Olive Kitteridge

by Elizabeth Strout

  “Are you home?” Winnie asked. “You know, if it’s Bruce or something?”

  “Winnie, just get it,” Julie said. “Before Mom hears it. Hurry. Yes, of course I’m home.”

  “Hello?” Winnie said.

  “Who,” Julie mouthed. “Whoo?”

  “Hello,” said Jim. “How’s everything?”

  “Hi, Daddy,” Winnie said.

  Julie turned and left the kitchen.

  “I’m just checking in,” said Jim. “Checking in.”

  When Winnie hung up, the phone started to ring again. “Hello?” she said. No one said anything. “Hello?” she said again. Through the phone she heard the sound of a tiny bell.

  “Winnie,” said Bruce. “I want to talk to Julie without your mother around.”

  “Here I am,” said Anita, coming through the back door. “What’s the story with the cookie dough? You kids decide to make it or not?”

  “I don’t know,” Winnie said, still holding the phone.

  “Who’s that?” her mother asked.

  “Okay, goodbye,” Winnie said into the phone, and hung up.

  “Who was that?” her mother said. “Was that Bruce? Winnifred, tell me, was that Bruce?”

  Winnie turned around. “It was Daddy,” she said, not looking at her mother. “He’ll be home pretty soon.”

  “Oh,” said her mother. “Well.”

  Winnie put a stick of butter in the bowl and tried to smoosh it with a spoon. Moody’s store, she thought. The bell she’d heard when Bruce called was the little bell on the screen door at Moody’s.

  Anita said, “One of the fish has that fungus again.”

  Julie was down on the shore, sitting on a rock not much bigger than her bottom, staring out at the water. She turned her head slightly when Winnie’s feet made a sound on the seaweed, then she looked back at the water. Winnie turned over rocks, looking for white periwinkles. She used to collect them when she was little, watching the way their muscly foot would cling to the rock, and then close up tight when she touched it with her hand. But today Winnie left them alone. The desire to collect them was gone, it was only habit that made her look. A lobster boat passed by, and Winnie waved. It was good manners to wave to someone in a boat.

  “Bruce called,” she said. Julie turned her head. “And it wasn’t from Boston either, I think. I think he was up at Moody’s.” A loud bang sounded from up by the road.

  “He called?” Julie said. There was another bang.

  “What is that?” Winnie said. “Fireworks?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Julie said, scrambling up over the rocks. “Winnie, that was a gun.”

  Anita was in the driveway holding the rifle with both her hands, but carefully, sort of, not aiming it at anything. “Hi there,” she said. Her eyes were shiny, and there were drops of sweat in the pale pockets of skin right below them.

  “What are you doing?” Julie said. Anita looked back at the rifle in her hands, looking down at the end of it. “Mom,” Julie said.

  “He’s all right,” said Anita. She kept looking at the gun, peering at the trigger. “He drove up and drove away—that’s all.” Her finger was on the trigger. “This hasn’t been used in years,” she said. “I think it got jammed. Don’t these things sometimes get jammed?”

  “Mom,” said Winnie, and there was this sharp, short crack of a sound and the gravel in the driveway sprayed out. Julie screamed and Anita screamed, only hers was a surprised shout really, but Julie’s scream kept on going.

  Anita held the gun away from herself. “Goodness,” she said. Julie ran to the house yelling. Anita was rubbing her arm.

  “Mommy,” Winnie said. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, sweetie,” she answered, brushing a hand across her forehead. “It’s kind of hard to say.”

  This time Anita did take a pill, Winnie saw her take it, obediently at the kitchen sink when Uncle Kyle asked her to, and then she went to bed. Uncle Kyle asked Julie if Bruce was the type to press charges, and Julie and Jim both said no, and then Julie asked Jim if she could call Bruce on his cell phone later just to make sure, and Jim said yes, she could do that, that Anita would probably sleep right through until morning.

  Winnie went out the back door and around to the side of the house where there were ferns and lily leaves pressed against the foundation, and she looked into her mother’s bedroom window. Anita lay on her side with her hands tucked under her cheeks, her eyes closed, her mouth partly open. She seemed bigger than usual; the tops of her arms and her bare ankles were pale and fleshier than Winnie had noticed before. There was something deeply uncomfortable about the sight, as though Winnie had come across her mother naked. She went down to the shore and gathered up some starfish and laid them out on a big rock above the tide line to dry.

  The sun was setting over the water. Winnie watched it through the bedroom window. It looked like the postcards they sold at Moody’s. On her bed, Julie sat painting her fingernails. She had spoken to Bruce, who was on his way back to Boston, and no, he wouldn’t press charges. But he had said he thought Anita—and Julie whispered this, leaning forward—was a fucking nut.

  “That’s not nice,” Winnie said. She felt herself blush.

  “Oh, baby girl.” Julie sat back. “When you get out of here,” she said, “if you ever do get out of here, you’ll find out not everyone lives like this.”

  “Like what?” Winnie said, sitting down on the foot of her bed. “Lives like what?”

  Julie smiled at her. “Let’s start with toilets,” she said. She held up a pink fingernail and blew on it gently. “People have toilets, you know, Winnie, flush toilets. And let’s move on to shooting people. Most mothers don’t shoot their daughter’s boyfriends in the driveway.”

  “I know that,” Winnie said. “I don’t have to go away to know that. We’d have a flush toilet, too, except Daddy says a septic tank—”

  “I know what Daddy says,” Julie told her, twisting the cap to the nail polish carefully, her fingers splayed out. “But it’s Mom. She wants to stay in this house because her poor now-lost-and-legendary father bought it when she got pregnant with me, and Ted didn’t have a nickel to spare. Daddy’d move out of here tomorrow, he’d move into town.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with living here,” Winnie said.

  Julie smiled calmly. “Mommy’s little girl.”

  “I am not.”

  “Oh, Winnie,” Julie said. But she was squinting at her baby finger, and then she unscrewed the nail polish again. “You know what Mrs. Kitteridge said in class one day?” Julie asked.

  Winnie waited.

  “I always remember she said one day, ‘Don’t be scared of your hunger. If you’re scared of your hunger, you’ll just be one more ninny like everyone else.’ ”

  Winnie waited, watching Julie do her baby fingernail once more with the perfect pink polish. “Nobody knew what she meant,” Julie said, holding her nail up, looking at it.

  “What did she mean?” Winnie asked.

  “Well, that’s just it. At first I think most of us thought she was talking about food. I mean, we were just seventh graders—sorry, Doodle—but as time went by, I think I understand it more.”

  “She teaches math,” Winnie said.

  “I know that, dopey. But she’d say these weird things, very powerfully. That’s partly why kids were scared of her. You don’t have to be scared of her—if she’s still teaching next year.”

  “I am, though. Scared of her.”

  Julie looked at her sideways. “Lot scarier stuff right here in this house.”

  Winnie frowned, pushed her hand into the pillow near her on her bed.

  “Oh, Winnie,” Julie said. “Come here.” She held out her arms. Winnie stayed where she was. “Oh, poor Winnie-doodle,” Julie said, and she moved down the bed to where Winnie was, put her arms around her awkwardly, holding her hands out to keep the nail polish from smudging. Julie kissed the side of Winnie’s head, and then she let her go.

  In
the morning, Anita’s eyes were puffy, as though all that sleep had exhausted her. But she sipped her coffee, and said brightly, “Whew, that was some sleep I had.”

  “I don’t want to go to church this morning,” Julie said. “I’m not ready to have everyone look at me yet.”

  Winnie thought there might be a fight about that, but there wasn’t. “Okay,” said Anita, after she had considered for a minute. “All right, honey. Just don’t sit around and mope while we’re gone.”

  Julie piled the breakfast dishes into the sink, her pink nails shining. “I won’t,” she said.

  In the hallway, Jim said to Winnie, “Doodle-bug, give your old father a hug,” but Winnie brushed past him, patting his arm that he held out, before going to put on her church clothes. In church she sat with her dress sticking to the pew. It was a hot summer day; the church windows were open but there wasn’t any breeze. Through the window Winnie saw in the distance a few dark clouds. Next to her, she heard her father’s stomach growl. He looked at her and winked, but Winnie looked out the window again. She thought how she had passed by him when he’d asked for a hug, how she had seen her mother do that to him, too, only sometimes Anita would touch his shoulders and kiss the air beside his cheek. Maybe Julie was right, she was Mommy’s girl, and maybe Winnie was going to turn out to be like her, someone who brushed past people even when she was smiling; maybe she’d grow up and shoot people in the driveway with a rifle.

  Tiredly, she stood up for the hymn. Her mother reached to straighten a wrinkle in the back of Winnie’s dress.

  On Winnie’s pillow was a folded note. “PLEASE make them think I’m out taking a walk. I’ve gone to Moody’s to catch the bus. My life depends on this. I love you, Doodle, I do.” Hot tingles shot through Winnie’s arms and fingers; even her nose and chin tingled.

  “Winnifred,” her mother called. “Come peel some potatoes, please.”

  The bus to Boston stopped at Moody’s at eleven thirty. Julie would still be there, probably trying to stay out of sight, maybe sitting in the grass behind the store. They could go get her in the car. She’d cry and there’d be a big fight and someone might have to give her a pill, but they could still do it, she was still here.

  “Winnifred?” Anita called again.

  Winnie took her church clothes off, took her hair out of its ponytail, so the hair would fall in front of her face.

  “You all right?” Anita asked.

  “I have a headache.” Winnie scooched down and took some potatoes from the bin in the bottom cupboard.

  “You need some food in your stomach,” her mother said. “Where’s your sister? You’d think she could have started the potatoes.” Anita put the Sunday steak into the broiling pan.

  Winnie washed the potatoes and started to peel them. She filled a pot with water and cut the potatoes; they plopped into the water. She looked at the clock above the stove.

  “Where is she?” Anita asked again.

  “Gone for a walk, I think,” Winnie said.

  “Well, we’re about to eat,” her mother said, and then Winnie almost cried.

  Uncle Kyle had told a story once about being on a train that hit and killed a teenage girl. He said he would never forget how he sat there looking out the window of the train as they waited for the police, thinking about the girl’s parents, how they would still be in their house watching TV or doing the dishes, not even knowing that their daughter was dead, while he sat on the train and knew.

  “I’ll go look for her,” Winnie said. She rinsed her hands and dried them.

  Anita glanced at the clock and turned over the steak. “Just give a holler,” she said. “Out by the back woods.”

  Winnie opened the back door and stepped outside. The clouds were moving in. The air had gotten chilly and smelled like the ocean. Her father stepped out onto the back porch. “About to eat, Winnie.” Winnie pulled at the leaves of a bayberry bush. “Look kind of lonesome out there,” he said.

  The phone rang in the kitchen. Her father went back inside and Winnie followed, watching from the hall.

  “Yes, hello, Kyle,” her mother said.

  In the afternoon it started to rain. The house got dark and the rain beat down on the roof and against the big windowpane in the living room. Winnie sat in a chair and watched the ocean, choppy and gray. Uncle Kyle had gone to Moody’s for a paper, and he had seen Julie up near the back of the bus as it pulled away. Anita had rushed into the girls’ bedroom, tearing things apart. Julie’s duffel bag was gone, and most of her underwear, and her makeup, too. Anita found Julie’s note to Winnie. “You knew,” she said to Winnie, and Winnie understood that something had changed for good, something more than Julie’s running away. Uncle Kyle had come over, but now he was gone.

  Winnie sat in the living room with her father. She kept thinking of Julie on the bus riding through the rain, staring out the window at the turnpike going by. She thought her father was probably picturing this too, maybe imagining the sound of the bus’s windshield wipers going back and forth.

  “What’re you going to do when you finish the boat?” Winnie asked.

  Her father looked surprised. “Well,” he said. “Dunno. Go for a ride, I guess.”

  Winnie smiled to be nice, because she didn’t think he’d be going anywhere. “That’ll be fun,” she said.

  Toward evening the rain stopped. Anita hadn’t come out of her room. Winnie tried to figure out if Julie was there yet; she didn’t know how long it took to get to Boston, but it took a long time.

  “I wonder if she’s got some money with her,” her father said, but Winnie didn’t answer—she didn’t know.

  Rain dripped from the side of the roof and off the trees. She thought of all the starfish she had laid out on the rock, all of them drenched from the rain. After a while her father stood up and went to the window. “Didn’t plan on things working out like this,” he said, and Winnie had a sudden thought of him on his own wedding day. Unlike Anita, he had not been married before. Anita had not worn a white dress, because of Julie. “You only wear white once,” Anita had said. There were no wedding pictures—that Winnie knew of, anyway—of her parents’ wedding day.

  Her father turned around. “Pancakes?” he asked her.

  Winnie didn’t want pancakes. “Sure,” she said.

  Security

  It was May, and Olive Kitteridge was going to New York. She had never, in her seventy-two years, set foot in the city, although she had on two occasions many years ago sat in a car and ridden past it—Henry at the wheel, worried about this exit and that—and seen from a distance the skyline, buildings against buildings, gray against a gray sky. Like a science-fiction city, it had seemed, built on a moon. It held no appeal, not then, not now—although back when those planes ripped through the towers, Olive had sat in her bedroom and wept like a baby, not so much for this country but for the city itself, which had seemed to her to become suddenly no longer a foreign, hardened place, but as fragile as a class of kindergarten children, brave in their terror. Jumping from the windows—it clutched her heart, and she had felt a private, sickening shame to know that two of the dark-haired hijackers, silently thrilled with their self-righteousness, had come down through Canada and walked through the airport in Portland on their way to such hellacious destruction. (She might have driven right by them that morning, who knows?)

  Time passed, though, as it does, and the city—at least from Olive’s faraway vantage—seemed eventually itself again, no place she cared to go, in spite of the fact that her only son had moved there recently, acquired a second wife and two children not his. The new wife, Ann—if you were to believe the one photograph that took ages to download—was as tall and big as a man; pregnant now with Christopher’s child, and according to a characteristically cryptic e-mail from Chris, with no attention paid to punctuation or any use of capital letters, Ann was tired and “had pukes.” In addition, it seemed Theodore turned into a hellion each morning before going off to preschool. Olive had been summoned t
o help.

  The request had not been put this way. After sending the note, Christopher had called from his office and said, “Ann and I’ve been hoping you’ll come visit for a couple of weeks.” To Olive, this meant they needed help. It had been years since she’d been in the company of her son for a couple of weeks.

  “Three days,” she said. “After that I stink like fish.”

  “A week, then,” Chris had countered, adding, “You could walk Theodore to school. It’s around the corner one block.”

  Like hell, she thought. Her tulips, seen right there through her dining room window, jubilant cups of yellow and red, would be dead by the time she got back. “Give me a few days to make the arrangements,” she said. The arrangements took twenty minutes. She called Emily Buck at the post office and told her to hold her mail.

  “Oh, this’ll be good for you, Olive,” said Emily.

  “Ay-yuh,” said Olive. “I’m sure.”

  Then she called Daisy up the road and asked her to water the garden. Daisy, who’d had fantasies—Olive was certain of this—of living out her widowhood with Henry Kitteridge if only Olive could have died early on, said she would be glad to water the garden. “Henry was always so good about watering mine when I went to see Mother,” Daisy said. Daisy added, “This will be good for you, Olive. You’ll have a good time.”

  A good time was not something Olive expected to have again.

  That afternoon she drove to the nursing home and explained to Henry what she was up to, while he sat motionless in his wheelchair, the expression on his face one he frequently wore—that of confused politeness, as though something had been placed on his lap that he could not comprehend, but which he felt required a polite expression of thanks. Whether or not he was deaf, there was still some question. Olive did not believe he was, nor did Cindy, the one nice nurse. Olive gave Cindy the number in New York.