When Caleb first started dropping by the house, Mom asked me if he was on drugs. I burst out laughing.
“Caleb doesn’t even wear leather,” I told her. “He’s the purest, most nontoxic person I’ve ever known.”
“Oh, well. In that case.” Mom took an if-you-say-so breath before she smiled.
“Finally,” Georgia says, slinging her messenger bag as we start walking to meet Caleb.
“Hey, buddy.” I kiss Caleb when we get close enough, and in a rush of ownership, he’s my Caleb again. His lips have just enough give and just enough heat, and his hands press my shoulders with just enough weight. I try to make the kiss longer. Mint and sweetness, until Georgia hacks an exaggerated cough.
“You’re late,” I say, more for Georgia’s benefit.
“Yeah, sorry. I had to run a couple of errands after work.”
“Next time, we fine you.” Georgia slingshots her hair elastic so that it bounces off Caleb’s chest.
“Heya, George. Ready to roll?”
“Like you don’t even know.” Georgia curls her bottom lip. “I am so over this job.”
“You drive,” I tell him. “I’m tired.”
When we get to the car, Caleb opens the passenger side door and flips the seat so that Georgia can climb into the back. I hop in front, and right away catch the scent of verbena. I lean forward for a deep lungful from the branch that Caleb has stuck in the built-in bud vase. Mmm. “My grandmother loved verbena.”
Nobody answers, which makes me feel slightly dorky in front of Georgia. What is it about referring to grandparents that seems to reveal the depths of your uncoolness? Maybe because grandparents are the recipients of such overflowing doses of little-kid love, the kind of love that makes you feel almost ashamed of yourself when you get older. Like believing in Santa Claus.
Then Georgia brings up what I was hoping she’d forgotten about by now. “So can I count on you guys to pick me up tonight for Alex Tuzzolino’s?”
“What’s up at the Tuzzolinos’?” Caleb shoots a glance at me.
“It’s her bon voyage cookout,” Georgia answers when I don’t. “Otherwise known as an excuse for an end-of-summer Tuzzolino blowout extravaganza.” She reaches an arm in between us to switch the radio station. “Jeez, Price. Only the biggest party of the summer. You and Eeyore need to get in the loop.” She makes a clucking sound.
Caleb raises an eyebrow for my answer. I shrug.
“That sounds all right,” he says slowly, “and I guess I’m in, if Lily is. Didn’t you say last night that you wanted to go out?” Turning to look at me deliberately. Knowing that I had and hadn’t meant it.
“Yeah. Sure.” I say the words like I’m reading them off a road sign up ahead.
“Like, eight-ish?” Georgia presses.
“Yeah. Sure,” I repeat.
“Don’t flake on me, por favor,” Georgia warns as we turn onto her street to drop her off. “There’s five more party days left before I go away to college. My social life is in your hands.”
“Five days,” repeats Caleb.
Once Georgia’s dropped off, I snap off the music, and the mood flattens. Usually I love these afternoons alone with Caleb, with work done and knowing that the only thing to consider is whether we should see or rent a movie. But today it’s different. Alex Tuzzolino’s good-bye party is like a storm front up ahead. Time feels like it’s moving forward too fast, and without my permission.
“Look, if you can’t hit this party tonight,” Caleb says, “then that’s fine by me. I’ll phone Georgia. We’ll watch a movie.”
“No way, uh-uh.” I’m a little too emphatic to hide my reluctance. “No more movies. I’m sick of staying in and watching movies. I want to go.”
“For real?”
“Yep.”
Caleb’s smile is slow to appear, and doubtful when it does. “Well, gee, I dunno, Lily Grace. It’s been a long time since we’ve been out. First we go to this party, and who knows what comes next? Body piercing? Drive nonstop across country? Join the circus?”
“Yeah, sure, we’re a coupla nuts.”
The joking is halfway to serious, though. We both know that somehow, for some reason, choosing to go to Alex Tuzzolino’s party means something deeper. It’s a first step away from comfortable sameness and a plunge forward into the unknown. Just thinking about it, my insides give a flutter kick of panic. Maybe that’s how changes are. Maybe the moment right before you’re ready to move on is always when it’s hardest to let go.
13 — THE BEST LEMONADE IN THE WORLD
Jane
Jane set the forks and knives on either side of the bamboo place mats. Three settings. One for Granpa, one for Augusta, and one for herself.
At the kitchen counter, Augusta was slicing rounds of pink-centered roast beef. Granpa was outside on his tractor, cutting the lawn by the last light of sundown. Through the open window, the smell of shorn grass drifted in along with the faraway purr of the engine.
“Look how you’ve made the kitchen.” Augusta smiled at her. “Gracious! Why, it hasn’t looked like this since you were a tiny little girl.”
“I have a good memory,” said Jane. “I can fit everything back together perfectly, in my head. And now I’m going to make the best lemonade in the world.”
“That sounds nice,” said her grandmother. Jane loved how she’d always said that. No matter what Jane might have told her. Like when she’d announced that she was changing her name to Gwyndermere. Or that she was never cutting her hair again.
“Lily’s boyfriend was here at the house today.” Jane pulled the lemonade pitcher from its shelf. Out of the corners of her eyes, she stole a look at her grandmother, whose reaction was unruffled as usual. “He was driving my car.”
“Lily’s car, now, I’d figure,” said Augusta.
“You never met Caleb,” Jane continued. “Remember that story of the boy in my class who was bitten by the dog? Well, he grew up to be Lily’s boyfriend. Her serious boyfriend.”
“That’s nice,” said her grandmother.
“Lily got Caleb in the fall,” said Jane, “and in the spring, I got a car. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have given it to me otherwise. But you were gone, and I had nobody. It was always Lily and Caleb, Lily and Caleb. And I was left out of everything.”
“There are usually reasons behind being left out,” said Augusta.
This wasn’t the answer Jane wanted to hear. “Lily and Caleb,” she said again. “The first time Caleb came over to our house, it was like he forgot how to leave. Mom and Dad just let him stick around. They always give Lily special privileges. One time I caught Caleb and Lily taking a nap in Lily’s room. Under the covers.”
“If they were in Lily’s room, it sounds like you were snooping.” Augusta snapped two sprigs of parsley from her window box garden and fixed one to each end of the platter of roast beef before centering it on the table.
Jane paused. The nap wasn’t a good example. She thought of how Caleb’s arm folded like a wing over Lily’s shoulder when they watched television. Or how he’d pour one glass of juice for the two of them to share. And the way he and Lily talked, filling up the space between them with their own language of jokes and gestures and secrets, secrets, secrets.
Augusta opened the refrigerator and handed her some lemons. Each lemon was perfect. No mold. No squish hiding in their firmness. Jane took the cutting board down from the rack and slid a paring knife out of the knife holder. Augusta’s lips thinned as she watched. “You know I’d never have let you handle a knife.”
“You might have,” Jane said, although she doubted it. She turned the sharp blade so that the sun bounced off its glint.
Suddenly Augusta took the knife with one hand, catching Jane by the wrist with the other. She flattened Jane’s fingers to expose the thorny scar at the base of her thumb. “You scared me that day. Blood down your shirt. All over the counter. The way you just looked at me, not speaking, not even to ask for help.”
Jane snatc
hed her hand away. She remembered. It had been the same weekend her grandfather had gone into the hospital for the last time. Her feelings had been too big to keep inside. She had used the knife, not to hurt herself, but to get some of the pain out.
Augusta placed the knife on the counter and crossed her arms. She looked out the open window. “When your grandfather became too weak, he left the care of the lawn to the Leonard boy, the younger one who could whistle. What was his first name?”
A little shudder tripped down Jane’s spine. She picked up the knife. She remembered the blade through her skin. How it had hurt so much, and at the same time, not enough.
“Billy Leonard,” she murmured.
“Billy Leonard.” Augusta smiled. “I can almost see your grandfather now, on his porch rocker. How his eyes would follow Billy from every angle. Oh, and how cranky Ray’d get if it wasn’t cut just so.”
“He’s never cranky,” said Jane.
Augusta watched as Jane gripped the knife and sliced a lemon into four equal quarters. Then another. Jane squeezed each wedge to a trickle of juice into the pitcher. She added water, a tray of cracked ice, and a cup of sugar from Augusta’s daisy canister. A few fresh mint leaves from the window box topped it off.
She poured herself a glass to taste. It was good. It was not the best lemonade in the world. Just lemonade. Disappointment ran through her. She had wanted to make something better than ordinary. But her perfect day was fading with the sun. It wasn’t meant to last. She picked up the wooden spoon. Maybe stirring would improve it.
“I changed after your grandfather died, didn’t I?” Augusta’s voice caught at the end. She cleared her throat. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, Jane. It hurt you. You’d come over Sundays, and I’d see your face pinched up with worries, and I knew you needed me, but I was too deep inside my own hurt. I could hardly put the coffee on, or read the paper.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Jane shrugged, but she felt tight with the pain of remembering.
“It does matter.”
Jane looked up, though she kept stirring to hear the clink-clunk of ice cubes bumping against the sides of the pitcher. Her grandmother was holding herself as still as a flagpole, her hands folded tight across her middle.
“I had a responsibility to help you.” Augusta nodded. “I let you down. I’m sorry for that.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” said Jane. “Everything’s good again.” But she realized that she was stirring so hard that lemonade had dribbled over to puddle on the countertop. “You were all alone. But I didn’t know what all alone felt like until you left me. Now I do. Even with you and Granpa here, I know.”
They stared at each other. Augusta knew better than to hug her. Jane had never understood hugs, all that smothering closeness.
Her grandmother took the dishrag and mopped the spill. “You’re here because you’re holding on,” she said. “You’ve got a grudge against the world, and that’s what keeps you stuck in it. You need to let go, Jane. Your grandfather and I are just a step along the way. Don’t you see that?”
And then Granpa appeared in the doorway, rosy cheeked, changed into a fresh cotton shirt and with his silver hair swept back in a puff. Jane blinked. His face was blurred. He looked like all the different ways she’d ever known him. He sniffed at the air and then, smiling, began to dance, snapping his fingers and catching Augusta by the waist as he twirled her to the tune of one of his nonsense songs. “Roast-a beef and lemon-ade and I’m a lucky man-o. Roast-a beef and lemon-ade and dancing with my girl.”
As Jane watched, she could feel her grandparents lost in each other. It was the one place they created that shut her out. It reminded Jane of Lily and Caleb, and their private life together.
“Time for dinner!” she said, to interrupt them.
Augusta smiled and tweaked Granpa’s nose as the dance ended. They took their places at the table. Jane could smell the tobacco and grass and cotton in her grandfather’s skin, the bitter lemon in her own fingers, and the verbena that she had picked earlier and set in a glass jar, for a centerpiece. All the right smells of summer.
On impulse, she reached out and gripped one of her grandparent’s hands in each of her own, so that they made a chain around the table, the way they used to say grace.
“You see? I’m not letting go of you,” she told them. “Ever.”
She meant it as a happy thing, but as soon as the words were out, she knew it wasn’t.
14 — ONE LEFT OVER
Lily
I’m doubtful about tonight, but I keep up the whole charade of preparing. So does Caleb. It’s like a game of chicken. By seven-thirty, I’ve shaved the stubble off my legs, washed my hair, and combed it out with a daub of my new, overpriced, undersized tube of hair gloss. In my closet, I pick out my favorite dark denim mini along with an off-the-shoulder white top that I bought on sale at Wilner & Webb. The tag’s still on because there hasn’t been any special occasion to wear it. Till now. Maybe.
The phone rings just as I’ve scooted my desk chair to my closet door mirror for a long-overdue eyebrow tweeze. Behind me, Caleb bends into different angles, checking himself out. The setting sun warms the hollows in Cay’s eyes and cheekbones while brightening the highlights of my hair. We smile at each other’s reflections. I wish I could feel as sparkly on the inside. Just thinking of tonight dries up my mouth in anxiety.
On the second ring, I guess out loud. “La Mom.” I dash for the phone, slide flopping across my bed to grab it off my bedside table. “H’lo?”
“Lily?” Mom’s voice sounds a thousand miles away. “How are you? How is everything? Aunt Gwen and Uncle Dean send their love.”
“Fine, fine. Everything’s cool. Tell Aunt Gwen and Uncle Dean I say hi.”
“And have you eaten dinner?”
“Uh-huh, those spring rolls you bought. Caleb gives them two thumbs up. He’s here. We’re going out a little later.”
“Hi, Mrs. Calvert,” Caleb calls absently.
“That’ll be fun.” Mom continued, “Say hi to Caleb for me.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Honey, your dad and I were thinking.” And now Mom ahems. “If you wanted to drive the car up here, both your father and I trust your highway driving enough to make the trip.” There’s a stamped-and-finalized way that she says this. She and Dad must have been wrangling with this topic for hours. “As long as you promise to leave before it gets too late. And not to drive in the left lane with all the crazy speed demons. Oop—hang on. Daddy wants to say something.”
I hear a mumble mumble in the background. Now Dad’s got the phone. “Can’t you make it for the weekend, Lily? Your aunt and uncle sure would like to see you.”
“Dad, I already said…” Then the thought strikes me—like a bolt from the blue, only this bolt is the kind that slides across a door and locks me in. Here it is, the Calvert family’s new reality. This is the way it will be from now on. Now the daughter left over has to be daughter enough for two.
The thing is, I’m not sure if I’m ready to face Maine again. Last August turned out to be our last family trip, when we went up there to spend ten days at Uncle Dean and Aunt Gwen’s. I hadn’t wanted to go, and at first I rebelled in a passive protest, eating up all the minutes of my cell phone plan on rambling calls to Caleb, while Jane played pool and Ping-Pong tournaments with Dad and Uncle Dean, or annoyed Aunt Gwen by taking her little froufrou dog, Sartre, out on long mountain hikes that snarled his perfect doggy coiffure.
But after a couple of days, Jane and I were acting like kids again. Braiding each other’s hair and making flower-chain bracelets and, in the evening, playing penny-bet poker or hearts. Or, when we felt more active, outdoor games of badminton. But those nights could get slow, too, and then I’d get antsy, throwing too much wood on the fire, or grazing for snacks in the kitchen, or reading the sexy scenes of Aunt Gwen’s romance novels. Aunt Gwen said there was an ice-cream parlor in town where kids hung out, but Jane only wanted to g
o to the movie theater, with family.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” she asked me one evening as we sat in front of the fireplace, laughing at a game.
“Sure.” I’d shrugged. It was okay in a plain-vanilla, family vacation way. The fun part was how normal Jane was acting. She was always better when it was just family, who could read her moods and knew all the things not to do or say. That night, watching Jane as she slept peacefully in the twin bed next to mine, I wondered why she couldn’t behave more like this in real life.
She must have wondered the same about me. Without Caleb, I probably brought back memories of the kid sister Jane had liked best, too.
But that wasn’t real life. I shouldn’t have to feel guilty about it.
Miraculously, a few minutes and almost a dozen good-byes and I-love-yous later, I manage to hang up the phone without having to commit to the trip.
“The parental unit is restless for a child,” I inform Caleb as I roll onto my back on the bed and stretch my arms over my head. It depresses me to imagine Mom and Dad sitting out on the deck and trading upbeat comments about the view when their hearts are sick with missing Jane.
Caleb suddenly jumps over to the bed and in the next second is on top of me. “Watch out, my hair!” I squeak as the flats of his hands land on it anyway. “Ouchouchouch, Cay, get off! You’re worse than a puppy!”
In response, he wriggles himself so that we’re hipbone to hipbone and toe to toe. Then he snuffles into my ear. “You smell so good, Lily-Lilliputian,” he murmurs. “All cleany, shampooy, shaving creamy girlie.”
“Is that right?” The edge of Caleb’s nose is sharp, and his snuffling makes the hairs lift on my arms.
“Mm-hmm.” Leisurely, he sniffs at my face, the underside of my chin and neck, then slowly back up to my mouth. “But ya know what else?” His voice is husky.
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