“V
ery nice,” Mr. Whitley managed through his stern, locked jaw, switching off the flat-screen TV that had been temporarily propped up against the dry-erase board. Olivia and Miles were squirming in the “hot seats,” two folding director’s chairs set up at the front of the room, awaiting critique by Whitley and the class.
“Olivia,” Mr. Whitley intoned. It had taken a few weeks, but he’d finally started to call her by her real name. “I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit about why you chose this scene, the scene of Lily finishing the painting at the end of the novel?”
Olivia’s thoughts swirled. She hadn’t realized they’d have to defend their projects, and she didn’t have anything prepared. Not to mention the fact that
Miles
had been the one to choose the scene. But she couldn’t flake out on him this time. Not again.
“I’m only curious,” Whitley continued, rapping his red pen against the inside of his wrist, “because you seemed not to
identify very much with the character at the beginning of the unit. I’m wondering how your feelings might have changed.”
“That’s not true,” Olivia said suddenly, clearing her throat and shifting forward in her seat. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was going to say, but she suddenly felt confident that the right words would find her. It was an old, familiar feeling, kind of like relearning how to ride a bike. Once the wheels started turning, the mechanics took care of themselves.
“I never said I didn’t identify with Lily,” she went on, her voice clear and her own. “I think in some ways she’s the heart of the book. And her transformation at the end, when she’s finally able to finish her painting, after she doesn’t have anything holding her back…it’s one of the most important scenes in the novel. It’s when she finally realizes who she is.”
Mr. Whitley nodded vaguely, pacing the length of a square-paned window overlooking the courtyard below.
“And what was it?” he asked deliberately. “What do you think was holding her back all that time?”
Olivia looked down at her feet, feeling every pair of eyes in the class burning holes into the top of her head. Miles’s mushroom loafers were fidgeting under the chair beside her, and she felt him holding his breath. Her heart was pounding, but this time it was different. Everybody in the room was waiting for her, and that was okay. This time she had things to say.
“The past,” Olivia answered finally. “The past was holding her back.”
Olivia hurried down the crooked maze of hallways toward the gym, her heart skipping an erratic beat inside her chest.
The last bell of the day had finally rung, and she knew that if she wasted any time, the gym—which was doubling as Calla’s thrift-store donation center—would be teeming not only with volunteers and people dropping off donations, but also the boys’ basketball team, stretching before practice. It was going to be horrendous enough to try and find the right words to apologize to Calla. She couldn’t even imagine how mortified she’d be if it had to happen in front of a captive audience.
Olivia peeked her head through the open red doors and was relieved to find Calla sitting alone in the far corner of the empty court. She was carefully separating items of donated clothing into piles, placing them gently in cardboard boxes arranged at her feet.
Olivia stole a deep breath of musty gym air and started across the shiny floor, her old sneakers squeaking against the clean parquet.
She had originally been hoping to catch Calla after Whitley’s class, assuming they could lighten the mood with a few jokes about how bad her on-screen performance had been. But Calla had been mysteriously absent, presumably in order to hang signs for the clothing drive that was now officially under way.
Maybe it would be better this way, after a full day at school had passed. And after the relative success of the Miles apology, Olivia couldn’t help but hope that Calla maybe wasn’t as furious as she’d been the night of the fashion show.
“What do you want?” Calla barked from across the clean lines of the court, without looking up.
Then again, maybe not.
Olivia paused, fiddling with the zipper of her sweater. She took another steadying breath and kept on.
“I have nothing to say to you.” Calla bent over a pile of boxes stacked inside of each other, wrangling the top one free and slamming it onto the table.
Olivia stopped in front of the makeshift donation center, her hands jammed low in the back pockets of her worn corduroys, rescued from underneath her bed where Violet had insisted they remain in a trash bag for eternity.
Calla had uncapped a Sharpie and was writing
Evening Wear
in tiny, perfect print on the top flap of the box.
“Calla,” Olivia said, her voice small and uncertain. “I’m so sorry.”
Calla held up a pair of satin wide-legged women’s trousers, examining the tag and folding them neatly across her elbow.
“Unless you have something to donate,” she said, placing the pants inside the appropriate box, “would you mind leaving me alone? I don’t really have time to relive being totally humiliated right now, as thrilling as that sounds.”
Olivia sighed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Okay,” she said. “I just…I’ve been trying to find you all day, and I really wanted to apologize—”
“What’s done is done.” Calla shrugged. “Nothing you can say will change what happened. Why bother?”
Olivia chewed the dry corner of her lower lip, feeling a lump forming in her throat and willing it to disappear. Her eyes burned and she blinked furiously at the hot tears threatening to escape down her flushed cheeks.
“I mean,” Calla continued, tossing aside a pile of pastel-colored cashmere shells in search of more dresses or skirts to add to the box, “it would have been one thing if you’d talked to me first. You had plenty of time to tell me that something
was going on between you two.” Calla snapped a long pencil skirt free of wrinkles, sending a sharp gust of air in Olivia’s direction and ruffling the hairs on her arms.
“I really didn’t mean for it to happen this way,” Olivia said, her voice growing stronger and more confident. “I had no idea he was going to break up with you. And after he did, and we started hanging out…”
Calla made a sound like she was choking on something, waving her hands in front of her face. “Stop,” she said quietly. “Please. You’ve made your choice. I really don’t want to hear details, okay?”
Olivia watched in silence as Calla tucked her long dark hair into a bun and went back to sorting a pile of pants.
She tried to speak but her mouth was dry and no words came.
Turning back toward the door, Olivia started the seemingly interminable walk of shame back across the gym, her back burning under the weight of Calla’s hurt and angry eyes.
Violet had been right.
Life was messy.
Too bad she hadn’t said anything about how to clean it up.
O
livia pushed through the lobby doors and onto the street, her teeth clenched to hold back the sobs that had been brewing inside her all afternoon. She gathered her fleece around her waist and walked toward the corner, her steps heavy and deliberate against a bitter wind whipping her hair back from the creased lines of her forehead.
“Hey.” She heard a familiar voice behind her, and then felt a warm hand on the small of her back.
She turned to see Soren, a checkered wool scarf waving wildly around the collar of his brown leather coat, his blond hair tousled and his eyes swimming red.
Olivia looked immediately to the sidewalk, shimmying out from under his touch and taking another step toward the curb. “Hey,” she said, her voice curt and cold. “I’m actually in kind of a rush.”
“Wait.” He steadied his hands on her elbows, searching her face with his soft green eyes. “I’ve been calling you all weekend. What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, the lump in her throat thickening, the burning fire back behind her eyes. “I have to go home.”
Soren let his arms fall heavily to his side. “Okay,” he said uncertainly. “So that’s it?”
Olivia whipped her head around, glancing hurriedly up and down the street.
There they were, standing together in plain view of school, and just around the corner from People’s. Anybody could turn that corner and catch them at any time.
Anybody.
“Soren, please,” Olivia said. “I really have to—”
“Why are you doing this?” Soren pleaded. “What are you so afraid of?”
Olivia crossed her arms, hugging warmth around her waist.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t want to make things worse.”
“For who?” he asked.
Olivia raised her eyes quickly to meet his, the glaringly obvious answer on the tip of her tongue.
Soren shrugged. “Yeah,” he said finally, “but Calla was going to find out eventually. And okay, it will be hard for a while, but things will settle down.”
Olivia looked up at Soren’s face, open and optimistic. She wanted so badly to fall into his arms, to let him make it better, to run away with him and never deal with any of this again.
Suddenly, Olivia felt something brushing past her shoulder. She turned her head quickly, expecting to see Violet,
hoping
with everything inside of her to find her sister standing there, arms crossed, ready with deadpan instructions for Olivia to follow.
But it was only the wind.
Olivia took a deep breath, the realization that she was more alone than ever hitting her like a rusty screw turning in the center of her heart.
Soren shuffled his feet and looked down at a crack in the sidewalk. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, his voice kind of crackly and unsure. “When you asked me, at the fashion show, why I liked you…I didn’t really know what to say, and I’m sorry it came out so lame.”
Soren was blushing now and he refused to look her in the eye, talking directly to a pair of tire marks on the pavement, scuffing the tops of his sneakers against the side of the tarspotted curb.
“I guess I just wanted to say something that sounded important and big.” He shrugged, stuffing his hands deeper into his pockets. “But the truth is, I don’t really have a reason. Even that first day I skated past you in the courtyard, it was like I was running into someone I hadn’t seen in a while. Somebody I already knew.”
Olivia smiled and nodded, remembering back to all of the stops and starts in their first few awkward conversations. It had felt a lot like they both already had so much to say, and were tripping over themselves not to let it all out too soon.
Soren glanced up from the street and caught her eyes. “And I know that it’s right, because…it’s right.”
Olivia laughed, losing his logic but not wanting him to stop.
“Right?” he repeated, smiling and nudging her with the outside of his elbow.
Olivia felt her features softening as Soren untucked one hand from his pocket. He reached carefully out for her hand, his fingers timid and curious as they grasped for hers.
She let her palm flop motionlessly inside his hand for a moment, before tightening her grip and giving his knuckles a cozy little squeeze.
There it was: the perfect fit.
Another gust of wind ruffled the waist of Olivia’s coat, and although she didn’t have to look to know that Violet wasn’t standing nearby, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t really alone.
Despite the damp cold, Soren and Olivia took the long way home, huddled close together and taking slow, coordinated steps. In front of her house, Soren kissed her and promised to call that night. She watched him disappear around the corner, a warm, easy calm floating up from inside of her.
It wasn’t until Olivia had turned her key in the lock that the fluttering in her stomach returned. She pushed the door quietly open, hoping her father would be drilling somewhere in a far corner of the house, lost and buried in one of his many projects of distraction. But all that greeted her was a homey silence, the familiar clanking of old pipes and the hum of the new refrigerator.
That was surprise number one.
Surprise number two was her mother’s long wool coat, hanging lazily over the banister, her patent leather pumps lined up directly beneath it, the discarded costume of an after-hours
professional. What was her mother doing home in the middle of the afternoon?
Suddenly, into the quiet chorus of home appliances, low, friendly voices drifted down through the floorboards. Olivia craned her neck up toward the ceiling, slowly taking the uneven stairs up to the third floor.
Violet’s door was pushed open into the hallway, and Olivia could feel a cool breeze tickling the tip of her nose, rushing inside from the windows she had left open that morning. She was almost to the end of the hall when she heard a sound so foreign it made her stop short, the top of one sneaker stubbing against the newly laid hardwood floor.
It took her a second to place it:
The short, choppy baritone.
The singsong soprano sigh.
She took one more careful step and peeked around the corner.
There, in Violet’s room, settled between the bay windows, with the contents of open boxes spilling around their tangled limbs, were Olivia’s parents.
And they were laughing.
Mac, his broad shoulders hunched back against the love seat, saw Olivia first. He lifted his eyes to hers and she noticed right away that they were moist from crying. Olivia hesitated in the door frame, her tote sliding down the length of her arm and landing on the floor in a deflated heap.
“Hi,” she said uncertainly, feeling like an intruder or unwelcome voyeur.
Bridget turned quickly, her eyeliner smudged into the wet creases at the corners of her eyes. “We were just going through
some of Violet’s things,” she said softly. “We thought it might be time to give more away.”
Olivia crossed her arms and leaned back into the door, half out of stubborn resolve and half because she suddenly felt off balance.
Mac cleared his throat and levered his weight against the sill, hoisting himself up to his feet. “And I finally finished those bookshelves I’ve been working on,” he said, approaching Olivia slowly from across the room. “I was thinking about putting those in here later. We could make this a library. Another room of your own, if you want.”
Olivia felt her eyes brimming and quickly looked at the tops of her boots.
“Honey,” Mac said, reaching out and lightly resting his rough, calloused hand inside the crook of her elbow. “We’re really sorry you’ve been feeling so alone. But you have to know it’s been hard on us, too.”
Before she could control it, a slow wave of hot anger burst up from the pit of Olivia’s stomach, and she lifted her gaze toward her parents’ hopeful eyes.
“Hard?” she quietly repeated, the tears already starting to flow, her nose running and her face on fire. “But all you do is work! At the office, or on this house! You never even
talk
about her.”
Bridget looked toward the window, a single teardrop careening off the strong silhouette of her chin. Mac needlessly cleared his throat again and took a step back.
“And guess what? All that working?” Her voice was high and cracking now, the tears welling up behind her burning eyes. “It’s not
working
for me.”
Olivia’s eyes darted wildly back and forth before she covered them with her shaking hands, sliding down the wall and landing in the corner with a muted thud.
Her father crouched low beside her, smelling like he always did of sawdust and aftershave, and pulled her head into the solid curve of his shoulder, just as he’d done when she was a little girl.
Too exhausted to argue, Olivia sobbed against his sweatshirt.
“We miss her, too, hon,” Mac said into the cold mess of her hair.
Olivia felt a warm push against her open side, Bridget’s voice echoing Mac’s in soft, soothing tones.
“We miss her every day,” Bridget said.
Olivia pushed both of her parents away and sat back against the wall, wiping the backs of her hands against her cheekbones. “You do?” she sniffed.
Bridget reached out and pushed a wispy link of curls back away from Olivia’s damp cheeks. “Oh, Olivia,” her mother said quietly. “I think about your sister first thing every morning.”
“And I talk to her before I go to bed every night,” Mac said, his voice fading into a cough. This time he was unable to stop the clumsy tears that were dropping onto his sleeve. Bridget reached across Olivia’s lap, taking Mac’s hand and squeezing it.
Olivia’s heart ached to see her parents cry, but it was the kind of ache that felt important and real, like she’d been underwater for too long and was finally coming up for air.
As they sat there, the three of them huddled in a corner
of a room that would have been Violet’s, Olivia knew that something had changed. Violet was gone, and she was never coming back. Things were pretty messed up, and her family would never be the same.
But they were definitely still a family.