“I will,” I promised. We looked at each other for a moment, the silence stretching long. She was still crouched in a low pose. Her core strength was admirable. I thought of the life she’d led, the prestige and accolades and adventures. Now it all made sense. She must have used a lemon drop and chosen to stay in the best version of her life for good. How astonishing to be able to choose in this way. No wonder she’d led an amazing existence.
“I offered the lemon drops to your mother once, you know,” she said finally, casually, rising from her position. Her knees creaked.
“You did?”
She nodded, moving smoothly back into the next pose. Needle at the Bottom of the Sea. “It was just after her accident when her situation was... critical. I called her and offered to fly down that very night. I told her about the lemon drops. I told her I thought they could save her life. She could have taken two, chosen a version of her life where she was strong and healthy still. I thought it might work. It was worth a try.”
“What did she say?” I was surprised, trying to picture what could have happened if she’d taken them.
Aunt Gert shrugged, pushing one hand firmly out in front of her as though stopping traffic. “Irene thanked me politely and then she declined. She said she’d lived the life she wanted with the people she loved most. She didn’t want a different life, even if it meant living longer. She said she was sorry to leave the world so soon, but she wouldn’t change her life, not one bit. She died the next morning.”
I stepped back, stunned. How incredible for Mom to have been offered the chance of a different life and to turn it down. How amazingthat she had a life so fulfilling that she could not imagine a better one. My mother had crafted a life for herself that was what she wanted. I longed to do the same.
“Be honest. Pay attention. Seek joy,” I whispered. I clutched the lemon drop in my hand. I had the world spread before me all of a sudden. Everything seemed possible. I could choose.
33
“You’re kidding, right?”Eve eyed me askance as she carefully poured caustic lye onto cubes of frozen goat’s milk in the bottom of a big metal soup pot. “You’re telling me you can go back again? Permanently?”
“That’s what Aunt Gert said. I can go back once more, but then I would stay there. That would be my life.” I tapped my fingers agitatedly on Eve’s dining room table, late-morning sun streaming in the window, as Eve whipped up a batch of goat milk soap. I had been tasked with cutting and wrapping already-cured batches of soap but was neglecting my chore, too intent on the choice before me. In the background, with quiet ferocity, Pat Benatar was singing about how we belong.
I’d made it to Sunday, carrying the lemon drop around in my pocket like it was a grenade. I was by turns terrified and giddy, completely topsy-turvy. In short, I was a mess. This morning I woke early, made the pies as quickly as I could, and headed to Vashon on an early ferry. Sundays at the diner were always leisurely in the morning, so I could see Eve and be back in time to help out with the weekend lunchtime crowd. When I’d arrived at the farm, Eve fed me a giant bowl ofoatmeal with cinnamon and sliced bananas to fortify me and then put me to work helping ready soap for the farmers market.
“Your life is absurd. You know that, right?” Eve was wearing bright blue latex gloves and carefully stirring the mixture with a silicone spatula. The smell of ammonia was eye-watering as the lye melted the frozen goat’s milk. “I mean, it was weird when you were going back for a day, but choosing a different life? This is a whole new level.” She shot me a skeptical glance. “Are you sure you’re not having some sort of slow emotional breakdown? No judgment if you are. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“I know it sounds completely crazy.” I ran a finger over the top of a bar of soap; the flecks of orange zest and cloves suspended in the soap were the color of dying embers. “It feels completely crazy. But it’s real, I swear, Eve. A few days ago I held those little girls in my arms. Rory kissed me. It was him. He tasted like bourbon and Coke and smelled like sweet tea. And it’s completely wrecking me.”
“No beer belly and boring personality then?” Eve sighed with evident disappointment. “It would have made things so much easier.”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “Sorry to disappoint. I’m still completely head over heels for him, and now I’m total smitten with the girls too.”
“Are you going to do it then?”
I hesitated. “I want to. My heart is saying yes, but it’s a... huge decision. I want to think it through carefully before I leap.”
“Well, what are the options?” Eve asked sensibly. “You already know you don’t want to choose Toast.”
“Right.” I lined up a long rectangle of cured activated-charcoal soap on Eve’s soap cutter and sliced the blade through it with satisfying ease, making uniform slices over and over. “I could always stay here and just keep living my life, doing the same thing I’ve been doing for ten years.” The thought curdled my stomach.
Eve cast me a skeptical look as she poured almond fragrance oilinto a mixture of other moisturizing oils. The smell was heavenly, like marzipan. “Come on, Lolly. Are you really telling me that you could be happy doing that? After you’ve seen all the other options?”
I thought of Aunt Gert’s admonition for me to follow my bliss.Be honest. Pay attention. Seek joy.I had been paying attention. I was trying to be honest. And I was desperate to find my joy, to find more of what I’d felt in flickers during those days with my mom and with Rory.
My mother’s words came back to me, what she’d said in Hawaii that night on the mountain under the stars.There is more for you, my girl. More life and love and good things, maybe babies if you want them. I wanted the more my mother promised me with everything in my heart.
“I can’t live this life anymore,” I said bluntly. “Something has to change.” I put my head in my hands and pressed my palms into my eye sockets.
“Preach!” Eve whooped. “Okay, keep going.”
I blew out a long sigh. This was hard. I admired Eve for having the guts to just up and change her life to something she found satisfying. And for her it was not about having a romantic partner or making a lot of money. She’d had both those things, but it turned out she didn’t want them. What she wanted was to live on a little plot of land on a remote and beautiful island with her goats, single and happy, making soap at her kitchen table.
“What about your mom? Have you considered going back to her?” Eve poured the lye–goat milk mixture into the oils.
“If I choose her, I lose Dad.” I grabbed a square of parchment paper from the neat stack I’d made, and wrapped a bar of charcoal soap, affixing a label to the front. “And I’m not with Rory there either. I couldn’t quite figure out what happened, but we weren’t together. Mom alluded to it.”
Eve stuck a hand blender into the soap mixture and turned iton low, churning the creamy yellow substance. She wisely said nothing. This wasn’t a choice anyone could make for me.
“You know, Aunt Gert told me she offered the drops to Mom when they knew she was dying. And she said Mom refused them.” I set down the soap and looked at Eve. “Mom said she wouldn’t change a thing about her life. She could have taken the lemon drops and lived longer, but she wanted to keep her life this way. As much as I miss her and wish I could have more time with her, I think I have to respect her decision and not change what she chose to do. I have to let her stay gone.”
