Olive Kitteridge (24 page)

“Oh, wait a minute,” Christopher said, sitting up straight. “Maybe I did ask him. Yeah. He said his father was the one who drove into a tree in Crosby, Maine, one night.”

“What?” Olive looked at her son through the darkness.

“That's when he got really religious.”

“Are you serious?”

“Thus, the parrot.” Christopher extended an arm upward.

“Oh, my goodness,” said Olive.

Christopher dropped his arm with an exaggerated gesture of defeat, or disgust. “Mom, I'm kidding you, for crying out loud. I have no idea who the guy is.”

Through the kitchen window Ann appeared, wearing a bathrobe and a towel around her head.

“Never liked that guy,” Christopher said, musingly.

“Who, the tenant? Keep your voice down.”

“No, what's his name. Mr. Jim O'Casey. So stupid to drive into a tree.”

         

There were fingernail clippings and soggy Cheerios on the table when Olive sat down with her cup of coffee in the morning. Ann was in the next room getting Theodore ready, and called out, “Good morning, Mom. Did you sleep?”

“Fine.” Olive raised a hand in a brief wave. She had slept better than she had in four years—since Henry's stroke. The same hopefulness she had felt on the plane seemed to return as she fell into sleep, holding her on a pillow of soft joy. Ann had no morning sickness; Christopher missed his mother. She was with her son, he needed her. Whatever rupture had occurred, starting years ago, as innocuously as the rash on Ann's cheek, spreading downward till it had split her from her son—it could be healed. It would be leaving its scar, but one accumulated these scars, and went on, as she would now go on with her son.

“Help yourself, Mom,” Ann called. “To anything.”

“Right-o,” Olive called back. She got up and wiped the table with a sponge, though touching other people's nail clippings was hardly her thing. She washed her hands thoroughly.

Other people's kids weren't her thing either. Theodore came and stood in the doorway, a knapsack on his back, so big that even while the child faced Olive, you could see the knapsack on both sides of him. She picked a doughnut from a box she had seen high on the counter and sat down again with her coffee. “You shouldn't have a doughnut before you have your growing food,” the boy told her, in a tone amazingly sanctimonious for a child.

“I'd say I'd grown enough, wouldn't you?” Olive replied, taking a big bite.

Ann appeared behind Theodore. “ 'Scuse me, honey pie,” she said as she stepped past him to the refrigerator. She was holding the baby girl on her hip, the baby's head turning around to stare at Olive. “Theodore, you need two juice boxes today.

“It's field trip day,” she said to Olive, who was tempted to stick her tongue out at that damn little staring baby. “The school takes them to the beach and I get worried about him getting dehydrated.”

“I don't blame you,” said Olive, finishing her doughnut. “Chris ever tell you about the sunstroke he got when we went to Greece? He was twelve. A witch doctor came over and did some swoopy arm motions in front of him.”

“Really?” said Ann. “Theodore, do you want grape or orange?”

“Grape.”

“I
think,
” Ann said, “grape makes you more thirsty. What do you think, Mom? Doesn't grape make you more thirsty than orange?”

“Haven't a clue.”

“Orange, honey.” And Theodore began to cry. Ann gave Olive a hesitant look. “I was going to ask you to walk him to school, just a block—”

“No,” Theodore cried. “I don't want her walking me to school…. I don't want her walking me to school….”

Shut the hell up, Olive thought. Chris was right, you are a little piece of crap.

Ann said, “Oh, Theodore, pleeeease don't cry.”

Olive pushed back her chair. “How about I take Dog-Face to the park?”

“You don't mind picking up his poops in the bag?”

“No,” said Olive. “I certainly don't. Having stepped in one myself.”

She was, to be truthful, uneasy about walking the dog to the park. But the dog was a good boy. He sat while they waited for the light to change. She walked him past picnic tables and big garbage bins overloaded with food and newspapers and tinfoil streaked with barbecue sauce, and he did strain a bit on the leash toward all that, but when they got to the meadow, she let him run free, as Ann had said she could do. “Now stay nearby,” she said. He sniffed around, not running off.

She noticed a man watching her. He was young, and wore a leather jacket, even though it was warm enough that you didn't need to wear a leather jacket. He stood beside the trunk of a huge oak, and called to his dog, a short-haired white dog with a sharp pink nose. The man made his way over to her. “Are you Olive?” he finally asked.

Her face got hot. “Olive who?” she said.

“Christopher's mother. Ann said you were coming to visit.”

“I see,” said Olive, reaching into her pocket and finding her sunglasses. “Well, here I am.” She put on her sunglasses and turned to watch for Dog-Face.

“You staying at the house?” the man asked eventually, and Olive didn't really think it was any of his business.

“I am,” said Olive. “The basement's very nice.”

“Your son stuck you in the basement?” the man said, and Olive especially didn't think that was nice.

“It's a very pleasant basement,” Olive said. “It suits me quite well.” She looked straight ahead but she could feel him looking at her. She wanted to say: “Haven't you ever seen an old lady before?”

She watched her son's dog sniff the rear end of a passing golden retriever, whose heavy-breasted young owner held a metal mug in one hand, the leash in the other.

“Some of these old brownstones have rats and mice in their basements,” the man said.

“No rats,” said Olive. “A nice daddy longlegs went by. Didn't bother me a bit.”

“Your son's practice must do well. These places cost a fortune now.”

Olive didn't answer. That he should say this was vulgar.

“Blanche!” called the man, starting after his dog. “Blanche, come here
now.
”

Blanche had no intention of coming, Olive noted. Blanche had found an old, dead pigeon, and the man went berserk. “Drop it, Blanche, drop it!” Blanche had the mess in her pointed mouth, and slunk away from her approaching owner.

“Jesus Christ,” said the big-breasted woman with the golden retriever, because the bloodied insides of the pigeon's body were right there, sliding out of Blanche's mouth.

Praise God,
came a voice from the oak tree.

Olive called to Dog-Face, clicked the leash onto his collar, then turned and walked home. Right before she got to the house, she glanced behind her and saw the man crossing the street with Blanche on a leash, and a parrot on his shoulder. A sense of disorientation came over her. Was that the
tenant
? That pretentious leather jacket, a manner that seemed—to Olive—confrontational. Unlocking the grated gate, she felt as though by eight o'clock in the morning a small battle had been fought. She didn't think her son should be living in this city. He was not a fighter.

         

The kitchen was empty. Upstairs she heard a shower running. She sat down heavily in a wooden chair. She had once known each of their six names. Now she could remember nothing but the wife's name, Rose, and one girl—Andrea? Sean could very possibly have been one of the youngest. But how many thousands of Sean O'Caseys were wandering around, and did it even matter? As though remembering something heard about a distant relative, Olive sat in the dark kitchen and remembered a person—herself—who had once thought that if she left Henry for Jim, she'd have done anything for Jim's children—her love had felt that huge.

“Christopher,” she said. He had stepped into the kitchen, his hair wet, dressed for work. “I think I met your tenant in the park. I didn't know he had a dog as well as a Christian parrot.”

Chris nodded, drank from a coffee mug as he stood by the sink.

“I didn't care for him.”

Christopher raised one eyebrow. “How surprising.”

“Didn't think he was a bit nice. I thought Christians were supposed to be nice.”

Her son turned to put his mug into the sink. “If I had more energy, I'd laugh. But Annabelle was up again and I'm tired.”

“Christopher, what's the story with Ann's mother?”

He wiped a kitchen towel across the counter in one swipe. “She's an alcoholic.”

“Oh, dear God.”

“Yeah, she's a mess. And the father, dead now—praise God, as the parrot would say—was in the army. Made them do push-ups each morning.”

“Push-ups. Well, I can see you two have a great deal in common.”

“What do you mean?” His face seemed to flush slightly.

“I was being sarcastic. Imagine your father making you do push-ups.”

That he had no response unsettled her slightly. “Your tenant wanted to know how you afforded this place,” she said.

Chris scowled, familiar to her again. “None of his damn business.”

“No, that's exactly what I thought.”

Christopher glanced at his watch, and she had a sudden fear of his leaving, of being left alone with Ann and those kids all day in this dark house. “How long does it take you to get to work?” she asked.

“Half hour. The subway's packed at rush hour.”

Olive had never been on a subway. “Chris, do you worry about another attack?”

“Attack? Terrorist attack?”

Olive nodded.

“No. Sort of. Not really. I mean, it's going to happen, so you can't just sit around waiting.”

“No, I can see that.”

Chris ran his fingers through his wet hair, gave his head a quick shake. “There was a store on the corner here, run by guys from Pakistan. Hardly anything in the store. A few cupcakes, a bottle of Coke. Clearly some kind of front. But I'd stop in to buy the paper each morning, and the guy would be real nice. ‘How you doing today,' he'd say, with his long yellow teeth showing. He'd give me this smile, and I'd smile back, and it was sort of understood that he had nothing against me, but if he knew which subway was going to blow, he'd smile and watch me walk to get on it.” Chris shrugged.

“How do you know that?”

“I don't. But I do. The store closed, the guy said he had to go back to Pakistan. It was in his eyes, Mom, that's all I'm saying.”

Olive nodded, looking at the big wooden table. “Still, you like it here?”

“Pretty much.”

         

But the day passed okay, and then another day passed. She took the dog to the park earlier, so as to avoid Sean. And while everything remained strange, like a foreign country, she could not let go of a certain happiness inside her; she was with her son. At times he was talkative, at times he was silent, and he was most familiar to her then. She did not understand his new life, or Ann, who said things that seemed to come from a Hallmark card, but she did not see in Chris any signs of moroseness, and that's what mattered—that, and simply being with him again. When Theodore called her “Grandma,” she answered. And while she really couldn't stand the child, she put up with him, reading him a story one night. (Though when she left out a word and he corrected her, she could have swatted his dark head.) He was her son's family, and so was she. When she tired of the child, or when the baby cried, she retired to the basement and lay on the bed, thinking how glad she was that she had never left Henry for Jim. Not that she would have, although she remembered that she felt she would have—and what would have happened to Christopher then?

On the third morning, when Ann returned from taking Theodore to school, and Christopher was off at work, the baby splashed in the pool out back while Olive sat in the beach chair. “Can you watch her, Mom, while I collect some laundry?” Ann asked, and Olive said, “Of course.”

Annabelle fretted, but Olive tossed her a twig from nearby, and Annabelle slapped it against the water. Olive gazed up at the deck, looking for any sign of the parrot, who would sometimes say, unprovoked,
God is king.
“Hells bells,” Olive said, then said it again, louder, and
Praise God
came from upstairs. She slipped off her sandals, scratched her feet, settled back in her chair, pleased to have maneuvered the response. It did sound just like her Aunt Ora. She got up, went into the kitchen to get a doughnut, and as she stood munching it by the sink, she suddenly remembered the baby.

“Oh, good God,” she whispered, and hurried outside. Annabelle was trying to stand up. Olive bent to steady the toddler, and Annabelle slipped; Olive moved around the edge of the pool, attempting to lift the child and keep her face out of the water. Annabelle got more and more agitated, slipping and crying, turning away from Olive. “For the love of God, stop it now!” Olive said, and the baby stared at her, and then cried again.