The One Who Got Away: A Novel (11 page)

“Is that a word?”

“Nope.” Yarrow went on, “But
sometimes, I find I want to be something more important, more valued by the
world at large, than simply being my children’s mother.”

“So if fulfillment doesn’t come
from a career,” Olivine said, “And it doesn’t come—entirely, at least—from your
children and your family, where does it come from?”

Yarrow laughed and shrugged.

“I’m only asking you because
you’re my big sister, Yarrow. You’re supposed to know these things. Pass on
your wisdom.”

“I think people have been trying
to figure that out for decades. Centuries,” Yarrow said. “I suppose I would
like to say that the answer is to just love. To love as hard as you can in your
own little space. Whether it’s occupied by birds and ferrets or dogs or little
people or grandparents or little boys who can’t find their gym sneakers at
school. People who have grand careers and they focus on making life meaningful
and better for others; mothers who focus on making life meaningful and better
for others. I think, in some way, the answer lies there. Just loving someone
else. Whoever is in front of you to love.”

Olivine was silent. She looked up
into the stairs and inhaled. Exhaled.

“I guess the night sky has made
me sort of sentimental,” Yarrow said.

“Philosophical,” Olivine
corrected.

“Corny.”

“No. I like what you said,”
Olivine replied. “Honestly, I feel like my heart races all the time. I feel
like I’m racing, racing to get somewhere. My heart races when I wake up in the
morning. It races when I go to sleep at night. I wake up in the middle of the
night, wide awake, my mind and heart racing, racing, racing.”

“Maybe you should lay off the
coffee.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Olivine laughed.
“But I keep thinking that if I do something, if I find the right thing to do, it
will go away. I will finally be at peace. I will know that I am doing the right
thing. On the right path. Not wasting my life.” She sighed and watched her
breath float above her into the dark sky. “When does it go away, Yarrow? When
can a woman finally relax?”  

“For me, I suspect it will be when
my work is done. All my chores. And when enough money is coming in, at least
enough to get us through the first of next month, and when everyone is sound
asleep in their beds.” Yarrow sighed again. “But when my kids are safe and the
money is coming in, I will probably worry that it will stop coming in. So I
guess maybe you never really relax. Maybe, for me, the answer is to work on
calming myself down instead of trying to control everything around me. You’ve
always been good at that, Olivine. Way better than me.”

Silence followed for a moment.
Olivine’s fingertips began to ache with the cold. She crossed her arms in front
of her. “I saw Henry.”

Yarrow sat up straight and popped
her eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So how does he look?”

“Hot.” She laughed. “As ever. Beautiful.
Fit. Strong. Also, married. And a dad.” Olivine’s final word hung in the air.

A few moments passed and when
Yarrow spoke again, her tone had changed. It became louder, less breathy. “So
he’s no longer yours to have.”

“Right.”

Yarrow turned her head toward
Olivine and rested back on the windshield. “You know, if you want to have a
family, of your own, you have to look at things as an adult,” she said. “You
have to plan some things out. You can’t just be all romantic and follow your
heart around all the time, like I did.”

“You have regrets?” Olivine asked,
turning her head to watch her sister’s reply.

“‘Regrets’ might be too strong a
word. I love my life and my kids and my husband to the depths of my toes, but
you are at a crossroads, Olivine. I can see it on your face. I know you are
looking at your situation more or less romantically, which isn’t altogether
like you. And the decision you make will decide the direction of your entire
life.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake.”

“Hear me out, Olivine. You have
to plan and you need to have decent medical insurance and you need a good man
with a good job. You need the sure thing…not the exciting, bad boy thing.  It
will make your life easier. Better. Otherwise, you’ll be stressed out and in
debt and sad. You, too, will need Mommy’s Nighty Night Juice. And it tastes
terrible.”

“Yuck.”

“Like black licorice.”

Olivine laughed, and Yarrow
continued. “You know, I don’t think you have ever had much need for money. But
if you have children, you’ll see. It becomes important. I mean, I know that
you
could backpack across Europe with an extra pair of underwear and a bar of soap,
but when you have kids it will be different.”

“Would it have to be?”

“You have no idea how expensive
they are, Ollie. Just getting them to Europe will cost you ten grand. Just buying
shoes for them will cost you a few hundred bucks.”

“You know, Yarrow, you used to be
such a hippie. I like your hippie ways better. It’s almost like you’re saying
money is more important than love. But money can’t buy love. Everyone who has
ever watched a Disney movie knows that.”

“Money can’t buy love. But you
have
love. That’s all I’m saying. You have love from a good, good man who can buy
you a lovely lifestyle. One where you can sleep at night and you know your kids
are paid for, and you can afford to show them things, and you won’t send them
off to college accruing debt as they go, which will push them into a job that
they hate for the rest of their lives. You constrict your children’s choices if
you end up with the wrong man, Olivine. Just don’t mess this up.”

“Oh, I won’t.”

“I know that Henry is…”

“Yes?

“Tremendously hot.”

Olivine giggled. She bent her
head toward Yarrow. “Tremendously,” she agreed.

“But that’s only one piece of the
puzzle. Paul is the total package. And you’ll never want for things. You’ll
never have financial stress.”

“Jeez, Yarrow. Seriously. Do you
need a loan?”

“Just answer me this. Since
you’ve been dating Paul, how many times have you vacationed somewhere you
needed a bikini?”

She thought for a moment. “Seven
or eight. Nine, maybe.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

*****

The sisters dined at Olivine’s
favorite café, tucked behind the post office on Main Street. Olivine ate their
last scone, loaded with butter and homemade raspberry jam, and Yarrow nibbled
on a slice of French silk pie, and they tried to talk of things besides men and
finances and children. And when Olivine dropped Yarrow off in front of her
house again, she skittered up the front walk, turning to wave from the front
porch.

Yarrow was right. She did feel
like she was
at a crossroads. There was Paul. A beautiful man who adored
her. Who would make sure she would live a good life, doing good, important
things. And there was Henry. A man who once left her without so much as a phone
call. And a man who was no longer hers to have. So why couldn’t she stop
thinking about him?

And she remembered sitting on a
park bench with Henry, ten years before, in the middle of downtown when the
clock tower chimed five o’clock, and, a few moments later, a swarm
of
people buzzed out of an office building. Women in skirts and pantyhose and
jewelry and men in white button-down shirts and brown shoes.  

“How do people go to work each
day and just put their time in there?” Henry had asked, shaking his head. “They
must know that they have just spent a bit of their lives, while they were in
that building. How do they go and sell something or make something that is trivial
and asinine and pretend that this is what they were put on earth to do?”  

“It's not trivial and asinine if
that's how a person makes his living,” Olivine had replied. “If it’s how they
support their family.”

Henry shook his head.

“It’s not their entire life,”
Olivine continued. “It’s just for seven or eight hours a day. And their job makes
it possible for them to finance the stuff they love.”

Henry considered this and then
said, “Somewhere deep inside, I know this to be true. I know I’m in a special
circumstance in that I grew up making things out of wood, and so did my
father,” Henry said. “I’ve always loved it, and so did he, and so I never had
to find a real job. In an office. I don’t even know what they do in there all day.
Make reports? Reports about what?”

Olivine laughed. “I can’t exactly
see you working in an office anyway. You need to be outside.”

“Absolutely.”

“But some people love that kind
of work. Just like you love carpentry.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” he said,
but he gave a shudder.

“It might even pay better, you
know.”

“Yeah, it might,” he said,
watching the people on the street for another moment. Then he added, “But, do
you know what? I have always refused to have a job or a career that I wouldn’t
have recognized as a job when I was a kid.”

“Explain.”

“No one, as a child, says, ‘When
I grow up, I want to sell insurance.’” Henry said, “Or, ‘I dream of, one day,
selling mutual funds.’ And then they become adults and they discover that this
is a pretty lucrative thing to go and do. So people graduate from college and
they go and do it. To me, those have never felt like
real
jobs.”

“So a real job would be…”

“A firefighter. A farmer. A guy
who builds stuff. Or drives big trucks,” Henry said, laughing. “What was it for
your friends, when you were growing up?”

“Oh, all my friends wanted to be
teachers or nurses.”

“And you?” he asked.

“I wanted to be a writer. Also,
Wonder Woman.” She laughed, remembering the costume she had as a child and how
she had worn it way past Halloween. “So do you mean to tell me that you always
wanted to be a carpenter? Always?”

“Yes. Also, Spider Man.” 

“There you go. We belong together,”
she had said, resting her head on his shoulder and squeezing at his bicep. “We
are Superfriends! Heroes of the universe. Defenders of the good.”

“And always shall we be,” he
said, raising a fist straight up.

“So what does that pay?” she
asked.

“Who the hell cares? You’re a
superhero
.”
And they both laughed, and he kissed her on the tip of her nose.

The following evening, after her
professors had returned her exams, Olivine decided she had better spend a bit
more time with her textbooks. Paul was working and she was busy making
flashcards for herself when there was a curt knock at the door in her sister’s
special pattern. Five quick raps, followed by a pause and then one more. It had
been their secret knock since girlhood. Olivine capped her marker and bounded
toward the door, swinging it open and grinning. How she needed a study break.

Yarrow shoved a canvas shopping bag
toward her, with tomatoes and springs of fresh basil sprouting from the top.
“Oh,” Yarrow said, “Thanks so much for inviting me over for a game of Scrabble
and tomato basil soup.”

“You know I didn’t, right?” Olivine
replied.

“I know. But even though you
didn’t...Truth is, I needed a little air, so I told Jon and the kids that we
had a thing.” She pulled her lips back.

Olivine stood aside and motioned
her in. 

Yarrow bounded to the kitchen
where she heaved the canvas bag onto the counter. “I brought some fresh tomatoes
we can roast and chicken stock and some basil and a recipe that looks
a-ma-zing.” She stopped and gestured toward Olivine’s stack of notecards and
open textbooks.  “Please don’t tell me you have other plans.”

“No, it’s great to see you. Of
course. By all means, make a mess of my kitchen.” Olivine smiled.

“You know I have no friends
except you, right?”

“You have your kids and your
husband.”

“Yes, and
you
have two
lovers.”

“I do not.”

“No? Just one still?”

“I would never cheat on Paul.”

“I know that. Really, I do. I was
only kidding.”

“Truly, I do. I would treat him
like a human being. I would never, ever cheat on him. I’m not a cheater. And I
would never be the Other Woman.”

“I know, Olivine. You don’t have
to convince me. Really, I was just joking,” Yarrow took a handful of tomatoes
to the sink and began washing them. “It’s been on your mind, obviously. Jeez. By
the way, just so you know, Jon said Paul called last night looking for you,
while we were out at the café. Jon told him we were just grabbing some dessert,
but we both thought it was weird he was checking up to see where you were. I
mean, since when does he care?”

“Yarrow!”

“That came out wrong. He is just always
more concerned about where
he
is than where you are.”

“Weren’t you begging and pleading
me to get things going with this guy? To not let him go. Just last night?”

“Yes, yes. No guy is perfect, you
know. And I know you don’t exactly want him to be around you all the time,”
Yarrow said. “And about last night, I probably shouldn’t have said some of the
things I said. Jon would kill me if he knows you know,” she dropped her voice
to a whisper, “about the debt, etcetera.” 

Olivine pantomimed herself
locking her lips with a key.

Yarrow unloaded an industrial-sized
can of chicken stock from the bottom of the bag and shoved it toward the back
of the counter.

“Goodness,” Olivine said, “How
much soup are we making?”

“Well, enough to freeze some. Oh,
and mom’s coming, too.”

Just then, Christine came through
the door. “Helloooo,” she cooed. She thrust a potted plant toward Olivine, its
leaves deep green, broad and waxy.  

“So I brought you a new plant,
love, because I noticed you killed the last one I brought. I think you set a
new record on that one.” They all turned and looked at the plant above the
sink. The leaves had turned dark on the edges, and they shriveled in on
themselves.

“That one’s dead?” Olivine asked,
taking the new plant from her mother.

“Yep,” Christine replied.

“But it’s still green.”

“No, it isn’t,” Yarrow and
Christine said, together.

“There’s no way I could revive
it?” Olivine twisted her lips to the side and raised an eyebrow.

“Nope. No way.” Christine shook
her head, “I’m going to teach you how to take care of this one, Olivine. I
mean, if you want kids someday, like you say you do, you’re going to have to
start with a plant, huh? And then maybe we can work our way up to a goldfish.”

“Ha ha, mom.” Olivine looked
away.

“Hell, I’m a great mom and I
can’t keep plants or fish alive either,” Yarrow said.

“So,” Christine said, leaning against
the counter and drawing a deep breath. “I have a feeling this isn’t going to be
news to either of you, but I stopped by the cabin earlier today. And did you
know that Henry Cooper is there?”

“Yeah,” Olivine said. “We’ve met.
Again.”

“He’s a tall, cool drink of
water, isn’t he?” Christine said, not taking her eyes off Olivine. “The years
have been good for him. I mean, mercy! Those eyes. How long has it been, Olivine?”

“Ten years, or so. I guess. Ten
and a half, maybe.”

“So have you become reacquainted?”

“No, Yes. Sort of.” Olivine felt her
face flush with color. She turned toward the windowsill, taking the dead plant
in her hands to inspect it. “I stopped by there the other night and Paul was
talking to him.”

“Really?” Christine prodded.

“Yes. Paul was really pretty
taken, actually, by the idea of what he has been commissioned to do. The door.”

“The doors Henry makes
are
amazing,” Christine said. “I mean, have you seen his website?  He’s not so much
a carpenter as he is an artisan. No. An artist.”

Olivine nodded. She stayed facing
away from them as she opened the cabinet under the sink and overturned the pot,
dumping the dried soil and her dead plant into the trash. “You’ve seen his
website?”

“Oh yes. And we had quite a nice
chat.” Christine said.

Olivine felt heat rise to her
cheeks. “Oh, you did?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant. She took the new
plant from the counter and poked her finger into the moist soil. Then she
turned once again to the windowsill and took her time arranging it on the sill.
“So what did you talk about?”

“Oh, well, we exchanged pleasantries
for some time,” Christine said, “He really is such a charming man. And then I
asked him why on earth he broke your heart in two so many years ago.”

Olivine turned to face her mom. “You
did not.”

“Well, I wasn’t
going
to.
I really wasn’t. And then it just came out. You know how those things do.”

“No, Mom, I don’t. I am an adult.
I am in full command of the words I say,” Olivine replied.

“Well, I figured by the way he
was talking about you, that you had never asked him what in the world happened
back then. And I figured, you know, you are so in love with Paul, right? What’s
the harm in figuring out our little mystery. You know, so we can close that
chapter
.”

Yarrow laughed and pulled up a
bar stool to the island in the center of the kitchen.“Wow, Mom. So what did he
say?”

“Well, let’s see…” Christine
pulled a cutting board from Olivine’s cupboard and then she chose a knife from
the block on the counter. She squeezed one of the washed tomatoes and cut it in
half. “He told me it was complicated and it had been a terrible time in his
life because he had just lost his dad and that he wanted nothing more than to
explain things to you, Olivine.”

“Wanted nothing more?” Yarrow
raised her eyebrows. Her over-plucked arch reminded Olivine suddenly of a bird’s
wing.  

“More than that,” Christine went
on, “he said he would never forgive himself if he didn’t get the chance. To
explain things to you. To tell you how he felt.”

Yarrow whistled through her
teeth, and Olivine turned away from them. She gave the new potted plant on her
kitchen windowsill a final nudge and poked the plastic card with its care
instructions deeper into the soil.

“Does Paul know anything about
this?” Christine withdrew a roasting pan from the cupboard next to the stove
and turned on the oven.

“Yeah, mom. I told you they were
talking when I went to the cabin the other day.”

“I know they have
met
.
What I mean is, does Paul know he has a problem?”

“He doesn’t, Mom,” Olivine said.

“He doesn’t have a problem? Or he
doesn’t
know
he has a problem?”

Olivine shook her head, still
facing away from them.

They fell silent for a moment.

“Huh. Well, one thing I’ll say. It’s
uncanny really,” Christine continued. “Henry. He reminds me so very
much
of your father at that age.”

Her words triggered a surge of
memories. Suddenly Olivine was a little girl and it was the day before she
started third grade, and Grandpa had been brushing her waist-length blonde hair
and he said, “You are getting too old for such long hair.” So, that very
afternoon, Olivine asked her mother to cut it. And as soon as the tresses fell
to the floor, she knew she had made a mistake. Her hair, which she had been growing
since she was a toddler; which slapped along her shoulders as she ran; which,
after a day of playing outside in the summertime, smelled rich and earthy. It
was gone. Cropped close to her head now. And Yarrow had stood next to her,
swinging her own long hair, and telling her she looked just like Tinkerbell.
How she longed for her long, swinging locks to return, but she didn’t want
anyone to see that she was crying over her hair.

That evening, her father had come
home from work, and he walked straight over to her and he held her very tight,
and he whispered straight into her ear in that way of his in which she could
smell his aftershave and feel the scratch of his whiskers. And he said, “Oh, Olivine.
You are beautiful and special and brave.” And she had burst into tears because
these were precisely the words she had needed to hear just then, spoken right
into her ear, without having to share them with Yarrow or with anyone else.
Words for her alone. And when Yarrow had asked her later that evening, while
they were doing dishes, what Dad had said, Olivine said she didn’t remember. And
Yarrow had said, “Yeah, he says stuff like that to me, too.”

It all made sense. That’s why she
couldn’t get Henry out of her head. It wasn’t him. It was her father. She
wasn’t going crazy, and she didn’t have a self-destructive streak. She was
simply responding to something familiar. Something she loved, deeply and truly.

“I mean,
so
much like your
dad,” Christine continued. “The guy lives in a bus, for crying out loud.” Christine
said. “It’s not a VW, but it’s so much like the one your dad used to drive
around. On the inside.”

“Henry lives in a bus?” Yarrow
asked. “You forgot to mention that, Olivine.”

“Well, not
all
the time.
Just when he’s on location.” Olivine felt this need, suddenly, to defend him. “At
least I think he has a home.”

“Have you seen it in there? Artie
is going to pee his pants when he sees it. Such a man cave. Backcountry skis
and a single speed bike and all kinds of tools and gear and books.”  

“What else?” Yarrow wanted to
know.

“Olivine, he has a pair of
handmade snowshoes in there. I mean, come on. Did you ever tell him our
snowshoe story?”

“No.”

“Do you mind if I do?”

“The story that ends in Dad’s
proposal? You want to tell him
that
story. Now?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you trying to do to me,
Mom?”  

“Nothing! I mean, if he’s going
to be part of our lives, why shouldn’t I tell him certain stories? I’ve got to
talk about
something
. He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night.”

“Seriously?” Olivine asked.

“Yeah, Artie wants to see him,
too. To get caught up.”

“I just don’t think that’s very…appropriate,”
Olivine said. “And what do you mean by ‘since he’s going to be part of our
lives?’”

“He’s making something very
special for this family, dear. He’s really something very special.”

“Mom, you can’t invite him to
dinner. He’s my ex-boyfriend.”

“Well, it’s really none of your
business what I do, because
you
are not invited.” And she slid the
tomatoes, lying halved on the roasting pan, into the oven. Soon the kitchen would
fill with the acrid scent of burning sugar as the tomatoes began to roast,
smoky and raw.