The Repeat Year (13 page)

“You have no idea how much that means to me,” her mom said, and Olive could hear the tears, close to brimming over, thick and tremulous in her voice.

Yes, I do,
Olive thought, as she remembered all the times she had withheld this joyful acceptance, when it was the only thing her mom had wanted from her.

“We were going to tell everyone over dessert,” her mom said, suddenly looking stricken. “Do you think you could act surprised? I don’t want Christopher to think I told you before him.”

Olive grinned. “Of course.”

“So about you and Phil—”

Harry poked his head into the kitchen. “Need any help in there, Kathy? I would hate for my noodles to be . . . the opposite of
al dente
, whatever that may be. Overcooked? Mushy? Limp?”

Olive tried not to laugh at Harry’s mention of limp noodles. She was glad Phil was in the living room, out of earshot; he probably wouldn’t have been able to contain himself.

“No worries,” her mom said. “I turned down the flame a minute ago. And we’re all set in here. Would you mind setting these salad dressings on the table for me?” She handed the gravy boats over to Harry and, as soon as he left, raised her eyebrows questioningly at Olive.

“Everything’s fine,” Olive said. “We’re fine. We’re great. Terrific.” With each adjective, she felt less and less convinced. But now was not the time or place to tell her mom about Phil’s proposal and her refusal.

Her mom held the glass salad bowl tightly to her chest. “All right. I understand.” And with these words, she let Olive know she was only temporarily letting her off the hook.

They situated themselves in a boy-girl pattern around the dining room table; last year, there’d been an empty chair next to Olive’s that had made her feel like an outcast. This year, Olive and Phil were across from Verona and Christopher, and Harry and her mom were seated at the head and foot of the table. Olive was stuck next to Harry, who liked to explain his every culinary choice at great length.

“Do you know what the secret of perfect shrimp primavera is?” he asked her. He was still wearing his tweed blazer, and three neat drops of sweat balanced just under his hairline. Harry had a crown of thick, brown hair ironically circling his otherwise bald head.

Olive tried to look politely interested, but all she wanted was to get Phil alone and ask him why he had wanted to know if she’d told anyone. Was it just his bruised pride, or was it a sign of something more serious? It worried her.

“There’s actually more than one secret.” Harry winked. “I prefer penne noodles, for their firmness, to the traditional spaghetti or linguini. Also, I find most recipes for the dish a tad bland, so I add a dash of pepper flakes to mine for a little kick. And lastly, I always use fresh basil from the farmers’ market at Capitol Square.”

Olive perked up at this last tip. Fresh basil from the farmers’ market? She looked over at Phil to see if he had caught this and was also reminded of their first meeting, but he was engaged in a conversation with Verona about the challenges of teaching physics and math to disinterested students.

Harry noticed he’d gotten her attention. “Aha,” he said, leaning in. “You wonder how I can possibly get fresh basil in March? One of the vendors I frequent gets a weekly shipment from California, and I don’t know how they do it, but you’d never know it’s flown two thousand miles to get here.”

She speared a penne noodle and wished she were eating one of her mom’s specialties instead: pork chops and sauerkraut, pot roast, or her dad’s favorite, meat loaf. “I’m not much of a cook,” she said. “I can hardly—”

“Boil water? Fry an egg?” Harry offered.

Olive shot her brother, who had been watching this exchange, a meaningful look. Harry’s verbal tics bothered him just as much as they bothered her. Harry had tried to call Christopher “Chris” early on with little success.

“Olive. Do you know who I saw at the library the other day?” her mom called down the table. “Sherry Witan. It sounds like she’s taken quite a liking to you.”

Phil turned to Olive with interest. She hadn’t told him anything about Sherry since her first unexpected visit. All other conversation stopped as everyone turned to study Olive.

“Sherry Witan?” Christopher gaped. “If you ask me, that woman isn’t rowing with both oars.”

Olive’s mom tried to look stern, but the corners of her mouth turned up a little. “Well, I think it’s very sweet of you, Olive, to take an interest in her like that. Sherry doesn’t really have anyone in her life since her last husband died.” There was a short, loaded pause before she hurried on. “Her only son just left for college last year, and apparently he refuses to come home or even talk to her on the phone. It’s a very sad situation.”

Sherry had a son? Olive didn’t know why she found this so surprising. With all those marriages, it seemed likely that at least one of them had produced children, and she was certainly under no illusions that she knew everything there was to know about Sherry Witan. Sherry told her almost nothing about herself. She wanted only to analyze Olive’s problems as if it were a spectator sport.

“That’s your book club friend, Kathy? The one who attends all the readings?” Harry asked, seemingly just to get back in the conversation.

Olive’s mom nodded quickly. “She’s the one with the—”

“Red hair and impeccable knowledge of
The Canterbury Tales
.”

“That’s the one,” she said with a smile. She seemed to find Harry’s interruptions charming. Olive wondered what she’d think of them five or ten years from now.

“What’s her son’s name?” Olive asked. Next to her, Phil was discreetly trying to remove the mushrooms from his shrimp primavera. He had mounded a little pile of them on a mauve rosebud on the china, as if they’d blend in.

“Heathcliff.”

“After
Wuthering Heights
?” Olive asked her mom.

“I’m not sure.”

“How do you know it wasn’t after the fat cartoon cat?” Christopher asked with a laugh, and Phil joined in.

Naming her child after a dark and doomed romantic hero definitely seemed like something Sherry would do. This was a conversation they had not had last year. Olive was so wrapped up in this new development that she momentarily forgot about the business at hand. Therefore, when Harry and her mom stood up to clear away the dishes, she felt her stomach do a series of back handsprings. But what did she have to be worried about? She’d already come to terms with it (well, almost), and her mom already knew that she knew about the engagement. All she had to do now was act surprised for Christopher’s benefit. But the memory of last year’s dinner was so awful that she couldn’t help feeling slightly squeamish.

“Let me help with that,” Verona offered. Always the model daughter-in-law.

“No, no. That’s quite all right,” Olive’s mom said. “There’s chocolate cake for dessert. We’ll be right out.” And she and Harry hurried into the kitchen loaded down with dirty plates.

Phil reached under the table for her hand. “What do you think? Is this it?” he whispered.

She squeezed his hand back, grateful for the gesture.
We’re still a team,
it seemed to say.

Her mom and Harry reentered, carrying the cake on its porcelain pedestal. Olive’s mom set it at her end of the table and sat down. Harry stood behind her and placed his hand on her shoulder.

“Kids, we have some news.” She didn’t call it
good news
. Just
news
. She made brief eye contact with Olive and then focused on Christopher. “Harry and I are getting married.”

Something bordering on hysteria bubbled up in Olive. She’d witnessed this announcement once before, already attended the wedding, and her mom had just conveyed the same information to her only minutes before, and she was supposed to act pleasantly surprised? Charmingly delighted? The downright ridiculousness of it made her feel like she was in a Shakespearean comedy—irony wrapped in irony upon irony. She gulped her wine and tried to figure out what a normal reaction would be at this point. She decided to play it safe.

“Congratulations, Mom! Congratulations, Harry.”

“That’s great news,” Phil said, a little too cheerfully.

“Have you started planning the wedding?” Verona asked. She leaned against Christopher as if to prod him into speaking. He looked like he’d just been told one of his dogs had been hit by a car.

“Yes, actually,” Olive’s mom said. “We’re planning a June wedding, because Harry won’t have to take off then. We’d like to do something small, one of those destination weddings on a tropical island. Of course we’ll want all of you to be there with us.”

This was the part where last year Olive had told her mom that she didn’t know if she’d be able to take off work since she hadn’t accrued much vacation time yet. She couldn’t believe her own thoughtlessness. She hadn’t thought through what she was going to say then, had just spoken the first words that came to her lips, which had been a declarative statement that pretty much meant she wouldn’t come to their wedding. Then she’d excused herself from the table, gone outside, and walked repeatedly around the house. When she’d come back inside, the table was cleared and everyone had moved to the living room and was talking quietly. Her mom wouldn’t look at her. In Olive’s own defense, she’d been taken aback. It had been only a little over two years since her dad’s death. Wasn’t there a longer, more respectable waiting period required for widows to remarry? And how could her mom possibly be considering marrying this man who was nothing like her dad? Someone her dad would’ve found insufferable?

Christopher finally spoke up. “Isn’t that a little fast? I mean, that’s only three months away.” His teeth were gritted.

“We’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” Harry said with an awkward chuckle. “June can hardly come fast enough. I can’t wait.”

“Oh, I bet you can’t,” Christopher said, under his breath but loud enough for everyone to hear.

“My college roommate did a destination wedding in the Bahamas,” Verona said. “It was the most gorgeous wedding I’ve ever been to. They said their vows in the meadow behind these plantation ruins at sunset—”

“No one wants to hear about Shelly’s disgusting glorification of Caribbean slavery that she tried to pass off as a wedding,” Christopher said. “This is about
my mom’s
wedding. To another man.”

Verona folded her napkin and carefully laid it next to her plate. “Excuse me, everyone. I need to use the restroom.”

“Christopher,” their mom said softly. “She’s just trying to help.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I know what she’s trying to do, and it’s not going to work.” He cast his insistent gaze on Olive, but she didn’t know what to say. “Look, Mom, we know you miss Dad; we do, too. But you don’t have to marry the first guy that comes along just for companionship. We’ll spend more time together. That Jane Austen tour in England you keep talking about? Well, maybe Olive and I can take you for Mother’s Day.”

“That’s a nice thought, Christopher, but this isn’t just about companionship. And he’s not just the first guy that came along. I love Harry.”

A long silence followed. Olive didn’t know how long. It felt like minutes, like her heart had paused its continuous clenching and unclenching, and she remembered how her dad had called her Olive Oyl, and her brother Columbus, and her mother Hepburn. “I look nothing like her!” her mom had insisted. “You’re right!” her dad had bantered back. “You’re much prettier!”

“And I love your mom, too,” Harry said at last. Olive was embarrassed to see that his eyes were slick with tears.

“We hope you’ll be very happy together,” she murmured. Her brother glared at her mutinously.

Christopher had handled this so much better last year. He hadn’t said these things. Granted, after the dinner he and Olive had spent an hour on the phone commiserating, but at the table, he’d been as good as gold. What was different? It was like their reactions had totally flip-flopped. Last year Olive had been the inconsiderate, selfish child, and Christopher had been the tactful, supportive one. Olive wondered if she had unwittingly helped Christopher maintain his cool last year by being antagonistic and voicing his opinion for him. She felt like she’d failed him. Why hadn’t she thought to prepare her brother for this?

“I’m going to check on Rona,” Christopher said, pushing his chair away from the table.

“Oops,” Harry said. “Forgot the forks and plates.” A contingency plan. He disappeared into the kitchen. And so Phil and Olive were left alone with her pink-faced mom, who was wielding a knife.

She stabbed into the cake. She carved a large slice, and then had no plate to put it on, so she continued cutting the cake into equally huge wedges. “Greg, Greg, Greg,” she muttered, seemingly to herself, although Phil was sitting only a foot away. “Why did you have to be so goddamn good?”

“Mom, I’ll talk to Christopher,” Olive said. “He doesn’t mean any of it. You just caught him off guard, that’s all.”

“Shhhh, honey. It’s all right,” her mom said, waving the carving knife vaguely in the air. “Let him have his reaction. Your dad would’ve appreciated it.”

A few minutes later, Christopher and Verona came back to the table, blank-faced and subdued. Harry returned with the plates; six forks dangled precariously off the stack. He looked around warily. Olive’s mom dished up the big slices, and they were passed around the table. Dessert required less conversation, and Olive found that everyone was taking larger bites and chewing longer than necessary. Olive’s mom asked Phil about the upcoming season of the boys’ golf team he coached at Wright. It was a relatively unfamiliar sport for most of his high schoolers, so his team rarely made it to regionals, let alone sectionals or state, but Phil enjoyed it all the same. From this, they moved to a discussion of how the University of Wisconsin campus was changing since Olive and Phil had graduated and finally, to Phil’s delight, their March Madness brackets. The topic of the wedding was not brought up again.

Olive tried to talk to Christopher on their way out, but he shook his head. “You said nothing. Nothing. Just ‘Congratulations’ and ‘We hope you’ll be
ever
so happy together.’” He clasped his hands under his chin, raised his shoulders, and batted his eyelashes, doing an impression of her. “I thought we were on the same page about Harry.”