Olive Kitteridge (18 page)

She went into the bump-out room, lay down on her back. No, Christopher wouldn't stab someone. (She hoped not.) It was not in his cards. Not in his bulb—planted in this particular soil, hers and Henry's, and their parents before them. Closing her eyes, she thought of soil, and green things growing, and the soccer field by the school came into her mind. She remembered the days when she was a schoolteacher, how Henry would leave the pharmacy sometimes in the autumn to come and watch the soccer games on the field beside the school. Christopher, never physically aggressive, had spent most of the games sitting on the bench in his uniform, but Olive had suspected he didn't mind.

There was beauty to that autumn air, and the sweaty young bodies that had mud on their legs, strong young men who would throw themselves forward to have the ball smack against their foreheads; the cheering when a goal was scored, the goalie sinking to his knees. There were days—she could remember this—when Henry would hold her hand as they walked home, middle-aged people, in their prime. Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it. But she had that memory now, of something healthy and pure. Maybe it was the purest she had, those moments on the soccer field, because she had other memories that were not pure.

Doyle Larkin had not been at the soccer games—he had not gone to that school. Whether Doyle even played soccer, Olive didn't know. She could not recall Louise ever saying, “I must go to Portland this afternoon to see Doyle in a soccer game.” But Louise had loved her children, had bragged about them endlessly; when she'd spoken of Doyle being homesick at summer camp, her eyes had moistened, Olive now remembered this.

There was no understanding any of it.

But she had been wrong to visit Louise Larkin, hoping to feel better by knowing the woman suffered. It was ludicrous, as well, to think that Henry would die because she had told him he could. Who in the world, this strange and incomprehensible world, did she think she was? Olive turned onto her side, drew her knees up to her chest, turned on her transistor radio. She would have to decide soon whether or not to plant the tulips, before the ground was frozen.

Basket of Trips

T
own is the church, and the grange hall, and the grocery store, and these days the grocery store could use a coat of paint. But no one's about to mention that to the grocer's wife—a plump, short woman who has brown eyes and two little dimples high up on her cheeks. When she was younger, Marlene Bonney was quite shy, and she would push the numbers on the cash register with a tentativeness, patches of pink spreading over her cheeks; you could see it made her nervous, counting out the change. But she was kind and warm-natured, and would listen carefully, her head bent forward, whenever a customer mentioned a problem they had. The fishermen liked her because she was quick to laugh, a sweet eruption of a deep, soft giggle. And when she made a mistake with the change, as she sometimes did, she would laugh even while blushing clear to her roots. “I guess I'm not going to win any prizes,” she'd say. “No prizes for me.”

Now, on this April day, people stand in the gravelly parking lot next to the church, waiting for Marlene to come out with her kids. Those who speak do so quietly, and there is a great deal of abstracted gazing, not uncommon in these circumstances, and many long glances at the ground. This same gravel parking lot stretches along the road and goes, eventually, up to the big side door of the grocery store, which in the past was often open during the summer months, and where people could see Marlene out back there, playing cards with the kids, or fixing them hot dogs to eat; good kids, always running around the store when they were small, always underfoot.

Molly Collins, standing next to Olive Kitteridge, both of them waiting along with the rest, has just looked around behind her at that side of the grocery store, and with a deep sigh says, “Such a nice woman. It isn't right.”

Olive Kitteridge, who is big-boned and taller by a head than Molly, reaches into her handbag for her sunglasses, and once she has them on, she squints hard at Molly Collins, because it seems such a stupid thing to say. Stupid—this assumption people have, that things should somehow be
right.
But she finally answers, “She's a nice woman, it's true,” turning and looking across the road at the budded forsythia near the grange hall.

And it is true, Marlene Bonney is sweet—and as thick as molasses, to boot. Years ago it was Olive who taught Marlene math in the seventh grade; Olive thinks she knows better than most how hard it must've been for the poor girl to take on that cash register when the time came. Still, the reason Olive has come here today, volunteered to help out, is that she knows Henry would be here if things weren't as they are; Henry, who went to church every Sunday, believed in this community stuff. But there they are—Marlene has come out of the church, Eddie Junior next to her, and the girls right behind. Marlene has been crying of course, but she is smiling now, the dimples high on her cheeks twinkling as she thanks people, standing on the side porch of the church in a blue coat that spreads over her rounded behind, but is not long enough to cover the rest of the green flowered dress that sticks to her nylons with static cling.

Kerry Monroe, one of Marlene's cousins (who was in trouble with the law a few years ago, and Marlene helped her out, took her in, gave her a job at the store), stands behind Marlene, slick as a whistle with her black hair and black suit and sunglasses, giving a nod to Eddie Junior, who nudges his mother toward a car and helps her get in. Those people going to the cemetery, and this includes the husband of Molly Collins, get into their cars as well, switching on their headlights in the midst of this sunny day, waiting for the hearse to pull away, then for the black car carrying the rest of the Bonneys to follow. All of it costing an arm and a leg, Olive thinks, walking to her own car along with Molly.

“Direct cremation,” Olive says, as she waits for Molly to dig out a seat belt from the mess of dog hairs. “No frills. Door to door. They'll come right down from Belfast and take you away.”

“What are you talking about?” Molly turns her head toward Olive, and Olive can smell the woman's breath from those false teeth she's had for years.

“They don't advertise,” Olive says. “No frills. I told Henry that's the outfit we'll be using when the time comes.”

She pulls out of the parking lot and starts down the road toward the Bonneys' house, which is way down at the end of the point. She has offered to go back with Molly to help lay out the sandwiches, avoiding, that way, the cemetery. The lowering of the casket and all that business—she can do without.

“Well, it's a nice day, anyway,” says Molly, as they pass the Bullock place on the corner. “Helps a little bit, I think.” And it's true the sun is strong, the sky very blue behind the Bullocks' red barn.

“Is Henry able to understand, then?” Molly asks a few minutes later.

For Olive, this is like someone has swung a lobster buoy and slammed her in the breastbone. But she answers simply, “Some days. I think so, yes.” Lying is not what makes her angry. It's the question that has somehow made her angry. And yet, she also has an urge to tell this woman, sitting stupidly beside her, how she took the dog over last week on that day the weather was so warm; how she brought Henry out to the parking lot and the dog licked his hands.

“I don't know how you do it,” Molly says quietly. “Going there every day, Olive. You're a saint.”

“I'm hardly a saint, and you know it,” Olive answers, but she is so angry she could drive right off the road.

“I wonder what Marlene is going to do for money,” says Molly. “Do you mind if I open a window? I think you
are
a saint, Olive, but no offense, it smells a little doggy in here.”

“Offense is not taken, I assure you,” says Olive. “Open any windows you like.” She has turned onto Eldridge Road, and this is a mistake because now she will have to drive by the house where her son, Christopher, used to live. She almost always makes a point of going the other way, taking the old route down to the bay, but here she is, and now she prepares herself to turn her head away, feigning nonchalance.

“Life insurance,” Molly is saying. “Cousin Kerry—she told someone there was life insurance, and I guess Marlene's also thinking of selling the store. Apparently Kerry's the one who's been running the business this year.”

Olive's eye has caught the clutter of cars in the front yard, and she turns her head as though to glance through the spruce trees out to the water, but the afterimage of the junky front yard remains in her eye; and oh, it had been a beautiful place! The lilac by the back door would have its tight little buds now, the forsythia at the kitchen window probably ready to burst—if those beastly people haven't knocked it down, living there like pigs. Why buy a beautiful house and junk it up with broken cars and tricycles and plastic swimming pools and swing sets? Why do a thing like that?

As they come over the crest where only juniper bushes and blueberry bushes grow, the sun is so bright above the water that Olive has to put the sun visor down. They pass by Moody's Marina, down into the little gully where the Bonney house is. “Hope I haven't lost the key she gave me,” says Molly Collins, fishing through her handbag. She holds up a key as the car stops. “Pull up a little farther there, Olive. There'll be a lot of cars here when they get back from the cemetery.” Years ago, Molly Collins taught home ec at the same school where Olive taught math, and even back then she was a bossy thing. But Olive pulls the car up farther.

“She probably ought to sell the store,” says Molly as they walk around to the side door of the Bonneys' big old house. “Why bother with the headache of all that, if she doesn't need to?”

Inside, standing in the kitchen looking around, Molly muses, “Maybe she ought to sell this place, too.”

Olive, having never been inside before, thinks the place looks tired. It's not just because some tiles are missing from the floor by the stove, or that part of the counter has bubbled up along the edge. The place simply has an air of exhaustion. Dying. Not dying. Either way, it tires you out. Olive peeks into the living room, where a large window looks over the ocean. It is a lot to take care of. On the other hand, it's Marlene's home. Of course, if Marlene sells the place, then Kerry, who lives in the room above the garage, will have to move out as well. Too bad, Olive thinks, closing the closet door with their coats hung up, heading back into the kitchen. Kerry Monroe had her eye on Christopher a few years back, smelled some money in that practice of his. Even Henry felt compelled to tell him to watch out. Don't worry, Christopher said, she's not my type. Which is pretty funny to think of now. “You could laugh your head off with that one, ha-ha thud,” says Olive to no one, as she comes into the kitchen, knocks her knuckles a few times on the table. “Put me to work, Molly.”

“See if there's any milk in the refrigerator, and pour it into these creamers.” Molly is wearing a bib apron that she must have found here in the kitchen somewhere. Or maybe she brought it along. One way or another, she appears to have made herself at home. “Now, Olive, tell me. I've been wanting to ask. How is Christopher these days?”

Molly sets out plates on the table as quick as playing cards.

“He's fine,” says Olive. “Now, what else do you want me to do?”

“Arrange these brownies on this. He likes it out there in California?”

“He's very happy out there. Got a nice practice going.” Little tiny brownies. What was wrong with making a brownie big enough to sink your teeth into?

“How can people in California have problems with their feet?” asks Molly, moving around Olive with a plate of sandwiches. “Don't they drive everywhere?”

Olive has to actually look at the wall and roll her eyes because of how stupid this woman can be. “But feet they have. And Chris has a very nice practice.”

“Any grandchildren on the way?” Molly draws the words out with a kind of coyness, while she shakes sugar cubes into a little bowl.

“Haven't heard,” says Olive. “And I don't believe in asking.” She takes one of the little brownies and puts it into her mouth, making her eyes big at Molly. Olive and Henry had told no one except their old friends Bill and Bunny Newton, who lived two hours away, that Christopher was now divorced. Why tell anyone that? It was nobody's business, and Christopher living so far away—who needed to know that his new wife had walked out after moving him across the country? And that he didn't want to come home? No wonder Henry had a stroke! How unbelievable it was! Never, in a hundred years, would Olive tell Molly Collins, or anyone else, how terrible it was when Christopher came back to visit his father in the nursing home, how terse he was with her, how he went back early—this man who was her dearly loved son. A woman, even Marlene Bonney's age, could expect one day to outlive her husband. A woman could even expect her husband to get old and have a stroke and stay slumped in a chair at a nursing home. But a woman did not expect to raise a son, help him build a lovely house nearby, get started in a steady podiatry business, then have him marry and move across the country and never move home again, even when he found himself deserted by a beast of a wife. No woman, no mother, expected that. To have a son stolen away.

“Leave enough for others, Olive,” says Molly Collins, and then, “Well, at least Marlene has her kids. Wonderful kids they are, too.”

Olive takes another brownie and puts it into her mouth, but then—here they are, the kids themselves, coming through the back door with Marlene, moving through the kitchen as the sound of cars pulling into the gravel alongside the driveway can be heard, and then doors slamming shut. And Marlene Bonney herself, standing now in the hallway, holding her pocketbook slightly up and away from her body, as though the pocketbook belongs to someone else, standing there until someone leads her into the living room, where she sits down politely on her own couch.

“We were just saying,” Molly Collins says to her, “that honestly, Marlene, you and Ed turned out the three best kids in town.” And it's true they are something to be proud of: Eddie Junior in the coast guard, smart the way his father was (although he is not as outgoing; there is a wariness in his dark eyes), Lee Ann studying to be a nurse, Cheryl about to graduate from high school; you never heard about any trouble they were in.

But Marlene says, “Oh, there's lots of nice kids around,” taking the coffee that Molly hands her. Marlene's brown eyes seem a little out of focus, the flesh of her cheeks a little more droopy. Olive sits down in a chair across from her.

“That cemetery stuff's bad business,” Olive says, and Marlene smiles, her dimples twinkling like tiny imprints of stars high up on her cheeks.

“Oh, hello, Olive,” she says. It has taken Marlene years to stop calling her Mrs. Kitteridge, which is what happens when you have people in school. And of course the opposite is true, which is that Olive continues to see half the town as kids, as she can still see Ed Bonney and Marlene Monroe as young schoolkids, falling in love, walking home day after day from school. When they reached the Crossbow Corners, they would stand and talk, and sometimes Olive would see them there as late as five o'clock, because Marlene had to go one way and Ed the other.

Tears have appeared in Marlene's eyes, and she blinks fast. She leans toward Olive and whispers, “Kerry says nobody likes a crybaby.”

“Hells bells,” answers Olive.

But Marlene sits back as Kerry appears, stick-thin and high-heeled, thrusting out that black-suited pelvic bone as soon as she stops walking, and it crosses Olive's mind suddenly that maybe Kerry was bullied when she was very young, skinny little kid. Kerry asks, “You want a beer, Marlene? Instead of that coffee?” She is holding a beer herself, her elbow tucked to her waist, and her dark eyes are keen, taking it in, the still-full cup of coffee in Marlene's hand, and the presence of Olive Kitteridge, too, who years ago sent Kerry to the principal's office more than once, before Kerry got shipped off to live with relatives somewhere. “Or would you like a little whiskey?”