The One Who Got Away: A Novel

by Bethany Bloom

  And just then, sitting on the porch of the family cabin, with the cold planks biting into the skin on the back of her legs, and the sun starting to set, and the chill moving through her thin pullover, she was seized by the notion that, not only did she want to have children, she wanted to have them with him. With Henry. Just so that he could look at them like that. Just so that he could look at them like he wanted to place them in the sky, like tiny stars. Suspend them in the forever.

  A look like that, she knew, was the ultimate gift for a child, and it was a look you couldn’t put on. You couldn’t fake it. It had to come from someplace deep and true and real. And she could see them, suddenly, her girls, just as she could the other night at dinner. Each had deep brown eyes, flecked with amber like their father’s. They were holding pomegranates in cupped hands, the fruits red and ripe and as big as their faces. They were both wearing yellow dresses and standing in an aspen forest in the autumn, golden and bright in slanted, burnished light.

  “Remember what we talked about so long ago?” Henry asked.

  “Probably,” she replied. “I remember a lot. Maybe everything.”

  “We talked about picking up and leaving. About writing a book. About the graffiti in bathrooms across America. About limping along, picking up odd jobs and taking photos and writing snappy little details about the entire countryside.”

  “Yeah. I’ve thought about it so many times. In fact, after you left. I did that. All by myself.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. Well, I didn’t write an entire book, but I took off. Across the countryside.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ve never told anyone about this,” she replied. “Not the whole story at least.”

  “Seems to be that kind of night. Go on.”

  “Okay,” she began.

  “Wait,” he interrupted. “Are you cold?”

  “Freezing.”

  “Me too. Excuse me for just a minute.” He jogged to the bus, his feet not seeming to touch the forest floor, and he returned with a quilt, thick and velvety.

  He placed it on the floorboards, sat on it, and motioned her forward. She nestled between his legs and settled back into him, and he wrapped the blanket around them both. His body felt hard behind her. Solid. He smelled of cedar.

  “Okay, start at the beginning,” he said.

  “Well,” Olivine began, “I needed proof. Some kind of proof that I was okay, even without you. I had never wanted or needed anything—anyone outside my own family—and all of a sudden, I discovered that a part of me had gone missing when you left. An essential part. But I wanted to prove that I was whole, complete. All on my own. That I was not the pining woman I promised never to be.”

  She could feel his breath come in and out behind her. She continued: “So I got in my car. I packed up the things I needed, which, I discovered wasn’t a whole lot. And then I flipped a coin before I got on the interstate. The coin came up ‘tails,’ so I headed east. And through a series of gut decisions, long days of driving, and subsequent coin flips, I ended up in a small town in the hills of North Carolina, where I found, quite by accident on a side street at the edge of town, a sprawling boarding house, with towering magnolia trees in the front yard and a veranda on which sat a tiny table, set with fresh biscuits and sweet tea. And there was a hand-lettered sign in the window: ‘Rooms for rent. Pay by the week.’ And so I went inside and I met with a man named Hank, and I moved in that day. And Hank had a library, a great library with a rolling ladder and overstuffed chairs that smelled of old pipe smoke and yellowed pages. This is something I’ve always dreamed of having.”

  “I remember. I remember you talking about that. You didn’t have a dream home…just a dream room. A library,” Henry said. “Go on.”

  “I fell in love with the place instantly, as you can imagine. There were three other renters. One, a couple, who had a faux painting and finishing company called ‘Faux You.’”

  “Catchy.”

  She laughed. “And there was another tenant. An older guy, Rodney. He was Hank’s best friend of thirty years. He and Hank would share a pint or so of whiskey before lunch each day. And then Rodney would go off for a little walk. Each day, he would hobble out of the house, and he would return a little while later. Rodney sort of took a liking to me, for lack of a better term. Mostly because I was too polite to shrug him off, and over time, too polite to run.”

  “How old was this guy?”

  “Oh, like seventy. Maybe eighty. It was hard to tell. Let’s just say the man was weathered. He had wrinkles so deep around his mouth. Crevices. And his hair was yellow. Not blond, but butter yellow, the color of a cigarette filter after all the tobacco has been sucked through.”

  “Go on.”

  “Rodney started to plan out my days for me. He wasn't a stalker or anything…”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Well, no.” Olivine laughed. “But I had a car and sometimes he needed to get around—go to the store or to the doctor—and I didn’t want him driving himself around, in his state of constant inebriation. I felt sort of stuck, but I was never one to admit that I had gotten myself in over my head.”

  She could feel him nodding his head from behind her. “Anyway, one day, I arrived home to find a silver Lexus in the driveway. And, as I walked through the door, I was met by a large woman with shiny long gray hair, twisted up behind her head. She had kind eyes, and she took me by the hand and she sat me on the couch in the formal living room, and she started speaking to me in a soft and deeply southern voice—the voice of people with manners and gentility and deep, deep roots to a people who take pride in speaking properly. I liked her instantly and I was enjoying listening to her voice so much that I didn’t hear at first what she was saying. She held my hand on the sofa and she asked me how long I had been acquainted with Hank, and I told her ‘just two weeks’ and that I had only just moved in, and she said, ‘Well, some things have changed.’ She told me that Hank had died that afternoon. She did not say where or under what circumstances, but he never left the house and he spent most of his time smoking filter-less cigarettes in his library and drinking whiskey from a tiny glass tumbler. And so I could imagine how it had all happened. A heart attack, a stroke. Something catastrophic in this quiet little house on this quiet little street. I wondered for a moment who had found him, and I thanked the Lord it wasn’t me.”

  “Wow, no kidding,” Henry said, and she felt his breath hot against her neck as he spoke.

  Olivine continued: “The woman said, finally, ‘Things will be different from now on…with Hank gone. I own this house, and I don’t intend it for boarders.’ Her voice was so genteel and kind, I wondered: where was her grief? And, as though she read my mind, she said that she and Hank had been divorced, amicably, for decades. And she explained that she had been allowing him to live in her family estate because he wasn’t fit for other kind of work, due to his condition. I didn’t ask her to elaborate. Was his condition alcoholism? A heart condition? Either way, the man had passed, and she was trying to ask me to move out. ‘Perhaps,’ she continued, ‘you could share with me your long term plans and I might be able to help you make other arrangements.’ And so I babbled something: ‘Oh, I’m from Colorado.’ I said. ‘I wasn’t here long enough to lay down any roots and now would be a good time to move on. I can be out soon. Tomorrow.’

  “‘Oh, heavens,’ she had said, ‘You don’t need to go so fast. But do begin making your arrangements, please. I’ll talk to the other boarders.’

  “I was ready to leave. I think I only left Colorado—I only struck out on my own like that—to prove that I could. And I wrote a lot while I was there. That’s how I can remember the details of the boarding house, of that library, of Rodney’s hair. And, besides that wrap-around veranda, buried in vines and magnolias, I would miss that beautiful library and my private bath with the clawed tub, but I knew I could go somewhere else. I could just flip a coin, and be gone.”

  Sh
e felt Henry’s body behind her, strong and solid. She had pushed in so close to him that she could feel his breath rising and falling behind her, along her spine, and her breath began to match his. She wondered then how long it had been since someone had listened to her tell a story, without interrupting.

  “So what did you do?” Henry asked.

  “I started to pack, to gather the few items I had left on the front porch, in the kitchen, in the library. And that’s when Rodney had returned to the house, from his morning walk. Hank’s ex-wife took him by the arm, as well. And she sat him on the sofa and she began to speak, and no sooner had she begun talking to him that he sort of collapsed in on himself. It was a grief unlike any I’ve ever witnessed. First, he sort of faded and then he combusted inward, like a dying star. He began to shake and he became very, very small, just shrinking there on the couch. And I went back up to my room, trying to give him space. I began organizing my things, preparing to leave. And eventually I went to bed, but at about eleven that same night, I felt him over me. Rodney. I smelled him. His breath. Whiskey. Cigarettes.”

  Henry’s body tensed beneath her.

  “No, no, he didn't do anything. But he was so drunk. And he was so slurred and he kept telling me he loved me and needed me as his friend and so I did what any twenty-two-year old could think to do.”

  “What was that?”

  “I left. Fast. In the middle of the night. Before he could stop me.”

  “Good girl.”

  “But first, I walked with Rodney back to his room, which was spotless and bare, save for the day’s newspaper, a carton of cigarettes and a tidy chest of drawers. And I talked to him, about the same things, over and over, and once he had passed out, I pulled the yellow coverlet up to his chin, and I tiptoed to my room, where I packed all of my belongings. I knew that the fifth stair creaked and groaned and so I skipped it. I packed everything in my car. By the time I was finished, the sun had begun to rise. I left a note for Lydia, Hank’s ex-wife, on the shiny dining room table with my condolences and my gratitude, but I didn’t leave one for Rodney…Because I couldn’t think of anything to say. I abandoned him right in his hour of need. Because it was too scary and would require too much of a commitment for me to stay. And I moved on.” She leaned in to him harder. “Just like you did.”

  Olivine continued, after a beat. “I think about it sometimes. I figure I'll have to answer for that one day. My leaving that boarding house that night. But I drove straight home. I hadn’t even meant to, but I turned that way on the interstate and once I realized I was heading home, I didn’t stop. I drove right on through the night and into the next day.

  “But the short time I was out there, I enjoyed myself so much. I wrote so much. I visited the childhood homes of all kinds of writers. The rolling quiet hills of these ancient mountains, with the mist, like shrouds of secrets. The land felt sacred. And they live by a different pace. Slower. More reverent. They were mountain people like me, and seeing them, meeting them, having this experience of getting to live among them just because I woke up one day and decided to do so…It made me realize that I can live however I want to live. I can choose to live chained to a desk or I could do anything I wanted to do. All on my own. So long as I kept my life simple. My needs simple. My monthly expenses simple. I could do anything. I could write or I could not. I could do small jobs here and there. I could pick up and take off. Whatever. And I didn’t need anyone. Of course, I knew that choosing this lifestyle also meant that I would most likely be poor as hell, but somehow that was okay, too. My needs were simple, and, so, I was free.”

  She let the last word hang there, among the trees, where it felt right. At home. Round.

  Henry was silent for a long while. And Olivine remembered how she had started to tell this same story to Paul once and he had said, “You shouldn’t have done that. Your parents shouldn’t have let you do that.”

  “I was twenty-two,” she had answered.

  “Still. You shouldn’t have done that. Anything could have happened to you.” And Paul had stopped her from telling the rest, telling instead the story of the European river cruise he had taken one spring break, by himself. “Now that is the way to travel,” he had said.

  And when she hadn’t replied, Paul had said, “It sounds like you have this romantic idea of living like that. But traveling is not enjoyable when you don’t have money to do it. Wouldn’t it have been better if you could have stayed at a nice resort in that town? Instead of some alcoholic’s cheap boarding house?”

  “But I want to see the world. That has always been my dream.”

  “Then you should start by getting a good job. Eventually you can earn enough money, and enough vacation days, and you can save up enough to see the world, in style. It’s all about patience,” Paul had said.

  “When would I write?”

  “There’s always time to write,” Paul had said. “Just get up a little earlier or something. It’s not hard. Olivine. You make things too hard. You work, you earn. You enjoy. It’s especially simple for you. With me around, there’s no stress in your life.”

  But now she was telling the story to Henry, and he had allowed her to tell the entire thing, from beginning to end. And he was still quiet, and she wondered if he, like she, was thinking about a brand of freedom she had found for herself that did not involve him. And did not involve Paul. But one that required only one. Olivine herself.

  Henry could feel the heat of his body behind her. She felt the freedom once again that came with leaving that North Carolina boarding house, the sun beginning to rise in her rear view mirror. Knowing she could go on, or she could return home, and that she could rely on herself, and that she was free. And with him sitting right behind her, she felt suddenly that she could give herself to him—to Henry—without having him consume her. That she could be with Henry while maintaining her freedom. She would be one entity and yet two distinct ones, made better by the union.

  She felt his breath against her neck: slow, rhythmic, hushed. She willed him to plant his soft, fleshy lips on her skin, right there. She pushed against him, ever so slightly. She nestled in a little tighter against his groin.

  He said, softly, “When I was with Clara, we had money. We made all kinds of money. And now, working here, I have nothing. I can honestly say it doesn’t mean that much to me. It’s never been that big of an issue for me. I’ve come to understand that everything has a cost. For everything you choose, you have to give up something. Whether it’s your money or your integrity or your passion or your time.”

  “I’ve been thinking about time lately. A lot.”

  “Have you?” he asked.

  “The truth is: I want to be a mother,” she said. Her voice was quiet. “It's just…I'm not getting any younger. I see the legacy of love that my grandparents have left and, for the first time, I want that. I crave that.”

  “But if you have children with Paul, then you’re stuck there. You know that, right? Children complicate things. More than you can imagine. You just need to avoid buying in.”

  “Buying in to what?”

  “Buying in to someone else’s dream of what the good life is. I can see that Paul has his definition of what the good life is. But yours can look different. Hell, yours can look different and you can raise a family. You don’t have to do it by being a PTA mom. No one has any expectations of you whatsoever.”

  “Ah, but they do.”

  “But you get to decide if those expectations matter, Olivine. You have an inner light unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Don’t buy in.” He whispered those last words, and his lips grazed the skin on her neck and there was a fluttering inside her, and a tingling in her limbs and in her chest and she felt his lips, soft and full, on her neck and he pressed them gently on her skin and his breath moved up along her neck.

  She closed her eyes and she turned now to meet his lips and they grazed against hers, and then a blur of yellow flashed beneath her closed lids. Her eyes blinked open and she was staring in
to a pair of high beam headlights, The Audi was coming up the driveway fast.

  “Paul,” she warned, and she pushed away the cocoon of blanket, and she stood. Her heart raced. She went cold, and her arms and legs prickled. She began walking toward the steps of the porch. Toward Paul and whatever was going to happen next.

  Paul stopped the car and leapt out. “Henry?” His headlights shone directly on the porch where they had been sitting a moment before. The moon had not yet risen and the rest of the driveway was shrouded in darkness. She stood just outside the puddle of light from Paul’s car, but he couldn’t see her, focusing as he was, only on the porch. On the porch and the quilt they had left moments before. “Have you seen Olivine? It’s an emergency.”

  “I’m right here,” she said, walking toward him but fighting an urge to run, to run through the forest, away from them both. Paul looked from Olivine to Henry, to the blanket on the floor of the porch, illuminated still by his headlights. “It’s your dad,” Paul barked. “Heart attack. Get in.”

  Olivine’s heart pounded hard. And then she found herself in Paul’s car, and the door had slammed shut. And she was looking back at Henry where he stood on the porch, his mouth open. His arms hanging by his sides, palms exposed.

  *****

  “Since when don’t you bring your phone when you run?” Paul demanded as they sped down the gravel road.

  “I forgot it today.”

  “Or maybe you didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “We were just having a chat, Paul.”

  “Cuddled in a blanket? Looking at the stars?”

  “Paul... It isn’t what you think. Tell me about my dad. What’s going on with my dad?”