The Repeat Year

by Andrea Lochen

  “Oh, your dad would’ve loved this,” she said, sitting down despite its damp, mossy appearance. “Your Grandpa and Grandma Watson had one of these in their garden. It was where we had our first kiss.”

  “Really?” Olive studied the bench and her mom with renewed interest.

  “Yeah. We were seventeen, and what I remember most is all the mosquitoes. We went inside shortly thereafter, and I had bites everywhere. My ankles, the back of my hands, even my forehead. I was so itchy I had to go home.”

  She’d seen her parents’ senior pictures, and she could imagine their seventeen-year-old selves sitting side by side, tentatively reaching out for each other. Her dad with his perpetual doofy grin, skinny and confident as a greyhound. Her mom with soft, soulful eyes—eyes that seemed much too old for her otherwise childlike face—and wavy hair down to her narrow hips. Olive had been raised on their love story and wanted to continue believing in that love story, so she was grateful to her mom for giving her this small gift of their first kiss.

  “That sounds magical,” Olive said with a laugh.

  Her mom peered into the dense grouping of trees. It was a sea of dark green, but mixed in were blazes of red and yellow leaves. “You said there’s an entrance to the Arboretum nearby?”

  “Yeah. Just a five-minute walk. And it’s not too far from both the hospital and the high school.”

  “That’s great.” Her mom stood up from the bench and dusted her dress off. “You know I’m a little old-maidish when it comes to my ideas about living together before marriage.”

  It was her one conservative belief. When Christopher and Verona had moved in together, she’d rattled off unsuccessful cohabitation statistics for weeks, and they’d even been engaged at the time. “They’re going to find out each other’s annoying habits sooner or later,” Olive’s dad had joked. “But there’s more to it than that,” her mom had insisted. “It’s about protecting yourself. And making sure you’re fully committed to the relationship, not just the fun and convenience.”

  Now her mom strode to the end of the yard in just seven steps, a few dead leaves crunching under her feet.

  “Yes, I do,” Olive said. “You made it pretty clear when Christopher and Verona bought their first house before the wedding.”

  Her mom cupped her hand over her brow and surveyed the roof and chimney. “But I know you’re not taking this lightly, and it’s the decision you feel comfortable making right now. And if this is the step you need to take to be with Phil, then so be it.”

  Olive walked toward her and followed her gaze. There were a couple of warped shingles, and one of the chimney’s bricks was missing. Little flaws, minor problems, but they were things she hadn’t noticed before, and they unnerved her slightly. Why hadn’t the inspector noticed them? Why hadn’t Phil noticed them?

  “How do you know we’re not making a mistake?” she asked, sounding more serious than she’d intended. She tried for a more playful note. “Like those couples in the articles you showed Christopher?”

  “I don’t, honey.” She turned to Olive, and her expression was hard to read. Encouraging, yet cautious. “But I feel good when I see the two of you together. And I’m hopeful.” She pressed Olive’s hand.

  Olive squeezed back. Hopeful was nice, but she wanted something more solid to go on. It was addictive, she realized, this foreknowledge and certainty that repeating a year gave her. Knowing what to expect, preparing her reactions, gauging each situation before she entered it. But she was off the map now and no longer knew what awaited her and Phil. How had she lived like this for the first twenty-five years of her life? How did everyone else on the planet live like this on a daily basis? It was distressing, to say the least.

  “Well, we shouldn’t keep Sherry waiting,” her mom said, already at the back door after three paces. “You know she has the patience of a fruit fly. Are you ready to go?”

  The inside of Sherry’s house reminded Olive strongly of the garden. Teacups, stacks of books, and potted plants covered the end tables, the coffee table, the bookcase, the floor. Olive and her mom perched on the edge of the couch, afraid to disturb any of the precarious stacks. Sherry had greeted them at the door in a black-and-gold kimono-like robe, a black scarf knotted around her head. She looked strangely beautiful, like a forgotten, aging movie star. She hadn’t seemed surprised or upset that Olive was with her mom.

  “Please let’s not talk about my health,” Sherry said as she lowered herself into an armchair. “I’m bored to death of cancer. Tell me how married life is treating you.”

  Olive’s mom moved a ruffled pillow to her lap. “Harry’s wonderful. He’s raking leaves right now. The maple in our backyard always drops its leaves early. We went to the farmers’ market this morning and bought some fresh herbs and vegetables. Tonight he’s going to make eggplant Parmesan for dinner.”

  “Ah, newlyweds,” Sherry said. She shot Olive a significant look, but what it was supposed to signify, Olive didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. “I remember when my second husband, Norman, used to read to me in bed. Everything from the Wall Street Journal to Wuthering Heights. I love being read aloud to.”

  “Have you read anything good lately?” Olive’s mom asked.

  Sherry considered the question. She spread out her elbows to rest on the arms of her chair. “Yes, but nothing I would recommend. Have you?”

  “Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time to read this year. But I am organizing a Virginia Woolf book club at the library if you’re interested.”

  “That sounds lovely,” Sherry said and closed her eyes. “‘I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.’” When she opened her eyes, she was staring straight at Olive.

  “Is that from Mrs. Dalloway?” Olive’s mom asked.

  “No, one of her autobiographical essays, ‘A Sketch of the Past.’ Do you agree, Olive? Do you ever feel that way?”

  Olive sat between them, feeling like a twelve-year-old again. She understood both of them much better than they did each other, and yet, in this living room, surrounded by all these books, she doubted her own insight. She remembered the way the voices of the book club ladies had drifted over her as she’d done her homework in the kitchen. Both her mom and Sherry were watching her.

  “Sometimes. But it depends on how you’re applying it to your life,” she said finally. “Even if we can’t fully understand all our emotions and the implications of our actions in the present, we can’t keep holding out, expecting to be given another chance to sort it all out. Because by then, it will all be nostalgia. You will be grieving for and missing all the things and people you lost.”

  “That’s a really interesting take on it,” Olive’s mom said, gripping her crossed legs and rocking forward. “But don’t you think Woolf was writing more about the knowledge we gain from having the time to meditate and reflect on our past? As they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

  “Not always,” Sherry muttered, but just loud enough for Olive to hear. She coughed. “Who wants tea?” she asked and tried to lift herself from the armchair. Pain flashed across her face and she fell back into the seat.

  “I’ll make it,” Olive’s mom offered. “Stay here and rest.” She touched Sherry’s shoulder as she left the room.

  Sherry steepled her fingers together and gazed intently at Olive. Olive was suddenly reminded of their first moment together in her apartment.

  “So you have it all figured out now? One go of it, and everything makes sense?” Sherry’s lips were twisted into a sarcastic smile.

  “Of course not. I’m still figuring it out,” Olive said. She hoped her mom wouldn’t take too long with the tea. Something in Sherry’s eyes made her uneasy. Something wild and restless.

  Sherry arranged her scarf over her shoul
der, like a long mane of black hair. “I called Heath. He didn’t answer. I left a message, and he hasn’t called back. That was over a month ago.”

  “I’m really sorry, Sherry. Maybe he didn’t get the message. Maybe he has a new cell phone. Or maybe he’s still thinking about it, and he doesn’t know how to react yet.”

  Sherry dismissed these comments with a wave of her hand. “It’s what I deserve, I know. I was never a very good mother to him. I’ve always been better at being on the receiving end of love than the giving end.”

  “Do you want me to try to talk to him?” Olive asked, realizing how far-fetched her offer sounded as soon as it escaped her lips. Who was she to Heath? Who was she to Sherry even? “Maybe I can convince him—”

  Sherry acted as though she hadn’t heard Olive. She turned her head and rested her cheek against the velour fabric of the chair. “I don’t know how this is going to work. If this is it—if I’m simply going to die alone at the beginning of next year—or if I’m going to be held by Heath’s refusal to forgive me as I held my own mother back.” Her pale face in profile looked stricken.

  “Two years longer I kept her on her deathbed. The first year I wasn’t there. I didn’t even know she was sick. I was at a women’s retreat in Florida. Heath called me and said, ‘Nana’s gone.’ That was all he said. I felt guilty as hell, but I didn’t bother begging and pleading for a second chance at things. I knew by then that wasn’t how this thing operated. So I was surprised when I woke up in 2005 again.

  “It was the first time in my life that I felt like I had a plan. I moved in with my mother. I did the grocery shopping, I gave her her medicine, I washed the drapes and polished the silver. She asked me to take her to Mass, and I did, but I wouldn’t come inside and stay for it, and that bothered her. She began preaching on the ‘state of my soul’ and told me that she couldn’t die in peace without knowing that my divorces had been annulled by the church and my son had been baptized. Nothing else I did mattered to her, and I got frustrated. I ran out on her, and she died alone again.

  “When I woke up in 2005 again, I knew I was being punished. I moved back in with her, and I tried to be the perfect daughter. I went to daily Mass with her. I took communion. I jumped through all the hoops to get my divorces annulled. And all the while, Heath was getting into trouble. He was thirteen then, skipping classes and smoking pot. Norman told me there were days at a time when he didn’t know where Heath was.

  “But I needed to make amends with my mother first. I stayed with her until the bitter end because I knew I’d caused her so much unnecessary pain. I see her face when I look in the mirror now. And I understand why Heath is staying away.” She buried her face in the chair.

  Olive leaned toward Sherry. “How do you know that your mother wasn’t experiencing the year over again, too? Maybe it was her decision to stay.”

  “No, she wasn’t. Why would anyone want that?” Sherry shrilled, balling her hands into fists.

  “Maybe it was more important for her to make things right with you than to relieve her own suffering.”

  Olive’s mom poked her head through the swinging kitchen door. “Tea’s almost done,” she announced. Her brow furrowed. “Is everything all right in here?”

  “Thanks, Kathy,” Sherry said. “There are some teacups in the cabinet above the sink.”

  After a moment, the door swung shut, and there was a long silence. Sherry wrapped the end of the scarf around her hand like a bandage. “I don’t know what to do. What should I do?”

  Her mom would come back through the door any minute. Olive stretched out her hand to Sherry and squeezed her knee. “Keep fighting. Keep getting your treatments. Keep taking your medications. And call Heath again. Go visit him if he won’t answer. Tell him what you just told me. Make him understand how much you love him and how sorry you are.”

  Olive’s mom reentered the living room, carrying a wooden tray with three teacups. She smiled at Olive as she handed her one. “I added milk and honey to yours because I know you don’t like tea. Try it; you may like it.”

  The teacup was made of delicate fine china; a chain of tiny purple flowers encircled its waist.

  “Isn’t the pattern lovely?” Olive’s mom said when she saw Olive admiring it.

  “Thank you. This was my mother’s wedding china,” Sherry said. “All the plates were broken or lost. I have only these few cups left.”

  “Greg and I didn’t get any china for our wedding. We were too young for that. I think we got mostly Tupperware.” Olive’s mom laughed.

  Olive took a sip of her tea. It did taste better with milk and honey. Less bitter. She studied the spines of the books stacked next to her. Ultimate Transcendence. The Spiritual Art of Dying. Tibetan Wisdom on Reincarnation. Prepare to Meet Your God. Her heart ached for Sherry. Atop the pile was an African violet with star-shaped pink flowers.

  She turned back to Sherry. “How did you get your African violet to bloom?”

  Sherry straightened up in her chair. “African violets are tricky. You have to convince them they’re living in Tanzania—the right light, the right water, the right humidity.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “The watering technique is really important,” Sherry said. “How do you water your violet?”

  “Usually just tap water from a glass. I don’t have a watering can.”

  “You should never water your violet from above. You don’t want to get the leaves wet. Never use cold water, either. You need a deep saucer to put under the pot. Fill it with small rocks. Always pour room-temperature water in the saucer, never directly in the pot. Whatever water the violet doesn’t drink within an hour, you should dump out of the saucer.”

  So she had been caring for her African violet all wrong. It hadn’t occurred to her to invest more time into researching what she was doing wrong and how she could make it healthier. She had expected it to grow and flourish because she wanted it so badly. But of course that wasn’t enough.

  Dusk was descending when her mom dropped her off. The red pickup was gone, and in its place was Phil’s tan Mercedes. A few of the lights were on, but Olive couldn’t see Phil through any of the windows.

  All of her worries, all of her hopes seemed minuscule next to Sherry’s. She felt like she had just lost a patient at the hospital. It was hard to pull herself back up, reenter her life, and care about the things she’d been so excited about only hours ago—organizing furniture and choosing paint colors—when Sherry’s body was slowly losing a war. Part of her resented Sherry for this. Olive was young, she was in love, she’d been given a second chance. Was it so wrong for her to want to enjoy this?

  “Your lives are entwined for a moment,” Gloria had told Olive on one of her first days in the ICU. “Your patient depends on you for his or her very life. And you give back the care and respect you would give a family member. Then your patient moves on—either leaving this hospital or leaving this life. The roles you have played in each other’s lives are over. And you need to take from the experience what you can and move on, too.”

  Olive didn’t know why she and Sherry had been thrown together. She didn’t know if they were the only two people in the Madison area or the only two people in the world reliving this year. Was Olive’s mom the connection? Something with Sherry’s breast cancer? Was Olive supposed to somehow save her? It seemed impossible: the same Herculean task she had assigned herself when her dad was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Find a loophole, find a cure. Make a miracle.

  Perhaps the link between Olive and Sherry was not predestined but only coincidental. Perhaps they were just two women who had hurt people they loved. Two women who were both in need of redemption.

  She walked up the driveway. Phil came into view. He was standing in the living room in a white T-shirt. He bent down, dipping gracefully out of her sight, and reappeared holding a large framed painting. He set it on
the fireplace, took a few steps back, and eyed the picture with a thoughtful gaze. God, she loved him. She would do anything to keep him. To hold on to this life they were building together.

  Chapter 18

  It was November 5. Olive’s twenty-sixth birthday again. Outside, the first snow of the season was falling, a mix between sleet and rain. Inside a crush of bodies filled the living room and kitchen. A fire blazed in the fireplace, the Killers blared over the speakers, and there were martinis and cosmopolitans and chocolate fondue. Phil had planned a party for her, inviting all their closest friends. In an echo of a year, he had still managed to surprise her.

  Last year she had gone out to lunch with her mom and then worked a twelve-hour shift.

  “Gosh, I wish I could find a place like this in Milwaukee,” Maggie said, admiring the fireplace. She wrote for the food section of the newspaper there. She and Alistair were Olive’s oldest friends.

  Olive bit into a chocolate-dipped strawberry. “Yeah, but you know Madison. Places like this are few and far between. We got lucky.”

  Alistair leaned over the couch and handed her a cosmopolitan. “For the birthday girl.” He worked in IT for the university and sent her dirty forwards almost every day.

  “Thanks,” Olive said. This was her third cosmo, and it was only ten o’clock. She surveyed the living room. It felt surreal to have so many of her friends—some of whom she hadn’t seen since 2010—together in one place. It felt a little like the old TV show This Is Your Life. There was Claire, Olive’s good friend from nursing school. After graduation, she’d moved to Milwaukee to work at Children’s Hospital. There was Tina, flirting with one of Phil’s best friends, Jeff. There were Robin and Lisa, who’d lived on the same floor as Olive and Kerrigan freshman year and then followed them to the pink house and lived in the lower flat until a few years ago. It was strange that Kerrigan wasn’t here yet.