The One Who Got Away: A Novel

by Bethany Bloom

  Paul’s eyes shifted again, to the ground, to the mud and the pebbles and the patches of dirt-encrusted snow on the side of the road, and he took a tiny blue velvet box from the pocket of his khakis, and he sank down on one knee, where he teetered for a moment, eyes still cast downward. When he looked up at her once again, he blinked hard, and with one motion, he opened the tiny box to reveal a diamond solitaire. The stone glinted, even in the rain and in the hail, and Olivine felt everything take on a grainy quality, as though she were viewing a scene that had been filmed in hard light. Finally, Paul said, “Olivine Karen Eriksson, Would you do me the honor of being my wife?”

  She inhaled, exhaled, swallowed, then whispered, “I will.” And he stood, one knee of his khakis dingy with roadside muck, and she waited for him to kiss her once again and to take her hand and help her slide off the car. She felt a release, but also a new sensation: a pressure in the pit of her stomach that rolled, first this way and then that.

  He opened the car door for her and she slid in, squeaking against the leather, and she felt unexpectedly small and self-conscious, as though she were a child playing house and not a woman in her thirties.

  Her proposal to Paul just made sense, and she had done it. Or, rather, he had done it. He turned to her and smiled, his lips pulled tight and flat, and memories poured into her mind of all the ways she had imagined, as a young girl, this scene playing out. Would her future husband propose in a ballpark, with loopy skywriting behind him, declaring his devotion? In a restaurant, where she would sit in a high-backed velvet booth and sip champagne and then nonchalantly glance over to where her dashing boyfriend was on one knee, staring longingly into her eyes?

  Well, no. But it was what it was, and she wouldn’t need to do it again. She was engaged. That was that. Moving on.

  “I’ve had it there waiting for you.” Paul said, once he started the car. “The ring.”

  She reached over and snapped off the air vent so she could hear him more clearly.

  “Oh,” she said. She fell silent for a few moments, hoping he would say something more. She wanted to ask how long the ring had been there, sitting in the glove box. She wanted to ask him what had stopped him from asking her before. She wanted him to say something—anything—but mostly she wanted him to tell her that he couldn’t live without her and that she cracked his world open to make it more colorful and meaningful and bright. But he was looking straight ahead, pulling back into traffic, turning on the windshield wipers with calm, measured motions.

  She knew him well enough to know that there weren’t going to be any more words. Not on his own accord, at least. She laughed a little, but it came out sounding hollow and forced, and so she quickly followed it up with, “Why didn’t you do something with it? The ring?”

  He remained silent for a moment, and then he said, “I don’t know. I guess you seemed…” He paused. “You seemed equivocal on the subject.”

  She wanted just then to tell him about the child with the Timberland boots and the eyes like puddles of chocolate syrup and about the panic rising in her chest, but she didn’t.

  A moment passed, and then another, and then he said: “I’ve been wanting to ask you for awhile. I’ve just been waiting for the right time.”

  A surge of affection, soft and true, swooped through her. And she remembered lying beside him in bed, her head cradled in his armpit, after they had made love the first time. She had let her eyes go in and out of focus as she stared at the red hairs on his forearms. His broad forearms. Strong, resolute, masculine. She looked at his hands, one cradling her arm, the other resting on his knee, which he had drawn up out of the sheets.

  She had imagined, just then, what those hands did all day. Cutting people open, fiddling around inside, doing something mysterious and careful and kind. Fixing them. He was so stoic and this…this detachment was what made him a good surgeon. And every now and then, it was what made the people in his life feel such reward for sitting and sharing his silence. He wasn’t a rose or a peony, whose beauty was available to just anyone. He was an orchid, growing on the side of some distant mountain. You had to care for it, and you had to wait, but if were patient, and you were kind, you were treated with a most wonderful gift. At least this had been what she told herself for the three or so years they had been together.

  And lying there in bed that morning, as she lay contemplating his hands, he had said, “You are just the right kind of woman for me.”

  “I am?” She repositioned herself so she could look into his eyes, because this was so early in their relationship that she hadn’t known better. He pulled his arm out from under her and crossed it over his face, burying his eyes inside the crease of his elbow.

  “Yes,” he replied. And just as Olivine was about to laugh and prompt him for elaboration, he said, “You don’t have expectations. You just are. And you let me be. You don’t talk too much, and you don’t... You don’t…Oh, I don’t know, you are just the right kind of woman for me.”

  Olivine had heard this before. Men would often tell her that she was somehow different. She suspected this was mostly because she made things easy on them. Not only did she not expect a nightly phone call, she could seldom be bothered to return them. She didn’t like to talk on the phone. She didn’t expect a man to be any different than who he was. If he didn’t feel like talking, well, that was fine with her. She had her own internal dialogue anyway.

  And now in the car, following the moment of their engagement, Olivine reminded herself that Paul’s detachment was one of the most attractive things about him. It made him one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the state, and it allowed him to see things with precision: His future. His ambitions. His ambitions for her.

  Plus, his long hours at work made it possible for her to do her own thing. She was taking a few classes during the day so she could join him in the operating room someday. The rest of the time, she was free to ski or hike or bike or run. Or tie up the loose ends on the ghostwriting business she was phasing out.

  And if he got to have his secrets—if he got to keep a certain part of himself private—it meant that she could keep certain parts of herself private, too. Paul would never look at her and ask, “What are you thinking about?” This was what their relationship had come to be about, over the years. He had his inner monologue and she had hers, and they didn’t always need to share them.

  And she remembered one night, when they had first moved in together, when Paul had come home from the hospital so late that birds were chirping and the sun was cresting on the horizon, and he was quiet and looked tortured and locked up inside himself, and, so when he had come to bed, Olivine tossed one long, bare leg over his and asked him, in the softest way she could, what his night had been like.

  She imagined, by the pulse of his jaw on the pillow beside hers, that something had happened. Something terrible. Had someone died while his hands were still inside them? And after she asked him, for the first time, to tell her how he was feeling, he had said, “Just because I have an emotion doesn’t mean I need to express it. Or share it.” And she had understood it to be, not only an explanation for his detachedness in the moment, but an instruction for future conversations.

  Not long after that, Olivine arrived home from a tense meeting with a ghostwriting client. She told Paul she had a rotten day, and he had said, “Did anyone die?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then it wasn’t that bad,” he had replied.

  Silence had followed that conversation, and she pushed her feelings back inside, which she did to this day. Occasionally, she trotted them out for her sister and her mother, who would commiserate and sympathize in all the right places. She didn’t need Paul for that.

  But now the silence in the car pressed in on her. She straightened the fingers on her left hand, watched the diamond catch the light and said, a little too loudly, “So should we call someone and tell them?”

  “Probably,” Paul said, “But I bet most of them know it was bound to happen
.”

  Bound to happen. Yes. That’s what it was. It was bound to happen.

  Chapter Three

  Yarrow’s kitchen was bright and white with high ceilings and stainless steel appliances, pocked with tiny fingerprints. Popsicle-stick figurines and vibrant finger paintings clung to the refrigerator, some tacked up by a single magnet, others with Scotch tape.

  Olivine was waiting for the twins to leave for Kindergarten so she could sit down with Yarrow and share a cup of coffee. Yarrow had called the night before and pleaded with her to come first thing in the morning. There was something she needed to talk to her about.

  It had been two days since Paul had proposed and they hadn’t shared the news yet. With anyone. No announcements, no giggly phone calls to friends and relatives. The more time passed, the more Olivine felt strange finally saying it aloud. She was certain that Yarrow didn’t know anything about it…unless Paul had told her, but he had been working late each night since the memorial.

  Olivine watched as Yarrow padded around the kitchen in a pair of knee-high orange slipper boots, which she had knitted herself. She wore a white cardigan over a flouncy frock, also handmade, with a band of yellow tulle on the bottom. She stood at the counter to stuff a series of zippered plastic baggies and two silvery juice boxes into matching lunchboxes while she gave a rundown of the twin’s after school activities. Marcus spit toothpaste into the kitchen sink, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and Clark batted at his bed-tousled hair with a damp palm. Baby Claire watched it all from her highchair pulled near the table. Every so often, she gave her tray a swift kick to see her Cheerios bounce.

  While Olivine waited, she rinsed cereal bits from a stack of bowls in the sink and loaded them into the dishwasher. Meanwhile, Yarrow bundled the twins into tiny down jackets, handed them their backpacks and kissed them on the top of the head.

  She held the back door open with her hip as she wiped a milk moustache from Clark’s face. Then she knelt down, held his face and looked him straight in the eye. “Ride the bus home today,” she said. “Don’t forget. I won’t be there to pick you up today, so don’t forget to ride the bus home.” Clark nodded, his eyes watery.

  She paused a moment, then turned to Marcus. “Quick quiz: How are you boys getting home today?”

  “The bus!” Marcus cried.

  “Very good. Help each other remember. I’ll see you as soon as you come in the door this afternoon.”

  She turned to look out the window just as the school bus came into view.

  “Okay, it’s here. Scoot along.” As soon as they were out the door, the boys turned in unison and Yarrow blew each boy three kisses and waggled her fingers as she said, “I’ll miss you both mucho, and my heart will be with you all the day through.” She clutched both palms to her chest, and then the boys turned and toddled to the bus.

  Yarrow stepped back in, still watching, allowing the storm door to slap back into its frame.

  She held her hand over her heart as she turned to Olivine and said, “Ach. Watching them go off like that every day. It’s like watching your heart totter off down the street.”

  Olivine laughed. “I wonder if you’ll still feel that way once they are older. Once they are Kindergarten graduates.” The May ceremony was coming up in two weeks, and Yarrow had volunteered to sew forty two crimson caps and gowns.

  “Oh, I will. No doubt about it.”

  Olivine offered to make two cups of espresso if Yarrow wanted to check on three-year-old Dixie, who was in the next room, lying upside down on the couch, slapping her feet together and singing along with the Little Mermaid and Life under the Sea. When Yarrow returned, she shuffled to the cupboard over the range and stood on tiptoes to fish out a dark amber bottle. She twisted the cap and poured enough Frangelico in each espresso cup to double its volume.

  “Yum,” Olivine said. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Oh, you just wait.”

  They sat at the kitchen table. Yarrow gathered a mound of breakfast crumbs with her palm, and Olivine stared into the blackness in her cup. Such dark, biting richness. Such bitterness. Espresso was one of the few things in life that was as robust as she wanted it to be, and the liqueur lent its own sweet, velvety warmth.

  Olivine wondered, once again, why on earth she wasn’t feeling something different than she was. Was elation just part of that “thing” you imagined you would experience, when, as a child, you visualized your fiancé’s proposal? Was it because she had waited so long to get engaged and was so accustomed to her own ways of living and moving in the world that she was grieving a loss before she could celebrate a gain?

  “Okay.” Yarrow clapped her hands, and Olivine startled, sending the blackness in the cup splashing up the sides. “I know a little something,” Yarrow said.

  “Well, all right,” Olivine said, wondering how she could possibly have known about the engagement. Had Paul talked to Jon? She shook her head and continued, “But let me tell you about it instead of you somehow telling me about it. Pretend you didn’t know, and I’m coming here, as your sister, to tell you. The way I should have in the first place.”

  “Oh. So you know?” Yarrow asked.

  “Of course. Wait…what?”

  “Never mind, never mind.” Yarrow waved her fingers over her head. “Okay, tell me what you know and then I’ll tell you what I know. Go, go!”

  Olivine was quiet. Why wasn’t she this excited?

  “Jeez, Olivine, talk. Hurry up or I’m going to tell you first.”

  “Okay. I just. I’m not sure I know how to say it.” And for the briefest of moments she wanted to cry. Before she could stop them, tears had surfaced. She pulled her sleeves long over her hands, so they covered even the tips of her fingers, and she began dabbing at her eyes.

  “Oh.” Yarrow leaned in close and grabbed for Olivine’s hands, still encased in her pink Lycra sleeves. “What on earth? What’s wrong, honey? What’s wrong?”

  Olivine closed her eyes and felt the warmth of Yarrow’s hands on hers, in this warm kitchen, with baby Claire still banging on her high chair and grinning. She told herself, again, that Paul was perfect. That this…arrangement made perfect sense and that this was the way it was supposed to be. He had set her on the car in the rain. So romantic, like a movie, except in Olivine’s mind, as she recalled it, it wasn’t Paul at all. It was someone else. She couldn’t see his face, but she could smell him. Freshly sawn cedar and fabric softener.

  Yarrow bent her head to meet Olivine’s eyes. “I’m sorry, honey. I thought you would be happy.”

  “It’s fine. I’m fine. It IS good news. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m emotional, I guess.”

  “Olivine, are you pregnant? Is this what you came to tell me?”

  “No!” she laughed.

  “Well, what then? What is going on?”

  And then the conversation took on a trajectory Olivine hadn’t planned. Instead of telling the news of her engagement, as she intended, words began rushing out: “Yarrow, do you ever feel like nothing is as sharp or as…I don’t know…as fantastic, or as amazing as it is supposed to be?” She inhaled sharply and shook her head, “I mean, life is this amazing gift, right? Beauty everywhere. Opportunities. Things to do. Places to go. And yet daily life is just such a day-to-day…‘scritchiness.’ It’s just sort of… hollow. And the more you want to get excited about something, the more you are left disappointed when it comes along. Everything is just…kind of a letdown.”

  “Wow, Olivine,” Yarrow said, her voice soft. “This doesn’t sound like you. At all. What is going on?”

  “Sorry. These things have just been on my mind lately. I didn’t even mean to say all that just now.” She exhaled in a rush and continued, her voice softer, lower. “I’m losing my mind a little, I think. I just…as I get older, it seems everything just sort of stretches from one scratchy day to the next.”

  “I think I know what you mean, actually. I think I’ve felt that. Once or twice,” Yarrow said.


  “But not anymore? Not today?” Olivine asked.

  “I guess I don’t really have time to think like that,” Yarrow replied. “Maybe I’ll start to get existential or something and then, bam, diapers need changing or someone falls off the swing set.” She covered Olivine’s hands with her own once again and lowered her head to meet Olivine’s eyes. “Could you be depressed? Like, do you need to talk to someone?”

  “I am talking to someone.”

  “No, I mean, do you need to talk to someone who has some answers?”

  “I think you have more answers than you realize.”

  “Well, have you talked to Paul about this, at least?”

  “Once or twice. He offered to prescribe medication.”

  “Well?”

  Olivine stared at the blackness in her coffee cup. “I am not depressed. I just don’t feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “Oh Ollie,” Yarrow said. “We all feel like that sometimes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.”

  “Are you happy?”

  Yarrow paused. She looked up at baby Claire who beamed back at her, a string of drool extending from her open mouth to the highchair’s tray table. “Yes. I believe I am. I mean, I have my moments where I feel scooped out and sort of, I don’t know, worthless. Scritchy? Is that what you said?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Is that a word?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Well, maybe that’s a good word for it. Scritchy. So, tell me, what is the opposite of scritchy? What would be the opposite feeling?

  “I don’t know,” Olivine replied, “Sharp, I think. Precise and sharp.”

  “Okay.” Yarrow nodded, and took a sip of her espresso. “When I feel scritchy, it’s usually when I don’t feel that what I’m doing has any real purpose. When I’ve been meandering or moodling around for too long.”

  “Is moodling a word?”

  “Probably not.” Yarrow smiled. “Tell me, Olivine, what were the moments in your life when you felt sharp and precise, as opposed to scritchy? What were the moments that you felt something deeply satisfying? What were the moments that didn’t disappoint but that were far better than you had imagined?”