changed: She grabbed a long-ago photo of her and her husband that sat on the nightstand—one taken at sunset on the beach of Lake Michigan, their young bodies framed by an explosion of color and light—and kissed it gently. She then tucked her body into a question mark under the sheets, grabbed her husband’s pillow and held it. If she inhaled long enough, Lolly swore she could still smell the Old Spice he loved to wear.

  When the skies were clear and the moon was bright, the long shadows of the pines outside her window fell across the middle of the water-blue comforter, and the pine needles took the shape of moving fingers. Lolly would sigh and pretend the needles were her husband’s fingers, and that he was holding her, massaging her tired old body.

  Lolly would then stare at another picture that hung haphazardly from an old log—another of Lolly and Les, this one when they were older, taken just outside the screened porch, two loons floating in the inlet behind them.

  Lolly would sear that image into her brain, shut her eyes, and feel for the loon charm on her bracelet until its smooth, shiny beak and feathers revealed themselves to her fingers.

  And then Lolly would wait.

  Whooo-dooo-ooooh-ooooh!

  The loons’ mournful wail outside her window transported Lolly back in time. She hugged her pillow and could now hear her husband’s voice.

  “Listen,” Les would say to her, as she rested her head on his chest. “Fred and Ethel are going to bed, just like us.”

  Whooo-dooo-ooooh-ooooh!

  The two loons had seemingly been married and living on Lost Land Lake as long as Lolly and Les Lindsey had. Their home was the reeds and inlet that pooled just feet from the bedroom window and screened porch of the cabin.

  “Tell me about the loons,” Lolly would always reply.

  And he would.

  “They mate forever, just like humans,” he would tell her. “They always come home, to the same place, same lake, every year, as soon as the ice thaws. They are territorial, and mates will defend their home from other loons. Small lakes can only accommodate one pair of loons, so they are always together, and they always talk to each other. Sound familiar?”

  “What do they say to each other?” Lolly would ask.

  “Well, it depends, my love, just like us … on their mood, what they have on their minds,” he would say in his husky rumble. “That sound we hear right now—that wail that sounds like a wolf’s howl—is the way they talk during their night chorusing. It’s just like what we’re doing now: It’s their own way of saying, ‘Good night. I love you.’”

  Lolly would sigh and spoon even tighter to her husband’s side as he continued.

  Lolly knew all of this, by heart now, but she was comforted hearing her husband’s voice hum in her body, his heart beat in her ear, just like hearing the loons call.

  Whooo-dooo-ooooh-ooooh!

  “I guess it’s now time for me to do my night chorus to you, my dear,” Les would whisper, before softly singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

  Lolly would hum along, until her husband would stop and say, “If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”

  The screen door banged, jolting Lolly from her memories.

  “Why is the reception so spotty out here?” she heard her daughter say.

  Lolly’s heart sank as she thought about Arden’s confession that she had no friends, only work. Lolly never felt Arden had married for love, and since her divorce, Arden had been married to work.

  Will she ever find what we had, Les? Lolly worried.

  Lolly’s memory of her husband’s nightly lullaby recalled when she used to sing “The Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book to Arden. She had sung it to her very intense little girl to calm her and get her to sleep, but she had also chosen the song to try to teach Arden to be happier with the simple things, as when a cheerful Baloo explains in the song how “a bear can rest at ease with just the bare necessities of life.” But—even at a young age—Arden had not seemed to care much for her mother’s stories or songs, and seemingly only wanted to get moving, to leave her mom, this cabin, this lake, her home.

  Lolly heard the loons sing “good night” to one another: Whooo-dooo-ooooh-ooooh!

  Will she ever find what they have?

  Suddenly, Lolly’s heart began to beat rapidly. She panicked and sat straight up in bed.

  Whooo-dooo-ooooh-ooooh!

  What are their names? What are their names? Oh, Lolly, you old fool!

  She began to bead in sweat, so much so that she got out of bed and opened the window all the way. A cool breeze calmed her, and she inhaled.

  Whooo-dooo-ooooh-ooooh!

  Lolly felt again for the charm of the loon on her bracelet. “Fred and Ethel!” she said. “Fred and Ethel!”

  Lolly repeated the loons’ names as she nestled back into bed. She grabbed her husband’s pillow and held it tightly.

  “Les,” she whispered to herself. “Les.”

  Lolly never regretted a day she had with her husband. No regrets. She knew few could say that.

  No, Lolly didn’t fear dying alone, because she wouldn’t. Les would always be with her, until they were reunited.

  “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

  No, Lolly’s fear was much deeper: She worried there would come a day when she would not be able to remember her husband, or the loons, no matter how much their voices tried to remind her.

  Lolly shut her eyes and whispered, “Good night, I love you,” into her husband’s pillow.

  And then she dreamed of standing beside Les—just like in the picture on her nightstand—the loons alongside, all four mates forever in love, forever home, forever together.

  Nineteen

  “Be ready by seven!” Lolly announced, walking onto the screened porch the next morning.

  Arden was furiously texting and jumped when she heard her mother’s voice.

  “For what?”

  “I’m taking you and Lauren to dinner after work. My treat! Rendezvous has music on Thursday nights!” Lolly said, holding up two aprons. “Now, which one?”

  Arden had returned to texting and gave her mother a distracted look. “Aren’t they the same?”

  “No!” Lolly said. “One has dancing cherries on it, and the other has dancing strawberries on it!”

  “Too early for cherry season,” Arden said, without looking up.

  “You actually have a point. What are you doing, by the by?”

  “Working.”

  “On…?”

  “Work.”

  “A conversation involves conversing, my dear,” Lolly replied.

  Arden stopped and looked up at her mother.

  “I’m texting my boss to see how things are going.” She looked up at her mom and then back down at her phone. “Without me.”

&n
bsp; “I thought you were going to take some time off?” Lolly asked, concerned.

  “I need the hours, Mom,” Arden said. “I need the money.”

  “You need to stand up for yourself, then good things will follow,” Lolly said. “Don’t send that message. Just be in the moment for a bit. Then clarity will come.”

  “I can’t,” Arden said. “I wouldn’t know how.”

  “Just be,” Lolly said. “Just be, my dear.”

  Arden continued to text.

  “Arden, it worries me that you have no friends and put your needs to the side for work,” her mother suddenly said. “You need to love and respect yourself.”

  All the sound seemed to be sucked from the cabin, like when Lolly finished placing the airtight seal on when she canned preserves. Lolly could actually sense it, hear it, feel it. But she couldn’t take the words back now.

  Arden winced and narrowed her eyes behind her glasses. Her mother was right, but her words still stung.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just worried about you. I want you to be happy,” Lolly said. “I want you to find true love and lead a full life beyond work.”

  Lolly stopped and looked out at Lauren, sunning on a striped towel on the dock.

  “Have you ever told her about your first love?” Lolly asked suddenly.

  Arden looked at her mom, shocked, and then shook her head. “She doesn’t need to know all that.”

  Lolly smiled sweetly and folded the cherry apron into a neat square before tying the crisp apron dotted with bright strawberries, trimmed with a white border, around her neck and waist. She watched her granddaughter spray her body with suntan lotion before flipping over.

  “She doesn’t?” Lolly finally said, turning to look at her daughter.

  “Why would you bring that up, Mom?” Arden asked.

  “I just want the same things for you both. I’m getting older, and I want you both to be happy.”

  Lolly stopped and looked back out at Lauren. “I’ve been thinking about what Lauren said, about how she switched majors. She needs to know you’re human, you’ve made mistakes, and that it’s okay for her to make some, too. She’s trying so hard to be perfect, and she’s not happy, my dear.”

  Arden’s head whirled.

  Is she right? Has my carefully crafted life been built on a cracked foundation? Arden thought. And now Lauren is crumbling, too?

  Arden stared at her mother, seeing her differently for the first time in a long time: Solid. Strong. Sage.

  Lolly nodded at her daughter and then pinned a large plastic nametag onto her apron featuring the logo of the sweet shop and the name “DOLLY!” in a capitalized script, the exclamation point in the shape of an ice cream cone.

  “See you at seven,” she said, ambling off the screened porch with a large bag stuffed with Dolly’s costume, and blowing Lauren a kiss. She stopped on the stoop and turned back around. “And try to look … well … a bit less serious for dinner.”

  “You don’t like my wardrobe, Mother?” Arden asked.

  “Why not let your daughter help you get dressed tonight,” Lolly sang, walking away from the cabin. “Just for fun.”

  Fun, Arden thought, suddenly picturing herself in her office at Paparazzi, images of the magazine’s most beautiful women—Kerry Washington, Angelina Jolie, and Princess Kate—whirling through her head.

  Out of the blue, Arden chuckled, watching her mother walk away: In a surreal, alternative universe sort of way, all of this made sense. One of the most bookish women in the world—bespectacled, bobbed, little makeup, drab clothes, no jewelry—working at one of the glitziest consumer magazines in the world, and the daughter of a true character.

  As Arden’s mind continued to whir, her life quickly became Photoshop clear: I am the Spanx underneath the glitz, the unseen glue that holds it all together.

  As soon as Arden heard the soft crush of gravel of her mother’s Woodie pulling away, she bolted upstairs, changed into running shorts and sneakers, and zipped past Lauren without saying a word.

  “Hi to you, too, Mom!” Lauren said, but Arden didn’t hear her.

  Arden jogged around the edge of the lake, hoping she might be able to outrun the ghosts from her childhood.

  Have I always been this lost?

  Then she saw it: That tiny opening within the large stand of white birch. She tried to resist, but it called to her, and Arden found herself running directly into it.

  Here was the secret jogging trail that skirted Lost Land. It meandered through the woods and hopscotched around summer cottages. The path had been formed when Arden was young, when wealthy Chicagoans had seen On Golden Pond and flocked to Scoops for a taste of the simple life, snatching up cottages as quickly as fudge. Thin white women with severe bobs introduced running to the resort area along with Pottery Barn and Martha Stewart, and their lithe bodies and Nike-clad feet eventually cleared a trail along the memorable little lake.

  As Arden ran, she recalled how fascinated she had been with this influx of status into the long-overlooked lake that sat miles from the money of downtown and the Lake Michigan coast.

  Arden remembered watching from her bedroom window during high school as construction workers descended onto Lost Land—earthmovers replacing herons—and transformed tiny log cabins on the opposite side of the lake into Ralph Lauren–chic estates. The wives followed, decorating and running, running and decorating. They would meet in their yards, which fronted the lake, stretching, doing this thing called “yoga,” before dashing off—Zoom!—an angry army of hornets in pink.

  Arden had followed. She not only began to run, she began to want clothes and shoes that Lolly and Les just couldn’t afford. Arden began to yearn for a life in the city she had never known.

  “They aren’t real. You can’t live your life wanting to be a projection of someone else,” Lolly would repeatedly say to her shy daughter. “You have to be you, Arden. And they wear tennis bracelets, not charm bracelets. They don’t know who they are or where they came from anymore.”

  Lolly had fought to preserve the original seven cabins along Lost Lake and had come out victorious. She knew these women didn’t like her, but she hadn’t expected her daughter to envy them.

  “They aren’t happy, Arden,” Lolly told her daughter. “They are never content enough to enjoy their lives.”

  Arden picked up her pace, trying to outrun her thoughts, and sprinted along the trail, shadowed and cool under a canopy of birch and sugar maples. She breathed deeply as she ran, her lungs filling with an ease she rarely experienced in the city.

  Arden approached a tiny stream—a “crick” as her mother called it—that ran into Lost Land, and decided to jump it like a show horse. She picked up steam and …

  Whap! Splash!

  Arden’s left foot caught on a tree root, and she yelped, her glasses flying from her face, her body falling hard and coming to land directly in the water. Arden’s heart raced, and she scrambled up to assess the damage.

  Face?

  Palms?

  Back?

  Knees?

  Arden exhaled and looked up toward the sky.

  No damage, she thought, relieved.

  Arden reached for her glasses and found them sitting on the edge of the bank she’d never reached. She rubbed the dirt off her lenses with her shirt and, as she placed the glasses on her face, the world came back into focus. Arden gasped.

  In front of her stood a tiny forest of gnarled sassafras, their trunks dark, knotted and bent, like witches’ fingers. The weight of the scene forced Arden to take a seat on the damp embankment, her feet resting on a stone in the stream.

  This is it! Our “secret spot,” she realized, amazed.

  Arden tried to catch her breath, but memories came rushing back.

  “Meet me by the sassafras grove,” read the notes that Clem used to shove into her locker, Arden recalled.

  Clem Watkins, a quiet farm boy who raised cattle and showed goats, had appeared as suddenly into Arden’s life as he
r father had left it.

  Clem and Arden had never talked much in school, outside of the occasional hello in the hall, but he came to the cabin after her father’s sudden death from a heart attack, with a casserole from his mother and a rose for Arden. No other classmates had come to visit, so when Clem asked Arden to go for a walk, she agreed. She had no one else, it seemed. They ended up sitting for hours in this sassafras grove, Arden crying until she could cry no longer, Clem patiently holding her until her tears subsided.

  “How will I move on?” Arden had gasped. “What will my mother do? I can’t imagine living alone with her. She’s already crazy enough.”

  “Your mother is not crazy. She’s unique. That’s a wonderful trait. Can you imagine what she is going through, too? Arden, you need to take all the time you need to mourn the death of your father,” Clem had said in the quiet of the woods.

  His words had stunned Arden. They were not only more mature than anything she expected a boy his age to utter and more heartfelt than any she had ever read in any of her beloved books, but they also echoed her mother’s.

  She began to tell Clem about her father’s and grandfather’s work as fishing guides, their love of the lake, the land, Lolly and Arden, Fred and Ethel.

  “They mate forever,” Arden said to him of the loons. “And they always return home. Forever. Do you think my dad will ever come back to visit?”

  “He never left you,” Clem had whispered. “He’s right here … in every leaf and in every wave of the lake.”

  For the first time since her father had died, Arden felt a sense of peace.

  From that moment on, they met whenever they could.

  The farm boy who Arden would have never previously talked to had suddenly touched her broken heart and made her consider a life that wasn’t part of the elite set or the city.

  To a girl who had lived with her head in books, Clem was real. Too real. Six foot four inches of tall Dutch ancestry, a body chiseled by farm labor, tousled hair made blonder by the summer sun, pine green eyes with chips of gold, and a deep voice that sounded like the engine of the family Woodie. When they talked about their futures, Clem’s always included Arden. When they kissed, Arden could actually picture their futures.