The Lemonade Year by Amy Willoughby-Burle

Author:Amy Willoughby-Burle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shadow Mountain Publishing
Published: 2018-01-22T05:00:00+00:00

12

I skip out of work after a meeting that includes the term “restructuring” a few too many times, and I find myself at Lola’s front door. I seem determined to avoid all aspects of reality and Lola’s house, filled with art and music, is the best place I can think of to hide from Jack, Oliver—everything.

The door, as usual, is open and I let myself in. I hear music from her studio in the sunroom at the end of the hall. Her own artwork and that of other locals whom she admires fills the walls. Vases of fresh flowers—roses and daisies from her yard—brighten the kitchen counter.

She loves flowers. She says that they remind you on their own if they need something so she doesn’t have to remember to water or weed. It’s evident and that appeals to a person like her.

She’s listening to a recording of a soft and somewhat sullen-sounding young man playing the guitar and singing. I don’t recognize it, but something about the slow cadence of his voice makes me think of Oliver. I close my eyes and see his hair—the color of wet sand, thick and perpetually mussed up. I see his lashes, long and dark, blinking closed over that indiscernible blue-green of his eyes. I shake him from my vision and search out Lola.

I love to watch her when she doesn’t know I’m there. I did it even when we were kids. She has always fascinated me. I envied, and still do, the life she created around herself—the one no one else could see. I used to watch her from the doorway to our room, careful not to breathe too loudly, not to creak the floor and disrupt the magic. She would sit by the window and talk to herself—or to someone else, maybe, I don’t know. Sometimes she would play each side of a two-person game, letting the invisible her win most of the time.

What moved me the most was that after the accident, she still played that way. At school, in the neighborhood, she kept quiet so no one would know if she slurred a word or said something that didn’t make sense. She tried so hard to hide the braces on her legs, to walk slowly so she wouldn’t need to limp, but inside her room, she would take off the leg warmers, sit in the sun, and let the light gleam off the metal casings on her ankles. When she talked, she seemed sometimes to revere the braces as a friend. I wanted to know what it was inside her that made those polar opposites possible.

I stand in her kitchen for a minute and read her day-list on the fridge.

Today is Tuesday

Put out the trash tonight

Use oven mitt—always

I look away from it. I’m used to Lola and the way her mind works now—and the way it doesn’t. She has a complex system that allows her to function in the world. She’s got it under control—most of the time.

But the list hurts.

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