Jewel Ann - Idle Bloom

My mom nods, still staring at me. “Yes, tell the guys to come eat.”

“You know I just want what’s best for you, Vivvy.”

“Oliver … Oliver is what’s best for me.” I speak the truth. I know in a part of my heart that wasn’t alive until I met Oliver that he was meant to be with me. I just wish I knew what to do with the pain of his past. A past that’s still part of his present, our present.

“Okay, Vivvy.” She sighs and hands me a dish of steamed veggies. “But you’re still not sleeping with him under this roof.”

No problem. Oliver and I don’t do much sleeping when we’re together anyway. I smirk. “That’s fine.” I’ve never considered myself a rebel, but the more she treats me like a child, the more I want to take Oliver upstairs and do very adult things with him in my boy-banned room under my parents’ roof.

We make it through dinner without any bloodshed. My parents ask me about school under the scrutinizing looks of both Oliver and Kai. I think if it were just Oliver here I would tell them. Sometimes it feels like Kai is waiting for me to fall on my face so he can come to my rescue, so he can keep me needing him. Not anymore.

“Oh my gosh, Mom! You didn’t need to put candles on my cake.”

“Yes, I did. You deserve a wish, Vivvy.”

Mom sets the chocolate cake with vanilla frosting in front of me. I look around the table at the people who mean the most to me, even tattletale-half-the-time-I-want-to-kill-you Kai. Taking a deep breath, I give Oliver a sideways glance and a wink before blowing out all my candles and wishing for … nothing. I already have everything I could ever want.

I blow them all out with one breath. Oliver rests his hand on my leg and leans over. “Happy birthday, my love,” he whispers in my ear and kisses my cheek.

“Our little girl is twenty-two. Where did the time go?” My dad smiles while shaking his head.

“Twenty-two … how old is your wife, Oliver?” Kai silences the room.

Oliver’s grip on my leg becomes painful.

“Wife?” My dad clenches his jaw.

“Get out, Kai.” The anger inside me builds to an explosive level. I should have never taken him home after his sister died. Cracking the door for Kai is like cracking the door to a bull’s pen. If given the chance he will trample me every time.

“Kai’s not the one with the wife, Vivvy. Why are you kicking him out?”

“You’re right, Mom.” I glare at Kai. “He’s not the one with a wife. Kai’s just the one who got drunk and wouldn’t take no for an answer the night I tried to escape his advances and fell into the hot coals.”

My parents look at Kai and the smugness evaporates from his face. “Viv, you swore you’d never say—”

“Say what, Kai? The truth?”

I could have predicted it—he’s tearing up. Unbelievable. He should have majored in theater, not pre-med.

“Vivvy? Kai? What’s going on?” my mom asks with a wrinkled brow.

“The truth?” Kai shakes his head. “That’s real rich coming from you.”

The legs of Oliver’s chair screech against the tile floor. “I think you’ve said enough.” He stands and clenches his fists.

“What are you going to do? Hit me again? Is that what put your wife in the looney bin?”

Smack!

“Oh my gosh! What are you doing?” my mom yells, scrambling to get to Kai, who looks close to unconscious on the floor with his chair tipped over and blood oozing from his nose.

I didn’t even flinch because I expected Oliver to knock him out the first time he made the wife comment. Once is risky. Twice is just stupid. My dad hasn’t moved and his eyes are on me. The anger is obvious, his anger with me—my lying, my “disappointing” choice in men.

“Rodney, help me get him up.” My mom presses a napkin to Kai’s face.

My dad shakes his head. I’m sure the only reason he helps Kai up is so he won’t have as much blood to scrub out of the grout later.

I look around, but I can’t find Oliver. “Oli?” As I start toward the stairs, I see him coming down them with his bag in hand. “Where are you going?”

He pulls his wallet out of his pocket and hands me a fifty. “Here’s some money for the train.”

I don’t take it. “What are you doing? I don’t want your money. Where are you going?”

“Home.” He keeps walking.

“I don’t understand. You’re just leaving me here?”

“Yep.” He opens the front door and heads to his car.

“Oliver, stop!”

He shoves his bag in the backseat and then gets in the driver’s seat.

“Stop!” I grab the door before he shuts it.

“I’m so sorry. Kai’s an asshole. But I stuck up for you, for us. Why are you leaving and punishing me?”

He rests his hand on the top of the steering wheel while looking out the windshield. His unwillingness to look at me is painful. “You told him I’m married. You told him Caroline is in a mental hospital!”

I jump at the angry snap of his voice. “I didn’t.” I shake my head and wipe a few errant tears.

Now he glares right at me. “Bullshit! I’m sure you couldn’t wait to call him after you got out of the hospital.”

“I’m not lying. I didn’t tell him.” I keep shaking my head like this is a bad dream. “Alex must have told Sean and he probably told Kai, but it wasn’t me.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s none of their business, it’s none of your …” He pauses.

“Excuse me!” I draw in a deep breath. “It’s none of my what? Business?”

Oliver closes his eyes and shakes his head.

“You have some nerve. I was in the freakin’ hospital! Broken in every sense of the word thanks to you keeping your past hidden from me. So excuse the hell out of me for confiding in Alex. But don’t you dare invite me into your bed and tell me you’ll do anything for me then turn around and say it’s none of my business.” I slam his door and start walking down the street because there’s no way I’m going back in the house with Kai and my parents.

“Vivian!”

I keep walking.

“Stop.” Oliver catches up and steps in front of me.

I stop. “You’d better knock me off my feet because right now anything less than that isn’t going to work. I’m so sick of everyone making me feel like the pain in my heart caused by other people is somehow my own fucking fault. It’s not my fault I have this embarrassing, mauled skin on my back that makes me look like a mutant. It’s not my fault you have a wife and didn’t tell me. And it’s not my fucking fault Kai told everyone tonight!”

There’s an echo of several dogs in the neighborhood barking. I’m sure my outburst has riled them up.

“You’re right.” Oliver sighs with downcast eyes and a sullen face.

I wait.

Nothing.

“No.” I shake my head and start to brush past him. “Not good enough.”

“Wait.” He steps in front of me again.

I stare at his chest, clenching my jaw.

“I’m trying so hard not to regret my past, as awful as it’s been. But when I’m with you it’s so hard to do. I let my mind imagine a world where you’ve always been mine … a world where you don’t see your imperfections through his eyes, but your divine beauty through mine. Then I think of the pain that won’t go away … my pain, Caroline’s pain … Melanie’s pain. And I wonder if time was worth it. Can I be that person who doesn’t believe in divine purpose and meaning? Can I call fate bullshit and wish my child never entered this world because the pain with which she left it … left me is too great? I don’t know what to do with the pain and anger.” His voice breaks and so does my heart. “You’re the very best thing that’s happened at the very worst time. I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean and you’re my life raft, and sometimes I get so frustrated that we’re not making it to safety fast enough. I find myself blaming you for it, but it’s only because I fear my weight, the weight of my past, is going to take us both under.”

He cups my face with gentle, loving hands, and tilts my head up. “What if we’re sinking?”

I place my hands over his and close my eyes to the anguish etched in his face. “What if we’re not?”

* * *

I let him go back to Cambridge, not because I want to, just because I need time alone with my parents.

“Young lady, where have you—” My mom pauses as I close the front door and look at her with red swollen eyes.

“Can you just…” I wipe away my tears “…treat me like an adult for once. I need a friend more than a mom right now. So can you? Can you be both tonight?”

My dad hugs me and kisses the top of my head then does the same to my mom before going upstairs. She looks at me for a moment then nods and opens her arms. I fall into her embrace and weep. All of the emotions I can’t share with Oliver come pouring out—the fear that we could be sinking, the insecurity of knowing that he has a wife and it’s not me, the meaning of what I saw behind the locked door.

“You love him.”

I nod between sobs.

“Tell me about his wife.”

“I-I don’t know. They l-lost their b-baby and she went ins-sane or something.”

“Oh, Vivvy … he had a baby?”

I sniffle. “A daughter … Melanie.”

She leads me into the kitchen and I sit at the counter while she makes us tea. “He’s leaving his wife for you?”

I shake my head. “He filed for divorce before we met.”

“Why?”

I suck in a shaky breath. “That’s just it. I don’t know and I’m so afraid to ask.”

“Does he see her much?”

“She’s in Portland. That’s where they moved after he graduated from Harvard.”

She hands me a cup of tea and sits across from me. “What happened to Melanie? SIDS?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I haven’t found the courage to ask him. But I have this very unsettling feeling it wasn’t SIDS.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know it’s just a … feeling.”

“Can I give you some advice as both your mother and a friend?”

I nod.

“Ask what you need to ask and decide sooner verses later if you can make the time and emotional investment in Oliver and his past. You have two years left of school and I’d hate to see anyone or anything derail your dreams.”

I grimace. “Yeah, about that …”

Oliver

I offered to stay, but she told me to go. Leaving felt cowardly, like I was abandoning her in the middle of a huge mess. Kai has impeccable timing. Of course I know it’s not fair to blame him for the timing of his sister’s death, but nonetheless it dragged Vivian away on my birthday. His announcing my wife to her family on her birthday … unforgivable. He must like having my fist stamped on his face. Dear God I hope Vivian is too smart to give him another chance.

“What’d you think of her parents?” my dad asks as we row along the river just after sunrise.

I grunt as my oars grab the water. “I like them. They’re a little overprotective, but I suppose that’s to be expected since she’s an only child.”

“Yeah, that and I’m sure they feel responsible for her burn accident. Every parent feels responsible for what happens to their children even if they have no control over it.”

I nod but don’t respond.

“Shit! Oliver, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s fine. I … I know what you mean.” I stop for a moment and sigh. “It’s probably about time for me to stop expecting everyone to act like my life in Portland didn’t exist. Vivian knows part of it and when she gets home later I’m going to tell her the rest.”

“Oliver that’s … Have you talked to your mom about this?”

I shake my head. “I trust Vivian. I don’t need Mom to tell me if or how to tell her. This is something I have to do by myself.”

“What about Caroline?”

I shrug, trying to dismiss the tensing hatred that takes over my body every time her name is mentioned. “What about her?”

“You’re still married to her. Responsible for her.”

We pull the boat out of the water. “No, I’m not. She’s Doug and Lily’s problem, not mine.”

“Oliver—”

“The papers have been filed, and it’s just a matter of time before it’s official.”

“You loved her once.”

“Dad! I’m not doing this with you!” I slam my oars in the boat.

He rests his hand on my shoulder. “I just want you to be prepared for the unexpected. You’re a lawyer. I shouldn’t have to tell you that circumstances can change.”