The Repeat Year (30 page)

“He just needed some more time,” Sherry murmured, and her eyelids fluttered drowsily. “More time to work things out.”

“Yes,” Olive agreed because it seemed like the wrong time to tell her the truth. It seemed egotistical and cruel to break through Sherry’s moment of bliss. “I wanted to thank you,” she choked out.

Sherry’s eyes flickered open again. “No, I want to thank
you
. For telling it like it is. For pushing me to take a risk and reminding me what it means to be a mother. I never would’ve swallowed my pride and called him without your constant nagging. I couldn’t have done it without you, Olive. You’re the reason he’s back.”

It was quickly becoming apparent to Olive that they were not talking about the same
he
. Her thoughts spun in a sloppy, graceless pirouette. “Do you mean . . . ? Are you talking about Heath?”

“Yes.” Though her body was blanched and wasted, Sherry beamed like a woman in her prime.

Everything clicked into place. This was the reason for Sherry’s beatific smile. Heath had come home. Olive wondered how long he had been in town and what had passed between them. It was unsettling to her that he wasn’t here with his mom now. She had so many questions for Sherry, but she didn’t want to tire her out after her mastectomy.

“Oh, Sherry. That’s terrific.” Her face hurt from a combination of smiling so hard and suppressing tears. Overcoming the cancer, reuniting with Heath—it was all too much. The wall between Sherry and the rest of the world had seemed too high, too impenetrable, but here it was, crumbling down, and all these good things were flowing in effortlessly. Sherry had been through so much in her life, and God knew she deserved this. But just behind Olive’s happiness for Sherry lurked an envy that she didn’t even want to acknowledge because it was so mean and low.
Why Sherry? Why not me? I’ve been working ten times as hard as she has.
But she ripped the envy away as though it were a spiderweb obscuring her view and told herself to be happy for Sherry.

“He arrived three days ago. He was so mad, I could hardly bear to look at him. He was mad at me for having cancer, can you believe it?” Sherry rasped.

Olive swallowed. Actually, she could. She remembered all the ugly stages of grief she’d been through with her dad.

“I told him, ‘Excuse me for inconveniencing you with my life-threatening breast cancer.’ We went on like that for a long time, and I thought for sure it was going nowhere and that he would leave any minute, and I’d never see him again. But then he showed me some pages from his journal that he took with him to Spain.”

In her eagerness to tell the story, Sherry tried to lean forward, her diminished body pulling against the various tubes and wires, but Olive gently restrained her. Sherry relaxed against the pillows as if that had been her plan all along.

“He had actually made a list of every wrong I’d ever done him! Can you believe it? God, that was hard to look at. But after I read the list to myself, I started to read it aloud to him, item by item, saying, ‘Heath, I am sorry for leaving you at Camp Loon Lake even though you wrote me twenty times that summer to come get you. I am sorry for promising to take you and your friends to Six Flags Great America for your eleventh birthday and then blowing it off. I am sorry for never learning that you hate peanut butter. I am sorry for bringing Robert to your cross-country awards banquet even though you asked me not to.’ He told me I was being stupid and to stop, but I told him I needed to do it.”

Her breathing sounded more like panting now. Olive didn’t know if it was from the emotion or the recent surgery, or both. Sherry’s heart rate and blood oxygen levels looked normal on the monitor. Olive stroked her forehead. “Take a breath. Easy now. You need to rest, Sherry. Don’t strain yourself.”

Sherry scowled at her but took a few slow, deep breaths. “I didn’t know what to expect when I finished. Neither of us said anything. But then Heath asked me if it was okay if he stayed with me for Christmas, and of course I said it was.”

“That’s progress,” Olive murmured. “Definitely a step in the right direction.” She held up the cup of water the nurse had left on Sherry’s tray, but Sherry shook her head.

“It was so awful looking at all the mistakes I’d made with him. I’ve always suspected I was a bad mother, but seeing it all stacked up like that in his neat, angry handwriting . . . it hurt.” Sherry curled her fist over her newly missing breast. “It hurt worse than this.”

“But you’ve acknowledged those mistakes now, and it seems like he’s willing to give you a second chance.”
Unlike Phil.
She swallowed back her own unhappy story, which was aching to trickle from her tongue. Sherry didn’t need to hear this from her now.

“To do what? Go to Great America together? I know nothing about being a mother to a college kid.”

Olive forced a smile. “Neither do I. Maybe you can talk to my mom. But I think the important thing right now is just to be there for him.”

“One go of it, and you have everything figured out,” Sherry said. It was the same thing she’d said when Olive and her mom had visited her in October, but this time it wasn’t a sarcastic accusation. Instead, Sherry sounded impressed. Maybe even proud of Olive.

Olive’s chest tightened. “Not everything.”

There was a light tap on the open door. The same young nurse with glasses who had cared for Sherry last time stood in the entryway. Olive feared that she had come to kick her out. “You have another visitor, Ms. Witan. Are you feeling up to it?”

Sherry widened her eyes and managed to look alert. “Yes, of course.”

Olive turned her head, anticipating seeing her mom with a cheery smile and a bright bouquet of flowers. Instead, it was the spiky-haired young man from the waiting room. He looked just as surprised to see Olive as she was to see him. His eyes flashed from Olive to Sherry and then back again.

“Heath,” Sherry whispered—she was the only one in the room who didn’t seem surprised—and he took a tentative step into the hospital room.

Olive pushed back her chair to make room for Heath as she struggled to comprehend how two people who looked nothing alike could be related. Sherry with her fair complexion, red hair, and once-rounded body. How could this dark, lean young man be her son? But then she remembered the strikingly familiar smile on the young man’s lips—it was Sherry’s smile—and the comment Sherry had made about Heath after her first mastectomy. Handsome like his father, Norman, but stuck with Sherry’s temperament. That seemed about right.

“This is Olive Watson, the daughter of a good friend,” Sherry explained. “And a good friend in her own right.”

Heath studied them skeptically. He still hadn’t moved beyond his first step into the room, even though Olive had pulled up a chair for him. “Yes, we’ve met,” he said. “In the waiting room.”

“Oh.” Now Sherry was surprised. She looked at Olive. “So you already knew that Heath was home for the holidays?”

“We didn’t introduce ourselves, and I didn’t put two and two together until just now,” Olive said. She gestured to the empty chair next to her, and finally Heath took the hint.

“Mom,” Heath started, and it shocked Olive to hear him call Sherry that. He sounded so young. “You look like shit.” Apparently, tactlessness was a family trait. Heath’s eyes drank in everything but his mother’s face—the partially open door leading to the bathroom, the blank TV, the call button, the IV bag and stand, the bedside monitor.

“I know. I
feel
like shit.” Sherry sounded almost apologetic.

They didn’t say anything else. Heath slouched forward with his eyes on the tile floor, gripping
The Divine Comedy
. Sherry stared at his spiky head fervently. It was a far cry from a Hallmark moment, but there was definitely something powerful there. Heath’s presence spoke volumes. The broken bones of their severed relationship were slowly starting to knit back together.

“Read to me?” Sherry suddenly asked in a way that would’ve seemed almost coquettish to Olive, had she not known how nervous and afraid of rejection Sherry really was.

Heath’s face reddened, and Olive was worried he would turn her down. But then she realized he was simply embarrassed. “I haven’t gotten very far,” he admitted, showing his mom the few thin pages his bookmark separated from the rest. “Should I just start at the beginning?”

“Please,” Sherry said. “Hearing about a journey through hell and purgatory and on to paradise seems fitting right about now.”

Heath cleared his throat and ducked his head low. “This is the Longfellow translation.” There was another long pause before he began. “ ‘Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.’”

His reading voice was gentle and rich, nothing like the blasé tone he’d taken with his mother earlier. Olive felt like she could close her eyes and stay there all day and all night letting the poetry wash over her and erase everything else. But she knew this moment belonged to Sherry and Heath, who still had such a long way to go. She had played her part in their reunion, but now it was time for her to leave them.

“I should get going,” she said when Heath paused to take a sip of water after completing the first canto. “It was nice meeting you, Heath. I hope you recover quickly, Sherry. Please call me when you’re feeling up to it. If there’s anything I can do for you . . .”

Sherry attempted to prop herself up against the pillows. Her brown eyes were intense, and Olive thought she could make out Sherry’s former fiery self. The Sherry who let her garden grow wild. The Sherry who read Hardy, Chopin, Brontë, and Woolf. The Sherry who conned men out of their money betting on baseball games and claimed she didn’t believe in happily-ever-afters. “Thank you, Olive,” she said softly.

It was almost five o’clock, and Olive knew her mom would be leaving work and heading to the hospital soon. She called her from the lobby to give her one more update. “I’m just leaving the hospital now, Mom. You might want to stop by a little later tonight.”

“Why? Is Sherry okay?”

“She’s doing fine. But her son is here right now, so it might be better to visit later.”

Olive’s mom took a sharp breath. “Heathcliff? Heathcliff is there? How wonderful! I know that will mean a lot to Sherry.”

Olive involuntarily lingered at the fountain. “Yeah, it does. I’m sorry I’m not sticking around. I know we planned on doing this together.”

“That’s all right. I’m just happy Sherry’s doing well. And I’m thrilled that her son showed up. I’m glad he had a change of heart.” She paused, and then added softly, “Sometimes it just takes time.”

She was insinuating that Phil might eventually forgive her, too, but Olive knew otherwise. “Time and a life-threatening disease,” she said sarcastically. “There’s nothing like cancer to bring families together. And then rip them apart.”

“Well, the cancer may have helped things in a way,” her mom admitted. “But I don’t think it was so much on Heathcliff’s part as Sherry’s. It gave her a reason to reach out to him finally and give it her all.”

Olive didn’t say anything; she was watching the basins overflowing and trickling like tears into the pool below. Her chest felt constricted by sorrow. She wanted to go home to Phil, but he was like a house that had been torn down. His shelter no longer existed for her.

Chapter 22

I
t was easy to prepare for Christmas when she already knew which gifts to buy. She felt a tinge of guilt recycling the same gift ideas from last year, but honestly, besides herself, who was going to know? She had too much on her mind right now to worry about coming up with the perfect presents. And her family had seemed to enjoy the gifts she’d given them last Christmas, so presumably, they would enjoy opening them up again. She purchased a watercolor kit for her mom, who had recently taken a painting class; a wok for Harry; and a cashmere sweater for Verona, and she made a donation to World Vision’s clean water fund for Christopher, who was against the extravagant holiday consumerism.

Her family knew that she and Phil had broken up and were no longer living together. But besides the short Thanksgiving Day encounter with her mom and Harry, Olive hadn’t spent any real length of time with her family since the breakup. It wasn’t something she was looking forward to. They had all been distraught, particularly Christopher, last February when she’d broken the news the first time.

She pulled up in front of the gray-and-white Cape Cod at the exact time her mom had specified, but Christopher and Verona’s car was already in the driveway. She braced herself for the day ahead. It bothered her that a holiday she had once so looked forward to now filled her with a sense of dread. She knew that would’ve been different if Phil had been by her side.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember happy Christmas Eves past. When Olive was in seventh grade, her dad had unwittingly started the family tradition of eating anything
other
than a typical Christmas dinner when he forgot to thaw the ten-pound turkey. That year they ordered pizza. In subsequent years, they did tacos, calzones, a fish fry, hamburgers, waffles, fried chicken, and for one particularly memorable Christmas, five kinds of pie. The December her dad passed away, they hadn’t celebrated Christmas, and the following year, her mom had reverted back to traditional Christmas dinners so she could invite Laurel and their elderly father, and the house wouldn’t feel so lonely. But even then, her mom would throw in an odd side dish, a stack of blueberry pancakes or a tray of chicken nuggets, as a kind of tip of her hat to her late husband. Last year, Harry had presided over the dinner with the standard fare: turkey, chestnut stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, acorn squash, pumpkin pie, and gingerbread cookies.

But when Olive entered the house, the rich smell she’d been expecting—a warm burst of cinnamon, nutmeg, molasses, and turkey roasting in the oven—didn’t greet her. She sniffed cautiously as she unwound her scarf and hung up her coat. It was four o’clock—hadn’t they started cooking yet? Although there were no food smells, she detected a hint of pine as she made her way to the living room. The tree Harry had picked out was beautifully symmetric and proportional, almost as tall as the living room ceiling. It was covered with Olive and Christopher’s childhood ornaments—laminated paper hearts with grade school photos pasted inside, Santas with buttons for eyes and cotton balls for beards, God’s eyes, gingerbread stars. In front of the tree, Christopher and Verona sat playing Christmas checkers at the coffee table. Olive’s mom relaxed on the couch with a glass of wine, watching their game. Harry stood before the stereo, apparently putting on some music. Nat King Cole’s velvety voice crooned from the speakers.

It was too much. It was too perfect, but still somehow all wrong. Just like watching the moment in Sherry’s hospital room, observing her own family felt like intruding. She didn’t belong here.

Almost as if he’d heard her thoughts, Harry suddenly turned around and spotted her in the doorway. “Olive!” he called. “Merry Christmas!”

Olive forced a smile and reluctantly stepped into the room. “Merry Christmas, guys!” She unloaded her bag of presents under the Christmas tree and sat next to her mom. “Who’s winning?” she asked.

“Rona, of course,” Christopher said with a frown. “She sits here and calculates the mathematical probability of every single move before she lifts a finger. It sucks.”

“I play winner,” Harry said.

“Looking forward to it.” Verona smirked at her husband, as she jumped another of his checkers and removed it from the board.

“Can I get you anything, Olive?” her mom asked. “Eggnog, wine, soda?”

“Thanks, but I can get it myself,” she said, and started to stand up.

“No, no. Let me get it,” Harry protested. “What would you like?”

“A soda would be great, thanks. Whatever lemon-lime kind you have.” Olive craned her neck to peek into the dining room. The table was naked except for a porcelain angel centerpiece. No plates, no silverware, no linen napkins, no silver gravy boat.

“I’ll take an eggnog,” Christopher called after him. He dejectedly moved one of his last checkers forward. “Go on. Take it.”

“Has he always been such a poor sport?” Verona teased.

“Always,” Olive and her mom both agreed.

“Are we done yet?” he complained, rocking back on his heels. “It’s clear I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this game.”

“Do you surrender?”

“I surrender.” He propped both his elbows on the coffee table with a glum expression, as Verona started putting all the pieces back on the board.

“What’s going on with dinner?” Olive asked, running her fingers along the braided seam of a paisley pillow.

“Oh,” her mom said, as if she were caught off guard by the question. She glanced over at Christopher. “We thought we’d do something different this year and order Chinese. It should be here any minute.”

“Harry’s not cooking?”

“No. You like Chinese food, right?” Her mom’s forehead scrunched with worry. “Christopher thought spring rolls and kung pao chicken were your favorites, so we made sure to get some of those. Honestly, we got a little of everything off the takeout menu. I don’t know how we’re going to eat it all.”

“No worries,” Christopher said, patting his stomach. “I’ll handle it.”

Olive stared at her brother in his oatmeal-colored cable-knit sweater, which clearly had been purchased by Verona. Could it be that he was actually on board with this Chinese food idea? It was so reminiscent of the dinners with their dad that she couldn’t tell if it was a good thing, a kind of tribute to him, or a disrespectful act, a taking over of his unique tradition, like the New Year’s Day party. It was also hard to know what to make of this seemingly random departure from last year. What had changed? Whose idea had it been and why?

“It’s fine. Chinese sounds fine,” Olive said stiffly, and accepted her soda from Harry. She thanked him, took a sip, and set the glass down on a coaster next to the potted poinsettia on the coffee table. The plant’s hearty leaves and red silken petals provided a stark contrast to her African violet. She had discovered it lifeless last week—its leaves parched and gray, its shriveled buds lying atop the soil—and she couldn’t revive it. She’d failed to keep her promise, and it seemed to her then, as it did now, that she hadn’t done one single thing right this year. It was all a waste. A terrible, stupid waste of cosmic magnitude.

Harry and Verona started their game of checkers, and Christopher settled into an armchair across from Olive, drinking his mug of eggnog.

“Hey, Olive, I’ve been meaning to ask you—” He started, and Verona looked up from the game and shot him a warning look, but he continued anyway. “Are you planning on selling your condo?”

“Christopher!” their mom scolded sharply. She surveyed Olive, as if to measure how much damage had been done.

“What? What’s wrong with that?” Christopher asked. “It’s a legitimate question. I have a friend who’d be really interested in buying it from you if you are. For good money, too, and this way you wouldn’t have to pay an agent commission or go through any of that other rigmarole.”

“Don’t mind him, Olive,” Verona said. “He’s actually quite torn up about you and Phil. Being an insensitive ass is just his way of showing it.”

“No, I’m not selling it.” The decision had been a difficult one. Should she cling to the hope that they would work things out, or should she prepare to start over alone? Selling the condo seemed so final. She worried that if Phil didn’t have a home with her to come back to, he wouldn’t ever come back to her. But living in the condo without him was torture. Everything reminded her of him—the Mint Julep walls; his forgotten, slowly rotting oranges in the fridge; her Chagall painting that he had hung over the fireplace. There were large, empty spaces like black holes where his belongings had been. The house that had once been bursting with happiness and potential now felt like a mausoleum. She and Phil had conversed brusquely about it over e-mail. He seemed indifferent to the fate of their condo, and since she had put down the majority of the money for the down payment, and they hadn’t made many mortgage payments yet, he said he didn’t care if she kept the condo and transferred it solely to her name.

“Really?” Christopher looked surprised. “But Phil moved out, right?”

“Yes.” She hugged a pillow to her chest. “He managed to get his exact same apartment back. Can you believe it? The place stood open for three months, and no one rented it.”

“I can believe it,” her brother said. “That place is a dive. Who else would want it?” He gulped his eggnog, which left a wisp of a white mustache.

“How can you drink that stuff?” Olive asked. “You know it’s like a million calories and grams of fat.”

“Thank you, Nurse Killjoy,” Christopher shot back.

“It’s only once a year,” her mom said. “Let him enjoy it.”

“Actually,” Harry interjected, “the way I make my eggnog is slightly different from classic recipes, and quite low fat. I use skim milk and mostly egg whites, but to make it thicken, I—”

The doorbell rang, sparing them from further details.

“I’ll get it!” Harry jumped up, nearly overturning the checkerboard. Verona, who was on the verge of jumping two of Harry’s checkers, Olive could see, blew out a heavy sigh and sat back.

Olive made a motion to move to the dining room table, but no one else did, so she remained seated on the couch, feeling almost like a propped-up doll, a shell of herself. She wished she could exchange glances with Phil and see what he was making of all of this, but of course, he wasn’t here, and he never would be again. She closed her eyes momentarily, remembering the reassuring pressure of his hand on her thigh, the way he’d been a cheerful conductor between Harry and Christopher, between all of them, really.

Harry returned with two large paper bags. Her mom slid off the couch and knelt on the floor, moving the checkerboard and poinsettia aside, and then helped Harry unpack the small white cartons and arranged them on the coffee table.
We’re eating here?
Olive thought, but Christopher was already opening a pair of chopsticks, and Verona was situating herself cross-legged beside him on the floor. “Ooh, beef and pea pods,” Verona said, as she untucked the flaps of the carton closest to her. Olive sat down next to her mom. It was like the nineties again with flimsy paper plates and reindeer napkins and greasy food and companionable silence and stocking feet and inexplicable Christmas cheer. But her dad wasn’t here. And Phil wasn’t here, either, and Olive wasn’t going to let herself be tricked into enjoying herself.

“Is Aunt Laurel coming over tomorrow?” Christopher asked around a mouthful of fried rice.

“No, she’s working,” their mom said. “We’re going to exchange gifts on New Year’s Day instead.” Olive’s heart flipped over at the mention of the New Year. “Harry and I are probably just going to sleep in, make a big brunch, maybe catch a matinee. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”

“Thanks,” Verona said. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world. We won’t be able to stay very long though because my parents are flying in, and we’re having a little dinner for them at our place.”

“Oh, how nice,” Olive’s mom said.

Out of the corner of her eye, Olive could see her mom watching her with great tenderness, and then she tucked a strand of Olive’s hair behind her ear. She murmured, “I hate to see you so sad, honey.”

Harry, with his preternatural hearing, looked up from a losing battle with his chow mein.
He really should be eating it with a fork,
Olive thought. She waited for him to say something cheesy and meaningless. Instead, he stared at her with a sad little smile of understanding.

“Hey, there are only four fortune cookies in here,” Verona said, holding up a little plastic bag. “We’re short one.”

“That’s okay. I don’t want one,” Olive said. She backed up from the table and pulled her knees to her chest.

“No, no. You take it. I don’t need one,” Harry said. “I’m the luckiest man alive. I have all the good fortune I’ll ever need.” He patted Olive’s mom’s shoulder, and she smiled back at him.

Christopher turned to Olive and pretended to stick his finger down his throat.

Olive’s mom cracked open her cookie and read aloud, “Those who have love have wealth beyond measure.”

“Aw,” Verona said.

Christopher rolled his eyes and then pulled the folded slip out of his broken cookie half. “He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”