The Charm Bracelet Read online

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  For my grandmothers … and my mom

  Thanks for teaching me that the grandest gifts in life are the simplest and for entrusting me with your charms, which retaught me that lesson.

  prologue

  The Half-Heart Charm

  To a Life Where We’re Never Separated

  July 4, 1953—Lolly

  Fireflies blinked, illuminating the stepping-stones to Lost Land Lake.

  “You see that, Lolly?” my mom laughed in the twilight. “Mother Nature is giving us a preview to the fireworks.”

  I smiled and inhaled.

  My whole world smelled of summer: Suntan lotion and sparklers, barbecues and pine needles.

  By our ears, dragonflies fluttered, as if an orchestra of violins had been sent, just for my mom and me, as we walked to our dock.

  I had just blown out the candles on my tenth birthday cake, and my dad was busy building a bonfire for s’mores. He had given me his gift, my first fishing pole, so I could spend Sundays with him, but now it was time for my mom’s gift. And she always gave it to me at the end of our dock.

  In the quickening dusk, I felt for her hand as we walked, our wrists colliding, setting our charm bracelets jangling. I giggled. Out of habit, I began to feel for her charms, trying to guess each one by touch rather than sight. It was a game I had invented years ago.

  “My baby shoe!” I said excitedly.

  “To a life filled with happy, healthy children,” my mom said.

  “A key!” I yelled.

  “Because you unlocked my heart,” she said.

  “Snowflake?”

  “Yes,” she said. “To a person of many dimensions.”

  My fingers kept flying, and my mom had a story and explanation for every charm. I knew almost every one by heart, and I spun my fingers until I found my favorites, the ones I always played with: The grand piano with the lid that opened and closed, the turtle with green gemstone eyes whose head moved back and forth, and a wishing well with a moving crank.

  “To a life filled with beauty, a life filled with slow, meaningful decisions, and a life where all your wishes come true!”

  As we neared the end of the dock, my fingers felt a charm I couldn’t identify.

  “What’s this one, Mommy?” I asked. “I don’t know it.”

  “That…” My mom hesitated, and her voice broke.

  “Are you okay?”

  “That’s my rocking chair,” she explained.

  “What’s it for?”

  “It’s for…”—again, she stopped, catching her breath, as if she had just finished a long swim across the lake—“… a long and healthy life.”

  We took a seat at the end of the dock, and dangled our feet in the water, just as the fireworks started.

  “Ooooh!” I said, as much for the chill of the water as for the fireworks. “Woooowww!”

  My birthday fell on the Fourth of July, just like our nation’s, and I was a child of summer.

  “All those fireworks are really for you!” my mom would always whisper, the explosions booming overhead and echoing off the water. “The world is celebrating your uniqueness!”

  Every year, for as long as I could remember, I received a charm from my mother on special occasions: Christmas, trips, school accomplishments. And every birthday, my mom would add another charm to my bracelet.

  This year was no different.

  “Happy birthday, Lolly!” my mom said, pulling me into her arms and kissing my head. “You ready to recite our poem first?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Why not?”

  “Mom! I’m getting too old.”

  “You will never be too old. Let’s do it together then!”

  This charm

  Is to let you know …

  My mom’s face lit up as she started the poem. Suddenly, it was like jumping into the lake on a hot day, I couldn’t resist. So I joined in:

  That every step along the way,

  I have loved you so.

  So each time you open up,

  A little box from me

  Remember that it really all

  Began with You and Me.

  My mom hugged me, radiating with joy. “Here you go,” she said, pulling a small package from the pocket of her jacket.

  I ripped open the tiny box, and, as usual, there was a silver charm sitting atop a little velvet throne.

  “What is it, Mommy?” I asked, squinting in the darkness.

  “It’s half of a heart. To a life where we’re never separated.”

  I pulled it out of the box and studied it, rubbing my hands over its delicate outline.

  “Where’s the other half?”

  “Right here,” she said, showing me her bracelet, which was as heavy with charms as our Christmas tree was with ornaments. Then she took my wrist, added the charm and placed my hand on her heart. “And right here. You will always be a part of me.”

  I smiled and leaned into my mom. She was warm, safe, and smelled like a mix of peonies and Coppertone.

  “See, when you put our charms together,” she said, connecting the two halves of our heart, “they read MOM AND DAUGHTER. They complete each other. So no matter what happens from now on, I will always be a part of you, and you will always be a part of me. Will you promise me something, Lolly?”

  “Anything, Mommy.”

  “Promise me you will always tell our story and you will always be you.”

  “I promise, Mommy,” I replied.

  My mom smiled and looked out over the lake as fireworks illuminated the night sky, and put her arm around my shoulder, drawing me even closer.

  “I will always be with you, Lolly. Especially when you wear your bracelet. It will always be filled with memories of our life together. No one can ever take that away.”

  She kissed my cheek as the fireworks exploded overhead.

  “I will always love you, Lolly,” she said.

  “I will always love you, too, Mommy.”

  A breeze rushed across the water and over the lip of the dock to jangle our bracelets.

  “You know, some people say they hear the voices of their family in this lake: In the call of the whippoorwill, the cry of the loon, the moan of the bullfrog,” my mom whispered. “But I hear my family’s voices in the jangling of my charms.”

  The way she said that gave me goose bumps. It was so beautiful, I had to look at my mom. Flashes of light from the fireworks illuminated her curly, blond hair and the freckles on her rosy cheeks. It was as if a million cameras with a million flashbulbs were taking her picture, so I’d never forget how she looked at this moment.

  I looked even closer, and it was then that I noticed tears streaming down her face.

  A year later, my beloved mother would be gone, dead of cancer.

  July 4, 2013

  Fireworks boom overhead, knocking me from this memory.

  I am now seventy. My mother a
nd father are long gone. My husband is dead, my daughter, Arden, grown and on her own in Chicago five hours away, my granddaughter, Lauren, is in college. For too many years now, I have celebrated my birthday alone. And yet when I look into the night sky, I am still mesmerized by the simple beauty of summer fireworks, overwhelmed by memories.

  As my head tilts upward, I can feel tears trail down my face.

  My mother may have taken half of my heart with her, but I got to keep all of her charms, and she was right: The charm bracelet is a constant reminder of her love for me.

  I vowed to myself I would share our family stories with Arden and Lauren because none of us ever really dies as long as our stories are passed along to those we love. I started to tell them about our family when they were both little girls but then they got so busy, and life—as life does—quickly skips away like a flat piece of shale across Lost Land Lake.

  I try to remind them of our history and traditions through the charms I still send, but my daughter has shrugged off our past and me, as if we were a jacket she no longer likes to wear. And her absence stings, like the first frosty day in October.

  So while I pray they will return home, I continue alone: I still read my mother’s poem out loud to the lake on my birthday every Fourth of July as fireworks explode. And, without fail, the wind will rattle my charm bracelet—now even heavier than my mom’s ever was—and I will shut my eyes, and listen to the charms.

  Happy birthday, Lolly, I can hear my mother say.

  part one

  The Hot Air Balloon Charm

  To a Life Filled with Adventure

  One

  May 2014—Arden

  Arden Lindsey realized too late that she was shouting.

  She got up and slammed the door to her office at Paparazzi magazine, fuming over the terribly written article just submitted by her youngest online staff writer.

  Beyoncé rocked her “recently unpregnant stomach” with sushi?!

  Are you kidding me?

  Simóne was always more interested in champagne and backup dancers than writing bubbly headlines and flowing sentences.

  “And how many times can you use some form of the word ‘sing’?” Arden continued to yell. “Sing? Sang? Song? Singer? Songstress?”

  Arden took a deep breath.

  “And could you even attempt to code the article for the website?” she mumbled to herself.

  Arden plopped back into her chair, the momentum causing her black bob to swing in front of her face and her thick, black eyeglass frames to bounce on the bridge of her nose.

  She removed her glasses, closed her eyes, and rubbed her temples. She could already feel the dull thump of a headache approaching even before it arrived, just like the vibrating tracks of the El train that ran outside the hip River North warehouse offices of Paparazzi magazine announced the train’s arrival.

  You can’t stop this train, either, Arden thought, pulling two ibuprofen from her bag as the El suddenly roared by her window.

  Arden popped the pills into her mouth and drained the remnants of her latte. She inhaled deeply, attempting to channel her inner yogi, pushing her glasses high onto her nose and positioning her fingers over her Mac like a trained pianist.

  Behind the Scenes with Beyonc[ACUTE “e”]!

  (Only [ITALIC “Paparazzi”] Was There!)

  By Simóne Jaffe

  [P]

  Are you ready to party, single ladies, because [CELEBRITY_LINK “Beyonc[ACUTE “e”]”] is!

  [P]

  The pop diva, who will perform her [LINK “Mrs. Carter Show”] Friday and Saturday at the [LINK “United Center”], held a private bash at [LINK “Sunda”] to celebrate her arrival in [LINK “Chicago”], where she dined on sushi and saki with [BUSINESS LINKS “hubby”] [CELEBRITY_LINK “Jay-Z”] and celeb BFF’s [CELEBRITY_LINK “Gwyneth Paltrow”] and [CELEBRITY_LINK “Alicia Keys”].

  When Arden Lindsey was in a zone like this, it was as if her soul had suddenly left her body and now hovered over her watching from above with the exposed ductwork and the wood beams of the drafty warehouse ceiling.

  She could see her hands fly across the top row of her keyboard, using keys few ever touched.

  Brackets and parentheses, number signs and ampersands.

  Arden had a job few even realized existed.

  Arden spent her day editing and rewriting, creating search engine optimization, click-throughs, coding, links, all the things that nobody considered when they read the magazine from their laptop, iPad, or cell, but which made advertisers happy and made Paparazzi the most searched celebrity website in the world.

  Arden began to click through the pictures that Paparazzi’s photographer had sent at dawn: Beyoncé hugging Gwyneth. Jay-Z in shades. Impossibly tall Kimora in high heels.

  Of course, Simóne was stunning, too.

  Simóne looked like she belonged in the pages of Paparazzi: Lush, dark hair, pale skin with emerald eyes, exotic yet accessible, a sort of step-Kardashian. In person, Simóne was maybe five feet tall, perhaps a hundred pounds. But in photos, she looked like a star.

  And she acted like one, too. She could chat with celebs in a way that made her seem as if she belonged in their inner circle. She could get them to say things after a few drinks.

  That is, if she remembered to take notes, Arden thought.

  As Arden studied the pictures, she suddenly caught her own image in the reflection of her laptop screen, her pale face and dull dress juxtaposed against the beauty of Alicia Keys and Kelly Rowland.

  She stared more closely at Kelly Rowland’s hair, studying it, wondering if her sleek mane was actually a wig.

  Now, that’s a good wig, Mother, she chuckled, remembering the embarrassing wigs her own mother wore to entertain tourists in her resort hometown.

  [PHOTO CODE: “TZQ189&04L”]

  Arden gave the article one final review, then uploaded it to Paparazzi.com, a stunning photo of Beyoncé and Gwyneth hugging the top of the page under a red banner that danced and screamed, “BREAKING NEWS!”

  Arden picked up her coffee cup and arced it into her trash can. She stood and walked over to her eighth-floor window, which offered a peek—between the elevated tracks of the train and the high-rises around her—of Lake Michigan.

  It was a beautiful, mid-May day, and the sunlight turned the surface of the water into a kaleidoscope.

  Arden watched the deep green waves rock the boats dotting the lakeshore.

  She had grown up on Lake Michigan, seemingly a million miles away—“on the other side,” as Chicagoans sometimes referred to their Michigan counterparts.

  It was only one lake, but it was, truly, a “great” lake to Arden, and it had seemed to separate her from the rest of the world when she was a kid.

  “I can’t smell salt,” LA and New York celebrities would always say when they visited Chicago. Or, “You mean you can’t see the other side?”—unable to comprehend the vastness and freshness of Lake Michigan.

  “Nice job on the Beyoncé story.”

  Arden turned at the sound of her boss’s voice.

  “Thanks,” she said to Van, noting his Zac Efron hair and bow tie.

  “Online a couple of minutes, and it’s already gotten a few thousand views,” he said. “Jay-Z already texted me to thank us for adding all the links to his corporate ventures. We do a great job, don’t we?”

  We? You may be the editor of Paparazzi.com, and we may cover the royals every single day, but that still doesn’t give you the right to use the “royal we” in regard to my work, Arden thought.

  “Yes,” Arden said, instead. It was all she could do to keep from rolling her eyes.

  She hesitated.

  “Is there a chance you’d let me cover her after-party tomorrow night?”

  “Sounds like a great idea, but we need you here,” Van said, smiling, in the same sweetly condescending way her ex-husband used to speak to her when she talked about writing her novel.

  Even a decade later, Arden still cou
ldn’t believe that her ex fought with her about everything—writing, money, the news—everything except for his own daughter. In the end, he didn’t even fight for custody. He didn’t want Arden. He didn’t want Lauren. His iciness had frozen Arden, paralyzed her ability to stand up to him and, as a result, she walked away with little financial support. Now, her ex had a new family, a new wife and a new life without them.

  “How would we survive without you?” Van asked.

  Arden smiled at the irony of his question, before turning to look out the window in an attempt to hide her disappointment and frustration.

  “Let Simóne do that,” he continued. “She lives for that sort of stuff. She’s going to be our next feature writer anyway.”

  Arden winced, as if her boss had suddenly walked over and slapped her. Out of habit, she tugged at her earlobe, a quirk that had started years ago watching The Carol Burnett Show with her mom. It had morphed into a nervous habit when she first went to kindergarten and was too scared to leave her mom.

  “Just tug your earlobe like Carol,” Lolly had told her outside the classroom door. “It’s your silent way to tell me—and yourself—that everything is going to be all right.”

  Arden kept her back to Van until she could hear him walk away. Van was—what?—a decade her junior and her seventh boss in the last decade? They all came and went, like pretty toy soldiers, putting in their time until the New York office called them up, or they landed at People, EW, or Entertainment Tonight.

  No one wants to be a writer anymore, they want to be a celebrity, just like the ones they cover, Arden sighed.

  “Mail!”

  Arden heard a loud plop, and turned to find a mountain of mail already sliding across her desk. She walked over and began to rifle through it.

  “Same ol’, same ol’,” she said, shuffling through press releases and early samples of celeb perfumes. A return address on a padded envelope caught Arden’s eye, and her pulse quickened. Arden’s desk began to rumble, and as she looked out her window to see the El screech by again, its tracks shaking violently, she could feel her headache begin anew.