Элизабет Страут - Olive, Again

—

That day they each gave the other an extra key to their apartments, and it was decided that every morning and every evening one of them would slip the key into the other’s door and make sure the other was okay, and then just walk out. Olive was surprised at the amount of safety she felt the first time—that night—when she heard her door open at eight o’clock and saw Isabelle walking into her bedroom. Olive waved, and Isabelle waved, and then Isabelle walked out. So it got like that. Olive checked on Isabelle at eight in the morning, and Isabelle checked on her at eight every night. During these times they seldom spoke, just gave a wave, and they both agreed it worked out well.

One day Olive opened the door to Isabelle’s apartment—it was a little earlier than usual, Olive had been up for hours—and just as she was about to holler “It’s only me,” she heard Isabelle talking, and so she almost walked out, thinking Isabelle had a friend over.

But then Olive heard this: Isabelle, speaking in a baby voice, said, “Mommy, do you think I’m a good girl?”

And then Isabelle’s voice changed to a calm, adult voice, and she said, “Yes, honey. I think you’re an awfully good girl. I really do.”

Isabelle’s baby voice again: “Okay, Mommy, that makes me happy. I try to be a good girl.”

Isabelle’s adult calm voice: “And you succeed. You’re a very good girl.”

Baby voice: “Mommy, I need to take a shower.”

Adult voice: “Okay, honey. You can do that.”

Baby voice: “I can? Because sometimes I get scared. That I’ll fall or something, Mommy.”

Adult voice: “Oh, I understand that, honey. But you’ll be okay. You can do it.”

Baby voice: “Okay, Mommy. Thank you, Mommy. You’re awfully good to me.”

And then Olive saw Isabelle start moving toward the bathroom, and very quietly, so quietly that Olive felt the tension ripple right down her back, Olive closed the door, hearing it click, and she waited outside the door of Isabelle’s apartment, and after a few moments she heard the shower running, and so Olive went back down the hall to her room.

Sitting in her wingback chair by the window, Olive kept hearing Isabelle talking to herself in those two different voices; a chill kept going down her arms. Was the woman schizoid? Olive could not stop herself from feeling a deep fear. Maybe Isabelle was going dopey-dope. Another chill ran down Olive’s leg.

—

That afternoon, Olive said to Isabelle, as they sat in Olive’s apartment, “I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot.”

Isabelle looked pleasantly at Olive. “Have you?” she said. When Olive didn’t answer, Isabelle said, “What is it you’ve been thinking, Olive?”

And Olive said, with a small shrug, “I don’t think my mother ever really liked me. I guess she loved me, but I don’t know if she liked me.”

Isabelle said, “Oh, Olive, that’s sad.”

So Olive just took the bull by the horns and said, “What about your mother, Isabelle? Tell me more what she was like.”

And Isabelle did not change her expression; she just said, “Oh, she loved me. But you know, Olive, I disappointed her. With my pregnancy so early on, that was very hard on my mother. And then she died. And it was very sad, Olive, it’s made me sad all these years, because I would have liked her to live long enough to see that Amy—oh, that Amy is a doctor, and so smart, and I would have liked her to know about my marriage to Frank. She would have felt so much better.”

“Yes,” Olive said. “Well, that’s life. Nothing you can do about it.”

“No.” Isabelle shook her head appreciatively. “That’s true. But I miss her these days. Somehow especially these days. Sometimes I talk to her—I even have her talk to me. The way she always would when I was little.” Isabelle shook her head slowly; light reflected off her glasses as she looked at Olive. “It comforts me. And it gets mixed up with my being a mother to Amy, because I don’t think I was such a good mother to her. You know, I’ve told you that before.”

—

Olive had to think about this once Isabelle went home. Apparently, Isabelle was not schizoid, nor was she going dopey-dope. She missed her mother and was calling upon her in her own voice. Or in her mother’s voice. For a long time, Olive sat in her chair by the window. A hummingbird came to the trellis, and then a titmouse. Olive, after many minutes of thinking about what Isabelle had told her, said tentatively, “Mother?” And it sounded foolish. Her own voice, an eighty-six-year-old woman’s, saying the word. And she could not answer in her mother’s voice. Nope, it was not going to happen.

And so, in a way, Olive felt a different layer of bereavement now; Isabelle still had her mother, in some form, and Olive did not. Olive sat, pondering this. After a moment, she stood up and said, “Well, phooey to you,” but she didn’t know who she meant.

It was June now.

One week earlier, as Olive had driven out of the parking lot on her way to Walmart, she had seen Barbara Paznik and her husband out taking their morning walk, and Barbara had smiled and waved vigorously. And then apparently (Olive learned this later), Barbara had keeled over soon after; she had had a stroke, and two days later she was dead. Olive was amazed by this, and she was amazed at how distressed she felt.

She sat now in the early afternoon on one of the chairs set up in the meeting room for Barbara’s memorial service; she had put on a pair of poopie panties just in case. Isabelle had not come because she had not known the woman, and she said she didn’t feel right attending. About twenty people sat in a room that could hold three times that many. No one was weeping; they sat quietly while Barbara’s daughter spoke about her mother always being so upbeat, and then a nephew spoke about Aunt Barbara always being so fun, and then—essentially—that was that. Olive started back to her apartment, then turned and went back toward the meeting room, and she found Barbara’s husband, talking to two women. She waited until he had stopped, then she said, “Barbara tried to be nice to me one day and I wasn’t very pleasant to her. I’m sorry she’s gone. Sorry for you,” she added.

And the man was so nice! He took her hand and he thanked her, he even called her Olive, and said that she mustn’t worry about how she had treated Barbara; his wife had never said anything to him about it. And then he leaned in and kissed Olive on the cheek. She could not believe it.

And she could not believe how sad she felt.

—

For the entire afternoon she sat by her window in her wingback chair and pondered many things. She had not been nice to Barbara Paznik because the woman came from New York. Then she thought how Barbara Paznik had been younger than Olive, and full of energy, and she was gone now. Dead. Olive kept picturing the woman’s vibrant, pretty face. And somehow Olive, in spite of her two husbands having died, now understood that this had to do with her, with Olive. She was going to die. It seemed extraordinary to her, amazing. She had never really believed it before.

But it was almost over, after all, her life. It swelled behind her like a sardine fishing net, all sorts of useless seaweed and broken bits of shells and the tiny, shining fish—all those hundreds of students she had taught, the girls and boys in high school she had passed in the corridor when she was a high school girl herself (many—most—would be dead by now), the billion streaks of emotion she’d had as she’d looked at sunrises, sunsets, the different hands of waitresses who had placed before her cups of coffee— All of it gone, or about to go.