Hope in a Jar

by Beth Harbison

  She walked right in, just like always. “What’s for dinner?” she asked as she walked into the kitchen and saw the steaming pot on the stove.

  “Five-cheese penne. Are you staying?” her mom asked.

  She loved that. It was a Barefoot Contessa recipe and it would blow her points off the chart today, but she’d been saving up for a special occasion. “Yes, please.”

  “I thought you were off to New York.”

  Allie reached for the hunk of Parmigiano Reggiano her mother had to the side of the stove and pulled off a piece. “I thought I’d pass the time here until rush hour is over.” She popped the cheese into her mouth, where it melted into pure flavor like only the best Parmesan can.

  “Good thinking.” Peggy poured the penne into the pot. “So what’s behind this trip anyway?”

  “Nothing’s behind it. I’m just going to see Olivia.”

  “Whom you haven’t seen or talked to in years. Then, suddenly, when Noah’s getting married you two are close as peas in a pod again.” Peggy raised an eyebrow. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, honey. But I know my girl well enough to know when something is going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on, Mom.”

  “All right.” Peggy ladled some chicken stock into the pot and stirred.

  “Nothing bad, anyway.”

  “That’s a relief. Hand me the cheese, would you?”

  Allie handed her the block of cheese and watched her shave it over a microplane into the pot. “I just don’t think Noah should marry Vickie.”

  “So you’ve said.” Her mother raised an eyebrow again. “Is there more to it now?”

  Of course. “I think I have feelings for him. I think . . . I might really have feelings for him.”

  Peggy set the cheese down, wiped her hands on her apron, and looked at Allie. “It’s about time you figured that out.”

  “Am I the only one who’s just finding out?”

  Peggy gave a laugh. “Allison, Noah has come by every Thanksgiving dinner, every Christmas morning, every family cookout for the past I don’t know how many years unless one of you was with someone else at the time. No matter what else happens, or who else you have a relationship with, you always come back to each other.”

  “But we never . . . did anything.”

  Peggy shrugged. “I’m not speculating as to whether you did or not. I just know you’ve spent more time with each other than a lot of married couples. Then when things ended with Kevin, you were angry but you didn’t really seem upset. But as soon as Noah got engaged you were moping around, crying all the time.”

  It was all true. “But do you think I’m just jealous?”

  “Actually no, I don’t.”

  She was strangely relieved to hear her mother say that. It was like validation. Proof that this was real.

  “I don’t, either.”

  “So the question is, what are you going to do about it? Are you trying to stop him from marrying Victoria?”

  “I’ve got to try.”

  “And if you can’t? Have you thought about what you’ll do then?”

  “No. I can’t think about that.” It must have been the effects of being home, because without any warning at all, Allie began to cry.

  “Oh, honey.” Her mother put warm arms around her. Suddenly it didn’t matter how old she was, it felt like her mom could fix anything. “Then you do what you need to do.”

  A few hours later, on the road to New York, what Allie had to do was dial Noah’s number twice—with star 67 each time for anonymity—just to hear his voice before hanging up and disappearing back into the night and the New Jersey Turnpike.

  “I’m going to Aunt Cassandra’s tonight,” Caroline said, shortly after Olivia got home from work. “Do you want to join me?”

  Olivia dropped her keys and purse on the table in the foyer and headed for the kitchen, where her mother was sitting and writing up some sort of list. “You’re going to Aunt Cassandra’s again?”

  “Mm-hm. She wanted some help going through her clothes and donating the ones she doesn’t wear anymore to charity.”

  This didn’t compute. “That’s great, Mom, but I don’t get it.” She took the coffee out of the freezer. “You can’t stand Aunt Cassandra, yet you’re going over there like two, sometimes three times a week all of a sudden.”

  Caroline sighed. “We have had our share of disagreements in the past, that’s true, and she can be a callous old goat.”

  “But . . . ?” She put coffee into the filter.

  “Oh, I don’t know. She needs the help.”

  “She can hire the help.” Olivia put water in the machine, pushed start and turned to face her mother. “Come on, I know there’s more to this. What has she got on you?”

  “As far as I know, nothing.” Caroline laughed. “But I wouldn’t be completely surprised if she came up with something.”

  “I’ll bet she has an entire dossier.”

  “Olivia, that’s not quite fair.”

  “I cannot believe you’re my mother.” Maybe coffee wasn’t strong enough, she thought, as it started to percolate. “Seriously, what have you done with Caroline?”

  Caroline smiled. “People change.”

  Olivia poured her coffee into a mug and took it to the table, sitting down and taking a moment to assimilate this. There was something her mother wasn’t saying. “I seriously doubt she’s going to put you in her will at this point.”

  Caroline looked so genuinely surprised that Olivia immediately felt terrible for having said it.

  “I wouldn’t dream of accepting a penny from her,” Caroline said, practically clutching her pearls. “I can’t believe you’d suggest such a thing! You are the sole heir to that fortune.”

  “Me?”

  “Of course. Cassandra never had children and you are your father’s only child, so naturally the family inheritance goes to you.” Caroline took a demitasse cup from the cabinet—she’d purchased them herself a few days ago—and poured herself a thimbleful of the coffee. “Who did you think would get it?”

  “I never thought about it.” Ever. She’d never thought about the money. All she’d ever thought about with regard to her father was that she wished she could remember something, anything, about him. He’d died when she was about eighteen months old, and though her mother had never talked much about him, it was Olivia’s impression that her father was different from her subsequent stepfathers.

  Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but she wished she’d known the one good man in her and her mother’s lives.

  “Perhaps you should start thinking about it,” Caroline said, then took a dainty sip. “An inheritance that size will need some clever investing. You should be prepared.”

  “I have a feeling Aunt Cassandra is more the I’m-leaving-it-all-to-my-cat sort.”

  Caroline shook her head. “She can be stern, but she’s not crazy.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Also, she hates cats.”

  Olivia sighed. “That figures.”

  “Anyway, I think I may stay overnight, so don’t wait up for me.”

  “Overnight,” Olivia echoed. “You and Aunt Cassandra are having a slumber party?”

  Caroline sighed. “The charity truck is coming for the pickup first thing in the morning. I can check that they make out the charitable donation slip correctly.”

  This was just hard to picture on so many levels. “That’s a shame. You’ll miss Allie.”

  Caroline took another sip and set her cup down. “I thought you two might enjoy being alone after all this time.”

  “That’s nice of you.” Olivia got up and refilled her coffee cup. “I think we might be up late.”

  “And what will you two be doing tomorrow?”

  “I’m hoping Allie will take me up on some of the appointments I’ve set up for her.” And she really hoped Allie wouldn’t be insulted that she’d done it. “Meanwhile, I’ll be at work.”

  “Olivia Pelham,
you cannot work another weekend! I’ve been here a month and you have taken exactly four days off in that time. That’s not healthy.”

  Olivia shrugged. “I love my work.” She did, she loved her work. It kept her from having to ponder all of the questions other single women her age were pondering. New York was a big city, with lots of people, but it was probably the crappiest place in the world to date.

  Luckily for Olivia, she didn’t have to think about that right now.

  She could worry about that later.

  “It’s funny, but you used to say that about school, too, to the exclusion of almost everything else.”

  “I did?”

  Caroline nodded. “Even when you were young and carefree and should have been boy crazy, you always said you’d rather do your homework.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She had said that. And when the choice had been homework or hanging out with her mother and Donald, homework had won every time. “I guess I’ve always had a good work ethic.”

  Caroline looked unconvinced. “Or maybe you just like hiding from real life. In any event, I hope you won’t leave your friend sitting here alone in the apartment while you toil.”

  Olivia laughed at the mental picture of her toiling. “No, Mom, I won’t.” With the class-A treatments she’d set up, Allie was going to be busier than she was.

  Fortunately her mother let the conversation drop there, but Olivia kept thinking about it long after her mother left. There was some truth to her mother’s contention: From an early age she had learned she could dive into the things that were expected of her—school, work, homework—and thereby escape the stuff that she found truly hard: socializing, friendships, boyfriends.

  In fact, if it hadn’t been for Allie, Olivia might never have come out of that shell.

  Interesting. She’d never looked at it that way. Despite the problems they’d had in the end, Allie had contributed quite a bit to what Olivia’s life had eventually become.

  “I can’t believe you’re really here,” Olivia said over wine and cheese at eleven o’clock that night.

  They were sitting in Olivia’s opulent living room. One entire wall was full of windows looking over the Upper East Side. It was gorgeous. Allie kept worrying that she’d spill something on the snow-white sofa or carpet, but she loved the feeling of sitting in the middle of someone else’s glamorous life.

  “Me, neither,” Allie said, leaning back against the plush sofa cushions. “This is all sort of surreal.”

  “In a way, we have Vickie to thank for this.”

  “True.” It was a sad thought but to the point. A long moment passed before Allie screwed up the nerve to ask, “Do you think we should talk about what happened?” She was testing cold waters with one timid toe.

  She’d thought for a long time she needed to nudge the issue, because they were talking again, forming a tentative friendship. But, on the other hand, she wondered if it might not be smarter just to let that sleeping bear lie.

  “What happened? You mean back in high school?”

  Allie nodded.

  Olivia sighed and looked toward the windows. Clearly it wasn’t something she particularly wanted to leap into, either. “We could, but what would be the point? We were both young. I really can’t blame you for what happened. We were seventeen. I heaped a big, heavy secret on you and expected you to be more mature than most adults I know.”

  Allie bristled. Old feelings still lingered in her psyche like tea leaves left in a cup. “Listen, Olivia, I don’t want to hammer the point or defend something so old it’s no longer relevant, but I have to say this: I honestly didn’t tell anyone.”

  Olivia looked at her with sad eyes, as if she’d expected this denial but didn’t buy it. “What can I say to that?”

  “I don’t know. I know why it’s hard for you to believe. To this day I wonder how everyone found out. It’s like one of the great mysteries of my life, but I swear to you, Olivia, it didn’t come from me.”

  There was a very long silence. Allie filled the time by slicing off a piece of the Brie she shouldn’t have been eating.

  “I’ve thought about it, too,” Olivia said. She worked her hands nervously in her lap. This was still a hot issue for her, but who could blame her? “Maybe I wasn’t as discreet as I thought I was.”

  “What do you mean?” Had she told someone else? Who? Who else could she possibly have trusted as much as she’d trusted Allie at the time?

  Olivia set her wine down. “We talked about it in between classes at school, do you remember?”

  “Of course.” How could she forget?

  “In the bathroom.”

  “Right.”

  Olivia shrugged. “Obviously we weren’t shouting, but I suppose it’s possible someone overheard in the hall.”

  “It would have to be someone pretty evil to go spreading it around. You were so upset.”

  “I don’t know about evil, necessarily. Just crappy. There are as many crappy people as nice ones in high school.” Olivia swallowed and lifted her wineglass again, with a hand that shook slightly. “Let’s change the subject and let that one rest finally.”

  “Okay.” Allie wondered if it was really going to rest, and if Olivia really believed her, but she knew better than to push the issue right now. She’d said what she needed to say and she believed she’d finally been heard. “Let’s talk about your life in New York.”

  Olivia shook her head, but a light came into her eye. “Better still, let’s talk about your life in New York.”

  Allie raised an eyebrow. “The reason you told me I had to cancel everything, no matter what, and come as soon as possible.”

  Olivia smiled. “Exactly.”

  “Hit me with it, I’m ready. What’s the plan?”

  “You are going to have a makeover. Now, before you get all up in arms, thinking I’m saying you need one, let me just say that, for all the times you did it for me, I thought I owed you one. Here you’ve lost all this weight—”

  “Only twelve pounds.” Allie was thrilled with twelve pounds gone, but the battle was far from over. She was well aware that she was the only one celebrating when her jeans were fractionally easier to button.

  “Here you’ve lost all this weight,” Olivia stressed again, “so I think it’s time you treat yourself.”

  “That’s so nice of you,” Allie said, but she was still puzzled. There was more to this. And as much as she wanted to enjoy this time with Olivia after so long, she felt cautious. It wasn’t that she was necessarily picking up on a hesitation from Olivia so much as she was afraid to trust this, to truly give herself to it, in case it didn’t work.

  She’d lost Olivia as a friend once before and it had hurt like hell. Good as it felt to start to share confidences with her again, it wasn’t worth it if it was all going to end up going down the drain again.

  “It’s nothing,” Olivia said, her voice betraying no hidden agendas or volatile feelings. “I’ve got all these resources but I very rarely have anyone who would appreciate them. You used to be the makeover queen, so I thought you’d get a kick out of it.”

  Allie smiled. “And how does this save Noah?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Your plan was to save Noah. And me. How does it save Noah for me to get a haircut?”

  The question remained suspended in the air for a moment before Olivia’s posture sank and she gave in and told the truth.

  “Because I know you guys have the hots for each other, even though you have remained mysteriously unaware of that fact, and I think if you had the confidence you should have, you might be a little more open to the idea.”

  Allie laughed.

  “It’s the truth,” Olivia insisted. “People have all kinds of ways to boost their confidence; I’m not saying my way is the only way, but you”—she gestured with her wine—“are a makeup and hair girl. That’s the key to your happiness, and I can give you that.”

  “Who says that’s the key to my happiness?”

  “Oh,
Allison Denty, it has always been the key to your happiness. You were never more joyful than when you were leaving Montgomery Mall with a Woolworth’s bag full of Aziza, Maybelline, and Flame-Glo.”

  There was no point in denying it. The mere memory of it made her feel warm. “It’s true.”

  “Remember that time we bought Village Naturals beer shampoo and sat by the penny fountain pretending we were drinking beer?”

  Allie gasped. “And that old woman walked by and actually wagged her finger at us and yelled at us for drinking beer!”

  “Right!”

  Allie closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. “That was about the coolest I ever felt,” she said sincerely. Then, “That’s sad, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Olivia agreed. “But as nervous as I was that she was going to call my mom or Donald, I also felt cool.”

  “We were such losers.” Allie laughed.

  “But we had fun!”

  “We did.” Allie took a moment to linger in that misty feeling of the past before saying, “And now here we are in cahoots all over again. Only this time, you’re the one with the plan. What do you want me to do?”

  “Glad you asked,” Olivia said, getting right back to business, though this time with a smile in her voice. “Because you have the hard part.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “You have to go to Noah and tell him the truth about how you feel.”

  Nineteen

  Lighten your hair and light up your life.

  —ad for Clairol Balsam Color

  “Remember that green face mask we used to get?” Olivia asked as she unlocked the door to her office on Saturday evening.

  Allie had spent the day at the stylist, getting cut, highlighted, colored, styled, and tipsy from all the free champagne they’d served. Then she and Olivia had had a long and fattening dinner at Patsy’s restaurant and had just enough garlic and wine in them to keep going a few more hours.