“Do you like her?” Jim asked. He raised his tea mug, took a sip, returned it to the table.
“I do.”
“Well, there we are.” Jim looked around now as though a restlessness had come over him. “You know, you guys, I’d like to come back up here more. I miss it. I miss Shirley Falls, and I miss you both.”
Bob and Susan looked at each other, Susan widening her eyes slightly. “Well, do,” she said. “Boy, we would love that.”
“I gained ten pounds this year,” Jim said. “Can you tell?”
“Nah,” said Bob. He was lying.
“Bob, you still boozing it up?” Jim squinted at his brother.
“No. Maybe one glass a night at most. And I haven’t had a cigarette since I married Margaret.”
Jim shook his head slowly. “Amazing.” Then he asked Susan, “How’s the eye business?”
“Booming,” Susan said. “I could retire, but I don’t feel like it. I like my job.”
“Look at you two,” Jim said.
* * *
Back in the small apartment, Helen said, “How about a glass of wine?”
Margaret looked surprised—to Helen she looked that way—and she said, “Okay,” and she got out the bottle of white wine that Bob had put in the refrigerator earlier and opened it and poured a small amount into a mason jar. She handed it to Helen.
“Lovely,” Helen said, and decided she would not make a joke about the wineglass. “You’re not having any?” Margaret shook her head, sitting down in the rocking chair that had the split upholstery; Helen sat on the couch. Helen crossed her legs and swung a foot. “So,” she said.
“So,” Margaret said.
“Oh, let me show you just a few more pics of my grandkids,” and Helen brought out her phone. “I just keep thinking about little Ernie. I’m just not sure he’s old enough to be at camp all by himself, but his parents wanted him to, and even Ernie seemed keen on it, but the cabin he was in seemed—well, terribly rustic.” When Margaret didn’t respond, Helen found some pictures on her phone and had Margaret look at many pictures of her three grandchildren. She told Margaret how little Sarah was talking already—almost full sentences and she was barely two, could you believe it? “No,” said Margaret, peering at the phone through the glasses she wore on the string that fell over her chest. Then Margaret sat back and sighed.
Helen rose and went into the kitchen, returning with the bottle of wine. She poured more into her glass and then said, looking at her phone again, presenting it to Margaret, “And look at Karen! She’s three, and she’s so different from her brother, he’s all confident and outgoing, and Karen—don’t you like that name, Karen? it’s so straightforward—and she is just the sweetest little thing—” Helen looked up at Margaret and said, “I’m talking about my grandchildren too much.”
Margaret said, “Yes. You are.”
Helen felt a sense of disbelief, and her face got hot immediately. She put her phone into her handbag, and when she looked back at Margaret, she saw that Margaret’s cheeks were pink as well. “I’m sorry,” Helen said. “I’m very sorry. I know you and Bobby never—”
“No, having no children makes us different. We feel fine about it, but it does get tiresome to hear—” Margaret waved a hand and stopped. “I apologize. I’m sure your grandchildren are all just wonderful.”
Helen took two big swallows of the wine and felt the warmth of it spread through her chest. “I wonder when the boys will be back,” said Helen, looking around the place; she was mad at Margaret now, just plain mad. She stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to use your bathroom.”
“Of course,” Margaret said.
Helen took her wine with her and finished the glass as soon as she closed the bathroom door. But then she realized that if she called Jim, everything could be overheard, so she sat on the toilet and texted him. Jimmy, she texted, where are you? M is making me NUTS. She waited, and there was no response. Then she texted, I think she is GRUESOME. Oh, come on, Jimmy, she thought, and then she worried that Margaret would not hear her peeing—because Helen had not needed to—and so she tried, and then she made a small gaseous sound, which was very upsetting, Margaret was right out there listening! After a moment she stood up and washed her hands carefully—the towel looked a little grimy—and then she returned to where Margaret was still sitting in the rocking chair as though she hadn’t moved at all.
Helen poured herself more wine.
“I really am awfully sorry,” Margaret said to her.
“No, no, that’s fine.” Helen drank the wine.
* * *
On the drive back to Crosby, Jim said, “You know, Bobby, here’s the truth: I’ve loved Helen even more since she redid the house.” He glanced over at Bob, who sat without moving. “You know why?”
“No,” said Bob.
“Because she actually thought it would help. She thought if she changed the house it would eradicate everything that had gone on in it, meaning that last year when I fell apart and screwed those dopes, and Helen really thought, If we change things, it will be different.”
Jim looked again at Bob, then back at the road in front of him. “But of course it doesn’t change anything, and now we’re living in a whole new house, which used to be our old house where many wonderful things happened. And when I realized that’s why she was doing it, making that godawful renovation, it made me love her more, Bobby. I think it made her more human to me, or something. I love her more than I did before, and that’s the truth.”
“Okay,” said Bob. “I get it.”
After another minute Jim said, “Helen didn’t make me go on this stuff. I did it myself.”
They drove in silence for a moment after that; Bob understood what Jim had said, but the information seemed to stay outside him. “She didn’t make you?” Bob asked. “Then why did you?”
And then Jim said, “I’m scared.” Jim looked straight ahead as he said this.
“Of what, Jimmy?”
“Of dying.” Jim looked over at Bob, gave him his wry half-smile. “I’m scared to death of dying. I really am. I can feel it coming so fast—whoosh! Jesus, it all goes so fast these days. But you know what?”
“What?”
“I don’t really care, either. I mean, about dying. It’s so strange, Bobby. Because on one hand I have these moments—or I had these moments before I got all doped up—of just sheer terror. Terror. And at the very same time, I kind of feel like, Yeah, okay, let’s go, I’m ready.” Jim was silent for a moment, glancing in the rearview mirror; he let a car pass him. “But I’m scared. Or I was. Before the medication.”
And now Bob felt frightened. Jimmy, he wanted to say, you can’t get scared, you’re my leader! But he knew—a part of him knew, and oh God it made him sad—that Jim was not his leader anymore. Then he said, “If Helen isn’t making you take the stuff, why did you tell Susan it was Helen who insisted on it?”
Jim looked as though he was considering this. He said, “Because I know Susan doesn’t like Helen, so I blamed Helen for it.” He turned to look at his brother, and his eyes widened. “Listen to me, Bobby, wow, am I an asshole.”
Bob said, and he was surprised to hear the level of irritation in his voice, “You know what, Jim? Will you stop that? You did one stupid thing ten years ago when Zach got in all that trouble, for crying out loud, and it brought up all the guilt you’d been feeling, and so you—you acted out. You had an affair. Or a couple of them, I don’t know. That doesn’t make you an asshole, Jim. It makes you a human being. Jesus, will you stop this?”
Jim said immediately, “You’re right, you’re right. Sorry. I really am sorry. God—I sound so melodramatic. I’m sorry about that, Bobby.”
And Bob felt a swift swoop of desolation; he could not remember ever speaking to his brother like that, or having Jim respond with an apology as he
just had.
* * *
Helen held her mason jar of wine and rocked her foot. “A year ago, Jimmy and I were on our cruise to Alaska,” Helen said. She didn’t know why she said this.
“Yes,” said Margaret. “So I heard.”
“It rained every day. When we got to the glacier place, Glacier Bay, we were supposed to take a helicopter up to see the glaciers, but it was too foggy.”
“That’s a shame,” said Margaret.
“No, it’s not. Who cares?”
Margaret looked at Helen. “I should think you would have cared. You’d paid all that money to go see the place.”
“Well, I didn’t care,” said Helen. She took two more large swallows of wine. After a moment she said, and she could feel her cheeks flushing slightly, “I’ll tell you what I cared about: the Indonesians who worked on the cruise ship. Everyone working on that boat was from Indonesia, and we got talking to one fellow one night and he worked ten months a year on that boat and went home to Bali for two months. And I bet you anything,” she pointed a finger at Margaret, “that those guys are stacked up on top of each other in the bottom of that ship with no windows, and once I realized that—well, I couldn’t really enjoy myself anymore. I mean, we were taking this trip on the backs of these people.”
Margaret said nothing, although she had opened her mouth as though she were about to.
“What are you thinking?” Helen asked her.
“I was thinking, How liberal of you.”
After a moment, Helen, who had some trouble taking this in, said, “Why, Margaret, you hate me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
But now Helen felt sad. She thought ministers were supposed to be nice people. She made a raspberry sound with her lips. “I’m sad,” she said, and Margaret said, “I think you may be a little drunk.”
Helen felt her face flush again. She took the bottle of wine and poured more into the stupid mason jar. “Bottoms up,” she said.
* * *
—
And then the men could be heard on the stairs, and after a minute the door squeaked open and closed and there they were, standing in the living room. “Oh, boys,” said Helen. “Boy, am I glad to see you two.” She squinted up at them. “Are you guys okay?”
She couldn’t see Jim’s eyes, but something in the way the men stood made her feel they were not okay. “Look,” she said, “I bought a piece of crap.” She pointed to the small painting, which was on the floor next to the couch.
Bob picked it up, and Jim stepped behind him to look. “God, Helen,” Jim asked, “why did you buy that?” And Bob said, “It’s not so bad.”
“It’s awful,” Helen said. “I just bought it—to be nice. Who was that woman?” Helen looked with confusion at Margaret. “That pickle person. You know—” She tried to snap her fingers, but her fingers slipped. “That person, what—you know, what’s like a pickle?”
“Olive.” Margaret said this coldly.
“Olive.” Helen nodded.
“Olive Kitteridge,” Margaret said.
“Well, she said this was crap.”
“Olive thinks everything is crap,” said Bob. “That’s just who she is.”
Margaret stood up and said, “I think we’d better go to dinner. Helen needs some food.”
It wasn’t until Helen herself stood up that she realized how drunk she might be. “Whoopsie,” she said, quietly. She looked around. “Where did Jimmy go?”
“He’s in the bathroom,” Bob said. “We’ll go in just a minute.”
And then Helen saw the staircase that went upstairs from the living room. “Bobby, is that where you sleep? Up there?”
Bob said that it was.
And Helen climbed the stairs. “I’m just going to peek,” she called out. She put her hand on the wall to steady herself. These stairs were steep as well, and they turned a corner partway up. She stood on the landing and turned around. There was a plant on the landing, and its leaves spread far up and down the steps. “Boy, that would give me the creeps,” Helen said, and then as she started up the rest of the stairs she fell backward, and what she was aware of was how long the fall was taking, how her body was bumping and bumping down these stairs, it was taking forever, and it was shocking. And then she stopped.
Margaret yelled, “Don’t move her!”
* * *
Jim went in the ambulance with Helen, and Margaret and Bob followed in their car. Margaret said, “Oh, Bob. Bob. This was all my fault.” He looked over at her. Her eyes seemed bald-looking to him, and they were red-rimmed. “No, it was,” she said. “It was all my fault. Bob, I couldn’t stand her. And she knew it. And it was terrible of me, I didn’t even really try with her. Oh, Bob. And she knew! She knew, because people always know these things, and so she got drunk.”
“Margaret—”
“No, Bob. I feel terrible. She just drove me crazy, and there was no reason that she should have, but she’s— Oh, Bob, she’s just so rich.”
“Well, she is rich. That’s true. But what does that have to do with it?”
Margaret looked over at him. “It makes her self-centered, Bob. She never even asked about me once.”
“She’s shy, Margaret. She’s nervous.”
Margaret said, “That woman is not shy. She’s rich. And I just couldn’t stand her from the very beginning. You know, her hair done so nicely, and her gold earrings. Oh, Bob. And then when she got out her foolish straw hat I thought I’d die.”
“Her straw hat? Margaret, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I couldn’t stand her and she knew it, Bob. And I feel terrible.”
Bob said nothing. He could think of nothing to say. But a quiet sense of almost-unreality seemed to come to him, and he thought the word “prejudice,” and he understood that he needed to drive carefully, and so he did, and then they reached the hospital.
* * *
—
It was midnight by the time Helen was released. She had broken an arm, and two ribs, and her face had been badly bruised; one eye was purplish and swollen. Now she sat silently, with her arm in a white cast that bent by the elbow, while Jim—whom Margaret had driven back to their place to get his car—went around and opened her car door and then helped her into the car. There had been a CAT scan done of her head, and there was no damage, and she had had a number of X-rays to check for internal injuries. Now Bob got into the backseat, and he texted Margaret that Helen was okay, Margaret should go to bed.
Jim said over his shoulder, “You have to sleep sitting up when you break any ribs.”
“Oh, Helen,” said Bob, reaching to touch the back of Helen’s head. “I’m so sorry.”
Jim said, “Hellie, we’ll drive back tomorrow. I’m going to rent an SUV, and we’ll just drive straight back. You’ll be more comfortable that way, I think.” And Bob could see Helen nod slightly.
At the inn, Bob helped his brother get Helen seated in the wingback chair—once she was in her pajamas, her cast sticking out at an angle, and her robe pulled over her—in the sitting-room part of their room, and then he said he would be back.
When he went up the stairs to his own bedroom, he was surprised to see that Margaret was fast asleep. There was a small light on by the bed, and he watched this woman, who seemed almost a stranger to him at this moment. He recognized now the smallness of her response to a world she did not know or understand; it was not unlike the response his sister had had to Helen. And he knew that had he not lived in New York for so many years—if his brother, whom he had loved as God, had not lived there as well, rich and famous for all those years—then he might have felt as Margaret did. But he did not feel as she did. He turned the light off and walked down the stairs and back to the inn.
The door of the room was unlocked, and he entered it quietly. Jim lay snoring on the bed, and Helen
sat, as though asleep, in the chair. On her feet now were thin pink slippers with fluffy pompoms on their ends.
Inside Bob moved a sadness he had not felt in years. He had missed his brother—his brother!—and his brother had missed Maine. But his brother was married to a woman who hated Maine, and Bob understood that they would not come up here again. Jim would live the rest of his life as an exile, in New York City. And Bob would live the rest of his life as an exile in Maine. He would always miss Pam, he would always miss New York, even though he would continue to make his yearly visits there. He was exiled here. And the weirdness of this—how life had turned out, for himself, and Jim, and even Pam—made him feel an ocean of sadness sway through him.
A sound came from the chair, and he saw that Helen was awake, and she was weeping quietly. “Ah, Helen,” he said, and he went to her. He turned and found a box of tissues on the table, then he put a tissue over her nose and said softly, “Blow,” and this made Helen laugh a little, and Bob squatted next to her chair. He put his hand on her hair, drawing it back from her face. “Ah, you’re going to be all right, Helen,” he said. “Don’t you worry. Jim’s going to drive you straight home tomorrow, and you will never have to come back to this awful state.”
She looked at him in the duskiness of the room, her one eye almost swollen shut, the other eye looking at him searchingly. “But you live here,” she said. “It’s not awful for you, is it, Bobby?”
He paused, then whispered, “Sometimes,” and he winked at her and so she laughed again.
“Bobby?”
“What, Helen?”
“I’ve always loved you.”
“I know that. And I’ve always loved you too.”
Olive, Again Page 19