Olivia

by Donna Sturgeon

  “Would you care to dance with me, Olivia?” Clete asked.

  “Yes.”

  Clete lifted the wine glass out of her hand and set it on the jukebox. The DJ and Limp Bizkit were jamming out “Rollin’” over the loud speakers, and the drunken wedding guests were jumping around and slamming into each other on the dance floor as they sang along, but when Olivia’s hand slipped into Clete’s, the noise and craziness faded away. The lights in the room dimmed, candles in the corners lit, and they were lost alone in a world of their own making. He stepped into her and she placed her hand on his shoulder as Nat King Cole appeared on stage in front of the string section.

  As the violins began, Nat stepped up to the microphone, and the inner music that had been missing from Olivia’s life for so long returned with the director’s cue. Nat serenaded Clete and Olivia with “Illusion,” and as they danced a slow and beautiful waltz, the room disappeared and gave way to something magically real.

  Soft, dewy grass sprouted under Olivia’s bare feet, tickling her toes as the air became heavy with the sweet scent of wisteria and Clete led Olivia around the moonlit garden in a heavenly dance. The musical interlude between each verse lasted a lifetime so Clete could hold Olivia in his arms forever. Her heart had known pain and longing, as well as George’s passionate, unconditional love, but something about the way her heart felt as Clete slipped inside during that dance was new and beautiful and made her feel like the woman she had been born to be.

  She could see their future together as clear as day as it played before her like an old-time motion picture projecting on the leaves of the trees and the bushes and flickering against the night sky. They would love. They would marry. They would stay up late at night, lying in bed, whispering and laughing, debating and contemplating, and love making. They would dance and argue and dream and reminisce. They would cry, and they would mourn.

  His skin would get leathery, his legs thin and his knees boney. She would get softer and fuller, and her back would start to curve downward. Time would speed up year after year as they raced from one milestone to the next, one memory to the next, until finally time would all but stop as their days filled with overly-loud television and meals of Campbell’s soup and not talking but not needing to because they had already said it all a hundred times before.

  And, one day, one of them would wake up and the other wouldn’t. But it would be ok because the other would follow soon enough and they would be together again. It was a forever thing that they shared, an indelible love promised in every whispered beat of their hearts as Clete held her in his arms.

  As the song came to an end, his lips met hers. Clete’s kiss was warm and sweet and promised her a lifetime of every dream come true. She could see it all, she could feel it all, and it was right where she was supposed to be. When the music inevitably ended along with their kiss, he spun her out slow and delicate and let her go with a nod of his head as a bow. He disappeared into the mist without looking back, knowing she would soon follow.

  When George and Olivia got home that night, Olivia stood in the middle of the living room and looked out the sliding doors, onto the balcony and beyond to the night sky. The stars were twinkling brighter than ever before, almost as though they were encouraging her on. She had to do it, but she didn’t know how, and she was scared.

  George came up behind her and lifted her hair away from her neck. His lips were soft as they played along her skin to her ear where he whispered, “I wish you could see how beautiful you and Clete are when you dance.”

  “George…” She breathed out as tears came to her eyes. She couldn’t say it. Simply saying his name broke her heart.

  “I already know, Baby Girl. I’ve known for a long time now.” His hands slid across her shoulders and down her arms, traveling slow as he turned her around. “I’d hoped I was wrong, but when I saw you two together tonight I knew I wasn’t.” He tipped her chin so she would look into his eyes. “You’re in love with him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “What if I’m wrong?” she started, faltered. “What if he doesn’t…?”

  “Oh, but he does.” George’s eyes softened, tears glistening as he held her face in his hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. “He’s loved you for a very long time now.”

  Olivia placed one hand over George’s heart as she cupped his face in the palm of the other, and he closed his eyes at her touch.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “Don’t ever be sorry for falling in love.”

  She nodded, and the tears came pouring down.

  “We all have to grow up sometime, Baby Girl, and this is your time. Someday soon I will, too. I can feel it coming, and I’m more than ready for it now—because of you.”

  He drew in a deep breath and brushed her hair back, a smile on his lips as he pressed them to her forehead. When he pulled away, she looked down at her hand and started working off the eternity ring he had given her for their future. Her tears had turned into a river. Through them the diamonds sparkled as bright and clear as the stars in the night sky.

  He took her hand in his. “Please don’t. When I bought this for you I knew in my heart this was not our lifetime to share together, but the beautiful thing about eternity is it never ends.” He slipped the ring back into place. “We came close this time, Baby Girl—so close—but it’s not quite right yet. What we had was a little peek in the window of the lifetime we’re destined to share, sometime in the future, when it circles around again, and I know without a doubt that when that time comes, it will be absolute.”

  She couldn’t pull her eyes away from his ring. It fit her so perfectly in every single way she wished it was their lifetime to share. It had seemed so true. “What if I come back as a Dalmatian next time?”

  “Then I hope to God I’m not a cat.” George smiled through his tears.

  “I want you to keep Kitty’s. She was always yours.”

  “No, Liv. I couldn’t do that.”

  “Please? For me?”

  “Will you still come in every once in awhile and dance with me?” he asked.

  “Every night,” she promised. “You won’t be able to kick me out. You’re my Jack…”

  “My beautiful Diane…” He brushed her hair away from her face and kissed her with unrestrained passion as tears slid down his cheeks and mixed with hers. He was saying goodbye in that kiss, but she wasn’t ready to let him go. Not yet.

  “Dance with me, Georgie,” she whispered. “One last time.”

  He was silent but for a moan as he unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor. His hands skimmed down her sides and her hips began to move against his. They didn’t need music to find their rhythm. They only needed to listen to their hearts.

  For the final time, in the low light of the moon, Olivia’s hips moved in perfection with George’s and their hearts beat as one as he danced her in a slow, private dance that would last them a lifetime apart until they were destined to be together again.

  * * *

  Olivia’s heart went into mourning over the loss of George. While it struggled to heal, she lived with Carla and Eugene. The house was as silent as the silence Olivia remembered from her childhood, but this time it was a silence that she didn’t have the urge to try and fill. It was a full, vibrant, pulsing silence, alive with the love that Carla and Eugene felt for each other.

  They slept in separate rooms, and Olivia never saw them as much as touch hands, let alone kiss, but the more time she spent with them, the more she knew with certainty that Eugene and Carla had made love to each other in their own special way, and would continue to do so for the rest of their lives. What they had was a forever thing, as well, and it was as beautiful as it was complete.

  Carla was more than just the woman who erased the empty corners of Eugene’s world. She also filled the gaping holes in Olivia’s. Carla was the mother Olivia had been waiting her entire life to meet. She listened, she comforted, sh
e advised, she scolded and she loved unconditionally. She gently wiped Olivia’s tears and erased her doubts and strengthened her confidence. Carla portrayed every characteristic of the kind of mother Olivia wanted to be one day, and her heart took careful notes and tucked them away, keeping them safe and saving them for the future.

  The three of them made up an odd little family, but they were the perfect family for Olivia, created in a very unique way. As Olivia had always suspected, Camille Marie Logan was not her mother. She had simply been the vessel of creation, crossing the boundaries of time and space, bearing in the past the child born from Eugene and Carla’s love for each other in the present. God did want Carla to be a mother after all, and when He decided the time was right, He gave her a child who was fully-potty trained and old enough to drive her to the liquor store.

  * * *

  The nights grew longer, the days a little colder, as summer slipped into fall. On an overcast day not long after the leaves had started to change color, Olivia pulled on a sweatshirt and went for a walk. Her heart still ached with every step, but as she placed one foot in front of the other and traveled the road, she discovered she had remembered how to breathe.

  She drew in a deep, cleaning breath of the crisp autumn air, slipped her earbuds into her ears, and hit shuffle on her iPod. As she walked up and down the old familiar streets, she felt as though her eyes were opening to a South that was different than the one she had seen all of her life, and she kind of liked what she saw. The meat-packing-plant-scented air didn’t smell any sweeter, the rabid dogs charging at her from behind rusted, chain link fences were still as ferocious as they had been the day before. The train whistle still blew its long, lonesome song every eight minutes without fail, but as she walked she realized it was all part of her, part of what made her Olivia, and it was all ok.

  She wandered down the Valley View lane, to Lot 14, where she had once lived, a lifetime ago. The shell of her 1950-something Atlas mobile home was gone, replaced by a doublewide, the once-scorched ground still scarred in places but blanketed in green everywhere it had already healed. Another spring, another summer, and the land would have all but forgotten about the fire. But she never would. Its heat had made her stronger.

  She passed by Mitch’s apartment as well. Whether or not he was still living there, she couldn’t tell. The curtains in the windows were different, but he may have been the one who had changed them. The charges against him had been dropped, the evidence insufficient, but she knew what he had done, and so did he. It would be his burden to carry, one that would either tear him down or make him stronger. It was up to him to control which way his fire burned. Olivia had burdens of her own to carry from their relationship, but they didn’t weigh her down. She looked up at the curtains dancing in the breeze and wished him well, and then she turned her back on him for the final time and officially put that part of her life behind her.

  As she headed deeper into South, she took the reins as director of her own life’s movie, and scrolled through her iPod. After a few false starts, she found Gary Allen’s melancholy “Life Ain’t Always Beautiful” fitting to play as the backdrop of her journey. The pace of the music controlled the pace of her walk, the color of the song blending seamlessly with the cloudy skies and the cool, damp concrete, with the splashes of vibrancy coming from the spattering of mums tucked into planters and the graffiti decorating the buildings along the way. The South surrounding her was grey, drab in places, but it was alive, the pulse of it steady with enduring optimism. Its perseverance was a thing of unrivaled beauty, and for the very first time in her life, she felt proud to have been born from it.

  Her feet and her heart eventually brought her around to the destination she had been headed to all along. She paused in the street in front of Clete’s house and drew in a few deep breaths, exhaling the last shadow of the old, inhaling the fresh new. The butterflies fluttered and she gave herself a little pep talk to calm them down before taking that first step up his driveway. She gave herself another pep talk as she rang the doorbell, and she was still talking to herself when he opened the door. When their eyes met the music stopped, her heart shuddered, and he smiled.

  “Took you long enough.”

  “I have a tendency to run a little late.” As her heart returned his smile, the first ray of sun broke through the clouds, leaving her breathless. “You’re just going to have to learn to deal with it.”

  “What else am I going to have to learn to deal with?” Clete asked, still smiling.

  “I’m a slob. And I hate vegetables.”

  “Really?” he asked, feigning surprise.

  “Really. And I’m not going to eat them, but I am going to have my dessert anyway. Cake might even be the only thing I eat for supper sometimes, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” She took a step toward him, challenging him, daring him to argue with her.

  “Well, I’m a neat-freak and I love vegetables. And some nights they’re all I eat for dinner,” he said, standing a little taller, returning her challenge with one of his own.

  “I can forgive you,” she said. As she took another step closer to him, the sunlight intensified in brilliance, filling her with radiant heat. “So… if I step inside your little neat-freak den, do you promise not to eat me when I shed my shell?”

  “I don’t know… That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “How tasty you look without it,” he answered, and she squealed as he yanked her through the doorway.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Olivia didn’t know exactly when because George kept it a secret from her, but sometime in the beginning of October, right around the same time Olivia had been drawing in that deep breath and taking that first step up Clete’s driveway, Juliette got a new Speedee Delivery guy. The old one had been fat and bald and named Ben. The new one was young and hot and named Joel. And he was gay. Every Tuesday, right after the noon rush, Joel delivered a case of barbeque sauce to Kitty’s, and then he stayed for lunch. He and George got to talking, and a few deliveries later they got to flirting. Another week or two passed, and they broke free of the Tuesday afternoon schedule. Soon after, they fell in love.

  George told his mom about Joel before he told Olivia. Even though Olivia was disappointed she wasn’t the first to know, she understood why she wasn’t. A week after George told Olivia, he told his dad. It didn’t go well, at all, but George had anticipated as much. You can’t exactly rob a man of his Cheez Doodles and not expect the guy to go through a painful period of withdrawal. Some things take time to adjust to. Pretending otherwise would have been a disservice to their relationship. George gave his dad a little space and remained optimistic, and eventually Greg Valish started to come around. Six months or so after George first introduced his dad to Joel, Greg invited the couple out for a round of golf. It was a very quiet, somewhat-tense eighteen holes, but when Joel ended the day at four-under-par, Greg smiled. He was far from ready to call Joel ‘Son,’ but he was more than willing to play another round whenever Joel so desired, and that made George smile.

  George’s dad may have initially been a little undecided about his son’s choice in a life partner, but Olivia had no qualms. From the moment Olivia first met Joel, she knew with absolute certainty he was George’s ultimate perfection. Not only was Joel easy on the eye, he was also easy on the ear. He was soft-spoken, smart as hell, and had a laugh that was infectious. What Olivia loved most about him, though, was the way he loved George—genuinely, selflessly, and absolute. In Joel, George had found that lost little bit of himself that he had all but given up looking for, and once he had it back his entire soul came to life, shining with an inner light that was gorgeous to behold.

  Olivia liked Joel right away. Surprisingly, Joel felt the same way about Olivia. Shocked the hell out of her, but she didn’t dare question it, lest he change his mind. George, of course, had been open and honest right from the very beginning and had given Joel the entire story about him and Olivia. And even that hadn’t scar
ed him away. But then again, Olivia had Clete, and the world around her tended to cease existing whenever she gazed into his omniscient blue eyes, so maybe Joel sensed he was safe to trust the crazy girl with the crazy hair and mad dance skills around his man. At any rate, Olivia and Joel liked each other, and that made George over-the-moon happy.

  Clete and Olivia were as perfect for each other as mashed potatoes and gravy. From the moment he dragged her into his neat and tidy lobster den and she turned it upside down and inside out, they were in heaven. Their passion for each other insatiable, they fought like crazy and loved like crazy and drove each other just a little bit crazy, and it was perfection.

  They married on the last Friday of April in 2010 at 11:07 a.m., just after the farm report, with George, Izzie, Allie and Juicy Fruit by their side, all of South and most of the Juliette P.D. in attendance, and Reverend Delany presiding over the ceremony as 97.9 The Breeze broadcasted the vows live on location from the little white church on Chicory Street. As Kenny had predicted, the reverend never did forget Olivia, or her stupid hammock comment, but he wasn’t the kind of man to hold a grudge. Reverend Delany was a good man—a real good man, as Mel had said—and he proved it once again by agreeing to perform the circus of a ceremony. Of course, Olivia had become a member of his church (the same church to which Clete and Allie had belonged all their lives), and, not to brag or anything, had added a welcome bit of pizzazz to his six-member choir, making it quite the talk of the town, so it was only fitting that he would agree. But even with all that in mind he still could have said no, and he didn’t. For that, Olivia was eternally grateful.

  Eugene didn’t walk Olivia down the aisle, but when he saw her in her wedding dress he did smile his firework smile, and that was even better. When Clete said, “With this ring, I thee wed,” he slipped his wedding ring onto Olivia’s finger until it rested on top of George’s eternity band. The two rings nestled together perfectly, exactly as Clete and George did in her heart, and those two pieces of jewelry were the only two that Olivia ever wore again.