Olive, Again

by Elizabeth Strout

  “Oh, Dad.” She looked at him with such great sadness on her face that he had to look away.

  Earlier—that afternoon, after a great deal of confusion, especially from Ethel, who did not understand what a dominatrix was and who kept saying, “I just don’t understand what you mean, Lisa”—Lisa, after explaining to her mother what she did as a dominatrix, that she dressed up and had men play out their sexual fantasies, had said to her parents, “People need to be educated.”

  “Why?” Ethel and Fergus had said this at the same time.

  “So they can understand,” Lisa said. “Just like how Mom doesn’t even know what we do.”

  Fergus had unwittingly walked across the tape to his wife’s side of the living room. “People don’t need to understand that kind of behavior. Good God, Lisa.” He tugged on his beard, walking about. Then he said, “You’re only excited because some damn person, some goddamn nimrod, decided to make a movie about this.”

  “A documentary,” Lisa said. She said, almost with exasperation, “It isn’t about sex, Dad. I’m not a prostitute, Dad.” She added, looking up at him, “I don’t have sex with any of these men, you know.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ethel said, moving her hand through her hair; she stood up and looked around and then sat right back down. “I really don’t understand any of this.”

  Fergus felt puzzled but—only slightly—relieved to hear that she didn’t have sex with anyone, but he said, “What do you mean it’s not about sex? Of course it’s about sex, Lisa. Come on.”

  “It’s about playacting. Dressing up.” Lisa’s voice sounded like she was trying to be patient. “If you watched it, you might learn something. Laurie watched it.”

  “You have it?” Fergus asked.

  “Yeah, I have a DVD. I’m not suggesting you watch it, I’m just saying if you did—”

  Now, late at night, Lisa only said, still with the sadness in her face, “Go to sleep, Dad. I never should have told you. It was a mistake. But you know, you might have found out, because it will go public, and I thought you should know.”

  “You don’t have sex with these men?” Fergus asked.

  “I don’t, Dad. No.”

  Fergus backed out of the room. “Good night,” he said.

  “Sweet dreams,” Lisa called to him.

  And Fergus could not believe she said that.

  * * *

  In the morning, Fergus overslept—he had not fallen asleep for ages—and when he woke he could hear Lisa and her mother in the kitchen. He knelt and got out his Civil War uniform from the trunk beneath his bed; the hat seemed squashed, and he punched it a few times. The whole uniform looked wrinkled; he had not taken it to the cleaners to have it pressed as he had in the past. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he murmured to himself. He put it on, got out the small brush for his mustache, which he tried curling at the ends, then went into the bathroom and sprayed hairspray on it, which got into his eyes and stung like hell.

  In the kitchen, while sunlight was streaming through the window, he said to Lisa, “Good morning,” and she smiled at him—“Hi, Dad”—and he poured himself a bowl of cereal and took it into the dining room, and then he did something he never did, which was to sit on Ethel’s side of the yellow duct tape, and he did that so he could hear better what they were saying. But they were talking about dish towels. Dish towels! Lisa was saying that she’d like to go to that store out by Cook’s Corner where they have nice dish towels, and Ethel was murmuring something that sounded like Okay, they could do that. Fergus finished his cereal and went back to the kitchen, rinsed the bowl, and told Lisa that he was going off and would see her tonight. “Have a good time,” Lisa said. And then his wife said, “Tell your father to enjoy his day,” which kind of surprised him, and he said to Lisa to tell her mother thank you.

  But he did not have a good day. Taking it from the garage, he put his pup tent into the back of his truck, and when he got to the park everyone was already there; in fact, he heard the gunshots before he even pulled up. It seemed a motley crew this time, not as many men were there as usual, and he got out his tent and walked over to Bob Sturdges, who greeted him and said, “Over there,” pointing to a place near the pup tents that Fergus was to use for his own, and Fergus was already too hot in his uniform as he put the damned thing up. He could not stop thinking about Lisa. He thought of her as a young girl, home from school at the end of the day: She’d always been a cheerful sort, not like Laurie, who was prone to sulking.

  One of the men nearby—Fergus could not remember his name—was cooking something on a tiny grill placed over a little fire, and Fergus took his coffee—he had cheated and ground the beans earlier—and his tin cup and went and sat with this man, who said, “Hello, Fergus!” And Fergus made his coffee, feeling like a fool, and sat and drank it with this man, whose name finally came to him, Mark Wilton. “Not so many folks today,” said Mark, and Fergus said no, there weren’t.

  From above them the sun came down sharply; they were in a tiny spot of shade from an oak tree, but much of the park was in full sunlight. The oaks and maples caused a dappling of the brightness, and Fergus suddenly remembered the park when he had been a kid here; there were elms in those days, and their leaves were so full, so thick, that the park had felt like it was garlanded. The grass in his memory had been greener as well, and in fact these days there was a whole section of the park that was just dirt, caused by the farmers market that showed up twice a week, the carts ruining the grass below.

  Turning, Fergus saw a woman walking toward them in a long dress, skirt puffed out, bright blue, and she was carrying a little blue parasol against the sun. He could see her face, and what struck him was the look of almost-smugness on it. But it wasn’t smugness, he realized, as much as a suppressed joy for being able to wear such a dress today. She was a big woman to begin with, and the dress made her appear even bigger. “Hello, Fergus,” she said as she got closer to him, and God Almighty if it wasn’t Charlene Bibber.

  “Hello, Charlene, that’s quite a dress you’ve got on today.” Fergus gave her a nod.

  “Yes, it is,” said Mark Wilton. “Look at you.”

  “Well, thank you, boys. I made this dress myself by hand.” Charlene stood there, a few beads of sweat lining her upper lip. “I thought to myself, no sewing machines back in those days, so off we go, Charlene, you can do this, and so I did.”

  Fergus stood up and said, If they would excuse him, he’d forgotten something back at his house.

  “What’d you forget?” asked Charlene, and he just shook his head. As he got into his truck he saw that she was still watching him.

  * * *

  In the driveway, he was surprised to see Laurie’s car, and even more surprised when he saw his grandson, Teddy—named after the dog—sitting in the backseat of the car. “Teddy Bear,” said Fergus, opening the car door. “What are you doing sitting here all alone?”

  The boy looked at him with serious eyes. “Mom said I couldn’t come in, that the conversation was something I couldn’t hear.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Fergus. He loved this kid like the devil. “Aren’t you kind of hot?”

  The boy nodded. “But I got the windows down. She said she wouldn’t be long.”

  “How long has she been in there?”

  The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. Not very long, I guess. I just wish—” He looked around miserably. “I just wish I didn’t have to sit here.” Then he said, quizzically, “Grandpa, you’ve got your uniform on. It looks different.”

  “Come sit on the porch, at least,” said Fergus. “Come on, I’ll take the blame if you get in trouble for just sitting on the porch. Come on, Bear.” And so Teddy got out of the car with a book, and he sat down on the first step of the porch.

  “Why does your uniform look different?” Teddy asked.

  “Oh, it’s not pressed.”

 
“Pressed?” Teddy asked, squinting up at his grandfather.

  “It’s not ironed. Probably why it looks different.” Fergus glanced down at his pants, and was struck by how rumpled they were.

  Through the open window came sudden hollering.

  Teddy looked up at Fergus with alarm in his eyes, and Fergus said, “Okay, back in the car, kid. I’ll come get you soon. I promise.” And so the boy returned to the car, and said, “It’s going to be okay, right?” And Fergus said, “You bet it is,” and he thought the boy’s face relaxed some, and this pleased Fergus unduly.

  “Did she tell you?” Laurie flung these words at her father when he walked into the house. “Did she?”

  “She did,” Fergus said. “Just calm down.”

  “That she sticks pins in men’s penises? Did she tell you that?”

  Fergus had to sit down. “For Christ’s sake, Laurie. Stop it.” His scrotum seemed to shrivel as he said this.

  “You’re telling me to stop it? I can’t believe you’re telling me to stop it. I’m the normal one in the family! Oh my God, your daughter is a prostitute and you’re telling me to calm down.” Laurie’s neck stuck forward a bit as she said this.

  “Yes, I am,” Fergus said. “I am asking you to calm down right now, Laurie MacPherson. This is not helping matters one bit.”

  Laurie turned to her mother. “Mom. Help me out here. Please.”

  But Ethel, who had been standing behind her chair, now sat down in it and she said only, “Oh, Laurie.” She added, “But she’s not a prostitute, Laurie. I think.”

  “Oh my God,” said Laurie. She dropped her pocketbook onto the floor and put both hands on her hips.

  “It’s just that I don’t know what to say,” Ethel said. “Can’t you understand that? I just don’t know what to say. The whole thing has been—it’s just been awful.”

  “You think?” Laurie gave a little dramatic head toss as she said this.

  Fergus said, “Laurie, for Christ’s sake, calm the hell down. Now.”

  Laurie pressed her lips together, then reached down and picked up her pocketbook. She said quietly, “This is the sickest family that ever lived on God’s earth.” She turned and walked through the door, slamming it so hard that a pan on the other side of the kitchen fell from a shelf it was on.

  Fergus rose and went after her. “Teddy Bear,” he said to his grandson, bending down to speak to him through the car window, “let’s you and I see each other soon. Your mother’s mad at the moment, but she’ll get over it, and then you and I can go fishing.”

  “Fishing,” said Laurie, as she strapped her seatbelt on. “You can go effing fishing all right.” And she drove out of the driveway with her tires squealing while her poor son looked down at his lap as Fergus waved to him.

  In the living room, Lisa seemed serene. She was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, and she looked young. She was speaking to her mother, and she turned her body slightly to include her father as he came in and sat in his chair. A glance at Ethel made Fergus actually feel sorry for his wife; she seemed frightened, and smaller physically. Lisa was saying, “You know, I just want to say, Mrs. Kitteridge told us, years ago in that math class—I will never forget it—one day she just stopped a math problem she was doing on the board and she turned around and she said to the class, ‘You all know who you are. If you just look at yourself and listen to yourself, you know exactly who you are. And don’t forget it.’ And I never did forget it. It kind of gave me courage over the years because she was right; I did know who I was.”

  “You knew you were a—a dominatrix?” Fergus asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Kind of, yes, that is what I’m saying. I knew, I always knew I loved to dress up, and I like to tell people what to do, I like people, Dad, and these people have certain needs and I get to fulfill them, and that’s a pretty great thing.”

  Ethel said, “I’m just not understanding this. I am not understanding this at all.” Her eyes seemed like they were turning in different directions; this is the image Fergus got when he glanced at her again. He also noticed that the roots of her hair were dark and the yellow parts were sticking out; she must have been running her hand through it—yes, there, she did it, ran her hand through her hair. “Honey, I’m trying,” Ethel said. “Lisa, I am trying, but I just don’t get it.”

  Lisa nodded patiently. Her dark eyes shone and her face had that glow that it had when she had first walked into the house. “And this is exactly why we’re doing the documentary. Because people don’t have to feel so—so, so, you know, marginalized anymore if they are into this stuff. It’s all just human behavior, and that’s what we’re trying to say.” She smoothed her hair over her shoulder; she had a confidence that was notable.

  Fergus cleared his throat, and sat forward with his elbows on his knees. “If putting needles into some man’s penis is acceptable human behavior, then something’s very, very wrong.” He tugged on his beard. “God, Lisa.” He stood and turned to leave the room, then turned back and said, “Human behavior? For Christ’s sake, the concentration camps run by the Nazis were human behavior. What’s this defending-human-behavior crap? Honestly, Lisa!”

  And then the tears came. Buckets of them. Lisa wept and wept, her eyes becoming smudged and causing black stuff to roll down her cheeks. How could he say she was a Nazi? How could he say that? And then, after minutes of sobbing noisily, she said it was because of ignorance. She stood up; there was a smudge of black eye makeup on her white T-shirt. “I love you, Dad,” she said. “But you are ignorant.”

  * * *

  By the side of the road stood Anita Coombs, next to a low blue car with a bent fender. Fergus pulled his truck over and got out. There were no other cars around, it was on the road out toward the Point, and all one could see were fields. The sun beat down and made Anita’s fender glint. “Oh, Fergie,” she said as he approached. “Boy, am I glad to see you. This damn car broke down.”

  Fergus put his hand out, and she handed him the key. Squashed into the driver’s seat, he tried to start the car and nothing happened. He tried a few more times, then got out and said, “It’s dead. Did you call anyone?”

  “Yeah.” Anita gave a great sigh and looked at her watch. “They said they’d be here in fifteen minutes, and that was half an hour ago.”

  “Let me call them,” said Fergus, and he took Anita’s phone and called the tow people and spoke to them brusquely. He gave her back the phone. “Okay,” he said. “They’re on their way.” He leaned against her car and folded his arms. “I’ll wait with you,” he added.

  “Thanks, Fergie.” Anita seemed tired. She put her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and shook her head slowly. Then she said, “Where’re you headed?”

  “Nowhere,” said Fergus, and Anita nodded.

  It was Sunday afternoon. Fergus had gone back to the park in the dark last night and found his pup tent, standing by itself—he had been vaguely surprised to see that it was still there—and he had packed it up and put it into the back of his truck. Also in the back of his truck now, in a garbage bag, was his Civil War uniform, with the boots and the cap. This morning after breakfast—she had seemed calm again, never mentioning her foolish documentary—Lisa said, “I’m going to call Laurie. I don’t like that she’s so mad at me.” Fergus almost said, “I’m mad at you too,” but he didn’t; he just took the dishes and washed them while Ethel remained at the dining-room table, drumming her fingers on it. They could both hear, from Lisa’s room, her voice, but could not make out the words. But Lisa talked and talked and talked, and after a while Ethel said, “Come on, Teddy,” and took the dog out for a walk. When she came back she asked, “Still talking?” And after a moment Fergus said, “Yes.” Then he said, “Teddy, tell your mother I’m going for a drive,” and he had gone out in his truck with the intention of taking his Civil War uniform to the garbage can out n
ear the Point and dumping it in there. In the truck he had said out loud a few times, “Creag Dhubh!” which was the war cry of the MacPherson clan, and then he stopped it; he thought of the Highland Games and wondered if that was foolishness too: standing there every summer in his kilt yelling that with the rest of the clan.

  Now he said to Anita, “What do you think of Olive Kitteridge?”

  “Olive?” said Anita. “Oh, I’ve always liked her myself. She’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I like her.” After a moment she said “Why do you ask?” and Fergus just shook his head. Anita gave a small laugh. “She was the one—did Ethel tell you this?—who suggested to us when we were filling out those fishing licenses and they asked for the weight of the person, Olive said, ‘Why don’t you ask them what they think a game warden would say about how much they weighed?’ It was kind of brilliant. You know, you get these fatties in there and you don’t want to just say, Hey, how much do you weigh? So we started doing that.”

  “Anita,” Fergus said, turning to her. “This is a hell of a world we live in.”

  “Oh, I know,” Anita said casually. She nodded. “Yuh, I know.” She added, “Always has been, I suspect.”

  “Do you think so?” Fergus asked. He looked at her through his sunglasses. “Do you think it has always been this bad, really? It seems to me like things are getting crazier.”

  Anita shrugged. “I think they’ve always been crazy. That’s my view.”

  And so Fergus thought about this.

  After another few moments he said, “Things all right with you, Anita?”

  She gave a sigh that made her cheeks expand for a moment. “Nah.” She looked both ways on the road and said, “Gary’s been a mess since he got laid off, and that was a few years ago, and my kids are crazy.” She looked at Fergus and made a circle around her ear with her forefinger. She said, “I mean, they are really crazy.” She shook her head. “You know what my oldest son is into? He watches some Japanese reality show on his computer where the contestants sniff each other’s butts.”