Элизабет Страут - Olive, Again

“I don’t need that,” Olive told him. “Phooey.”

But truthfully, the idea of being alone in her house made her afraid.

In the afternoon, the nurse Jeff came to see her before he started his duty in the ICU. “Hello, hello,” she told him. “I’ve been walking around the halls, I’m ready to go home.”

“You’re amazing,” he said. And one time he took her arm as she walked the halls with him, her cane in her other hand.

“So are you,” she said.

Dr. Rabolinski asked her again if she had moved her bowels, and she considered lying about it, but she did not. “Nope,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You will.”

And then that afternoon—oh ye gods! Olive broke wind, and broke it some more, and then she began to leak from her back end. She didn’t understand at first what was happening, but as she raised herself from the bed, she stared at the mess that was there. She rang for the nurse. The nurse did not come. She rang again. The nurse finally arrived and said, “Oh dear.” And that made Olive feel worse.

“I should say so,” Olive said. “This is horrible.”

“Don’t worry,” the nurse said. “It happens.”

“It does?” Olive demanded, and the nurse said, Yes, sometimes it did, it was the antibiotics she’d been on for her pneumonia, let’s get you into the shower and she’d change the bed, and when Olive came out of the shower the bed was changed and on the bed was a huge papery diaper.

When Dr. Rabolinski showed up the next morning, Olive waited to see if he had heard of her horror, and when he did not mention it, she finally said, “My bowels moved with a frightful ferocity.” She made herself look at him when she said that. He said, “It’s the antibiotics,” and gave a small shrug. So she relaxed a tiny bit and asked when she could go home, and he said, Any day now. He sat on the bed after that, without saying anything, and Olive gazed out the window. For a few moments she felt something close to bliss, but it was more as though time had stopped—just for these few moments time had stopped—and there was only the doctor and life, and it sat with her in the morning sunshine that fell over the bed. She put her hand on his briefly, and still looking out the window she said, quietly, “Thank you,” and he said, quietly, “You’re welcome.”

Back home, Olive felt awful. She couldn’t understand how she had lived in this house—Jack’s house—for so many years, it seemed very different to her, and she worried that it would always feel that way. It was chilly, and she turned the heat up high, which she had never done before. The living room seemed huge, she felt she could barely walk across it, and she slept in the guest room downstairs. But Betty showed up—the first home healthcare aide—and she was a big person. Not fat, just big. Her maroon cotton pants were tight on her, her shirt barely closed; she was probably fifty years old. She sat down immediately in a chair. “What’s up?” she asked Olive, and Olive didn’t care for that.

“I’ve had a heart attack and apparently you’re supposed to babysit me.”

“Don’t know that I’d call it that,” Betty said. “I’m a nurse’s aide.”

“Fine,” said Olive. “Call yourself whatever you want. You’re still here to babysit me.”

When Olive, walking to the kitchen a few minutes later, looked out the window at the truck that Betty had driven over in and saw on the back of it a bumper sticker for that horrible orange-haired man who was president, she almost died. She took a deep breath and walked back to where Betty sat, and she said to Betty, loudly, “Listen to me. We will not talk about politics. Do you hear me?” And Betty shrugged and said, “Okay, whatever.” Olive shuddered every time she thought about that bumper sticker.

But after a few days of Betty, Olive sort of got used to her. It turned out that Olive had had the woman years ago in Olive’s seventh-grade math class; she had forgotten until Betty reminded her. “You sent me to the principal’s office a lot,” Betty said.

“Why?” Olive asked. “What could you have done?”

“I wouldn’t stop talking in class. I was mouthy.”

“And I sent you to the principal’s office?”

Betty nodded. “I’d do it on purpose. I had such a crush on him.”

Olive watched her from across the room.

“Oh, did I have a crush on that man,” Betty said. “Mr. Skyler. Whoa.”

“Jerry Skyler,” said Olive. “He was a nice man, I liked him myself. He’d always say to people, ‘You’re doin’ excellent.’ He’d been a coach.”

Betty laughed. “You’re right! He’d always say that. Well, I really liked him. You know, I was skinny back then,” and she ran her hand down in front of herself. “And kind of cute. And I think he thought I was kind of cute. Who knows. But, boy, I was crazy about that guy.” Betty shook her head slowly, then pointed a finger at Olive and said, “You’re doin’ excellent.”

—

At four o’clock a different woman would show up; her name was Jane, and she was pleasant but Olive found her bland. Jane made dinner for her, and Olive told her she would like to be alone, so Jane went upstairs. And then when Olive woke up in the morning yet another woman was there, but she left soon and Betty came back.

A few days later, around four o’clock—when it was time for Jane to show up—Betty answered the door, and Olive heard her say “Hello,” but she heard something different in Betty’s voice, it was not as pleasant as it usually was. Olive got up and walked out into the hallway, and standing there was a young dark-skinned woman wearing a brilliant peach-colored headscarf, and a long robelike dress that was a deeper peach color. “Well, hello, hello,” said Olive. “Look at you! You look like a butterfly, come on in.”

The young woman smiled, a row of brilliant white teeth showing across her face. “Hello, Mrs. Kitteridge,” she said. “My name is Halima.”

“Well, just come right on in. Very nice to meet you,” Olive said, and the woman came into the living room and looked around and she said, “A big house.”

“Too big,” Olive said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Betty left, without saying a word, and Olive was disgusted by that. But Halima took right over; she got to work in the kitchen, asking Olive what she ate, and then she made the bed in the guest room, even though it was five o’clock, while Olive sat in the living room.

“Come sit,” Olive finally called to the woman, and so the woman came in and sat down and Olive thought again that she looked beautiful. “I’m going to call you Butterfly,” Olive said, and the woman smiled with those bright white teeth and shrugged and said, “Okay, but my name is Halima.”

“Now tell me, Ms. Halima Butterfly, you must come from Shirley Falls.”

And Halima said that was right; she had gone to Central Maine Community College and earned her nurse’s aide degree and—she shrugged, raising her arms slightly, her robe flapping like gentle wings—here she was, she said.

“You were born here?” Olive asked.

“I was born in Nashville. Then my mother moved here fifteen years ago.”

“Was she in one of those camps in Kenya?” Olive asked her.

And the woman’s face brightened. “You know about the camps?” she asked.

“Of course I do. Do you think I’m an ignorant fool?”

“No, I don’t think that.” Halima leaned back in the chair. “My mother was in the camp for eight years, and then she was able to come over here.”