The One Who Got Away: A Novel (12 page)

The following night, Paul arrived
home early with a brown grocery sack full of produce and fresh pasta from the
natural foods store. He blasted Count Basie on the stereo, the tiny white speakers
tinkling with fast piano and wails from a saxophone, and he told Olivine she
could relax on a bar stool and keep him company while he cooked their dinner. He
moved mostly in silence: boiling water, wiping countertops, pouring, chopping, occasionally
whistling along to the music.

When he was nearly finished, Paul
held a carving knife in a flat position, just off the cutting board, and struck
the side of the blade twice with his left hand. He checked to see if the garlic
cloves beneath were sufficiently smashed. Then he peeled the garlic off the
board with the blade of the knife and shook it over the bowl of prepared whole
wheat Rotini, atop freshly chopped basil, ripe tomatoes and grated parmesan.

Olivine took a long pull on her
red wine glass, which felt too large in her hand, like she was Alice in
Wonderland and had been shrinking alongside ordinary objects. And she wondered
what her mother was, at this moment, feeding Henry.

Paul pointed to the copy of
Brides
magazine that he had brought home and that had been sitting near Olivine’s
elbow all the while he had been preparing their dinner. “Had a chance to look
at that yet?” he asked. His hair gel made the top of his hair swoop up just so,
and she had a sudden urge to tousle it. To put her palm on it and scrub hard. She
placed her wine glass down on the counter, opened the cover of the magazine and
flipped through the first twenty pages. “A little bit,” she said, though she
hadn’t.

“Anything catch your eye?”

“A little bit.” Why didn’t she care
about any of this stuff? Her budget was without limit. He had told her so.
Twice.

“I guess the first thing we need
to do is set a date, so you have a timeline you can follow. So you know what
you are looking at. I mean, if you want to have a dress designed or something.”

“Set a date. Yeah, I guess that
would be the first logical step.” The idea made her throat clutch. “I don’t
need anything fancy or anything. I mean, maybe we should just start planning
and see how things go.”

“It’s fine with me if you just
slip on a pair of jeans, say ‘I do,’ and be done. In the backyard, even. I
don’t care. But I think your parents will want something more.” He lifted a
spoonful of pasta to his nose, dropped it back in the bowl and began to grind
more pepper over the top. “Besides, you know that you can get whatever you
want. Isn’t that what every girl dreams of? Planning the fairy tale wedding.
Carte blanche.”

“I guess so.”

“But then, I guess, you’re not
every girl,” he said. He handed her the serving bowl over the bar and she
turned to set it on the table in the dining room.  

“You know,” he continued, topping
her wine glass, “I just want you to be happy. I mean, I’d even be fine doing it
in Vegas, if that’s what you want. You are calling the shots here. I just want
you to be happy.” Paul tended to repeat himself after a single glass of wine.

He turned his back to her to do a
final scrub of the countertop before they sat down to eat. She could see his
trapezius muscles and his deltoids, those strong, broad shoulders, through his
shirt, which was freshly pressed. And his freshly pressed shirt reminded her, all
at once, of a trip she had taken to San Francisco with Yarrow and her parents
when she was eleven years old. They had taken a ride on a cable car, not to get
anywhere, but simply to say that they had done it. Olivine was standing nearly
on tiptoes to reach the leather strap that hung above her when a man, a
middle-aged commuter, jumped on the car. Without a glance at her, the man
grasped the leather strap just ahead of hers. He had short black whiskers and a
briefcase and when the cable car jerked forward, he slid into her. His body had
been so surprisingly hard. Unyielding. And she felt suddenly like she was peeking
into the dark and strange world of adults. Seeing a man on his way home from
work. Feeling his body against hers.

And she had imagined herself
sitting in a tiny room, looking out a window in one of those San Francisco
apartments, those tiny windows stacked one on top of another, in building after
building, clear up to the sky. She had imagined herself older, with her long hair
held back in a simple clip, wiping her breath from one of these windows and
waiting for a man like this to come home.

And she remembered deciding,
right then, that she would never do this. That marriage was a trap. That there
was no way she would ever wait at home for a man. That it might seem like you
were getting a man to laugh with, to share time with, but what you were really getting
was a job to do, day after day, and a tiny window to look out of. A tiny window
of many, many windows.

And then she remembered, another
day, shortly after this vacation. Her mother had invited all of the neighbor
ladies over for coffee and cinnamon rolls. Christine had loved to bake and all
the moms came over and marveled, first, at the clever way she had folded the
lemon yellow cloth napkins, and their lips stretched tight over their teeth and
their voices were strident and laced with false enthusiasm, and young Olivine
thought they must all be so terminally bored that they had to make up things to
get excited about. That morning, the ladies chattered about a lot of things:
how to get tomato stains out of Tupperware, the best laundry detergent for
grass stains, the long distance commercials that always made them cry.

And one of the ladies asked her
mother how in the world she got the raisins in her cinnamon rolls to be so
plump and another asked how she had managed to get all the cinnamon and raisins
into that tight spiral shape. At the time, her mother had laughed and purred
and kindly revealed a few of her tips. She went into detail about how the
secret was to soak the raisins before baking and how she had first rolled out the
dough and sprinkled the toppings inside, and then rolled it up and sliced the
dough for baking.

And once the ladies left, her
mother had turned to Olivine and she had said, “Now can you believe those
ladies don’t know how to make cinnamon rolls?” and “Marjorie thinks she knows
everything there is to know about getting whites whiter, but I could show her a
thing or two.” And just then, Olivine vowed that she would never grow up to
feel superior and self-righteous over something as trivial as plump raisins.
Also, that she would never host these kind of parties.  

She looked at Paul just then,
across the bar between the kitchen and the dining room. His red hair combed so
precisely. His voice was low, like he was telling her a secret, or waking her
from some dream he imagined she was having. “Hey,” he whispered, “Ready to
eat?”

“Ready.” She smiled and let him
take her hand and walk her to the dining room table, where she had set the serving
bowl of pasta. He pulled out her chair, and she looked into his eyes. Could he
tell that he loved her more than she loved him? Did he have any idea? Did
she
,
before this very moment?

“I’ve taken the liberty,” he
said, as he ladled pasta onto her plate in a portion only slightly smaller than
she would have chosen for herself, “since you are almost finished with your
prerequisites, to talk to some of these admission counselors today.”

He slid his hand under his
placemat and withdrew a thin catalog and a series of brochures. He set them on the
table between them. The shiny cover of the largest booklet featured a
fresh-faced, grinning young woman and, in soft focus in the background, a
bearded man lobbing a Frisbee. “You could get a Master’s degree in Nursing in
roughly the same amount of time it would take you to get your R.N.
certification, and your pay would be higher. And then, who knows, where you
will take it. That would be better, don’t you think? I mean, maybe a little
more stress, a little more time, a little more tuition, but we have that
covered. The admissions counselor was really pretty adamant that this is the
direction you should go. Unless you just want to go all the way and start
thinking about medical school now.”

“Oh, I can’t imagine being a
doctor.”

“You are such a nurturing sort.
You’d be amazing at it. A natural. Really.”

She thought of the potted plants
her mother kept appearing with. She couldn’t even nurture a houseplant. This
was not her gift. How did he not know this about her? And if he didn’t know,
did she even owe it to him to tell him?

He nudged the brochures toward
her. He took a bite of his pasta and chewed, then wiped his mouth with his
napkin and returned it to his lap.

“I also talked to them about your
living arrangements. You could commute, especially since we’ll be newlyweds and
all.” He winked at her. “Or I could rent you a little place. Right next to
campus. This particular program,” he said, sliding a different brochure toward
her, “is the accelerated one. If you go this route, I don’t think you should
commute. Just live there, work hard and get it done. I mean, you can do anything
for a year, maybe two. Right?” He scooped another forkful of pasta into his
mouth and continued, “I mean, it’s intensive, but nothing you can’t handle. You
could be finished in no time. Then we could take trips. Eventually. We could
take trips and fix babies.”

“Fix babies?”

“Yes. There are so many medical
outreach programs. I’ve been looking into that, too. It’s a way for us to
adventure. To see the world. Isn’t that what you wanted? Wasn’t that your idea
of…of fun?”

Her throat clutched again. “Have
you ever thought about maybe having one of our own?” she asked.

“A medical outreach program?”

“No,” she laughed. “A baby.”

“Oh.”

“You know, fixing one of our own.
From scratch.”

“You mean
instead
of you
going back to school? Or
after
you go back to school?”

“I don’t know. But I’m not
getting any younger.”

“That’s the problem, Olivine. I
want you to
know
.”

“Know what?”

“I want you to know what you
want.” Paul put down his fork and closed his eyes. Then he looked up at the
ceiling, clasped his hands in front of his face. “Honestly. Here we’ve been
working toward our dreams. And then out of the blue, you say you might want to
have a child.” He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders at her. “I want
you to know what you want to do with your life. Not just spring things on me
whenever the mood arises. We have never talked about having children. Not
ever.”

“But if we’re getting married,
isn’t it something that most people do? Or at least talk about? Isn’t it
something most people discuss when they enter that chapter of life?”

“Well, no. There are plenty of
couples who don’t do that. Do you think that’s why people get married? The only
reason?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Do you think the reason I asked
you to marry me was so that we could have babies?”

“No.”

“Because it wasn’t.”

“For the record,” she said, “I
asked you. You never got around to asking me.”

“Oh, I was going to, Olivine. I
told you that. You know that.”

“I’m just saying that maybe I’m
not the only one who doesn’t always know what I want.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then
he sighed. “Look, Olivine.” He put his hand on the table and cupped his fingers
around her elbow, a gesture that made Olivine feel awkward. Her instinct was to
shake him off, but she kept still. She struggled to keep her breathing even. “I
know a lot of things,” Paul continued, “And if there is anything I know, with
absolute certainty, it’s that I want you. I want
this.”
He pointed his
finger toward her face, then toward his own, then back again. “But, look, we have
always known that we were…are…getting a little too old for that. As an older
mom, you are more likely to suffer complications, anything from placenta previa
to preeclampsia. And your chance of having a baby with Down’s Syndrome is five
times higher after the age of thirty-five.”

“I’m not thirty-five”

“Well, no. But you aren’t having
babies yet either. And you haven’t even gone to nursing school yet.”

He moved his chair closer to the
table and lowered his voice. His tone was deliberate and measured, the words
over-enunciated. “We could fix so many more babies if we didn’t have one of our
own. That’s always been my idea. That’s been my mission. To help and to heal people.
Not to be a dad. And it’s certainly not to be a hardly-ever-there kind of dad.”

In her mind, she saw the little
girl from the reception hall at Grandma’s memorial service. She had dark
droplets for eyes, like molasses, dark and melty, and, this time, she was
wearing an A-line dress with ruffles that started at the chin and continued
down, down, down…all the way to her tiny Timberland boots. The girl stretched
out her hand, in a way that showed she was sweet and inviting. Not the precocious
kind of sweet, but quiet and introspective. The kind of child who would listen
and put her hand gently on her mother’s back, just to see how things were
going. Her eyes were calm and filled with patience and wisdom.