* * *
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 Ethel 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.
Now—it was a Friday evening in early August—Fergus said out loud to his television, “Goddammit,” and this caused his wife to begin to sing. “La-la-lahhh-la, deedly-dee-dum,” she sang out loudly because she hated when he swore, but he had his earphones on and probably couldn’t hear, so she gave it up. Fergus had sworn because his daughter’s visit was going to coincide with the Civil War Days in the park next week, which Fergus always took part in, dressing up like a Union soldier and marching back and forth on Saturday and shooting a rifle—they were blanks, of course—and then he slept in his little canvas pup tent in the park with the other soldiers, and they cooked their meals on tiny makeshift stoves like the kind that were used in the Civil War days. It was Fergus’s job to beat the drum, along with one other man, a nasty old codger named Ed Moody from down the coast who—when he joined a few years ago—seemed to think that he was the drummer; there had been trouble about that, but the regiment had finally said that both men could beat a drum. In truth, Fergus’s enthusiasm for this entire thing had been waning, but he knew his wife laughed at him for partaking in it, and so he continued to do so. He had, when he thought about it, always preferred the St. Andrews group—the Highland Games when men of Scottish ancestry all wore their kilts and marched about the fairgrounds, bagpipes whining; Fergus played the drum for them as well, as he marched in his kilt of the MacPherson plaid.
The dog, who had been lying in the corner of the room, a small—now old—cocker spaniel named Teddy, rose and walked over to Fergus and wagged his tail. Fergus took his earphones off. Ethel said, “I hope your father plans on taking you out, I don’t feel like it tonight,” and Fergus said, “Tell your mother to hush up.” Fergus rose, and as he was leaving with the dog he said, “Tedd
y, I guess we’ll go to the grocery store,” and his wife said, “I hope to heck Fergus doesn’t forget the milk.” In this way, they communicated.
* * *
For years Ethel had worked in the town clerk’s office, giving out fishing licenses and dog licenses and things of that sort to people who came in. So she was friendly with Anita Coombs, who still worked there, and tonight at the grocery store Anita was in line when Fergus walked up with the milk and his cans of baked beans and his hot dogs. “Hello, Fergus,” said Anita, her face widening in pleasure. She was a short woman with glasses, who had sorrows of her own; Fergus knew this from listening to his wife on the telephone. Fergus gave her a nod. “How’s everyone?” Anita asked. And Fergus said everyone was just fine. In his pocket his hand went around the roll of bills he always carried. Years ago, his wife had said to the girls that their father was so cheap he’d hang up the used toilet paper to dry if he could, and he had been stung by that; ever since, he carried around a roll of cash as if that made it not true.
“Getting ready for those Civil War Days?” Anita asked as she took out her credit card and stuck it in the slot for credit cards. Fergus said he was. Anita squinted at the card in the machine, then turned to Fergus and said, touching the edge of her eyeglasses, “I heard that you folks may not be spending the night in the park this year. Too many druggies out at night now.”
Fergus felt a splinter of alarm go through him. “Don’t know,” he said. “Guess we’re considering all angles.”
Anita took back her card, then took her recycling bag of groceries and hoisted it over her shoulder. “You say hi to Ethel,” she said, and he said he’d do that, and she said, “Awful nice to see you, Fergie,” and she left the store.
In his car in the parking lot of the grocery store, Fergus took out his phone and saw a text from Bob Sturdges, who was the captain of their little Civil War army. It said: Got some problems, give me a call when you can. So Fergus called him from the car and found out that what Anita had said was partly true: They were not going to be spending the night in the park. But Anita had been wrong about the druggies. It was because there was too much political stuff happening around the country these days, too many people upset about things; they had already stopped having Confederate soldiers in their unit, but you never knew. And also, the men were getting old. These were the reasons Bob Sturdges gave to Fergus about why they would not be spending the night in the park; Fergus felt disappointment and then, when he hung up, some relief. So they would go pitch their tents on Saturday and that would be that.
* * *
Lisa had telephoned to say she’d be late; she’d flown to Portland and rented a car, and she’d told her parents—who each held a telephone receiver in their hand—that she was going to visit her sister on her way up. Traditionally, the girls had never been especially close; both Fergus and Ethel noted to themselves that it was curious that Lisa would stop and pay Laurie a visit rather than wait for Laurie to come to the house with her son, which is what Laurie had always done in the past.
But now Lisa’s car could be heard turning in to the driveway, and her mother went to the door and waved and called out, “Hello, Lisa! Hello!” And Lisa got out of the car and said, “Hi, Mom,” and they sort of hugged each other, which is what they always did, a sort of half a hug. “Let me help you,” said her mother, and Lisa said, “No worries, Mom, I’ve got it.” Lisa’s dark hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, longer than it was last year, and her dark eyes—always large—shone with light. Ethel watched her daughter bring in her little suitcase, and then Ethel said, “You’re in love.” It’s because of how Lisa looked that her mother said this; there was an extra layer of beauty to her face.
“Oh, Mom,” said Lisa, closing the door behind her.
* * *
A few years back, Fergus had had a fling with a woman at the Civil War Days. Her name was Charlene Bibber, and she was one of the women who dressed up in a hoop skirt and a shawl and a small cap over her head with the handful of other women there who were dressed like that—most of them wives of the so-called soldiers—and that night Fergus had some whiskey and he found himself at the edge of the park—it was a glorious night—and there was Charlene, whose husband had been a soldier until he’d died the year before, and Fergus said, “You’re a pretty thing tonight,” and she had giggled. In fact, Charlene had graying hair and was plump, but that night she seemed to exude something that Fergus wanted. He took her around the waist and then messed around with her a bit while she kept saying, “Fergie, you naughty boy, you!” Laughing as she said it, and then up by the bandstand they had done it; the surprise of this, and the hustling of getting that damned hoop skirt up, had made it seem exciting at the time. But when he woke in his pup tent the next morning he thought, Oh holy Christ, and he found her and whispered an apology to her, and she acted as though nothing had happened, which he thought extremely rude.
* * *
“Listen, you guys,” Lisa said. She had kissed her father, who had stood up to greet her and who was now sitting back down in his lounge chair, and Lisa sat down in a chair across from her mother, next to her mother’s television, but then she got up and moved the chair so that it was directly on the strip of yellow duct tape; she looked back and forth between her parents. She touched the long bangs that fell onto her face, moving them slightly aside. “I stopped and saw Laurie on the way up—”
Fergus said, “We know, Lisa. That was good of you.”
Lisa glanced at him and said, “And I told her something, and she said I had to tell you guys, that if I didn’t she would—so I have to tell you.” The dog sat at Lisa’s feet, and he suddenly whined and wagged his tail, poking at Lisa’s jeaned legs with his nose.
“So tell us,” said Ethel. Ethel took a glimpse at her husband; he was looking at Lisa impassively.
Lisa smoothed her long brown ponytail over her shoulder, and her eyes were very bright. “There’s a documentary that’s been made.” She said this and raised her eyebrows. “And it stars me.” Then she turned to the dog, patting him, and making kissing sounds toward him.
Fergus said, “What do you mean, a documentary?”
“What I said,” Lisa answered.
Fergus sat up straight in his chair. “Now, hold on,” he said. “You’re starring in a documentary? I didn’t know documentaries had stars.”
“Tell your father to hush up,” Ethel said. “And then tell me about this documentary. What do you mean, you’re starring in it? Honey, this is so exciting.”
Lisa nodded. “Well, it is, frankly. Very exciting.”
* * *
A few times during the summer months, after the Highland Games in June, Fergus would put on his kilt—not the one with the MacPherson plaid, but a different one of plain color; he had gained weight and bought the last one at a store for only twenty-one dollars and ninety-nine cents, the price had pleased him—and he walked the streets of Crosby. He enjoyed this; people were pleasant, and he liked the feel of the kilt; he wore it with a gray T-shirt that matched his gray beard, and he wore his brown walking shoes with it as well. People, often summer people, would stop and talk to him, and they spoke of their own Scottish pasts, if they had one, and he was always surprised—and pleased—at how many people were proud of their ancestry this way. Years earlier there had been a pack of boys up near High Street that would call out, “What does a Scottish man wear under his kilt? A wang, a wang,” and they would convulse with laughter. He had felt like throwing stones at them, but of course he did not, and he noticed as the years went by that this sort of thing happened much less frequently and so he had his own private theory that people were becoming more tolerant—about a man wearing a kilt, anyway, if not more tolerant about the mess in the country—and this pleased him.
“About your work?” Ethel was asking Lisa. “Or is this a documentary about someone who comes from a small town and lives in New York City?”
Lisa closed her eyes, and opened them. “About my work,” she said. She stood up. “Oh, you guys, we’ll talk about this later. Let me get unpacked.”
Fergus said, “No, tell us now, Lisa. Spit it out, kid. Not everyone stars in a documentary.”
Lisa looked at him. “Well. Okay. Now, listen, you guys. I’m a dominatrix,” she said.
* * *
Fergus couldn’t sleep. He stared at the dark above his head. Then he closed his eyes and immediately felt afraid and so he kept his eyes open, but he couldn’t sleep that way. After almost two hours he got out of bed and went down the hall and listened, and he heard Lisa moving about her room, so he knocked lightly on the door.
“Dad?” She stepped back and let him in. She was dressed in her pajamas; they were pink silky-looking things, the bottoms long.
“You know, Lisa,” he said. He put his hand to the back of his head. “You know, if it’s money you need, honest to God, just say the word. I never should have assumed you could have made it on your own down there—”
“Dad, it’s not the money. Well, it kind of is, I guess, but that’s not the point.” Lisa put her hand to her hair, which was out of its ponytail now, and she smoothed it over her shoulder; it looked glossy to Fergus, like a television ad.
He sat down on her bed; his legs felt weak. “What is the point?” he said.
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