Hope in a Jar

by Beth Harbison

  In her years of resentment, it had never occurred to Olivia that her mother harbored any personal uncertainties.

  “It was all I could think of.” Her mother gave a wave of the hand, and her expression once again betrayed nothing. “You have to come up with all this stuff so fast.”

  Olivia nodded and typed in the password, found her way to the “account” page, and deleted the entire thing.

  Then she turned to her mother. “Look, Mom, if this is something you really want to do, I don’t mean to put the kibosh on it. But you have to be safe. You have to understand that there are predators out there who are more diabolical than you or I can even imagine. There’s no way to stay one hundred percent safe, but you’ve got to do everything you can. For instance, give your general location, Manhattan, instead of the specific address. Don’t give out your phone number. Don’t give out my phone number. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t put down your real name.”

  “This is so complicated.”

  “That’s the Internet.” Olivia stood up and went to the cabinet. She took out a travel mug and poured some coffee into it. “I’ve got to go to work now. Please, please be careful while I’m gone.”

  “I’m not a child, Olivia.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Mom, it’s just—I want you to be careful, that’s all. More careful than you were with that.” She gave a limp gesture toward the computer. “There are more important things in the world than romance, you know.”

  “I certainly know that.” Caroline sat straighter in her chair, her face losing some color. “But romance is also important. Love is important, Olivia. That’s something you’ve never seemed to understand.”

  “Excuse me?” Olivia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I’ve never understood the importance of love?”

  “No, you haven’t.” Caroline spoke sharply. “Not romantic love. You act like my need for companionship is some sort of vanity.”

  Olivia sighed. “It’s more like a compulsion, Mom. It seems like it’s all you ever think about.”

  “That is absolutely untrue,” Caroline countered, though it looked like Olivia’s missile had found its mark. “You’re not like me. You were always fiercely independent. You didn’t want my love and attention or anyone else’s.”

  “Don’t go there, Mom.” Olivia held up a warning finger, and hoped it wouldn’t shake with the explosion of emotion she felt. “Do not go there.”

  “It’s the truth. You trusted no one—”

  “Can you blame me?”

  “You never trusted anyone. Even long before . . . we left Potomac. Before that. To be honest with you, I thought you changed when your father died, though the doctors all said I was crazy and that you didn’t know any better.”

  Could it really have affected Olivia’s whole life to lose her father when she was eighteen months old? “It seems more likely that you checked out when Dad died,” she said. “And you never came back. I can remember so well trying to get your attention when I was little, but you kept telling me to go away, you kept handing me off to babysitters while you went out with one guy after another.”

  Caroline straightened in her chair. “I wanted you to have a father.”

  “I did. But he was dead.” Stupid tears prickled Olivia’s eyes and she blinked them back. She was not going to cry. “So then I didn’t have a mother, either.”

  “You did, you always had me. We went everywhere together, don’t you remember?”

  “Yes, Ohio, Wisconsin, Maryland, California.” Olivia ticked off the places they’d lived with Caroline’s various husbands on her fingers. “Oh, yeah, we were like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, you and I.”

  Caroline didn’t say anything for a long moment. She sat with her hands folded in front of her, her face pale, and her eyes unblinking.

  Finally, she looked at her daughter and said, “I did my best. Maybe I wasn’t good at it, but I loved you, Olivia, and I tried my best for you. And now I’m alone. I’m lonely. I don’t want to die in some room by myself. I want companionship, I want love.” She looked at her daughter with watery eyes. “Is that really such a sin?”

  Was it?

  The seconds ticked slowly past as Olivia knew she should say something, and more important knew she should have an answer, but she didn’t.

  Had her mother’s need for companionship been wrong?

  The answer came to Olivia on a wave of guilt.

  No.

  It hadn’t been wrong. Her choices had, heaven knew, but it wasn’t Olivia’s path; it was Caroline’s. Olivia had no right to judge her on it.

  God, she’d been such a jerk.

  All this time she’d been feeling so sorry for herself, and it had never occurred to her that her mother might also be suffering. She had no idea what a poison loneliness was to Caroline.

  But how stupid. Of course she should have known. She’d been suffering from it herself, only her loneliness was self-imposed, born of a steely determination not to need anyone. She called her loneliness mere solitude.

  How many people had she hurt?

  “No, Mom.” She went to her and put a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Of course it’s not a sin.”

  Her mother put her hand up to touch it wordlessly. She continued to look down.

  And that small gesture almost did Olivia in.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, bending down to kiss her. She held on for a moment before letting go. “I was wrong. About a lot of things.”

  “I think Noah’s in love with you.”

  The phone had woken Allie up in the middle of a dream about fending off ferocious monkeys and snakes with a whisk broom, so she wasn’t sure she’d understood Olivia correctly. “I’m sorry?”

  “I realize that this might sound crazy, and it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.” Olivia’s voice was a little hysterical. “I think Noah is in love with you. I think he has been for a long time.”

  Allie rolled over on her back and put her arm over her eyes to shield it from the bright light of that stupid extra-large digits digital clock Kevin had gotten from Sharper Image. “Olivia, have you been drinking?”

  “No, and I think this is important. Don’t ask me why, I have my reasons.”

  “Why?”

  “I just told you not to ask me that.”

  Allie sat up in bed and blinked in the darkness, half wondering if she was still dreaming and if a monkey was going to swing at her on a vine made of licorice. “You can’t just tell me to take something like this on blind faith. You need to tell me exactly what you’re basing this on.”

  “Okay. Hold on, let me get a drink.” There was the sound of footsteps as Olivia walked across a hard floor. “But don’t count on me to be entirely coherent. It’s been a weird night for me.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  There was the sound of clinking dishes. “First of all, remember that time at the fair?”

  “The fair?”

  “Montgomery County fair. In high school.”

  “Good Lord, I hope that drink has caffeine in it. And that you’re not driving anywhere.”

  “Allie, I’m serious. Eleventh grade? Maybe it was tenth. Anyway, I was with Mark Grudberg and you were with Noah, sort of, and you kissed on the Ferris wheel?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Allie smiled, remembering. It had actually been one of the more romantic moments of her life. “That was really nice. Scary, at the time, but it’s a good memory now.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it, by the way?”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t know. But you know now, so who did?”

  “Noah.” There was the clink of glass then the sound of a refrigerator door closing. “Obviously.”

  “I can’t believe he even remembers that!”

  “He didn’t just tell me.” Her footsteps crossed the hard floor again. Eleven-thirty at night and she was still wearing high heels even though she was calling from ho
me. “He told me at the time. When I asked him why you and he weren’t speaking.”

  Allie remembered that part every bit as well as she remembered the kiss. She’d been desperate for him to say that calling it a mistake had been a mistake, and for him to declare his undying love, but instead he’d refused to speak to her.

  She’d figured it was because he didn’t want her to get any ideas about the two of them.

  That didn’t really sound like the Noah she knew now, though.

  “And you’ve kept this to yourself, wondering why I didn’t tell you, all this time?” she asked.

  “No, of course not.” There was a sound, clearly that of shoes being kicked off. “I haven’t thought about it for ages,” Olivia went on. “Then I was talking to my mother today, and suddenly a whole bunch of things became clear to me.”

  “I’m not following,” Allie said. “I mean, I’m glad you had a revelation that got you so jazzed, but I don’t know how this leads to Noah being in love with me and the fair in high school being relevant.”

  The words were sort of nice, though.

  Noah in love. Noah in love with Allie. Noah and Allie. Allie and Noah.

  For just a split second she remembered playing the same name games in seventh grade, but that memory quickly gave way to the way he’d looked at her the other night before he left, and a twinge spun through her core.

  He hadn’t looked at her like a friend.

  And she hadn’t responded like a friend.

  Then he’d gone.

  “Okay, back up,” Olivia said. “It began with eighth grade—”

  That was enough to pull Allie’s attention back. “Eighth grade!”

  “Right after he started school at Cabin John and you said you liked him. But I liked him, too. Or thought I did.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Actually, maybe I just wanted what you wanted because you wanted it. Anyway, the point is that we were partners in geography class and he asked me about you.”

  “This is still in eighth grade.”

  “Yes. I told you this goes back. Look, you don’t have a big revelation sparked by my mother without having to dig deep.”

  “That makes sense.” Allie shuddered to think how deeply the past got imbedded in the psyche.

  She could only imagine how deep and stuck things were when Caroline was involved.

  “So. Noah asked me about you in eighth grade because he liked you but I told him you liked someone else.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “I don’t remember, but that’s not the point. I sabotaged you! You two might have gotten together but I threw a wrench in it.”

  “I can’t believe we’re talking about this like we’re still in junior high.”

  “This is no proud moment for me, believe me.”

  Allie laughed. “Liv, it was eighth grade. I seriously doubt Noah and I would be married today if only we’d made out in the back of Ms. Rosen’s music room twenty-five years ago.”

  “All right, what if you’d gotten together in twelfth grade?”

  “Oh, well, twelfth grade. That would have made all the difference. We’d probably have a couple of kids and a golden retriever by now, too.”

  “You could have,” Olivia said. “You might have.”

  “Look,” Allie said, dismissing the idea. After twelfth grade they might have made a go of it. Two years ago they could have. But as kids? There was no way. “If that was really our destiny, it would have taken more than one hapless teenager to break it up.”

  “I wasn’t hapless,” Olivia said, sounding serious. “I was selfish.”

  “So what if you were? It would have taken more than one selfish teenager to break it up. In fact, I don’t even know what it is you think you did.”

  “I didn’t tell you he was upset. He was heartbroken and I knew it and I didn’t tell you. And frankly, you must have had some pretty strong feelings going on there, too, because otherwise I can’t believe you wouldn’t have told me about it.”

  Allie thought back to that time. It wasn’t hard. She hadn’t carried a lot of high school stuff forward with her into life, but now that she gave it some thought, details were coming back to her with some clarity.

  She’d had a crush on Noah for a long, long time. It didn’t stop them from being friends, but the friendship stopped her from telling him how she felt. The possibility of humiliation was just too great—every week someone wrote to Ann Landers about confessing their love to their best friend and being shot down.

  But then he’d kissed her. And it had been so great. The adrenaline of her fear, mixed with the surging hormones, and the undeniable romance of being suspended high in the sky with neon below and starry velvet above, had made for a potent mix.

  Finally, she thought. Finally.

  Then the ride had jerked to life. She’d been startled and drew back from Noah just as he was making his big move toward second base.

  And she’d wanted him to make the move. In fact, at that point, she’d have been content if the ride had stayed stuck forever.

  But when she started to apologize for gasping, he immediately agreed, he was sorry, too, it was a mistake, and so on.

  Allie had gotten off that Ferris wheel so humiliated, and so disappointed, that she couldn’t even bear to tell Olivia what a fool she’d been. Because Olivia’s response would have been obvious, or so she’d thought: Why would you think you could have a thing with Noah Haller? You’ve been friends too long. He thinks of you as a kid sister, not as a girlfriend.

  The dialogue in Allie’s head had been written by her, but it had been easy to imagine Olivia saying it.

  And she was embarrassed enough at making such a mistake without spreading the word about what a fool she was.

  “You know, it’s funny,” Allie said to Olivia now, rolling over in bed and talking into the phone just like they had two decades ago. “I really did have the hots for him for so long, but I was too stupid to say anything to him.” She anticipated Olivia’s guilt and added, “And even if you’d told me you’d caught him crying into his pizza lunch, wailing my name, I wouldn’t have had the balls to say anything. I thought it was the boy’s job.”

  Olivia sighed. “I still think it’s the boy’s job.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.” Allie laughed. “So even if you’re right about Noah now, I just don’t have it in me to say anything to him. Especially now that he’s talking about marrying Vickie.” She felt sick at the thought.

  “But that’s exactly why you need to,” Olivia said. “Before it’s too late. Look, I’ve been antilove all my life–”

  “Who could blame you?” Allie asked. A few stepfathers, flaky mother, constantly moving from one part of the country to another. “I would have been, too.”

  “You weren’t, and you were right. I was wrong. No matter what kind of crap relationships my mother had, or how awful it was to spend a childhood at their mercy, it was stupid to conclude that love itself sucked. It was just my mother’s taste that did.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Yeah, finally. Anyway, that’s why I know that you need to talk to Noah and at least give it a shot. Like I said, before it’s too late.”

  “It already is.”

  “No it isn’t, Allie, if you just—”

  “He came by my apartment and told me he can’t see me anymore.”

  “What?”

  Allie nodded, even though Olivia couldn’t see her. And she was glad Olivia couldn’t see her, because she felt like she might cry. “We can’t even be friends anymore.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Ever since he announced he was dating Vickie I’ve been all Eeyore about it. Then when he said he was going to marry her, I reacted like he’d announced he had a terminal illness.”

  “Allie,” Olivia said. “I’m not being a smart-ass here, but isn’t that the way you’ve always been with him? Haven’t you always shot from the hip?”

  It was true. “I guess so.”r />
  “Then why would he suddenly be offended by that?”

  “Because he was never getting married before.”

  “Okay, then tell me this: Why doesn’t he sound happy about getting married?”

  Allie leaped on that. “You’ve noticed that, too?”

  “Yes. It’s really obvious.”

  It stank that Noah seemed unhappy, but Allie was at least a tiny bit relieved that her impression had been true and not just colored by her dislike of Vickie.

  “Then what can we do?”

  “Funny you should ask that,” Olivia said. “Because I think I might have the solution.”

  Now that sounded just like the Olivia of old.

  Actually, it sounded even more like the Allie of old.

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” she said. The solution. Maybe there was a solution. “What is it?”

  “Can you come to New York?”

  “Yes. When? Why?”

  “As soon as possible. And because I have a plan and it might be the only way we can save Noah. And you.”

  “Me?”

  “You know it.”

  Allie swallowed. “How’s this weekend?”

  “Perfect.”

  Eighteen

  This season, beauty is in color.

  —ad for Estée Lauder

  After work on Friday afternoon, which consisted of a bunch of dull but profitable proofreading for a defense firm downtown, Allie drove to her parents’ house to wait out rush hour before driving to Olivia’s in New York.

  Maybe it was everything that was going on, maybe it was the fact that she was about to have a “sleepover” with Olivia for the first time in twenty years, and maybe it was just the old Madonna song playing on the radio when she got in the car, but by the time Allie pulled up in front of the brick Colonial she’d grown up in, her mood was terribly melancholy.

  The storm door was open when she arrived, like the warm glow of a candlewick. The lights were on inside. Straight ahead she could see the shadows of her mother’s movements in the kitchen, and to the left there was the flicker of the TV lights. Her dad watching ESPN, undoubtedly, and waiting for dinner.