Sanibel Scribbles Read Online Free PDF Page B

then ordered in the tone of voice reserved for someone requesting a tissue to dry her eyes.
    “I’ll have a double dip sugar cone with Chocolate Rocky Road on the bottom and Chocolate Turtles on top, please.”
    She chose these two flavors because Grandma had loved the first one, and her mother loved the second, and she missed both right now. Since her family had sold the business, she knew that, for the rest of her life, licking ice cream could never simply be an innocent, mindless act. Each flavor generated a memory.
    The teenage boy holding the scoop did not smile. He did not say a thing.
    “Give me that scoop, please. I’ll do it myself,” insisted Vicki. “My parents used to own this place. We sold it a couple of months ago. You’ve got to let me dip my last cone.”
    “Sure. Whatever. I need a break anyway.” He dunked the silver scoop in the water well, shook it off and handed it to her.
    She ran around to the other side of the counter. “Thank you.”
    She dug hard and deep inside the box, making sure to rub her arm against the side. She had to get coated with ice cream one more time. Closing her eyes, she smelled the freezer, the ice. That ice she had scraped down once a week every summer for years. At the short age of nine she could barely reach inside, so her mother had her stand on a bucket. Now she recognized the work that had to be done: the box needed scraping and that boy shouldn’t have been taking a break. She wanted the job. She longed to scrape with such intensity and passion that her father would reap more profits because she could gather more ice cream off the cardboard. Instead, she had a bus to catch. No, more than that, her family no longer owned the shop, the bed-and-breakfast upstairs, or the luncheon parlor next door. Someone else now wore the apron for the job she once had and loved.
    She scooped the bottom dip bigger than the top so it wouldn’t be top-heavy. Her dips never fell off. She knew how to dip ice cream the right way. She glanced at the old-fashioned pink radiator set against the window, and, for a moment, she could see her grandmother’s frail little body dressed in purple, sitting there as she always did. Osteoporosis hadn’t allowed Grandma to dip, but she always stuck around the family as they worked the business together.
    Vicki shut the freezer lid and plunged the silver scoop into the well, splashing herself. She laughed, then nearly cried thinking of all the times her father used to shake water at her as they worked side by side. She looked around. No one was watching. She pulled two thumbtacks off the board behind her and stuffed the label that read “peppermint” under her shirt. Her mother had once painted each of the flavor labels by hand. She peeked under the wooden counter holding the cash register. Good, her family’s scribbles still marked the wood. One night they had written silly little notes on the counter, as if marking their territory. Scribbling down dreams was a family tradition. The scrawl in blue magic marker she immediately recognized was her own ten-year-old handwriting: Scoop Ice Cream Forever! She shook her head, realizing how much her goals at ten had changed to become her current goals. She couldn’t dip anymore. Her life there was no more.
    Pulling napkins out of the silver holder, she felt sticky fingerprints all over it. Vicki had never let that thing get dirty. No, the napkin holders in her parent’s shop never stayed sticky for long, not when she worked there. Just then, she glanced out the window and spotted a shapely pair of female mannequin legs hanging from a second-story window of the boutique across the street, and she laughed at the ploy to lure shoppers. Only in Saugatuck!
    Then the bus slowly turning the corner caught her eye. It couldn’t go without her. In a panic, she darted out the door, never leaving a dime behind for her cone and ran toward the bus, screaming, “Wait for me!”
    The bus stopped, and when she caught