Элизабет Страут - Olive, Again

That night, Kayley’s mother only shrugged and said, “Well, it was bound to occur.”

“But what happened to the picture of her brother, and her violets?”

Her mother said, “I imagine they got tossed out.”

Kayley waited long enough so that her mother would not think she wanted to get away from her, but after some time passed Kayley said, “Mom, I want to go for a bike ride. The evenings are light now,” and her mother looked at her suspiciously. Kayley could not ride fast enough, up Dyer Road, then down Elm Street, and then up past the school, she just could not ride her bike fast enough.

When Mr. Ringrose showed up the next week, silently as always, Kayley was dusting the legs of the couch. She turned; she was enormously glad to see him. “Hello,” she whispered as she stood up. It was the first time she had spoken to him. He nodded and gave her a tiny smile, gazing at her through his rimless glasses. She unbuttoned her shirt without pause. She thought his eyes seemed even kinder than usual and she watched him steadily as she moistened her fingers and touched her breasts, the tips becoming hard almost instantly; if Mrs. Ringrose should walk in, she didn’t care! This is how Kayley felt that day as she turned slightly one way, then the other, for the silent Mr. Ringrose.

She put the envelope of money inside her underwear drawer, and the next three weeks she did the same; she was astonished that one week there was a hundred-dollar bill.

School was now out, and on Wednesday mornings and Saturday mornings, Kayley worked at the doughnut shop. She poured coffee and brought out the doughnuts from the back, slipping them into the white paper bags for the customers. One Wednesday she saw Mr. Ringrose walking by the place; he was glancing down at the sidewalk and did not look up through the window. He was slightly bent over, and she almost did not recognize him at first; his white hair was sticking at odd angles from his head. She stopped in the middle of an order to watch him; he seemed to not walk in a straight line. It could not be him, she decided. But she was rattled. No, that could not have been him.

When she cleaned the Ringrose house the next week, he did not show up, and she felt terribly sad and worried.

That Saturday, as the sun was slicing through the large glass windows of the doughnut shop, Mrs. Kitteridge walked in. “Oh, Mrs. Kitteridge,” Kayley said; she was surprised at how glad she was to see her. But Mrs. Kitteridge looked at her and said, “Do I know you?” And Kayley blushed.

“I’m the Callaghan—”

“Oh, wait. Of course. I remember you, riding your bicycle to that awful nursing home to visit that woman.”

Kayley said, “Do you still visit your friend there? My friend died.”

Mrs. Kitteridge looked her up and down. “I’m sorry about that,” she said. Then she added, “Well, not that she’s dead, who wouldn’t want to be dead living in there. Damn smart of her to die. My friend is still alive.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kayley said.

Mrs. Kitteridge ordered three plain doughnuts and two cups of coffee, and she turned to the man behind her. “Jack,” she said, “say hello to the Callaghan girl.” The man stepped forward; he was a big person as well, wearing aviator sunglasses and a short-sleeved shirt that showed his saggy arms, and Kayley did not really like the way he said “Hello, Callaghan girl” as though he was slightly mocking her.

“Bye now,” Mrs. Kitteridge said, and they walked out, Mrs. Kitteridge waving a hand above her head.

A few evenings later, the telephone rang in their apartment, and Kayley’s mother answered and said, “Yes, of course. Here she is.”

Kayley had been playing the piano—ferociously she had been playing it, but she had stopped when the telephone rang—and now, when her mother said “It’s for you,” Kayley rose and went to the phone.

“Kayley? This is Mrs. Ringrose.”

Kayley opened her mouth but no sound came out.

“I won’t be needing you anymore,” said Mrs. Ringrose. There was a silence after that.

“Oh, I—” Kayley started to say.

“There are a few health issues in our house, and I’ve retired, as I’m sure you know. So I can take care of things. Thank you, Kayley. Goodbye.”

A wave of grief scooped Kayley up, and it would not let her go. She rode her bicycle through town, down along the coast, she rode and rode, thinking of Mr. Ringrose. There was no one she could tell about what had happened, and this knowledge stayed in her and made her feel almost constantly unwell. But she simply kept going, riding her bicycle, working at the doughnut shop two mornings a week, and the man who ran the place let her add another morning, Thursdays. But she was a devastated girl, and one afternoon as she knelt on Bertha Babcock’s kitchen floor with the toothbrush, she felt a real dizziness. Bertha Babcock was not home, and Kayley stood up and she left the woman a note. I CAN’T WORK HERE ANYMORE. She did not even empty the pail of water, and she left the toothbrush on the floor.

The next day, her mother came into the doughnut shop and said to Kayley, “You come straight home after work.” Her mother looked awful, furious and small-eyed. When Kayley got home, her mother was standing in her room. Kayley’s underwear and socks had been flung onto her bed, the bureau drawer stuck open like a tongue. “Where did you get this money?” Her mother screamed the words at her, and showed her the envelopes with the twenty-dollar bills and the one envelope with the hundred-dollar bill. Her mother took the money out and let it fly around the room as she tossed it in the air. “Tell me where you got this!”

“It’s my house cleaning money,” Kayley said.

“No it is not! You got ten dollars to clean house for that Ringrose woman, and there’s at least three hundred dollars here, where did it come from?”

“Mom, I’ve been cleaning for her for ages.”

“Don’t you lie to me!” Her mother’s fury was huge, billowing through the room.

Kayley’s mind worked quickly; she did the math even as her mother screamed; the other stuffed envelopes of cash were hidden in her closet, and she did not let her eyes look in that direction. Instead, she sat down on the bed and said, making her voice sound calm, “It’s my house cleaning money, Mom. From Bertha Babcock, who pays me fifteen dollars, so that’s twenty-five dollars a week.” She added, “And I went to the bank to get a hundred-dollar bill so I could have it.”

“You’re lying,” her mother said. “Bertha Babcock called here this morning and told me you just walked out.” Kayley did not answer this. “Who taught you that you could just walk out of a job like that? Who taught you such a thing?”

Kayley watched as her mother screamed and screamed at her. And then a funny thing happened to Kayley. She stopped caring. Like a switch had gone off inside her. All the fear that had been escalating in her disappeared. She was done; she did not care. Her mother even slapped her across the face, which caused tears to spring to Kayley’s eyes, but she did not care. It was the strangest feeling she had ever had, and the feeling—not her mother—frightened her. Her silence seemed to cause her mother’s wrath to increase—“I’m calling your sister!” her mother yelled—and when it was done, when her mother had left Kayley’s bedroom, Kayley looked around and thought the room seemed vandalized: A pair of her underpants had landed on a lamp that had been overturned on her small desk, socks were against the far wall, her pink quilt had been ripped.