Olive said, “Go on.”
After a moment Isabelle sat forward again and said that she had packed everything up one day and driven up the coast to Shirley Falls, Maine.
“I told you I went to high school in Shirley Falls,” Olive interrupted. “I came from the little town of West Annett and I went to high school there, and so did my husband.” Isabelle waited, her swollen fingers draped over the top of her cane. Olive said, “Okay, keep going. I won’t stop you again.”
Well, said Isabelle, she knew no one in that town when she first arrived, and she guessed that was the point. But she was very lonely. She found a babysitter for her little girl, and she got a job working in the office room of a shoe factory, she was the secretary to the man who ran that department, and the room was filled with women. “I thought I was better than they were,” Isabelle said. “I really did. For years, I worked with these women, and I thought, Well, my grades in high school were very good, I would have been a teacher if I’d not had Amy, and these women could never be teachers. I would think things like that,” she said, and she looked directly at Olive again.
Olive thought: By God, she’s honest.
The women in the office room, though, turned out to be real friends. When Amy was sixteen years old, there was a crisis. Isabelle found out that Amy had been having a relationship with her math teacher. “A sexual one,” Isabelle said. Isabelle had become furious. “Do you know what I did?” She looked at Olive, and Olive saw that the woman’s eyes were smaller and becoming red.
“Tell me,” Olive said.
“Amy had always had beautiful hair. Long, wavy yellow hair, her father’s hair, not mine, and when I found out about that math teacher—Olive, I walked into that girl’s bedroom with a pair of shears—and—and I cut her hair off.” Isabelle looked away and took her glasses off and drew a hand across her eyes.
“Huh.” Olive considered this. “Well, I guess I can understand,” she said.
“Can you?” Isabelle looked at her, putting her glasses back on. “I can’t. Oh, I mean I did it, so I should understand it, but, oh, the memory haunts me, what a thing to do to that child!”
“Does she like you now?” Olive asked.
And Isabelle’s face broke into gladness. “Oh, she loves me. I don’t understand how she can, I really was not a good mother, I was so quiet and she had no friends, but yes, she lives in Des Moines now, and she has one son who is thirty-five and living in California doing computer stuff. But yes, Amy does love me, and she’s the reason I can afford this place.”
Olive asked to see a photograph of the girl, and Isabelle pointed behind Olive, and Olive turned around and saw a whole array of photos. The girl was much older than Olive would have pictured, but then she remembered how young Isabelle was when she had her. Amy wore her grayish hair short now, but her face was full and had a sweetness to it. “Huh,” Olive said. She looked at the photos carefully.
“Well, I wasn’t a good mother either,” Olive said, turning back to face Isabelle. “But my son loves me. Now. After I had my heart attack he seemed to grow up.” She said, “What does Amy do?”
Isabelle said, “She’s a doctor. She’s an oncologist.”
“My word,” Olive said. “Well, that’s something. Working with cancer patients all day, my goodness.”
“Oh, I think it has to be very hard, but she seems to find it fascinating. You know, her first little boy, he died when he was eighteen months old. Not of cancer. SIDS. And she was in nursing school, and then she just kept right on going. She’s married to a doctor as well. He’s a pediatrician.”
Somehow Olive found this astonishing. She said, “Well, my son is also a doctor, in New York City.”
“New York!” Isabelle said, and asked what kind of doctor he was.
“A podiatrist,” said Olive. Adding, “People walk a lot in New York. He has a blazing practice.” She looked over at the many little figurines that were on a shelf by the window.
“Those were my mother’s,” Isabelle said.
“So when did you marry?” Olive asked, looking back at her.
“Oh, I married a wonderful man, he was a pharmacist—”
“I married a pharmacist!” Olive almost yelled this. “My husband’s pharmacy was right here in Crosby, and he was a lovely, lovely man. Henry was made of love.”
“So was my husband,” Isabelle said. “I married him right about the time Amy went to college. He died last year, and our house was just too much for me, and so Amy got me into this place.”
“Well,” said Olive. “Well, well, well. We both married pharmacists.”
Isabelle said, “My husband’s name was Frank.”
“And he was a Franco,” said Olive. “What we used to call a Frenchie.” And Isabelle said yes, and wasn’t that funny, because back when she worked in that shoe factory, thinking she was superior to the women who worked there, she would never have thought she’d marry a Franco. But she did. And he was wonderful. He’d had a wife who’d died very young, before they’d had any children, and what this man did after his wife died, every day in the spring and summer and fall, was to go home after work—he and this young wife had had a house outside of Shirley Falls with fields all around—and he would get on his mower and he just mowed those fields. Mowed and mowed and mowed. And then he met Isabelle.
“Did he stop mowing?” Olive asked.
Isabelle said, “He didn’t mow as much.”
Olive felt a warmth move through her; she stuck her cane onto the ground and pushed herself out of the chair. “Well, I like the sunlight you get here,” she said.
* * *
Then something happened that made Olive far more concerned than the lack of sun in her apartment. Olive’s bowels began to leak. She had first had this occur at night, it had woken her each time with a terrific sense of dread, and then one day on her way out of the dining room, she thought: I’d better hurry back to the bathroom, but she didn’t get there quite in time. For Olive, this was absolutely appalling.
She rose at six in the morning the next day and got into her car—she passed Barbara Paznik and her husband, who were out walking, and Barbara waved with enthusiasm—and Olive drove to the Walmart far out of town. Walking as quickly as she could with her cane, she bought a box of those atrocious diapers for old people, and she brought them back and put them in the top of her bathroom closet. She wondered when she should put one on. She never knew when these episodes would occur.
A few nights later after supper, as she and Isabelle walked down the hallway, she felt the urge, and when Isabelle said, “Do you want to come in?,” Olive said, “Yes, and hurry,” and she walked directly into Isabelle’s bathroom. “Whew,” she said, and as she was straightening herself out a few minutes later, she glanced up and saw—a box of Depends!
Olive came out and sat down and said, “Isabelle Goodrow Daignault. You wear those foolish diapers for old people,” and Isabelle’s face became pink. Olive said, “Well, so do I! Or at least I’d better start occasionally wearing them.”
Isabelle pushed her glasses up her nose with the back of her swollen wrist and said, “My bladder can’t seem to control itself, so I had to start wearing them. Not always, but at night I do.”
Olive said, “Well, my back end leaks, I’d say that was far worse.”
Isabelle’s mouth opened in dismay. “Oh, good heavens, Olive. That is worse.”
“I guess to God it is. And I think after I eat is when this happens. Honest to good God, Isabelle. I’m going to have to make sure I have my foolish poopie panties on. Even my granddaughter’s outgrown them—years ago!”
Isabelle seemed to enjoy that; she laughed until tears came from her eyes. Then she told Olive how she was always embarrassed to buy them when she took the van to the store with the other old people (she did not have a car); she always tried to sneak off and get them, an
d Olive said, “Hell, I’ll buy all you want, I go to Walmart when it opens at six in the morning is what I do.”
“Olive.” Isabelle let out a sigh. “I’m awful glad I met you.”
* * *
—
When Olive returned to her apartment she didn’t write up any memories; she just sat in the chair and watched her birds at the feeder outside her window and thought that she was not unhappy.
* * *
And so the year went by. At Christmas, Olive met Amy Goodrow and her husband, who was Asian—Olive already knew this from the photographs—and she was surprised by Amy in person; there was something at once kind about her, but also cool. Olive didn’t know what to make of her, but she told Isabelle after they had left—they had flown into town for three days—that she was a nice girl. “Oh, she is wonderful,” Isabelle said, and Olive thought about that, how much Isabelle adored this girl.
Olive’s own family stayed in New York for Christmas. “They have all those little kids and the tree and all that foolishness,” Olive told Isabelle. And Isabelle said, “Of course they do.”
* * *
Another spring slowly arrived.
One evening Olive noticed that Bernie Green had some guests with him at supper. She watched from the doorway as she entered. They were a couple, maybe in their fifties, but as she watched she suddenly realized: Why, that’s the Larkin girl! So Olive walked over to their table, and she said, “Hello, are you the Larkin girl?”
And the woman looked up at her, closing her dark red cardigan with one hand, and said, tentatively, “Yes?”
Olive said, “I thought so. You look like your mother. I’m Olive Kitteridge. She used to be a guidance counselor at the school where I worked.”
The woman said, “Well, I’m Suzanne, and this is my husband.” The man nodded at Olive pleasantly. Olive thought Suzanne was a pretty thing, though she seemed to Olive to have a pulse of sadness going through her.
“Do you know—oh, this was years ago now—” Olive sat down at the empty chair at the table. “Your mother called me a cunt.”
Suzanne Larkin’s hand went to her throat, and she looked at her husband, and then at Bernie. Bernie started to chuckle.
“Oh, I deserved it,” Olive said. “I went to see her after my first husband died, and I went there because I thought her problems were worse than my own, and she knew that was why I was there, it was extraordinary, really, I never forgot it. But my word, what a word to use.”
Suzanne Larkin looked at Olive, and then a sudden kindness came to her face. “I’m so sorry about that,” she said.
And Olive said there was no reason to be sorry at all.
“She just passed away this week,” the girl said.
“Oh Godfrey,” Olive said. Then she said, “Well, I’m sorry. For you.”
And the girl reached to touch Olive’s hand lightly. “No reason to be sorry.” She leaned in toward Olive. “At all.”
* * *
Mostly, Olive and Isabelle spoke of their husbands, and also a little bit of their childhoods; Olive had told Isabelle right away that her father had killed himself in the kitchen of his house when Olive was thirty years old, and Isabelle’s face had shown genuine sorrow. This was important to Olive; had the woman appeared judgmental, Olive thought they might have stopped being friends. Only seldom did they mention their grandchildren, and one day Olive asked Isabelle why she didn’t talk more about her grandson, the fellow in California doing computer stuff. Isabelle put her hand to her chin as though thinking about this. “Well, talking about grandchildren can be boring for others, and also—” Here Isabelle sighed and looked around Olive’s living room—they traded off their places to visit—and said, “And also, I don’t really know him very well. The truth is, Olive, Amy is good to me, but she does live in Iowa, and I sometimes think when a child moves that far away they’re really trying to get away from something, and in this case I suspect it’s me.”
Only then—in a certain way—did Olive fully understand why Christopher lived in New York City. “I guess you’re right,” she said slowly, the pain of this a reticulation spreading through her. And then she thought about Amy. That’s what her slight coolness had been: Amy loved her mother, but she was not close to her. The things that happen in childhood do not go away.
“I love my grandson,” Isabelle was saying. “Oh, I do, but he’s not really a part of my life.”
Olive swung her foot up and down. After a minute she told Isabelle how she had written a letter to Little Henry and one to his older brother, who had suddenly been nice to Olive, and they had both written back, and then she got a call from Christopher saying, “Mom, you need to write the girls as well.” And Olive had been stung by that, so she wrote the girls, and never heard a thing back from them.
Isabelle listened, and shook her head slowly. “I don’t know, Olive,” she said.
And Olive said, “I don’t either.”
* * *
And then one day Isabelle did not show up for supper. Olive went and banged on her door, and Isabelle came to the door—though it took her a long time—and she had bruises up and down her arm, which she showed to Olive as soon as Olive got inside. “Oh, Olive,” she said. “I fell.” And she told Olive how she had been getting into the shower when she fell and for a few moments it seemed she wouldn’t be able to get up, but she did, and now she was very scared. Tears glistened behind her glasses. “I’m scared they’ll move me over the bridge,” she said. And Olive understood.
* * *
—
That day they each gave the other an extra key to their apartments, and it was decided that every morning and every evening one of them would slip the key into the other’s door and make sure the other was okay, and then just walk out. Olive was surprised at the amount of safety she felt the first time—that night—when she heard her door open at eight o’clock and saw Isabelle walking into her bedroom. Olive waved, and Isabelle waved, and then Isabelle walked out. So it got like that. Olive checked on Isabelle at eight in the morning, and Isabelle checked on her at eight every night. During these times they seldom spoke, just gave a wave, and they both agreed it worked out well.
* * *
One day Olive opened the door to Isabelle’s apartment—it was a little earlier than usual, Olive had been up for hours—and just as she was about to holler “It’s only me,” she heard Isabelle talking, and so she almost walked out, thinking Isabelle had a friend over.
But then Olive heard this: Isabelle, speaking in a baby voice, said, “Mommy, do you think I’m a good girl?”
And then Isabelle’s voice changed to a calm, adult voice, and she said, “Yes, honey. I think you’re an awfully good girl. I really do.”
Isabelle’s baby voice again: “Okay, Mommy, that makes me happy. I try to be a good girl.”
Isabelle’s adult calm voice: “And you succeed. You’re a very good girl.”
Baby voice: “Mommy, I need to take a shower.”
Adult voice: “Okay, honey. You can do that.”
Baby voice: “I can? Because sometimes I get scared. That I’ll fall or something, Mommy.”
Adult voice: “Oh, I understand that, honey. But you’ll be okay. You can do it.”
Baby voice: “Okay, Mommy. Thank you, Mommy. You’re awfully good to me.”
And then Olive saw Isabelle start moving toward the bathroom, and very quietly, so quietly that Olive felt the tension ripple right down her back, Olive closed the door, hearing it click, and she waited outside the door of Isabelle’s apartment, and after a few moments she heard the shower running, and so Olive went back down the hall to her room.
Sitting in her wingback chair by the window, Olive kept hearing Isabelle talking to herself in those two different voices; a chill kept going down her arms. Was the woman schizoid? Olive could not stop herself from feeling a deep fear.
Maybe Isabelle was going dopey-dope. Another chill ran down Olive’s leg.
* * *
—
That afternoon, Olive said to Isabelle, as they sat in Olive’s apartment, “I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot.”
Isabelle looked pleasantly at Olive. “Have you?” she said. When Olive didn’t answer, Isabelle said, “What is it you’ve been thinking, Olive?”
And Olive said, with a small shrug, “I don’t think my mother ever really liked me. I guess she loved me, but I don’t know if she liked me.”
Isabelle said, “Oh, Olive, that’s sad.”
So Olive just took the bull by the horns and said, “What about your mother, Isabelle? Tell me more what she was like.”
And Isabelle did not change her expression; she just said, “Oh, she loved me. But you know, Olive, I disappointed her. With my pregnancy so early on, that was very hard on my mother. And then she died. And it was very sad, Olive, it’s made me sad all these years, because I would have liked her to live long enough to see that Amy—oh, that Amy is a doctor, and so smart, and I would have liked her to know about my marriage to Frank. She would have felt so much better.”
“Yes,” Olive said. “Well, that’s life. Nothing you can do about it.”
“No.” Isabelle shook her head appreciatively. “That’s true. But I miss her these days. Somehow especially these days. Sometimes I talk to her—I even have her talk to me. The way she always would when I was little.” Isabelle shook her head slowly; light reflected off her glasses as she looked at Olive. “It comforts me. And it gets mixed up with my being a mother to Amy, because I don’t think I was such a good mother to her. You know, I’ve told you that before.”
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