Элизабет Страут - Olive, Again

For years Ethel had worked in the town clerk’s office, giving out fishing licenses and dog licenses and things of that sort to people who came in. So she was friendly with Anita Coombs, who still worked there, and tonight at the grocery store Anita was in line when Fergus walked up with the milk and his cans of baked beans and his hot dogs. “Hello, Fergus,” said Anita, her face widening in pleasure. She was a short woman with glasses, who had sorrows of her own; Fergus knew this from listening to his wife on the telephone. Fergus gave her a nod. “How’s everyone?” Anita asked. And Fergus said everyone was just fine. In his pocket his hand went around the roll of bills he always carried. Years ago, his wife had said to the girls that their father was so cheap he’d hang up the used toilet paper to dry if he could, and he had been stung by that; ever since, he carried around a roll of cash as if that made it not true.

“Getting ready for those Civil War Days?” Anita asked as she took out her credit card and stuck it in the slot for credit cards. Fergus said he was. Anita squinted at the card in the machine, then turned to Fergus and said, touching the edge of her eyeglasses, “I heard that you folks may not be spending the night in the park this year. Too many druggies out at night now.”

Fergus felt a splinter of alarm go through him. “Don’t know,” he said. “Guess we’re considering all angles.”

Anita took back her card, then took her recycling bag of groceries and hoisted it over her shoulder. “You say hi to Ethel,” she said, and he said he’d do that, and she said, “Awful nice to see you, Fergie,” and she left the store.

In his car in the parking lot of the grocery store, Fergus took out his phone and saw a text from Bob Sturdges, who was the captain of their little Civil War army. It said: Got some problems, give me a call when you can. So Fergus called him from the car and found out that what Anita had said was partly true: They were not going to be spending the night in the park. But Anita had been wrong about the druggies. It was because there was too much political stuff happening around the country these days, too many people upset about things; they had already stopped having Confederate soldiers in their unit, but you never knew. And also, the men were getting old. These were the reasons Bob Sturdges gave to Fergus about why they would not be spending the night in the park; Fergus felt disappointment and then, when he hung up, some relief. So they would go pitch their tents on Saturday and that would be that.

Lisa had telephoned to say she’d be late; she’d flown to Portland and rented a car, and she’d told her parents—who each held a telephone receiver in their hand—that she was going to visit her sister on her way up. Traditionally, the girls had never been especially close; both Fergus and Ethel noted to themselves that it was curious that Lisa would stop and pay Laurie a visit rather than wait for Laurie to come to the house with her son, which is what Laurie had always done in the past.

But now Lisa’s car could be heard turning in to the driveway, and her mother went to the door and waved and called out, “Hello, Lisa! Hello!” And Lisa got out of the car and said, “Hi, Mom,” and they sort of hugged each other, which is what they always did, a sort of half a hug. “Let me help you,” said her mother, and Lisa said, “No worries, Mom, I’ve got it.” Lisa’s dark hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, longer than it was last year, and her dark eyes—always large—shone with light. Ethel watched her daughter bring in her little suitcase, and then Ethel said, “You’re in love.” It’s because of how Lisa looked that her mother said this; there was an extra layer of beauty to her face.

“Oh, Mom,” said Lisa, closing the door behind her.

A few years back, Fergus had had a fling with a woman at the Civil War Days. Her name was Charlene Bibber, and she was one of the women who dressed up in a hoop skirt and a shawl and a small cap over her head with the handful of other women there who were dressed like that—most of them wives of the so-called soldiers—and that night Fergus had some whiskey and he found himself at the edge of the park—it was a glorious night—and there was Charlene, whose husband had been a soldier until he’d died the year before, and Fergus said, “You’re a pretty thing tonight,” and she had giggled. In fact, Charlene had graying hair and was plump, but that night she seemed to exude something that Fergus wanted. He took her around the waist and then messed around with her a bit while she kept saying, “Fergie, you naughty boy, you!” Laughing as she said it, and then up by the bandstand they had done it; the surprise of this, and the hustling of getting that damned hoop skirt up, had made it seem exciting at the time. But when he woke in his pup tent the next morning he thought, Oh holy Christ, and he found her and whispered an apology to her, and she acted as though nothing had happened, which he thought extremely rude.

“Listen, you guys,” Lisa said. She had kissed her father, who had stood up to greet her and who was now sitting back down in his lounge chair, and Lisa sat down in a chair across from her mother, next to her mother’s television, but then she got up and moved the chair so that it was directly on the strip of yellow duct tape; she looked back and forth between her parents. She touched the long bangs that fell onto her face, moving them slightly aside. “I stopped and saw Laurie on the way up—”

Fergus said, “We know, Lisa. That was good of you.”

Lisa glanced at him and said, “And I told her something, and she said I had to tell you guys, that if I didn’t she would—so I have to tell you.” The dog sat at Lisa’s feet, and he suddenly whined and wagged his tail, poking at Lisa’s jeaned legs with his nose.

“So tell us,” said Ethel. Ethel took a glimpse at her husband; he was looking at Lisa impassively.

Lisa smoothed her long brown ponytail over her shoulder, and her eyes were very bright. “There’s a documentary that’s been made.” She said this and raised her eyebrows. “And it stars me.” Then she turned to the dog, patting him, and making kissing sounds toward him.

Fergus said, “What do you mean, a documentary?”

“What I said,” Lisa answered.

Fergus sat up straight in his chair. “Now, hold on,” he said. “You’re starring in a documentary? I didn’t know documentaries had stars.”

“Tell your father to hush up,” Ethel said. “And then tell me about this documentary. What do you mean, you’re starring in it? Honey, this is so exciting.”

Lisa nodded. “Well, it is, frankly. Very exciting.”

A few times during the summer months, after the Highland Games in June, Fergus would put on his kilt—not the one with the MacPherson plaid, but a different one of plain color; he had gained weight and bought the last one at a store for only twenty-one dollars and ninety-nine cents, the price had pleased him—and he walked the streets of Crosby. He enjoyed this; people were pleasant, and he liked the feel of the kilt; he wore it with a gray T-shirt that matched his gray beard, and he wore his brown walking shoes with it as well. People, often summer people, would stop and talk to him, and they spoke of their own Scottish pasts, if they had one, and he was always surprised—and pleased—at how many people were proud of their ancestry this way. Years earlier there had been a pack of boys up near High Street that would call out, “What does a Scottish man wear under his kilt? A wang, a wang,” and they would convulse with laughter. He had felt like throwing stones at them, but of course he did not, and he noticed as the years went by that this sort of thing happened much less frequently and so he had his own private theory that people were becoming more tolerant—about a man wearing a kilt, anyway, if not more tolerant about the mess in the country—and this pleased him.