The Charm Bracelet(81)

Jake reached out and touched Arden’s forearm. She dropped her phone in her lap and grabbed his hand. They drove that way until traffic into town became snarled, the tiny, two-lane road—no wider than a country bridge—unable to handle the giant SUVs sporting license plates from Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, and Indianapolis.

“Over there!” Arden suddenly shouted, pointing at an empty space.

“I think your contacts work better than your glasses,” he said, parking his truck. “And you certainly look even prettier without them.”

The two took to the Scoops streets, falling into flow with the slowly meandering summer resorters, on their way for drinks and dinner. Arden grabbed Jake’s hand and cut down a small alley between two restaurants, which spit the pair out just down the street from Dolly’s.

“I became quite the expert at avoiding crowds my whole life in Scoops,” Arden explained in a matter-of-fact way when Jake stared at her for taking the impromptu shortcut.

Arden peered through the window of Dolly’s, but didn’t see her mother. She looked at the clock on the window, but there was no time designated for the next show.

Alarmed, she zipped into the sweets shop and asked a young girl with two shades of hair—white on top, black underneath—“Where’s my mother? Lolly? I thought she worked until six?”

“She said she had an emergency,” the girl said, looking up as she rang a customer up.

“Was she okay?” Arden asked, alarmed.

“Totally,” she responded. “Very happy. She took off with some young girl.”

“Let’s just go to the park,” Jake said, pulling Arden out of the shop and toward the boardwalk. “That’s where she said to meet.”

“Something’s just not right,” Arden said, checking her cell as they walked.

4:59.

And that’s when she saw it: The giant banner above the park announcing the Tulip Queen pageant.

Strains of terrible music suddenly began to blare over a pair of squeaky speakers. Pimply, ragtag members of the Scoops choir—dressed in hideously bright colored T-shirts—stood in front of a row of mics and began to sway like flowers in the wind, singing off-key The Andrews Sisters’ song that had kicked off the Tulip Queen pageant for decades:

Tu-li-tu-li-tu-li-tulip time!

“Oh, no,” Arden said, stopping in her tracks so quickly that a family of four nearly tripped over her body. “This is like reliving a nightmare.”

Jake put his arm around Arden and led her to the bleachers. Arden squinted in the late afternoon sun, the reflection bouncing off the river, and yanked sunglasses from her purse.

From behind the bleachers, a row of girls dressed in colorful, sequined gowns began to walk in a line toward the platform in front of the pavilion. From a distance, they looked like one, long, undulating glittering snake seeking sun.

“Why am I here?” Arden asked out loud.

And then she saw why: At the very end of the snaking line stood her daughter.

“Lauren?”

Without thinking, Arden was on her feet.

“Lauren?!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Lauren! What are you doing?”

The crowd around her stared, alarmed by her shouts, cautiously sliding their rears away on the aluminum benches from the crazy woman.

In the distance, Lauren heard her mother yell, and she waved back enthusiastically, just like she had done when she was little and had to perform in a band concert.

“Don’t alarm her,” said Lolly, who was hiding under the last rows of the bleachers. “Just keep her calm.”

Arden saw her daughter laugh. She put her hands around her eyes, scanning the narrow slats between the bleachers to get a better look.

Was that…?

“Mother!” Arden yelled, standing on her bleacher. “I knew you were behind this!”

As Arden’s screams traveled toward Lolly, she tried to hide behind a stranger’s body, shadowing the surprised observer like Wile E. Coyote might in a cartoon.

“I can see your wig, Mother!”

Though Lolly’s body was small and fragile, there was no mistaking—even from a distance—her mother’s teased, flame red wig and rainbow makeup. From a distance, Lolly looked like a falling meteor.

Arden watched her daughter motion with both arms for her to take a seat. When Arden refused, Lauren crossed her hands in mock prayer. “Please!” she mouthed.

Arden stepped down off her bleacher and sat with a thud, crossing her arms in displeasure.

Tu-li-tu-li-tu-li-tulip time!

The choir finished its song with a weak warble, and was immediately replaced by an Up North bellow:

“We begin da pageant with da evening gown competition!” the emcee yelled, reverb causing the crowd to cover their ears. “Contestant number one is Molly Von Mancipher!”

Slowly, the contestants walked the runway, stopping in the center to pose, turn, and smile. One by one, Dutch blonde after Dutch blonde winked, blew kisses, tossed tulips, and pirouetted.

This is like the movie Groundhog Day … I have to watch my life over and over again, Arden thought, grimacing.

“Our final contestant is Lauren Lindsey from Chicago and Scoops! We have quite da world traveler!”

As Lauren took the stage, Arden watched her daughter gracefully float across the platform, as effortlessly as one of the white clouds bouncing overhead. Lauren stopped in midstage, posed, and turned.