The One Who Got Away: A Novel (10 page)

The bus contained no seats except
for the driver’s. On either side of the interior, plastic bins filled with
books were secured by bungee cords to an aluminum rack system. The titles she
could see were those of epic poetry:
The Iliad,
The Odyssey, Beowulf.
Thrown on top of the books was an old tube from a bike tire. Another bin
held wax for skis and a waxing iron, all in a jumbled heap.

He turned to load her skis and
poles through the double doors. As he carried his own skis in, she said. “That’s
a pretty nice setup you have there.”

“The bus? Or the skis?”

“Your skis. They’re nice.”

“Yeah, I ski every day that I can.”
He sat on the driver’s seat and flipped a silver switch. A series of whitish
lights blinked on throughout the bus. He swung his legs into the aisle so he
was facing her. “I do a few endurance trips every year. And I do some adventure
racing, too. I just missed one, actually, being out here. My last race of the
season.”

“What kind of race?” 

“It’s cool. I bet you would like
it.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because you were skiing in the
darkness. By yourself.”  

“Oh.”

“Really. All of the racers start
at midnight and then we travel fifty miles. Up over three mountain ranges.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. It’s a trip.”

“Why midnight?”

“It keeps the avalanche danger
lower. You don’t want to reach some of those mountain passes after about noon.”

“Sounds kind of scary.”

“Not really. Not with all the gear
they require. We have to wear beacons and GPS trackers, so it really isn’t as
dangerous as it has been, in years past. And they have search and rescue teams
at the ready, too…choppers, snowmobiles, the whole bit. There’s a nurse’s
station every ten miles or so. It’s fine. If you’ve trained, you’re fine.”

“What does your wife think of
that?”

The air turned cold and still. After
a moment, he said, “Well, she is actually glad I started going with her.”

“Oh.” An image of a woman, super
fit, passed thorough Olivine’s mind, as clear as though she were standing right
there before her. Tight ski pants. Smiling face. Toned triceps. Lean. Rich.
Successful. Someone who knew what she was doing with her life. Someone who knew
where she was going. Olivine sucked in her stomach. “She got you started doing
it?”

“Yeah, she has been doing these
kind of races since she was about eighteen. She used to do them with her
father, but when he suffered his first heart attack, he asked me to go in his
stead. I was honored and we’ve been doing it together ever since. This is the
first one I’ve missed.”  

“How’s she taking that?”

He shrugged and said softly, “I don’t
really want to talk about my wife.”

Her cheeks burned. Once again,
she was saying the wrong thing. Doing the wrong thing. She looked down at Lola
and stroked her, from neck to tail. A plume of tiny white hairs puffed into the
air.

He continued: “Things are
just…They are just complicated, and there are so many other things I want to
say to you, before I talk to you about her.”

She thought suddenly about Paul.
If he hadn’t been called in to work tonight, he was home wondering where she
was. Maybe she should call him. No, she should get home. What was she doing out
here? In this married man’s bus?

“So how’s the knee?” he asked. He
leaned forward toward her. “You know, I actually have some skills. In that
area. Do you mind if I touch it?”

“What are you going to do?” she
asked, laughing, relieved that they were no longer talking about his wife.

“Well, I do this thing.” He
clapped his hands and began rubbing his palms together.

“You saw that in a movie!”

“No, no. It’s my signature move.
It’s a little Reiki…”

“Oh, so you don’t have to touch
it at all.” She laughed.

“Well, actually, it’s a little Reiki
-ish
.
It’s also a little massage
-ish
. Can I just try?”

“Oh, alright,” she sighed. “Then
would you take me back to my car? Please?”

He nodded, and the corner of his
lips turned up. Then he rolled up her pant leg, past her knee. The  tips of his
fingers were rough, and her spine tingled. Henry rubbed his hands together
fast. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply and began to hum. And then he placed
his hands on either side of her knee. His hands were warm, nearly hot, and she
felt just then a jolt, a current of electricity or magnetism, or something else
she had never before experienced. The sensation oscillated from heat to warmth
and then she felt the energy dissipate and flow through the rest of her body in
concentric waves. When the waves ceased, the pain was gone. 

“Seriously?”  Olivine whispered.
“How did you just do that?”

He grinned and nodded. “Told you
I had skills. Do you think you can walk around?” 

“Yeah.” She scooped the dog from
her lap and stood, putting her full weight on the injured leg.

“That is amazing. Where did you
learn that?” she asked.

“This guy in Vietnam showed me.
It has a lot to do with what I think about as I do it. As I touch you.”

“So the obvious question is: If
you can do that, how come you didn’t do it up on the mountain? How come you carried
me down?”

“Well, I don’t know. Would you
have even let me do that up there? Some guy comes along and goes all Miyagi on
you?”

“I’m a bit surprised I let you do
it here.”

“Well, that makes two of us,” he
said, and they laughed together and his eyes locked onto hers, and she had a
vision of him, once again, grabbing her by the back of her neck and pressing his
lips into hers.

But he had a wife. Henry Cooper
had a wife. A wife she could picture, and it made her breathless. Where Olivine
was tall and lean, his wife would be petite and buxom. Where she was fair, his
wife would be tan, with a sprinkling of freckles along her nose. Where she
struggled to know what to say and do, his wife would know, instinctively.

She felt cold, suddenly. “I
really should be getting home,” she said.

He looked at her for several
moments. “Of course,” he said, “If that’s what you want.”

She nodded. He turned, and he started
the van. First a misfire, then a throaty hum. He drove in reverse, expertly, using
only his mirrors to navigate the narrow forested driveway.

“Does your wife ever come in
here?” she asked, after a beat. Damn. Once again, she was at a loss for what to
say. He already said he didn’t want to talk about his wife.

But he just laughed. “What? You
think it needs a woman’s touch?” he asked.

“Well.” She used two fingers to
pick up a dirty sock, by the edges. “Yes.”

“No. She makes a point to stay
out of my bus.”

“Ah,” she laughed. “It’s your man
cave, then, huh?”  

“That’s exactly what she calls
it, actually. She did come in once. Right after I bought it. Our son loves it.
He likes to come in here and sleep sometimes,” he laughed, staring at the
windshield. “Or to talk on the phone so we can’t hear him.”

Son? Olivine turned away. Her
heart lurched upward. Henry had a child. Henry had a child with someone else. She
lost her breath.

“But other than that,” he continued,
“this bus is all mine.”

He pulled up next to her car in
the trailhead. A parking lot in the middle of nowhere at night. It was dark.
The moon had not yet risen and bluish clouds shrouded the stars, creating an
inkiness that seemed to go on and on. Desolate and yawning.

As he stopped the bus, he turned
to look at her. “We never talked, Olivine.”

“We’ve been talking for an hour.”

He took a deep breath. “ I know,
I know. All this time we shared, and I never got the nerve to tell you. To tell
you what I came here to tell you. “ His brow furrowed; his eyes became glassy.
“Have dinner with me. Tomorrow night. Please.”

Olivine opened her mouth. Closed
it again. Instead of leaving one person, Olivine thought, this man had left
two. He had left a wife and a son in order to come here. And she remembered the
pain she felt when he had left her. The pain he was causing now, for someone
else.

No. She would not be the other
woman. How dare he come back here. How could one man be so destructive to her
life…occupying her thoughts for nearly a decade, and then coming back to wreck
everything, even though he was married. Even though he had a family. Henry
Cooper may want her back, but he was too charming—and too dangerous to the life
she had so carefully set up for herself in his absence. Olivine leveled her
face toward his, then turned to locate her skis and poles along the side wall
of the bus.  

“Do me a favor, Henry,” she said.

“Anything.”

“Go home. To your family.”

Without meeting his eyes, she
reached for the silver lever at the front of the bus and pulled hard. The
double doors clattered open, and she took her skis and her poles in her arms
and she willed herself down the two steps of Henry’s bus, and she disappeared
into the darkness.

Olivine sped from the trailhead,
just until the lights from Henry’s bus had faded into the distance. And then she
wasn’t sure where to go. Not home, certainly. Not yet. She drove to a mining
road, old and deserted, and she turned in far enough that she couldn’t be seen
from the road. And she sat in silence, staring out the windshield at the mountainside,
straight ahead. And she breathed, and while she breathed, she opened her mind
and her body and she let thoughts fill her…whatever thoughts came along, and
she allowed every  kind of emotion—the pain of knowing that Henry had started a
family with someone else. The elation, the energy, she felt when she was near
him, like a throbbing in the air. And then the knowledge that he was not hers
to have. Not hers to take. A life that would never be.  

Her throat constricted, and she
felt tears about to come, and then she opened herself still wider, breathed
still deeper, and she allowed all of these emotions, without resisting them or
examining them or trying to grasp them. She simply allowed them to fill her and
to rush through her.

After a time, her breathing
returned to normal and she looked down at her cell phone. Paul had tried to
call, four times, but he hadn’t left a message She considered calling him. Just
to ease his mind. But then she began to drive, with no particular destination,
and she found herself at Yarrow’s house.

It was late. The kids would be in
bed. She knocked softly on the door and when Yarrow creaked it open, wearing a
tank top and flannel pants, Olivine asked, softly, “Want to go out for a bite?”

“Now?”

“Yeah. I don’t think I’ve eaten
all day.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I just need to get a
bite. With you.”

“Well, the kids are asleep and
Jon’s home, so I guess I could go out. Do you want to come in while I run it by
Jon? And change out of my pajamas?”

“Nah. I’ll wait in the car.”

“Okay, give me a sec.”

Olivine lingered for a moment on
the porch, and then turned back to her car. She stood near the driver’s door
and stared straight upward. High in the Rockies, looking up at the sky was an
experience. The clouds had cleared in patches, revealing pockets of stars. Tiny
pinpricks of light, salt-sized sprinkles on the canopy above. As a girl, she
would imagine they were passageways…hints to a bright, bright world that lay
just beyond this one. Just out of reach. It was cold enough that she could see
her breath, as she looked up, her head tilted toward the sky, her breath
puffing up, up into the night.

How quickly things could change,
she thought. Henry was back, as a married man. With a kid. And Paul was already
starting to think something was wrong. She should call him. She should go home.
But, suddenly, she was tired of thinking about things she should do.

Yarrow’s front door closed with a
bang, and she padded down the walk in her well-worn Uggs, slouchy and scuffed
on the toes.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Yarrow asked as she approached the car.

Olivine nodded, but she regretted
coming here, suddenly. She thought she wanted to talk about it. To talk about
Henry and the things she felt when she looked at him. But she found, now, that
she did not. Sometimes, she didn’t want to see people or to be around them. Not
even Yarrow. Sometimes—times like these—she just wanted everyone to be quiet so
she could look up at the stars, make puffs with her breath, and stare straight
up at the sky.  

The two sisters stood at the
Jeep. Both staring up. Yarrow on the passenger side and Olivine near the
driver’s door. After a time, Yarrow spoke, “Thanks for coming by, Olivine. I
can lose myself in my little world. You know?” After Yarrow had spent the day
with her kids, taking in all of their energy, her words would sometimes come
out all in a rush, as though she were afraid of getting interrupted. “These
days, I keep wanting to get into my pajamas right after dinner. And not even
wanting to go out.”

“You do?” Olivine asked.

Yarrow nodded, but her head was
still pointed up, toward the stars. “Some days, I realize that I never went
outside. All day. And I look around at the people, like you, who actually
ventured outside, past your driveway, and I feel like you must have conquered
something pretty amazing out there in the world. Something I would know nothing
about because my life goes on inside the house. Where my kids and my husband
live.”

Olivine was glad that Yarrow was
in the mood to talk because she was most decidedly not. The more Yarrow talked,
the more Olivine determined that, tonight, she would discuss Yarrow’s problems
and not her own. They provided a good distraction, at the very least. Besides,
Yarrow always made her laugh. She needed her sister’s company, at times, like
she needed sleep or vegetables. Even when—especially when—she wasn’t in the
mood for company.

Yarrow was still talking, and Olivine
wasn’t in a hurry to go inside, to a restaurant or anywhere else. The cold air
made her feel alive, vital. She hopped on the hood of the Jeep and rested against
the windshield. Yarrow watched her for a moment, then swung her handbag over
and leapt up, too. Yarrow rubbed the toes of her boots together where she sat,
then took a deep breath, stretched her arms into the sky, looked up and sighed.

After a beat, Olivine spoke. “You
may not leave the house, Yarrow, but, still, you have this thing you do all
day. This thing that makes you special
.
That makes you realize you
aren’t wasting your time on this earth. You have a natural talent…for making
little kids feel amazing about themselves. And you aren’t squandering it. You
are living it, every day.”

Olivine could hear Yarrow’s
breath, steady and rhythmic, to her right. “Yeah,” she said. “Every. Single.
Day.”

“You can’t tell me your kids
don’t give you a sense of fulfillment and wonder, all the days of your life.”

“Oh, they do,” Yarrow replied, “but
honestly, they distract me so much. They make me so busy with just…life, with
the day to day chores…that time just passes. One day, I looked around and I’m
30-something. I have a little belly. And I have crow’s feet. Five minutes ago,
I swear, I was…
hot.”

“You're still hot.” Olivine
laughed. It felt good now to be out here, outside, with Yarrow. Someone who
understood her. Who could make her laugh without even meaning to. Who could
help her to not be alone with all of the thoughts that kept marching through
her mind.

“No, sweetie, I'm not hot. I
actually own a pair of jeans with an elastic waistband. Two, actually.”

Olivine laughed.

“I do. They’re so comfortable.
You wouldn’t believe. That’s why I own two pairs. And the tallest heel I’ve
worn this decade were on my cowboy boots when I chaperoned the Cub Scouts’ trip
to the horse ranch.”

“Oh come on! You know, you’re in
better shape than you were in your twenties. You work out all the time.”

“Not so much, Olivine. Don’t try
to make my life sound all glamorous. When you have four kids, you go along and
you try to pay your bills and the only way you know it’s even remotely possible
is because everyone else seems to be doing it. They seem to be doing it just
fine.”

“Seriously,” Olivine said, “You guys
don’t struggle financially.”

“Hell yes, we do. At times.”

“But Jon makes good money.
Doesn’t he?”

“Sure. He makes alright money. But
show me a family of six that doesn’t struggle for money, at least sometimes.
Olivine, our health insurance premium is more than a thousand dollars a month,
and that still gives us catastrophic coverage only. Huge deductible. Huge. And
that doesn’t count eye doctors, dentists, and, soon, orthodontists.”

“Goodness.”

“We can make ends meet. I mean,
don’t worry about us or anything, Olivine.” Her voice grew hushed. “It's not so
much a struggle as it is something that's constantly on my mind. There's six of
us, which means there’s six people who could befall trouble. Who could slip on
the ice and break an ankle and rack up that giant deductible on their way home
from school.” Yarrow turned her head to look at Olivine. “You know, I’ve never
told anyone this, and please don’t tell Mom and Dad, but when Marcus broke his
arm on that jungle gym last year, we started falling into debt, and then the
construction industry tanked, and we were almost making it, just a thousand or
so short each month, so we put things on the credit card because we always knew
that, before long, things would turn around. And they did, but now we have all
this debt. We don’t talk about it, so please don’t tell Jon I told you. It’s
shameful, but it’s something I think about all the time.”

“Wow. Yeah. Okay. I didn’t know.”

“How much is your debt?”

“Enough where I don’t sleep at
night.”

“You don’t?”

“Nope. Well, I drink some cough
medicine from time to time, when things get really bad. Jon calls it Mommy’s
Nighty Night Juice.” She laughed. “Just to me, of course. Never to the kids. Please
don’t tell anyone
that
either.”

“I won’t say a word. To anyone. You
know that.”

“I know we’ll be okay, but I also
know we won’t take any family vacations for a while, and anytime the kids go
outside with their skateboards or their bicycles or, hell, even their sneakers,
I hold my breath until they come back.”

Olivine nodded.

“And then, living here, in this
resort town, among all of these trust funders, you get to know people who are
set up financially. They are on Easy Street. And they are always going off to
Tahiti or Norway or New Zealand with all of their kids. My kids don’t
understand. I mean, here’s Jon, working so hard, and everyone is so competitive
with us, you know? Like some of my friends here, in the neighborhood, they got
married just out of college, just like me. And  the world, to them, is this
endless competition. As though because we started on the same life
plan,
we have to compete with one another. Even though I don’t have a trust fund. Sometimes,
I want to walk into my book club and my mommy group and my Gymboree class and
say, ‘I don’t want to compete anymore. You all win.’ The older I get, the worse
it gets.”

“I wouldn’t like that,” Olivine
said.

Yarrow continued, speaking fast
now. “And there are people you have so much in common with. Rebecca Gervais, remember
her from grade school?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Well, she lives right there.”
Yarrow pointed to a house down the street. “She has four kids the same ages as my
kids, and she was driving around a sixty thousand dollar car and she got these
great big fake boobs. And they couldn’t afford all of this, but they just
wanted to, so bad, you know? And last winter, she wrecked on her skis, and she
popped her boob.”

“What?”

“Seriously. It deflated like a
damn balloon and she was walking around all cock-eyed.”

Olivine laughed. “Cock-boobed.”

“Exactly. And she’s freaking out
because she has to have it fixed. But her insurance doesn’t cover it and she’s
got silicone leaking inside her. And so she has to have her boobs redone at
tremendous expense. Meanwhile, the car gets repossessed and the mortgage
doesn’t get paid and the neighborhood has a big benefit, and, so, here I am
writing a check to help them out. Meanwhile, I’m struggling with my
hand-me-down minivan and my teeny-weeny boobs.” She laughed and said, “I mean,
you wish sometimes people would just stop pretending to have what they don’t
have. Just so everyone can relax a little.”

“You guys have fun,” Olivine
countered. “You have a great family life. You certainly don’t need a fancy car
or new boobs.”

“Oh I know, honey. We just don’t
do
things. Sometimes I wish we could go and do things.”

“Well, then go and do things.”

“You know, we wanted to go to
Disneyland this summer, so we thought we would make the fourteen hour drive in
the August heat, and we just decided Jon couldn’t take that much time off
work.”

“So take a plane.”

“To fly us all somewhere would
cost us thousands, and then I’ve got to rent a car and haul everyone’s car
seats all over the place and who wants to go anywhere that bad? And so, we
snuggle in our homes. We mend things, so we don’t have to buy new ones. We
watch television shows about how to make cupcakes and we look up the recipes
and we bake them and we just go along with our simple life, because that’s all
we can really do.”  

Olivine nodded and made patterns
with her breath into the night sky. Three puffs out, a pause and two more
puffs. Yarrow continued. “I remember a time when I wanted to be rich and I wanted
to be super successful, and I thought it would be so easy. Go out and do your
best in your job. Speak your truth, I thought. That’s all it would take. But then
you realize there are people who cheat and who sometimes win when they cheat.
And there are people who are just way better than you at what you are setting
out to do. You have to be in that tiny top percentage point of achievers in
this competitive world. And in order to do that, you need to give up
everything. Everything. And then you look around and you realize that is not
what makes you fulfilled either. That’s not where love and meaning and
fulfillment come from anyway. And it’s times like these that I’m glad I had a
family. I’m glad I have children, because, at the end of the day, I look at
their sleepy little faces and I tuck them into their fuzzy coverlets, and I
feel something deep. A gladness, from my sheer irreplace-ability.”