Number four...Help my family be happy together 4 ever. I winced at the blithe optimism of that goal.
“Turns out we don’t get to decide whether the people we love the most are safe or happy,” I murmured to my younger self. Ten years after I’d written this list, our happy little family was shattered as we lost the linchpin of our lives.
But the other three items... I traced the loopy script on numbers one and two.Live in another country. Own my own restaurant somewhere amazing.I’d always dreamed of living in another country. My junior year at Portland State University I’d done a semester studying abroad in London and fallen head over heels in love with England. For a while I’d planned on moving there and opening my own restaurant.
“Toast.” I hadn’t said the name aloud in years. It was my ideal café—eclectic and quirky (a little like me) and focused on sustainable, local, organic food. I could still conjure it up in my mind, the bright airy space with a vintage twist. I dreamed of creating a place for people to gather, a space with unhurried rhythms. I wanted it to foster an appreciation for simple, good food to invite meandering conversations, folks lingering over local wine, discussing great books and films. My dream for Toast was not just about serving a good meal, it was about creating an experience that invited people into a stronger connection with the Earth and with each other, into gratitude and thoughtfulness. I wanted to bring simple joy and goodness with every bite.
“Gather. Savor. Toast.” I murmured the slogan I’d painstakingly created in a marketing class in college. I still dreamed about England and Toast sometimes, wistfully, with a touch of longing. It had never happened. Life got in the way. After Mom’s sudden death, I came home and never left. I couldn’t leave my dad and ten-year-old Daphne to cope alone, so I had stayed and taken on Mom’s role at the diner and in our family as best I could.
I looked around the kitchen. I’d done all I could, but so many days it seemed like it wasn’t enough. The truth was, I disliked many of the things about my role at the Eatery—crunching numbers, keeping up with ever-changing regulations, making the day-to-day operations run as smoothly as possible. I was responsible and organized, but I was not particularly keen on the logistics of running a struggling diner. It was a far cry from how I’d pictured my life running Toast. Yet I was the only choice after Mom died. Dad struggled with severe dyslexia; he could jerry-rig a burst pipe with some duct tape and a plastic bag and make a tasty karbonader, but the business side of things was alphabet soup to him. And Daphne had been so young when we’d lost Mom, too young to shoulder any of the responsibilities Mom had left behind. There had really been no one else but me to take her place. So I did.
I put down the diary abruptly and went back to the piecrusts. Life lists were tricky. Pie I could do. Sliding the circles of dough into the battered aluminum pans, I crimped the edges with quick pinches, then covered them with parchment paper and added pie weights. Setting the timer, I popped the pans into the oven to partially blind-bake the crusts. Cracking five large eggs, I separated the yolks and the whites, setting aside the whites for the meringue top. On the radio Johnny was singing “I Walk the Line” in his signature gravelly voice.
I whisked water, granulated sugar, cornstarch, salt, lemon juice, and lemon zest together over medium heat. Mom’s secret recipe used Meyer lemons for a sweeter, richer flavor. That was one of her tricks.That and European butter. With its higher fat content than American butter, it made a flakier crust.
“Lolly, what are the three secret ingredients that make this the best lemon meringue pie in the world?” She’d drilled me that last night before she died, demanding I recite every ingredient, every step, until she was satisfied I had it down pat.
“The three ingredients are Meyer lemons, European butter, and a leaf of lemon balm boiled into the syrup every time,” I’d dutifully recited in her hospital room, feeling the weight of grief, of responsibility rest heavier on my shoulders with every word.
Lemon balm was an unorthodox choice for pie, but Mom had loved cooking with edible flowers and herbs. She’d taught me everything I knew about them. I reached for the little lemon balm potted plant growing on the windowsill over the sink and carefully pinched off a leaf.
“In the language of flowers, lemon balm means sympathy or good cheer,” she’d explained once. “So every bite of this pie can help brighten someone’s day.”
I crushed the leaf of lemon balm between my fingers and inhaled the scent, hoping it would work on me. No such luck. I dropped the leaf into the pot and stirred. Every time I made these pies I felt her presence. She had loved lemons—their sharp, fresh scent and cheerful hue. She would slice a lemon in half and sniff deeply, happily.
“See, Lolly,” she’d say. “Lemons brighten every day. They are a touch of kitchen magic, and we all need a little magic in our lives.” She’d rub the peels beneath her fingernails so her hands always smelled like the brightest summer sunshine. But since her sudden death and everything that had come after, I had not been able to see lemons in such a positive light. They represented duty and loss more than anything else to me now.
I stirred the contents of the pot, thin and cloudy, about asappealing as dirty dishwater. In a few minutes it would begin to thicken and bubble happily. The scent rising from the pot was enticing, the sharp tang of lemon juice and the sweetness of dissolving sugar with just a kiss of the lemon balm beneath. I leaned against the counter and shivered in the cold kitchen, all tile and steel. I’d thrown an apron on over my joggers and sweatshirt when I came in, but I still felt the chill. While I waited for the filling to boil, I glanced over at the list still open on the counter, my eyes skittering away from number three. I knew what it said.Fall in love.Technically, I had accomplished that goal.
In an instant, a series of images flashed through my mind, bright and fleeting as sparklers on the Fourth of July. Tawny eyes crinkling at the corners with laughter. The cinnamon-colored stubble along his jawline that he’d rub across the tender skin of my neck just to hear me squeal. A constellation of freckles along the smooth planes of his shoulder blades. His strong arms wrapped around me, us fitting together so perfectly, my cheek nestled against the nubby wool shoulder of his fisherman’s sweater, his mouth pressed against my hair. The way he said my name, like it was the answer to a prayer, so husky and tender it made me melt inside like a pat of French butter.
Rory Shaw. No question that I had fallen for him. Our path to love had not been smooth, but I’d fallen slow and hard, so thoroughly it took me years to recover. I wasn’t actually sure Ihadrecovered. For a moment I could have sworn I caught a whiff of sun-warmed skin and the honeyed oak scent of bourbon and sweet tea. For a moment the sorrow was so strong I couldn’t catch my breath. He was the first and only boy I’d ever loved. The boy whose heart I broke. The boy who’d smashed my own heart into a thousand pieces.
I leaned over the pot to check the filling, then stepped back from the stove and dabbed at my welling eyes behind my glasses, afraid to dapple the lemon mixture with briny tears. A quiet agony, to still love a man who was so thoroughly out of reach, so terribly gone. Did itcount if you did indeed fall in love but then it ended disastrously, entirely by your own hand?
“Pretty sure the answer to that is no,” I whispered, trying to swallow the knot of grief clogging my throat.
So this was it, the truth about my lemon of a life. I was on the cusp of turning thirty-three, and that sparkly purple list of life goals spoke loudly about all I had not done. In the loneliness of the kitchen I felt the sharp slice of despair. How had it come to this? How had I not managed to accomplish even one thing on the list?
Across the room, over the door to the dining room, hung my mother’s favorite sign. Painted on thin metal whitewashed to look vintage, it read:When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.A saying so common it bordered on trite, but one my mother had firmly embraced nonetheless. She was a lemonade sort of woman, approaching every hurdle with a brisk, efficient optimism. If she were here now, I knew what she’d say.
“Stop crying over your lemon of a life, Lolly, and start figuring out how to make lemonade.”
But she wasn’t here, and her absence was a huge part of the reason my life was now quite lemony. I reread the sign and felt something stir in my chest, a flicker of determination. When I wrote that list, I’d had every intention of following through on every point. And indeed up until ten years ago I’d been well on my way to accomplishing each one, and then life had gotten in the way. It wasn’t my fault that circumstances had derailed me. It wasn’t fair either. But it had happened.
I’d been telling myself for years that I’d get back on track with my own dreams, just a little later on, when Daphne was older, when the Eatery was on firmer financial footing, when, when, when. Yet somehow that time never seemed to come.
It’s not too late.My mother’s voice, a loud whisper in my mind.
“How would I even start?” I whispered back.
But if I didn’t do something now, when would I? I gave the list a sideways glance and made a snap decision. I simply couldnotreach my thirty-third birthday with all my goals still unmet.
“I’ve got a month,” I said aloud, setting my chin firmly. And there in that cold kitchen, surrounded by the scent of bubbling lemon filling and Johnny crooning a strangely plaintive rendition of “You Are My Sunshine,” I made myself a promise. “I will check at least one thing off that list before I blow out my birthday candles if it’s the last thing I do.”
Then I picked up the spoon and stirred the lemon filling vigorously, trying hard to focus on the future and all the possibilities that lay ahead, not looking back to the shattered past and all I’d left behind.
5
