Элизабет Страут - Olive, Again

“Suzanne,” her father said, his face wet, his chest heaving, “Suzanne, I can’t do it anymore.”

“Oh, Daddy,” Suzanne said. “She’s been getting so much worse, you shouldn’t have to take care of her alone.” Suzanne had finally gotten her mother to bed, but she had seen the bruises on her mother’s wrists, and she had been shocked to find more bruises on her mother’s ankles, on her upper arms too, even at the top of her chest. Her father had stayed on the living-room floor, and she sat down beside him; his red T-shirt was wet. “Dad,” she said. “Dad, she’s got bruises all over her.” Her father said nothing, just hung his head in his hands.

She had hired round-the-clock aides to come in, meeting with each one, telling them that her mother had fallen, but she had been scared—scared to death—that they would say something to the authorities, although they never did. But in one week’s time there was a sudden opening at the Golden Bridge Rest Home, and Suzanne helped her father move her mother in, and Suzanne’s father retreated to the upstairs, where he had been living for a while. Her father had said to Suzanne, “Please don’t come back here again, you have your life, and you must live it.” He had become a shell of a man, not even recognizable to her.

Suzanne thought now that she—Suzanne—had not been quite right in the head since this had happened.

—

She said, “So every week, you know, I spoke on the phone with my father.”

Bernie scratched the back of his head. “Tell me,” he said.

“Every week I called him. Even if it was only for a few minutes. I mean, what did the man have to say ? But we would chat, and I spoke to him the night he died. I mean, before he died, of course,” and Suzanne’s saying that made her think: Oh, I’m really not right in the head. She said, “I think I’m not right in my head. Not like my mother being crazy, just everything—”

Bernie raised his large hand. “I know what you’re saying. You’re fine. You’re under stress. You’re not crazy, Suzanne. Of course you feel you’re not right in your head.”

Oh, she loved him, this man.

Suzanne closed her eyes briefly. “Thank you,” she said. And then she started to cry. She wanted to wail her head off, but her weeping came out only in little fits and starts. It was like waiting to throw up, she thought—how you could sense it but it wasn’t here yet. She was surprised that he had a box of tissues—she hadn’t noticed them—sitting right on his large wooden desk. He pushed them forward to her, and she pressed a tissue to her eyes. After a moment she said, “So you have people in here all ready to cry, like therapists do?” She tried to smile at him. “I mean, you’re all set with the Kleenex box.”

“People come here in various states of distress,” Bernie said, and she realized of course that would be true.

“Well, I’m distressed,” she said. She blew her nose, and scrunched the tissue up in her hand. Her crying went no further.

“Of course you’re distressed. Your father, to whom you spoke each week on the telephone, has died horribly in a fire. I would think you’d be quite distressed, Suzanne.”

“Oh, I am. I am. And also, I might be getting divorced.”

At this news, Bernie’s eyelids dropped all the way down, and he shook his head in what Suzanne thought was great sympathy. After a moment he looked up and asked, “Your sons?”

Suzanne noticed a small wastebasket under the desk, and she bent down and tossed her tissue into it. “Well, they both started college last year. One at Dartmouth, the other at Michigan. They have no idea we might be separating, thank God. But it’s just— Oh, it’s all awful.”

Bernie nodded.

Suzanne said, “It’s my fault, Bernie.” She hesitated and then said the words: “I had an affair. A stupid, stupid little affair with a—oh, a kind of creepy man—and when I tell my husband I know he’ll completely flip out and he’ll want a divorce.” She added, “My husband is really—” She paused, looking for the right word. “Well, he’s traditional.”

Bernie moved a piece of paper on his desk just slightly with his hand, and then finally he nodded one small nod.

“Why do you act like this is so normal?” Suzanne squeezed her nose with her fingers.

Bernie let out a sigh and said, “Because it is, Suzanne.”

“Oh, man, not for me, it isn’t. I feel like I’ve set off a bomb in my life. For years I felt like I was safe on an— I don’t know, like an island. I had floated away from all those troubles that poor Doyle had, I was safe on my island with my own family, my husband and my boys, and now I’ve blown it up.”

“Loss can do this,” Bernie said.

“Do what?” Suzanne asked.

Bernie opened his hands upward. “Cause these…indiscretions.”

“But when I had this crappy indiscretion, my father wasn’t dead yet.”

“But your sons have left you.” Bernie pointed a finger toward the ceiling. He added, “And six years ago your brother was sent to prison for life. And, as you put it, your mother is gone. Those are huge losses, Suzanne.”

These words rolled over Suzanne with a swiftness, as though something true had been said but she couldn’t catch it. She gazed around his office. Oh, she wanted to stay here! A sudden crack of sunlight came through the far window, making a small strip of light across Bernie’s desk, and she saw that on his desk was one small framed photograph, facing him. “Who’s that?” she asked, nodding toward the frame.

He turned it around so she could see. The couple, in black-and-white, looked like they were from the olden days; the man had a full beard and a suit with a skinny tie, and the woman had a hat tight on her head. “My parents,” he said.

“Really.” Suzanne squinted at them. “Were they, you know, Orthodox?”

Bernie held up a hand and turned it one way, then another. “Yes, no. Eventually no.”

“Eventually? I thought if you were Orthodox, you were Orthodox.”

Bernie pressed his lips together, then gave a shrug. “Well. You were wrong. They died in the camps,” Bernie said. “They pretended they were not Jews, but they were and so they died.”

“Oh Jesus. Oh God. I’m so sorry.” Suzanne’s face got very hot. “I had no idea,” she said.

“Why would you have any idea?” He looked at her with his eyelids half down.

“How did you end up in Maine, Bernie?”

Bernie seemed indifferent to the question. “My wife and I wanted to get away from New York, and there was—still is—a Jewish community in Shirley Falls, so we came up here, but then we got tired of it, the community, so we moved to Crosby.”

She wanted to ask him how he’d come to New York after his parents had died in Europe, but she did not ask. She wanted also to ask about his faith. She wondered if he had lost his faith, if that’s what he meant by being tired of the community. It would be natural—wouldn’t it?—to lose your faith if you lost your parents in such a way? For many years Suzanne had had what she thought of—privately—as a faith of sorts, but this sensation had eluded her for a few years now, and she felt very bad about that. “Oh, Bernie,” she said. Then she asked, “How are your kids? Grandchildren?”

“They’re all fine.” He looked out the window then, and after a moment he said, “Ironically, they’re all living back in New York. Which is fine,” he added.

“Okay,” Suzanne said. She did not ask about Bernie’s wife, because Suzanne had just seen his wife—they had said hello—on her way upstairs to this office. His wife looked like a melted candle, this was what had gone through Suzanne’s mind. But she may have always looked like that, Suzanne could not remember.