The Impossible Story of Olive In Love

by Tonya Alexandra

  ‘Is there another man?’ Felix jokes.

  I fiddle with his shirt, my throat is all rough and my voice is stuck. God.

  ‘There is? Hallelujah!’

  ‘There was,’ I manage. ‘Like a week ago.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was my usual stupid self.’

  He strokes my forehead. ‘Come on.’

  ‘I was!’

  ‘I don’t believe he could have been anything but captivated by you.’

  I make a choking sound as if I’m going to be sick. ‘So this is why you’re a winner with the ladies.’

  Again he ignores me. ‘Did you tell him your crazy stuff?’

  ‘I didn’t need to. He can see me.’

  ‘Oh so he can see you.’

  There’s the tone; that condescending, infuriating warp to his words. I hate going over this with him. Felix has never believed that I’m invisible, even though he’s always going on about how open-minded he is. But I’m not going to go there with him today. I don’t have the energy.

  ‘Yeah, he can. So finally, I know what I look like.’

  He bites his lip as if he’s trying to stop himself from saying something.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘I know what you look like.’ He moves his hand to touch my face, but I push it away.

  ‘Oh yeah? What colour is my hair? I bet you don’t know that.’ He looks down at his lap. ‘I’m black Irish, Felix. I’ve never known. My hair is black, my eyes are blue. Like bright blue.’

  ‘Whatever blue is,’ Felix half mutters, half laughs.

  I’m not going to fall for his pity shit. I push him away and sit up. ‘You cac. You think this is all a big joke, don’t you?’

  He releases a breath. ‘It’s just not plausible. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I know it doesn’t make sense, you idiot. But that’s the way it is! My mum was invisible, I’m invisible and if you could open your stupid blind eyes you would know it. I’m cursed!’

  Felix groans. ‘Please, please don’t start with the gypsy bunkum again.’ The idea of magic puts Felix in a tailspin. He’s unswervingly scientific about the world. He doesn’t even remotely entertain the possibility that there could be a god.

  ‘Bunkum!’ I get up off his bed. ‘You’re blind in more than one sense of the word.’

  Insulting the gypsy story is like cutting out my heart. It’s my truth, or as close to my truth as I’m ever going to get.

  The gypsy’s magic made my Ma invisible to everyone but her true love. And by the luck of the Irish, I was born the same way. Tom being able to see me is a huge deal that Felix would never understand because he can’t see anyone.

  ‘Then why don’t you prove it to me?’ He crosses his arms across his chest. ‘I’ll call Mum in here and you just stand there. If she doesn’t say anything to you—I’ll believe you.’

  ‘I shouldn’t need to prove it. I’m your friend.’

  He shakes his head like I’m an obstreperous two-year-old. ‘Nothing is that simple, Olive.’

  ‘I guess not.’ I’m hiking up his window again. I don’t need this. ‘Thanks for your support, Freud. Some therapist you’re going to be!’ I say, dropping to the ground below.

  He is standing at the window yelling. ‘Yeah, well why don’t you go and see that real friend of yours then—Jordan, isn’t it?’

  ‘Screw you, blind man!’ I scream back at him.

  I’m scuffing my feet along the dark wet street; the puddles are shiny like oil stains. How had I expected him to understand about Tom? He was never going to be pleased for me. Rose was excited for me. She was thrilled to hear, finally, what I looked like. But she’s scared too. She’s worried about what it will do to Tom. It screwed up my dad well and truly. It screwed up all of us.

  But Tom and I are not there yet. I’m not going to get stressed out about what could happen when we might not even see each other again. Hell, he still hasn’t called.

  I pull out my phone to check if Tom has texted. Or maybe Felix has called to apologise. It’s rare for us to fight.

  Felix and I met at a bus stop. He was thirteen, I was eleven. His mother had just started letting him ride the bus alone. It was obvious he was blind so I sat on the far end of the bench, being less careful than I usually am. Still—I was pretty damn quiet. It didn’t fool Felix though. His ears pricked up like some hunting dog.

  ‘Excuse me, can you tell me when the next bus comes? Mine hasn’t shown up.’

  He was all polite and sweet; I felt sorry for him and quite a bit intimidated because he looked older than me—and okay, yeah, he was a boy—so I glanced around and checked that nobody was near then read out the timetable to him.

  ‘You smell good,’ he said when I sat back down. It was perfume I had nicked from Rose; ghastly rose-reeking stuff, during the period she was taking her name quite literally. I told him he had bad taste and he laughed. We started talking and let two buses pass us by, we were that engrossed.

  He called me ‘funny’ and ‘interesting’. The attraction was simpler for me—he was the only person I’d ever spoken to apart from my family and Jordan.

  We’ve been best mates ever since. It’s not complicated. I love him but not like that. I love Tom like that. Tom is the one. He can see me. How can it not be him?

  There’s no message from either of them. I bash my forehead with my fist, angry with myself for stuffing everything up. There’s only one way to make myself feel better: late-night shopping.

  CHAPTER

  9

  The bus glides to a stop and I slide in behind a large elderly lady. I find old people the best to trail, as their movements are slow and considered and people usually give them a wide berth.

  The lady takes up most of the double seat so I perch on the edge, betting that nobody will ask the woman to shove over. I’m right, as the bus packs up, people are steering clear of the old woman. It helps that she has a distinctive off-butter smell about her.

  I leap off when we get to the city, the doors snapping at my heels. It’s embarrassing to get caught with your leg in a bus; when it happens the doors swing open again automatically and the driver stares quizzically, and you’re lying in a tumbled mess on the road with nobody offering to help. Not that it’s happened to me. Much.

  But today I’m out free and running to the grass. Nobody walks on the grass in the city. I catch my breath before I move into the slipstream of pedestrian traffic. It’s important to ride the right tide. I slide in behind two women in intense conversation. They won’t break apart for anyone, the perfect shield. I walk close behind, watching for signs of them slowing, stopping or changing direction. As luck would have it they stroll me straight through the doors of a large department store.

  I stand by the wall to get my bearings. Walking in a busy area is a lot more stressful than you’d imagine. I’ve had some horrific elbows in kidneys, fingers in face, et cetera—people always look baffled for an instant but move on pretty quickly (usually shaking out their accountable body parts), meanwhile I’m left trying to stop a bloody nose or bent over trying not to cry out because someone has inadvertently poked me in the eye. Not fun.

  Nobody is waiting for the elevator so I ride up to the designer level. The more expensive the wares, the fewer people around, so luxury goods are my best bet. I stroll lazily around the glossy floor, where bored saleswomen pick at their nails and noses when they think nobody is watching. When you see people like this, as they truly are, you realise how fake society is. What masks they wear. I’m almost glad I don’t have to deal with them.

  The lingerie is calling me; red and black; frills and lace; suspenders and stockings. Who wears this stuff? How must they feel to be seen in this? I think about strutting around a five-star hotel room wearing this stuff, thunderous high heels too, someone watching me walk. In my dreams there is always someone watching. I am never invisible.

  But I’m glad nobody is watching me now, of course. I pull a black bra off the han
ger plus the matching pants. They fit neatly down into my shirt and disappear. I could wear this for Tom, I think. Then blush at the thought. No, that’s never going to happen. I’m actually terrified by the idea of him getting that close. Of him seeing me and not liking me. Why would he?

  Fortunately the rush of kleptomania overrides my despair. I’m caught up in the illicit thrill of it, even though I’m pathetic as far as thieves go. I try to keep my stealing to a minimum; a dozen times a year when I really need the kick, and I’ve never stolen more than a couple of hundred bucks’ worth.

  Sometimes I wonder about robbing a bank. It’d be easy slipping behind a teller, pulling out wads of cash when nobody was looking, stuffing it into my pockets. A few weeks in a few banks would do it. I could set up Rose and me in a penthouse somewhere with some loyal butler, like Bruce Wayne’s Alfred, someone sworn to keep the family secrets. With a ‘gift’ like mine it seems criminal not to take advantage of it.

  Unfortunately though, I had a good moral upbringing. Already I’m starting to feel bad as I’m walking down our street. Rose hates it when I steal. She gets really disappointed in me. You’re better than that, she says. She’s right. Besides, it’s terrible karma. I’ve proven that a few times.

  I think of Jordan and me; we’re eight years old and I’ve convinced her to climb the orange tree in Mr Vasetti’s front yard a few houses down. Its branches are weighed down with the fat ripe orbs and we’re sitting high at the top gorging on fruit; the tangy juice smeared around our mouths, in our long tangled hair, dripping off our fingers onto our bare feet. Delicious. ‘Dare you,’ I say, chucking an orange onto the street. It hits the path with a satisfying splat.

  ‘All right,’ Jordan replies, never to be outdone.

  I have a vivid memory of the orange she plucked from the branch above her. It was greener than the others, more dimply and large. Very large. I gasped as she hurled it through the air but Jordan chuckled maniacally. Nicole Whatley was walking past the fence hand-in-hand with her mother and I can still see the way it bounced off the brick fence and smashed into the side of Nicole’s head. It was quite beautiful.

  The mother spun around in horror as Nicole began to wail.

  ‘You could have killed her!’ she screamed up at Jordan. ‘Don’t you think I won’t tell your mother about this, Jordan Withadrew, you little wretch!’

  Then Mr Vasetti came out, shaking his fist and yelling in Italian. He picked up his hose and turned it on us (well, Jordan), so Jordan and me scrambled madly down through the branches and bolted away laughing.

  The karma was not swift, it was insidious.

  ‘It was Olive’s idea,’ Jordan told her mother later.

  That was the first time I saw her mother narrow her eyes at my name. In that moment, I went from a cute and whimsical imaginary friend to something that needed to be ‘dealt with’.

  I shoo the memory from my mind—I’ve cried enough tears over that lost friendship—and jump the low fence to walk down the side of the house. It’s embarrassing I can’t use my own front door. I understand the logic; the suspicion it would raise, seeing the door open and close itself. But it feeds a little seed of shame in me every time I walk by it. Shame I don’t need to grow bigger. I scoop up the cat, Mr Perceval, and nuzzle him into me. He feels soft and warm and rumbles a contented purr into my neck. He doesn’t care what I look like. I wonder if he sees me at all.

  I push the back door and go straight to my room to hide the evidence. I am stuffing the lingerie into my drawers when Rose appears at the door.

  ‘Olive, are you there?’

  I consider not answering for a minute, but she knows I’m here. It would be a dumb move. Mean, too.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where have you been? I thought you’d be here when I got home.’

  ‘Just out,’ I say, sitting down on my bed.

  ‘Have you thought about calling Tom?’

  ‘No point.’

  She’s picking at the paint on the doorframe. ‘You really think that?’

  ‘He’s a nice guy, it’s too risky for him. Besides, I don’t even think he likes me.’

  ‘He likes you,’ Rose says definitively. ‘And yes it is risky, but you’ll regret it if you don’t try. Who knows when you’ll meet another …’ She drifts off. She can’t say the words.

  I let her off that particularly insidious hook. ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘You just need to plan your next date better, make him feel comfortable, don’t be so confronting all the time. Men need to feel like they’ve got some control, and you—well, you’re all over the place.’

  ‘Just say it, I’m a bitseach.’

  Rose laughs. She likes it when I swear in Gaelic. ‘No, just a bit of a cíoch,’ she says fondly.

  A tit. ‘Great,’ I say, rolling my eyes. But she’s got me thinking.

  After she leaves I pick up my phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  Oh god.

  ‘Hello?’

  Is it too late to hang up?

  ‘Olive, I know it’s you. I can see your caller ID.’

  Stupid caller ID.

  ‘Okay scumbag, so it’s me.’

  Tom snorts some kind of laugh. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So … I hate the phone.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Arghh! Say something normal, stupid!

  ‘Look, anyway, I’m sorry about before.’

  ‘It’s okay. I probably overreacted.’

  ‘Yeah you did, but I, well … Do you want to go out on a date?’

  ‘That word sounds weird coming out of your mouth.’

  ‘Then don’t make me say it. Are you going to come over or what?’

  ‘You want me to?’

  His stupid voice is so confident. He knows I do. What a jerk. A hot jerk, unfortunately.

  ‘Plah,’ I say. There are no words.

  ‘Is that a yes?’ He laughs.

  ‘If you strip off half that arrogance.’

  ‘I’ll strip off anything you like.’

  ‘You’re unbelievable, do you know that?’ I say it with disgust but we’re both smiling. You can hear it clear as dawn. My eyes feel like they’ve opened for the first time in days.

  ‘Is tomorrow okay?’ Tom asks.

  ‘Tomorrow—that’s eager.’

  ‘I’ve been eager since the first minute I saw you, my little Olive Oyl.’

  I grumble and grunt into the phone, making the right noises of disgust—I’ve told him not to call me that. But the reality is my heart has left my body and somehow it’s flying around my shitty dark room.

  ‘Just come.’

  ‘Righto.’

  CHAPTER

  10

  We’re walking through the park, the sky low and grey. The wind makes the leaves on the trees shiver like girls with no cardigans waiting in line outside a nightclub.

  I was hoping for sun today but whatever.

  Tom is carrying everything for our picnic. He doesn’t understand why he needs to but he doesn’t complain. He really is a gentleman. More well-mannered than I’ll ever be—I can’t keep my eyes off him. He is so damn handsome today in his khakis.

  I’m so scared I’m going to stuff up that I’m acting all reserved. Even Tom knows it’s not me. He’s told me to chill out a few times already.

  It’s easy for him to say, he can walk away and start up with another girl as easy as picking up a stick. Not me. This is it, my one chance at true love. If one is to believe Irish folklore …

  Rose has given me a few pointers and she says the first thing I need to deal with is food. Men need to eat or they get cranky, which totally explains the cinema thing—he warned me he was hungry, but I ignored him because, well, I wasn’t hungry. But it wasn’t purely selfish, eating out is a conundrum. A piece of chicken spiked onto a fork flying through the air isn’t a good look. I’ve experimented enough to k
now that. Eating or holding anything in public, unless it’s very small, is out of the question. But I suppose if I want things to get real between Tom and me, I need to figure it out.

  I’m watching Tom, thinking he is so worth the investigation, when we happen upon a girl. I notice her because she looks dreamy and not quite present. The type of girl I like. I’m thinking about this a bit and giving her a wide berth at the same time when the girl’s eyes flash with recognition and suddenly I’m afraid. Tom doesn’t know anyone from this area.

  ‘Tommy!’

  Then again, Tom knows everyone.

  ‘Bridget! What are you doing here?’

  ‘A seminar. We’re on a break.’ She points across the road. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Just having lunch with Olive. Olive, this is Bridget. My sister Sarah’s best friend.’

  I smile and nod, scared out of my wits. The time has come. I didn’t think it would be so soon. I thought perhaps we’d have a few more days, nights, time to try out the physical thing at least.

  Bridget’s forehead is creased with confusion. ‘Who’s Olive?’

  He looks at me questioningly. ‘My girlfriend?’

  I smile and nod again, trying to look sweet and nice and encouraging. (Not at all me.) Wishing at the same time I could leap into his arms and kiss him for calling me his girlfriend. It’s such a wonderful word. I’m somebody’s girlfriend!

  But we haven’t even kissed. And Bridget is going to ruin everything. Idiot! I curse myself. Why haven’t you kissed him?

  Bridget bites her lip, then laughs a little. ‘Girlfriend? What? You’re having me on. Little brothers! I’m so glad I never had one.’

  ‘I’m not having you on, Bridge. Why would I do that?’

  I start hyperventilating. Tom has no idea how loony he looks. Bridget is staring at him like he’s completely lost his mind. I have to end it before it gets any worse.

  I run.

  ‘Olive, wait!’

  I hear him crying out goodbyes and apologies, and Bridget is yelling after him, asking if he’s okay, if she should call Sarah, but he’s saying he’s fine, following me, running now too. Briefly I think about the champagne in the backpack, which will ruin with all that shaking, but I keep running, startling a flock of pigeons so they scuttle out of my path.