The Memory of Lemon (10 page)

Roshonda explained her proposed menu and a full wedding plan, and the mother and daughter were pleasantly nodding. All good so far.

And then my little tartlets—including the square puff pastry case filled with a dollop of sweetened, flavored mascarpone and an artful scattering of fresh berries—stole the show.

Lydia and her mother sat side by side on my settee, looking at each other.

“This is exactly the wedding I wanted, Mother, but I didn't know how to express it,” Lydia said, eyes shining.

“I'm glad you love it, sweetheart. I think your father will approve.”

Lydia bit her lip, as if she were thinking,
He's not really my father,
but maybe I was just imagining that. The mention of Gene Stidham seemed to take a little bit of the pleasure away from Lydia for some reason. At least she managed to meet her mother halfway.

Gavin, Roshonda, and I breathed a collective sigh of relief. We all settled back to enjoy our French press coffee or herbal tea and the tartlets.

I had skipped lunch, so I sampled the custard. It was beautiful—it tasted rich and sweet—but it needed something more. I typed a note into my phone.

“I was wondering if you might use this as a flavoring in one of the tarts,” Lydia said to me. She handed me a little plastic sandwich bag of what looked like tiny, round allspice. I opened the bag and took a whiff. It smelled like allspice, a combination of nutmeg and clove and a little cinnamon. But it wasn't allspice.

“Spicebush berries,” explained Lydia. “My grandmother used to pick them in the woods and dry them. It's an old-time Kentucky flavoring.”

“I remember,” said Mrs. Stidham. “Vangie used to make custard pie with a little spicebush flavoring. She always got lots of orders for that pie when Deuce and I were little kids, before she went to work in the drugstore. But I vote for something else. I never really liked spicebush.”

Lydia scowled.
Here we go again
.

Spicebush berries. The flavor gave me the feeling of a long-ago time, when a peaceful evening meant watching the river flow by.

I thought again of the twin cabins, joined together by the dogtrot. The Kentucky garden. The tobacco barn. But, again, the flavor vanished before I could get a full story.

“We could do both,” said Roshonda, bringing me back to the present as she artfully brokered yet another peace deal between mother and bride. “Right, Claire?”

She only called me Claire when it was important.

“Of course,” I said. “Golden custard with spicebush and golden custard with something else.”

As if on cue, I finally got a text from Ben.

We have to
talk.

Neely

“I couldn't think where else to meet,” said Ben, sitting with his elbows on the table in our booth at the House of Chili. “I had Sammy let me in the back door.”

We both looked around, but didn't see anyone with a cell phone or a camera.

“I thought you'd given up on me,” I whispered, grabbing both his hands as I sat down across from him. I had robin's egg blue stains on my fingers from coloring our signature buttercream frosting. I still had on my pastry chef's jacket with a few chocolate squiggles that were not part of the all-white design. I had been able to pull my hair into a more presentable ponytail and swipe on a quick swath of lipstick, but that was it. After not seeing or talking to Ben for all this time, I was in too much of a hurry to go full-out primp.

“Not you, Neely. Never you,” he said with a grim smile. “But I hate this.”

The ever-present Bluetooth hovered over his ear. I searched his face like I was mapping a new planet. I noted the spot he had missed shaving that morning, the nicks and dents from his football-playing days, the crow's-feet just appearing around his eyes. He was perfect.

“We have to have a plan,” I said.

“You mean other than avoiding each other?”

“Roshonda says my attorney is more lapdog than pit bull, but he wants us to wait this out. Maybe he's got a point. He says that high-asset divorces are usually more volatile because there's more at stake. It's only two more weeks until I can file for divorce, and then Luke will have to know it's a lost cause.”

“Unless it means big bucks.”

“What do you mean?”

“Unless Luke is up for an endorsement deal or a big commercial or something that would require him to have an image as a family man.”

“Well, when your wife has left you, moved to another state, and filed for divorce, there is no family.” I bristled. “Luke is going to have to give his image a single-guy makeover because I'm not going back or pretending to be his wife. Not for any amount of money.”

“I'm just saying that there's something else going on here. Most of the rich divorced guys I've worked with, especially the pro ball players, just go with the settlement terms outlined in the prenup and call it a day. Those agreements tend to favor
the breadwinning partner anyway, and I bet yours does, too. So there has to be a reason Luke doesn't want to pay you and move on.”

“Yes. Charlie Wheeler.”

“He's not such a bad guy, Neely. He was a punter, for God's sake.”

I knew that was “football” for not being a guy who stood strong on the battlefield, but Ben didn't know Charlie like I did. Charlie was manipulative. He had paid off Luke's conquests so they never talked to sports writers. He had arranged for at least one woman to keep Luke happy after a Pro Bowl I had to miss because of a big wedding. When I finally had had enough and left Luke, I kept receiving flowers and lavish gifts, as if I could be bought, just like the others. Luke wouldn't have thought of that without Charlie's help.

“Charlie is a snake,” I said simply.

“Maybe Luke thinks he can win you back.”

“Not happening.”

We ordered our food and sat in silence.

Ben's five-way arrived, that quintessentially Queen City concoction of spaghetti, chili, kidney beans, finely chopped raw onion, and shredded cheese served on an oval plate. I eyed my two mini chili dogs; I was suddenly hungry. I passed Ben the packets of oyster crackers I knew he liked to crumble on top.

He sighed. “The door opens for us and then slams shut.”

“We need something to prop it open,” I said. “We need information. If I can find out why Luke is playing hardball, I can get myself off the hook.”

“I can help with that,” said Ben. “I know people who know things.”

“You can help by staying out of it,” I said. “If anyone finds out you're involved, it will rebound on me. I have to be the one to dig.”

After we had finished our lunch and rose to go our separate ways, I wanted to walk into his arms and just say the hell with it all. But the thought of Gran living in one of those places that smelled of urine and old food held me back.

“I miss you,” I said. “Now we can't even connect through texting or e-mail. I wouldn't put it past Charlie to tap my phone or hack into my computer.”

“I'll write you a letter,” Ben said half-jokingly, and then we realized that was a pretty good idea.

“The last I checked, it was a federal offense to tamper with the mail,” he said.

“Send it to the bakery, just to be safe,” I said. “I'll write to you, too.”

“Maybe I'll have Dave deliver it, attach it to your porch goose. Who would look there?”

We walked over to the cashier's counter, delaying our separate departures as long as we could. “Lunch is on me,” Ben said.

“Big spender.”

I finally got him to smile and I felt like the sun had just come out.

That safe and warm feeling must have prompted what I said next. “My dad has been writing to me. He's living in a trailer in a Kansas City scrapyard. He has a black dog. He says he wants to come home.”

“Why Kansas City?”

“That's just where he landed, I guess. He had been living in some fleabag motel. The stationery is stained and yellowed and smells like cigarette smoke.”

“At least he's in touch,” said Ben, gently.

“I'm not getting my hopes up this time.”

“Well, look at it this way. Now you have not one, but two new pen pals.”

I reached up to kiss him.

When I got back to work, as if on cue, the mail had come. Maggie had left it in a pile on the counter.

“Well?” she asked.

“We're going to send love letters.”

“Good plan,” she said, rolling her eyes.

The lunch crowd had thinned out and Jett wasn't due in for another half hour, so I took the mail back to the workroom to sort.

The thought of an actual letter from Ben was sort of romantic. I picked up a junk mail envelope and pressed it to my heart, just for practice.

Maybe this wasn't all bad, a take-your-time, old-fashioned kind of romance, even if it wasn't by choice. Ben was that sort of guy, one who stood for honor and steadfastness and intelligence. There was a lot of sexiness in that.

Anybody could promise something he couldn't or wouldn't deliver. Anybody could think of himself first. It took a real somebody to stay with you when there didn't seem to be anything in it for him.

I threw the junk mail in the recycling bin, then sorted through the rest.

Junk. Junk. Bakery business. Junk. Bill. Letter.

Letter.

City Vue stationery. But the return address was crossed out and the scrapyard address written in. So he was still there.

I opened the envelope.

Dear Claire,

We had a big storm last night. Ranger the dog hates storms about as much as I do. Especially waiting one out in a tin can trailer. Makes me remember my helicopter pilot days in Vietnam.

The folks at the VA hospital say I have to tell the people I love what is going on with me. I have to tell my story. So I'm going to try to tell you what I think has gotten me hung up—and I mean that literally. One of the things.

That damn dream. The storm made me relive it. But I didn't fight it so much this time.

It always starts with a thudding in my chest. I'm in danger. It feels like I'm falling from the sky. I can't stop myself. I have no control. And I know something really bad is going to happen. I'm scared shitless. (Sorry, honey.)

Next thing I know, everything is black. There is no pain, but I know there is, if that makes any sense. I mean I can't feel anything, but there is the taste of pain, sort of tinny and metallic like I had the blade of a sword in my mouth. You will know what I mean.

My throat constricts. My eyes water.

And then from out of the darkness comes this girl with blue hands. They're stained dark blue, like she stuck her hands in a vat of ink. And the smell of piss. I think I must have pissed my pants for days, it's so strong. And I'm cold. I'm in the back of a shack and people come in to look at me lying there, and they bend down and get up in my face, but the only one who brings me water or rice is the girl with blue hands.

I know my helicopter went down over North Vietnam, but the rest of it is a black hole. My Army records say I turned up as a prisoner of war just outside Hanoi, but I don't know how I got from my helicopter to the camp. They don't, either. According to some of the other guys at the camp, I was brought in on a stretcher, or so they told me. So I must have been in bad shape.

Claire, honey, I think if I could remember what happened, I might be able to put my life back together. I might be able to be the father you deserve.

I sure miss you, sweetie.

You can write me back at the Blue River Scrapyard.

Love,

Dad

That evening, at home in my upstairs office, I Googled
blue hands
. First, I found medical reasons for a person's hands turning blue, such as Raynaud's syndrome or cyanosis, but the photos showed hands just tinged blue, not a dark blue as Dad remembered.

Then I added more terms.
Hands
plus
blue stain. Blue ink. Blue dye
.

What was the name of that blue dye made from plants?
Indigo
. I searched
Indigo
then
Vietnam
.

I got a hit right away.
Cây chàm.
The indigo plant
.

From there, I found the villages of Lao Chai and Sa Pa, in northwestern Vietnam where indigo grew. By a lengthy process, villagers made the dark blue dye from the plant, using urine to set the color.

So he wasn't crazy.

I found recent photos on travel blogs. Hills terraced with rice fields. Vats of indigo dye. Women with blue hands dipping textiles into the dark dye.

I printed the photos to mail with the letter I had yet to write. Maybe I would also send some lemon cookies we had left over from a special order. Couldn't hurt.

Lao Chai was twelve hours from Hanoi today, by train and motorbike. Who knew how long it took during the war? Maybe several days. If Dad had been carried into the prisoner-of-war camp on a stretcher, the journey must have been extremely painful.

Then I read first-person accounts of American prisoners of war detained in Vietnam. Some of them had shipped out when the Beatles had their first stateside hit song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in 1964 and finally came back after the Beatles had broken up nine years later, when the Vietnam War officially ended. The troops left with crew cuts and came back to hippies with long hair.

When I looked up again, it was after midnight.

Jack O'Neil was not alone in feeling that he had lost big chunks of time.

Maybe something in these images, these place-names would prompt his memory.

Maybe he could finally come back from the war.

Maybe he could move on from 1973.

Or maybe not, knowing my
dad.