The One Who Got Away: A Novel (2 page)

Paul’s car was chilly with its tinted
windows and the cool air blasting from the vent. It blew Olivine’s loose blonde
curls against the side of her face and perfumed the air like lemons.

The rhythm of the windshield
wipers—
ka skwunk, ka skwunk
—reminded her of the silent game she played
as a child. She would choose one of the raindrops, a ripe one on the periphery
and she would track it as it inched its way across the windshield to join other
raindrops; or else it went splashing off to the side as the car turned a
corner. She liked keeping her eye on a single drop just to see what would
happen to it. What its fate would be. How long could it last before it went
flying off into the world or became absorbed into another group of drops? How
long before it lost its own edges?

When Paul made a sharp  turn to
get on the interstate, west toward home, the water on the windshield sloshed to
the side, and the drop she was watching melded with the others.

“It will be snowing at home,”
Paul said.

Olivine nodded. It
would
be snowing in their mountain town, an hour’s drive west. It would be snowing,
in fact, on and off through the end of May, to the delight of the skiers who
made their town come alive and whose wrist, knee and ankle injuries made Paul’s
orthopedics practice thrive.

Paul’s Audi hugged the curves as
they raced up the interstate. Even as a little girl, driving up from the city
with her parents, Olivine knew she was nearly home when the hills turned from
rolling to sheer. And whenever they came into view—the series of four craggy
peaks, jutting straight upward, scratching the sky—she would take a sharp
breath and say thank you for this place she loved.

She loved the freshly laundered
scent of the air as it blew through the aspens and the pines. She loved the
brilliant blue of the sky. Most of all, she loved how everything about the
landscape was extreme. Nothing was mediocre, or wishy-washy or just sort of,
kind of, prosaically beautiful. The peaks were jagged, the ridges razor sharp and
etched into the cerulean sky behind.

She looked over at Paul as he sat
with his back perfectly straight and his face blank. He was gripping the
steering wheel at ten and two, and his hands and his forearms were broad and
strong. His shirtsleeves were rolled up in two precise turns. She felt,
suddenly, as though she were looming somewhere above, looking down at the two
of them. A man and a woman, like any man or woman sharing a car. Driving along on
the interstate.

Olivine grounded herself by fixing
her eyes straight ahead, on a raindrop upon the windshield, struggling to find
its way. Then she inhaled sharply, and on the exhale, she said it: “Maybe we
should get married.”  

Her words hung there like a
fruit, ripe to bursting, on a tree. She swallowed and continued staring out the
windshield, but she could feel him looking at her, and so she turned to face him.
His eyes were dull and green and rimmed with red. His face blank. Unreadable. He
said not a word, but he flicked on his blinker and pulled the Audi smoothly out
of traffic. He parked on the shoulder, reached over to
pop
open the glove box and to remove something with his palm, his
motions precise and smooth. He clicked the glove box shut, then opened his door
and slid out. His door closed with a tight snap behind him. Was he leaving? Was
he leaving her right there on the interstate?

But then she saw a streak of his
blue shirt at her door, which he opened, and then he took her hand, and he
guided her gently from her seat, and as she stood on the side of the road, she bobbed
her head in an attempt to catch his eye because this was often the only way she
could see his intention. The only way she could see what might happen next. But
Paul was looking at the ground and then up toward her hips, and then he moved
his hands, broad and strong, onto her waist and, in one sweeping movement, he
lifted her onto the front of his car.

The cold metal of the hood bit
into the back of her thighs, and she suppressed the urge to wriggle away from
him; to wriggle back down to the ground. The rain was coming down now in plump
drops, nearly frozen. Some of the drops were hard and white, the size of ball
bearings, and they pinged off the car and off her scalp. And Paul met her eyes
just then and he cradled the back of her neck with his hand, and his light
touch prickled her skin, and he kissed her, not with the ferocity she was
half-expecting, given the uncharacteristic romance of the moment, but in his
familiar way: gentle, smooth and moist.

Paul’s eyes shifted again, to the
ground, to the mud and the pebbles and the patches of dirt-encrusted snow on
the side of the road, and he took a tiny blue velvet box from the pocket of his
khakis, and he sank down on one knee, where he teetered for a moment, eyes
still cast downward. When he looked up at her once again, he blinked hard, and
with one motion, he opened the tiny box to reveal a diamond solitaire. The
stone glinted, even in the rain and in the hail, and Olivine felt everything
take on a grainy quality, as though she were viewing a scene that had been
filmed in hard light. Finally, Paul said, “Olivine Karen Eriksson, Would you do
me the honor of being my wife?”

She inhaled, exhaled, swallowed,
then whispered, “I will.” And he stood, one knee of his khakis dingy with roadside
muck, and she waited for him to kiss her once again and to take her hand and
help her slide off the car. She felt a release, but also a new sensation: a
pressure in the pit of her stomach that rolled, first this way and then that.

He opened the car door for her
and she slid in, squeaking against the leather, and she felt unexpectedly small
and self-conscious, as though she were a child playing house and not a woman in
her thirties.

Her proposal to Paul just made
sense, and she had done it. Or, rather,
he
had done it. He turned to her
and smiled, his lips pulled tight and flat, and memories poured into her mind
of all the ways she had imagined, as a young girl, this scene playing out. Would
her future husband propose in a ballpark, with loopy skywriting behind him,
declaring his devotion? In a restaurant, where she would sit in a high-backed
velvet booth and sip champagne and then nonchalantly glance over to where her
dashing boyfriend was on one knee, staring longingly into her eyes?

Well, no. But it was what it was,
and she wouldn’t need to do it again. She was engaged. That was that. Moving
on.

“I’ve had it there waiting for
you.” Paul said, once he started the car. “The ring.”

She reached over and snapped off
the air vent so she could hear him more clearly.

“Oh,” she said. She fell silent
for a few moments, hoping he would say something more. She wanted to ask how
long the ring had been there, sitting in the glove box. She wanted to ask him
what had stopped him from asking her before. She wanted him to say
something—anything—but mostly she wanted him to tell her that he couldn’t live
without her and that she cracked his world open to make it more colorful and
meaningful and bright. But he was looking straight ahead, pulling back into
traffic, turning on the windshield wipers with calm, measured motions.

She knew him well enough to know
that there weren’t going to be any more words. Not on his own accord, at least.
She laughed a little, but it came out sounding hollow and forced, and so she
quickly followed it up with, “Why didn’t you do something with it? The ring?”

He remained silent for a moment,
and then he said, “I don’t know. I guess you seemed…” He paused. “You seemed
equivocal on the subject.”

She wanted just then to tell him
about the child with the Timberland boots and the eyes like puddles of
chocolate syrup and about the panic rising in her chest, but she didn’t.

A moment passed, and then
another, and then he said: “I’ve been wanting to ask you for awhile. I’ve just been
waiting for the right time.”

A surge of affection, soft and
true, swooped through her. And she remembered lying beside him in bed, her head
cradled in his armpit, after they had made love the first time. She had let her
eyes go in and out of focus as she stared at the red hairs on his forearms. His
broad forearms. Strong, resolute, masculine. She looked at his hands, one
cradling her arm, the other resting on his knee, which he had drawn up out of
the sheets.

She had imagined, just then, what
those hands did all day. Cutting people open, fiddling around inside, doing
something mysterious and careful and kind. Fixing them. He was so stoic and
this…this
detachment
was what made him a good surgeon. And every now and
then, it was what made the people in his life feel such reward for sitting and
sharing his silence. He wasn’t a rose or a peony, whose beauty was available to
just anyone. He was an orchid, growing on the side of some distant mountain.
You had to care for it, and you had to wait, but if were patient, and you were
kind, you were treated with a most wonderful gift. At least this had been what
she told herself for the three or so years they had been together.  

And lying there in bed that
morning, as she lay contemplating his hands, he had said, “You are just the
right kind of woman for me.”

“I am?” She repositioned herself
so she could look into his eyes, because this was so early in their relationship
that she hadn’t known better. He pulled his arm out from under her and crossed
it over his face, burying his eyes inside the crease of his elbow.

 “Yes,” he replied. And just as
Olivine was about to laugh and prompt him for elaboration, he said, “You don’t
have expectations. You just are. And you let me be. You don’t talk too much,
and you don’t... You don’t…Oh, I don’t know, you are just the right kind of
woman for me.”

Olivine had heard this before.
Men would often tell her that she was somehow different. She suspected this was
mostly because she made things easy on them. Not only did she not
expect
a nightly phone call, she could seldom be bothered to return them. She didn’t
like to talk on the phone. She didn’t expect a man to be any different than who
he was. If he didn’t feel like talking, well, that was fine with her. She had
her own internal dialogue anyway.

And now in the car, following the
moment of their engagement, Olivine reminded herself that Paul’s detachment was
one of the most attractive things about him. It made him one of the best orthopedic
surgeons in the state, and it allowed him to see things with precision: His
future. His ambitions. His ambitions for her.

Plus, his long hours at work made
it possible for her to do her own thing. She was taking a few classes during
the day so she could join him in the operating room someday. The rest of the
time, she was free to ski or hike or bike or run. Or tie up the loose ends on
the ghostwriting business she was phasing out.

And if he got to have his secrets—if
he got to keep a certain part of himself private—it meant that she could keep
certain parts of herself private, too. Paul would never look at her and ask,
“What are you thinking about?” This was what their relationship had come to be
about, over the years. He had his inner monologue and she had hers, and they
didn’t always need to share them.

And she remembered one night, when
they had first moved in together, when Paul had come home from the hospital so
late that birds were chirping and the sun was cresting on the horizon, and he
was quiet and looked tortured and locked up inside himself, and, so when he had
come to bed, Olivine tossed one long, bare leg over his and asked him, in the
softest way she could, what his night had been like.

She imagined, by the pulse of his
jaw on the pillow beside hers, that something had happened. Something terrible.
Had someone died while his hands were still inside them? And after she asked
him, for the first time, to tell her how he was feeling, he had said, “Just
because I have an emotion doesn’t mean I need to express it. Or share it.” And
she had understood it to be, not only an explanation for his detachedness in
the moment, but an instruction for future conversations.

Not long after that, Olivine arrived
home from a tense meeting with a ghostwriting client. She told Paul she had a
rotten day, and he had said, “Did anyone die?”

“Well, no.”

“Then it wasn’t that bad,” he had
replied.

Silence had followed that
conversation, and she pushed her feelings back inside, which she did to this
day. Occasionally, she trotted them out for her sister and her mother, who would
commiserate and sympathize in all the right places. She didn’t need Paul for
that.

But now the silence in the car
pressed in on her. She straightened the fingers on her left hand, watched the
diamond catch the light and said, a little too loudly, “So should we call
someone and tell them?”

“Probably,” Paul said, “But I bet
most of them know it was bound to happen.”

Bound to happen. Yes. That’s what
it was. It was bound to happen.

Yarrow’s kitchen was bright and
white with high ceilings and stainless steel appliances, pocked with tiny fingerprints.
Popsicle-stick figurines and vibrant finger paintings clung to the
refrigerator, some tacked up by a single magnet, others with Scotch tape.  

Olivine was waiting for the twins
to leave for Kindergarten so she could sit down with Yarrow and share a cup of
coffee. Yarrow had called the night before and pleaded with her to come first
thing in the morning. There was something she needed to talk to her about.

It had been two days since Paul
had proposed and they hadn’t shared the news yet. With anyone. No
announcements, no giggly phone calls to friends and relatives. The more time
passed, the more Olivine felt strange finally saying it aloud. She was certain
that Yarrow didn’t know anything about it…unless Paul had told her, but he had been
working late each night since the memorial.

Olivine watched as Yarrow padded
around the kitchen in a pair of knee-high orange slipper boots, which she had
knitted herself. She wore a white cardigan over a flouncy frock, also handmade,
with a band of yellow tulle on the bottom. She stood at the counter to stuff a
series of zippered plastic baggies and two silvery juice boxes into matching
lunchboxes while she gave a rundown of the twin’s after school activities. Marcus
spit toothpaste into the kitchen sink, wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand, and Clark batted at his bed-tousled hair with a damp palm. Baby Claire
watched it all from her highchair pulled near the table. Every so often, she
gave her tray a swift kick to see her Cheerios bounce.  

While Olivine waited, she rinsed cereal
bits from a stack of bowls in the sink and loaded them into the dishwasher.
Meanwhile, Yarrow bundled the twins into tiny down jackets, handed them their backpacks
and kissed them on the top of the head.

She held the back door open with
her hip as she wiped a milk moustache from Clark’s face. Then she knelt down,
held his face and looked him straight in the eye.  “Ride the bus home today,”
she said. “Don’t forget. I won’t be there to pick you up today, so don’t forget
to ride the bus home.” Clark nodded, his eyes watery.

She paused a moment, then turned
to Marcus. “Quick quiz: How are you boys getting home today?”

“The bus!” Marcus cried.

“Very good. Help each other
remember. I’ll see you as soon as you come in the door this afternoon.”

She turned to look out the window
just as the school bus came into view.

“Okay, it’s here. Scoot along.”
As soon as they were out the door, the boys turned in unison and Yarrow blew
each boy three kisses and waggled her fingers as she said, “I’ll miss you both
mucho,
and my heart will be with you all the day through.” She clutched both palms to
her chest, and then the boys turned and toddled to the bus.

Yarrow stepped back in, still
watching, allowing the storm door to slap back into its frame.

She held her hand over her heart
as she turned to Olivine and said, “Ach. Watching them go off like that every
day. It’s like watching your heart totter off down the street.”

Olivine laughed. “I wonder if
you’ll still feel that way once they are older. Once they are Kindergarten
graduates.” The May ceremony was coming up in two weeks, and Yarrow had
volunteered to sew forty two crimson caps and gowns. 

“Oh, I will. No doubt about it.”

Olivine offered to make two cups
of espresso if Yarrow wanted to check on three-year-old Dixie, who was in the
next room, lying upside down on the couch, slapping her feet together and singing
along with the Little Mermaid and Life under the Sea.  When Yarrow returned,
she shuffled to the cupboard over the range and stood on tiptoes to fish out a
dark amber bottle. She twisted the cap and poured enough Frangelico in each
espresso cup to double its volume.

“Yum,” Olivine said. “What’s the
occasion?”

“Oh, you just wait.”

They sat at the kitchen table.
Yarrow gathered a mound of breakfast crumbs with her palm, and Olivine stared into
the blackness in her cup. Such dark, biting richness. Such bitterness. Espresso
was one of the few things in life that was as robust as she wanted it to be,
and the liqueur lent its own sweet, velvety warmth.

Olivine wondered, once again, why
on earth she wasn’t feeling something different than she was. Was elation just
part of that “thing” you imagined you would experience, when, as a child, you visualized
your fiancé’s proposal? Was it because she had waited so long to get engaged
and was so accustomed to her own ways of living and moving in the world that
she was grieving a loss before she could celebrate a gain?

“Okay.” Yarrow clapped her hands,
and Olivine startled, sending the blackness in the cup splashing up the sides.
“I know a little something,” Yarrow said.

“Well, all right,” Olivine said,
wondering how she could possibly have known about the engagement. Had Paul
talked to Jon? She shook her head and continued, “But let me tell
you
about it instead of you somehow telling me about it. Pretend you didn’t know,
and I’m coming here, as your sister, to tell you. The way I should have in the
first place.”

“Oh. So you know?” Yarrow asked.

“Of course. Wait…what?”  

“Never mind, never mind.” Yarrow
waved her fingers over her head. “Okay, tell me what
you
know and then
I’ll tell you what I know. Go, go!”

Olivine was quiet. Why wasn’t
she
this excited?

“Jeez, Olivine, talk. Hurry up or
I’m going to tell
you
first.”

“Okay. I just. I’m not sure I
know how to say it.” And for the briefest of moments she wanted to cry. Before
she could stop them, tears had surfaced. She pulled her sleeves long over her
hands, so they covered even the tips of her fingers, and she began dabbing at
her eyes.

“Oh.” Yarrow leaned in close and
grabbed for Olivine’s hands, still encased in her pink Lycra sleeves. “What on
earth? What’s wrong, honey? What’s wrong?”

Olivine closed her eyes and felt
the warmth of Yarrow’s hands on hers, in this warm kitchen, with baby Claire
still banging on her high chair and grinning. She told herself, again, that
Paul was perfect. That this…arrangement made perfect sense and that this was
the way it was supposed to be. He had set her on the car in the rain. So romantic,
like a movie, except in Olivine’s mind, as she recalled it, it wasn’t Paul at
all. It was someone else. She couldn’t see his face, but she could smell him. Freshly
sawn cedar and fabric softener.  

Yarrow bent her head to meet
Olivine’s eyes. “I’m sorry, honey. I thought you would be happy.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. It IS good
news. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m emotional, I guess.”

“Olivine, are you pregnant? Is
this what you came to tell me?”

“No!” she laughed.

“Well, what then? What is going
on?”

And then the conversation took on
a trajectory Olivine hadn’t planned. Instead of telling the news of her
engagement, as she intended, words began rushing out: “Yarrow, do you ever feel
like nothing is as sharp or as…I don’t know…as fantastic, or as amazing as it
is supposed to be?” She inhaled sharply and shook her head, “I mean, life is
this amazing gift, right? Beauty everywhere. Opportunities. Things to do.
Places to go. And yet daily life is just such a day-to-day…‘scritchiness.’ It’s
just sort of… hollow. And the more you want to get excited about something, the
more you are left disappointed when it comes along. Everything is just…kind of
a letdown.”

“Wow, Olivine,” Yarrow said, her
voice soft. “This doesn’t sound like you. At all. What is going on?”

“Sorry. These things have just
been on my mind lately. I didn’t even mean to say all that just now.” She
exhaled in a rush and continued, her voice softer, lower. “I’m losing my mind a
little, I think. I just…as I get older, it seems everything just sort of
stretches from one scratchy day to the next.”

“I think I know what you mean,
actually. I think I’ve felt that. Once or twice,” Yarrow said.

“But not anymore? Not today?” Olivine
asked.

“I guess I don’t really have time
to think like that,” Yarrow replied. “Maybe I’ll start to get existential or
something and then, bam, diapers need changing or someone falls off the swing set.”
She covered Olivine’s hands with her own once again and lowered her head to
meet Olivine’s eyes. “Could you be depressed? Like, do you need to talk to
someone?”

“I
am
talking to someone.”

“No, I mean, do you need to talk
to someone who has some answers?”

“I think you have more answers
than you realize.”

“Well, have you talked to Paul
about this, at least?”

“Once or twice. He offered to
prescribe medication.”

“Well?”

Olivine stared at the blackness
in her coffee cup. “I am not depressed. I just don’t feel like I’m doing what
I’m supposed to be doing.”

“Oh Ollie,” Yarrow said. “We all
feel like that sometimes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.”

“Are
you
happy?”

Yarrow paused. She looked up at baby
Claire who beamed back at her, a string of drool extending from her open mouth
to the highchair’s tray table. “Yes. I believe I am. I mean, I have my moments
where I feel scooped out and sort of, I don’t know, worthless. Scritchy? Is
that what you said?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Is that a word?”

“Probably not.”

“Well, maybe that’s a good word
for it. Scritchy. So, tell me, what is the opposite of scritchy? What would be
the opposite feeling?

“I don’t know,” Olivine replied,
“Sharp, I think. Precise and sharp.”

“Okay.”  Yarrow nodded, and took
a sip of her espresso. “When I feel scritchy, it’s usually when I don’t feel
that what I’m doing has any real purpose. When I’ve been meandering or moodling
around for too long.”

“Is moodling a word?”

“Probably not.” Yarrow smiled.
“Tell me, Olivine, what were the moments in your life when you felt sharp and
precise, as opposed to scritchy? What were the moments that you felt something
deeply satisfying? What were the moments that
didn’t
disappoint but that
were far better than you had imagined?”

Olivine had an image, suddenly, of
herself sitting alone in her tiny attic office, years ago, before she moved in
with Paul. She had painted the walls and the ceiling sky blue, and there was a
small circular window just above her desk that allowed her to see all of the
comings and goings of her world through a tiny picture frame. She could
disappear up there and be with her thoughts and she could create things on
paper that hadn’t existed before. Entire worlds. And she thought of Henry. The
night he made love to her on the floor of her tiny attic office.

Moments like these held their
place in time. They held a certain sticking point. And she would think about
them, over the past ten years, at the strangest times: stepping out of the
shower, taking cereal off the shelf at the grocery store, while making love to
Paul.

“I don’t know,” Olivine replied,
after a time. “But I’ll give some thought to it, Yarrow. Really, thanks for
listening to me. I’m sorry that I am a lunatic.”

“You are far from a lunatic,
Ollie. You simply…experience the entire range of human emotion.” They laughed
at this and then Yarrow said, “And here’s to that!” as they clinked their espresso
cups.

Yarrow tipped the porcelain
demitasse into her mouth and then stood to pour a few more Cheerios on Claire’s
tray table from the box on the counter. The baby’s cheeks were red and full,
her eyes bright, and she had a faint rash on her chin.  

“So was this your big news,
Olivine?” Yarrow asked, returning to her seat. “That your life has been one
endless string of disappointments? Because if it is, then my news is better
than yours.
Way
better.”

“No, that’s not my news,” Olivine
said. “My news is that Paul and I are getting married. We’re engaged.”

“Oh. What? Oh.” Yarrow gulped. “How
wonderful.”

“We are. After the funeral. We
got engaged.” Olivine laughed. “That sounds weird. But, he proposed on our way
home. Actually, I think I might have proposed. Either way, we’re getting
married.”

“Well, no wonder you’re emotional,”
Yarrow said, reaching across the table to grasp her hands once again. “God
bless you, sweetie. That’s great news. He’s an amazing guy.”

“He really is, isn’t he?”

“So, let me see it. Where’s the
ring?”

“I didn’t want you to see it
before I told you, but it’s here.” She fished it out of her pocket, picked off a
piece of lint, and slid it on her finger.

Yarrow held Olivine’s hand gently
in hers. “So beautiful and elegant. Just like you.”

Olivine met her sister’s eyes and
Yarrow looked her full in the face for a moment, as though searching for
something. Finally, Yarrow said, “So if you got engaged on the way home from
Grandma’s memorial, why am I only learning this now?”