Olive, Again

by Elizabeth Strout

  “Henry planted that tree when he was four years old,” Olive said. “He did.” She nodded. “He found this tiny sapling and he decided to stick it in the ground, and his mother—old horror—apparently helped him water it when it was tiny, and now there it is.”

  “Very nice,” said Jack.

  “You don’t care,” Olive said. “Well, never mind, let’s go.”

  Jack made himself look around the little neighborhood, and he said, “I care, Olive. Where do you want to go now?”

  And she said out to West Annett, where she had grown up, so he drove the car while she directed him, and they went along a narrow road, past many fields that were still oddly green for November, and the sun slanted across them with that horrifying gorgeousness. They drove and drove, and Olive told him about the one-room schoolhouse her mother had taught in, how her mother had had to come early to get the fire started in the winter, she told him about the Finnish woman who used to watch her—watch Olive—when Olive was too small to go to school, she told him about her Uncle George, who was a drunk and who had married a young wife and the young wife fell in love with a neighbor—“Right there, that house right there”—and then the neighbor, well, Olive didn’t know what went on with him, but the young wife had hanged herself at the bottom of her cellar stairs.

  “Jesus,” Jack said.

  “Yup,” said Olive. “I was scared to go down to that cellar when I was a kid, someone would send me down to get potatoes or something and, oh, I hated going down there.”

  “God,” said Jack.

  And then Olive said that her Uncle George had remarried, but ten years after his first wife died, he hanged himself in the same spot.

  “My God,” Jack said.

  * * *

  —

  So it was like that, they drove around many back roads and they talked. Jack talked about his own childhood, which he had already done, but seeing Olive’s childhood home made him think of his childhood home outside of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and he spoke of it again now, the sense of its smallness to him, even when he was young, though it was not as small as Olive’s house had been, but he had felt cramped, he said now. Olive listened, and said, “Ay-yuh.”

  Then she said, “Would you look at that,” because Jack had turned a corner and before them was the November sinking sun against the darkening blue sky. Along the horizon was a spread of yellow. And the bare trees stuck their bare dark limbs into the sky. “That’s kind of amazing,” Jack said.

  Up and down the car went, up one small hill and down another, around a long curve, around a short bend, the car dipped and rose over the road as the sun set around them.

  Jack said, “Let’s try that new restaurant in Shirley Falls. I heard Marianne Rutledge mention something about it the other day. It’s supposed to be the only nice restaurant in the town. What’s it called—some funny name.”

  “Gasoline,” said Olive.

  He glanced over at her. “That’s right. How did you know about the fancy restaurant in Shirley Falls called Gasoline, Olive? You surprise me.”

  “And you surprise me. Don’t you read anything? There was an article about it in the paper a few months ago. Imagine calling a restaurant Gasoline. I never heard of such a thing.”

  * * *

  —

  Jack parked on the street a block away from the restaurant, which had its name in neon lights outside, and as he locked the car he looked around. It had been dark for well over an hour, and the darkness at this time of year always seemed to Jack to be really dark; he didn’t like it and he didn’t want his car stolen or broken into. Olive stood on the sidewalk. “Oh, come on, Jack,” she said, as though she could read his thoughts—to Jack it sometimes seemed she could—“for heaven’s sake, the car is fine.”

  “I know that,” he said.

  The place seemed cavernous at first glance when they stepped inside. High-ceilinged, with a bar where the glasses twinkled and the liquor bottles were all lined up in front of a huge mirror; beyond the bar were the tables. Two more large mirrors hung on opposite walls, and on each table was a tiny flickering cup. The hostess ushered them to a table in the center of the place, there were few people here at the moment, and so they sat down and Olive shook out her napkin and said, “I hope they have steak. I want a steak.” And Jack said he was sure they had steak. “My treat,” he added, winking at her.

  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, “Thi
s 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 feel 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.