Olive Kitteridge

by Elizabeth Strout

  She waved a hand above her head, and kept going. She noticed nothing on the rest of the walk, not the sun, not the river, not the asphalt path, not any opening buds. She walked and thought of Jack Kennison without the wife, who’d been the friendly one. He’d said he was in hell, and of course he would be.

  When she got back to the house, she telephoned him. “Would you like to go to lunch one day?”

  “I’d like to go to dinner,” he said. “It would give me something to look forward to. If I go to lunch, then I still have the rest of the day.”

  “All right.” She didn’t tell him she went to bed with the sun, that to have an actual dinner in a restaurant would be, for her, like staying up way past midnight.

  “Oh, that’s lovely,” said Bunny. “Olive, you’ve got a date.”

  “Why would you say something so foolish?” Olive asked, really annoyed. “We’re two lonely people having supper.”

  “Exactly,” said Bunny. “That’s a date.”

  Funny how much that irritated Olive. And she didn’t have Bunny to tell it to, since Bunny was the one who’d said it. She called her son, who lived in New York. She asked how the baby was.

  “He’s great,” Christopher said. “He’s walking.”

  “You didn’t tell me he was walking.”

  “Yuh, he’s walking.”

  Immediately a sweat broke out on her—she felt it on her face, beneath her arms. It was almost like being told Henry had died, how the nursing home hadn’t called her till morning. And now a little relative of hers and Henry’s, down there in the foreign land of New York City, was walking through the dark living room of a big old brownstone. She doubted she would be asked to visit, as the last visit had not gone well, to put it mildly. “Chris, maybe you can come up here this summer for a bit.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see. Got our hands full, but sure, we’d like to. We’ll see.”

  “How long has he been walking?”

  “Since last week. Held on to the couch, smiled, then took right off. Three full steps before he fell down.”

  You would think a child had never walked before any place on the earth, to hear Christopher’s voice.

  “How are you, Mom?” His happiness had made him nicer.

  “You know. The same. Do you remember Jack Kennison?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, he’s a big flub-dub whose wife died in December. Sad. We’re having supper next week and Bunny called it a date. What a stupid thing to say. Honestly, that irritated me.”

  “Have dinner with him. Consider it volunteer work or something.”

  “Yes,” Olive said. “You’re exactly right.”

  The evenings were long this time of year, and Jack suggested they meet at the Painted Rudder at six thirty. “Should be a nice time of day, right there on the water,” he said, and Olive agreed, although she was distressed about the time. For most of her life, she had eaten supper at five o’clock, and that he didn’t (apparently) reminded her he was someone about whom she knew nothing, and probably didn’t care to either. She had never liked him from the start, and it was foolish to have agreed to dinner.

  He ordered a vodka and tonic, and she didn’t like that. “Water, please,” she said firmly to the waitress, who nodded and backed away. They were sitting kitty-corner to each other, at a table for four, so that they could both see the cove with the sailboats and the lobster boats, and the buoys bobbing just slightly in the evening’s breeze. He seemed much too close to her, his big hairy arm draping down to his drink. “I know Henry was in the nursing home for a long time, Olive.” He looked at her with his very blue eyes. “That had to be hard.”

  So they talked like that, and it was kind of nice. They both needed someone to talk to, someone to listen, and they did that. They listened. Talked. Listened more. He never mentioned Harvard. The sun was setting behind the boats as they sat with their decaf coffees.

  The next week they met for lunch at a small place near the river. Maybe because it was daytime, the spring sunshine full on the grass outside, the parked cars seen through the window reflecting shards of brightness—maybe the midday-ness of it made it not as lovely as the time before. Jack seemed tired, his shirt pressed and expensive-looking; Olive felt big and baggy inside her long vest that she had made from an old set of curtains. “Did your wife sew?” she asked.

  “Sew?” As though he didn’t know what the word meant.

  “Sew. Make things from cloth.”

  “Oh. No.”

  But when she said that she and Henry had built their house themselves, he said he’d like to see it. “Fine,” she said. “Follow along behind.” She watched in the rearview mirror as his red car moved along behind hers; he parked so poorly he almost ruined a young birch tree. She heard his steps behind her on the steep walkway. She felt like a whale, imagining her large back from his eyes.

  “It’s nice, Olive,” he said, ducking his head, although there was plenty of room for him to stand up straight. She showed him the “bump-out room,” where you could lie and see the side garden through all the glass. She showed him the library built the year before Henry’s stroke, with its cathedral ceiling and skylights. He looked at the books, and she wanted to say, “Stop that,” as though he were reading her diary.

  “He’s like a child,” she told Bunny. “He touches everything. Honest to God, he picked up my wooden seagull, turned it around, put it back in the wrong place, then picked up the clay vase Christopher gave us one year, and turned that over. What was he looking for, a price?”

  Bunny said, “I think you’re being a little hard on him, Olive.”

  So she didn’t talk to Bunny about him anymore. She didn’t tell Bunny how they had supper again the next week, how he kissed her on her cheek when she said good night, how they went to Portland to go to a concert, and that night he lightly kissed her mouth! No, these were not things to be spoken of; it was nobody’s business. And certainly nobody’s business that she lay awake at the age of seventy-four and thought about his arms around her, pictured what she had not pictured or done in years.

  At the same time, in her head, she criticized him. He’s afraid to be alone, she thought. He’s weak. Men were. Probably wants somebody to cook his meals, pick up after him. In which case, he was barking up the wrong tree. He spoke of his mother with such frequency, and in such glowing terms—something had to be wrong there. If he wanted a mother, he’d better go looking elsewhere.

  For five days it rained. Harsh and heavy—so much for spring. This rain was cold and autumnal, and even Olive, with her need to walk by the river, saw no point in heading out in the mornings. She was not one to carry an umbrella. She had to wait it out, in the car outside Dunkin’ Donuts with the dog in the backseat. Hellish days. Jack Kennison didn’t call, and she didn’t call him. She thought he’d probably found someone else to listen to his sorrows. She pictured him sitting beside some woman at a concert in Portland, and thought she could put a bullet right through his head. Once again she thought about her own death, Let it be quick. She called Christopher in New York. “How are you?” she said, angry because he never called.

  “Fine,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Hellish,” she answered. “How’s Ann and the kids?” Christopher had married a woman with two children, and now there was his. “Everyone still walking?”

  “Still walking,” Chris said. “Crazy, hectic.”

  She almost hated him then. Her life had once been crazy and hectic, too. You just wait, she thought. Everyone thinks they know everything, and no one knows a damn thing.

  “How was your date?”

  “What date?” she asked.

  “With that guy you couldn’t stand.”

  “That wasn’t a date, for crying out loud.”

  “Okay, but how was it?”

  “Just fine,” she said. “He’s a nitwit, and your father always knew it.”

  “Daddy knew him?” Chris said. “You never told me that.”

  “Not knew
him knew him,” Olive retorted. “Just knew him from afar. Enough to know he was a nitwit.”

  “Theodore’s crying,” Christopher said. “I have to go.”

  And then—like a rainbow—Jack Kennison called. “It’s supposed to clear off by tomorrow. Shall we meet on the river path?”

  “Don’t see why not,” Olive said. “Six o’clock I take off.”

  In the morning, when she drove into the gravelly lot by the river, Jack Kennison leaned against his red car, and nodded, his hands staying in his pockets. He had on a Windbreaker she’d not seen before, blue—it matched his eyes. She had to get her walking shoes from the trunk and put them on in front of him, which annoyed her. Her walking shoes had been bought in the men’s department, right after Henry died. Broad, and beige, they still laced up, they still “walked.” She stood up, her breathing heavy. “Let’s go,” she said.

  “I might want to rest on the one-mile bench. I know you like to keep going.”

  She looked at him. His wife had died five months ago. “I’ll rest whenever you want to rest,” she said.

  The river was to their left, broadening at one point, the small island seen, some of the bushes on it already a bright, bright green.

  “My ancestors paddled their canoes up this river,” Olive said.

  Jack didn’t answer.

  “I thought I’d have grandchildren that would paddle up the river, too. But my grandson’s growing up in New York City. I guess it’s the way of the world. Hurts, though. Have that DNA flung all over like so much dandelion fuzz.” Olive had to walk slower, to match Jack’s ambling stride. It was hard, like not drinking water fast if you were thirsty.

  “At least you have DNA to get tossed,” he said, his hands still in his pockets. “I won’t be having any grandchildren. Or not really.”

  “What do you mean ‘not really’? How can you not really have grandchildren?”

  It took him a while to answer, as she suspected it would. She glanced at him and thought he did not look his best; something unpleasant sat on his face, his head thrust forward from his sloping shoulders. “My daughter has chosen to live an alternative lifestyle. Out in California.”

  “I guess California’s still the place for that. Alternative lifestyles.”

  “She lives with a woman,” Jack said. “She lives with a woman the way others would live with a man.”

  “I see,” Olive said. There, in the shade, was the first-mile-marker granite bench. “Want to sit?”

  Jack sat. She sat. They looked out over the river. An elderly couple walked by holding hands, nodded to them, as though they were a couple, too. When the couple was out of earshot, Olive said, “So I take it you don’t like that, about your daughter?”

  “I don’t like it at all,” Jack said. He raised his chin. “Perhaps I’m shallow,” he said.

  “Oh, you’re sophisticated,” Olive answered, adding, “Though I guess in my opinion, that can mean the same thing.”

  He looked at her, his old eyebrows shooting up.

  “However, I’m not the least bit sophisticated. I’m essentially a peasant. And I have the strong passions and prejudices of a peasant.”

  “What does that mean?” Jack asked.

  Olive reached into her pocket, found her sunglasses, put them on.

  After a while, Jack said, “Be honest. If your son told you he wanted to sleep with men, did sleep with men, was in love with a man, lived with him, slept with him, made a home with him—do you think, really, you wouldn’t mind?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Olive retorted. “I would love him with all my heart.”

  “You’re being sentimental,” Jack said. “You don’t know how you’d feel because you haven’t been presented with it.”

  Olive’s cheeks grew warm. There was the prick of perspiration beneath one arm. “I’ve been presented with plenty.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the fact that my son married a hellion who moved him to California, then walked out on him.”

  “Statistically, Olive, that happens all the time. Fifty percent of the time.”

  “So what?” It struck her as a stupid, unfeeling response. “And what are the statistics of having a gay child?” she asked. Her feet looked enormous, stuck out there at the end of her legs. She pulled them in under the bench.

  “It changes. Every study they do says something new. But obviously, fifty percent of one’s offspring do not turn out to be gay.”

  “Maybe she’s not gay,” said Olive. “Maybe she just hates men.”

  Jack Kennison folded his arms against his blue Windbreaker, stared straight ahead. “I’m not sure that’s very nice, Olive. I haven’t offered a theory on why your son married a hellion.”

  It took Olive a moment to absorb this. “Ducky,” she said. “A ducky thing to say.” She stood up, and didn’t wait to see if he stood, too. But she heard him behind her, and she slowed enough to walk with him; she was heading back to the car.

  “I still don’t know what you mean by saying you’re a peasant. In this country I don’t think it’s peasantry. Perhaps you mean you’re a cowboy.” She glanced at him, was surprised to see he was smiling at her good-naturedly. “I can see you as a cowboy,” he said.

  “Fine, I’m a cowboy.”

  “A Republican, then?” Jack asked, after a moment.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Olive stopped walking, looked at him through her sunglasses. “I didn’t say moron. You mean because we have a cowboy for a president? Or before that an actor who played a cowboy? Let me tell you, that idiot ex-cocaine-addict was never a cowboy. He can wear all the cowboy hats he wants. He’s a spoiled brat to the manor born. And he makes me puke.”

  She was really riled, and it took her a moment to see that he was looking away, his expression closed off, as though inside his head he had backed away, was just waiting for her to finish.

  “God,” she said finally. “You didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “You voted for him.”

  Jack Kennison looked tired.

  “You voted for him. You, Mr. Harvard, Mr. Brains. You voted for that stinker.”

  He gave a small bark of a laugh. “My God, you do have the passions and the prejudices of a peasant.”

  “That’s it,” said Olive. She began walking, at her pace now. She said over her shoulder, “At least I’m not prejudiced against homosexuals.”

  “No,” he called. “Just white men with money.”

  Damn right, she thought.

  She called Bunny, and Bunny—Olive couldn’t believe this—actually laughed. “Oh, Olive,” she said. “Does it really matter?”

  “Matter that someone voted for a man who is lying to the country? Bunny, for God’s sake, this world is a mess.”

  “That’s true enough,” Bunny said. “But the world has always been a mess. I think if you enjoy his company, you should just let it go.”

  “I don’t enjoy his company,” Olive said, and hung up. She’d never realized Bunny was an idiot, but there you were.

  It was terrible, though, when you couldn’t tell people things. Olive felt this keenly as the days went by. She called Christopher. “He’s a Republican,” she said.

  “Well, that’s gross,” Christopher answered. Then: “I thought you were calling to see how your grandson is.”

  “Of course I wonder how he is. I wish you’d call me to tell me how he is.” Where and how, exactly, this rupture with her son had taken place, Olive couldn’t have said.

  “I do call you, Mom.” A long pause. “But—”

  “But what?”

  “Well, it’s a little hard to converse with you.”

  “I see. Everything is my fault.”

  “No. Everything is someone else’s fault; that’s my point.”

  It had to be her son’s therapist who was responsible for all this. Who would ever have expected this? She said into the phone, “Not I, said the Little Red Hen.”

  “What?”


  She hung up.

  Two weeks passed by. She walked along the river earlier than six, so she wouldn’t bump into Jack, and because she woke after just a few hours’ sleep. The spring was gorgeous, and seemed an assault. Starflowers popped through the pine needles, clusters of purple violets were there by the granite seat. She passed the elderly couple, who were holding hands again. After that, she stopped her walking. For a few days she stayed in bed, which—to her memory—she had never done before. She was not a lie-er downer.

  Christopher didn’t call, Bunny didn’t call. Jack Kennison didn’t call.

  One night she woke at midnight. She turned on her computer, and typed in Jack’s e-mail address, which she had gotten back when they were having lunch and going into Portland for concerts.

  “Does your daughter hate you?” she wrote.

  In the morning was the simple “Yes.”

  She waited two days. The she wrote: “My son hates me, too.”

  An hour later came the response. “Does it kill you? It kills me that my daughter hates me. But I know it’s my fault.”

  She wrote immediately. “It kills me. Like the devil. And it must be my fault, too, though I don’t understand it. I don’t remember things the way he seems to remember them. He sees a psychiatrist named Arthur, and I think Arthur has done this.” She paused a long time, clicked on Send, then immediately wrote, “P.S. But it has to be my fault, too. Henry said I never apologized for anything, ever, and maybe he was right.” She clicked on Send. Then she wrote: “P.S. AGAIN. He was right.”

  There was no reply to this, and she felt like a schoolgirl whose crush had walked off with a different girl. In fact, Jack probably did have a different girl, or woman. Old woman. Plenty of them around—Republicans, too. She lay on the bed in the little bump-out room and listened to the transistor radio she held to her ear. Then she got up and went outside, taking the dog for a walk on a leash, because if he was loose, he’d eat one of the Moodys’ cats; this had happened before.

  When she came back, the sun was just past its peak, and it was a bad time of day for her; it’d be better when it got dark. How she had loved the long evenings of spring when she was young, and all of life stretched before her. She was looking through the cupboard for a Milk-Bone for the dog when she heard her phone message machine beep. It was ludicrous, how hopeful she was that Bunny or Chris had called. Jack Kennison’s voice said, “Olive. Could you come over?”