“Olivia, you have three minutes!” Honor announced, hurrying in from the stage with her class. Her kids were beaming, thrilled at having had their moment in the spotlight, and Olivia warned her class to behave then ran onto the stage while the curtain was drawn to drag props into place.
She yanked the trees into position, rolled out the carefully painted roll of paper that denoted a winding river, and the garishly colored cardboard front of grandma’s house. Before she’d left for Thailand, she still hadn’t finished the final act of the play, the scene where Little Red Riding Hood (and several Spidermans and butterflies and other forest creatures) arrived at the cabin and found the not scary wolf who had not eaten grandma. It wasn’t until she thought about Jarek in the aftermath of their breakup that she knew how it should end.
On the opposite side of the curtain she heard Zhang Laoshi introducing the performance, and scurried back to collect the kids and order them into position. Then the heavy curtains drew back and Rose pressed play and the show started.
Olivia stood at the edge of the stage, very nearly out of sight, to troubleshoot. But the kids knew their roles, and soon Alan—Red—was talking to “her” mother (and father, and brother, and sister, and pet monkey) about visiting grandma with a variety of gifts.
“Does the grandmother like cake?” the mother asked.
“Yes, the grandmother likes cake!” Red answered.
“Does the grandmother like shampoo?”
“Yes, the grandmother likes shampoo!”
And so it went until Red and her brother, sister, and pet monkey were ready to leave on their trip, trailed by live action cake, shampoo, two flowers, a carton of milk, and an ice cream cone. They skipped through the wooden forest while singing a song about trees and meeting three butterflies, three birds, and three Spidermans, who came in handy when it came time to cross the river that naturally did not have a bridge.
Olivia covered her mouth and smiled as the Spidermans spun a “web” across the water for the group to traverse. The audience tittered and applauded as appropriate, and the entire senseless thing suddenly made perfect sense. When they first encountered the Big Bad Wolf, Olivia risked a look at Zhang Laoshi in the front row; her perpetual smile wavered as she took in the angry snout and pointy ears and clawed hands worn by one of the boys in the class.
“Hello,” the wolf said. “I am Wolf. Nice to meet you.”
“Hello, I am Red,” said Red. “Nice to meet you too.”
They shook hands and Red introduced her gaggle of friends, and said she was en route to meet grandma at her orange house with a yellow door, the only paint colors they’d had enough of when it had come time to paint the cardboard. The wolf distracted Red and her friends, then darted into the forest, knocking over two trees and making five kids cry. Olivia hustled out to calm them and straighten the trees as the parents laughed.
“Very good!” she assured them. “Keep going! You’re almost at grandma’s house!”
The kids wove back and forth across the stage on an imaginary winding pathway through the forest, until they arrived at the house.
“Who is it?” called the wolf from behind the door.
“I am Red!” Alan cried. “May I come in?”
“Come in, please!”
The wolf pushed open the door and the whole crew fought to get inside, then Olivia rushed out to take the cardboard away and reveal the “interior” of the house, which consisted of two small chairs positioned facing each other, and a table. The wolf sat on one chair with his feet on the other, a blanket covering his lap. He now wore a sleeping cap to pretend to be grandma.
“Who are you?” Red demanded.
“I am grandmother!” the wolf replied.
“Hello, grandmother! I love you.” At this point Red was supposed to kiss grandma, but Alan just shot Olivia a distasteful look and shook his head no.
She shrugged and waved for them to continue. One by one Red introduced all of the friends and items she had come with, the appropriate items then sat on or stood near the table, and the rest prepared to leave. Until grandma/the wolf jumped up to block them.
“I want to eat you!” he roared.
The kids screamed.
Zhang Laoshi covered her mouth and looked around in alarm.
“Stop!” Red commanded.
The wolf froze.
“You do not have big ears!” Red accused.
Slowly the wolf pulled off the big ears.
“You do not have big hands!” Davy the butterfly pointed out, twirling in a circle.
The wolf pulled off the big hands.
“You do not have a big nose!” the pet monkey exclaimed, jumping.
The wolf pulled off the big nose, so all that remained was a boy in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt with a dump truck on the front.
“You are not a wolf!” the kids shouted. “You are a boy!”
The wolf/boy hung his head in shame. “Yes,” he admitted. “I am a boy.”
Just then, grandma, played by Rose, strolled in, explained that she had been at the store, but was happy to see Red and her friends. Rose darted off stage to press play on the CD player, then hurried back to perform the final dance number, as arranged by Alan. Out in the audience Zhang Laoshi was still covering her mouth, but now she looked perplexed instead of alarmed, as did most of the parents. The other students were laughing hysterically. But her class didn’t give a damn. They danced their hearts out, sang gibberish at the top of their lungs, and Olivia sang along and clapped her hands, long before the applause started.
“Okay. I guess…that’s it.” Olivia had enjoyed a lot of alone time these past weeks, and had taken to talking to herself on occasion. She dumped the final pile of debris from the dustpan into the trash and wiped her hands on her jeans, then checked her watch for the thousandth time. Her flight to Boston left at five o’clock in the evening, and she had to catch the train at noon. It was eleven ten. Still a little early to head to the station, but there was nothing else to do. She had given away the few household items she owned, shipped a box of souvenirs for Willa to hold for her, and the apartment was now as clean and bare as the day she’d arrived.
It felt like a lifetime ago. Lazhou had been cold and dark and mysterious, and somehow it had come to feel like home. Or some semblance of home, where not everyone was a friend and not everything was perfect, a lesson she had been a little late in learning. She’d made mistakes, no doubt. Everyone did. She’d learned from them. Even Dale, with his awful, ruddy face and lewd words had come by to apologize, lingering outside the school gates the day after the graduation performance to plead his case. She’d stared at him, equal parts surprised and pissed, as he told her how Jarek had gotten drunk and spilled his guts, his heartache, their secrets. How he’d asked him to say those things to her and how he’d agreed because he’d wanted to punish her for hurting his friend. How he understood now how stupid and cruel he had been. And then he’d really surprised her by somehow managing to champion Jarek, pointing out that the guy wasn’t used to feeling anything and didn’t know how to process his emotions. By the time he finished, Olivia had accepted his apology and told him he was forgiven, if only to get him to go away. It would take time for the exchange in the trailer to fade, but it would happen. Soon it would be just another dark memory, and like the others, she would learn to let it go.
She went to use the bathroom one more time before leaving, and when she came out she skidded to a halt. She’d left the wooden door open to let the air circulate, and now Jarek stood outside the metal door, backlit by the sun. His expression was hard to determine in the shadows, but his voice was not. “Olivia.”
She kept her voice level. “Hi.”
His head shifted slightly as he looked around at the empty walls, the bare mattress visible in the background. “Can I come in?” he asked.
Her lower lip trembled and she fought to remain composed. She really hadn’t expected to see him again. She’d told him her departure date a long time
ago, but didn’t know if he was here because he’d remembered or if it was just an unfortunate coincidence. But instead of telling him to fuck off, she said, “It’s not locked.” She had never tried to keep him out, she realized. For all his effort at warning her away, his certainty that he was the mythical big bad wolf, she’d seen him as the boy dressed up in scowls and glares and intimidation, and never the villain he imagined himself to be. He’d spent so long trying not to be someone else that he failed to see who he was. Who he could be. She wasn’t angry so much as she was disappointed. In him. For him.
Jarek entered and stopped just inside the threshold. Olivia was several feet away, near the wall where she’d stood the night he’d apologized after the bar. A wry smile touched his lips, as though he were picturing the same thing. “So this is it,” he said eventually.
She nodded, not really sure if he was referring to the end of them or her time in China. “I’m on my way to the station.”
“When’s your train?”
“Twelve.”
He pursed his lips. “Right.” He studied her two medium-sized suitcases and backpack, waiting by the door. “You don’t have much to take with you.”
“I know.”
“Are you flying to Detroit first?”
“No. Straight to Boston.”
He pulled in a breath that was deep enough she could see his chest rise under his thin T-shirt. He was wearing board shorts and flip flops as though he planned to head to the non-existent beach after this. Whatever “this” was.
“Well,” she said, when he didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “I’m—” He broke off and looked away, pushing an agitated hand through his hair. “I wanted to tell you I’m really fucking sorry.”
Her eyes filled with tears she refused to shed. She’d cried all freaking week. Saying good-bye to her students, the teachers, Ritchie and Honor, alone in her apartment. She couldn’t possibly have any tears left.
“Okay, Jarek.”
“No, Olivia. It’s not okay.”
“It is what it is.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I watched the play.”
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I know. I just…wanted to. I wasn’t there long. Ritchie told me what time, so I came and then I left right after.”
“Huh.”
“It was really weird.”
She couldn’t help it; she laughed. “I know.”
“You looked beautiful.”
She sucked in a wounded breath. “Please don’t.”
He crossed to her suddenly, and raised a hand to tilt her head so she looked up at him, even though she didn’t want to. “You are,” he said seriously. “You’re perfect. I didn’t deserve you. I’m sorry I hurt you. It wasn’t Dale’s fault. It was all me. It doesn’t matter now, but I want you to know that I didn’t say anything until that last week. I wasn’t betraying you all along.”
She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. Perfect meant nothing. She had been perfect her whole life, and then she’d done one thing people hadn’t liked and they’d turned on her. So had he. “Okay.”
“Tell me you understand.”
“I understand.”
“Olivia.”
“I have to go, Jarek.”
His hand fell and when she risked a look at him, his eyes were closed. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll come with you to the train station.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
But he was already picking up the suitcases and hefting them out the door. She didn’t waste her breath arguing, not sure she even wanted to. So it hurt to breathe. She’d get over it. She’d keep putting one foot in front of the other until she got where she was supposed to be, wherever that was.
Olivia collected her backpack and purse, then locked the doors and followed Jarek downstairs to flag a cab. He loaded the bags in the trunk and gestured for her to get in first, then climbed in after. She asked to go to the train station, a seven or eight minute ride, and folded her hands in her lap. She knew Jarek was watching her but she didn’t know what she was supposed to say. I forgive you? She would, some day, she was sure. But not right now. Not when he’d found the courage to show up and apologize three weeks too late, then failed to muster the nerve to say the thing that scared him most.
“You nervous?” he asked eventually. “About starting over?”
She shrugged. “It’ll be okay. At least I speak the language.” It was a weak joke, but he smiled anyway.
They got to the station and he paid the fare, even when she told him not to. He grabbed her bags from the trunk and carried them through the milling crowd to the boarding area. “You going to be all right with these?”
“They’re not heavy.” She looked at the large clock on the wall. Twenty minutes until her train departed. “I have to go.”
“I know.”
“Take care, Jarek.”
A muscle in his neck twitched, then suddenly he pulled her against him, his arms like steel bands around her torso, holding her tight. She could barely breathe, barely manage to lift her arms to hug him back, her fingers brushing the soft fabric of his T-shirt.
“Olivia.”
Her eyes sank shut. She was suddenly so, so tired. She didn’t know if she was coming or going, beginning or ending. “Just say it,” she said softly.
His grip tightened. “Don’t say it back.”
She didn’t answer, just watched the narrow hand on the clock tick past ten agonizing seconds.
“I love you, Olivia,” he murmured into her hair. That was all he said. Maybe all he could say. Five more seconds passed before he released her.
She stepped back and wiped her eyes. “Good-bye, Jarek.” She gathered her bags and walked away, showing her ticket to the gate attendant and following the crowd to the platform. She didn’t look over her shoulder to see if Jarek was watching, didn’t want to extend their painful good-bye to epic proportions. She loved him, she hated him, she loved him. And if he didn’t know by now, he never would.
Chapter Seventeen
THE THREE WEEKS BETWEEN breaking up and saying good-bye at the train station were the longest of his life. Jarek worked non-stop, willing time to speed up and his mind to stay empty, but neither happened. He thought about her constantly, as he had for months. Only now, instead of seeing smiling Olivia, or rather, naked, smiling Olivia, he saw her in profile. He saw her hair splayed on the pillow beneath her head, face twisted away as she uttered the only words he deserved: get out.
He’d listened. He’d gone home and gone to work and hadn’t done much more than eat, drink, and sleep when he wasn’t in the carpentry trailer. He made more furniture than he’d ever made in his life. Desks with intricate inlaid designs, chairs with backs carved to resemble the woodwork he saw on temples around town. He took precise measurements for built-in bookshelves, spending hours getting every cut just right. Everything was perfect. And it was all wrong.
No matter what he did he couldn’t stop thinking about her. About it. What he’d done. And the worst part was, he’d done far worse shit in his life—a thousand times—and he’d never felt bad. A man didn’t walk into those rooms and do the things he had done without being absolutely certain he was right. He’d never questioned his decisions or his tactics, and when he got the answers he was looking for, he didn’t question those either. He followed his instincts and they had never led him astray. Until now. Now he couldn’t stop asking the one question he had never allowed himself: what if he was wrong?
The answer wasn’t reassuring. He knew, without a doubt, that he’d been wrong. Oh, she’d been in Thailand with Chris, all right. And yes, she’d lied about it. And yes, he’d been hurt and furious and right to feel that way—but none of that mattered. He’d been wrong, and he had so little experience with apologies—hell, most of that experience was with her—that he didn’t know what to do to repair such a monumental fuck up. So he poured everything he had
into the furniture, into making something good and lasting that he’d leave behind and have no opportunity to destroy. And it still wasn’t enough.
He worked through the night again, collapsing in bed shortly after five a.m., as had become his routine. As sleep claimed him he knew it was the last time he’d wake up and know he could still try to fix this, that she was just twenty minutes away. Because try as he might to forget, he couldn’t: Olivia was leaving today. And if there was any sort of merciful god looking down on him, they’d let him sleep for twelve hours, until she was out of reach and he finally had a decent excuse for not walking his ass down there and telling her what she needed to hear.
If there was anyone looking down that day, they showed him no mercy. Jarek woke up at nine a.m. and could not fall back asleep. He contemplated the bottle of scotch that still sat on the counter where he’d left it three weeks ago, but even his muddled brain knew it was too early. Or too late. He should have started drinking at midnight, when it was socially acceptable.
He lay in bed and tried to drift off, but he couldn’t. He went to the gym trailer and punched the sandbag until he couldn’t breathe. He took the longest shower of his life. He tried to read. Watch TV. Tried to sleep again. And somehow it was only eleven o’clock. He remembered that her flight was in the late afternoon, but had no idea when she’d leave for the train station, so he dressed slowly, forced down some food, and at eleven thirty started the painfully slow slog to her apartment.
Her inner door was open so he could see the bare expanse inside, suitcases packed and ready to go. Then she’d stepped out of the bathroom and everything he thought he wanted to say fled his mind and his heart stopped beating and the only thing he knew was he loved her and he was sorry and it couldn’t be the end, even when it was.
He certainly hadn’t planned on taking her to the train station, but she was already so distant that he felt the ridiculous urge to extend their technical closeness as long as he could. Then, when she told him to take care, he grabbed her without a second thought. He wanted to hold her there until the train left, until by pure osmosis she absorbed the fact that he loved her and was pathetically sorry, but she wasn’t a science experiment or a mind reader. When she ordered him to “just say it,” he didn’t pretend not to know which words she was referring to. If he thought it took everything he had to utter the three most painful words of his life, he was wrong again. Letting her go and watching her leave almost brought him to his knees. He stayed in place, people ebbing and flowing around him, garnering more strange stares than normal, until the train left. And for ten minutes beyond that, until he knew she hadn’t changed her mind and stayed on the platform as the train rolled away.
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