The One Who Got Away: A Novel (6 page)

“I remember.”

“And you wrote that adorable
earnest-as-hell editorial about how we should all do our part to make the world
a happier, prettier place?”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me. I was a
silly little girl.”

“No, you weren’t silly at all. That’s
just my point. You never did enjoy the folly of youth. Not really. You just
always knew that you had the power to change people. To change their minds. You
have a certain something, especially when you were younger. And how you can
write!”

“Well, that didn’t exactly work
out.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I’ve been writing and publishing
and writing and publishing, and the most ambitious or earth-shattering thing I
wrote last year was a memoir for some trust funder who hasn’t even done
anything yet that’s worthy of writing about.”  

Her mom chuckled and stacked a
plate by the sink.

“Just because your writing career
hasn’t taken off by now, it doesn’t mean you need to change course. It doesn’t
mean you need to seek your legacy in a different way. You are
enough
,
honey, just the way you are. You will live a life of significance, no matter
what you do. Just by virtue of the person you are. The light you bring to your
little corner. Your little corner of the world.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, mom,
but what does that have to do with my engagement?”

“I just think that you might be
mistaking Grandma’s legacy for your own. Her legacy was to give birth to this
amazing, loving family. Maybe yours is, too. And maybe it isn’t. Maybe yours is
to write wonderful words that inspire people and help them to live richer,
better lives.”

“I gave writing a chance.”

“Don’t speak in the past tense
like that. You’re young.”

“Not so much.”

“Well, when you’re my age, you’ll
think thirty-two is young. Hell, when you’re thirty-five, you’ll think
thirty-two is young. Things don’t have to go according to a plan or a diagram
you drew out when you were younger. Sometimes the best thing that can possibly
happen to you is that you are forced into a detour.”

“Detours make me a little
panicky,” Olivine replied. “Whether they are on the road or in my life.” She
scooped up a handful of suds and stared into them. Tiny spheres—some white,
some iridescent—all mashed together. She continued. “Maybe it
is
related
to Grandma. I feel a… a sense of panic. I’m sure it’s related to me feeling,
finally, a sense of my own mortality.” The words were coming out of her
quickly, before she had a chance to think, “I feel like I’m running out of
time, but running out of time for what? I don’t even know what I’m racing to
do.”

Spilling her emotions like this, she
was taken back to a night when she was ten years old and her mother had checked
on her late, in her bedroom. She had been lying awake and when Christine had
walked in and asked her what was wrong, Olivine confessed, all in a rush, that she
was scared to die. And the admission of her deepest fears, suddenly out in the
world, with her mother sitting next to her, flooded her with a sense of relief.
And here she was again, like a little girl seeking solace, begging her mother
to tell her it was going to be okay. That life was going to be okay and so was
death and that she would never be left all alone.

“I know you want to leave a mark
on the world,” her mother said. “Your grandmother did it in a most marvelous
way. Yarrow does it in a most marvelous way. Paul does it in a most marvelous
way.
You
will do it in a most marvelous way. Your marvelous way doesn’t
need to simply be to help Paul with his life mission. You are allowed to have
your own. Your very own mission. You’re even allowed to not know what it is
yet.”

Olivine shook the soap bubbles
from her hands and folded her mother in her arms. She squeezed her until Christine
pulled away.

“It’s been a tough week on us
all. How about we not make any big announcements to the group just today? Just
this evening?” Christine said.

“Of course, Mom.”

Christine swept a plate of
brownies from the counter and winked at Olivine as she backed out the swinging
kitchen door. Olivine plunged her hands into the dishwater once again, not
bothering to wipe her tears as they fell, ripe and full, into the dishwater
below.

*****

That evening, on her way home,
Olivine remembered one of the last days they were together, she and Henry, before
she had ever given much thought to legacies and what life was or wasn’t for.
Back then, she cared for an affluence of time and an affluence of freedom; not
an affluence of money. She and Henry had talked about how they could go
anywhere together. They could live anywhere.

They had been lying on the floor
of her apartment. Her head was propped on his stomach and he spoke about how
they could write a book together. Some kind of book about…what had he suggested?
Rest area bathrooms. They could travel the country and document the words they
would see etched into the paint on the lavatory walls. Or they could travel the
world and photograph people who looked like their dogs, or they could
photograph cool windows and doors. Or churches. Or spires. Or old trees. They
could go from one idea to another. He could take photos and she could write
something pithy, he had said.

“Pithy?” she asked, and when he
laughed, her head bobbed up and down on his abdomen, and he told her how they
would find endless new adventures and things to do and they would live like
vagabonds, anywhere they wanted. He could tend bar or log trees or build homes.
And she could write and learn about whatever she wished. She could learn to
arrange flowers, he said, or decorate cakes, or illustrate poetry books, and
when they got bored of one thing, they could move on to one another. And they
could travel and take photos of things and make pithy remarks for coffee table
books.

“Who is going to buy a coffee
table book on rest area bathrooms?” she had asked him, giggling.

“Well, if your words were pithy
enough…”

It had been a warm day, and she
could smell him, a raw musky earthiness, from where her head was positioned on
his stomach.

She remembered that it wasn’t an altogether
pleasant aroma, but still she lay there, with her head buoyed up on his belly. And
Olivine remembered thinking, just then, how she loved being a woman. How she
loved finding shampoo that made her hair smell just right and she loved
applying scented lotion to her skin. She loved matching her fragrance to her
mood. But she also imagined that, if she were a man, she would enjoy plunging
into her own manliness—her own stink—from time to time. If she were a man, she
would grow a beard every now and then.

Certainly, this was how Henry
felt. She had asked him once, “What is it about you mountain guys? You guys
don’t believe in deodorant? Antiperspirant?” Her father and most of the men she
knew were the same way. Smelled the same way.

“Ach,” Henry had said, “I don’t
know what kind of toxins and poisons are in that. I’m not smearing it on myself
every day. Besides, I smell nice.”

“Not always.”

“Well, I guess you’ll learn to
love it because this is the way I smell.” And he squeezed her around the waist
and kissed her hard, with closed lips, on the mouth.

But Paul, he showered two or
three times a day. Always before work. Often, at work. And then at the gym,
where he often went after work. He got haircuts twice a month, on alternating
Mondays from the same barber.

Henry said he cut his hair twice
a year, whether he needed it or not, and he did it himself. All he needed, he
said, was a set of clippers and a number two guard, which he could run all over
his face and his head “I’m a simple man with simple needs,” Henry would say.

And then Olivine remembered how
she and Henry had attended a birthday party for her dad’s dearest friend,
Charlie. Charlie had a broad, Yosemite Sam moustache that covered his front
teeth when he talked. He had an easy laugh and eyes that glistened. Charlie had
been teaching downhill skiing to ten-year-olds for decades, and he rode his bicycle
everywhere he went, all year long, his skis strapped to his back. Another
simple man with simple needs, Olivine thought.

When they had arrived at the
party, Charlie locked Olivine into a hug, smashing her face against his
tropical print shirt. When he finally released her, he held her by her elbows
and looked into her eyes and smiled.

“How are you doing, Charlie?” Olivine
had asked.

“Olivine, I’m having the time of
my life.” This had been his stock response ever since she could remember.

“You’re always having the time of
your life,” she said, as she always did.

And Charlie replied, as he always
did. “It’s not hard to have the time of your life when you have the heart of a
five-year-old.”

“That is true,” Olivine said as
she pulled Henry toward her, one arm looped around his waist. “Charlie, I want
you to meet Henry. He also has the heart of a five-year=old. In fact, I was
just telling him this today. Not so poetically, maybe.”

“Yeah. Not so poetically.” Henry
laughed. “She told me I was immature.”

They laughed together, and
Charlie said, “Tomato, tom-ah-to.”

But she knew, too, that Henry
wasn’t always having the time of his life. Sometimes, she caught him looking at
her while she was doing something ordinary: folding laundry or making sandwiches
or hiking alongside him, and there was a flash of sorrow, just until she saw
him watching her. And then the smile returned.

She asked him about it from time
to time: “Is there something I should know?” or “Are you sad?” And he would
say, “Ah, we all get sad, but you make it all go away. That’s why I can’t get
enough of you.”

And Olivine reflected on Charlie.
A man she loved like a second father. Even as a child, growing up with Charlie
coming and going from her parent’s house, she wondered what it would be like to
marry someone like him. Charlie didn’t have children and, to the rest of the
world, his wife seemed cold. Intimidating to adults; scary for kids. She rarely
left her front yard, and she would spend hours upon hours tending to her garden
in the summer. Olivine remembered how she always wore a pink baseball cap and
pink gardening gloves, and how she was always popping up from the yard to tell
the kids in the neighborhood to make sure they stayed away from the bushes in
her side yard during their games of hide and seek.

Charlie hardly ever appeared in
public with his wife. And yet, something about their relationship worked. Now,
they were both nearing seventy, like her own parents, and they were still
together.

You never knew what it was
between a couple that made it work, Olivine thought. And maybe this is how it
would be now, with Paul. There was something more to a lifelong love than met
the eye. She could keep her outside world in order. Paul would help her take
care of that world, and inside, she could be however she wanted.  

She liked to keep things inside
herself, and Paul didn’t pry. He never asked her how she was feeling. He made
suggestions, sure, on which direction she could go—on what kind of decisions
she should make. He helped her when she was struggling with her career. He
helped her to redirect to something of more significance. But he never asked
too many questions. He let her inner life be her own.

She relished this inner life. And
Paul relished his. She understood Paul. She understood his silence and his
independence. Paul’s father was probably right: no one could love Paul like she
could. No one could understand his detachedness like she could. He needed her,
and she understood him. And that was that. They would be together. The way it
should be.

As Olivine turned onto her street,
she found herself driving more slowly and lingering at stop signs. She didn’t
want to go home. She didn’t want to talk about Anatomy class, and she didn’t
want to be indoors. It was a beautiful night, so warm for early May, and so she
turned out of her neighborhood and back to the highway, and, soon, she found
herself driving to the cabin.

This is where she could come when
she needed to think and to be alone. Sometimes she would just arrive there, as
if on autopilot. This place would always be home to her. This is the place
where, as kids, she and Yarrow and their cousins would sit on the white trunk
of a massive cottonwood tree that had fallen across the river and dangle their
feet into the water, so cold it stung. In the springtime, they would walk
barefoot across the snow, which had grown coarse and pebbly with the slanted
sun, and they would sit side by side on the log and keep their feet submerged
as long as they could stand it, the river running high with fresh snowmelt from
the peaks just above. Some days, they would have contests to see who could keep
their feet in the river the longest.

The water was just a few degrees
above freezing, and Olivine would suck in a sharp burst of air as she first
slid her feet in and watched them turn corpse white under the clear mountain
water. She could outlast anyone, even her cousin Brad, who was four years older
and who played varsity football and who always told her that she was one touch
chick. Also, that she would someday lose a toe to frostbite, which hadn’t come
to pass.

Olivine would stay with her feet
in the water, breathing through the sting, willing the pain into the center of
her and away from her face. Away from anywhere it could be visible. Her eyes
would be closed, her breathing deep and even, and someone would eventually go
and get her mother, who would come and make her walk inside where she was made
to wrap her feet, now raw and red, in a blanket.

Anywhere near the cabin—sitting
on the log over the river, by the fire ring in the backyard, on the cabin’s
front porch—she could see the four peaks that buttressed her town. She knew
them so well, she could picture them in any season. In the winter, their crags
blanketed in snow. In the springtime, the cornices on the high peaks would
tumble, triggering avalanches that left trails you could see from miles away. Long
skids of snow like ripples on a white sheet, hanging on the line
.

And now, Olivine turned into the
driveway, which was cut just wide enough for a single car; a narrow path through
towering Ponderosa pine, shrubby blue spruce, and patches of white-trunked
aspens, the trees so dense she couldn’t see the house until she rounded the
final curve at the end of the drive. As a child, she had dubbed it “The Hallway
Forest” and, now, as she drove through, she found herself ducking her head as
she always did, even inside the car, as she passed beneath the branches that
dipped low.

Driving down this alley, just a
couple hundred yards to the house, she experienced that gentle, familiar
fullness she always felt when she arrived at this place. This place where she
could sit on the porch or on a log in the river and simply listen to the trees
for a time. To take in their hushed musings and their gentle scent, as familiar
and comforting to her as a fleece blanket, pulled high on her neck.

The sun had long dipped behind
the mountains, but the full moon cast a pale bluish light over the forest. As
she rounded the corner at the top of the drive, she spotted a glint of silver
through the trees by the house. Paul’s Audi.

Paul was known to come here
sometimes. In the summer, he came to fly fish in the river. On warm evenings,
he would sit on the porch and listen to the silence of the deep forest, much as
she did. In the winter, he would start a fire in the great room of the cabin, and
he would pull the rocker up close and watch the flames consume the wood.
Whatever the season, Paul could sit here, in a rocking chair on the porch or
watching the fire, and not say a word. Sometimes for hours. His eyes would
close and he would get a pensive look on his face as though the trees or the
fire were telling him something and he must listen very closely.

She wasn’t in the mood to see
Paul. Not out here. Not tonight. She slowed to a stop and looked backward over
her shoulder, hoping to pop the car in reverse before she was spotted. To go
back, stealthily, the way she had come. That’s when she noticed another car.
Parked farther up the drive. Nearly concealed, deep in the trees. Her chest
lurched. Had Paul met someone here? What was he doing here? At night? Without
her?

Now she had to see. Instead of
backing out of the driveway, she pulled the Jeep directly in front of the
house. She flipped off the headlights, popped out, and strode toward the cabin,
but an ice flow had formed just before the steps to the wraparound porch. Here,
there wasn’t anything to grasp for balance, so she held her arms out to the
side and set one foot carefully in front of the other.

Just then, something small and
white dashed off the porch and ran straight for her. Startled, Olivine leapt to
the side just as a small dog, not more than nine inches off the ground, skidded
toward her and slammed its black nose straight into her shin. Two low-toned
voices drifted from the darkness of the porch, around the side where she
couldn’t see.

Whomever Paul was meeting with, it
wasn’t a woman. What had she been thinking? Of course, it wasn’t a woman. She
took a deep breath and considered climbing back into her car. Had he invited
some buddies here? That would be unusual, too. What she needed was a good
night’s sleep. She really was losing her mind.  

The dog was still jumping toward
her and against her, slipping here and there on the ice, but, Olivine laughed,
it was the warmest, most enthusiastic welcome she had experienced in a while.
She bent to return the greeting and received three quick licks from the
smallest Jack Russell Terrier she had ever seen. It was snow white except for
two perfect brown spots, one on each eye, and a third spot the exact shape and
size of a thumbprint, directly on top of its head. The dog’s legs were short
and muscular, and its stubby tail wagged with vigor. She heard Paul’s chuckle
from the porch and then his voice. “Are you alright out there? Do you need
help?” Then silence.

The dog stayed at Olivine’s heels
as she made her way up the porch steps and across the front of the house, where
the rockers sat, positioned to take in the view of the peaks. A window to the
house had been left open and a faint scent wafted toward her. The scent of the
cabin: Decades of coffee and freshly baked Swedish cardamom breads, combining with
the musty scent of old cedar planks.

The porch was lit by a series of
can lights, set deep into the soffit, and forming distinct puddles of yellow
light just beneath them. As she rounded the corner of the porch, she saw two
figures, sitting on the wood floor. She blinked her eyes to help her pupils
adjust.

“Come on over, Olivine,” Paul
said, motioning toward her, not standing up. “I want you to meet Henry.”

Olivine’s stomach dropped. Her
face flushed. As her eyes adjusted to the faded light, she could see Paul, sitting
cross legged on the floor, which looked suddenly so odd for a man to do, though
he always sat like that. And then, just across from him, sat Henry.

His black hair was now flecked
with silver at the temples, but the rest of his face was just the same. His
eyebrows thick and arched and expressive. His eyes luminous. And when she saw
the stubble on his face, she could suddenly feel the scratch of it on her bare
neck. When she saw his lips, parted slightly, she could feel them whispering
hot in her ear. Her breath caught.

She had forgotten how beautiful
he was. She met his eyes, without meaning to, and her face prickled. Heat
coursed through her chest and her arms and her legs. And she stood there for a
moment and let the memory of him ripple through her, and then it occurred to
her that Paul was talking. His mouth was forming words that she hadn’t heard.
She watched Paul’s mouth, to help her mind stop racing, to help her process
what he was saying.

 “…should see the stuff this guy
can do with wood. Grandpa hired Henry here to do up some doors for the cabin.”

Olivine nodded, not sure of what
would happen if she tried to speak.

“Sit down, hon,” Paul said,
patting a spot next to him on the wood. And so Olivine sank down, her knees
bent in front of her.

“But he surprised the hell out of
me when I pulled in,” Paul went on. “I just dropped by to pick up my fly rod so
I can take it in. Get the ferrules waxed, etcetera, before summer. I didn’t even
know he was here at first.”

“Sorry about that,” Henry said.
His voice so familiar. Deep but gentle and the sound of it made the base of her
belly tingle. For a moment, she felt dizzy. Had she been holding her breath? “I
wanted to get off the road so I wouldn’t interfere with any plowing or any
traffic to and from the house,” Henry was saying. “I live there, actually, in
that bus, whenever I’m working on location…” she watched his lips move; those
full, fleshy lips and she remembered kissing them, pulling and sucking on that
bottom lip. “I took the road as far as the plow had gone. I hope I’m not in the
way of the turnout.”

Olivine turned to Paul. She fixed
her eyes on him.

“No, I’m sure it’s fine,” Paul was
saying, “What is that, anyway? Your bus? Some kind of special carpenter’s
vehicle?”

Henry laughed and shook his head.
“Something like that. I converted it from a school bus that I bought at auction.
Took all the seats out and filled it with the stuff I need when I’m away from
home. It’s pretty bare bones, but it suits me fine. It’s not great in the snow unless
I put chains on it, but I’ll leave it parked for most of the time I’m here.”

“We should be about finished with
the snow. I’m jonesing to get on my bike. Put the skis away for awhile.”

Jonesing? Paul didn’t talk like
that.  

“How long will you be here? I
mean, how long will this door take?” Paul asked.

“It all depends on the kind of
material I have to work with,” Henry said. “It shouldn’t take more than a few
days. A week.”

“Well, did you bring your skis?”

“Of course. Skis. A bike. I’ve
got all the toys with me. Truth is, they live in the bus with me. I never take
them out.”

“Sweet, man.”

Sweet, man? Olivine laughed to
herself. Henry had the same effect on Paul as he had on her grandfather. He
was
charming. She’d say that for the man. But that was all it was. She steeled
herself. She was not going to fall victim to him or his charm again.

When she had repeated this fact
to herself a number of times, she allowed herself to meet Henry’s eyes once
more. And that was when their eyes locked, and neither could look away. His
voice became small, apologetic, kind. “Hello, Olivine.”

Paul looked from Henry to Olivine
and back again.  

“Wait a second,” Paul said. “You
two already know each other.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

“We
knew
each other,” Olivine
said. “Decades ago.”

“We’re not
that
old.”
Henry laughed, in that easy way of his, like the sounds just fell out of him.
Tumbled forth. More shards of memory rushed through her. She lying on his stomach
as he laughed. Her head bobbing up and down. The roughness of his fingertips on
her bare skin, her waist, the inside of her thigh.

“But yeah, a different lifetime,”
he continued. They looked at one another steadily and Olivine could feel the
oxygen squeezing from her lungs and, even knowing that Paul was staring at her
and looking back and forth between them, she couldn’t look away until finally
Henry broke his gaze and turned his attention to Paul.

“I lived here for a summer,
building custom homes,” Henry said. “Just after college, I guess it was. And
that’s when we met.”

“Yeah.” Olivine nodded.

“Ah. Well,” Paul said, placing
his hand on Olivine’s knee. “We’re getting married.”

Henry popped his eyebrows. “Oh. To
each other?”

“Yes.” Paul laughed.

“Congratulations.” Henry’s eyes
swept toward Olivine and then snapped back to Paul.

“So.” Paul paused for a moment,
and then his words came out in a rush, “You do most of your work on location,
huh? You build most of the doors on site?”

“Not generally, no.” Henry
replied. He paused and he looked down at the planks for a moment. And then he
said, in a tone that was lower, quieter, “But I do travel quite a bit. Either
finding doors to reclaim or doing installations. Most of the actual carpentry
work I do is on-site in our yard in Idaho, but this was such a unique project,
I’ll be doing everything here because that’s where the raw material is.”

Paul turned to Olivine. “Apparently,
Grandpa had this idea, “ Paul said, “to take wood from each of the things in
the back. And to fashion them into a front door. Patchwork style.”

“Yeah,” Olivine said, “He’s been
talking about doing that himself for decades. I thought it was just an excuse
to keep all that stuff around.” She turned to Henry. “Everybody teases him
because he never throws anything away.” Her voice sounded too loud, too brassy.
Not her own.