Olivine watched the soap suds rise for a moment and then she slid a stack of dinner plates, one by one, into the bubbles, watching as each vanished under the white foam.
“How are your classes going, Ollie?” Christine asked.
Olivine watched the bubbles and formulated her response. She opened her mouth. Shut it again.
“Is there something you want to talk about?” Christine asked.
“No,” Olivine said, without turning around. “Why?”
“Because you seem a million miles away.”
“Oh.”
“Really, Olivine. Are you sure there isn’t something?” Christine came to stand next to her at the sink “You wash. I’ll dry,” she said.
Olivine nodded without looking up.
“Is it Grandma?” Christine asked. “Are you missing her?”
“No. I mean, yes. Of course, I’m thinking about her. And missing her. How is Grandpa?”
“He’s okay. I’ll go back down to the retirement home tomorrow. I’ve called him each day. It’s too bad he’s not well enough to live here with us, but the doctor says the elevation is just too high. He’d need to be on oxygen all the time, and even then...” She held the plate she was drying up to the light. “ It just wouldn’t be good for him. And I understand that. I do. I just don’t like him down there in that…that facility. Without her.”
“He likes it there, Mom. You know he does. He’s got all kinds of friends, and he does way more than he could living here with us.”
“I know. You’re right. His buddies are taking him to a model train show this weekend.”
“Nice.”
“And I’ll spend the day with him Thursday. The whole day.” She turned a dish over in her hand, ran her fingers along the ridge on its back. “Imagine, Olivine, being married to someone for sixty-five years and then, one days, she’s gone. Eating toast or eggs with that person for sixty-five years of breakfasts. Turning off the light next to her for sixty-five years of bedtimes.”
“I know. It’s hard to imagine.” Olivine shook her head. “Impossible, actually.”
“No one expects him to live long, you know.”
“He’s in great shape, Mom.”
“I know, but this is what happens with a relationship like that one. They were one and the same. He’ll let go. He’ll let go of this life. Soon. Watch and see.”
Silent moments followed. They scrubbed, cleaned, stood side by side, swaying with the rhythm of the water and their own thoughts.
“Isn’t there something we can do?” Olivine asked, finally.
“No, I don’t really think so, dear. We just have to let him know he is loved, and we have to let him know that we understand what she was to him.”
Olivine nodded and dunked another dish into the bubbles.
“Mom?” she said, her voice small and low.
“Yes, love?” Christine looked up from the dishwater and met Olivine’s eyes.
“I got engaged after the funeral.”
Christine was silent. She went back to wiping the dishtowel over the plate in her hand, scrubbing streaks of water even after they disappeared. Her lips pulled down at the sides, and she said, “You did?”
“I want a love like Grandma and Grandpa’s.”
Christine smiled and spoke slowly, “Yeah. There aren’t too many loves like that, but Paul is a good man. You’ll be happy with him. Don’t you think?”
“I do.” The dishwater had cooled, and Olivine blasted more hot water into the sink. She felt the steam on her face; she breathed in deeply and let the fullness of it enter her lungs. She turned again to face her mother, pressing her hands down on the edge of the sink. “Paul makes sense. You know? He’s exactly the kind of guy I’ve always planned to find. Someone who knows what he wants. Someone who is doing something important with his life.”
Christine chuckled softly. “You’ve always wanted to be someone, Olivine.”
“I know.”
“More than you wanted to find someone; you wanted to be someone. You’ve always wanted to make some kind of an impact. This ambition; this sheer over-thinking, was so pronounced when you were a little girl, it was almost like it was a condition.” Christine laughed. “Remember that newspaper you created for the neighborhood? You even had an investigative piece about who stole Julie Barrett’s soccer ball. Remember that?”
“I remember.”
“And you wrote that adorable earnest-as-hell editorial about how we should all do our part to make the world a happier, prettier place?”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me. I was a silly little girl.”
“No, you weren’t silly at all. That’s just my point. You never did enjoy the folly of youth. Not really. You just always knew that you had the power to change people. To change their minds. You have a certain something, especially when you were younger. And how you can write!”
“Well, that didn’t exactly work out.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I’ve been writing and publishing and writing and publishing, and the most ambitious or earth-shattering thing I wrote last year was a memoir for some trust funder who hasn’t even done anything yet that’s worthy of writing about.”
Her mom chuckled and stacked a plate by the sink.
“Just because your writing career hasn’t taken off by now, it doesn’t mean you need to change course. It doesn’t mean you need to seek your legacy in a different way. You are enough, honey, just the way you are. You will live a life of significance, no matter what you do. Just by virtue of the person you are. The light you bring to your little corner. Your little corner of the world.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, mom, but what does that have to do with my engagement?”
“I just think that you might be mistaking Grandma’s legacy for your own. Her legacy was to give birth to this amazing, loving family. Maybe yours is, too. And maybe it isn’t. Maybe yours is to write wonderful words that inspire people and help them to live richer, better lives.”
“I gave writing a chance.”
“Don’t speak in the past tense like that. You’re young.”
“Not so much.”
“Well, when you’re my age, you’ll think thirty-two is young. Hell, when you’re thirty-five, you’ll think thirty-two is young. Things don’t have to go according to a plan or a diagram you drew out when you were younger. Sometimes the best thing that can possibly happen to you is that you are forced into a detour.”
“Detours make me a little panicky,” Olivine replied. “Whether they are on the road or in my life.” She scooped up a handful of suds and stared into them. Tiny spheres—some white, some iridescent—all mashed together. She continued. “Maybe it is related to Grandma. I feel a… a sense of panic. I’m sure it’s related to me feeling, finally, a sense of my own mortality.” The words were coming out of her quickly, before she had a chance to think, “I feel like I’m running out of time, but running out of time for what? I don’t even know what I’m racing to do.”
Spilling her emotions like this, she was taken back to a night when she was ten years old and her mother had checked on her late, in her bedroom. She had been lying awake and when Christine had walked in and asked her what was wrong, Olivine confessed, all in a rush, that she was scared to die. And the admission of her deepest fears, suddenly out in the world, with her mother sitting next to her, flooded her with a sense of relief. And here she was again, like a little girl seeking solace, begging her mother to tell her it was going to be okay. That life was going to be okay and so was death and that she would never be left all alone.
“I know you want to leave a mark on the world,” her mother said. “Your grandmother did it in a most marvelous way. Yarrow does it in a most marvelous way. Paul does it in a most marvelous way. You will do it in a most marvelous way. Your marvelous way doesn’t need to simply be to help Paul with his life mission. You are allowed to have your own. Your very own mission. You’re even allowed to not know what it is yet.”
Olivine shook the soap bubbles from her hands and folded her mother in her arms. She squeezed her until Christine pulled away.
“It’s been a tough week on us all. How about we not make any big announcements to the group just today? Just this evening?” Christine said.
“Of course, Mom.”
Christine swept a plate of brownies from the counter and winked at Olivine as she backed out the swinging kitchen door. Olivine plunged her hands into the dishwater once again, not bothering to wipe her tears as they fell, ripe and full, into the dishwater below.
*****
That evening, on her way home, Olivine remembered one of the last days they were together, she and Henry, before she had ever given much thought to legacies and what life was or wasn’t for. Back then, she cared for an affluence of time and an affluence of freedom; not an affluence of money. She and Henry had talked about how they could go anywhere together. They could live anywhere.
They had been lying on the floor of her apartment. Her head was propped on his stomach and he spoke about how they could write a book together. Some kind of book about…what had he suggested? Rest area bathrooms. They could travel the country and document the words they would see etched into the paint on the lavatory walls. Or they could travel the world and photograph people who looked like their dogs, or they could photograph cool windows and doors. Or churches. Or spires. Or old trees. They could go from one idea to another. He could take photos and she could write something pithy, he had said.
“Pithy?” she asked, and when he laughed, her head bobbed up and down on his abdomen, and he told her how they would find endless new adventures and things to do and they would live like vagabonds, anywhere they wanted. He could tend bar or log trees or build homes. And she could write and learn about whatever she wished. She could learn to arrange flowers, he said, or decorate cakes, or illustrate poetry books, and when they got bored of one thing, they could move on to one another. And they could travel and take photos of things and make pithy remarks for coffee table books.
“Who is going to buy a coffee table book on rest area bathrooms?” she had asked him, giggling.
“Well, if your words were pithy enough…”
It had been a warm day, and she could smell him, a raw musky earthiness, from where her head was positioned on his stomach.
She remembered that it wasn’t an altogether pleasant aroma, but still she lay there, with her head buoyed up on his belly. And Olivine remembered thinking, just then, how she loved being a woman. How she loved finding shampoo that made her hair smell just right and she loved applying scented lotion to her skin. She loved matching her fragrance to her mood. But she also imagined that, if she were a man, she would enjoy plunging into her own manliness—her own stink—from time to time. If she were a man, she would grow a beard every now and then.
Certainly, this was how Henry felt. She had asked him once, “What is it about you mountain guys? You guys don’t believe in deodorant? Antiperspirant?” Her father and most of the men she knew were the same way. Smelled the same way.
“Ach,” Henry had said, “I don’t know what kind of toxins and poisons are in that. I’m not smearing it on myself every day. Besides, I smell nice.”
“Not always.”
“Well, I guess you’ll learn to love it because this is the way I smell.” And he squeezed her around the waist and kissed her hard, with closed lips, on the mouth.
But Paul, he showered two or three times a day. Always before work. Often, at work. And then at the gym, where he often went after work. He got haircuts twice a month, on alternating Mondays from the same barber.
Henry said he cut his hair twice a year, whether he needed it or not, and he did it himself. All he needed, he said, was a set of clippers and a number two guard, which he could run all over his face and his head “I’m a simple man with simple needs,” Henry would say.
And then Olivine remembered how she and Henry had attended a birthday party for her dad’s dearest friend, Charlie. Charlie had a broad, Yosemite Sam moustache that covered his front teeth when he talked. He had an easy laugh and eyes that glistened. Charlie had been teaching downhill skiing to ten-year-olds for decades, and he rode his bicycle everywhere he went, all year long, his skis strapped to his back. Another simple man with simple needs, Olivine thought.
When they had arrived at the party, Charlie locked Olivine into a hug, smashing her face against his tropical print shirt. When he finally released her, he held her by her elbows and looked into her eyes and smiled.
“How are you doing, Charlie?” Olivine had asked.
“Olivine, I’m having the time of my life.” This had been his stock response ever since she could remember.
“You’re always having the time of your life,” she said, as she always did.
And Charlie replied, as he always did. “It’s not hard to have the time of your life when you have the heart of a five-year-old.”
“That is true,” Olivine said as she pulled Henry toward her, one arm looped around his waist. “Charlie, I want you to meet Henry. He also has the heart of a five-year=old. In fact, I was just telling him this today. Not so poetically, maybe.”
“Yeah. Not so poetically.” Henry laughed. “She told me I was immature.”
They laughed together, and Charlie said, “Tomato, tom-ah-to.”
But she knew, too, that Henry wasn’t always having the time of his life. Sometimes, she caught him looking at her while she was doing something ordinary: folding laundry or making sandwiches or hiking alongside him, and there was a flash of sorrow, just until she saw him watching her. And then the smile returned.
She asked him about it from time to time: “Is there something I should know?” or “Are you sad?” And he would say, “Ah, we all get sad, but you make it all go away. That’s why I can’t get enough of you.”
And Olivine reflected on Charlie. A man she loved like a second father. Even as a child, growing up with Charlie coming and going from her parent’s house, she wondered what it would be like to marry someone like him. Charlie didn’t have children and, to the rest of the world, his wife seemed cold. Intimidating to adults; scary for kids. She rarely left her front yard, and she would spend hours upon hours tending to her garden in the summer. Olivine remembered how she always wore a pink baseball cap and pink gardening gloves, and how she was always popping up from the yard to tell the kids in the neighborhood to make sure they stayed away from the bushes in her side yard during their games of hide and seek.
Charlie hardly ever appeared in public with his wife. And yet, something about their relationship worked. Now, they were both nearing seventy, like her own parents, and they were still together.
You never knew what it was between a couple that made it work, Olivine thought. And maybe this is how it would be now, with Paul. There was something more to a lifelong love than met the eye. She could keep her outside world in order. Paul would help her take care of that world, and inside, she could be however she wanted.
She liked to keep things inside herself, and Paul didn’t pry. He never asked her how she was feeling. He made suggestions, sure, on which direction she could go—on what kind of decisions she should make. He helped her when she was struggling with her career. He helped her to redirect to something of more significance. But he never asked too many questions. He let her inner life be her own.
She relished this inner life. And Paul relished his. She understood Paul. She understood his silence and his independence. Paul’s father was probably right: no one could love Paul like she could. No one could understand his detachedness like she could. He needed her, and she understood him. And that was that. They would be together. The way it should be.
Chapter Six
As Olivine turned onto her street, she found herself driving more slowly and lingering at stop signs. She didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to talk about Anatomy class, and she didn’t want to be indoors. It was a beautiful night, so warm for early May, and
so she turned out of her neighborhood and back to the highway, and, soon, she found herself driving to the cabin.
This is where she could come when she needed to think and to be alone. Sometimes she would just arrive there, as if on autopilot. This place would always be home to her. This is the place where, as kids, she and Yarrow and their cousins would sit on the white trunk of a massive cottonwood tree that had fallen across the river and dangle their feet into the water, so cold it stung. In the springtime, they would walk barefoot across the snow, which had grown coarse and pebbly with the slanted sun, and they would sit side by side on the log and keep their feet submerged as long as they could stand it, the river running high with fresh snowmelt from the peaks just above. Some days, they would have contests to see who could keep their feet in the river the longest.
The water was just a few degrees above freezing, and Olivine would suck in a sharp burst of air as she first slid her feet in and watched them turn corpse white under the clear mountain water. She could outlast anyone, even her cousin Brad, who was four years older and who played varsity football and who always told her that she was one touch chick. Also, that she would someday lose a toe to frostbite, which hadn’t come to pass.
Olivine would stay with her feet in the water, breathing through the sting, willing the pain into the center of her and away from her face. Away from anywhere it could be visible. Her eyes would be closed, her breathing deep and even, and someone would eventually go and get her mother, who would come and make her walk inside where she was made to wrap her feet, now raw and red, in a blanket.
Anywhere near the cabin—sitting on the log over the river, by the fire ring in the backyard, on the cabin’s front porch—she could see the four peaks that buttressed her town. She knew them so well, she could picture them in any season. In the winter, their crags blanketed in snow. In the springtime, the cornices on the high peaks would tumble, triggering avalanches that left trails you could see from miles away. Long skids of snow like ripples on a white sheet, hanging on the line.
The One Who Got Away: A Novel Page 6
