The One Who Got Away: A Novel (4 page)

Suddenly everything she said or
did somehow related back to him. She saw tofu tacos on the menu at a restaurant
and she thought about whether Henry had ever tried tofu tacos. She saw a gnarled
bristlecone pine high on a hiking trail and she thought about how very much
Henry would like this particular tree. It was as though she were living her
life looking out from two perspectives. His and hers.

She had told Yarrow about it one
night on the phone, twirling the spiral phone cord around her finger.

“Oh, you’ve got it bad,” Yarrow said.

“I know.” Olivine giggled.

“I’m thrilled for you, honey. I
mean…love!” Yarrow cried. “How can you wish anything more for someone in their
lives than they would fall in love. Like
this
.”

“Ugh. You’re so romantic,
Yarrow,” she said, laughing.

“Well, yes. But I know you aren’t
used to these…emotions. You’ve never needed a man in your life.”

 “You’re right about this.”

“I mean, I thought you were
immune to the tides of love and the feelings that sweep lesser people like me
completely away.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is, though. When men come
through your life, it’s like they are these little parenthetical annotations in
your day. They look at you with these giant puppy dog eyes and you see them as
just something you might visit on occasion, or talk to once a week. Something
you might butter your toast with and discard, with never a thought.”

“What?”

“No, it’s true.”

“Butter my toast with them?”  

“You know what I mean, Olivine.
Someone whom you don’t
need
. Someone who is serving a particular role for
you but whom you could just as soon do without.”

“I like butter,” Olivine said,
laughing.

“But Henry has become the whole
slice of bread. And the butter, all slathered together.”

“Yeah, I see your point.”

“So you’re crazy about him. What
do you make of it? Whatever are you going to do?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Does he love you with the same….wildness?”

“Well he’s sort of passionate, I
guess, but also strange and awkward and kind of funny. Like, before our hike
the other day, he stopped at the deli to get me a sandwich and I went to the bakery
next door to get some cookies to share at the summit, and somehow he knew or
remembered exactly what I like on my sandwich… I mean, down to the brand of
mustard, and he unwrapped the sandwich, and while he was still in the deli, he wrote
something sweet on the butcher paper and then he wrapped the whole thing back
up. And then he gave me the sandwich and he didn’t say a word. I almost threw
the wrapper away before I noticed it, and he wouldn’t have even told me but I
happened to see it and I read it and then I looked over and he just grinned.”

“Oh Ollie, he sounds like he’s a
little too smooth.”

“Well that’s just it. He’s not
smooth. He’s pretty goofy. You get the sense that he’s kind of embarrassed by
it all. I think what I like most is his total
lack
of smoothness. He has
no pretentions of any kind. He just is who he is. I mean, his VW is filthy, and
it kind of stinks and he doesn’t care.”

“Yeah, you’ve got it bad if you
love that about him.”

“What I love about him most is
the way I am when I am with him.”

“He’s the one, then.”

“I’m me, only better. I’m fun,
Yarrow. I’m having fun.”

“I can see that.”

“It’s weird. And I love it. When
I’m with Henry, I don’t feel like I need to plan everything out. I don’t have
to make sense of everything. I feel like, and this is probably going to sound
incredibly stupid and cheesy, but I feel like no matter what happens in my
life, it will be okay because I’m with him. And so I can lighten up and go from
one experience to another. I can just…enjoy myself.” 

“You are incredibly lucky,
Olivine.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean, incredibly,
incredibly lucky. From what I’ve seen, of our friends, of our family, very few
people in the world find a love like that.”

“Huh.”

“It’s true. You’ve just put into
words exactly the way I feel when I’m with Jon. I love him, but I also love the
woman I am when I’m with him. I love living my life with him.”

“So what should I do?” Olivine
had asked.

“Well, one thing you must never
do.”

“What’s that?”

“You must never, ever let him get
away.”

And so, for the first time in her
life, Olivine held on tight. She and Henry spent part of each day together that
summer. He continued working on a framing crew for luxury custom homes, nestled
high against the ski mountain, and she began her freelance writing business, and
when Friday night came along, Henry would hand Olivine a dart, which she would
throw against his wall-sized map of western Colorado, and wherever the dart
landed became their destination. They would climb inside his Volkswagen Vanagon,
where their sleeping bags were always packed. And they went to this new and
unfamiliar place and they hiked it and photographed it and made love against
the backdrop of its mountains and meadows and streams.

The van became their second home
that summer. He had removed the carpeting and installed wood, gleaned from the
scrap piles at his jobsites, and they lay on the wooden floorboards and spoke about
how they would live the remainder of their days. Olivine could only just
remember, far in the distance, the person she had once been…the person who
weighed each decision, who agonized over the plans for what to do in a weekend.
Who only did things that made sense and that wouldn’t hurt her in the long run.

And now, as she sat, scrubbing
the baseboard in the home she shared with Paul, Olivine remembered the bright
white t-shirts that Henry always wore and his deep brown eyes and the way he always
smelled freshly laundered. No cologne. Just clean. Natural.

And then he disappeared. Just
like that. Gone. Leaving her to get back in touch with the person she had been
before he had ever come along. The person who examined things to make sure they
made sense. The person who checked for hidden objects before she dove in, head
first.  But how she missed the girl who lay dreamily in a van, in some
unfamiliar meadow, so long ago.

*****

After Henry left, Yarrow had told
Olivine that she had hadn’t tried hard enough. She had played it too cool. She
hadn’t even chased after him. “Everyone wants to be wanted,” she had told
Olivine. “Go find him. Put some of that passion, that energy of yours, to good
use. Don’t just let him slip off into the world as though he means nothing to
you.”

And maybe Olivine should have
gone and tracked him down and professed that he was the most amazing thing she
had ever seen and that she couldn’t live without him and on and on. But she
didn’t. She couldn’t. If he wanted her the way she wanted him, he could never
have left her, so he must not have felt the same way. And that, she decided,
was that.

“You are too proud.” Yarrow had
told her.

“Maybe,” she said.

And Yarrow said, that, in the
end, Henry would find someone who would try harder. Who would wrap
his
sandwiches in love notes. “Relationships take work,” Yarrow had said, “If you
don’t do that work, you’ll have to go through your life knowing that someone
else is married to your husband.”

“Oh, Yarrow.”

“No, seriously, Olivine.”

Now, Henry was found again. But
she felt lost.

At five o’clock the following
evening, Olivine arrived at Yarrow’s house with two bottles of her sister’s
favorite dessert wine, and a new concoction she knew Jon would love: it looked
like melted chocolate in a bottle. It was something from Denmark that the
sommelier had suggested when she had made her other selections. She set them on
the counter, where her mother was tossing a salad with pears, gorgonzola cheese
and sugared pralines.

Olivine fished out one of the
nuts and popped it into her mouth. “You make the most gorgeous salads. I can’t
wait,” she said.

The truth was, she had hoped to
arrive before her mother, so she could talk to Yarrow. So they could finish
their conversation from the day before. “Where’s Yarrow, Mom?”

Christine pointed upstairs. “Up
there, busy doing something. I don’t know. Laundry?”  

The other morning, at her breakfast
table, Yarrow had shared all the information she knew about Henry’s return.
Henry would be doing some work on the family cabin. Apparently, Yarrow had
spoken with Grandpa, who had somehow discovered that Henry was making custom
doors now, sourcing the material from all over the world… traveling to Spain,
Mexico, Argentina, wherever he could to find reclaimed doors and stiles, old
iron work, carvings, antique gates, and shutters. Any old world, historical
pieces, Yarrow had explained, many from centuries-old churches or manors or
castles. 

Knowing this, Grandpa had
commissioned Henry to build a new door for their family cabin. The work would
be done on site. The exact dates would depend on Henry’s schedule, which was
apparently quite full. So full, in fact, that it could be months before he
arrived.

Olivine had smiled with the idea
of it. Henry had discovered a way to weave his love of travel and adventure
with his love for carpentry. And he would create for them a door that would be
in their family for generations. This was the home that Grandpa had built
himself, that Grandma and Grandpa had spent their lives in before their health
demanded that they move to a lower elevation. This home would be willed to them
all—her entire family, as a family gathering place, as a place to go to stay
connected, as a respite from the rigors of the world. Even now, it was a place
she and Paul and Yarrow and Jon, together with Christine and Artie, would
gather to spend time, deep in the trees, whether together or alone. The cabin’s
new front door, Yarrow had explained, would meld a variety of woods and
materials from Grandpa’s life and the lives of his children and grandchildren.
And it would be something solid and enduring. Something as important and
long-standing and symbolic as the cabin itself.

When Olivine had arrived home
from Yarrow’s that morning, after she scrubbed the baseboards, she searched for
Henry on the internet, something she had never before allowed herself to do.
Before, it would have been the work of a heartbroken woman, pining after a
flame that had long been snuffed out. Now, it was the family business. It was
her responsibility, as future part-owner of the estate, to oversee the
craftsmanship of the new entry portal.

A quick search located his
business within moments. And when she clicked the link and saw his name on the
screen: “Henry Cooper Originals,” her shoulders hunched a little and her cheeks
burned. He had been twenty or so keystrokes away. All this time. There was his
name alongside a series of slow-loading photographs of his work: custom doors,
inlays, cabinetry, and arches, all with scrolling accents and an old-world
luster. She was struck by the way looking at his work was like looking at a
photograph of him. These were things only he could create.

Her heart pounded as she hovered
the mouse over the “about us” link, which she discovered in small font at the
bottom of the page. She clicked it so fast she surprised herself. And there he
was, standing next to one of his doors, stained the color of espresso. He wore
a white t-shirt and a baseball cap. The same grin. The same stance. She
remembered the feeling of his bicep as she held the crook of his arm. The rough
feeling of his hands. The way she felt when they had explored  a new town
together…like she was being carried away by something, steered from a spot in
the pit of her stomach and led forward, fast, in a direction she couldn’t
discern. Her breath caught at the memory of it.

All at once, she clicked the red
“x” in the corner of the screen. She simply could not allow herself to look at
that. Things were different now. At that moment, in fact, her fiancé was curled
on the loveseat, sleeping, an arm’s distance from her.

Olivine sat watching him for a
moment, and when he didn’t stir, she slipped in behind him. She spooned against
his buttocks, which were muscular and hard, even in repose. She nuzzled her cheek
into the back of his neck, feeling the tiny hairs at the nape.

“What?” he murmured.

“I’m sorry, are you tired?” she
asked, softly.

“Yeah.” He opened one eye, then
closed it again and nestled deeper into the cushions.

She waited for a moment, and, when
he had drifted back to sleep, she slipped out from behind him and returned to
the computer. She typed the website address again, quickly, and when Henry’s photo
came up, she imagined herself standing next to him in a workshop, a barn
somewhere, nestled in a meadow surging with wildflowers, knee-high lupine and wild
roses and columbines in red, blue and yellow. And in her mind, she stood in the
entrance to the barn and she watched him, in his clean white t-shirt, as he
planed boards and blew away sawdust.

And now she was climbing the
stairs at her sister’s house. Would she tell her sister about the research she
had done? Would she tell her parents, at dinner, that she was engaged? She
wasn’t sure. She didn’t feel sure of anything just now.

The noise from her nieces and
nephews, giggling and shouting, trailed off as she climbed to the upper section
of the house. The washer and dryer were installed in a closet off the upstairs
hallway. The bi-fold doors yawned open, and Yarrow was bent over the washing
machine. Olivine stood just behind her as Yarrow squinted into the musty
darkness.

Olivine whispered, but her tone
was throaty and urgent: “You haven’t said anything to Mom, have you?”

“What?” Yarrow banged her head on
the metal drum as she straightened her body and removed her head. “Oh, you
startled me.” Yarrow laughed. “Of course I haven’t said anything.” Her voice
lowered to a whisper. “I kind of thought
you
would. Tonight. I guess I thought
this would be your engagement party. Or something. Isn’t Paul coming?”

“No, he’s in surgery. Emergency,”
Olivine lied.

“Oh. Well, I guess it will have
to wait then.”

“Yeah. Another time. Soon.”

Olivine joined Yarrow in her bid
to match the socks in the basket, which was overflowing on top of the dryer. They
worked in silence for a few moments, matching a variety of colors, sizes, and
shapes and folding the tops, then tossing them back into the basket to be
sorted into drawers at another time. It was a silence Olivine relished. The
beauty of not having to speak. Of being so close with a person that you felt instantly
comfortable. It reminded her, once again, of Henry. Of being in his Volkswagen,
of saying nothing as they logged mile after mile and then, every now and then,
looking at one another and grinning, like they both knew a secret too
important, too juicy, to put into words.

It was Olivine who spoke first.
“When you were fixing to get married, did you feel like throwing up all the
time?”

Yarrow laughed. “Oh, yeah. Definitely.
it's like that for everyone, Olivine. It's never what you think it's going to
be. Everyone feels like throwing up or backing out when they get engaged.”

“How could that be true?”

“Well, it’s true for some of the
women I know, at least. But for all of us, I think, there’s this little voice
that says you aren’t ready for this. That you’re still a child. That you can’t possibly
be trusted with that kind of a decision. That you can’t be expected to know
what’s going to make you happy over the next year. The next month. The next six
decades. I think you always feel too young and ill-prepared to make a step like
this.”  

“Yeah. But when you’re thirty-two?”

“No matter how old you are. It
just means you’re taking it seriously enough.” She twisted another pair of
socks together and held them, balled up in her hand. She looked down for a
moment and then looked directly at Olivine, her voice hushed. “You know, I
don't know if this is going to be any consolation to you, but now that I've
been married…what?... going on ten years, sometimes I’m not sure whether it
matters
whom
you end up with. Even if you marry the greatest guy in the
world, you’re going to have to make some concessions. You’re going to have to
work pretty hard.”

“Not to romanticize it, though,
huh?”

Yarrow chuckled and fished
through the laundry basket for another match. “No, really. When I was younger,
I believed in one true love. Now, I wonder if it would have been any different
had I married Bruce or John or Greg, or…wow. I can’t even remember anyone else
I dated. I sometimes think that only the scenery would change. The town. My
address. The socks. But the washing machine. Now that would probably be the
same. Old and used and kind of smelly if you put your head in there.”

“What about your kids? They
wouldn’t be the same.”

“You know what? That's precisely
it. That's what makes you, at some point, believe that whatever happens—whatever
arbitrary decisions you’ve made – those were the ones that were meant to be.
That it couldn’t be any other way.” She found another match, rolled the socks, and
continued. “I can’t imagine life without my kids.
These
kids. Not one
freckle or hair different, and that means the life decisions I’ve made, though
they’ve landed me in debt and dishwater and dirty socks…these were the
decisions I was meant to make.” She laughed, spun around, clutched her arms to
her chest, and said, “All this….it was my destiny!”

Their mom’s voice came in from
behind them, at the top of the stairs, “For what it’s worth, I think all of
your decisions have been glorious, Yarrow. And I think your kids are glorious,
too. But, you know, when you made all of those decisions you weren’t
necessarily thinking about ten years down the road. You just started to
live
.”

How long had Christine been
standing there? Olivine’s face flushed and she bowed her head over the laundry
basket.

“You got married so young,
Yarrow, that you weren’t accustomed to being on your own. You never knew how to
be selfish with your time,” Christine said. “You hadn’t gotten used to being
alone. You just got married and that was that. The path of your life was sort
of… set. And here you are.” She paused and folded her arms. “New decisions
every day.”

“Yeah. Guess I didn’t know any
better,” Yarrow replied. “And now, before I make any kind of decision…whether I
want to go to the store, whether I want to go two hundred miles away on
vacation, I have to consider five other opinions.”
 

“But you, Olivine,” Christine
said, “you can make all kinds of decisions. You can luxuriate in the not
knowing. You can go one direction, or you can go another. You have only
yourself to consult.”

“I can’t ‘luxuriate’ in any ‘not
knowing’ if I want to make a family,” Olivine replied.

“Is that what you’re thinking
about these days?” Christine paused to look at her before picking up a stack of
towels and turning to take them downstairs. “You know that’s the first time
I’ve ever heard you talk about a family. I mean, without me bringing it up.”

“It is not.”

“Oh, trust me, Olivine. It is. These
are the things that moms pay attention to.”

A bang came from downstairs,
followed by their father’s roaring laugh. Then, doors slamming, giggles, more
squeals, and a clatter. Mom took off down the stairs, balancing the stack of
towels in one palm.

“Oy. What now?” Yarrow said,
laughing as she twisted her hair into a loose bun and secured it with a pencil that
she found on top of the dryer.

“Come on,” Yarrow said, squeezing
Olivine’s hand and then releasing it as she whispered, “Let’s pour the wine for
your I-have-a-secret and-I’m-not-telling-anyone party.”

*****

Dinner passed the way these
dinners did. Artie told a joke, which made one of the kids laugh, which made
another one snort, which made milk shoot out of another one’s nose, which made
them all laugh some more. And when the food was eaten, the kids cleared their
plates and went into the adjoining room, Marcus carrying baby Claire. And there
they sat to watch four men on the television who were wearing bright colors and
singing about fruit salad in high-pitched voices.

The adults lingered over the
table, all the dishes left just as they were; everyone afraid to clear them
lest it signal the time to leave, and no one was ready for that. The
conversation turned to young love, to relationships, and, then, to proposals. Olivine
narrowed her eyes at Yarrow, who shrugged and looked away.

Yarrow and Jon told the story of
how they met. It was a story they had all heard before, but Yarrow added little
details; specifics that made it feel like it had just happened. And then Yarrow
turned to Christine. “So tell us again how Dad proposed.”