Элизабет Страут - Olive, Again

“And I had been thinking about it on the drive back to the house, and I realized I’m a peasant and Jack is not. I mean, it’s a class thing. So when I got back and saw that he was so sorry, I told him that, the business about this being a class thing, very calmly, and do you know? We must have talked for two hours straight, we just talked and talked, and he said he was kind of a peasant too, and that’s why he was so sensitive about people being provincial, because all his life he had deep down felt provincial, and he didn’t want to be. He said, I’m a snob, Olive, and I’m not proud of that. His father was a doctor, you know, outside of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and I thought that was hardly being a peasant, but his father was a general practitioner with an office in the back of their rather small house, and Jack said he felt like he never fit into the school there, and then his first wife, Betsy, well, she was to the manor born, she was from Philadelphia, a Bryn Mawr girl—”

Olive stopped talking. Then she said, “Well, we had a wonderful talk, is what happened.”

“I’m glad,” Cindy said. “But, Olive, what do you mean, you’re a peasant?”

“Well, I mean, I am not all la-di-da. My father never graduated from high school, though my mother was a teacher. But we were small-time people, and I’m proud of it. Now you better tell me something,” Olive said.

So Cindy told Olive that her hair should start coming back within a month. It would look like fuzz for a while, but then it would come back, and Olive looked at her with interest, nodding slightly.

Then Olive said, “Say, I’ve been meaning to ask. What about your sisters, Cindy? What happened to them? Didn’t you have a sister? Or two?”

Cindy was surprised that Olive remembered. She said, “Yes. One of them lives in Florida. She’s a waitress. And my little sister died many years ago—” Cindy hesitated, then said, “Of a drug overdose.” She added, “She’d had issues for years.”

Olive Kitteridge looked at her, and after a moment she gave a small shake of her head. “Godfrey,” she said. She crossed her ankles, turning her rump slightly on the chair. “Well, then I guess they don’t come and see you.”

“My sister-in-law comes. Anita. Honestly, Olive? She’s the only person other than you who has come to see me consistently.”

“Anita Coombs,” Olive said. “Sure, I know who she is. Works in the town clerk’s office.”

“That’s right.”

“Nice person. She always seemed that to me.”

“Oh, she’s wonderful,” said Cindy. “Boy, she has some problems. But who doesn’t?” And then Cindy sat up straighter, and she said, “Olive, did you tell me about that fight you had with Jack Kennison because you think I’m going to die?”

Olive looked at her with what seemed to be genuine surprise. After a moment she said, crossing her ankles the other way, “No, I told you because I’m an old woman who likes to talk about herself, and there was really no one else I felt comfortable telling.”

“Okay,” said Cindy. “I thought maybe you figured I was a safe person to tell because you thought I’m going to die, so why not tell her.”

Olive said, “I don’t know if you’re going to die.”

They were silent, and then Olive said, “I saw you had your Christmas wreath still up. Some people do that, I never knew why.”

Cindy said, “Oh, I hate that. I’ve told Tom so many times. Why can’t he remember to take it down?”

Olive flapped a hand through the air. “He’s upset, Cindy. He can’t concentrate on anything these days.”

And it was strange, but Cindy saw then that Olive was right. Such a simple statement, but it was completely true. Oh, poor Tom!, Cindy thought, Tom, I haven’t been fair to you—

But Olive had turned to gaze out the window. “Would you look at that,” Olive said.

Cindy turned to look. The sunlight was magnificent, it shone a glorious yellow from the pale blue sky, and through the bare branches of the trees, with the open-throated look that came toward the end of the day’s light.

But here is what happened next—

Here is the thing that Cindy, for the rest of her life, would never forget: Olive Kitteridge said, “My God, but I have always loved the light in February.” Olive shook her head slowly. “My God,” she repeated, with awe in her voice. “Just look at that February light.”

About his children, something was wrong.

This came to Denny Pelletier as he walked alone on the road one night in December in the town of Crosby, Maine. It was a chilly night, and he was not dressed for it, having only a coat over his T-shirt, with his pair of old jeans. He had not intended to walk, but after dinner he felt the need in him arise, and then later, as his wife readied herself for bed, he said to her, “I have to walk.” He was sixty-nine years old and in good shape, though there were mornings when he felt very stiff.

As he walked, he thought again: Something was wrong. And he meant about his children. He had three children; they were all married. They had all married young, by the age of twenty, just as he and his wife had married young; his wife had been eighteen. At the time of his children’s weddings, Denny did not think about how young they were, even though now, walking, he realized that it had been unusual during that time for kids to marry so young. Now his mind went over the classmates of his children, and he realized that many had waited until they were twenty-five, or twenty-eight, or even—like the really handsome Woodcock boy—thirty-two years old when he married his pretty yellow-haired bride.

The cold was distracting, and Denny walked faster in order to warm up. Christmas was coming soon, yet no snow had fallen for three weeks. This struck Denny as strange—as it did many people—because he could remember his childhood in this very town in Maine, and by Christmastime there would be snow so high he and his friends would build forts inside the snow banks. But tonight, as he walked, the only sound was the quiet crunching of leaves beneath his sneakers.

The moon was full. It shone down on the river as he walked past the mills, their windows lined up and dark. One of the mills, the Washburn mill, Denny had worked in starting when he was eighteen; it had closed thirty years ago, and then he had worked in a clothing store that sold, among other things, rain slickers and rubber boots to the fishermen, and to the tourists, as well. The mill seemed more vivid to him than the store, the memories of it, though he had worked there not nearly as long as he had at the store. But he could remember with surprising clarity the machines that went on all night, the loom room he worked in; his father had worked as a loom mender there at the time, and when Denny began he had been lucky enough to go from sweeping the floors for three months to becoming a weaver and then, not long after, a loom mender as his father had been. The ear-splitting noise of the place, the frightening scoot a shuttle could take if it got out of place, whipping across the cloth and chipping pieces of metal; what a thing it had been! And yet it was no more. He thought of Snuffy, who had never learned to read or write, and who had taken his teeth out and washed them in the water trough, and then a sign had been put up: No Washing Teeth Here! And the jokes about Snuffy not being able to read the sign. Snuffy had died a few years ago. Many—most—of the men he had worked with at the mill were now dead. Somehow, tonight, Denny felt a quiet astonishment at that fact.

And then his mind returned to his children. They were quiet, he thought. Too quiet. Were they angry with him? All three had gone to college; his sons had moved to Massachusetts, his daughter to New Hampshire; there had seemed to be no jobs for them here. His grandchildren were okay; they all did well in school. It was his children he wondered about as he walked.