The waitress brought Jack a whiskey and Olive a glass of white wine, and eventually they ordered; Olive ordered a steak and Jack got the scallops, and after a while the waitress brought the food over; Olive and Jack were talking so much they had to lean back and let the waitress place the food down, and then they continued talking. Olive was telling Jack about the Somalis, who had moved here more than fifteen years ago, how it had caused a ruckus at first, Maine being such a white, white state. “And old,” Olive added. But the Somalis were very entrepreneurial, according to Olive, and had started a bunch of businesses in town.
“Well, that’s great,” Jack said, and he meant it, although he didn’t care a whole lot. But she was making it interesting, as interesting as it could be to Jack, because she was Olive, and he knew they would start talking about something else soon; he was waiting.
The big heavy door of the restaurant opened and a couple came in. Jack, glancing toward the door, saw the woman first and he thought: That almost looks like— And then he heard her voice. She turned and spoke to the man, who had come in right behind her, and it was her voice that was unmistakable. Jack could hear her say, “Oh, I know that, I know that, yes, I know that,” and he—Jack—said quietly, “No.”
“No what?” Olive asked. She was about to bite into her steak, which she had just cut a piece of.
“Nothing,” Jack said. “I thought I saw someone I knew, but it’s not.”
But it was.
And he could not believe it. He really could not believe it. It was not unlike falling off his bicycle so many years ago when he was a child, the slow sense of something terrible happening, and the knowledge that there was nothing he could do about it. Watching the pavement come up to meet his cheek.
He sat without moving while he saw them walk farther into the place, he watched the hostess greet them, he watched as they walked toward him. She was wearing a gold-colored sheepskin coat with a brown scarf around her neck, the gold-colored coat almost matched the color of her hair, and she seemed slightly larger than he would have thought, maybe it was the coat, and very pretty as she always had been; she was wearing clunky gold earrings that seemed big to him, and then he saw her look at him. He saw in her face a flicker of confusion, then saw her look away, and then she looked back at him and she stopped walking right by his chair. “Jack?” she said. “Jack Kennison?” A faint scent of perfume reached him; it was the same scent she had always worn, and Jack felt an odd tingling along his jaw.
“Hello, Elaine.” He rearranged his napkin on his lap.
Elaine stared down at him, her earrings like two punctuation marks on the side of her face, and Jack wondered if he should stand up, and so he did, and then he saw—he saw this distinctly—her green eyes go from his face involuntarily down his body and back up. He sat down, his belly hitting the table’s edge. The fellow she was with had stopped as well.
Her face was older—naturally—but it was surprisingly the same. Slightly bigger, her face seemed; she had put on a bit of weight. Her makeup was perfect, her green eyes were lined with black and they looked very green, and her hair was a little longer than when he had known her. “Jack, what are you doing here?”
“I’m having my dinner.”
He watched her eyes move to Olive, who right then said, sticking out her hand, “Hello. I’m Jack’s wife, Olive,” and he saw Elaine’s silent amazement. Elaine shook Olive’s hand. “Elaine Croft,” she said. And then she put her hand on the arm of the fellow she was with and said, “This is Gary Taylor.” So Gary shook Olive’s hand, and then Jack’s hand, and Jack thought the guy looked like an imbecile, with his round glasses and his one earring (an earring, for Christ’s sake, a tiny gold hoop!) and his hair down to almost his shoulders.
Elaine turned back to Jack, and he saw how she wanted to ask, and so he said, “Betsy died, by the way. Just so you know.”
“She died?” Her eyes widened in a way that pleased him; she was that surprised.
“She did.” Jack picked up his fork.
“When—”
“Six years ago, now.”
“Do you—do you live here, Jack?” He was aware of her slightly lowering herself, as though to see him more clearly.
“We do not live in Shirley Falls, no. But tell me, Mizz Croft.” He put his fork back onto his plate and gazed up at her. “What is it that brings you to the town of Shirley Falls?”
She looked at him, her face becoming cold; the “Mizz Croft” had been received. “Clitorectomies, Dr. Kennison, is what brings me here.”
“I see.” Jack almost laughed.
“There’s a Somalian population that lives here,” Elaine said.
“Yes, I am aware of that,” Jack answered.
Olive held up a finger. “Somali.” Olive said this with a thrust of her finger. “Not ‘Somalian.’ People make that mistake all the time. But it’s Somali population, just so you know.”
Elaine’s face got a prissy look, even colder. She said, “Yes, I know that, Mrs. Kennison. And I said ‘Somali.’ ”
“No, I heard you say—” Olive widened her eyes, gave a small shrug, then cut another piece of steak.
Jack said, “And how are you researching clitorectomies, Elaine? Are you knocking on the doors of Somalians and saying, Hello, I’m Elaine Croft, I teach at Smith College, and we’re trying to find out: Do you have women in your household who have had a clitorectomy?”
Elaine looked down at him; on one side of her mouth was a tiny half smile, fury, he knew from the past. “Goodbye, Jack,” she said, and she nodded toward her bozo friend and they walked away and Jack saw her speak to the waitress and they went to a table as far away from Jack and Olive as the space allowed.
“Who was that?” Olive asked, eating her steak, and Jack said she was just a woman he had known years ago at Harvard. He almost said, “She’s a nut,” but he didn’t.
“Well, she didn’t seem very nice. Full of herself, I’d say. What does she mean she’s here to investigate—what did she say?”
“She said clitorectomies, Olive. The woman has apparently come to town to study female circumcision.”
Olive said, “Oh, for God’s sake, oh, for heaven’s sake, I never heard of such a thing, Jack.”
“Well, now you have.” He ate his scallops with no notice of them being anything at all except food that he was eating: fuel. He still had the sensation of falling off his bicycle, but he was not sure that he had landed yet.
“You know, it’s just sad what the Somali population has been accused of—”
“Let’s drop it, Olive,” he said, and Olive said, “Fine with me.” After a few moments she asked how his scallops were, and he said that they were very good. “Well, this steak is just wonderful,” she said; she was halfway through it.
From the corner of his eye he could see Elaine and her—whatever he was—leaning across the table and talking, and he understood that she would be telling the fellow who Jack was. Jack wanted to throw his napkin onto the table and go over and say, “But that’s not the story!” He felt that his vision was affected as he looked at his food. In truth, he only wanted to get home. And then in his mind’s eye he saw again what he had thought was astonishment in Elaine’s response to Olive saying she was his wife. Betsy had been a quietly pretty woman, Elaine had met her a few times at faculty parties. And he thought again how her green eyes had gone down his body when he stood up, noticing his large stomach, of course.
It was endless as Olive finished her steak, commenting on it yet again, then saying, “Shall we have dessert?” And Jack said no. He could see her surprise, and he said, “I’m sorry, Olive, I’m just not feeling that well.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Olive demanded. “How long have you not been feeling well?” And he said, Only recently, and she said, Well, this was a waste of money, then, coming to such a restaurant that ends up making you not fee
l well. And then she was silent. Jack, aware of Elaine, aware that she could very well be watching them, touched Olive’s arm and leaned into her and said, “Oh, Olive, who cares, it’s just money.” Olive only looked at him.
As they left the restaurant, Jack did not glance over at Elaine’s table.
Her feet had been beautiful. They had been the sweetest feet Jack had ever seen in his life, and Elaine had been surprised; she claimed she had not known that about her feet, and perhaps she had not. But she had high arches and small ankles, and her toes—which were always polished a bright red color, or sometimes a tangerine, “I have a pedicure every week,” she laughingly told him their first time—were the loveliest toes Jack felt had ever existed anywhere. “You’re killing me from the feet up,” she would laugh in her bed, and he began to call her Socrates, after the man who had claimed he was dying from the feet up. Jack often started with her feet, once he had discovered them; she would laugh and laugh because she was ticklish, and she asked him if he had a foot fetish, but in fact Jack did not have a foot fetish, only a fetish for her feet. Her stomach had been dimpled, and her backside was not small. She had been a beauty, in the eyes of Jack; he had never seen anyone as beautiful, understanding that it was because he loved her.
God, he had loved her. He had missed a class once because of a fight they’d had, it was too painful for him to leave her, even as he could not now remember what the fight had been about, most likely whether he would stay with Betsy, even though Elaine had always, from the start, said, “I don’t want you leaving your wife, Jack, I don’t want that responsibility.” They were in a hotel in Cambridge, which was risky as they both lived in Cambridge, but it had not felt as risky as being seen coming from her house so many times. And in their hotel room that day, perhaps she said something about Betsy, and he missed his class—the only class he missed his entire teaching career, except when he’d had his gallbladder out many years earlier—to be with her. And this is what he remembered: When they were done, had made up, she said something about having to go meet with Schroeder, the dean, she had been stepping out of the shower, having asked him to hand her the towel, and then she had said she had to get to a meeting with the dean, while Jack had missed his class! And something in Jack had clicked, though he never—even to this day—could have said why. But something in him that day realized: She is a careerist.
And of course she had been. Everyone at that school was a careerist. But it was not until she came up for tenure and Jack voted against her because everyone else on the committee had voted against her—and also, he had privately never thought her work was that strong—that she decided to file a lawsuit against Jack citing sexual harassment. And when Schroeder called him into his office that day, Schroeder told him she had recordings of Jack’s late-night drunken calls to her—calls Jack had made over the course of the last year as he felt her affections slipping—and she had emails from him as well, and Schroeder said to Jack, “Just take a research leave until we get this settled.”
A research leave.
And then Schroeder would not talk to him again. Three years later, Elaine Croft walked away with a settlement of three hundred thousand dollars. By that time Jack had left; he and Betsy had come up to live in Crosby, Maine.
Jack himself had been a careerist. But that had been many years before he met Elaine. By the time he met her, he was sick of being on that faculty; but she was young, and she was out to make it and she did.
Only not at Harvard.
He should never have mentioned Smith tonight. It gave away the fact that he had googled her—which he had a few years ago—and learned that she had gotten a tenured job at Smith and he had thought: Perfect.
Jack unlocked the car from a distance, holding up the key and pressing on it; the lights flickered once and the ping sound occurred, and then as he walked toward the car he saw in the streetlight that someone had run something against the car—most likely a key—and made a long, long scratch along the driver’s-side door. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I just don’t believe this.” Olive stood peering at it as well, and then she said “But who would do such a thing?” and walked around to her side of the car.
Jack said, “I’ll tell you who would do such a thing. Some young fellow who doesn’t like the look of a new Subaru.” He added, “Goddamn them to hell.” Inside the car now, he said, “Jesus.”
“Well, it seems a foolish thing for someone to do,” Olive said, strapping on her seatbelt. And then she said, “But it’s just a car.” And somehow this made Jack even more furious.
He said, “Well, it’s the last car I will ever buy,” which was a thought he had had when he had bought the car.
He pulled up to the stop sign at the end of the street and braked the car hard, then pulled ahead suddenly; he could see Olive being slightly thrown against the back of her seat. “Oh, my, my, my,” she said quietly, as though to playfully chastise him.
But as they headed out of town, onto the open road now, Olive was silent in the seat next to him. And Jack had nothing to say to her, he still felt the sense of the bicycle overturning. But as he drove along the river without seeing anything except the white line in the road, it returned to him, the fact that Olive was his wife, and that they had had a day together of happiness before seeing Elaine tonight. But it did not feel like happiness that he had experienced with Olive, it felt far away from him now.
And so the day they had had together folded over on itself, was done with, gone.
In the silence of the dark car Jack was aware of Olive—his wife—aware of her presence in a way that felt insurmountable. A pocket of air rose up his chest and he opened his mouth and belched; it was a long and loud sound. Olive said, “Good God, Jack, you might excuse yourself.” Jack kept staring straight ahead at the black road before him and the pale white line running down its middle.
Olive said, “I guess Gasoline knows what they’re talking about naming it that foolish name. Why don’t they just shorten it to Gas?”
Jack said, “At least I didn’t fart,” and he was aware that he had fired a salvo—really without meaning to—and Olive did not respond.
As they finally entered the dismal town of Bellfield Corners, Olive said quietly, “I know who she was, Jack.” He glanced over at her. He could just see her profile in the dim light, and she looked straight ahead.
“And who was she?” Jack asked dryly.
“She’s that woman who got you fired from Harvard.”
“I didn’t get fired,” Jack said; this made him really angry.
“She was the reason.” Olive said this, still quietly. And then, turning her face toward him, she said, and it seemed her voice almost trembled, “I have to tell you, Jack. The only thing that upsets me about her is your taste in women, I think she is a dreadful, dreadful woman.”
When Jack did not answer, Olive continued, “At least that foolish Thibodeau girl that Henry was in love with way back when, she was mousy, but she was decent. An innocent girl. And that fellow, Jim O’Casey, that I had my almost-affair with a hundred years ago, at least he was a lovely man.”
Jack drove past the sign for the credit union; the whole town was dark except for the gas station, which seemed eerily alone with its lights.
“Oh, stop it,” Jack said. “Honest to God, Olive. Some man with six kids and a wife who says to his fellow schoolteacher, Will you leave Henry and go off with me?, then ends up drunk and wrapped around a tree, is not a lovely man, Olive. Jesus Christ.”
“You have no idea,” Olive said. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, and I would appreciate it if you left your stupid—stupid—opinions to yourself. He was a lovely man, and that snot-wot is a creep. That dreadful woman you bedded down all those years.”
“That’s enough, Olive.”
“No, I’m not through. She was supercilious. She was just crap, Jack.”
“Olive, I�
�m asking you to stop this. Okay, she was crap. Who cares?”
“I care,” Olive said. “I care because it says something about you. When you’re attracted to crap, it says something about you.”
“It was many years ago, Olive.” He thought the ride was unbelievably long; he was aware of the miles to go before they got home. He drove around a curve too quickly.
“And so was my almost-affair with that man who was lovely. You never met him, you don’t know. But he was a lovely man, Jack, and you telling me that he wasn’t, it’s just horrible of you. And now I know why you would say that. Because of this woman you were so drawn to yourself.” She paused, then said, “It makes me sick.”
He almost yelled at her. He almost shouted at her to shut up, to stop it; he came so close he could feel the words in his mouth; in a way, he almost thought he had yelled these things, but he had not. And she said no more. When they got home, she got out of the car and slammed the door.
“Enjoy your whiskey,” Olive said to him as she went up the stairs; he heard her go into their bedroom. He hated her then.
Jack drank his whiskey quickly, sitting in his chair, because he was so frightened. What frightened him was how much of his life he had lived without knowing who he was or what he was doing. It caused him to feel an inner trembling, and he could not quite find the words—for himself—to even put it exactly as he sensed it. But he sensed that he had lived his life in a way that he had not known. This meant there had been a large blindspot directly in front of his eyes. It meant that he did not understand, not really at all, how others had perceived him. And it meant that he did not know how to perceive himself.
He got up to get more whiskey, pouring it into the tumbler he had just emptied, and then he went into the bathroom, where he splashed his pee like an old man. Turning to leave, he saw his face in the mirror. He was an old man: He was half-bald, his nose seemed to have become bigger, there was no connecting this man in the mirror to who he had been when he knew Elaine. He went back and sat in his chair and sipped his whiskey. But who had he been back then? A person much older than she was, someone who thought she was beautiful, who loved her intelligence, who loved her youth, but how in the world did that make it different from any other stupid sordid story of its kind? It didn’t. There was nothing different about the story—except that it was his. And that it ended the way it did. It still amazed him, that Elaine had managed that. She must have been using him all along. Which is what Betsy had said immediately when he first told her the story, as he stood in the kitchen of their Cambridge home shaking visibly.
Olive, Again (ARC) Page 16