The One Who Got Away: A Novel (22 page)

Paul was saying something. His
lips were moving. The room was tilting. Her breath was coming fast.

“What should we do now? Shall we
go home?”

Words came. “Yes. Yes. You go
ahead,” she said.

“What the hell? Go ahead?”

“Yes, you go ahead. You go home.
You do what you need to do. I am going to go.”

“You are going to
go?”

“Yes.”

“You are going to go
where?”

“I’m just going to go.”

Paul stared at her, and she thought
about saying she was sorry, but she couldn’t make her mouth form the words, so
she slid off the velvet upholstery, and she slid out of the casino and into the
light outside, which stung her eyes and made them water.

And then she began to walk. She
walked past three obese men in nylon superhero suits, standing by the fountain at
the entrance to the hotel: one dressed in a nylon PowerPuff Girls costume, another
as a nightmarish Chuckie doll and another as Robin, with no Batman to be seen.
A sign propped on an overturned fifty-gallon bucket offered photos with the
characters for twenty dollars each.  

She walked past a disabled man in
a wheelchair, just a head and a torso, trying to sell her bottled water. She
walked past a man handing out promotional cards bedecked with nude, busty women,
two tiny black strips along a blonde’s nipples. And when she had walked for a
while, she hailed a cab from the rotunda of a towering yellowish hotel and she found
herself at the airport. She tucked away the credit card that she shared with
Paul, and she brought out her debit card. The one she’d kept from the time when
she was alone in the world and the one that would draw on her own tiny bank
balance.

She found herself, then, in line
at the ticket counter, but then she decided that she did not want to go home.
Instead, she decided that she might rent a car. A sedan. No. Her eyes glanced
down to the Luxury Convertible category and she realized that, here in Vegas, she
could rent any of a number of exotic cars. And so she decided on a Porsche 911
convertible in platinum silver because it was precisely the opposite of
everything she had ever driven before. And she jingled the keys in her hand,
and she clicked along the airport floor, and she tucked inside a bookseller’s
shop, and she chose a thick leather-bound writing journal with crisp, buttery
pages and a heavy white pen with ink that flowed fast. And then she burst into
the glittering sunlight to find her new car.

The leather seat pressed lush
against the back of Olivine’s legs. She placed her pocketbook and her shopping
bag on the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition, feeling the
Porsche’s throaty hum beneath her hands on the steering wheel and beneath her
seat and beneath her feet. She pulled the switch on the center console until
the convertible top had peeled back completely. She backed out of her parking
space, followed the exit signs, and merged into the lane that would take her
toward home.

Then she cut the wheel hard to
the right, and she found herself heading west instead.

She suspected that, once she was
encased, alone, inside the cocoon of the car, she would fall apart. She would begin
to weep and ask herself, “What now?” But she found, instead, that, as she
drove, the highway presented her with one green road sign after another, each
positing a plain and simple choice. This way to have
that
experience.
This way for a different experience. Each experience unknown. And she no longer
wanted to cry. Instead, she envisioned herself as the woman of the tiny wick in
the painting. She didn’t need to illuminate anyone’s world but her own. And she
felt free.

She lifted her shoulders back and
inhaled and watched her chest rise up, up, up. And she began to laugh with her
mouth wide open. When she felt hungry, she stopped at a convenience store, and
she bought a bag of cherry sours candy and a Dr. Pepper, knowing that they
would interact to produce a fizzy sensation in her mouth and, later, a stomachache.
At the counter, she added a four dollar pair of sunglasses and a two dollar
pair of flip flops.

The man behind the cash register
asked her where she was headed and she began to say that she had no earthly
idea, but then she decided that this was not a safe thing to tell someone, so
she made up something about being on her way to a medical conference in San
Francisco, and the man grinned and shook his white hair into his face and slid
her purchases into a plastic bag. And she laughed at the rush of relief she
felt over the fact that this was a total lie. That this could not, in fact,
have been further from the truth.

The truth was, she was going
where she was not someone’s child, not someone’s sister, not someone’s fiancé.
At some point, she would need a destination. Some point. Probably soon. But
that would not be a problem. Because she made her own light, wherever she
went. 

*****

After Olivine had driven awhile
and the sun had set, she pulled off the highway to find some dinner, and she
ate it sitting at a bar, which felt gritty against her forearms. And then she
checked into a hotel, where she opened the French doors wide, and she stood on
the balcony, and she let her dress flip in the wind.

She fell into a hard sleep, on
top of the bed, without slipping between the sheets. And in the morning, she
scrubbed her face, and she turned on her cell phone, which had been buried in
her pocketbook, and she sent a text message to her sister and to her mother, saying
she was taking care of some things and not to be alarmed by anything they might
hear and that she would be home shortly.

“That,” she said aloud to
herself, “will have to do.”

And then she got in the car
again, and she set off. When the phone rang, or the text message alert chimed,
she would answer or respond only if they were from her mother or her father or
from Yarrow.

Paul had tried to call. And so
had Henry. But this trip wasn’t about them. It was about her. For a decade, she
had been wrestling with memories of the one who had gotten away and yearning
for a way to get him back. But now she saw that it wasn’t Henry who had gotten
away at all. It was Olivine: the person she was and the person she loved. And
she would get her back, but, to do that, she needed quiet, and she needed
distance and she needed time.

So Olivine set off, with no
particular destination and with no particular deadline and deciding, from one
road sign to the next, where to go; sometimes turning onto a new route solely
for the satisfaction that came with deciding to do so. A decision that no one would
care about, debate over, or chime in on. And, everywhere she went, she wrote.

She wrote pages upon pages upon
pages. She drove along the Pacific Coast, and she wrote with her feet in the
sea and the kelp twisting between her toes. She wrote atop rocky outcroppings
above the crashing surf. And when that first leather-bound journal was filled,
she bought another. And then another.

And when she tired, finally, of
diner food and hotel beds, she headed toward home. And she found that, once she
was headed in this direction, she drove all day and all night, stopping only
when she entered the Rocky Mountains, at the first scenic overlook, to sit amid
the soaring peaks to write some more. And here she wrote about the rocks that
lifted straight up into the sky, dotted with tiny pines, weathered and beaten.

She wrote about how spring had
arrived and how the landscape bloomed fresh and how the grasses had shrugged
off winter’s snow and were standing tall once more. And she wrote about the sky
and the shade of sapphire that existed only here, high in the Rockies, where
the air was so thin and so dry. And she wrote about where she would go next,
and what she might do and the kind of woman she was and would forever be, as
she returned to this home and to the family she loved.

*****

As she drove back into her town,
she inhaled the sweetness of the pine needles and the soggy earth, and she knew
it was time to face a few things. She would need to face the rental car bill, for
one, and she would need to face Paul, at least in order to get her own car
back. Out of his garage or out of impound or whatever he had done with it.

And in the face of all these
things, she found herself driving out to the cabin. To sit on the porch,
perhaps, or on the fallen cottonwood tree in the river. To breathe in the air
and to surround herself with her past, with her memories. She would stay here,
at the cabin, until she was ready to leave once more.

Pebbles pinged the sides of the
car as it purred up the driveway. She parked near the front of the house and picked
her way along the forest path in her strappy sandals. In the short time she had
been gone, the alpine buttercups and evening primrose had nudged through the
soil, their bent heads shy and wary. The clearing where Henry’s bus had been
parked was mended. Self-healed. The grasses once trampled by the bus tires and
by the melting snow had risen again.

Everything had returned to its
original condition. A release surged through her, and her shoes clicked up the
porch steps as she went to stand at the rails. She pressed her hands on the
wood and expanded her chest and breathed the air, so familiar in any season.
Today, a wet scent. Nearly swampy, but mixed with sweetness. The promise of a
great many wildflowers, of knee-high lupine and fireweed and blue flax. These
would come along in time, but not yet. For that, she would have to wait.

She looked out over the expanse
and thought how her grandmother would have looked across this same expanse,
each June morning, with Grandpa by her side, and how they would have shared
dark roast coffee from their French press, sweetened with two sugar lumps and
whole table cream, no half and half. Olivine smiled, remembering how her
grandmother had lived by superlatives, too. She, like Olivine, always yearned
for things to be richer, deeper, and darker.

Something caught Olivine’s eye
just then, and she turned and this is when she saw Henry’s door, in place now
on heavy hinges of pounded steel.

Olivine walked to it, fingers
outstretched, and she grazed her fingertips over the carvings, the inlays of
wood. There, laid out, under a deep amber stain, was her family tree, in
abstract: pieces of wood, reclaimed from life itself and presented patchwork
style. At the top, a square of lighter, whitewashed wood; narrow slats
alternating and butting against one another. She drew a sharp breath when she
recognized them as pieces of her grandmother’s rocking chair. The very chair
that Grandma had rocked Christine to sleep in. And here, a lap of siding from the
first house that her grandfather had built, after the war. It was signed
“Claude Eriksson, 7/8/1946.” And here, pieces of her family’s dining room
table; the tiny marks she had made one day as a child, poking the tines of her
fork into the soft pine. Here and there a series of rusted square-head cut
nails were visible, and she knew then that these were from carpenters that
Henry had known. Henry. His father. Her father. Her grandfather. And then she
saw a small bright spot in the bottom right. A shape like a sun, etched into
the sandblasted wood, retaining its orange tint even under the darker stain.

And she was glad, then, that
Henry had come. Grandpa would be pleased with the door. And she wondered if
there had been an unveiling. If Grandpa had come to see it while she was gone.  

She touched each part of the door
with the palm of her hand, and in the center, she pressed hard, without knowing
why, as though to feel its heartbeat. And slowly, slowly the door creaked inward
and, for a moment, she was confused. Had the door not been latched? And then a
figure emerged from the other side of the door. Henry. Standing before her.

The porch spun once and righted
itself, and, still, he was there. In a bright white t-shirt. His eyes luminous
and searching. His lips pink and full.

And she put her hand on his
chest, in the center. In that place where she knew her face fit just so, in
profile. And he placed his hand on her arm and she felt his warmth. His
fingertips were rough against her skin and she felt a hum in her arms and in
her legs.

Henry began to speak and he told
her he had no expectations of her. That she would never need to pretend. That
she could close off, or she could close in. That she could invite him in or
push him out. That he just wanted to sit there with her, on the edge.  

And then he whispered to her. His
explanation. It was the same explanation she had heard from his messages on her
phone, which she had never returned. “When you came by, the last time I saw
you, my son had just driven all night to see me. He found out that his mother
had initiated divorce proceedings. That she wants to marry again. And Max lost
his mind a little. When you came by that morning, he had just arrived. He was beside
himself. So angry and demanding to know if I was in love with someone else, too.
If I was having an affair. And I hadn’t had time to explain anything to him.
He’s sixteen. And he loves me. And I love him. And I froze. But I knew you were
strong, and I knew it would be okay. That you would be okay. I had faith. In
this. In us.”

Her chest swelled and she
realized that she was okay. She was okay whether Henry was sitting here talking
to her, explaining himself, or whether he was not. No longer did she need this.
But she would enjoy it, and she would enjoy him, and she would let him in, and
she would share her light with him, and she would bask in his.

And when Henry had finished, she
asked, “How is he? How is Max?”  

“He is okay. His mother loves
him, and his birth father loves him, and I love him and his father-to-be loves
him. And I’ll always have a relationship with him.”

“And Clara?”

Paul’s chest lifted. “Clara is
going to be just fine. She is in love, and she has my blessing. Of course.”

Olivine looked out once again to
the land, scanning the property, breathing full, deep breaths.  “So, where is
your bus?”

He chuckled, “Your mom and dad
took it. They went to the beach. Christine said Artie needed some lower
elevation and moist sea air.”

Olivine laughed. “So when will
they be back?”

“No one knows.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“Well, I am now,” he said, and he
looked into her eyes.

“So you’re staying here?” she
asked, not looking away.

“Your mom and dad insisted, when
they took my bus.” He laughed again.

“When they get back, can we go
somewhere?”

“Of course.”

“Where?”

“Wherever. Wherever is next.”

And then he moved his hand behind
her head, to the nape of her neck and he tipped her head upward, and he moved
his face in close, and his lips met hers and they were as soft as she
remembered, and he kissed her with a gentleness and then with probing
intensity, nearly a desperation, as though to make up for all the time they had
lost. And their bodies began to move in the rhythm that she only just now
remembered, like the swells of the sea and then the feel of velvet, pure and
rich and deep. And they came together the way only two people who have searched
and who have missed one another can, in the end.

And then they lay on the planks
of the porch, and they looked out to the canopy of the waking trees, to the
aspens that had been slumbering all winter and now stood brimming with leaves,
emerald green.