The Charm Bracelet (21 page)

The blinds lifted.

The door opened.

The crowd screamed.

Lolly emerged, still in tennis shoes, the sweet smells of the shop and Don trailing along behind her.

“Greetings!” Lolly yelled.

“Hello, Dolly!” the crowd yelled back.

Lolly yanked off her apron to reveal the sequined dress, shimmying just so to make the fringe dance.

The crowd roared.

Don handed Lolly her feather boa, and she curtsied as he ambled away. Through the windows, the shop and its treasures were now on full display, the sun like a spotlight illuminating the copper urns, fudge, ice cream, taffy, and candies as well as Don, now seated at the player piano, started the piano and the music began.

Lolly walked up to an elderly man leaning on a cane, and placed her boa around his neck. She began to sing and his face broke into a smile as bright as the midday sun. Then she urged the crowd to sing along with her.

Arden shook her head from inside the shop and walked away as yet another group played along, putty again in her mother's hands.

But, suddenly, there was silence.

Arden tilted her head.

Nothing.

Arden raced back to the window.

Music from the player piano continued to squeak from the speakers. Lolly turned and looked back at Arden, panicked. Without thinking, Arden began to pantomime the lyrics, swaying back and forth. Lolly's face instantly brightened.

“We feel the shop swaying 'cause the piano's a-playing,”
Lolly sang, the crowd none the wiser, nodding back at Don,
“one of your favorite songs from way back when!”

When Lolly finished, she took a dramatic bow, flinging her boa behind her head, as people in the crowd applauded and went in for hugs before flooding the shop to buy sweets.

Lolly posed for pictures, and as she did, her mind flashed, like the cameras:
Actually, Dolly is going away, fading, one day at a time,
she thought with sadness.

“Thank you,” a young mother said, stroking Lolly's back. “My whole family has adored you for ages. You will live forever in our photo albums and memories.”

Lolly's jaw quaked, but she steeled herself and hugged the woman. “Thank you, my dear. You have no idea how much that means to me today.”

As soon as the crowd outside had dissipated, Lolly walked inside to the clock adhered to the window and moved the hands up an hour.

NEXT SHOW: 1:OO
, it now read.

She put her apron back on, adjusted her wig, and took over the paddles from Lauren and Arden.

“Thank you,” she whispered to Arden.

“You're welcome,” Arden said. “You will get through this, okay? Even if you have to use a sheet to remember the lyrics. People will still love you.”

Lolly smiled and began to stir the chocolate.

“Look at her smile,” Lauren whispered to her mom. “She's not just punching a time clock, is she?”

As Lauren walked over to help her grandma stir the fudge, her words struck a chord in Arden and, as if led by an external force, she found herself walking directly over to Doris Van Voozle, Dolly's granddaughter, who now owned the shop.

“It's good to see you!” Doris said, hugging Arden. “Glad you could make it up this year.”

“Me, too,” Arden said, before nodding toward her mother. “Act never changes, does it?”

Doris's doughy face considered Arden's question. “Some things never should,” she said, straightening her own white apron with Dolly's logo emblazoned on the front. “There's not enough innocence in the world. There's not enough nostalgia. The world is all bad news and ticker tape terror. Your mother makes people feel safe and happy. She reminds them of the way the world used to be. Escapism, like in those celebrity profiles you do, right? If that's not a necessary gift today, I don't know what is.”

Arden's mind shifted, and she smiled at the woman's words.

“Still can't believe your mother came up with this whole Dolly idea,” Doris said matter-of-factly, before turning to head to the cash register, jammed with customers. “Sure been great for our business all these years.”

“Wait! What?” Arden asked, confused. “What do you mean she came up with this whole idea?”

“Didn't you know?” Doris asked, ringing up a family laden with sweets. “The whole she-bang, from the Dolly song and act to making the fudge in the front window. She just walked in one day off the street, introduced herself, and told us she was lonely and needed hope. I was a bit skeptical at first, and sort of let her try it out, because I felt sorry for her. But she was a huge hit, so I gave her a job. I don't want anything to change. Especially your mom. She is a gift.”

Arden's jaw dropped. She turned to watch her mother work the urns.

“Doris, do you mind if my mom takes a break after her next show?”

“Not at all.”

“I think I want to buy her an ice cream cone.”

 

Twenty-seven

“Scoot your rear over a little more.” Lolly laughed, hitting Arden's bottom with a cheek of her own. “There.”

Lolly, Arden, and Lauren squeezed onto a teak bench in the rose garden across from Dolly's, three generations crammed together and eating triple scoop ice cream cones. Sun squeezed through the thick, verdant branches of the dogwood, birch, and redbud trees that canopied the small park.

“After these, we may not be able to fit on this bench anymore,” Arden said, licking a scoop of cappuccino chocolate chunk.

“Hey, this was your idea, Miss Fitness,” Lolly laughed, licking her Blue Moon cone, her tongue and lips turning blue. “What gives?”

Though it was early in the growing season in northern Michigan, sunny daffodils and color-drenched tulips lined the small park's border, and nuclear-size azaleas and rhododendrons flowered. But the park was known for its roses, and the early varieties in virginal white, deep violet, and pretty pink danced in the breeze for passersby.

Arden took a big lick of her ice cream, wiped her mouth, and put her hand on her mother's leg. “So, a little birdie just told me about how you masterminded the whole Dolly showcase.”

Lolly stopped licking her cone for a second, craning her neck dramatically to scan the branches above. “Bad birdie!” she said.

“Mom,” Arden said, suddenly very serious. “I want to know: How did that come about? I had no clue. I guess I just thought Dolly's had always had a Dolly and that you were the latest to be cast in the role.”

Lolly chuckled. “So you actually want to hear one of my stories?”

“Yes … no … well, I mean … I guess I do, Mom.”

A little girl, no more than five or six, wearing the most adorable pink and white dress skipped into the park with a bubblegum ice cream cone as big as her head. Her parents trailed behind, the mother pushing a stroller, the father carrying a camera and cone.

“Rose!” he shouted. “Slow down! We want a picture.”

The little girl, her curly red hair starting to come loose from the colorful barrettes and big bow that held it back, stopped in front of the roses.

Lauren glanced over, and her artistic senses whirred. It was as if the scene had been perfectly coordinated in cotton candy colors, everything washed in pinks and whites. On instinct, Lauren shut her eyes and her hands began to move, to sketch and to paint, invisibly.

Lolly and Arden watched Lauren, until the little girl screamed, “We're done!” and Lauren opened her eyes.

“Nothing sweeter than a child with an ice cream cone in the summer,” Lolly said. “It was that very simple thing that changed my life, in fact.” She paused.

“Here, hold this,” Lolly said, handing Arden her cone, “so I can show you this.”

Lolly looked through her charm bracelet until she found a charm unlike the many silver ones that ringed her wrist, one that mimicked the design on her apron: A glittery ice cream cone, with one blue scoop atop a pink scoop sitting in a golden sugar cone.

“This sweet little charm gave me purpose, passion, and meaning,” Lolly said, smiling and waving at the family now leaving the park. “This charm made Lolly Dolly.”

 

Twenty-eight

Memorial Day Weekend, 1985

Fog hung over Lost Land Lake, heavy and thick, like a moving curtain, choking out the daylight and making even the dock and water impossible to see from the screened porch of Lolly's cabin.

She shivered and pulled a blanket over her body, gripping her warm mug of coffee closely.

Save for the loons, there was not a sound coming from the lake.

Typically, on the first summer holiday of the year, the lake was teeming with people and activity. Summer—like life—was ready to begin again, filled with hope and optimism. Now, however, the world was cloaked in darkness.

The weather matched Lolly's mood: She was in a grey place, on the verge of depression. It had only been a short time since she found her husband, dead. This was her first Memorial Day without him.

Arden would be leaving Scoops for college in a few short months, and Lolly had a feeling deep down that her daughter would not return.

My whole life has been an endless ellipsis: I have gone, in the blink of an eye, from little girl to motherless daughter, from daddy's caretaker to wife and mother.

My whole life—nearly every single day—has been spent caring for someone else.

Now, in the blink of an eye, I am alone.

How could You, God? How could You?

Despite wanting Arden to be happy and to pursue her dreams no matter where they led her, Lolly couldn't help but feel stung by Arden's rejection of everything dear to her.

Tears came, and a great weight rested atop Lolly's body. She was exhausted, unable to even sit up and move. Lolly set her mug on the slatted wood floor, propped a pillow under her head, and stretched her body out on the glider, adding another quilt over her weary bones.

The chilly fog seeped through the screens of the porch, almost like sleeping gas, and, quickly, Lolly was unconscious, nightmares of death and loneliness causing her body to thrash on the glider.

In the midst of her nightmares, Lolly was startled awake by the sounds of boat engines and children screaming. She sat up, and the world was gleaming in sunshine.

She squinted at the old, glittery kitty-cat clock she had on the porch—eyes moving left, tail moving right, eyes moving right, tail moving left.

Two o'clock? I've slept for four hours?

Lolly shook the cobwebs from her head and walked to the screen facing the lake. The fog had cleared, the skies were now blue, and a warm wind blew. Everything glistened with dew, as if Michigan had been dipped in wet silver. She held her face to the sun.

“Who wants ice cream?” Lolly heard a mother a few cabins down call to her children.

“I do!” they replied, sprinting to the cabin in their wet swimsuits.

I do, too,
Lolly thought.

She searched the fridge first, and then the big cooler in the garage, but she was out of ice cream. She was out of everything.

Lolly willed herself to get dressed, put on some makeup, and walk out of her cabin.

She revved the Woodie and pointed it toward Scoops, parking it along a side street on the edge of town in the only spot she could find.

As she strolled, she started to see her hometown through fresh eyes.

Scoops was founded in the mid-1800s, and while the lakeshore teemed with new construction, the hilly town remained quaint: Little, shingled bungalows and white clapboard cottages sat tucked behind huge gardens and walls of rhododendrons.

Lolly inhaled deeply as she walked. Scoops smelled of lake water and wood, pine needles and fudge.

As she neared downtown, her pace slowed as soon as she passed the little hardware store, packed to its wooden rafters with tools, bolts, mowers, and birdseed.

Scoops was filled with fudgies, who had foregone the beach due to the bad weather earlier and flocked to town, instead.

Women trailed into dress and purse shops, while their husbands took seats in the Adirondack chairs that sat outside the stores, patiently waiting until it was late enough in the afternoon to hit the Sandbar Saloon or Old Crow Bar for a happy hour beer.

Lolly headed into the old Scoops drugstore, which had been around forever and was once the epicenter of the tiny town. Resorters loved the drugstore for its cheap sweatshirts and Scoops souvenirs, and locals loved it for Dr. Philbrook, who had been the pharmacist before—the town joke went—aspirin was invented. Few folks knew, however, that way in the back of the congested store—behind the rows of Scoops T-shirts, hats, and mugs, beyond the trinkets and key chains, and tucked behind the pharmacy and towering rolls of toilet paper—sat a narrow old ice cream counter on a patch of red-and-white tile. The short counter held only eight worn leather stools that rotated slowly even when no one was seated on them, behind which stood two soda jerks, who barely had enough room to turn from griddle to counter. The old-fashioned drugstore served up only a select few items in the tiny space: shakes, malts, phosphates,
real
cherry cola and homemade ginger ale, along with sundaes, floats, banana splits, hamburgers, onion rings, and French fries.

Lolly used to come to the drugstore with her mom and pick out charms, before they would head to the back for a treat. Lolly had done the same thing with Arden. She thought of her daughter's suitcases, sitting in her room, already half filled to leave for college.

Lolly looked up and down the counter at the happy people eating ice cream and making the best of what had started as a rather dreary Memorial Day weekend.

An elderly man using a walker slowly made his way to the counter and took a seat next to Lolly, grunting with every effort he made.

“Ma'am?” asked a young man wearing a brightly striped paper hat tilted on his head.