Of Lemons
by Kendall Romani Andrew
It was the perfect morning for lemon tea. The sky was a dove-gray outside her window, and dim light glistened off the wisps of steam rising in curls from the mug on her bedside table. Eloise closed her eyes and let the scent of lemons and cinnamon wash over her, letting the cool glow of the morning soak under her skin.
Edwin smells of lemons.
It was the kind of day where the air was cold and her sheets warm, and the air conditioning hummed a low whir on the wall behind her. She picked up the remote, which was conveniently tucked under her left arm, and flicked it off. She couldn’t stand the thing, humming low but somehow ringing in her ears—
Mosquito at her ear.
Right now, she needed calm and quiet—quiet and lemon tea.
Purple and white flowers decorated her bedroom and wallpaper. Dainty little bouquets tied together in pearl white bows. Suited well to the spring morning outside.
Purple flowers grow in mother's garden.
She sat up and took a sip from her mug. Warmth trickled down her throat, and the scent of it seeped into her nose, waking up her senses with the richness of it. She’d have to get up and get ready. She had a lunch date to get to after all. Lunch at 12 – That's what she’d told him yesterday.
Off to meet the boy who smelt of lemons.
She slipped out of the blankets and into her house slippers. Pink and feathery, as if a pale flamingo was twisting around her toes. A scone was waiting for her on the vanity, and she trudged groggily over to it, shaking off the heavy drag of her feet that came with the morning. It was worth getting out of bed for; the scone was some sort of berry and lemon flavour. Lemon.
Edwin smells of sweet scone lemon.
She remembered her tea and hurried over to grasp its handle. Getting ready was always better with tea.
She commenced the sort of ritual she always did when getting ready for a date – fussing with herself in the mirror. Grooming and cleaning her skin, scrubbing her face near raw. The bathroom was not a glamorous one by any means, and she had meant to get the lights replaced. An ugly, migraine-causing fluorescent light lit up her now pink face in the mirror.
Hospital’s light.
She knew it all too well. A call to the handyman was well overdue for the dreadful lighting and the air conditioner that could definitely use some tweaking. Minty toothpaste, like frost on glass, foamed bubbles at the sides of her lips as she brushed her teeth. She hummed and made faces at herself in the mirror while she brushed mindlessly. What an odd reflection it was in that mirror. As if not her own. She decided the lighting was better in the bedroom, and off she went.
Makeup bottles and powders sprawled across the vanity messily – an assortment of uses for each. Foam applicators and tweezers, appliances for plucking, spreading, puffing and patting littered her working space. Eyebrows were always first in her routine, she had finished one and was halfway through pencilling the other when the phone rang. She had absolutely no intention of allowing an interruption during her getting-ready ritual, and despite the annoying screech of the thing, she simply waited for it to stop.
She continued with blush on her cheeks, and for her lips:
Cherry red lipstick.
She’d mind the mess she’d left later. Right now, she needed to look perfect. Simple and to her own taste but perfect. And perfection called for a dress. She hurried excitedly to her wardrobe, sifting through ruffles and fabric of all sorts, flipping through hanger after hanger.
Yes, this was the one.
Slipping it on, she felt the silky cool of it sliding down her back and into place. She struggled with the zipper for a minute and then examined herself in the mirror. An odd reflection, it was indeed.
Excitement radiated off her skin and into the air. The flowers on the wallpaper seemed brighter under her gaze, and the sky outside her window glowed less of a dull-ish grey.
How funny it was, a date. What a ridiculous thing, chatting over lunch with a cute boy.
Silly, it seemed. And as she stood in the middle of her room, staring at her reflection in the mirror, flattening the wrinkles on her dress, she pondered the thought. It was a beautiful dress that she had on.
Blue as his eyes, a lovely garden flower blue.
She twirled and flounced about. The purple and pink of her walls whizzed by as she spun to show off her skirt—showing it off to the mirror, the little stuffed bear on her shelf, her glimmering glass lamp and the paintings of flowers on her walls. As if items of such beauty could appreciate her own. Laughing with delight, she twirled around, tulle and ruffles bouncing about. She twisted like a tornado until throwing herself onto the bed as if she were a little girl…
Showing her new church dress to her mother.
The phone rang again. It echoed throughout the room, somehow louder this time, an alarm of sorts.
Stupid thing it is, annoying as anything, whining and screaming like an infant.
Sprawled across the bed, she waited as patiently as she could for it to stop ringing. Waiting. Until finally, silence.
Waiting, she realized, was almost the best part of a date – that anticipation and butterflies she had in her stomach. After finishing her makeup and showing off her dress once more to her very observant audience, which was, of course, the inanimate objects in her room, she sat back down on her bed with her tea.
She had gotten ready much faster than she originally anticipated, and she lay down happily, swimming in the fabric of her light blue dress, looking like a dolled-up duckling floating in a small pond. What a lovely shade of blue it was.
Blue as the eyes of the boy who smelled of lemons.
She couldn’t wait for her date.
Eloise sat quietly in her room, waiting patiently for the time to pass. Butterflies seemed to swallow her stomach whole. He would be picking her up from the house, so there was no need to rush now that she was ready.
She finished her tea, which was now an unpleasantly cold temperature for her liking, and picked up a book that was resting beside her pillow. She didn't remember seeing it there earlier, but never mind. It was a lovely little book, and literature always calmed her nerves. She sat there on her bed, reading attentively, when something caught her attention in the corner of her eye. Not something, someone; a younger woman leaning on her doorway, watching her quietly. A fly on the wall, almost unnoticed.
“Hello,” said Eloise softly, not really knowing why the woman looked so familiar, or why her presence was somehow calming, for a stranger.
“Hello,” replied the woman. “I called you,” she said.
“I know,” replied Eloise, a tinge of annoyance hanging in her tone.
The woman looked slightly surprised, but her eyes stayed kind, their expression soft and caring. “How have you been doing today?”
“Lovely,” Eloise responded. “I have a date coming to pick me up, you know.”
There was a shift in the young woman's face as she said this, a sort of sadness that looked as though it had been there a while.
“You look beautiful, Mom, really beautiful.”
And Eloise knew that it was over. She knew then that there was no date to get to, no Edwin to pick her up.
Suddenly, the sky became greyer and the flowers on her wall less bright. Eloise knew why the woman looked so familiar, why those eyes were so kind. They were his.
Beautiful garden flower blue eyes.
And as her daughter hugged her gently, her hair wafted a soft scent. She smelled just the slightest bit of lemons.