Olive Kitteridge (28 page)

In the lobby near the mailboxes was a brown padded envelope addressed to Rebecca. The shirt had made its way from Kentucky to Maine. Rebecca carried it upstairs to the apartment, and pulled the tab across the top of the envelope, while pieces of gray stuffing sprayed across the table. The woman was right, it was a beautiful shirt. Rebecca spread it out over the couch, arranging the full sleeves over the cushions, and then stepped back to look. This was not a shirt David would wear. Never in the world would David wear this shirt. This was a shirt for Jace.

“It happens,” the woman said cheerfully. “Just send it on back.”

“All right,” Rebecca said.

“You sound discouraged,” the woman said. “But you'll get your money back, honey. It'll take a few weeks, but you'll get it back.”

“All right,” Rebecca said again.

“No problem, honey. It's no problem at all.”

         

The next day, Rebecca looked around the doctor's office for something to steal. Other than magazines, there wasn't much. It was like they'd planned it that way, even the coat hangers were the kind that couldn't come off the rack. But there was a small glass vase on the windowsill, plain and ordinary, with the pale remnants of a brown stain around the bottom.

“The doctor will see you now,” said the nurse. Rebecca followed her down the hallway into the examining room. She rolled up her sleeve for the blood pressure check. “How's the stomach feel?” the nurse asked, and glanced at the chart.

“Good,” Rebecca said. “Well, not good. The Maalox doesn't really work.”

The nurse unpeeled the Velcro strip from Rebecca's arm. “Tell the doctor,” she said.

But the doctor, Rebecca could see right away, was irritated with her. He folded his arms across his white-coated chest and pressed his lips together, gazing at her without blinking.

“It still hurts,” Rebecca said. “And—”

“And what?”

She had been planning on telling him how her hands were shaking, how she felt that something was deeply wrong. “And I just wondered why it still hurt.” She looked down at her feet.

“Rebecca, we've run upper and lower GI's on you, done the blood work. And what you have to accept is that you're fine. You have a sensitive stomach. A lot of people do.”

Back in the waiting room, Rebecca put her coat on, standing near the window and gazing out, as if she were interested in the parking lot below. For a moment, her head didn't ache, her stomach didn't ache, there was nothing in her except a thrill as clean as fresh water. Like she was the pure flame her lighter became. Nearby, a man read a magazine. A woman filed her nails. Rebecca put the vase into her knapsack and left.

         

That night they sat on the floor watching an old movie on television. Anyone looking through the window would have seen Rebecca sitting, leaning against the couch, David next to her, holding a bottle of seltzer water, as ordinary-looking as a couple could be.

“I never shoplifted when I was a kid,” Rebecca said.

“I did,” said David, still watching the movie. “I stole a watch from the drugstore I worked in. I stole a lot of things.”

“I never did it, because I was scared I'd get caught,” Rebecca said. “Not because it was wrong. I mean, I knew it was wrong, but that's not why I didn't do it.”

“I even stole a present for my mother's birthday,” David said, and he chuckled. “Some kind of pin.”

“Most kids probably do it at some point,” Rebecca said. “I guess. I don't know. When I was little, I never went over to other kids' houses and they never came to mine.” David didn't say anything. “My father said it didn't look good,” Rebecca explained. “For a minister's kids to show favorites. In a small town like that.”

David kept looking at the television. “That stinks,” he said. “Watch this. I love this part. The guy's going to get chopped up by that boat propeller.”

She looked out the window at the dark. “Then I got to ninth grade,” she said, “and my father decided the church shouldn't be spending money on a housekeeper for us anymore, so after that I cooked. I used to cook special meals for him practically soaked in butter. God,” she said.

David hooted. “There he goes. Gross.”

“I bet legally that makes me some kind of criminal.”

“What's that, honey pie?” David said. But Rebecca didn't say it again. David patted her foot. “We'll bring our kids up differently. Don't you worry.”

Rebecca still didn't say anything.

“This is a great movie,” David said, settling back against her legs. “This is just great. In a minute, they cut off that cat's head.”

         

Something was going on at the bar. Three police cars pulled into the parking lot and the lights were left flashing while the police went inside. Rebecca waited by the kitchen window, the lights zinging across her arm, across the kitchen floor. Two of the policemen came out of the bar holding a man between them with his hands behind his back. They stood the man against one of the cars, and then one of the policemen said to him, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.” The policeman's voice was not kind or unkind, just steady and clear. “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, you have the right to have an attorney appointed to you.” It was like poetry, the way the Bible was like poetry if you heard it read the right way.

The other policemen came out of the bar, and pretty soon they put the man in the backseat, and then all three cars drove away. The kitchen seemed dark without their flashing lights. She could make out the Maalox spoon by the corner of the sink, a few glinting white specks on it. For a long time, Rebecca sat at the kitchen table in the dark. She pictured the doctor's office, the streets the bus took to get there. In Maisy Mills no buses ran at night. She thought it might take her almost half an hour to walk. If you can't figure out something, Jace had once told her, don't watch what you think, watch what you do.

She watched herself take the barbecue starter stuff from beneath the sink, put it into her knapsack. She watched herself quietly slip from her underwear drawer the old postcards from her mother. In the kitchen she ripped them in half—and when she did, a tiny sound came from her. She put them into the knapsack. Then she put in the shirt she'd bought for David, and also the rest of the magazine where the ad had come from. She put two cigarette lighters into her coat pocket.

Moving carefully down the hall stairway, the words repeated in her head.
You have the right to remain silent. You have the right—You have the right—You have the right.

It would be worth the arrest if they put it like that.

River

T
he day before, she almost backed into him in the parking lot of the library, and though he didn't shout, he raised an arm as though to ward off the coming car, or perhaps just out of surprise. In either case, Olive had stepped on the brake in time, and Jack Kennison did not look at her, just kept walking to his own car—a small, shiny red one, parked a few feet away.

Old horror,
Olive thought. He was a tall man with a big belly, slouching shoulders, and—in her mind—a kind of arrogant furtiveness in the way he held his head thrust forward and didn't look at people. He had gone to Harvard, had lived in New Jersey—whether teaching at Princeton or somewhere else, Olive didn't know—but a number of years ago he had retired with his wife to a house they'd built on the edge of a small field here in Crosby, Maine. At the time, Olive had said to her husband, “Stupid to pour all that money into a place not even on the water,” and Henry had agreed. The reason she knew Jack Kennison had gone to Harvard was because the waitress at the marina told Olive that he let everyone know.

“How obnoxious,” Henry had said, with real disgust. They had never had a conversation with the Kennisons, had only passed them sometimes in town, or had seen them at the marina for breakfast. Henry always said hello, and Mrs. Kennison said hello back. She was a small woman, with a quick smile.

“I expect she's spent her life making up for his boorishness,” said Olive, and Henry nodded. Henry did not always warm up to summer people or retirees, those who came up the coast to live out their last days in a setting of slanting light. They were apt to have money, and, often, a grating sense of entitlement. For example, one man felt entitled to write an article in the local paper, poking fun at the natives, saying they were cold and aloof. And there was the woman who'd been overheard at Moody's store, asking her husband, “Why is everyone in this state fat, and why do they all look retarded?” She was, according to whoever had told the story, a Jew from New York, and so there was that. Even now, there were people who'd have preferred a Muslim family to move in rather than be insulted by a Jew from New York. Jack Kennison was neither, but he was not a native, and he had an arrogant look.

When the waitress at the marina reported that the Kennisons had a daughter who was gay, living in Oregon, and that it was Mr. Kennison who wouldn't accept it, Henry said, “Oh, that's wrong. You need to accept your children either way.”

Henry had never been tested, of course; Christopher was not gay. Henry had lived long enough to see his son divorced; but a massive stroke soon after—and Olive would never be convinced the divorce hadn't done it—had kept Henry paralyzed and unknowing when Christopher married again. Henry died in the nursing home before the baby was born.

One and a half years later, this still squeezed Olive so hard she felt like a package of vacuum-packed coffee, as she clutched the steering wheel, leaning forward in the dawn's light to peer through the windshield. She had left the house while it was still dark—she often did—and it would grow light on the winding tree-lined road into town, a twenty-minute drive. Every morning was the same: the long drive, the stop at Dunkin' Donuts, where the Filipino waitress knew she liked extra milk in her coffee, and Olive would take the newspaper and some doughnut holes—she'd ask for three, but the girl would always toss in extra—and go back into the car to read the paper, feeding a few doughnut holes to the dog in the backseat. By six o'clock, she felt it was safe enough to walk by the river, though she'd never heard of any trouble on the asphalt path. At six, it was mostly the old folks, and you could walk a good mile before seeing anyone.

Olive parked in the gravelly parking lot, took her walking shoes out of the trunk, tied them on, and took off. It was the best, and only bearable, part of the day. Three miles in one direction, three miles back. Her one concern was that such daily exercise might make her live longer.
Let it be quick,
she thought now, meaning her death—a thought she had several times a day.

         

She squinted. A body was slumped on the path not far from the first mile's stone bench. Olive stopped walking. It was an old man—she could see that much, as she walked tentatively closer—a balding head, a big belly. God in heaven. She walked with faster steps. Jack Kennison lay on his side, his knees bent, almost like he'd decided to take a nap. She leaned down and saw his eyes were open. His eyes were very blue. “Are you dead?” she asked loudly.

His eyes moved, looked into hers. “Apparently not,” he said.

She looked at his chest, his big stomach bulging out beneath his L.L.Bean jacket. Then she looked in both directions, up and down the path. No one was in sight. “Have you been stabbed or shot?” She leaned closer to him.

“No,” he said. Then he added, “Not that I remember.”

“Can you move?”

“I don't know. I haven't tried.” His big stomach was moving, though, slowly up and down.

“Well, try.” She touched her sneaker to his black walking shoe. “Try to move this leg.”

The leg moved.

“Good,” said Olive. “Try an arm.”

Slowly, the man's arm moved onto his stomach.

“I don't have one of those cell phone things,” Olive said. “My son keeps saying he'll buy me one, but he hasn't. I'm going back to the car and drive to call someone.”

“Don't,” said Jack Kennison. “Don't leave me alone.”

Olive stood, uncertain. It was a mile away, her car. She looked at him, lying there, his blue eyes watching hers. “What happened?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

“Then you ought to get to a doctor.”

“Okay.”

“I'm Olive Kitteridge, by the way. Don't believe we've ever formally met. If you can't get up, I think I should go find you a doctor. I hate them, myself. But you can't just lie there,” she said. “You might die.”

“I don't care,” he said. A small smile seemed to come to his eyes.

“What?” Olive asked loudly, bending way down toward him.

“I don't care if I die,” the man said. “Just don't leave me here alone.”

Olive sat down on the bench nearby. The river was calm, barely seemed to be moving. She bent toward him again. “Are you cold?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“It's nippy out.” Now that she had stopped walking, she felt a chill herself. “Do you hurt?”

“No.”

“Is it your heart, do you think?”

“I don't know.” He began to stir. Olive stood and put a hand beneath his arm, though he was much too heavy for her to do any good. Still, after a great deal of struggling, he managed to get himself up, and settled on the bench.

“All right,” said Olive, sitting down beside him. “This is better. Now we wait for someone to come along with a phone.” She added suddenly, “I don't care if I die either. I'd like to, in fact. Long as it's quick.”

He turned his balding head toward her, studied her tiredly with his blue eyes. “I don't want to die alone,” he said.

“Hell. We're always alone. Born alone. Die alone. What difference does it make? Long as you don't shrivel for years in a nursing home like my poor husband did. That's
my
fear.” She pulled at her sweater, clutched it closed with a fist. She turned to look at him carefully. “Your color seems all right. You don't have any idea what happened?”

Jack Kennison stared out at the river. “I was walking. I saw the bench and felt tired. I don't sleep well. So I sat down and started to feel dizzy. I put my head between my legs, and next thing I knew I was lying on the ground, with some woman squawking at me, ‘Are you dead?' ”

Olive's face became warm. “You seem less dead every minute,” she said. “Do you think you can walk?”

“In a moment, I'll try. I'd like to sit here a moment.”

Olive glanced at him quickly. He was crying. She looked away, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him reach into his pocket, heard him blow his nose, a real honk.

“My wife died in December,” he said.

Olive watched the river. “Then, you're in hell,” she said.

“Then, I'm in hell.”

         

In the doctor's waiting room she sat, reading a magazine. After an hour, the nurse came out and said, “Mr. Kennison's worried about you waiting so long.”

“Well, tell him to stop it. I'm perfectly comfortable.” And she was. In fact, it had been a long time since she'd been this comfortable. She wouldn't have minded if it took all day. It was a newsmagazine she was reading, something she hadn't done for quite a while—she turned one page quickly, because she couldn't stand to look at the president's face: His close-set eyes, the jut of his chin, the sight offended her viscerally. She had lived through a lot of things with this country, but she had never lived through the mess they were in now.
Here
was a man who looked retarded, Olive thought, remembering the remark made by the woman in Moody's store. You could see it in his stupid little eyes. And the country had voted him in! A born-again Christian with a cocaine addiction. So they deserved to go to hell, and would. It was only her son, Christopher, she worried about. And his baby boy. She wasn't sure there would be a world left for him.

Olive set the magazine aside and leaned back comfortably. The outer door opened, and Jane Houlton walked in, took a seat in the waiting area not far from Olive. “Say, that's a pretty skirt you're wearing,” said Olive, although she had never cared for Jane Houlton one way or another, Jane being a kind of timorous thing.

“Do you know, I got this on sale at a store that was closing in Augusta.” Jane smoothed her hand down over the green tweed.

“Oh, wonderful,” said Olive. “Every woman loves a bargain.” She nodded appreciatively. “Very good.”

         

She drove Jack Kennison back to the parking lot by the river so he could get his car, and then she followed him home. In the driveway of his house on the edge of the field, he said, “Would you like to come in and have some lunch? I might find an egg, or a can of baked beans.”

“No,” said Olive, “I think you should rest. You've had enough excitement for one day.” The doctor had taken a whole bunch of tests, and so far nothing had been found to be wrong with him.
Stress fatigue,
is what the doctor, for the moment, had diagnosed. “And the dog's been cooped up in the car all morning,” Olive added.

“All right, then,” Jack said. He raised a hand. “Thanks very much.”

Driving home, Olive felt bereft. The dog whined, and she told him to stop it, and he lay down on the backseat, as though exhausted from the morning himself. She telephoned her friend Bunny and told her the story of finding Jack Kennison on the path by the river. “Oh, the poor man,” said Bunny, whose husband was still alive. A husband who had driven her nuts for most of her married life, arguing about how to raise their daughter, wearing a baseball hat when he sat down to lunch—all this had driven Bunny batty. But now it was as though she'd won a lottery, because he was still alive, and Olive thought Bunny could see what it was like, her friends losing their husbands and drowning in the emptiness. In fact, Bunny—Olive sometimes thought—didn't really want to be around Olive too much, as though Olive's widowhood was like a contagious disease. She'd talk to Olive on the phone, though. “How lucky you came by and found him,” Bunny said. “Imagine, lying there.”

“Somebody else would have ambled along.” Olive added, “I might just give him a call later to make sure he's all right.”

“Oh, do,” said Bunny.

At five o'clock, Olive looked up his number in the phone book. She started to dial, then stopped. At seven o'clock, she called. “You all right?” she asked, not introducing herself.

“Hi, Olive,” he said. “I seem to be. Thanks.”

“Did you call your daughter?” Olive asked.

“No,” he said, with what Olive thought was a small sound of puzzlement.

“She might want to know you weren't feeling well.”

“I don't see any reason to bother her,” he said.

“All right, then.” Olive looked around the kitchen, its emptiness and silence. “Goodbye.” She went into the next room and lay down, holding her transistor radio to her ear.

         

A week passed. Olive was aware on her early-morning walks by the river that the time spent in the waiting room while Jack Kennison saw the doctor had, for one brief moment, put her back into life. And now she was out of life again. It was a conundrum. In the time since Henry had died, she had tried many things. She had become a docent at the art museum in Portland, but after a few months, she found she could hardly endure the four hours required for her to be in one place. She had volunteered at the hospital, but she could not bear wearing the pink coat and arranging dead flowers while the nurses brushed past her. She had volunteered to speak English to young foreigners at the college, who needed simple practice with the language. That had been the best, but it was not enough.

Back and forth she went each morning by the river, spring arriving once again; foolish, foolish spring, breaking open its tiny buds, and what she couldn't stand was how—for many years, really—she had been made happy by such a thing. She had not thought she would ever become immune to the beauty of the physical world, but there you were. The river sparkled with the sun that rose, enough that she needed her sunglasses.

Around the little bend in the path, there was the stone bench. Jack Kennison sat on it, watching her approach.

“Hello,” said Olive. “Trying again?”

“All the tests came back,” said Jack. He shrugged. “Nothing wrong with me, so I thought I'd get back on the horse, as they say. Yes, I'm trying again.”