Chapter 35
35
Olivia
“Hope the company I sent your way was okay,” my dad greets me, his familiar smile doing more to warm me than the fire he must’ve lit while I was gone. I release the breath I’d been holding since the beach and sink into his embrace.
“Yeah, Dad,” I nod, breathing him in. Nantucket in the winter, my dad and I. Something I can always count on, regardless of what’s happening elsewhere. “We needed that conversation, I think.” And maybe it’s the gravity of that conversation, and the tidal wave of emotions that are still washing over me, but I have to ask if she’s here. Like maybe she’d have some kernel of truth to get me through this. “Caroline didn’t want to come?” I try my hardest not to let that inkling of hope seep into my voice.
“You know how Mom is, sweetheart. Never not on call.” He gives me a tight lipped smile before turning around to stir something on the stove. It’s only now that I register the scent of cinnamon and apples and realize he’s stirring the cider.
Caroline, who conceived me, nurtured me in her womb, and birthed me, had very little to do with nurturing me beyond the age of three. She comes from a long line of doctors, each known for either inventing or fueling the discovery of something miraculous. By the time she’d conceived me, she’d “failed” to contribute to that legacy the way she thought she would. If you ask me, being the top surgeon in your field is a legacy making accomplishment in and of itself, but if you asked her, she’d say the long hours she spent in the OR, the lab, or conferences would one day be worth it if only she could… fill in the ever changing blank. I think I might’ve mourned her physical and emotional absence more if I didn’t have my dad. I know she loves me, in that way mothers must viscerally love their children, but she doesn’t know me. It didn’t really bother me, this apparent lack in my life, until I lost Lily.
Not that Lily was a mother figure to me, but her mom was, in a way. Grace Newhouse shepherded the both of us, as if we were sisters. I had a dad who showered me with love and believed in me so intensely, and a faux mother who mediated every best friend tiff, smoothed every heartbreak, swooped in when I felt the blood trickle down my leg in the sixth grade, compared dresses with me for prom— I really didn’t need anyone else.
When Lily left, when she died, I called Dad. He told me to come home. We’d find a therapist, I could take a gap year, and I could heal. I didn’t want that, though; what I wanted was to start my freshman year at Astor with Lily. Thinking back to that time I can see now how young I was. How emotionally naive and immature I was. I hung up on my Dad, furious that he’d even suggest doing something so rash. A few days later, I called Lily’s mom. When I’d seen her that awful morning, I’d known she was irrevocably changed. How couldn’t you be, after something like that? I just also thought there would still be space for me in her life.
When she picked up the phone, she sounded far away. She said she couldn’t bear to hear my voice, that I reminded her too much of Lily. That she knows I must be suffering too, but for her sake she needs me to leave her alone. That she’d reach out when she could.
It was only then that I realized I don’t really have a mother. Maybe my own mother would’ve been less partial to Lily. Maybe she would’ve shepherded me down my own path, parallel to my best friend’s but separate. Maybe my mother would have done these things if she saw me flailing in adolescence but she didn’t because… I had Lily.
“Where’d you go, Liv?” my dad’s voice cuts into my thoughts. I take a deep inhale of the warm aroma as he hands me a mug, steam rising from it.
“Just thinking about Lily,” I tell him, deciding not to say I just released a bunch of her stuff into the ocean.
He nods slowly, his eyes squinting, carefully assessing me.
“Did I ever tell you about my friend Harold?” Here we go , I think to myself, amused. My dad couldn’t simply give a sage piece of advice, or regale a straightforward crumb of wisdom. He had to tell you about a “friend.”
I give him a knowing smile, laughing despite myself. “Nope. Never heard of Harold until this very moment, actually.”
“Well, Harold was always hanging around this other guy we knew. Now, this was decades ago— we were a bunch of lowly L1s, desperate to get a good study room in the age of pen and paper sign up sheets. Ages ago, if you can even imagine it.” He laughs at his own joke.
My lips press together in amusement. “Go on.”
“Yes well, when I met him, he hadn’t met Seth yet. Hadn’t been tainted so to speak. He was funny, sure of himself, a real hoot to be around. At some point he latched onto Seth— Seth who was certainly not a hoot. At least not as much of a hoot as Harold. Anyway, as much as Harold and Seth together were a good time, it was obvious he was playing second fiddle to Seth. Seth who, before meeting Harold, could barely get the courage to pick up at a bar! Really it was unbelievable.” He’s shaking his head at the very thought. “Well, year two comes along and we’re expecting the same sort of group to form, and Seth is nowhere to be found. Turns out, he transferred to a different program, didn’t even tell him. I was kind of relieved. I mean, Seth was kind of a drag. Harold, though— it was like he forgot how to be himself.”
“Well that’s fucking sad,” slips out of my mouth, and I cringe at my own profanity. To my surprise, my dad just raises his eyebrows. “I assume I’m Harold?”
He sputters, as if shocked that his parable was so transparent. “I… yes. But you didn’t let me finish!”
“Please do continue to tell me about my likeness to the pathetic Harold,” I say emphatically, crossing my arms. If I wasn’t so entertained, I’d be offended.
“Sweetheart,” he starts, moving toward me, his brows furrow. Hands on my shoulder, he gives me a soft shake. “Not pathetic. Human. Imperfect. You… Olivia, you loved Lily. I know you did. And if Lily was still here, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you two would still be thick as thieves. But I also know if she was here, neither of you would be the girls we sent off to Astor three years ago. And you shouldn’t be.” He subtly pushes me down into one of the comfy armchairs across from the roaring fire, taking up residence in the one beside it. He takes a sip of his cider, staring into his mug for a moment, as if he’s reading tea leaves.
“The moment you came into this world, Olivia, you were just like your mom, maybe more aware of things outside your orbit, sure, but that same determination. I didn’t know a baby could be so determined. And that determination grew into a silent confidence; you just oozed it, Liv. Solve a Rubik's cube? Little Liv thinks she could do it if you just give her enough time. Brazenly took scissors to her hair when I wasn’t looking? It would certainly be stylish by the time you came home from preschool the next day. It’s natural for that surety to diminish as you grow into adolescence but… I’d hoped college would be a time for you rediscover that part of yourself.”
“What do you mean?” I ask him, quietly.
“I… Lily was a great friend to you, and you to her. I don’t want you to think I didn’t see that. But you girls had a way of being to each other that… I guess is what teenage girls do. That quiet confidence got so small, especially when Lily was around.”
“Yeah. I’m starting to realize there were many parts of myself that got small around Lily.” I feel the resentment start to rise, quickly followed by that acidic guilt. “It was just so hard not to compare myself to her; it was unconscious. She was this beautiful, idyllic, sprite of a person and I was me and I think teenage girls just… eat away at each other and call it friendship. I mean I love Lily, still. I can realize she was shitty to me and still love her, can’t I?” I ask him in earnest, like his answer could save me from what I’m feeling.
“Oh, Olivia,” he says, giving me his knowing smile. “Life is filled with realization after realization that the people we love the most have an immense capacity for being shitty to us.”
“Okay, well, that is bleak. I don’t know if I want the rest of this TED talk,” I admit, rolling my eyes.
“We are human, Olivia. Tell me. Were you never a poor friend to Lily?”
“I…” I think back to that definitive decade of my life, quickly scouring my mind for any stand out memories where I could’ve made her feel the way she made me feel. “I don’t know,” I say, defeated. How could I not know? I’m sure I was, but I’m blind to it.
“Lily was just a girl, just like you were just a girl. This idea you had of her— what did you say? An idyllic sprite? That wasn’t real, Olivia. That’s who she was to you . Don’t you wonder what that might’ve been like for her? For the girl she probably also loved most in the world to have this imaginary bar set for her to reach?”
I pause, stunned by my dad’s assessment of me. It feels embarrassing. Like I’ve spent this semester ruminating on the worst parts of my friendship without acknowledging all the ways I’d played a role in those parts. I feel my eyes start to water and shut them hard.
I feel my dad's hand over mine. “Sweetheart, I only want you to accept what you had with Lily. I believe that, looking back, you realize that Lily did a lot to hinder you. But I also believe that, if you’re honest with yourself, you might discover ways you stifled her.” The observation hits me in my gut, but miraculously my tears start to dry and that acidic guilt begins to melt away. I’m breathing steadily, and while I don’t feel better, I feel clearer.
I open my eyes, turning to my dad. “Did Harold ever get back to himself?”
“There was nothing to get back to. Only somewhere to go, Olivia.”