Read Online The One Who Got Away: A Novel by Bethany Bloom - Free Book Online

with a startle, as though it
had just occurred, how Henry had pulled over on the side of the road one day,
barely off the interstate, and he had swung his legs over to the middle,
between their seats and he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to the back
of the bus, and he had made love to her, with a passion—an urgency—but also a
tenderness unlike any she had experienced before. It had been their second time
together, and a truck roared past with his horn blaring, and while Henry was
kissing her bellybutton he looked up, and her heart raced at the idea that
maybe they were smack in the middle of the road, going at it with wild abandon,
as they were. But she was with Henry, and so she knew they were safe. With him,
nothing could touch her. She remembered thinking that this was all she would
ever need in the world. This Volkswagen van. And this man.  
    Everyone at the table was looking
at her. “I remember,” Olivine answered, shaking her head a little and casting
her eyes down to the tablecloth.
    Christine went on with her story,
and Olivine was struck once again by the way she could be in a particular
position in her mind, stuck in a thought, right there making love to Henry in a
VW van, and yet sitting here with her mother and her father. The memory had
been so vivid that the transition away from it took a moment, and she heard her
mother’s voice as a buzz in the background, telling the tale they had all heard
countless times.
    “And we took off our snowshoes and
we grinned at one another and then Artie burst out that we should ‘get married
or something.’ I’ll never forget how the Vee-Dub smelled of dogs and gasoline
and old wet blankets, and I thought there must be a more romantic way for this
to happen, but here it was. This was it.” Christine took the smallest sip of
wine. “This was just the kind of guy he was. And I think it slipped out, his
proposal, because we had just had a remarkable day. He wasn’t joking. We just
felt so right, and I remember thinking: who really cares if he meant to
say it. He said it, and I said ‘yes.’”
    Christine paused then, and no one
said anything. She stared down into her wine glass as she gave it a swirl,
watching the wine lap the sides. She went on: “And then, fast forward all these
years...There are years where you feel so trapped with your little kids,” she said,
looking up at Yarrow. “Trapped by your own love mostly. You aren’t sure you
love to be there every day, but you love them so much that you are stuck. You
can’t leave and you feel so ready to move on with this life, but at the same
time you want to slow time. To stop time altogether.” Her voice faded to a
hush. “But time goes on, and then you are in a new place, and it’s all perfect,
because…well, because this is the way it is.” Her lips were rosy and full and,
Olivine thought, beautiful.
    “It has worked out just fine for
us,” Artie said, after a moment had passed. “I mean, I tell people, we’ve been
married ten good years, and people say, that’s all you’ve been married? At your
age? And I say, ‘Well, now I’ve been married forty years, and about ten of them
have been good.’”
    Artie beamed at himself and his
joke.
    “You could do worse, you know,” Christine
said to him, “And so could Yarrow. And so could Olivine.” Everyone turned to
look at the two sisters, sitting side by side. Yarrow turned and winked at Jon.
Then she turned to Olivine, who fidgeted with her napkin as she said, “Oh, I 
know, Mom. Paul is a great guy. Truly he is.”
    “He’s working tonight?”
    “Yes,” she lied again. She hadn’t
told him he was invited. He was, at this moment, most likely watching a golf
tournament he had recorded or maybe he was taking a bath, relishing the time
alone as he did.
    “A lesser woman couldn’t take it,
you know. Being with a surgeon. So independent. So busy. And with his
humanitarian goals, this whole ‘Doctors Without Borders’ thing. He