Olivia (38 page)

Christmas started creeping up and George started hinting that he wanted to take Olivia home to Omaha to meet his parents. Olivia flat-out told him that she didn’t want to go. In fact, even the mere mention of spending the holidays in Omaha terrified her. She had a horrible track record when it came to meeting parents. She dropped things, she laughed inappropriately, she told off-color jokes. She broke out into hives and got constipated. No parent had ever liked her, and she tended not to like them either. By the end of the visits, mothers would pull sons aside and whisper in their ears while shooting scathing glances her way, and within a month she would be single again.

In the end, Olivia won and they spent Christmas Eve at Carla’s with Eugene and Chester. Carla made brisket, and Chester humped away on Hercules the stuffed panda under the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree while Carla’s dog, Sherman, watched in jealousy.

Olivia gave Eugene a new soldering iron and Carla a card full of scratch tickets. Eugene and Carla gave Olivia and George a lot box from the Frank and Erma Roush auction back in October full of miscellaneous glassware and serving spoons. Some of it was broken, but nestled in the bottom of the box, wrapped in the Sunday comics, was a pair of mismatched Lolita wineglasses that Olivia simply adored.

After dinner, they all four crammed onto the sofa and watched John Wayne and snacked on Cheez Doodles and Christmas cookies. Eugene’s temporary living arrangement with Carla had become permanent. Carla filled just the right amount of silence in his life, and he in hers. They were as comfortable together as an old married couple, hardly talking but not needing to. Watching them together warmed Olivia’s heart. She couldn’t stop smiling as she and George said their goodbyes and Merry Christmases.

On Christmas morning, George and Olivia sat in their pajamas on the floor in front of their little tree and shared a cup of creamy coffee and a plate of cookies while they opened their gifts to each other. George gave Olivia a Daffy Duck watch, and as he slipped it onto her wrist she had to laugh when she saw it was set seven minutes fast. He also gave her a small fortune in iTunes cards so she could find lots of new songs for them to dance to.

Her gift to him was in the pocket of her flannel pants, and she knelt in front of him and took his hand in hers.

“Ok, now, I’m going to warn you that this isn’t as amazing as the one you gave me, and it’s not old and it’s not special or anything. It doesn’t have a story behind it and wasn’t owned by anyone before I bought it.” With her heart hammering and her tummy flipping from nerves, she pulled the ring she had purchased for him out of her pocket and pinched it tight between her forefinger and her thumb. “It’s just a ring, but I thought you might like it because I thought of you as soon as I saw it. I thought it was kind of cool.”

The ring was silver in color with a raised, tribal design running around the circumference. The background was brushed metal, giving it a darker color which made the design stand out even more. It wasn’t fancy, but she’d paid the extra ten dollars to have the inside of the band engraved.

“You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to. I know it’s kind of cheesy. I think they said it’s stainless so hopefully if you do wear it, it won’t turn your finger green or anything like that,” she babbled. “I hate gold bands but if you want one you can trade it in. Or you know—whatever. If you don’t want a ring at all, it won’t bother me.”

“Liv?” George tried to interrupt.

“Maybe just pretend like you like it and then lie to me and say that you lost it or it fell down the drain or something—”

“Liv!”

“What?”

“Can I see it?” he asked with a little smile. She handed it over and sat back on her heels as he turned it so he could read the inscription.

“It says ‘When two souls collide, it’s eternal.’ It’s stupid I know. I hate it. I came up with it in like five seconds while I was in the store and it’s stupid. They said it can be taken off and re-inscribed if you—”

“Shut up, Liv,” he ordered and yanked her onto his lap. His mouth came down on hers so fast she didn’t have a chance to catch a breath and had to steal his.

She kissed every bit of sugar and vanilla she could get off his lips and tongue and then pulled away to ask, “So, it’s ok?”

Instead of answering her with words, he shoved the plate of cookies out of the way, flipped her onto her back, ripped away her flannel jammies, and proceeded to show her just how “ok” it was, right there on the floor under the Christmas tree.

In the evening, they went to Izzie and Mel’s for dinner. The house was full of Christmas cheer and happiness and hyper kids with thousands of brand-new, very loud toys. Clete and Allie knocked on the door right before dinner, and Olivia sat across from Clete at the table. He avoided her eyes and the only time they talked during the entire meal was when he asked Olivia to pass the pepper, please.

There was an obvious tension in the air, almost as if he didn’t want to be near her, and she didn’t blame him. When she had stayed at his house, she had acted like the selfish little bitch he’d said she was, and then had blubbered like a big, fat baby on his porch, so she wasn’t surprised he had been avoiding her. The giant pink eraser would have come in handy for those few days as well.

Late into the night, after the kids had crashed in a sticky, sleeping pile on the floor and the adults had added whiskey to the eggnog and retired to the dining room for a few hands of Pitch, Olivia went outside for a smoke. While she was out there, Clete stepped through the sliding glass doors and joined her on the patio.

“Hey.” His hands were stuffed into his pockets and his breath came out on a white puffy cloud. Tiny flurries fell from the night sky, landing on his sweatshirt and in his hair like crystalline dust.

“Hey yourself,” she answered, shocked as hell that he had not only approached her but had intentionally searched her out.

“I was wondering if you’ve heard from Mitch lately,” Clete said. His eyes didn’t meet hers as he spoke. Instead they settled on her left foot. “The department kind of quit looking for him. Budget cuts and all that, you know? But I’m still working on it and I can’t find him anywhere.”

“Haven’t heard a word,” she said.

“If you do, let me know.”

“I will.” She took the last drag off her cigarette and flicked it into a snowdrift.

They stood in silence on the patio and watched the snow fall. She wanted to continue talking to him, but she didn’t know what to say exactly or where to begin. “I’m sorry” didn’t quite cut it. She settled for wishing him a Merry Christmas, and started for the house.

Clete grabbed her arm and said, “Wait.”

She waited, and he kept a hold of her. His blue eyes gazed into hers, and she waited. His breathing sped up, and her heart rate increased. And she kept waiting.

“Olivia…” he finally said. “I want to explain myself to you a little so you can understand where I’m coming from if I sometimes act like a jerk around you. I don’t mean to be one, and I think you deserve to know where it comes from.”

“You don’t have to explain anything,” Olivia said, but Clete continued on as if he hadn’t heard her.

“I was married for only five years, but I was with my wife for a really long time before that. Jen was the first girl I ever kissed. She was my first everything, really, and she was the only woman I thought I’d ever be with. She made up my entire world, and I thought I made up hers.

“Four years ago, we sat down to dinner as if it was any other night, and between salting her potatoes and peppering her steak, completely out of the blue, as if she were telling me the hallway light bulb needed changed, she informed me that she had fallen in love with my best friend and wanted a divorce. And then, as if that weren’t enough, she said she didn’t think she had ever loved me. She said she mistook feeling safe and comfortable with each other for love, but the first time she made love to my best friend she realized there was such a thing as passion. She said she knew she had been frustrated with our relationship for years, but it wasn’t until she slept with my
best friend
that she knew how to define it.”

“Oh, my god, Clete, I—”

“Her bags were already packed,” Clete interrupted, as though unwilling to stop once he’d started. “She moved out as soon as the dishes were done—she actually
washed
the dishes before she left… When she left me, it destroyed me. I had no clue what to do. The life I’d thought I had was ripped right out from under me, and it was gone forever.”

“I’m so sorry, Clete. I had no idea.”

“I know you didn’t,” he assured her. “You know, even with the way she cheated on me and the way she dumped me like I was last night’s trash, the hardest part of all this is that I’m still in love with her. I haven’t dated anyone… I hadn’t met anyone I
wanted
to date… All this time I’ve felt so goddamn dead inside… until that night I kissed you…” His eyes closed as he turned away from her, but he turned right back around with his eyes open and his face masking his emotions as he said, “Olivia, I can’t sleep in my bed because I am still in love with my wife, and it physically
hurts
not to have her sleeping next to me. That’s why I sleep on the sofa. That’s what I wanted to explain.”

“I kinda thought maybe that was the reason,” Olivia admitted.

He took a deep breath and exhaled a racing, white cloud. His nose and cheeks were red from the cold, making his eyes deepen in color until they were the blue of the sky on a hot summer day. “I don’t know how to stop loving her.”

“Do you have to stop?” Olivia asked. “Can’t you keep on loving her but still let her go, just a little bit, and make room for someone else?”

“How?” he asked. His voice was pleading and desperate, begging her for the answer. “How do I do that?”

Olivia stepped into him and placed her hand over his heart. “You have a huge heart, Clete. It’s probably one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever known. You love and care for more people than anyone else ever could. You love your daughter and your friends and your community. You’d willingly give your life to protect them. And you deserve to be loved in return. As soon as you
believe
that, your heart will open up, and let Jen go.”

She lifted onto her tiptoes and put her arms around him. She held him, and he let her. Her hair filled with snow and her toes went numb, and still, she held him. He kept his hands in his pockets, but his body leaned into her and he slowly relaxed in her embrace until, finally, he was ready for her to let go.

She kissed his cheek, letting her lips linger longer than they needed to, and whispered in his ear, “Merry Christmas, Clete.”

“Merry Christmas,” he whispered back as her arms fell away from him, and he watched as she walked away.

*  *  *

On New Year’s Eve, at eight in the morning, there was a knock on the apartment door. Olivia rolled over in bed and reached for George, but he was already up and gone. The knocking became more persistent and continuous. Olivia fell out of bed and stumbled to the front door in her panties and t-shirt, passing by the bathroom door through which she heard George belting out some ridiculous pop ditty at high volume over the sound of the shower spray.

She peeked out the peep hole and when her eye focused, she saw Reggie. She ripped open the door. “You motherfucker!”

“Happy New Year, Olivia!” Reggie sang out in joyous greeting. He pushed his porky body past her and into the apartment.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

“Oh, here and there,” he said with an ambiguous wave of his hand.

He snooped around the living room and shuffled through some papers on the end table and opened a few drawers and cabinets and ate a handful of grapes from George’s fridge. All the while, Olivia followed him around and cursed him up one side and down the other. When she paused for a breath, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a long, white envelope.

“It took some major doing on my part, but I finally got you a settlement I think is fair. Happy Holidays.”

Before Olivia could respond, he weaseled his way back out of the apartment, taking George’s morning
Omaha
World-Herald
with him. She ripped open the envelope and pulled out a check. When she saw the dollar amount written on it, she damn near fainted dead away. And then she screamed.

Her eyes quickly scanned the itemized statement, and she damn near fainted again. She got a measly hundred bucks for her car (which she’d figured), the bank got every penny for the trailer (of course), but apparently the small fortune that the crazy woman had spent to furnish the stupid trailer in its 1950’s glory amounted to a
huge
fortune in replacement value. Even Mr. Mark Wahlberg had been considered a collectable and worth quite a ridiculous amount.

She screamed again and flew into the bathroom, ripped back the shower curtain, startling George who happened to be in the middle of shaving, causing him to carve a huge chunk of flesh from his neck.

“What the hell—” George started to say as his neck gushed bright red, but Olivia stopped him mid-sentence when she jumped into the shower with her t-shirt and panties still on, and with the check still in her hand.

She kissed him hard on the lips, smearing his shaving cream all over her own face in the process, and showed him her check. His eyes bugged out of his head and he let out a little whoop as he ripped it from her hand and tossed it out of the shower for safe keeping. He then lifted her against the shower wall and proceeded to smear the rest of his shaving cream all around her rapidly melting body. They celebrated until the water ran cold, and that night they partied like it was 1999, even though it was exactly ten years later.

*  *  *

New Year’s Day was hang-over day, but the day after that was house-shopping day. George and Olivia looked at fourteen houses, all in Northside, and all well within George and Olivia’s combined price range. In the end, she decided on one of those townhouses she had happened across on the Walmart scooter, the one that was her dream house with the white picket fence on the outside and the two-point-five kids on the inside, even though standing in front of it didn’t seem nearly as life-altering as it had before. The realtor went back to the office to draw up the paperwork, and Olivia and George went back to his apartment to practice making the first of the two-point-five. And then he went to work.