Элизабет Страут - Olive, Again

Last year, around the time of Denny’s fiftieth high school reunion, he had shown his eldest boy his yearbook, and his son had said, “Dad! They called you Frenchie ?” Oh sure, Denny said, with a chuckle. “It’s not funny,” his son had said, adding, “Mrs. Kitteridge, way back in seventh grade, she told us this country was supposed to be a melting pot, but it never melted, and she was right,” and he had gotten up and walked away, leaving Denny with his yearbook open on the kitchen table.

Mrs. Kitteridge was wrong. Times changed.

But Denny, who had turned to walk along the river, now saw his son’s point: To be called “Frenchie” was no longer acceptable. What Denny’s son had not understood was that Denny had never had his feelings hurt by being called “Frenchie.” As Denny kept walking, digging his hands deeper into his pockets, he began to wonder if this was true. He realized: What was true was that he, Denny, had accepted it.

To accept it meant to accept much: that Denny would go to work in the mills as soon as he could, it meant that he did not expect to go on to school, to pay attention to his studies. Did it mean these things? As Denny approached the river, and could see in the moonlight how the river was moving quickly, he felt as though his life had been a piece of bark on that river, just going along, not thinking at all. Headed toward the waterfall.

The moon was slightly to the right of him, and it seemed to become brighter as he stopped to look at it. Is this why he suddenly thought of Dorothy Paige?

Dorie Paige had been a beautiful girl—oh, she was a beauty! She had walked the halls of the high school with her long blond hair over her shoulders; she was tall and wore her height well. Her eyes were large, and she had a tentative smile always on her face. She had shown up at the end of their sophomore year, and she was the reason Denny had stayed in school. He just wanted to see her, just wanted to look at her. Otherwise he had been planning on quitting school and going to work in the mill. His locker was not far from Dorie’s, but they shared no classes, because Dorie, along with her astonishing looks, had brains as well. She was, according to teachers, and even students said this, the smartest student to have come through in a long time. Her father was a doctor. One day she said “Hi” as they were at their lockers, and Denny felt dizzy. “Hi there,” he said. After that, they were sort of friends. Dorie hung around with a few other kids who were smart, and those were her real friends, but she and Denny had become friends too. “Tell me about yourself,” she said one day after school. They were alone in the hallway. “Tell me everything.” And she laughed.

“Nothing to tell,” Denny said, and he meant it.

“That’s not true, it can’t be true. Do you have brothers and sisters?” She was almost as tall as he was, and she waited there for him while he fumbled with his books.

“Yeah. I’m the oldest. I have three sisters and two brothers.” Denny finally had his books, and now he stood and looked at her. It was like looking at the sun.

“Oh wow,” Dorie said, “is that wonderful? It sounds wonderful. I only have one brother and so the house is quiet. I bet your house isn’t quiet.”

“No,” said Denny. “It’s not too quiet.” He was already going out with Marie Levesque, and he worried that she would show up. He walked down the hall away from the gym, where Marie was practicing—she was a cheerleader—and Dorie followed him. So at the other end of the school, near the band room, they talked. He could not now remember all they said that day, or the other days, when she would suddenly appear and they headed toward the band room and stood outside it and talked. He did remember that she never said he should go to college, she must have known—of course, “Frenchie”—that he did not have the grades, or the money, to go; she would have known because of the classes they were not in together, just as he knew she would go to college.

For two years they did this, talked maybe once a week. They talked more often during the basketball season, when Marie was practicing in the gym. Dorie never asked Denny about Marie, though she’d have seen him in the halls with her. He saw Dorie with different guys, always a different fellow seemed to be following Dorie, and she’d laugh with whoever it was, and call out, “Hi, Denny!” He had really loved her. The girl was so beautiful. She was just a thing of beauty.

“I’m going to Vassar,” she said to him the spring of their senior year, and he didn’t know what she meant. After a moment she added, “It’s a college in upstate New York.”

“That’s great,” he said. “I hope it’s a really good college, you’re awfully smart, Dorie.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “Yeah, it’s a good college.”

He could never remember the last time they spoke. He did remember that during the graduation ceremony, when her name was called, there had been some catcalls, whistles, things of that sort. He was married within a year, and he never saw Dorie again. But he remembered where he was—right outside the main grocery store here in town—when he found out that she had finished Vassar and then killed herself. It was Trish Bibber who told him, a girl they had been in school with, and when Denny said, “Why?,” Trish had looked at the ground and then she said, “Denny, you guys were friendly, so I don’t know if you knew. But there was sexual abuse in her house.”

“What do you mean?” Denny asked, and he asked because his mind was having trouble understanding this.

“Her father,” said Trish. And she stood with him for a few moments while he took this in. She looked at him kindly and said, “I’m sorry, Denny.” He always remembered that too: Trish’s look of kindness as she told him this.

So that was the story of Dorie Paige.

—

Denny headed back to his house; he went up Main Street. A sudden sense of uneasiness came over him, as though he was not safe; in fact, the town had changed so much over these last few years that people no longer strolled around at night, as he was doing. But he had not thought of Dorie for quite a while; he used to think of her a great deal. Above him the moon shone down; its brightness continued, as though the memory of Dorie—or Dorie herself—had made it so. “I bet your house isn’t quiet,” she had said.

And suddenly it came to Denny: His house was quiet now. It had been getting quieter for years. After the kids got married and moved away, then, gradually, his house became quiet. Marie, who had worked as an ed tech at the local school, had retired a few years ago, and she no longer had as much to say about her days. And then he had retired from the store, and he didn’t have that much to say either.

Denny walked along, passing the benches near the bandstand. A few leaves scuttled in front of him in the harsh breeze. Where his mind went he could not have said, or how long he had walked. But he suddenly saw ahead of him a heavy man bent over the back of a bench. Almost, Denny turned around. But the large body was just draped over the back of the bench—such an unusual thing—and appeared not to be moving. Slowly Denny approached. He cleared his throat loudly. The fellow did not move. “Hello?” Denny said. The man’s jeans were slightly tugged down because of the way he was hanging over the bench, and in the moonlight Denny could see the beginning of the crack of his ass. The fellow’s hands were in front of him, as though pressed down on the seat of the bench. “Hello?” Denny said this much more loudly, and still there was no response. He could see the fellow’s hair, longish, pale brown, draped across his cheek. Denny reached and touched the man’s arm, and the man moaned.