“I miss the coast of Maine too,” she said. And after that they were fine. They had a wonderful time.
The last night on the boat, he said, “Oh, Olive, I got you a first-class ticket for the way home. Hope you don’t mind.” He winked at her.
And she could not believe the flight home. She had her own seat that stretched backward and forward. It was like she was an astronaut, in her own little cubbyhole. There was a kit, with socks and a mask and a toothbrush, all for her! She ate a roast beef sandwich and had ice cream for dessert, and she could not stop looking across the aisle at Jack. He made a kissing sound and said, “Now, don’t disturb me.” And drank his glass of wine.
The second week of October, Olive went to get her hair cut by Janice Tucker, a woman who worked from her home. Olive always had the first appointment of the day, at eight o’clock, and as she settled into her chair, Janice wrapped the plastic apron around her and said, “I heard you had breakfast with Andrea L’Rieux.”
“I did,” said Olive. “I certainly did.”
“Then you must feel terrible about her accident.”
“What did you say?” Olive turned her head.
“In the paper just yesterday. I thought you’d have seen it. Wait, I’ll get it for you.” Janice turned around and went through a pile of newspapers on the table in the waiting area. She brought back the paper and said, “Here. Look at this. Oh, Olive, I thought you knew.”
The small headline read: Former Poet Laureate Struck by Bus, Survives. And a small paragraph said that Andrea L’Rieux had been hit by a bus on a street in Boston, that she was in stable condition with a broken pelvis and internal injuries. A complete recovery was expected.
Olive felt a secretion from the back corners of her mouth. She put the paper on the counter and sat back and said nothing, while Janice got her little scissors and began to snip at Olive’s hair. “So sad, right?” Janice asked, and Olive nodded. She felt awful. As the woman snipped tenderly at her hair, Olive felt worse and worse. And then realizing she had no Jack—or Henry, her first husband—to go home and tell this to, she said suddenly, “Janice, I think the girl was trying to kill herself.”
Janice stood back, the scissors near her chest. “Olive, stop.”
“No, I think she was. I’ve been sitting here thinking about it, and she talked about suicide to me. She said how men use guns and women tend not to use guns, they mostly use pills, and I should have known, I should have realized—”
“Now, Olive. Don’t you think that. Do not even think that. I’m sure it’s not true. She was hit by a bus, it happens, Olive.”
“Janice, you didn’t see her. She looked like hell. She wore a ratty little sweater, and she was smoking. She hated her father, and then he died. And that can make a person messed up too.”
Janice seemed to think about this. And then she said, “Olive, I just don’t believe that she tried to kill herself. I don’t want to believe it, and so I’m not going to.”
“Fine,” said Olive. “Fine, fine, fine.”
She did not tip Janice, as she usually did, and then she left, waving one hand above her shoulder as she went down the steps with her cane.
It was a glorious autumn. The leaves clung to the trees and were more vivid than they had been in years. People said this to one another, and it was true. And the sun shone down on all of it, day after day. It rained mostly at night, and the nights were cold, and the days were not too cold, but they were not warm. The world sparkled, and the yellows and reds, and orange and pale pinks, were just splendid for anyone driving down the road out to the bay. Olive could see this without driving; from her front door she saw the woods, and every morning when she opened the door she was aware of the beauty of the world.
This surprised her. When her first husband had died, she had not been aware of anything. This is what she thought. But here was the world, screeching its beauty at her day after day, and she felt grateful for it. Inside the front closet, Jack’s coats and sweaters remained. And this was different too. She had gotten rid of Henry’s clothes quickly, once he died. She had even started getting rid of them while he was still in the nursing home, the new pair of shoes he had on the day of his stroke, that he would never wear again—she had gotten rid of those quick as a flash. Camel-hair-colored suede shoes, the laces not yet dirty a bit.
But Jack’s clothes she held on to, and the smell of them still arrived faintly when she opened the closet. There was the dark green cardigan with the leather elbow patches he wore when they went to dinner the first time, and the blue gabled one from when they’d had their first real fight and he had said, “God, Olive, you’re a difficult woman. You are such a goddamn difficult woman, and fuck all, I love you. So if you don’t mind, Olive, maybe you could be a little less Olive with me, even if it means being a little more Olive with others. Because I love you, and we don’t have much time.”
She’d heard him.
And then he’d said, sitting on the bed, “Let’s get married, Olive. Sell the house you had with Henry and move in here. Please marry me, Olive.”
“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 curv
ed 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.
Jack’s voice: “You’re a snob, Olive. You think being a reverse snob is not being a snob? Well, you’re a snob, my dear.”
Olive had approached Andrea L’Riuex that day at the marina because the girl was famous. That’s why she had sat herself down and talked to her like she knew her. If Andrea L’Rieux had never become the Poet Laureate of the United States, if she had just been what Olive would have expected of her—another woman with children and sort of happy and mostly unhappy (her sad-faced walks)—then Olive would never have approached her. She hadn’t even liked the girl’s poetry, except for the line about the darkness and the red leaves. But she had sat down across from her because she was famous. And also because she, Olive, was—Andrea was right—lonely. She, Olive Kitteridge, who would not have thought this about herself at all. She said fiercely, out loud, “You remember this, Olive, you fool, you remember this.”
In the semi-dark of the bedroom, Olive got out her small computer, and she went to Andrea’s Facebook page. She had never written a comment before, and she at first couldn’t figure out how to do it. But then she did, and she wrote, “Saw your new work. Good for you.” She sat looking out the window at the darkness of the field; only one streetlamp, far away, could be seen from here. She went back to the computer and added a line: “Glad you’re not dead.”
For a long time, Olive sat on the bed; she was just looking through the glass at the dark field. It seemed to her she had never before completely understood how far apart human experience was. She had no idea who Andrea L’Rieux was, and Andrea had no idea who Olive was, either. And yet. And yet. Andrea had gotten it better than she had, the experience of being another. How funny. How interesting. She, who always thought that she knew everything that others did not. It just wasn’t true. Henry. This word went through Olive’s mind as she gazed through the window at the darkness. And then: Jack. Who were they, who had they been? And who—who in the world—was she? Olive put one hand to her mouth as she contemplated this.
Then Olive put the computer away and got back into bed. She spoke the words softly out loud: “Yup, Andrea. Good for you. Glad you’re not dead.”
The End of the Civil War Days
The MacPhersons lived in a large old house on the outskirts of Crosby, Maine. They had been married for forty-two years, and for the last thirty-five they had barely spoken to each other. But they still shared the house. In his youth, Mr. MacPherson—his name was Fergus—had had an affair with a neighbor; back then there was no forgiveness and no divorce. So they were stuck together in their house. For a while their younger daughter, Laurie, had come back home briefly, her marriage had broken up and she and her six-year-old son came to live with them—both Fergus and his wife had been gladdened by their arrival, in spite of its cause—but very soon Laurie said that “their continued arrangement,” as she put it, was too unhealthy for her child, and so she left, moving to a small apartment near Portland.
Their arrangement was this: They lived with strips of yellow duct tape separating the living room in half; it ran over the wooden floor and right up against the rug that Ethel MacPherson had put on her side of the room; and in the dining room the tape was there as well, running over the dining room table, dividing it in half exactly, running down into the air and then onto the floor. Each night Et
hel made dinner and placed her plate on one side of the taped table, and placed her husband’s plate on the other side. They ate in silence, and when Ethel was done eating she put her plate on her husband’s side of the table and then she left the room; he did the dishes. The kitchen had been taped too, years earlier, but because of the sink and the cupboards, which both MacPhersons needed access to, especially in the morning, they had let the tape become peeled in places and they mostly ignored it. As they ignored each other. Their bedrooms were on separate floors, so that was not an issue.
The main issue, naturally, was the televisions in their living room. On either side of the duct tape sat a television; Fergus’s was the bigger of the two, and Ethel’s was older. For years they sat there in the evenings—Fergus drawing his fingers through his beard; Ethel, who in the early years might have had her curlers in, but eventually she cut her hair short and dyed it an orangey-yellow; she still was often knitting—watching separate shows on their televisions, each turning up the volume to drown out the other. But then a few years ago Fergus—right before he retired from the ironworks, where he had been a draftsman—went and got a fancy set of earphones that were attached to something like an old-fashioned telephone cord that he stuck into his television, and so he sat in his lounge chair with his earphones on, and Ethel could keep her television down to almost a regular sound.
In any event, their older daughter, Lisa, was coming home in a week for her annual visit from New York City, where she had moved eighteen years earlier. There was something about her that Fergus could never quite put his finger on: She was a pretty thing, but she never mentioned a boyfriend except for once in a very great while. Now she was close to forty, and the fact that she would probably not have children saddened him. Fergus had a special place for Lisa in his heart that he did not have for her younger sister, Laurie, though he loved Laurie as well. Lisa had a job as the administrative assistant to a program at the New School. “So you’re a secretary,” Fergus had said, and she had said, Yeah, well, basically she was.
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