Элизабет Страут - Olive, Again

“I wish I could stay right here,” Suzanne said. Across the room was a sofa in the corner that matched the red velvet cushioned chair she sat on.

Bernie said, “In Crosby?”

“Oh God, no. No, I meant here . Right here in this room. I wish I could just stay here, is what I’m saying.”

“Stay here as long as you like, Suzanne. There’s no rush.”

But they spoke then about the estate. When Bernie told her the amount of money that would come to her, Suzanne sat up straight. “ Stop it,” she said. “Bernie, that’s sickening .”

“Your father made very good investments,” Bernie said.

She asked, “What did he invest in? I know he was an investment banker, but what did he invest in that made all this money? My God, Bernie, that’s a lot of money.”

“South Africa,” Bernie said, glancing at some sheets of paper in front of him. “Way back. And also the pharmaceutical companies. Exxon, too.”

“South Africa?” Suzanne asked. “Are you saying back when there was apartheid he was investing over there?” Bernie nodded, and she said, “But he didn’t, Bernie. I asked him—when Mandela got released from prison—I asked my father if he had invested in South Africa and he said, ‘No, Suzanne.’ He told me that.”

Bernie put the papers back into a folder.

“I’m giving it all away. Every penny. I don’t want it.” Suzanne sat back. “My God ,” she said.

Bernie said, “Do with it whatever you like.”

He told her she would have to cover the costs of cleaning the lot up—although there was insurance—and then they would put it on the market. “It should go, I think,” Bernie said. “It’s a great location, right there as you come into town. Someone will want it.”

“Or not,” said Suzanne; she was absolutely shocked about the amount of money.

“Or not.” Bernie gave a small shrug.

Finally Suzanne rose, and Bernie stood up as well. She went and put her arms around him, and after a moment he put his arms around her too. She hugged him more tightly, and then she felt him pull away just slightly, so she stopped hugging him and said, “Thank you, Bernie. You’ve been wonderful.”

As she headed for the door, he said, “Suzanne.” She turned to him. “Why do you need to tell your husband about your…indiscretion?” He was standing with both hands loosely on his hips.

She said, “Because he’s my husband . We can’t live with this between us, it would be so, you know, so awful.”

“As awful as getting divorced?”

“What are you saying, Bernie? That I should live with this lie forever?”

He turned slightly, putting one hand to his chin, and then he turned back and said, “You’re the one who made the decision to have the affair. I think you should be the one who takes responsibility for it. Not your husband.”

She shook her head. “We’re not like that, Bernie. There have never been any secrets between us, and this would be too awful. I have to tell him.”

“There are always secrets,” Bernie said. “Let’s go.” He extended his hand toward the doorway, and she went before him down the stairs. She had forgotten that he was to drive her back.

Beneath the clouds—which were even lower now—sat the jagged part of the corner of the house that was still standing, and the gruesomeness of its remains looked exactly like what they were: remains. “Thank you,” Suzanne said. She got her car key from her handbag.

“It’s okay.” He turned his car off, and a faint thrill went through Suzanne, that he did not want to leave her yet. After a moment Bernie said, “You know, it’s not my business, but I wonder if you could see someone, a therapist. There has to be a good therapist in Boston. Just for now while you sort all these things out.”

“Oh, Bernie,” said Suzanne. She touched his arm briefly. “I’ve been to a therapist. That’s who I had my stupid affair with.”

Bernie closed his eyes for a long moment, then he opened them and stared straight ahead through his windshield. He said, “Suzanne, I’m sorry.”

“No, it was kind of my fault. I let him come on to me.”

“It was not your fault, Suzanne.” He looked at her now. “It was very unprofessional, what he did. How long had you been seeing him?”

“Two years.” Suzanne added, “Since my mother went into that home is when I started seeing him.”

“Oy vey,” said Bernie.

“But it was just the last few months—oh, it’s so sordid, the whole thing, and you know he’s—oh, no offense, Bernie—but he’s old. You know.”

“Yes,” said Bernie. He added, “Of course he is.”

“Please don’t worry. Please.”

“He should be reported,” Bernie said, and Suzanne said, “I’m not going to report him.”

He raised a hand then and said, “Goodbye. Good luck, Suzanne. Call if you need me.” Then he started his car, and she felt a terrible desolation return.

She got out, and went and sat in her car while he drove out of the driveway. A few orangey leaves had fallen onto the hood from the tree above the car. She saw on her phone that her husband had texted to see if she was okay, and she texted back that she would call him soon. She looked through the car window at the charred remains of the house where she had grown up. Try, she thought to herself with a kind of fury, and what she meant was: Try and have a good memory come to you.

She could not do it.

She could almost find no memories at all, just tiny fleeting images of her mother veering up from the dining-room table at night, a wineglass in her hand, her father, as though in a shadow, walking down the stairs. Doyle, always so skittish, so intense. She turned her head and squinted at the part of Main Street she could see from here, and she thought of this town, where she had spent her youth, but she had gone to a private school in Portland and so the town had never felt as real to her as it otherwise might have. As a young girl she had taken longs walks, alone, she had walked across the bridge and down by the coast; there was a good memory. Then she thought of Doyle sitting next to her in the car each morning, banging his knee, laughing. They’d had a real connection, because they both went to school out of town. And because she had loved him, her little brother. Most days her father drove them to school in Portland, and now Suzanne remembered him stopping at the gas station by Freeport, coming back out of the little store and tossing her a package of cellophane-wrapped doughnuts, six little ones covered in powder. “Here you go, Twinkie,” her father would say, because he would also buy Twinkies for both of them, as well, to have with their lunch.

Back home, Bernie stepped into the kitchen and walked up behind his wife, who was washing dishes, and put his arms around her. She was a short woman; the back of her head was below his chin. “Oy, Eva,” he said, and his wife turned to him, her hands soapy. “I know,” she said. He held her to him with one arm then, and stood looking through the kitchen window at the cedar tree. “That poor girl,” his wife said, and Bernie said, “Yes.”

He went back upstairs to his office and sat for quite a while at his desk, turning his swivel chair to look out the window at the river. Suzanne had seemed more childlike than he would have thought from his telephone call to her with the news of her father’s death; she had been calm and adult-sounding then. But he realized that faced with the image of that burned-down house, with the reality of all that had happened, she had been thrown. Still, she had surprised him with her acuity about her father; Roger Larkin had not, in fact, respected the truth that she was a lawyer, he had told Bernie a number of times that she was “really just a social worker.” Bernie sat with his hands on the armrests of the chair and pictured Roger in his younger years, a dark-haired handsome man with a pretty blond wife; she had come from Philadelphia. Roger had come from poverty, in Houlton, Maine, but he was smart and went to Wharton, and then he just made money, and more money. When Roger had first come to Bernie for legal advice, it had been about investments made in South Africa; he needed a loophole, which he had already figured out, and Bernie had advised him. Bernie had said to him that day, “But I don’t like this, Roger,” and Roger had just smiled at him and said, “You’re my legal adviser, Bernie, not my priest.” This had always stayed with Bernie, because he thought that a priest also had to hear the sorts of secrets that Bernie had to hear from his clients, but a priest was—ostensibly—pure; Bernie did not feel pure. Over the years, Roger Larkin had sat on the board of the Portland Symphony, and various other boards as well. One time, many years ago, Roger had walked into this office and said, “I really need you for this one, Bernie.” There had been an affair with a woman in his office, he had to have money arranged for her abortion in New York, and then she had sued him. Bernie had settled the suit quickly, and so it had not reached the papers. That part of her father Suzanne did not seem to know about.