The Moment Keeper

by Buffy Andrews

  Cole nods to each girl, but when he gets to Olivia his dark eyes are drawn to her green ones as an electron is drawn to a proton. He brushes his five o’clock shadow with the palm of his right hand and flashes teeth so white Olivia is convinced he must bleach them. I think everyone notices the spark and I immediately worry that the winds of time will fan it into an inferno.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Olivia asks the guys.

  “What’s on draft?” Cole asks.

  “Blue Moon,” Lexie says.

  They each want a draft.

  Olivia gets two frosty mugs from the freezer and Tallen and Lexie head for the leather sectional.

  “Want me to pour?” Cole asks. “There’s an art to pouring so you don’t get too much head.”

  Delaney, Molly and Jackie laugh. Olivia gives them her beadiest evil eyes by scrunching them so much they become slits.

  Cole takes the frosty mug from Olivia and tilts it under the tap at about a forty-five-degree angle.

  “When the glass is about half full, turn it to a ninety-degree angle. You want to pour in the middle of the glass. And you want…” he looks at Delaney, Molly and Jackie “…an inch or so of head on it.”

  “What’s so good about head anyhow?” Molly asks.

  Everyone laughs.

  “For one thing, it looks good. For another, it releases the beer’s aromatics,” Cole says.

  “It’s what?” Molly asks.

  “It makes the beer taste better,” Olivia says.

  Cole looks at Olivia. “Next one you can pour.”

  “How’d you learn so much about pouring beer?” Olivia asks.

  “Watched my dad. He owns a bar.”

  The girls look over and see Lexie sitting on Tallen’s lap. She’s rubbing his head and grinding.

  “We need to cut her off,” Molly says.

  “Already done,” Olivia tells them.

  “So, Cole. Tell us about Catholic High. What’s it like?” Delaney asks.

  “Like your school, only we have religion classes.”

  “I’d hate that,” Delaney says.

  “It’s not too bad.”

  “My parents are always trying to get me to go to church. Just not sure I buy the whole God thing,” Delaney says.

  “That’s it,” Olivia says. “No talking religion.”

  Olivia and Delaney have gotten into this debate before and Olivia really isn’t up to having a serious conversation about it now. She’s tried to convince Delaney that God is real, that Heaven is real, but Delaney is stubborn. She just can’t bring herself to believe in something she can’t touch or see or hear.

  “Let’s dance,” Molly says, trying to break the tension. The girls go to an open space near the poker table to dance. Olivia and Cole stay at the bar to talk.

  I feel as if I’m spying on Olivia. I guess I am in a way. I’m recording all of her moments, watching and filing them away to recall later. While we record everything, moment keepers don’t share everything at the end. We choose those moments that matter. Maybe it’s a moment that shows growth or leads to an understanding of why something is one way and not another. Each moment is carefully picked to play a part in the final showing of each life story. It’s like editing a movie and deciding which moments best depict the person’s life in a way that leads to acceptance and understanding.

  Sometimes, I know immediately that I will include a moment as I’m recording it. I just recognize its significance instantly. I’ve gotten better at this over the years, too. I know I will include, for example, when Olivia and Cole met for the first time. Something inside of me tells me that they will be connected forever. I’m not sure exactly how yet. I don’t see moments ahead of time. It’s just something I feel.

  “Tallen says you’re a dancer,” Cole says.

  Olivia sips her Diet Pepsi, which she had added rum to when she refilled her glass. “Yeah. Dancing’s pretty much my life. It’s what I want to do forever. How about you?”

  “I’m thinking about medicine. Maybe bio. Wouldn’t mind being a doctor. Just got back my SAT scores and I did unbelievably well. Even my guidance counselor called me down to the office to talk about them. Said that I was a bit of an underachiever in school but the SATs showed my true potential.”

  “So what’s next?” Olivia asks.

  “Can’t start applying until late summer. I have my top five schools picked and I’ll probably throw in a couple of others just to be safe.”

  “Are you two gonna join us?” Delaney asks Lexie and Tallen. “Or are you just going to make out all night?”

  Lexie gets off Tallen, takes his hand and pulls him off the couch. “We’re coming.”

  Olivia and Cole join in, too.

  “Wait,” Jackie says. “I think I hear something.”

  Delaney turns down the music. “It’s the doorbell again. Isn’t it early for the other guys to be here? You said they weren’t coming until nine.”

  Olivia goes upstairs and peeks out the window and runs back downstairs. I notice her left eye and thumb are twitching.

  “Crap. It’s my mom and dad. Lexie, you’d better come with me. The rest of you must be really, really quiet. They’re probably just stopping by to make sure Lexie and I don’t need anything.”

  Olivia and Lexie go upstairs. Olivia pulls out a chair in the kitchen. “Sit here. I’ll answer the door. Just yell in that you’re making pizza. Got it?”

  “I gots it.”

  Olivia opens the door. “Hi, guys.”

  “Hey, Lib. We were on our way home and wanted to make sure you and Lexie didn’t need anything,” Elizabeth says.

  “We’re fine, Mom. Lexie’s in the kitchen making pizza.”

  “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy. I’m making cookies.”

  “I thought you said she was making pizza?” Olivia’s dad asks.

  “We’re making both.”

  “Such little Suzy Homemakers,” Elizabeth says. “Well, if you need anything we’ll be home the rest of the night. Love you.”

  “Love you too, Mom.”

  Olivia hugs her parents and says goodbye and walks into the kitchen. “Now that was a close one.”

  “Thinks sa believed you?” Lexie asks.

  “I think so.”

  The girls return to the basement and give the all-clear signal. Delaney turns on the music and the partying starts again. Olivia follows Cole over to the bar and he pours another draft. “Want to try it?”

  “I think I’ll stick with the Diet Pepsi and rum,” Olivia says. “Do you drink a lot?”

  Cole shakes his head. “Been around it all of my life since my dad owns a bar. Never did much for me. I never wanted it to get in the way of baseball. Plus, I’ve seen lots of drunks who waste their lives sitting on a bar stool downing Jack.”

  Matt was one of those drunks so I knew just what Cole was talking about. I can still picture Matt sitting at the bar with some floozy hanging on his arm, slobbering like an idiot. Once when I was little, Grandma dragged me to Matt’s hangout. She was spitting fire that day and determined to make an ass out of Matt for neglecting me.

  When Grandma opened the door and we walked in, everyone at the smoky bar turned to look. Most of them were men, but there were a few women in the crowd. Grandma took my little hand and we walked to the end of the bar where Matt sat.

  “Matt,” Grandma said. “Don’t you think you’d better come home? Your daughter needs you.”

  A woman sitting a few stools down from Matt looked at me. “I didn’t know you had a kid, Matt. She’s cute. Good thing she doesn’t look a damn bit like you.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “She’s not mine,” Matt said.

  “Quit talkin’ nonsense, Matt. She’s as much you as you are me. Now get off your drunken ass, clean yourself up and come home.”

  Matt stood. “I told you once, Mom. I’m not going to tell you again. I don’t want her. Take her. Do what you want with her. But never come in this bar again looking for me, te
lling me I need to be some kind of father. I’m not that man.”

  I ran up to Matt and kicked him as hard as I could in the shin. “I don’t want you for a daddy.”

  “Son of a bitch, that hurt,” Matt said. “You little…”

  Grandma grabbed my hand and we practically ran out of the bar and we never went back – ever.

  Chapter 27

  “Now, Dad, when Cole gets here, don’t ask him a million questions.”

  Tom looks up from his book. “Why are you telling me this and not your mom?”

  “Because I know how you are.”

  Tom runs his fingers through his salt and pepper hair. “I just can’t believe my little girl is going on a date.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Dad, I’m not two anymore.”

  “But it’s your first date, sweetie,” says Elizabeth, tossing her House Wonderful magazine on the couch. “We just want to make sure that Cole’s a nice boy.”

  “And responsible,” Tom says. “Don’t forget that. Not sure I should have given in and let you date him since he’s a year older.”

  “Look, guys. I wouldn’t be going out with Cole if he wasn’t nice. And I think he’s pretty responsible. At least he seems to be. He works hard in school and plays baseball. He’s had to watch his little sister a lot over the years because of his parents’ business.”

  “They run a bar, right?” Tom asks.

  “Yes, Dad, a bar. They aren’t professionals like you and Mom but that doesn’t mean they’re bad people.”

  “I don’t think your father was saying they’re bad people for running a bar.”

  “I know what he was thinking,” Olivia says. “I could tell by the tone of his voice.”

  “Look, Lib,” Tom says. “I’m sorry. I’m not a snob. You know that. It’s just that I want the best for my little girl. That’s all.”

  “Dad, this is our first date. It’s not like we’re getting married. Who knows? It could be our one and only date.”

  “OK. OK. I’ll try not to ask too many questions.”

  “You know, Dad,” Olivia says, “he’d like to be a doctor like you. You could talk to him about that. He’s going to be the first one in his entire family to go to college. He has goals and plans and he’s a hard worker and I know how much you value hard work.”

  Tom smiles and the doorbell rings.

  “OK. That’s him,” Olivia says. “Remember, not too many questions.”

  Olivia picks up Daisy, who’s at the door barking. She answers the door and, after introducing Cole to Daisy, leads him into the living room to meet her parents. Tom and Elizabeth stand.

  “Mom. Dad. This is Cole. Cole, my mom and dad.”

  Cole extends his hand to shake their hands.

  “So, Cole. Libby tells me you want to be a doctor.”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “Good. Good. Get good grades, then?”

  “I do all right.”

  “Gotta do better than all right to get into med school.”

  “Dad,” says Olivia, with a clenched jaw.

  “I just meant that med school is tough. Gotta work hard to make it through.”

  “I agree, sir,” Cole says. “And I plan to.”

  “To what?”

  “Work hard. Like you said.”

  “Libby tells us your parents own a bar,” Elizabeth says.

  “Yeah. It was my grandfather’s.”

  “Where’s it located?”

  “Near the hospital, actually. On Broadway and Philadelphia.”

  “Are you Sam’s son?”

  “Yes, sir,” Cole says. “You know my dad?”

  “Had a drink or two in that bar in my younger days. We used to go there after work sometimes with the other residents. It was kind of our hangout. Remember that, Liz?”

  Elizabeth nods. “Yeah, it’s where we met. How could I forget Sam’s Place? Do people still write on dollar bills and pin them on the walls and ceiling?”

  Cole nods.

  “The day we got engaged, we went to Sam’s to celebrate with our friends. I wrote our names and the date with a black marker on a dollar bill and pinned it somewhere above the bar. Always wondered if that bill was still there. Haven’t been there in years. Probably not since Olivia was born.”

  “Hate to cut short the reminiscing,” Olivia says, “but we better leave if we’re going to catch the seven-twenty show.”

  Tom, Elizabeth and Daisy watch as Cole opens the door for Olivia and she slips inside his Honda Civic and they drive away.

  The first time Grandma met Bryan, she fired questions at him faster than popcorn popping. I thought for sure he would turn around and walk out. Talk about intense.

  How old was he? Where did he live? What did he do? Did he go to church? Was he baptized? Why didn’t he go to college? Did he ever get anything more than a speeding ticket? Who were his parents? Even I was stunned by some of her questions. Like if he was baptized. That’s not something you ask a person the first time you meet. And, to be honest, I’m not sure it’s a question I’d ever ask. I mean, who really cares? Well, Gram did. Big time.

  I met Bryan at the grocery store where I worked. He always got in my checkout line, even though he could have used the express line because he only ever bought ice tea and thin pretzels. But he waited in my line no matter how long it was.

  “So. How about going out sometime?” he asked one day. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  I could feel my face heating up. I was sure it was as red as the lady’s lipstick behind him. I tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come out. I felt as if I were trying to swallow a tennis ball and it got stuck in my throat.

  He rubbed his neck. “Course, you probably have a boyfriend.”

  “Uh, no. It’s not that. You just surprised me.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  The woman with the red lipstick sighed. “Can you just give him your number, honey? I’m in a hurry. Gotta pick up my kid.”

  I wrote my number on the back of Bryan’s receipt and handed it to him. He called the next day.

  Traffic is heavy and Cole and Olivia arrive at the movie theater minutes before the show starts. They slip into the dark, crowded theater and find two seats in the back row next to a couple with tubs of popcorn and super-sized sodas.

  Cole slips his arm around Olivia and she inches toward him. Olivia likes comedies and romances but Cole picked a thriller for their first date. When a scene is particularly bloody or violent, Olivia turns her face and buries it in Cole’s chest. She’s so close to his heart that she hears it beating. It reminds her of Lexie’s party, when she laid her head on his chest for the first time and heard his beating heart.

  She smiles, thinking about that night. How Lexie and Tallen went to Lexie’s bedroom. How Tallen’s other friends never showed up and Delaney, Molly and Jackie eventually left. And how she and Cole talked until three a.m., until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.

  It was so easy to talk to Cole. So easy to open up to him and share her dreams and plans. He was different. He didn’t try to make out. He hadn’t even tried to kiss her, even though Olivia wanted him to. And when he asked for her number before he left, she couldn’t write it down fast enough. Actually, she couldn’t find a piece of paper so she wrote it on his wrist in blue pen. She noticed when he picked her up that the ink was faded but still there. And she wondered how long it would last before it was completely gone.

  Bryan and I went to the movies on our first date, too. I don’t remember much about the movie other than there was a lot of shooting and car chases. What I’ll never forget is how I felt sitting next to him. I felt a strange tingling inside. It wasn’t a bad thing, but it was scary because I had never experienced anything like it before. My body quivered when he reached for my hand and our fingers interlocked. This was the first time I had been this close to a boy and I wanted the sensation to last forever.

  We stayed until the last credit rolled because Bryan
wanted to see the extra scene they included at the end. As we left the theater he spotted a dime tails up in the parking lot. He reached down and turned it over.

  “Aren’t you going to pick it up?” I asked.

  He smiled. “No, I turned it over to heads for someone else to find. Heads always brings good luck.”

  After the movie, we went for ice cream and sat in his Jeep and talked for hours. I was surprised at how normal and natural it felt to be with him. It reminded me of the box of gloves Gram brought home one fall day. Someone was cleaning out their closets and thought we could use them. I tried on one after another and finally found a pair. They weren’t the newest pair or the best pair, but they fit perfectly.

  I learned that Bryan lived alone, had no parents — he had avoided answering this question when Gram asked it and didn’t want to go into details now — dropped out of high school but got his GED, worked at some warehouse on the loading dock and ran at least five miles every day.

  “And, don’t tell your grandma, but I don’t think I’ve ever been baptized.”

  Chapter 28

  “What am I supposed to do, Lib?” Cole asks. “I agreed to go to the prom with her before I met you.”

  Olivia and Cole have been dating for weeks and Olivia’s upset because Cole is taking another girl to the prom.

  “Does she know you have a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, I told her.”

  “And she still wants to go with you?”

  “She’s pissed, but she bought her dress and everything. It’s not like we were a couple like you and me. It wasn’t like that,” Cole says. “She needed a date, I needed a date, and we were friends. Well, maybe she wanted to be more.”

  “Can’t you get someone else to take her?” Olivia asks.

  “All of my friends have dates. Look, we’re just going to the prom. We’ll eat, dance a little and leave.”

  “No slow dancing, right?”

  “Right.”

  Olivia squirms closer to Cole. They are at her house watching a movie in the media room on the lower level.