Olivia
Page 35
“You know what?” Carla asked, and dug through the pictures on the bed. “I think I’ve got a picture here somewhere that you might want. It’s old but… Oh, I hope I still have it…”
Carla gave up on the pictures in front of them and went into her overflowing closet. Boxes of clothes and cards and shoes got pushed aside as she dug her way toward the back wall. Finally, she pulled out an old, dusty and worn, orange Payless Shoe Source shoebox. She dumped the contents into the bed and sifted through pictures and postcards a handful at a time until she found the one she wanted.
“I shoulda gave this to you a long time ago.” She handed it to Olivia, and Olivia gasped.
“Oh my god, Carla…” she managed to say, but then couldn’t speak.
The picture was of her and Eugene when she was maybe three. Her hair was combed away from her face and pinned in little, pink plastic barrettes. Eugene’s hair was darker, his face a little fuller, his glasses quite a bit bigger but not nearly as thick as the ones he wore now.
It was nighttime, and she sat on Eugene’s lap with her back to his chest. Both of their faces pointed to the sky in exactly the same way, and both of them were smiling the exact same smile of amazement. It was Eugene’s fireworks smile, and judging from the vivid colors playing across their faces that was exactly what they were smiling at.
Olivia let out a long breath and clutched the picture to her heart. She finally had back what Mitch had stolen from her.
Tears came to her eyes and she mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
“My pleasure, sugar,” Carla said and pulled her in for a hug. Olivia decided right then and there that she was going to have Carla adopt her. She didn’t care that she was too old.
Olivia wiped her eyes and looked at the picture again, mesmerized by Eugene’s smile. “Who did my hair?”
“Who do you think did your hair? Eugene did,” Carla said as if it were obvious.
“Really?” Olivia asked in surprise.
Carla looked up at Olivia’s hair and said, “Maybe you should go take him a comb and see if he can help you out again.”
“Yeah, probably should.” Olivia laughed and rolled her eyes at herself.
“He was a good dad, Liv,” Carla said. “A real good dad.”
“He still is,” Olivia agreed, and Carla patted her cheek.
As soon as she got home, Olivia framed the photo and placed it on the nightstand right next to her alarm clock so she could say goodnight to her dad every night before she went to sleep, just like she used to.
* * *
On a Friday evening in early July, Olivia came home from work and found George sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, deep in thought. A bottle of beer sat beside his elbow. It was fresh from the fridge, sweating from the humidity the air conditioner couldn’t quite cut from the summer heat seeping into the apartment. A handful of empties sat around his half-eaten and forgotten dinner. He didn’t turn when she walked in. Wherever he was, he was far away.
“You’re home early,” she said. She’d kept her voice low to keep from startling him, but she’d startled him just the same. His shoulders jumped as he lifted his head from his hands, and she apologized.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” he said, his tone apologetic as well.
She dropped her purse by the door and crossed the room to him. “Is everything ok?”
“Yeah.” He lifted his beer and took a drink as he motioned her over to him. He pulled her into his lap and offered her the bottle, then lifted a crumbled but smoothed out piece of paper from the table. “I got a letter in the mail today.”
“Who’s it from?” she asked after she swallowed.
“Nick.”
“Oh…” That explained the abuse the paper had sustained. She took another drink, then set the beer down slow and took the letter from his hand. Her eyes scanned the page but she couldn’t focus on the blue-ink printed words. Her attention had instead been drawn to a picture lying on the table. When she picked it up, George let out a sigh and his arms tightened around her.
“Their adoption went through,” he said.
She slipped her free hand around George, rubbing his shoulders and the back of his neck in comfort. She recognized Nick immediately as the man she had talked to at the casino, the same man as the one who had been in the picture she had found in George’s desk drawer a lifetime ago. The other man looked familiar as well, tickling her memory. “He’s the drummer, right?”
His voice came out in a whispered exhale when he said, “Yeah… Michael.”
Nick and Michael were sitting close, posed with a baby of about six months old between them. All three were smiling for the camera. There was no mistaking the joy in the two men’s faces, but Nick’s grin was the biggest of them all.
“He looks happy,” Olivia said.
“He does,” George agreed.
She set the picture down and turned in his arms to place a kiss at his temple, then allowed her lips to linger against his skin. “I’m sorry, George.”
George held her tighter. “Don’t be sorry. I’m happy for him.”
“I’m sorry he wrote you,” she said to clarify what she had meant. She ran her fingers through the hair above his ear and kissed his temple again.
He closed his eyes and leaned into her kiss. “I’m not.”
“Are you still in love with him?”
“In love?” George picked up the letter, his eyes tracking across the page as he re-read a line or two. “No. Not in love… I think I’ll always love him, though. He was my first love. For that reason alone he’ll always be special. You know?”
“I do,” she whispered.
“But as I read this letter, and re-read it, I think I finally came to realize he doesn’t control my heart anymore.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“A very good thing.” He tossed the letter aside and inhaled a deep breath as he scooted the chair, and them, farther away from the table. He smiled the first real smile she’d seen him wear in too long a time. “Let’s go on vacation.”
Olivia laughed. “We can’t afford to go on vacation. A trip to the zoo, maybe, but not a real vacation.”
“Sure we can. I have some money saved up, and I can’t think of a memory I’d rather spend it on than one made with you.”
A wave of guilt washed over her and tears threatened as she cupped his face in her hands. His jaw was shadowed in prickly stubble, his eyes tired. How long had he looked so tired? He’d been fighting a bit of a summer cold, and it had worn him down, but was that what was showing on his face? Or was his exhaustion new, born from the letter and the beers? Was it from something else entirely? How long it had been since she’d focused her undivided attention on him?
Too long. And he deserved better than that.
“You’re too good to me,” she said on a whisper.
“I know,” he teased with a wink, and that easy way he loved her only made her guilt intensify.
She kissed him in apology. She owed him a million more apologies, delivered in a million different ways, but she started with just one kiss, and then she smiled, the first real smile she had felt like smiling in too long a time. “Well, all right then. Where do you want to go?”
“I was thinking the ocean,” George said. “Maybe do some surfing and snorkeling. Play in the waves and make love in the hot sand.”
Of course he would pick something athletic to do. “Mmm… that all sounds good, especially the making love part, but seeing how I don’t know how to swim, you might be doing some of that by yourself.”
“You don’t know how to swim?” he asked in surprise.
She blushed in embarrassment and shrugged. “We live in Nebraska. I never saw the need to learn.”
He laughed. “You never went wading in the river?”
“Where the fish poop?” She shuddered. “As if.”
He laughed harder. “What about the pool at the park?”
“Full of pee.”
“I guess you don’t.” She smiled.
“Favorite flavor of ice cream?” he asked, rekindling the game they had played once before, but he cut her off before she could answer. “Never mind. I already know—all of them.”
“Every single one.” She laughed as he nibbled on her neck.
“Ok, how about this… How many kids do you want?” he asked.
“Two-point-five,” she answered automatically. “But you knew that, too.”
“A boy and a girl and a baby on the way,” he said, reciting what she had always thought in her mind, but had never said aloud.
“How many do you want?” she asked, surprised to realize she had never thought to ask him before.
“I don’t know. I hadn’t given much thought to the number,” he said, his voice turning serious. He took her hand in his, his thumb playing along her eternity ring. “I guess I always saw myself more as a foster parent than having one or two of my own.”
She threaded their fingers together. “We should look into it.”
“Someday. When the time is right.” He lifted their hands and kissed the back of hers. “The inevitability of all those goodbyes scares the hell out of me.”
“Yeah, but there’s a lot of hellos to be had.”
“True.”
“And think of all the grandkids you dad could teach how to golf.”
His voice came from far away when he said, “He’d be in heaven.”
“I kinda got the impression he’s in heaven whenever he’s around you.” She stroked the hair at the nape of his neck. He’d skipped a haircut, and she’d just now noticed. Where the hell had she been that she’d missed these little things? “He loves you, George. All of you.”
He lifted his eyes to meet hers, and as they sat still in silent communication, she studied the flecks of color in his irises. They were brown on the surface, but if you truly looked, you could see the darker, outer circle surrounding inner golds and hints of green, the squiggle of lines that looked almost black, the pupils that reacted to his emotions as telling as they reacted to the light. He wore a faint scar just below his left eyebrow where he had taken a hockey stick to the face when he was eleven-years old. As she traced it with the edge of her thumb, he closed his eyes to her touch.
“Do you miss having a Nick in your life?” she asked in whisper.
After a long pause, without opening his eyes, he asked, “Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
One heartbeat passed, and then another before he opened his eyes. When he did, she traced his nose, and ran her thumb along his cheekbone, trailed down to his chin, and memorized every freckle, every dip, every bump, every hair, every pore, individual and together, the parts and the whole. By not answering, he had answered, but he hadn’t needed to do even that. She had already known. They didn’t need to play Twenty Questions.
“New Orleans,” she said.
“The birthplace of jazz.” He smiled. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
She traced the crinkles of skin his smile had created around his eyes. They would be permanent lines some day. His hair would go grey. A liver spot would pop up here or there. His ears would grow, or maybe his nose. Maybe both. All those tiny little changes would only make him even more beautiful than he already was. He was truly gorgeous, inside and out, in every single way, and her time with him was slipping away. She needed to slow it down, truly breathe in every moment of it.
As though he sensed it too, he said, “Let’s not fly. Let’s drive and take our time.”
“Take the back roads,” she said. “Stay in seedy motels and eat crap food.”
“Buy ridiculous souvenirs and take thousands and thousands of pictures,” he said.
“Polaroids,” she decided. “Of everything we see.”
“We’ll take one for me, and one for you.”
“And we’ll take a third to leave behind for someone else to find.”
“Let’s go tonight. Right now.”
“And let’s not pack. Let’s just go.”
“Right now.” He smiled.
“Right now,” she agreed.
And they went.
Chapter Twenty
On an unbearably-muggy Saturday afternoon in the middle of August, Olivia and Mel got a quickie divorce and Mel and Carl Jr. got married again, this time in the little, white church on Chicory Street instead of the Pizza Hut. Carl Jr. had failed to get paroled back in January, but thanks to the regular time he started to spend with the minister who visited the jail every day, he finally figured out that he had done something wrong, and became remorseful. He was awarded parole the last week of June and came out of prison clean and sober, twenty pounds heavier and born again. Olivia hoped for Mel’s sake that this time he was serious about straightening out his life.
After the wedding, the guests burst from the church and pooled in the street, pausing to gossip and reminisce and enjoy a bit of sunshine before breaking off in smaller groups to make their way around the corner to celebrate at Kitty’s. Clete and Allie missed the wedding, but they came to the reception. Olivia swore Allie had grown a full foot taller since she had seen her last, and Allie gave Olivia the best hug Olivia had ever received in her life.
They sat together at dinner and Allie taught Olivia how to fold a napkin into a duck, then they danced together and Olivia taught Allie the Cupid Shuffle. Allie asked Olivia if she could start coming over for dinner again and, for lack of a better answer, Olivia said maybe. There was no way to explain to a child that she couldn’t come for dinner because she was in love with the host, so she didn’t even try.
Over a year had passed since Olivia had first met Clete in the middle of the road in the middle of that Northside neighborhood. While that didn’t seem like a lot of time compared to the rest of her life, it was massive in terms of Allie’s. Olivia would blink and the braids would be gone, the cute, crooked smile would be straightened, and Allie would be making her own mistakes in the back of a Camry or behind the bleachers on the football field. And Olivia wouldn’t be there to offer support or advice or a shoulder to cry on when any of it happened. She bit back a tear and pasted on a smile and enjoyed her precious time with her little girl while it lasted.
The party lasted late into the night and Olivia spent as much time as she could on the dance floor. She danced with George and with Sam and Kenny and John. Carl Jr. wasn’t much of a dancer so she only did one awkward two-step with him, and then scratched him off her dance card. George kept her moving and kept her full of drink and kept her in his arms.
As they were slow dancing to K-Ci and JoJo, she caught Clete’s eye as he watched her from across the room. A blush rose up her neck and her face felt flush and she had to look away. But her eyes kept drifting back to meet his, which never left her.
She hadn’t seen him in months, but her heart pounded in her chest as if they had kissed a moment earlier. She could feel his hand on the back of her neck and taste the remnants of left-over chocolate cake on his lips. Her knees grew weak as if his breath still blew hot on her neck. She could feel his skin under her fingertips and smell his distinct scent—slightly spicy with a hint of coffee and car exhaust and the heavy dose of testosterone that only comes from working alongside other testosterone-filled men all day long.
The color of his skin had deepened with a tan, his sandy blonde hair a little longer than normal and slightly bleached from the sun, and she wondered if it was from working on his house or if he played baseball for the Juliette men’s senior league. There was so much about him that she didn’t know and she desperately wanted to know all of it, every single silly bit.
“Would you mind if I dance the next one with Clete?” Olivia asked George. The question had come out on its own, tumbling off her tongue before she could stop it.
“Not at all.” George held her a little
bit closer as they finished their song. She closed her eyes and kept her cheek pressed against his, their bodies moving in perfection as they danced, and she lived in the moment with George for one moment longer.
When the last note played, George kissed her lightly as he let her go, and told her to have a good time. She didn’t look back as she moved across the room. She couldn’t have if she wanted to. She felt as though she were being pulled, her feet moving on their own accord, her heart leading her body. Even so, she moved slowly, careful not to rush so she wouldn’t fall.
“You look beautiful tonight,” Clete said as she approached him with a glass of wine in her hand. She had no idea where it had come from, whose it had been, but she took a sip if it to calm her rapidly beating heart.
“Thank you.”
Her dress was simple and pale blue, and flowed across her hips. She chose it because it had flared out when she spun in front of the three-way mirror in the dressing room at Penneys and it had made George smile. Her hair had been curled and pinned in butterfly clips earlier in the day, but the butterflies had long since flown away and her hair had fallen into a mess across her shoulders and into her eyes. Her shoes were under a table somewhere and if she never saw them again she wouldn’t mind because they pinched her toes when she walked. The only jewelry she wore was the eternity ring on her left hand and the Daffy Duck watch that no longer kept time on her right wrist.
“You look pretty good yourself,” Olivia said. Other than the sadness in his eyes, Clete looked amazing in his suit and tie with his nose lightly sunburned and a slight spattering of freckles across his cheeks that she hadn’t noticed before. The blue of his eyes brightened into sky when she smiled at him.
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out between you and Mel,” Clete said with a wink.
“We’re just two people moving in opposite directions.” Olivia sighed with a theatrical wave of her glass. She sipped her wine and gazed into Clete’s baby blues. People milled about them and talked and laughed and danced, but Olivia only saw Clete and only heard his heartbeat. “Are you going to ask me to dance?”