The Repeat Year

by Andrea Lochen

  Kerrigan was still leaning in the doorway talking about football and Steve, the new guy she was dating. “. . . TCU doesn’t stand a chance,” she concluded.

  Don’t be so sure, Olive thought, but instead she said, “You know, you’re worse than living with a guy. You’re messy, you’re always watching sports, and you hog the bathroom.”

  “You love me,” Kerrigan said. “I’m going to shower now. Don’t do anything crazy while I’m in there, okay? I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on you.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  She was alone again. She’d been wishing for this all morning, wishing to get away from Phil and then Kerrigan, to have quiet and solitude, but now that she’d been granted that, she realized she was left all alone with her thoughts. The tropical beaches calendar was still lying on the floor next to the bed. She picked it up and considered throwing it away. But as she bent down to drop it into the garbage, she saw the crumpled cellophane peeking out, and attached to the cellophane was the snowman gift label her mom had used.

  To: Olive Elizabeth

  With Unconditional Love, Mom

  The sight of her mom’s bubbly, even handwriting—like an elementary school teacher’s—made her resolutely restore the calendar to her desk. Unconditional love. The words sent a sharp pain to somewhere below Olive’s breastbone. It was far easier to accept unconditional love than to give it. She and her mom had always been close, and they’d become even closer after the death of her dad three years earlier. Last year’s wedding, however, had driven an invisible wedge between them. A Harry Matheson–sized wedge.

  Harry or no Harry, she suddenly had the urge to be sitting next to her mom on the squishy, paisley-print couch in her childhood home, a mug of hot cocoa in hand. Even if she didn’t confide in her mom, just being in her presence would make things seem more normal and less uncertain. There were moments in her life when the only person who could offer her comfort was her mom. This was one of them.

  An hour later, she stood on the doorstep of her childhood home: a gray-and-white Cape Cod in Cottage Grove. There were four cars in the driveway and a long row of them parked on the street. She’d had to park almost a block away. When she’d seen all the cars and realized what this meant—a New Year’s Day party—she had almost turned around and driven home. But her need for comfort was stronger than her feeling of indignation.

  A New Year’s Day party was a tradition her parents had started in the eighties. They had thrown one every year and opened their house, cupboards, bar, and hot tub to their friends, family, and neighbors. Olive had been required to attend these parties until she was fifteen years old, at which point she’d been allowed to make other plans on New Year’s Day with her friends. In the fourteen years of parties she’d endured, she’d witnessed Neil Diamond karaoke, a heated argument about Reaganomics that nearly escalated to a fistfight, and middle-aged men and women skinny-dipping in the hot tub.

  Her mom hadn’t hosted a New Year’s Day party since her dad’s death. The first year had been too sad, and the following year, she had claimed that Greg had been the one who liked to do all of the entertaining, that she was just as happy to go to someone else’s party or maybe even a movie on New Year’s Day. Therefore, this had to be Harry’s doing. They’d been married only six months, and Harry was already trying to take over her dad’s traditions.

  Except this was supposedly 2011. And if that was really true, it meant that Harry and her mom weren’t married yet; they weren’t even engaged this early in the year. So what was going on?

  Olive swung the door open into the chaos of the party. Judging by the pileup of people in the foyer who were hanging their coats in the hall closet, many guests were just arriving. She recognized several faces: her aunt Laurel, her mom’s younger sister, who immediately snagged her in a hug; Mr. and Mrs. Pinto from next door; and Sherry Witan, who had been in a book club with Olive’s mom several years ago, who no one much liked, but who never turned down an invitation. There were other faces that looked vaguely familiar, Harry’s coworkers, she suspected.

  She found her mom in the kitchen surrounded by many helping hands. She was wearing an apron with a cartoon figure drawn on it that made it look like she was wearing a bikini: a tacky Christmas gift from Harry, who had a matching surfer dude–physique apron. Her dark hair was pulled into a high ponytail. The effect was that she looked like a college cheerleader instead of a middle-aged hostess. The marble kitchen island was covered in time-honored potluck dishes—the plate of deviled eggs, the red Jell-O mold in the shape of a candy cane, some kind of cheesy casserole, a tray of tortilla chips arranged around a bowl of guacamole.

  “Oh, Olive!” her mom said. She pulled Olive into a one-armed hug, as her other arm was occupied stirring the barbecue in the slow cooker. “When did you get here?” Was she surprised to see Olive?

  “Just a second ago.” She glanced down at her mom’s wedding ring. It was the white gold band with the solitary diamond—from her first marriage—not the braided yellow and white gold band Harry had given her. It was another piece of undeniable evidence that the events of 2011 had not played out yet.

  Her mom followed Olive’s eyes to the ring, and she twisted it self-consciously. “You’re not working today?”

  “No, I had to work the late shift last night.”

  “Really? I thought you and Phil had plans.”

  Olive paused. “There was . . . a big change of plans.” She accepted a cup of punch from Jody Kessler, her mom’s friend and fellow librarian. “I didn’t know you were having this party.”

  “Of course you did. I invited you last week. But to be fair, I didn’t think you’d come since you’ve been dodging these parties since you were a teenager.”

  “These parties? Mom, these parties were a tradition you had with Dad.” She didn’t realize how shrill she sounded until she saw Jody peek out from whatever she was doing in the pantry and then disappear as though it were unsafe to return.

  “So was eating dinner and going for a walk. Does that mean I can’t ever do those things again?” Though her tone was light, her smile had evaporated. Without it, Olive could clearly see the crow’s-feet and the hair-thin lines around her mom’s drawn lips. Not a college cheerleader. A widow in only her early fifties.

  “Olive, these parties are for my neighbors and friends—our neighbors and friends—to celebrate the new year together.”

  Olive planted her palms on the cool marble countertop. She couldn’t help wondering if these were the same words Harry had used to persuade her mom to host the party. Her fingers curled around the smooth edge. Shouldn’t she be past all this? This back-and-forth with her mom, the subtle insinuations, each fanning the flames of grief and guilt for the other. She had struggled so hard last year to come to terms with her mom’s remarriage. She took a deep breath. “The new year. Right.”

  Her mom leaned forward to tuck an escaped strand of hair behind Olive’s ear. “Is everything okay, honey?”

  The tenderness in that question made her want to burst and spill everything like a shattered decanter of wine. This was the comfort she’d been seeking—the opportunity to place this burden on someone else, someone who had the capacity to bear it, the wisdom to sort it out, or better yet, make it all go away. But this visit was not how she had envisioned it. The party guests, for one. The youthfulness and glow of her mom, for another. She had already disrupted the party enough; there was no need to bring it to a screeching halt by making her mom question her mental stability.

  “Everything’s fine.” She took a small sip of punch. “Is Harry here?”

  Her mom furrowed her eyebrows and searched Olive’s face. “Of course. He’s grilling the salmon fillets.”

  She drifted into the living room, out from under her mom’s worried gaze. It was so like Harry to grill something like salmon. In her mind’s eye, she could see her dad in his University of Wisconsi
n sweatshirt and red-and-white striped sneakers planted firmly on the deck that he had built, a bottle of Miller Lite in one hand, a metal spatula in the other. It had been only hamburgers and brats for him. The occasional steak or chicken breast. Through the French doors, Olive could see the slim silhouette of Harry at the helm of the grill, like a man tangling with an unruly beast. She didn’t go outside. Instead, she walked to the picture wall. She braced herself for the worst. After the wedding in June, Olive’s mom had hung up a photograph of the five of them, all standing barefoot on the beach—the newlyweds; her brother, Christopher, and his wife, Verona; and then Olive, the only one unpaired, like an unmatched sock. Her eyes sought the place where the picture had hung, which was now marked only by its absence—a conspicuous hole among the other framed memories.

  She stood looking at the wall for a long time. She felt like she might crumple to the floor again, the way she had back at the apartment, so she made her way to the couch. Sherry Witan was sitting on the other end of the couch leafing through a coffee table book. Olive pulled one of the worn paisley pillows onto her lap. It was soothing to hold.

  The wedding had happened. The whole year had already happened—all 365 days of it. Olive knew it; perhaps someone else knew it. Just because Phil and Kerrigan and her mom didn’t remember didn’t mean that she was the only one. She studied the other party guests to see if she could detect a difference in their behavior, an awareness, a kind of recognition of the absurdity of their position. Mrs. Pinto seemed to be a little off, clutching her beer bottle in both hands and surveying the room hurriedly with her small, black eyes, but Olive suspected she was just drunk. There had to be someone else. She couldn’t be the only one.

  She shifted in her seat and touched the edge of a folded newspaper her mom must have wedged between the couch cushions. It was often her way of quickly tidying up. Olive opened up the newspaper and began skimming through the headlines. Dane County snowmobile trails to close. Injured bald eagle on the mend at wildlife center. UW marching band ready for Pasadena. Nothing caught her eye, but she didn’t know what she was looking for. Was she looking for an article to reassure her that others were aware of this strange loop in time, or was she looking for something to irrevocably convince her of this awful fact? The date on the newspaper was December 31, 2010. Her mom wouldn’t have let something a year old stay under the couch cushion if that were the case. But it wasn’t. There was no refuting the facts now. Olive bowed her head.

  Her cell phone suddenly vibrated against her leg, and she wiggled it out of her pocket. It was a text message from Phil. How are you feeling? Call if you need anything. I’m helping my mom take down her Xmas lights today. Love you.

  She stared at the message until the letters looked like hieroglyphic groupings of pixels. How was one supposed to respond to a loving, concerned message from an ex-boyfriend who didn’t remember he was an ex-boyfriend? Was there some kind of etiquette to follow? She finally settled on a reply: No need to worry about me. I’m at my mom’s. She pressed the send button and slumped even further into the couch.

  Someone sat down next to her. “Hungover?” a female voice asked with a low laugh. Her aunt, Laurel.

  “Tired,” Olive corrected. She pocketed her phone and sat up straighter. She could see Sherry Witan on the other side of her aunt, still pretending to be captivated by the coffee table book, but Olive had a feeling she was eavesdropping on their conversation.

  “I missed you guys at Christmas,” Laurel said. “I’m really sorry I couldn’t be there.” She was a flight attendant for Frontier and was often scheduled to work both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

  “We missed you, too,” Olive said.

  “I heard Harry joined in the festivities.” Laurel leaned in conspiratorially.

  “He did.”

  Her dad, a car salesman, had never been quite impressive enough for Laurel, who had remained vigilantly single her whole life, and dated pilots and doctors and actors—or at least men who claimed to be pilots and doctors and actors—that she met on her flights to Kansas City and Cleveland and Indianapolis. Laurel found Harry’s job as a professor at the University of Wisconsin much more glamorous. Wrongfully so, since he taught medieval studies, perhaps the dorkiest of all departments. She claimed a scholar was just the thing for her brainy older sister, who had been the acquisitions director at the Richmond branch of the Madison Public Library for the past nineteen years.

  “Aren’t you warming up to him yet?” Laurel asked. “I know it’s hard for you and your brother to see your mom with anyone other than your dad, but you’ve got to get used to it sooner or later. For Kathy’s sake.”

  Olive disliked when people talked down to her like that, as though she and Christopher were a pair of school-age brats reluctant to gain a new stepfather. However, she had just told off her mom for throwing a New Year’s Day party with Harry—maybe she was a brat. “He’s a great guy,” she said. “He’s grilling salmon right now,” she added, as though this substantiated her claim.

  “How nice.” Laurel nodded and sifted through a handful of mixed nuts. “Nuts are good for you, right? Protein. I’m trying to lose some weight. Do you have a New Year’s resolution?”

  Olive didn’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. They seemed like something dreamed up by health clubs, a feel-good method of making it through January’s postholiday blues and the guilt of overindulgence. It was so much easier to focus on a problem with your body than with your personality. So much easier to come up with a solution, too. There were products to purchase. Exercise balls, diet pills, an elliptical machine, Weight Watchers cookbooks, Pilates classes. Where was the quick fix for a character flaw like recklessness or selfishness or just downright stupidity?

  “Not yet,” she said. “But I probably need one. Or ten.” She must have done something seriously wrong to be here. Made mistakes of epic proportions, mistakes worthy of attracting the universe’s attentions. Unless it was just some random glitch in the otherwise relentless march of time. “Is that your only resolution, Aunt Laurel? To lose weight?”

  Laurel’s chipper expression became serious. She wiped her salty palms on her black skirt and leaned closer. “Don’t tell your mom, okay? I want to try Botox. All the women I work with are trying it, and they look fabulous.” Sometimes it was hard to believe Laurel was her mom’s sister, they were so different.

  A loud snort came from the other end of the couch, but when Olive turned to look, Sherry Witan appeared engrossed in Barns across America and unaware of their conversation.

  “Would you excuse me for a minute?” Olive asked. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  She wanted to lock herself in the bathroom the way she had in third grade. Over a dinner of brats and corn on the cob, her mom had announced that Olive would have the same fourth-grade teacher Christopher had, Mrs. Katz. Christopher had been a troublemaker in her class, and Olive was horrified to think Mrs. Katz would think the same of her. Though it was painful to give up her corn on the cob with the beloved miniature corn-shaped holders, Olive fled to the downstairs bathroom and refused to come out until her dad convinced her Mrs. Katz would give her a fair shake and quickly discover what a bright, well-behaved student she was. A goody-two-shoes, Christopher had clarified.

  Her dad wasn’t here now to make this problem go away. She had come to this house looking for some solidity and reassurance, conveniently forgetting all that had vanished three years ago. Even though this year seemed to be standing still, time hadn’t stood still in her childhood home. Everything was changing. Her mom had resurrected the New Year’s Day party tradition last year, and Olive hadn’t even known about it. She hadn’t been a part of it. She was ninety-five percent sure that her mom hadn’t invited her last year, and if her mom had, she had intentionally misled Olive into thinking it was a different type of get-together. Somehow that seemed like the biggest betrayal—that she’d had to live a whole year of her life
and return to the beginning just to find out what she’d missed that first day.

  She fingered the basket of small holiday soaps her mom put out every year. These soaps were never used; they were for decoration only. There was a gold bell, a green tree, a red cardinal. Underneath the colored wax in some places, flakes of white shone through.

  She knew her situation was incredible, unbelievable, unfathomable, but still she wished she didn’t have to face this year again alone. She needed a confidant: someone imaginative, who could suspend his or her disbelief and just trust her. Phil was too rational; he’d insist there was some sort of explanation, maybe having to do with quantum physics, but most likely one that had to do with her mind. Kerrigan couldn’t keep a secret to save her life, and her mom obviously had enough on her plate as it was.

  Her face was pale and tired-looking. Her long, dark hair was knotted at the nape of her neck because she hadn’t had a chance to shower yet. She looked a little unbalanced. “Maybe it is all in your mind,” Olive said to herself in the mirror. She dipped her fingers in cold water and traced the circles under her eyes. She pinched the apples of her cheeks a couple of times and turned off the tap.

  “I’m not crazy. I know I’ve lived this year before.”

  Sherry Witan was waiting to use the bathroom when Olive came out. They exchanged glances and Olive tried to smile at her because she knew most people avoided Sherry and she felt a little bad for her, sitting all alone at the end of the couch with a coffee table book throughout the entire party. Sherry squinted sternly back at her. Olive walked away.

  Chapter 3