“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?