Элизабет Страут: Olive, Again

The huge man came over and gave Jack the ticket, and Jack said, “Thank you very much, fellows. I’ll be off now.” And he drove slowly away. But Fish-Eyes followed him all the way down the turnpike until Jack came to the exit for Crosby, and when Jack took that exit the guy did not follow him but headed on straight up the turnpike. Jack let out a yell: “Get yourself some tighty-whities, like every other man in this state!”

Jack took a deep breath and said, “Okay. It’s okay. It’s over.” He drove the eight miles into Crosby, and on the way he said, “Betsy. Betsy! Wait until I tell you what happened to me. You’re not going to believe this one, Betts.” He allowed himself this, the conversation with her about what had just happened to him. “Thanks, Betsy,” he said, and what he meant was thanks for being so nice about the prostate surgery. Which she had been; there was no doubt about that. All his life Jack had been an undershorts man. Never for him those tighty-whities, but in Crosby, Maine, you couldn’t buy any undershorts. This had amazed him. And Betsy had gone to Freeport for him, and bought his undershorts there. Then his prostate surgery, almost one year ago, forced him to give up the undershorts. He needed a place to put the stupid pad. How he hated it! And right now, as though on cue, he felt a squirt—not a dribble—come from him. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said out loud. The whole state, it seemed, wore tighty-whities; just recently Jack had gone to the Walmart on the outskirts of town to buy one more package of them, and he had noticed there were no undershorts there either. Just a slab of tighty-whities sized all the way to XXX-Large for all those poor fat men, huge men, in this state. But Betsy had gone to Freeport and found him undershorts there. Oh, Betsy! Betsy!

Home, Jack had trouble believing what had happened during the day, it all seemed ridiculous and somehow—almost—incidental. He sat for a long time in his big chair, looking at the living room; it was a spacious room with a low blue couch on metal legs that stretched along a few feet from the wall facing the television, then went at a right angle along the other area of the room, with a metal-legged glass coffee table in front. Then Jack turned in his chair and stared through the windows at the field of grass and the trees beyond, their leaves bright green. He and Betsy had agreed that they liked the view of this field more than any view of the water, and as he remembered this a warmth trembled through him. Finally he rose, poured himself some whiskey, and boiled four hot dogs on the stove. He kept shaking his head while he opened a can of baked beans. “Betsy,” he said out loud a few times. When he was through eating and had rinsed the dishes—he did not put them in the dishwasher, that seemed too much trouble—he had one more glass of whiskey and got to thinking of Betsy being so in love with that Tom Groger fellow. Oh, what a strange thing a life was—

But filled with a sense of goodwill—the day was almost over and the whiskey was working—Jack sat at his computer and googled the fellow, Tom Groger. He found the man; he was apparently still teaching at that private high school for girls in Connecticut; he’d be eight years younger than Jack. But only girls? Still? Jack scrolled through and saw they’d been accepting young men for about ten years. Then he found a small picture of Tom Groger; he had gray hair now, he was thin, you could see that in his face, which seemed pleasant enough, and very bland to Jack’s eyes. There was an email address for him attached to the school’s site. So Jack wrote to him. “My wife, Betsy (Arrow as you would have known her), died seven months ago, and I know she loved you very much in her youth. I thought you might want to know about her death.” He pressed SEND.

Jack sat back and looked at the light that was changing on the trees. These long, long evenings; they were so long and beautiful, it just killed him. The field was darkening, the trees behind it were like pieces of black canvas, but the sky still sent down the sun, which sliced gently across the grass on the far end of the field. His mind went back over the day and it seemed he could make no sense of it. Had that guy really had a boner? It seemed impossible, yet Jack knew—in a way, he knew—the feeling of anger and power that might have produced it. If the guy had even been getting one. And then Jack thought of the ants that were still going about trying to get their sand wherever they needed it to go. They seemed almost heartbreaking to him, in their tininess and their resilience.

Two hours later, Jack checked his email, hoping his daughter might have written and hoping as well that Olive Kitteridge might have reappeared in his life. After all, she had been the one who emailed him the first time, about her son, and he had answered about his daughter. He had even told Olive one day about his affair with Elaine Croft, and Olive had not seemed to judge him. She had spoken of a schoolteacher that she herself had fallen in love with years ago—an almost-affair, she called it—and the man had died in a car accident one night.

Now as he checked his email he saw that he had forgotten (forgotten!) about Tom Groger, but there was a reply from TGroger@Whiteschool.edu. Jack squinted through his reading glasses. “I know about the death of your wife. Betsy and I were in contact for many years. I don’t know if I should tell you this, or not, but she spoke to me of your own dalliance, and perhaps I should tell you—I don’t know, as I said, if I should tell you or not—but there was a period of time when Betsy and I met in a hotel in Boston, and also New York. Perhaps you already know that.”

Jack pushed back his chair from the desk; the wheels rumbled against the hardwood floor. He pulled the chair back in and read the message again. “Betsy,” he murmured, “why, you son of a gun.” He took his glasses off, wiped his arm across his face. “Holy shit,” he said. In a few minutes he put his glasses back on and read the email one more time. “Dalliance?” said Jack out loud. “Who uses the word ‘dalliance’? What are you, Groger, some faggot?” He pushed DELETE and the message disappeared.

Jack felt as sober as a churchmouse. He walked around his house, looking at the touches from his wife, the lamps that had that frill around the bottoms, the mahogany bowl she picked up somewhere that stayed on the glass coffee table and was now filled with junk: keys, an old phone that didn’t work, business cards, paper clips. He tried to think when his wife went to New York, and it was—he thought—not too far into their marriage. She had been a kindergarten teacher, and he remembered her speaking of meetings in New York she had to attend. He had paid no attention; he was busy getting tenure, and then he was just busy.

Jack sat down in his armchair and immediately stood up. He walked around the house again, stared out at the now darkened field, then went upstairs and walked around that too. His bed, their marriage bed, was unmade, as it was every day except when the cleaning woman came, and it seemed to him to be the mess that he was, or that they had been. “Betsy,” he said out loud, “Jesus Christ, Betsy.” He sat tentatively on the edge of the bed, his hand running up and down his neck. Maybe Groger was just yanking his chain, being mean for the fun of it. But no. Groger was not the sort; he was, Jack had always gathered, a serious man, he taught English, for the love of Christ, all those years at that school for little twats. Wait, was this why Betsy had said it would have “made things easier” if Jack had died during his gallbladder operation? That far back? How far back was that? Ten years into their marriage at least. “You were doing my wife?” Jack said aloud. “You little prick.” He stood up and resumed his walking through the upstairs. There was another bedroom, and then the room his wife had used as her study; Jack went into them both, turning around as though looking for something. Then he went back downstairs and walked through the two guest rooms, the one with the double bed and the one with the single bed. In the kitchen he poured himself another whiskey from the jug he had bought that day. It seemed days ago he had bought it.