Lemons Read online

“Mrs. Dickerson!” Tobin calls while he works to unknot the twine tied tight around his leather case and legal pad. When he finally gets them free, he dashes up the front steps, and I follow.

  The new white tennis shoes that Mama and I got at Hanson’s Shoes are dirty now too. I spit on my hand and rub a spot, but it just smears and only makes it worse.

  I feel like crying.

  But I don’t.

  Tobin bangs three loud knocks on the screen door. The cookies piled high on the plate smell glorious, and I can’t help but stare at them.

  Too bad I already filled up with vermin on the way over. I gag one more time just thinking of it.

  “Mrs. Dickerson!” Tobin calls louder this time, peering through the screen between cupped hands.

  “Oh, there you are, Tobin, sweetheart. Thank you for coming so quickly,” Mrs. Dickerson’s voice says from somewhere inside the house.

  When she turns a corner, I can see she walks with a bright silver cane. We watch her slowly slide her way toward us down the hall.

  She’s old.

  I mean ancient.

  Like Jesus old or maybe even older. Who’s older than Jesus? God, I suppose.

  She’s God old.

  Her white hair is tied up on top of her head in a loose knot, and there are so many wrinkles on her face, there isn’t any part of her that’s smooth. The wrinkles are so deep and twisty, each one is like a road map to all the different stories of her life. She has on a flowery dress and bright pink lipstick that looks like it’s slipping off where it’s supposed to be. And her eyes are the deepest blue I’ve ever seen, like the sky on a really clear day when there isn’t one single cloud.

  “Come in. Come in.” She smiles a big smile that makes her eyes disappear in all those wrinkles.

  Tobin pulls the screen door open. She leans down and wraps her thick arms around him. His arms don’t make it all the way around her.

  “Mrs. Dickerson, I’d like you to meet my new assistant, Lemonade Liberty Witt.” Tobin points a thumb in my direction. “Lemonade, this is Mrs. Dickerson. She used to teach third grade at Willow Creek Elementary before she retired.”

  She smiles at me and holds out a hand for me to shake.

  “Hello there, it’s so nice to meet you, Lemonade.”

  “I ate a bug,” I blurt out.

  She looks surprised and then smiles even bigger, her blue eyes disappearing again.

  “Oh, well, that can happen now and again. Nothing to worry about, though, I’m sure. Well, Lemonade, I heard you were coming in to stay with Charlie. I’m so sorry to hear about Elizabeth, dear. Such a tragedy…and so young, too.”

  I look down at the smeared spot on my shoe and swallow the lump that always finds its way up my throat when someone says her name.

  Elizabeth Lilly Witt.

  Tobin stares back and forth between us, shifting his feet.

  “I remember her very well,” Mrs. Dickerson goes on.

  “My mom?” I look back up at her, studying her wrinkles again and wondering which ones might hold stories about Mama. “You know her?”

  “Oh, goodness’ sakes, yes. She was in my class one year and was also very good friends with my youngest girl, Violet.”

  It feels weird to hear about Mama this way. It’s like I thought I knew her better than anyone in the whole entire world, and now I find out I didn’t know lots of things about her.

  “You look just like her at that age.” Mrs. Dickerson smiles again.

  I can’t help but smile now too.

  “I do?”

  “Oh, my, yes.” She laughs a little. “And you know what? She was unique.”

  “Unique?”

  “Yes, very much so. Quite an individual,” Mrs. Dickerson goes on. “I remember when she was right around your age and she got a doctor kit for Christmas. Well, don’t you know she opened up her very own free clinic for all the animals in town? She made house calls too, for the horses and steers. What did she call it?”

  “She did that?” I ask. “Well, she loves animals, you know. She’s a veterinarian back home.”

  Mrs. Dickerson smiles like she already knows.

  “What did she call it?” she says again. “Well, anyway, I remember she loved learning anything she could about animals. She checked out every book we had up at the school library on all kinds of different species. From cats and dogs to horses and livestock. And she was busy at her clinic too. Many people brought their small animals to Charlie’s garage to see her, and of course also to visit with Charlie and Rebecca. What was the name of it? It was such a unique name.”

  Tobin is a bubbling pot ready to explode, shifting his feet faster now and still looking back and forth between Mrs. Dickerson and me.

  Mrs. Dickerson looks at me for a long time, like she’s mulling me over.

  “You’re the spitting image of your mother, Lemonade Liberty Witt,” she finally says. “That’s certainly a one-of-a-kind name, isn’t it? Although I wouldn’t expect anything different from Elizabeth.”

  “Everyone just calls me Lem,” I say.

  “Ah, well.” She places a warm hand on my shoulder. “Welcome to Willow Creek, Lem. I’m looking forward to getting to know you— The Rainbow Bunny Animal Hospital and More!” Mrs. Dickerson blurts out. “That’s what it was. Thank the stars, I would have been up all night trying to remember—”

  That’s when Tobin lets out the biggest sigh you’ve ever heard.

  “Ah…Mrs. Dickerson?” He finally bubbles over. “Can you show us where you saw the Bigfoot now?”

  “I’m sure there are fingerprints to dust for this time,” Mrs. Dickerson tells us, sliding her cane toward the kitchen in the back of the house.

  The whole place smells like sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg and peanut butter and fresh-brewed tea leaves. It makes my stomach moan.

  “I was in the kitchen here, baking, and wasn’t I surprised to turn around and see a Bigfoot staring at me through the window, of all things! Leaned up right there on the sill.” She nods to the window facing the thick woods out back. “When I turned to look at him, he growled at me through the glass. Right here is where I dropped the hot pan of cookies I had just taken out of the oven.” She motions to a small indentation in the wood floor.

  Tobin aims his Polaroid camera at the dent and takes a picture of it. The camera spits out a photo. He grabs the photo and hands it to me.

  “Exhibit A,” he says, and turns back to Mrs. Dickerson. “Then what happened?”

  “Well, I had to throw all those cookies in the trash, of course.”

  “No, Mrs. Dickerson, with the Bigfoot,” Tobin says.

  “Oh, yes, well, the pan had made this horribly loud bang, which must have startled him, because that’s when he darted off into the trees. But not before giving the loudest, shrillest scream I’ve ever heard in all my days. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. My goodness, it was something, all right.”

  “We can check for prints on the glass and the sill,” Tobin tells me, adjusting his chin strap. “I sure hope you’re right this time, Mrs. Dickerson.”

  “You know I keep my camera here just in case, but it happened so quickly I didn’t get the chance to grab it.” Mrs. Dickerson points to the camera hanging on a hook next to the refrigerator.

  “Me and my assistant will go check out the window in question, then bring all the evidence back to HQ to further evaluate it.” Tobin nods at me all official-like.

  “HQ?” I roll my eyes, then head out the back door and down the cement steps with Tobin at my heels.

  “That’s right, Headquarters,” he says, and then points to the ground just under the kitchen window and takes a picture of it. “Grass. No footprints to cast.”

  I watch him take off his glasses and eyeball every inch of the window, his nose so close that his breath makes small circles of fog on the panes. Then he carefully sets his leather case on the ground and unzips it. He pulls out a jar filled with blackish powder and also a big round pa
intbrush. I watch him swirl the brush inside the jar of powder and then brush in tiny circles along the window and windowsill. The powder smears into a messy grayish cloud all over the glass.

  “I don’t think she’s going to like you doing that to her window,” I tell him.

  “This is how you dust for prints,” he says, pushing up his glasses with his forearm. “No footprints to cast, but there could be finger- or palm prints on the window.”

  “Bigfoot fingerprints?”

  He sighs like I’m the biggest dope in the entire universe.

  “The Bigfoot is a descendant of Gigantopithecus,” he explains as he swirls the brush. “It’s a species of giant ape from Asia that is believed to have been extinct for more than a million years. What we know is that humans have friction skin, like fingerprints, or dermal ridges, that usually go in one direction, and primates have dermal ridges that usually go in another. Plus, they’re coarser and wider. I’m dusting to see what types of prints these are. Human or nonhuman prints.”

  “Oh…” is all I can think of to say. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Grab the tape from the case, and we’ll see if we can lift some prints from the glass.”

  I bend down and dig through his leather case. There’s a movie camera inside, a bunch of packets of unused film, extra pens, tweezers, and one silver dollar. At the bottom I feel something else and pull it out. It’s an old picture of some man with reddish-brown curls, leaned up against a silver convertible and holding a baby.

  “Who’s this?” I hold up the picture.

  Tobin doesn’t even hear me. Now he’s examining his grayish, cloudy masterpiece with a magnifying glass that he’s pulled out of his back pocket.

  “Who’s this?” I ask again.

  Tobin turns to look at what I’m holding in my hand and then turns back toward the window.

  “My dad,” he says.

  “Is that you with him?” I ask him.

  He sighs one of those loud sighs again.

  “Did you find the tape or not?”

  “Sorry,” I say, putting the picture back in and digging down deeper to find a roll of Scotch tape.

  “I don’t have a dad,” I say matter-of-factly, holding out the tape in his direction.

  “What do you mean you don’t have a dad?” he asks without taking his eyes off the glass. “Everyone has a dad.”

  “Not me,” I say. “Mama told me he didn’t want to be a father when I was born. So I guess you could say that technically I don’t have one. Here—”

  He looks at me.

  “The tape.” I hold it toward him.

  “Don’t need it,” he sighs. “There are no prints to lift.”

  “So you don’t need the tape?”

  “Mrs. Dickerson.” Tobin motions through the glass. “I’m just not seeing anything come up back here.”

  She pokes her head out the back screen door. “Well…isn’t that a shame? Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Pretty sure.” He examines the window again through the magnifying glass. “I’m not finding a fingerprint or a palm print or anything.”

  “Well, fiddlesticks!” She looks disappointed.

  Tobin shakes his head and drops his hands to his sides.

  “Nope, there’s just nothing,” he says, looking back up at her in the doorway.

  “My goodness, I hate to have you kids come all this way out for nothing. How about some cookies and tea before you leave? I have peanut butter and molasses fresh out of the oven this morning,” she says, her wrinkles swallowing up her eyes.

  At dinner that night I stare at my plate with my arms crossed over my chest.

  Turns out Charlie is quite the gourmet.

  Boiled hot dogs à la Wonder Bread with one squirt of ketchup and one squirt of mustard and a pile of Tater Tots on the side that are still cold in the middle.

  Tobin and Charlie are working on a thousand-piece puzzle at the kitchen table while they eat. It’s a basket of kittens playing with two blue yarn balls. Right now, Tobin and Charlie are searching for corner and edge pieces.

  “Mama always makes greens with dinner,” I inform Charlie.

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” Charlie says, examining a puzzle piece from behind his glasses. “Tell me what you kids have been up to today.”

  “I made Lemonade my assistant and then we went over to Mrs. Dickerson’s again. This time she saw one peeking in the window, so we went out to dust for prints,” Tobin tells him with his mouth full of boiled Oscar Mayer. “But we didn’t get anything this time either, even though she swears she saw one.”

  “Mmmm,” Charlie says. “This a corner?”

  Tobin squints at it.

  “Nope.”

  Charlie puts it back on the table.

  “She made her famous peanut butter cookies, so it was still worth the trip, right?” Tobin looks at me. “Oh, and she told all kinds of stories about Lemonade’s mom. She was best friends with Mrs. Dickerson’s daughter Violet. Did you know that?” Tobin asks Charlie.

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” Charlie says, holding up another piece. “Here’s a straight edge.”

  “Yep,” Tobin agrees. “I didn’t know she had nine children.”

  “Ah…nine? Yeah, that sounds right,” Charlie says. “Don’t ask me to name them all, though, I couldn’t do it.”

  Tobin looks at me again.

  “Oh, and…this one ate a bug.” He points his head in my direction and snickers behind his hand. “It’s all she’s talked about all day.”

  “What are you laughing at?” I snap.

  He stops.

  “It’s not funny at all,” I say. “That thing might be laying eggs inside my stomach as we speak, and I could die any second from an insect-related scourge infesting my intestines.”

  “See what I mean?” Tobin says to Charlie. “You can’t die from swallowing a bug, can you, Charlie? I already told her, but she doesn’t believe me.”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of anyone perishing from swallowing a bug, no,” Charlie says, examining another puzzle piece.

  I push my plate away and stand up.

  “Well, maybe you both don’t know everything. Ever think of that?” I put my hands on my hips. “Maybe they’ll write about me in the medical journals because I’ll be the very first!”

  Tobin dips a Tot in a puddle of ketchup and takes a bite. There’s ketchup on the side of his mouth, and he doesn’t even lick it off. He’s too busy examining me like I’m one of his stupid puzzle pieces. Trying to figure out what shape I am and where I fit.

  “You know, you sure complain a lot,” he says, chewing and staring just like the vile-smelling cows out in the pastures.

  He can’t be talking to me. Not me. He thinks he knows exactly what shape I am, and he doesn’t know anything. I’m not a corner or an edge piece.

  I’m me.

  Lemonade Liberty Witt.

  I want to tell them both that I don’t belong here. Not on an edge or in a corner, or even anywhere in the middle.

  “That’s not so!” I tell him. “You don’t even know me!”

  “I know you complain a lot.”

  “You better take that back!” I warn him. “Charlie, tell him to take that back!”

  Charlie looks up then, slowly removing his glasses and leaning way back in his chair. He begins to examine me just like Tobin.

  “My mom always says I can take any lemons that life gives me and make lemonade. That’s why she named me Lemonade. Because that’s what she does, and that’s what I do too,” I inform them both. “I’m the spitting image of her. Mrs. Dickerson even said so.”

  “Well, you sure don’t seem to be very good at it.” Tobin pops another sloppy red Tot into his mouth.

  I feel tears prickling in my eyes.

  “How would you even know, anyway? I have a million friends in the city and they all know that about me—”

  “Hey.” Tobin turns to Charlie. “Maybe that’s why they call her Lem instead of Lemonade. ’Cause the
lemonade she makes isn’t lemonade at all, it’s all sour and tart, and instead of sugar, she adds a whole lot of bellyaching.”

  My eyes want to cry.

  My mouth wants to scream.

  My fists want to punch him in his stupid safari hat still strapped tight under his chin.

  “Well, you know what, Tobin Sky?” I holler at him. “You can just go and suck a lemon.”

  I turn and stomp down the hall.

  “Why in Sam Hill would I want to suck a lemon?” Tobin is saying.

  Charlie takes a deep breath and sighs out real long, like a deflated balloon.

  “Give her some time,” I hear him say. “She’s had some really big lemons to deal with lately. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out just how to get the sweetest juice when they’re bigger than you expect. Bigger than what’s even fair. You of all people should understand that.”

  “Are we still talking about the girl or are we talking about the drink?” Tobin asks.

  I grab the tarnished brass knob on the second door on the right, ready to give it a good, loud slam, when all the happy family pictures hanging on the wall of the hallway catch my eye.

  A mom.

  A dad.

  And a girl.

  One at the beach, another one skiing in the mountains, and even one on a ferryboat ride under the Golden Gate Bridge.

  There’s a picture in a round frame of just the redheaded girl on a hill, sitting in long green grass. She’s squinting in the sun. She has a single red braid down her back, tied at the end with an orange and green crocheted yarn braid. Freckles are sprinkled across her face, her arms, and her legs. She’s waving to the camera and smiling a big goofy grin. I lift the picture off the hook and inspect it more closely.

  She’s as bright as the sunshine washing over her. She’s bubbling over and brimming with zest.

  She is lemonade.

  And I am too. The spitting image. Mrs. Dickerson even said so.

  Except that I don’t feel sunny or bubbly or zesty. I feel like a volcano ready to spew lava in every direction.

  There isn’t anything Lemonade about that.

  Maybe Tobin was right. Maybe I’ve forgotten how to be me. Maybe I’ll never be me again. Maybe I won’t ever make lemonade for the rest of my entire life.