Элизабет Страут - Olive, Again

“Why?” she had asked.

His slight smile, with one corner of his mouth turned up. “Because I love you,” he said. “I just plain goddamn love you.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because you’re Olive.”

“You just said I was too much Olive.”

“Olive. Shut up. Shut up , and marry me.”

When he died in his sleep beside her, oceans of terror rolled over her. Day after day she was terrified. Come back, she kept thinking, oh please please please come back! Eight years they’d had together, as quickly over as an avalanche, and yet—horrible—she thought of him at times as her real husband. Henry had been her first, and then Jack had been her real one. Horrible thought, and it could not be true.

How quickly now darkness fell!

For Olive this meant a change in the way she lived. She did not drive when it was dark, and so by four o’clock she was in bed, watching her television set. She dozed a little bit, and would wake frightened. And then it would subside. She watched the news, and she was interested. What a hell of a mess this country was in. Then she ate her dinner, and had a glass of wine. The wine had arrived in her life with Jack. Before then Olive had never once imbibed. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Olive, would you have a glass of wine?” he said to her once, before they were married. “If anyone could use a glass of wine it’s you.” He himself had whiskey, and no small amount of it. But she had never seen him drunk. Still, she had bristled when he said that, about her needing a glass of wine. And yet he had been right. Because when she had one a few nights later, she felt like she was— She just felt all right.

And alone, without Jack, the wine still helped her. She never had more than one glass, but she thought it still helped her.

Winter came.

It snowed as though it would not stop, white swirling stuff, or white gritty stuff, every few days a new storm hit. For Olive, these were days of torture. She could not believe how long time was—how long the afternoons were—she could not believe it! And yet she should have known, she must have known, because of when Henry had his stroke. But she was always going to the nursing home then, it seemed she had been busy. Had she been? Well, she was not busy now. She had the newspaper delivered because there were days she could not drive with all the snow. And one day she saw a small article about Andrea L’Rieux. The bus driver who had hit her had been drunk; the investigation had just closed. Really? Olive read through it again, and tossed the paper aside. Well, so Janice Tucker had been right. Andrea had not been trying to kill herself after all. “Fine,” Olive said out loud. “Fine, fine, fine.”

She looked at the clock and it was only two.

And then May finally arrived.

Olive opened the door to step outside, only wanting to see the view of the woods that spread out beyond the curved driveway. From the front door one could see the long, large field, but Olive liked this view too, she supposed because it reminded her of the woods by the house with Henry. Turning to go back inside, she saw in her mailbox a magazine; it was sticking partway out as though to get her attention, and she was surprised, the mail would not be here for hours. It said American Poetry Review, and then she saw there was a Post-it someone had put near the front as though to mark a page. Taking it, she went inside and closed the door, and before she had even left the foyer, she saw on the cover that it said: New Poetry by Andrea L’Rieux.

Seated now at the breakfast nook, she opened it to the page that had the Post-it and read: Accosted. Olive did not understand why that had been marked, until slowly, as she read the poem, it came to her, like she was moving—very, very slowly—under water. Who taught me math thirty-four years ago / terrified me and is now terrified herself / sat before me at the breakfast counter / white whiskered / told me I had always been lonely / no idea she was speaking of herself. Olive read on. It was all there, her father’s suicide, her son being a needle in her heart; the poem’s theme, pounded home again and again, was that she—Olive—was the lonely, terrified one. It finished, Use it for a poem, she said / All yours.

Olive stood unsteadily and walked to the garbage and put the magazine in it. Then she sat down again and looked out at the field. She tried to understand what had happened, all the while knowing—but not believing—what had happened. And then she realized that someone in town had dropped the magazine off at night, had driven up to her house and put that damned magazine in her mailbox, having stuck that Post-it to the page so that Olive would be sure to see it, and this stung her even more deeply than the poem had. She recalled how years and years ago her mother had opened the door one morning and a basket of cow flaps had sat there on the step, with a note that said, For Olive. She never knew who had brought the cow flaps, and she could not think who would have brought this magazine.

After a few minutes, or maybe an hour—Olive did not know how much time went by, how long she sat immobile at her table—she went and got the magazine from the garbage and read the poem again. This time she spoke out loud: “Andrea, this poem stinks .” But her cheeks became very warm; she could not remember her cheeks ever becoming as warm as they did while she sat there looking at the poem. She started to rise to put the magazine in the garbage again, but she did not want it even in the house, and so she found her cane and walked to her car and drove out past Juniper Bay, where she found a garbage can for the public, and there was no one around, and so Olive, taking the Post-it from it, threw the magazine in there.

When she got back to the house she telephoned Edith. Edith said, “Olive, how are you?”

“What do you mean, how am I? I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?” She thought she heard in Edith’s voice some knowledge of the poem.

“Well, I don’t know,” Edith said. “I don’t know how you are, that’s why I’m asking.”

“How’s Buzzy these days?” Olive asked.

“Oh, Buzzy’s fine. You know, he’s Buzzy. Gets up at the crack of dawn, goes out and gets our coffee and brings it back, same as always.”

“Well, you’re lucky he’s around,” Olive said.

“Oh yes, my word. I am lucky.” Edith said this with more feeling than Olive thought she needed to.

“Goodbye,” Olive said.

She walked around the house that day and thought about Buzzy getting up early, driving to get their coffee. But where in the world would Buzzy get a copy of American Poetry Review ? Buzzy wouldn’t have known poetry if it walked up and introduced itself to him. Buzzy had built houses for a living. But still, Edith had asked her how she was. Christopher had said to her one time, “You’re paranoid, Mom.” She hadn’t liked that a bit, and she didn’t like it now, thinking of it.

That night, Olive soiled herself while she was asleep, and she woke immediately with the warmth of her excrement seeping from her. “Horrors,” she whispered to herself. This had happened twice before, since Jack died, and Olive would not tell her doctor, or anyone. As she changed the sheet and showered—it was one in the morning—she thought about Andrea. And she thought how she, Olive, had always held it against Andrea that she was French-Canadian. She had. Almost without knowing it, she’d held it against all the L’Rieuxs. And against the Labbes and the Pelletiers, although once in a while a kid surprised her, like the Galarneau girl who had light in her face and was so smart, Olive had liked her. Was this the truth? It was the truth. Olive sat down on the edge of her bed. It’s a class thing, like shooting heroin. Only that’s not so much lower-class anymore.