The One Who Got Away: A Novel (5 page)

Christine said, “You all know
this story.”

“I know but it’s so good,” Yarrow
said, “I love it so much. I mean, here is this model of delicious, perfect love.
And it had started quite accidentally.”

“Delicious? Perfect?” Artie
interjected. “You all obviously haven’t seen us trying to find a parking spot
at the airport, or when she’s telling me how to fix an appliance, or when I’m
driving through a snowstorm….”  Artie turned his sideways grin to Christine.
“But continue. Tell the story again, if you must.”

She smiled, patted him on the
forearm, and nodded. “I long suspected, and still do, that he didn’t even mean
to say it. To propose marriage. That it slipped out in a weak moment. And he
loves me too much to confirm this one way or another. We never speak of it.”

Her father was using the back end
of his fork to poke at a piece of gristle on his plate, but he was smiling, and
so Christine continued.

“He had made snowshoes. Because
he hurt himself jumping off a balcony. There was a decade or so when he thought
he was Superman and infinitely indestructible.”

“Only a decade?” Jon asked.

Christine ignored the
interruption and continued, “Well, he had just broken his foot because he
jumped from a balcony or some such thing, and so he had this great big cast on,
and he couldn’t go to work because he couldn’t climb ladders and he couldn’t walk
on the tops of two-by-four walls and so he handcrafted these snowshoes because
he didn’t know what else to do with himself. He had all this time, and God
knows he can’t sit still. Never could. So, in the workshop at the cabin, he
worked all day on these snowshoes. He soaked the rawhide to bend it. He laminated
the wood, one thin layer after another, and then he pushed them all together to
form the curved wood of the shoe.” As Christine spoke, she fidgeted with the
charm on her necklace, buzzing it on the chain from left to right. “The way he
had designed them, they buckled right onto your boots. They were a little
cheesy.”

“Cheesy? Hell!” Artie said, but
he was smiling.

“So when they were all finished,
I took the pair he made for me, and I strapped them on, and I walked around in
my front yard, and something about it made me laugh. I laughed and laughed and
just fell all over the place into the deep snow,” Christine said, “I felt like
such a pioneer. Remember that, Artie?”

He nodded, smiling, his eyes
downcast.

“To walk on top of snow, on
something of your own devising,” Christine said, “It
was
kind of a
thrill… And so, once Artie decided his foot had gotten pretty close to healing,
he cut off his own cast, so we could go try them out.”

“You cut your cast off yourself?
What would Paul say?” Jon asked.

Artie shook his head and Christine
went right on talking, “And so we went to Mount Williams, and in those days,
everyone would hike to the top in the spring and then ride the couliers—the little
chutes—down, down, down on their butts— and sometimes you would make little
avalanches with your rear, but you would ride them.” She clapped her hands
together. “It was great fun! Remember that, Artie?”

He nodded.

“Now, over the years, I suppose,
quite a lot of people died that way,” Christine went on, “and so now they really
don’t like you to go down on that side of the mountain anymore at all, but this
is what we had done. And we sat, afterwards, in the bus, back at the trailhead,
and it was just one of those days, with the brilliant sunshine and the hard
exercise where your face tingles when you finally stop moving, and we felt so
alive and awake and unstoppable. And so there we were, afterwards, in his VW
bus. Much like the van that friend of yours used to have, Olivine. Remember
that VW?”

Olivine’s face flushed hot. Henry’s
VW van with the wooden floors. And she remembered with a startle, as though it
had just occurred, how Henry had pulled over on the side of the road one day,
barely off the interstate, and he had swung his legs over to the middle,
between their seats and he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to the back
of the bus, and he had made love to her, with a passion—an urgency—but also a
tenderness unlike any she had experienced before. It had been their second time
together, and a truck roared past with his horn blaring, and while Henry was
kissing her bellybutton he looked up, and her heart raced at the idea that
maybe they were smack in the middle of the road, going at it with wild abandon,
as they were. But she was with Henry, and so she knew they were safe. With him,
nothing could touch her. She remembered thinking that this was all she would
ever need in the world. This Volkswagen van. And this man.  

Everyone at the table was looking
at her. “I remember,” Olivine answered, shaking her head a little and casting
her eyes down to the tablecloth.

Christine went on with her story,
and Olivine was struck once again by the way she could be in a particular
position in her mind, stuck in a thought, right there making love to Henry in a
VW van, and yet sitting here with her mother and her father. The memory had
been so vivid that the transition away from it took a moment, and she heard her
mother’s voice as a buzz in the background, telling the tale they had all heard
countless times.

“And we took off our snowshoes and
we grinned at one another and then Artie burst out that we should ‘get married
or something.’ I’ll never forget how the Vee-Dub smelled of dogs and gasoline
and old wet blankets, and I thought there must be a more romantic way for this
to happen, but here it was. This was it.” Christine took the smallest sip of
wine. “This was just the kind of guy he was. And I think it slipped out, his
proposal, because we had just had a remarkable day. He wasn’t joking. We just
felt so right, and I remember thinking: who really
cares
if he meant to
say it. He said it, and I said ‘yes.’”

Christine paused then, and no one
said anything. She stared down into her wine glass as she gave it a swirl,
watching the wine lap the sides. She went on: “And then, fast forward all these
years...There are years where you feel so trapped with your little kids,” she said,
looking up at Yarrow. “Trapped by your own love mostly. You aren’t sure you
love to be there every day, but you love them so much that you are stuck. You
can’t leave and you feel so ready to move on with this life, but at the same
time you want to slow time. To stop time altogether.” Her voice faded to a
hush. “But time goes on, and then you are in a new place, and it’s all perfect,
because…well, because this is the way it is.” Her lips were rosy and full and,
Olivine thought, beautiful.

“It has worked out just fine for
us,” Artie said, after a moment had passed. “I mean, I tell people, we’ve been
married ten good years, and people say, that’s all you’ve been married? At your
age? And I say, ‘Well, now I’ve been married forty years, and about ten of them
have been good.’”

Artie beamed at himself and his
joke.

“You could do worse, you know,” Christine
said to him, “And so could Yarrow. And so could Olivine.” Everyone turned to
look at the two sisters, sitting side by side. Yarrow turned and winked at Jon.
Then she turned to Olivine, who fidgeted with her napkin as she said, “Oh, I 
know, Mom. Paul is a great guy. Truly he is.”

“He’s working tonight?”

“Yes,” she lied again. She hadn’t
told him he was invited. He was, at this moment, most likely watching a golf
tournament he had recorded or maybe he was taking a bath, relishing the time
alone as he did.

“A lesser woman couldn’t take it,
you know. Being with a surgeon. So independent. So busy. And with his
humanitarian goals, this whole ‘Doctors Without Borders’ thing. He probably
won’t be around for you much.”

“I think that’s what I love most
about him,” she said as she pressed her fork into the leftover potatoes on her
plate. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her. She looked up to her mother. “Is
that wrong?”

“Well…” Her mother stood and
began stacking dishes, holding forks in one hand, piling plates in another.
“Maybe,” she said.
 

*****

In the kitchen, Olivine stood at
the sink and squirted a stream of orange liquid soap into the water. Christine
moved from the counter to the trash, scraping the dishes. The congealed spots
of gravy. The potatoes. Things half eaten and left there. Yarrow pushed through
the swinging door.

This had always been one of
Olivine’s favorite parts of the meal, when everything was finished and it was
just she and her mother and her sister, moving through the kitchen, as though
choreographed. Yarrow owned a dishwasher, but Olivine loved to wash dishes by
hand. She loved scrubbing the white plates, bringing them up, still sudsy, to
catch the light. To ensure they were clean. And then setting them aside to be
rinsed and dried.

Olivine watched the soap suds
rise for a moment and then she slid a stack of dinner plates, one by one, into
the bubbles, watching as each vanished under the white foam.

“How are your classes going,
Ollie?” Christine asked.

Olivine watched the bubbles and
formulated her response. She opened her mouth. Shut it again.

“Is there something you want to
talk about?” Christine asked.  

“No,” Olivine said, without
turning around. “Why?”

“Because you seem a million miles
away.”

“Oh.”

“Really, Olivine. Are you sure
there isn’t something?” Christine came to stand next to her at the sink “You
wash. I’ll dry,” she said.

Olivine nodded without looking
up.

“Is it Grandma?” Christine asked.
“Are you missing her?”

“No. I mean, yes. Of course, I’m
thinking about her. And missing her. How is Grandpa?”

“He’s okay. I’ll go back down to
the retirement home tomorrow. I’ve called him each day. It’s too bad he’s not well
enough to live here with us, but the doctor says the elevation is just too
high. He’d need to be on oxygen all the time, and even then...” She held the
plate she was drying up to the light. “ It just wouldn’t be good for him. And I
understand that. I do. I just don’t like him down there in that…that facility.
Without her.
”

“He likes it there, Mom. You know
he does. He’s got all kinds of friends, and he does way more than he could
living here with us.”

“I know. You’re right. His
buddies are taking him to a model train show this weekend.”

“Nice.”

“And I’ll spend the day with him
Thursday. The whole day.” She turned a dish over in her hand, ran her fingers
along the ridge on its back. “Imagine, Olivine, being married to someone for
sixty-five years and then, one days, she’s gone. Eating toast or eggs with that
person for sixty-five years of breakfasts. Turning off the light next to her for
sixty-five years of bedtimes.”

“I know. It’s hard to imagine.”
Olivine shook her head. “Impossible, actually.”

“No one expects him to live long,
you know.”

“He’s in great shape, Mom.”

“I know, but this is what happens
with a relationship like that one. They were one and the same. He’ll let go. He’ll
let go of this life. Soon. Watch and see.”

Silent moments followed. They
scrubbed, cleaned, stood side by side, swaying with the rhythm of the water and
their own thoughts.

“Isn’t there something we can
do?” Olivine asked, finally.

“No, I don’t really think so,
dear. We just have to let him know he is loved, and we have to let him know
that we understand what she was to him.”

Olivine nodded and dunked another
dish into the bubbles.

“Mom?” she said, her voice small
and low.

“Yes, love?” Christine looked up
from the dishwater and met Olivine’s eyes.

“I got engaged after the
funeral.”

Christine was silent. She went
back to wiping the dishtowel over the plate in her hand, scrubbing streaks of
water even after they disappeared. Her lips pulled down at the sides, and she
said, “You did?”

“I want a love like Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

Christine smiled and spoke
slowly, “Yeah. There aren’t too many loves like that, but Paul is a good man.
You’ll be happy with him. Don’t you think?”

“I do.” The dishwater had cooled,
and Olivine blasted more hot water into the sink. She felt the steam on her
face; she breathed in deeply and let the fullness of it enter her lungs. She
turned again to face her mother, pressing her hands down on the edge of the
sink. “Paul makes sense. You know? He’s exactly the kind of guy I’ve always
planned to find. Someone who knows what he wants. Someone who is doing
something important with his life.”

Christine chuckled softly. “You’ve
always wanted to
be
someone, Olivine.”

“I know.”

“More than you wanted to
find
someone; you wanted to
be
someone. You’ve always wanted to make some kind
of an impact. This ambition; this sheer
over-thinking,
was
so
pronounced when you were a little girl, it was almost like it was a condition.”
Christine laughed. “Remember that newspaper you created for the neighborhood?
You even had an investigative piece about who stole Julie Barrett’s soccer ball.
Remember that?”