The Memory of Lemon (2 page)

It didn't take much searching to find photographs of Gene and Cadence Stidham in evening dress, attending one big event after another. She was attractive in a nouveau riche sort of way and taller than him. He had thinning hair, glasses with clear frames, and a pleasant demeanor. Not a guy you would pick out of a crowd and say,
He looks successful.

But I could still imagine how they had gotten together. Maybe, once upon a time, a down-on-her-luck single mother with a waiflike daughter had pulled at his heartstrings. I wanted to know more, but I couldn't bear the fake lime flavor another moment. I'd try at another meeting.

At this rate, we'd have to have quite a few more meetings because we weren't getting anywhere. I took another sip of coffee.

When I looked up, Lydia was staring at me. Everyone else was, too.

Quickly, I had to pick up the thread of our conversation.
Simple paradise. Augusta. Wedding pie.

“And is there a special reason you'd like pie instead of cake for your wedding?” I asked Lydia.

“Grandma Vangie taught me how to make pie. She made the best pies.”

I nodded. “Well, I don't have pie today, but see what you think of this.” I passed her a sugar cookie, which she—thankfully—took and began to nibble.

I had to think fast.

“Let's start with the little things and then we can work up to wedding pie,” I suggested. “We can do these sugar cookies in virtually any shape and flavor you want for a bridesmaids' luncheon and wedding guest favors or simply as part of the wedding dessert buffet. I have these wonderful edible transfer wafer papers that you can apply to a sugar cookie so it looks like a vintage postcard or a perfume bottle or a china pattern.”

Lydia scowled.

“But I don't see those designs for you,” I quickly added. “I see botanical prints of Kentucky wildflowers or woodland plants like ferns on these cookies. We put the cookies in handwoven baskets so the guests can gather them like herbs from your grandmother's garden.”

“Yes!” Lydia said, suddenly animated.

“And maybe the flavoring for the cookie could be a Kentucky flavor, maybe something that could have come from your grandmother's garden or the woods near her house. We can figure that out later.”

Lydia beamed and turned to her mother, who looked crestfallen.

Uh-oh
.

“You have to understand, Claire, that this wedding is for Lydia and Christopher, first, but it's also a big social occasion for my husband,” said Mrs. Stidham.

“I would imagine that Mr. Stidham has a lot of friends and business associates he'd like to invite,” I said.

“My husband has been very good to Lydia and me, and I don't want to disappoint him,” Mrs. Stidham said, twisting her handkerchief again in her lap, as the fake lime flavor started to reassert itself.

I swallowed hard, trying to banish it.

“Gene wants the best of everything for Lydia, as I do. Designer gown. Luxurious reception. The finest champagne. It's expected from one in his position . . .” She trailed off, looking away. Her chin jutted out. She wanted her way.

I noticed that as she became upset, a hint of her Kentucky drawl returned.
Interesting
.

“Almost all of my big weddings feature signature sugar cookies,” I reassured her. “It's just a question of what you do with them.”

“I do appreciate everything you and Gene are trying to do for me,” Lydia said forcefully, turning to face her mother. “But it's my wedding. I don't want glamour and glitz. I want something
real. I want my wedding to be meaningful. You and Gene give enough big parties as it is. Can't this be what Christopher and I want?”

We were back to the classic standoff: Bride versus Mother.

When Lydia got up to use the restroom, Mrs. Stidham whispered to us, “Isn't it funny? I love Augusta. I truly do.”

The fake lime flavor came in on a wave.

“But having Lydia's wedding there would be hard for me. I've spent most of my life trying to get away from the log cabin I was raised in, and then living paycheck to paycheck as a single mother.” Thankfully, the awful taste was ebbing again.

“Thanks to Gene,” Mrs. Stidham continued, “those days are long gone. I want to make up for everything I couldn't give Lydia earlier in her life. She could have a destination wedding in Paris, in Tahiti, no expense spared,” she said, dabbing her eyes again. “But my daughter wants a hillbilly wedding.”

LATE MARCH

INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI

Jack O'Neil

The spring blizzard had blasted down from Canada, covering everything in sparkly white. That may have been bad news for commuters and daffodils, but it was good news for Jack O'Neil.

Jack's buddy Marvin was doing the rounds of the parking lots on old Route 40—fast-food drive-ins, no-tell motels, and porn palaces—with the snowplow hitched to his pickup, making a little extra money. Marvin had taken the dog with him. He said he'd bring back a pizza and some soda.

Jack had stayed behind for his tour of duty at the beat-up desk in the motel office.

The No Vacancy sign was crooked in the City Vue's window, but he wasn't expecting any travelers in this weather. I-70,
which ran parallel to Route 40 a little ways to the north, was closed. Plus, the City Vue did a brisk if downtrodden business in temporary assistance, housing the needy sent there by Social Services.

Most of the City Vue tenants were on welfare and rented by the week, so there was little need for hospitality. But you never knew what might happen. The numbers he needed were right by the old push-button phone: the Independence, Missouri, police department; the ambulance service; and the fire department. If you called 911, you got all three and a lot of flak afterward. It was better to be particular and ask for only what you needed in the low-rent district.

Jack had worked some construction the past year so he could afford a warmer place to stay in deep winter. Ever since he got frostbite on one of his toes—it looked like freezer burn and hurt like hell—he didn't sleep rough when it got too cold.

Yet it wasn't like he had the TV on and a weather report he could check. Hell, he didn't even have a cell phone. In Independence, and neighboring Kansas City, the temperature could plummet fifty degrees in twelve hours. Despite the layers of sock, plastic bag, sock, plastic bag, then boot, he almost lost that toe and could have lost others during a cold snap last year. No way was he going to be a cripple.

So when Marvin, another regular at the nearby VA hospital, had offered him this temporary gig, Jack took it.

By April, it should be okay to go back to his old place.

Here at the City Vue, where it was warm and dry, he could keep things safe. Like the letter from his daughter that the guy
from Project Uplift, the nonprofit group that fed the homeless, had brought by. Jack kept the letter in his shirt pocket, which he patted from time to time to make sure it was still there.

He sat back in the swivel chair that didn't swivel anymore and looked around the room.

A rack of Technicolor postcards of the Kansas City skyline was furry with dust. Fake paneling peeled off the walls. The dropped-down ceiling tiles were yellowed with nicotine, even though Marvin had stopped smoking years before.

Jack opened the desk drawer and drew out a sheet from a stack of stationery so old, there was no zip code. The paper smelled musty.

But it was free.

One of the perks of the job here, along with a room for him and the dog.

In the back of the drawer, he found a ballpoint pen almost as old as the postcards. Amazingly, the darn pen still wrote.

He opened with
Dear Claire,
then put the pen down, unsure what to say next. He had left when she was fifteen. He hadn't spoken to her since, barely able to send a postcard from wherever he landed over the years.

There was so much, he didn't know where to start
. Better keep it short this time,
he told himself. When he finished, Jack put the letter in a City Vue envelope and wrote out the address he knew by heart in Millcreek Valley, Ohio.

He leaned back in the chair, just to rest his eyes, and fell into that old dream again.

He's dangling by strings like a marionette, his arms and legs in a
silky fabric, jerking at some invisible puppet master's whim. Abruptly, the strings go limp and Jack collapses in a heap.

He wakes up in the dark, in pain, a smell of wood smoke in the air. And piss. A girl with blue hands reaches down to him. She's trying to tell him something, but he can't understand her. Her round face glows red.

When Jack woke up, a blue light was seeping through the opening in the sagging draperies. Jack looked down at the floor and shook his head.

More than forty years of this same goddamn dream. Wasn't it time for it to make some sense?

Or for Jack to quit searching for clues? Or to stop dreaming it?

In the old days, this would have made him turn to the bottle.

But he was learning to feel his feelings. And now he was goddamn hungry.

Where were those lemon cookies that the people from Project Uplift had brought in the previous day? Lemon always reminded Jack of home, of his mother's famous lemon pie. His daughter, Claire, also loved it. Jack wondered if all families had a favorite flavor.

He had avoided anything lemon for years. He hadn't wanted to remember the people he left behind: his daughter, Claire; his mother, Dorothy; his sister, Helen; even his wife, Cindy. Maybe she had divorced him by now. He wouldn't blame her.

He hadn't wanted to remember his hometown, Millcreek Valley, or the house in which he'd grown up. And he especially hadn't wanted to recall his time in Vietnam.

But if he wanted to get better, the docs at the VA hospital kept saying, he had to let it all come back. He had to feel the
feelings. Talk it out with other vets. Write a different ending in his mind.

Maybe then he could go home again.

Meanwhile, there were no more cookies.

Where the hell was
Marvin?

APRIL

Lime and Coconut

Neely

The second meeting with Mrs. Stidham and Lydia had gone about as well as the first. We still weren't getting anywhere. And the wedding was in June, two months away.

As they rose to leave, taking with them a little box of cookies and our robin's egg blue wedding packet, they still seemed uneasy. I would have made pies and tarts for them to taste, but Mrs. Stidham had stonewalled us, perhaps hoping to wear her socially errant daughter down.

It was clear that neither the soothing charm of my parlor nor my winning recipes had worked their usual magic—again. The bride and her mother loved each other, deep down, but there was also mistrust and selfishness. And that played out in the very different ideas they had about the wedding. They each wanted their own way. And we still had no solutions.

I couldn't help fix the problem if I didn't have information. The fake lime flavor that Mrs. Stidham emanated was part of a story she was trying to hide, but it wasn't the “tell.” And I wasn't getting anything from Lydia yet.

As I walked them out my front door and onto the wide covered porch for the second time in as many weeks, I pointed out my concrete goose with its chef's hat and baker's apron, the tongue-in-cheek yard art that Millcreek Valleyites dressed up for every occasion. I purposefully placed it right by the front door to help soften any wedding-jangled nerves before I conducted wedding cake tastings.

“I don't get it,” Lydia said, pointing to the goose. “What's with the goose?” Her mother looked equally puzzled.

“It's sort of a Millcreek Valley mascot,” I said. “Millcreek Valley used to be known as Gansdorf, or Goosetown, when the first German settlers moved here in the 1840s.” Blank looks.

But still I blathered on.

“The hardware store on Millcreek Valley Road has a whole flock of concrete geese, if you want to take one home to dress up,” I added. “Maybe if you style her up perfectly, yours will finally lay that golden egg we're all hoping for.”

“This one stays out here on your porch, though, right?” Mrs. Stidham asked, catching her bottom lip in her teeth again. “What I mean is, you don't bring the, uh, geese to weddings or anything like that, do you?” Obviously, Mrs. Stidham was happy enough with her own rather sizable nest egg, courtesy of Dragon's Warcraft, Duo Gaming's wildly popular mobile game. She didn't need a fake bird to make things happen for her. Even so, I thought there might still be a chance for a connection here—that with a
well-placed quip, I might be able to make her see the humor in this moment.

“Oh, no, I would never bring this old girl to a professional event. She's way too heavy,” I deadpanned. I hoped my delivery was dry enough to elicit a giggle or even a smirk. But nothing.

“Hmm,” they both said, as they practically ran down the steps and to their car.

I closed the front door and sank against it.

“They didn't get the goose thing, I take it,” said Roshonda.

I shook my head.

“How are we going to make this wedding happen?” I moaned.

“Here, I'll pour a coffee for you,” said Roshonda. “Gavin?”

He put his hand over his cup.

“Give yourself some, too,” I said to Roshonda as she poured.

“No, thanks. I feel like I'm going to jump out of my skin as it is.”

The three of us sat for a while in silence.

“We'll find a way to make everybody happy,” Gavin suddenly said. “We have to.” He shot his starched cuffs out of his sport coat, a nervous habit he'd had since junior high band concerts.

Nervously, I nibbled a sugar cookie, but it stuck in my throat. I sipped coffee and felt the lump move ever so slowly downward.

“Well, at least money is not an issue,” said Roshonda. “That's one good thing.”

“We have to get the mother past the idea of Kentucky as poor hillbilly cabin and toward Appalachian artisan, rustic chic, old-fashioned garden, small-batch bourbon,” added Gavin.

Roshonda shook her head. “We should just go there,” she said.

“Go where?” I asked.

“Augusta,” she said. “On the ferry, over the river, into Kentucky. We have to find Lydia's grandmother's place and see it all for ourselves. Maybe it would work for the wedding and reception, maybe not. If it's really some smelly old cabin, Mrs. Stidham is never gonna go for it, no matter how much Lydia pouts. We need a place with
potential
.”

We all knew what that meant. In wedding-speak, it was a term that combined availability, affordability, and style-ability.

“So, we don't invite Mrs. Stidham and Lydia to go with us?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” Roshonda said. “They can't agree on what day it is. The three of us go there. We check it out. We eliminate it or we work up a plan that will showcase it as a five-star wedding venue that will please our hillbilly bride.”

“I can't go Saturday. I've got the Mill Creek Yacht Club Regatta,” Gavin said.

Roshonda and I rolled our eyes at each other. The “yacht club” was a grassroots group of environmentalists and supporters of clean water who paddled down the Mill Creek in canoes and kayaks to assess the state of the waterway. They held their regatta of ragtag boats in spring, when the weather was cool, as the Mill Creek was still far from pristine and during the height of summer smelled like the bad old days of industrialism.

“Hey, I even talked Big Ben into going this year,” Gavin said.

“I can just see the two of you in a canoe,” said Roshonda. “You'll look like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in
Twins
.”

I laughed. Ben Tranter was a former college football player with
the musculature to match—the polar opposite of rail-thin Gavin. Ben and I had known each other since grade school. We dated briefly in college, but our romance derailed (all my doing). Then we parted ways. He now owned a private security firm that catered to the many one-percenters in our region. When I moved back to our hometown from New York City late last year, Ben and I began circling each other again, this time with grown-up thoughtfulness. The feelings were all there, at least from my perspective: I knew I didn't have far to go before falling deeply in love with this man. But it was complicated. Not least because I was still technically married to my narcissistic, soon-to-be ex-husband, Luke.

“How about Sunday?” Roshonda asked.

We all were free, so I added
Field trip to Augusta
to my planner.

“Can I ask Ben to go with us?” I asked.

“Don't see why not,” said Roshonda, giving me a sly smile. “Could be fun.”

Our meeting broke up, and I went back to the bakery.

Every time I walked in the door of Rainbow Cake, I experienced the same feeling of well-being that you enjoy when you sink into a hot bath on a cold day.

The robin's egg blue walls, the little cakes on tiny stands that popped up and down the chocolate-colored marble counter, and the vintage glass display cases made my heart glad. Gavin had done a fabulous job making my vision come true.

The far wall displayed our colors and flavors for April: lime and coconut. The chartreuse backdrop made the little pastel Easter egg cakes, a white bunny cake, yellow sugar cookie chicks, and coconut cupcakes with lime filling stand out. It also made me yearn for spring.

“We were wondering when you were going to grace us with your presence.” Maggie Lierman, whose short blond hair and milkmaid complexion belied her toughness as Rainbow Cake's manager, handed me my apron. “Rough morning?”

“I just want world peace,” I said as I put the apron on, and then I gave Maggie the short version of culture clash, wedding-style.

We caught up on special orders and surveyed our shrinking inventory of unsalted butter (and then called our supplier, who was on speed dial) before another wave of customers ambled in to be waited on.

Usually Mondays were slow, but not today.

“See you tomorrow, Neely,” Norb called as he went out the back way. Norb Weisbrod was my tried-and-true baker who came in at three o'clock every morning to get the day's cakes, cookies, and pastries done before our first customers arrived. Rainbow Cake was my bakery, but when Norb was in back mixing and baking, it was
his
space. Woe to anyone who interfered with his concentration or his routine. The difference between home and retail baking was
consistency
. Norb had that in spades, so I was happy to let him be.

But now that he had gone for the day, I needed to finish up a special order for lime and coconut cake. I had already made the pale green lime curd, its sharp citrus tang perfectly balancing the smooth blend of butter, sugar, and eggs. Its aroma and flavor banished the fake lime that I associated with Mrs. Stidham and now dreaded every time we met for Lydia's wedding.

Norb had baked three tender layers of our yellow cake, made with the softest cake flour. I had to put the layers together with a billowy frosting that looked and tasted best the day it was made.
And, of course, I needed to grate fresh, sweet coconut, familiar yet exotic.

For the frosting, I put the sugar and egg whites in the top part of my trusty double boiler over a saucepan of simmering water. As the ingredients warmed and dissolved into a clear mixture, I used my hand mixer to whip them into a glossy white cloud. Magic!

I smoothed the aromatic lime curd over the top of the bottom cake layer, then placed another cake layer on top, spread it with more lime curd, and repeated the process with the third layer. I used my spatula to whirl the frosting over the sides and top of the cake, making stiff peaks wherever I could. Then I showered it with tiny curls of fresh coconut. The tantalizing scent transported me to a white, sandy beach lapped by a turquoise sea under a tropical sun. Lime and coconut were the getaway flavors my bakery customers needed in April, tax time.

All too quickly, the bell on the front door jangled again and snapped me out of my island paradise. I looked up at the clock. Yes, the mailman was as on time as ever. I put my spatula back in the frosting bowl and walked to the front of the bakery. He handed me a stack. “I might as well give you these, too, if you don't mind,” he said and piled my personal mail on top. He winced as he put his hand on the small of his back. “Saves me a trip.”

With Maggie behind the counter, I went back to the inner sanctum of Rainbow Cake. Its milk chocolate walls, marble work surfaces that stayed cool for pastry and chocolate work, and orderliness calmed me. I sorted through the mail, dropping the junk in the recycling bin and piling the rest on the counter.
Coupons, ads: Pitch. Invoice, invoice, wholesale bakery catalog: Keep.

I tore open a letter from Luke's attorney. Blah, blah, blah. Something about our prenuptial agreement. The tone was vaguely threatening, reminding me that according to the terms of that long-ago document I had naively signed, Luke held all the cards. I was at his mercy. He could take back the worldly goods he had so generously bestowed upon me—Gran's house and the bakery, both of which I had bought with money he had given me. In other words, if I were smart, I'd forget about this silly divorce business and go back to being Mrs. Luke Davis, the little woman. At least in public. Fat chance.

I tossed the letter on the marble countertop, which was way too good for any contact with Luke. Basically, he was stalling, bringing up some nonissue that he hoped would prevent me from filing for divorce in a timely fashion. The NFL football season was over. Now it was golf, with every gridiron great sponsoring a golf tournament for charity at a five-star resort with plenty of sun, beer, and babes. And, of course, Luke, the NFL quarterback always tagged by sports journalists as
this close
to making it in a Super Bowl, couldn't miss any of them. What else was new?

The other letter. Hmm. I didn't know anyone at the City Vue Motel in Independence, Missouri.

The stationery looked old and smelled like cigarette smoke, but the spiky handwriting was familiar.

My heart in my throat, I stood up and began to pace. The workroom now seemed to close in on me, so I strode out to the baking area. Norb was gone, so the area by the ovens was quiet.

I sat on his stool by the rolling metal rack of sheet pans and began to read:

Dear Claire,

A guy at Project Uplift stopped by and gave me your letter.

I have read it so many times, it's about to fall apart.

It sounds like you're doing well with your bakery. You can do anything you set your mind to, honey.

Please forgive me for the harm I never meant. I've been messed up for as long as I can remember, but I'm getting help now.

For some reason, I've been thinking about my mom's—your gran's—lemon pie and dreaming of home. And you know what that means, don't you, sweetie?

I never intended to be gone this long. But one thing just led to another and here I am. I have nobody to blame but me.