The Savior Section 2

THE DREAM always starts the same, with Mom and me.

           “Tony, the recipe for lemonade is simple,” Mom says.

           She takes my small hand in hers, always warm, and together we squeeze the lemon halves into a large glass pitcher.

           “One after another, Tony. That’s right. Then add the water until the pitcher is filled,” she says in her native, Sicilian-accented Italian.

           I respond in English, “Yes, Mom.”

           The sunshine comes through the slats in the shutters, closed over the kitchen window to keep out most of the light. Her hands glow as she runs water over them, washing away the lemon’s sweet-sour stickiness. The reason that Mom’s hands are so warm, I know, is because they absorb sunlight.

           “You know what comes next, Tony?”

           “Sugar?”

           She smiles. She has large teeth and a small symmetrical gap lives between her front two that are overlarge. She calls them rabbit teeth. I have them too. Her long black hair smells, I imagine, like dirt and flowers and old stone from Palermo.

           “Correct,” she says.

           She hands me a small glass jar full of sugar.

           I put in one tablespoon, two, and three.

           “Not too much now, dear.” She takes away the bowl and says, “You don’t want it too sweet. What’s the last ingredient?”

           I don’t know what to say. The look on my face is slack. A dumb expression I would see more and more often on my face, as I got older.

           “A bit of you. Your soul,” she says.

           “How do you add that, Mom?”

           She sighs. Then she says, “That’s a tough one; because, only you can know if it’s in there. You squeezed the lemons. You added the sugar. So you have to tell me, does it taste like you?”

           I look at it. Squint at the clear glass pitcher. The yellow liquid swirls with bits of pulp and seed slivers.

           I don’t see my soul.

           Mom lifts the pitcher and as she does my eyes follow it and my reflection gets stretched across its swollen belly. She pours the lemonade into a clunky hexagonal glass, the type that will chip and wear over time, but should last generations before it fully breaks and becomes unusable.

           I take a sip.

           The dream shifts. My hand is larger and hairy. In it, is a smaller hand: my daughter’s warm hand.

           I show Carol how to squeeze the lemons so that just the right amount of pulp falls in, not too much or too little. She adds the sugar.

           But I don’t ask her about the last ingredient. After all, I never could get it in mine.

           “All done,” I say.

           “No, it’s not ready,” she says.

           I’m surprised, like I always am in this part of the dream. I am taken aback, intimidated even, by the self-assuredness in her voice.

           “What do you mean, love?” I ask.

           She tilts her head left then right, her hand on her chin all the while.

           “It’s missing something.”

           I don’t know what I expect to happen, but it isn’t what happens next.

           Carol pounds her fist against an open palm and yells, “Got it.” Her voice is the high-pitched product of excited childhood. She leans over the pitcher, opens her mouth, and lets a ball of spit slip out. The spit makes a quiet plop as it hits the pale yellow liquid.

           Turning to me with a grin on her face, she wipes what’s left of the spit away.

           “Me,” she says and puts on a serious expression, out of place on the face of a child, lip out and hard stare from eyes older-than-her-years. “Me,” she repeats firmly.

           I laugh, and she pours the lemonade into the same glass I used to use with Mom, I drink it. It’s the best tasting lemonade I’ve ever had.

           I always wake up then, my cheek on wet, moldy-smelling cardboard, a trail of drool dampening my makeshift bed even further. Then I cry, though I would’ve no doubt denied it 5 minutes to 9 the next morning had someone ever confronted me with the fact that I did cry, but, luckily, nobody ever does.