Summer Fruit

The five-dollar bill looked small on the kitchen table, rumpled up, and folded in half twice.

“For the ice cream man,” the mother said. “I heard the truck go past earlier, he’ll probably be back!” She smiled cautiously. “You always loved the ice cream man, Lucy. Strawberry shortcake, that was always your favorite.”

Her daughter smiled a little and put the money in her pocket, mostly so she wouldn’t have to look at its dismal smallness any longer. She had been sitting at the table eating canned peaches when her mother made this offering. The fruit had tasted syrupy and overly sweet on her tongue- a mockery of the fresh fruit she had become accustomed to eating at cafes and coffee bars in the city.

“I can make you something to eat if you want?” the mother said. “Lucy?” Her words seemed to travel across a chasm in the kitchen. In the four years that the daughter had been away the space between the pair had grown.

The daughter found she couldn’t meet the eyes of the woman in front of her. She wanted to tell her mother that she didn’t go by the name Lucy anymore but knew she wouldn’t understand. Maybe she would even be hurt to find her daughter had spurned the name chosen for her. At college, everyone called her by the sleek and simple moniker of “L.” Sometimes she pretended it was her given name and that she’d had the type of mother who would name her daughter “Elle.” Lucy was a name for cartoon characters and pet dogs. L was the name of the modern and sophisticated woman she had become. 

Out of the corner of her vision, the daughter could see the hunched frame that was so familiar to her, wrapped in a faded summer dress. She could tell her mother was chewing her nails, a nervous habit she’d been unable to kick all her life. This woman didn’t have a degree. She had never lived in a city before in an apartment with a balcony, drinking cocktails, and dining with important people. She surely didn’t appreciate art the way her daughter did. She probably couldn’t even taste the difference between fresh peaches and canned.

Behind thick glasses, the mother’s eyes were glued to her daughter. They saw a beautiful grown woman. She remembered the little version of this woman- the girl who needed a booster seat to sit at the kitchen table and eat her peaches. The girl who pinched the skirt of her mother’s dresses for balance when she took her first steps.

Now the mother saw someone self-sufficient and lofty and mature. Her daughter’s presence seemed to fill the small kitchen- to fill the entire house. She stood up straighter as she thought these things, swelling with pride for her little girl, enveloped in the warm feeling being near her own blood gave her.

  The daughter refused the offer of food and excused herself from the table. “I have some work to do,” she said.

This wasn’t true of course. There was no work to be had and that was why she was back in her mother’s house in the first place. Years of higher education had proved fruitless. She had tasted the freedom and culture and wildness of college life but in the end, she was back where her life had begun. No more scholarships or work or stylish apartments shared with older men who made her feel special. College had spat her out with a useless degree in art history and a pit in her stomach where all the happiness and excitement used to be. Her lips ached for kisses that tasted like apples and her tongue longed to taste special food prepared only for her; the kind those older college men always made her.

Her childhood bedroom was unchanged; a tiny time capsule full of the remnants of teenage life. The walls were papered with posters for movies and bands she no longer cared for and her shelves were full of books that no longer interested her. A print of one of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers hung over her bed. A man had ridiculed her once when she told him Van Gogh was her favorite artist, calling her soulless and commercial. He told her that Van Gogh was tedious and overrated and took her to museums and exhibitions to show her what real art was.

The daughter collapsed on her twin bed and fiddled with a bottle of perfume on her bedside table, pressing the nozzle and spritzing the air. She coughed, choking on the scent of citrus and vanilla hanging in the sticky summer air. The smell of it resurfaced memories of spraying herself with too much of it on dates and outings with friends- high school friends she didn’t talk to anymore. She remembered buying her first bottle and how sophisticated and grown-up she had felt. Or had her mother bought it for her? Yes, that was right. The first perfume bottle was a gift from Ma. From that moment on, the daughter’s life was cloaked in the smell of synthetic orange and lemon.

Later, when the daughter finally emerged from her room, Ma approached her smiling. “You smell so pretty,” she said, tentatively curling her finger around her daughter’s hair. It had been four years since she last got a whiff of that fragrance. The perfume that was synonymous with her daughter. Synonymous with Lucy.

Lucy let her eyes meet Ma’s this time and saw that they shone. “Thanks, Ma.”

In the kitchen, Ma spooned heaps of lemonade powder into two glasses without asking or thinking about it. She offered one of the drinks to Lucy. She took it.

Lucy sat down on the front step and breathed. Lilac and muggy air, freshly-mown grass and gasoline. Suburban smells. She found that these were scents she missed and she was glad to be sitting there on the step smelling them. For the moment, she allowed all thoughts of school and work and money to melt away with the ice cubes clinking in her glass of lemonade.

Lucy sat and waited, the five-dollar bill in hand. The ice cream man was coming.