The One Who Got Away:
A Novel
By Bethany Bloom
Text Copyright © 2013 Bethany Bloom
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All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents, places, and events portrayed are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or localities is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
Who was it who said that no matter how great a life you have lived, and no matter how delayed or premature your death, there will be macaroni salad, heavy on the mayonnaise, at your funeral, and someone will talk about football.
Someone will laugh and forget she is not at a cocktail party. Mothers will try to keep their kids from knocking over the punch or spilling Grandpa's coffee. No one will quite know what to say.
The church’s altar guild, made up of men and women whom you didn’t know, will turn their long, etched faces to the sink to prepare coffee in twenty-four-cup urns where it will burn and smell just like the funeral you went to as a child. Women with support hose and polyester skirts with elastic waistbands and SAS shoes will cut fruit near the sink. They will remove the plastic lids from the tubs of macaroni salad and scoop it into serving dishes. They will mix Hi-C drink powder into plexiglass pitchers and place them on yellow plastic tablecloths.
And the guests, like Olivine herself, will notice that things don’t change. That people pass through the world like waves on the shore, lapping at the sand one moment, a memory the next. That nothing is nearly as fantastic or as rich or as significant as they want it to be. That people are born and that people die and, meanwhile, they do what they do. They get food on the table, and they clean it up again. They tend to the children. They carry on.
These thoughts were making Olivine lightheaded and somewhat thirsty. She could feel Paul’s hand, faint and gently guiding, on the small of her back, and she would have turned and shared these thoughts with him, but he would have asked, again, without changing the expression on his face, if she would like him to prescribe some medication. “Really, Olivine,” he would say, “Everyone is taking some kind of something. There's no shame in it.”
What kind of a life would you have to lead, Olivine wondered, to have a passing that was somehow different from this one?
This was her grandmother’s memorial. The celebration of life for a woman as kind, as sweet, as true as any woman she had ever known. And this was how she ended. A roomful of people, each of whom looked itchy. And, in the corner, Grandpa. A veteran; a true hero of his time. Now, surrounded yet alone, staring blankly into a Styrofoam cup of coffee that someone had set before him.
Olivine knew, of course, that her grandmother’s real legacy survived in these children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, several of whom were, just then, huddled together on the piano bench, trying to knock their two smaller cousins off the ends.
There were other guests besides the generations of family. A whole series of grey-skinned, tiny people, ordinarily shuttered out of sight; today shuffling about the lemon yellow room in polyester pant suits.
Just then, something made Olivine’s head spin. A single turn and then the room felt right again. What caused it? A scent? She wasn’t sure. This happened to her in churches. She got lightheaded and woozy, but only sometimes.
It always made her think of Henry Cooper. A man she hadn’t seen in ten years. Ten years since she had last touched him, placed her head on his belly while he lay on the grass, looked into his eyes clear through to that soft center that only she had access to. Ten years and yet, still, every day, her thoughts would turn to him, his rolling laughter, the luster in his eyes when he looked at her, listened to her, watched her speak.
And as Olivine stood at the back of the church narthex, she thought of the time that she and Henry had walked the streets of an unknown mountain town, one they had chosen by flinging a dart at the Colorado state map. And as they walked that unfamiliar sidewalk, tripping and giggling and bowing their heads together, Henry had clutched her by the waist and yanked her inside a dainty white church, set like a gingerbread house right off the sidewalk.
It had been so dark inside that it took a moment for her eyes to adjust and she felt suddenly lightheaded. And Henry swung one arm around her shoulder and squeezed her in close, and she could feel his bicep against the back of her neck and she peered up at him, laughing, feeling safe and yet free, and he whispered right into her face, “Someday in a place just like this, you are going to make me the happiest man in the world.” And then he yanked her out of the church again, his arm around her waist, and they were snapped back out into the bright sunshine, and she had to focus on a crack in the sidewalk to fend off her dizziness. Henry had been like that. Surprising bursts of affection that made her breath catch, even in memory.
That was just before Henry had vanished. And now this other man standing before her. Paul. Staid and respectable. Tall and broad-shouldered. Those smooth, freckled surgeon hands. Hands that never shook or wavered and a voice he never raised. Paul was looking at her just now; studying her in that expressionless way of his.
Paul had been called in to surgery at two o’clock that morning. “A crash on the interstate” was all she heard as he shuffled out of the bedroom. But he had made it back in time to pick her up for her grandmother’s service, just as he said he would. He had come to their front door and handed her a tall paper cup of French Roast, made just the way she liked it. No cream, one packet of sugar. And then he took her other hand, and he led her to the car, and he opened her door and she slid onto the leather passenger seat, cold against the back of her legs. Smooth jazz played on the stereo, the volume turned low enough to be an undercurrent: a soft beat, the soundtrack of their life together. He smelled of cologne, which he wore only when he hadn’t yet slept. When he had come straight from the hospital.
And now, in the reception hall, after the service, Paul had moved to stand just behind her. His was a quiet strength and she leaned into him as she looked over to where her sister was standing, near the piano. Yarrow held the baby on her hip, her other three children within arm’s reach. They fanned out around her like a skirt. The toddler reached up, arms outstretched, to grab for her hand. The twins sprawled frog-legged on the floor, poking with their fingernails at something in the carpet and giggling.
Just then, Yarrow turned and nuzzled her head into the neck of her husband. It was a gesture so intimate and so warm that Olivine could nearly feel the sensation herself, from across the room. She could nearly smell Jon’s soap. Could nearly feel his whiskers, his warmth. Her chest swelled as she watched Yarrow lean into him, this man who had been with Yarrow for more than a third of her life now. Yarrow was and always would be surrounded, encircled, cradled from head to toe with warmth and closeness amid days that, Olivine suspected, were filled entirely with sweet things like story times, pajamas, and sticky juice.
And Olivine remembered how she had once told Yarrow that, even if she were to never have kids of her own, she would be the very best Auntie, with trinkets and treasures and time to listen to Yarrow’s children. Each time Olivine recalled this promise—this “Auntie”—she had an image of herself gathering a long, soft skirt in her hand and kneeling down on the floor to tell a story. This despite the fact that she hadn’t worn a long, soft skirt in decades and was never any good at telling children stories. Plus she didn’t have a whole lot of time for these nieces and nephews just at the moment. But someday.
Olivine’s throat tightened as she looked around her. The kids, the laughter. Grandpa still in the corner, staring into an inky black cup of coffee.
Just then, a child she didn’t recognize appeared from the glass side door, which led to the play area outside. The little girl bounced on her toes as she walked across the room, scanning the crowd. She was four, maybe five, with loose blonde curls that bobbed around her face, which was smeared faintly with dirt. Her white eyelet dress was clean but for a series of handprints down the front, like she’d used it for a napkin, and she wore a pair of tiny Timberland boots, pale yellow and filthy, with heavy waffle tread. Her eyes were big as quarters and brown and when they met Olivine’s, she stuck a finger in her mouth, twirled one of her curls and started walking faster, looking straight ahead, suddenly shy. Olivine felt the child’s emotions herself, even as she stood against the wall with Paul.
All at once, Olivine felt a sense of fullness, and with it, a certainty. For the first time in her thirty-two years, Olivine knew that she would have a child. Of her own. A child with messy blonde curls and a dirty face and enormous brown eyes.
What would it be like, she wondered, to look at another human and to witness, glimpse, stare, into eyes that you recognize as your own? What would it be like to experience the world from a perspective that wasn’t yours directly, but that you could help to mold? To be charged with helping another human understand and experience the depth of emotion and beauty in the world?
She turned to catch Paul’s eye. She long suspected that he could sleep both standing up and with his eyes open. He blinked twice and gave her a consoling smile and, with it, communicated the words he would have whispered in her ear if he were the type of man who whispered in ears. His smile said he was ready to leave whenever she was but never in a million years would he rush her.
Paul was the perfect man. And he was right there, standing behind her. She respected him. He appreciated and valued her. Paul made sense in just the way that she liked for things to make sense. He was just the type of man she had always planned to find. He had plans for her and for their life together. Big, important plans. And more than anything, she wanted to live a big, important life. What was she waiting for?
Was it her memories of Henry? Memories that grew less distinct with each passing year to the point where Olivine wondered if he had been a fantasy. If he had been some distant dream conjured by a younger, less responsible Olivine.
No. These memories of Henry, whatever they were, had stopped her life for long enough. It was time to grow up—because she could already feel herself growing old.
Olivine flushed hot as a sense of panic rose in her chest. Would there be enough time? Could she change the trajectory—the very meaning—of her life so suddenly, so instantly? Would Paul even want a child?
She scanned the room for her sister once more. Yarrow had moved to the buffet table, but still her babies fanned around her. She laughed: a musical sound, high-pitched and darting, and she moved like a bird, her movements swift and nimble, but graceful, too. Pecking at veggies to place on her child’s plate.
Yarrow’s newest baby, balanced high on her mother’s hip, opened her mouth wide and released a string of saliva straight onto the blond head of her brother, standing below. Yarrow chuckled, switched the plastic plate to her other hand and rubbed her son’s head, then moved her hand down to his neck and then his shoulder, squeezing gently with her fingertips. He looked up at her and grinned.
It reminded Olivine of something she had read not long ago: That the way you imagine the face of God had a lot to do with your childhood view of your mother and father. Were they mean and vengeful and scary? Or were they kind and forgiving and wanting, always, what was best for you? Olivine was sure that she saw her sister, just then, the way her children did: strong, vigilant, loving, kind, always ready to laugh.
What responsibility. What importance. What a way to make a difference in the world. This was the way to make her world sharper, brighter, more significant. This was the way to create a legacy. Like Grandma’s.
And she remembered what Grandma had told her, not long ago: “All anyone needs in this world is a simple witness. One person whom you trust to give you a soft place to curl up and cry or laugh or talk. Just one. One person sitting across from you at the breakfast table who knew you yesterday and who would grow to know you even better today. That’s all you need in this life, Olivine,” she had said, staring into Olivine’s eyes and squeezing at Grandpa’s knobby hand.
Paul was perfect. And he was right here. Right now. The talk regarding children could come later, but now was the time. She had waited long enough.
Olivine placed a hand on the root of her stomach and reassured herself that Grandma would have liked this. On this day, when they were celebrating the love and the joy and the laughter that her grandmother had made possible in the world, Olivine would start a family of her own. Her own legacy of love. Just like this one.
Knowing Paul, she was going to have to get it started. Today. Before she lost her nerve.
Chapter Two
Paul’s car was chilly with its tinted windows and the cool air blasting from the vent. It blew Olivine’s loose blonde curls against the side of her face and perfumed the air like lemons.
The rhythm of the windshield wipers—ka skwunk, ka skwunk—reminded her of the silent game she played as a child. She would choose one of the raindrops, a ripe one on the periphery and she would track it as it inched its way across the windshield to join other raindrops; or else it went splashing off to the side as the car turned a corner. She liked keeping her eye on a single drop just to see what would happen to it. What its fate would be. How long could it last before it went flying off into the world or became absorbed into another group of drops? How long before it lost its own edges?
When Paul made a sharp turn to get on the interstate, west toward home, the water on the windshield sloshed to the side, and the drop she was watching melded with the others.
“It will be snowing at home,” Paul said.
Olivine nodded. It would be snowing in their mountain town, an hour’s drive west. It would be snowing, in fact, on and off through the end of May, to the delight of the skiers who made their town come alive and whose wrist, knee and ankle injuries made Paul’s orthopedics practice thrive.
Paul’s Audi hugged the curves as they raced up the interstate. Even as a little girl, driving up from the city with her parents, Olivine knew she was nearly home when the hills turned from rolling to sheer. And whenever they came into view—the series of four craggy peaks, jutting straight upward, scratching the sky—she would take a sharp breath and say thank you for this place she loved.
She loved the freshly laundered scent of the air as it blew through the aspens and the pines. She loved the brilliant blue of the sky. Most of all, she loved how everything about the landscape was extreme. Nothing was mediocre, or wishy-washy or just sort of, kind of, prosaically beautiful. The peaks were jagged, the ridges razor sharp and etched into the cerulean sky behind.
She looked over at Paul as he sat with his back perfectly straight and his face blank. He was gripping the steering wheel at ten and two, and his hands and his forearms were broad and strong. His shirtsleeves were rolled up in two precise turns. She felt, suddenly, as though she were looming somewhere above, looking down at the two of them. A man and a woman, like any man or woman sharing a car. Driving along on the inte
rstate.
Olivine grounded herself by fixing her eyes straight ahead, on a raindrop upon the windshield, struggling to find its way. Then she inhaled sharply, and on the exhale, she said it: “Maybe we should get married.”
Her words hung there like a fruit, ripe to bursting, on a tree. She swallowed and continued staring out the windshield, but she could feel him looking at her, and so she turned to face him. His eyes were dull and green and rimmed with red. His face blank. Unreadable. He said not a word, but he flicked on his blinker and pulled the Audi smoothly out of traffic. He parked on the shoulder, reached over to pop open the glove box and to remove something with his palm, his motions precise and smooth. He clicked the glove box shut, then opened his door and slid out. His door closed with a tight snap behind him. Was he leaving? Was he leaving her right there on the interstate?
But then she saw a streak of his blue shirt at her door, which he opened, and then he took her hand, and he guided her gently from her seat, and as she stood on the side of the road, she bobbed her head in an attempt to catch his eye because this was often the only way she could see his intention. The only way she could see what might happen next. But Paul was looking at the ground and then up toward her hips, and then he moved his hands, broad and strong, onto her waist and, in one sweeping movement, he lifted her onto the front of his car.
The cold metal of the hood bit into the back of her thighs, and she suppressed the urge to wriggle away from him; to wriggle back down to the ground. The rain was coming down now in plump drops, nearly frozen. Some of the drops were hard and white, the size of ball bearings, and they pinged off the car and off her scalp. And Paul met her eyes just then and he cradled the back of her neck with his hand, and his light touch prickled her skin, and he kissed her, not with the ferocity she was half-expecting, given the uncharacteristic romance of the moment, but in his familiar way: gentle, smooth and moist.
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