Olive, Again: A Novel (17 page)

“When to shut up, mainly.”

“What things do you shut up about?” Cindy asked, and Olive seemed to think about it, and then she said, “Well, for example, when he has his breakfast, I don’t say to him, Jack, why the
hell
do you have to scrape your bowl so hard.”

Cindy asked, “How long have you been married?”

“Coming up to almost two years, I guess. Imagine at my age, starting over again.” Olive put the towel in her lap and raised one opened hand slightly. “But it’s never starting over, Cindy, it’s just continuing on.”

For quite a while they sat in silence, and the rain could be heard on the roof. And then Olive said, “I don’t imagine you want to think of Tom starting over.”

Cindy let out a great sigh. “Oh, Mrs. Kitteridge, I can’t stand to think of him alone. I can’t stand it, really, I can’t. He’d be just a— Oh, he’d be like a big huge baby all alone, and that breaks my heart. But that he might
be
with someone, it breaks my heart more.”

Olive nodded as though she understood this. “You know, Cindy, you and Tom grew up together. Henry and I were like that. Eighteen when we met, twenty-one when we married, and the truth is—that’s who you lived with, that never ever goes away.” Olive gave a shrug. “It just doesn’t.”

“Do you talk about Henry to Jack Kennison?”

Olive looked at her. “Oh, yes. When Jack and I first met, we talked about his wife and my husband nonstop. Nonstop.”

“Was that uncomfortable?”

“God, no. It was wonderful.”

Cindy lay silent for a while. “I don’t know that I want to be talked about.”

Olive shrugged. “Not much you can do about it, if it comes to that. But I’ll tell you this, you will be sainted. You will become an absolute saint.”

Cindy laughed. She laughed! And Olive, after a moment, laughed as well.

Then Cindy said, “Your son. Does he like this Jack Kennison?”

Olive said nothing for a moment. Then she said, “No, he does not. But I don’t think he likes me much either. Even before I married Jack.”

“Oh, Olive, I’m sorry.”

Olive’s foot was bobbing up and down. “Ay-yuh,” she said. “Nothing to do about it at this point.”

Cindy hesitated, and then she asked, “Were things always bad with your son?”

Olive tilted her head as though thinking about this, and then she said, “I really don’t know. I don’t think so. Not for a while. Maybe things started with his first wife.”

After a minute, Cindy—who’d turned her gaze toward the window, and saw the grayness of the sleet that was splattering against it—said, “Well, I’m sure you didn’t scream and yell a lot like my mother did. She was difficult, Olive. But then, she had a difficult life.” She turned her face back to Olive.

And Olive said, “Oh, I think I did scream and yell a lot.”

Cindy opened her mouth, but Olive continued. “I can’t honestly remember, but I think I did. I was pretty awful when I felt like it. My son probably thinks I’m a difficult woman, like you think your mother was.”

“Well, I still loved her,” Cindy said.

“Yuh. And I suppose Christopher loves me.” Olive shook her head slowly. The two women were silent for a few minutes. Olive held the towel in her lap.

Then Olive leaned forward and said quietly, “I will tell you this, Cindy. There are times I miss Henry so much I feel that I can’t breathe.” She sat back, and Cindy thought there might be tears in her eyes. Olive blinked, then she finally said, “I miss him so much, Cindy, right out of the blue—and it’s not because Jack isn’t good to me, he is, mostly—but something will happen and I will think
Henry
.”

“I’m awfully glad you came over,” Cindy said. “You wouldn’t believe the people who don’t come over to see me.”

“Yes, I would. Believe it.”

“But why don’t they come see me? I mean, Olive. Old
friends
don’t even come see me.”

“They’re scared.”

“Well, too bad!”

“Oh, I agree. I agree with you about that.”

“But you’re not scared.”

“Nope.”

“Even though you’re scared of dying.”

“That’s right,” Olive said.

The weather remained nasty; the wind whistled through the windows and it rained and then snowed briefly and then rained again. To Cindy it seemed like this went on for days. In the mail during this time she received a card from the librarians she had worked with. It had a flower on it, and inside it said, Get Well Soon! And everyone had signed their names. Cindy threw it into the wastebasket. The nurse came and changed the bed, and Cindy was glad to see her; they spoke briefly and companionably. But when the nurse finally left, Cindy got back into bed and pulled the covers up almost over her head. She listened to Pandora on her phone, with her earplugs in, which was something she did more and more. There was no sense today that she could read a book; she did not want to read a book. And she did not want to watch any movie on the iPad that Tom had bought her for that purpose.

Then she took her phone and texted her sons, who were both at the university. One more to go, she wrote, I love you both!! And in a few minutes, they had both texted back, We love you too, Mom. Her older boy texted again and said, Good luck with the last one! And she wrote back, Thank you honey!, and sent him a kiss emoticon. She wanted to write more, to say, But I really really
REALLY
love you! But there was no point in that. There were so many things that could not be said, and this had occurred to Cindy with more frequency and it made her heart ache. But she was very tired, and in a way that helped her, for she gave herself over to it, listening to her music on her phone. When she dozed, she did not feel herself fall asleep, and so she was surprised when she woke up.

Toward the end of the day, Anita stopped by on her way home from work, and Cindy sat at the kitchen table with her. Anita’s husband—Tom’s brother—might be losing his job, and Cindy said, “Anita, you have a lot of stuff going on,” and Anita said, “I do. And so do you,” and then Anita laughed; she had a burble of a laugh, and she pushed her glasses up her nose, and Cindy put her hand over Anita’s. “And Maria with those tattoos,” Anita said. “Up and down each arm, and I told her, Well, you just wait till that arm gets flabby. And she said, I’m getting them on my butt too—” Tom came through the door then, and Cindy asked if Anita wanted to stay for supper, and Anita said, “God, I would
love
to stay for supper.” And she got up and put her coat on. “But I got to feed that freakin’ family of mine.”

The next day the sun came out. It shone brightly as Cindy walked across the driveway to the car with Tom, who had taken the morning off to go with her for her last treatment, and she noticed the sun but almost nothing else, and she didn’t say much to Tom as he drove her to the hospital. Once there she sat as she had before, for more than an hour while the stuff was dripped into her, then Tom helped her get back into the car and he said, “I’m going to stay right with you, Cindy. All day.” Back at the house, Cindy got into bed, and pretty soon Tom came up the stairs and sat on the bed next to her. He was eating an apple, and Cindy could not stand the sound of it. He crunched the apple, and there were slurping sounds too, and she finally said, “Tom, can you finish that apple somewhere else?” And he looked hurt, and said, “Okay,” and went back downstairs.

Exactly a week after Cindy’s final treatment, Olive Kitteridge showed up, and she said, “Congratulations. What’s next?”

“A scan in three months. So we wait.”

“Okay, then.” After a moment, Olive said, “Jack and I had a fight. Boy, it was a whopper.”

Cindy said, “Oh, Olive, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yuh, well, I’m sorry to report it. It had to do with our friends. Our social life, as Jack put it.”

Cindy lay back on her cushions and watched Olive. Her face seemed to be moving; she was distressed. “You want to tell me?” Cindy asked.

“Well, he has these friends from his former life, the Rutledges, and I said the other night after we’d had dinner with them, There’s nothing wrong with Marianne Rutledge that a pin wouldn’t fix.” Here Olive raised her hand, fingers together, and made a jabbing motion in the air. “So stuffed up on herself, that woman, honest to good God. And he took offense! He took offense, and
then
he said, Well, Olive, your friends are rather provincial. He said that. He said that they never asked him about himself—God, what a male thing to say!—and that he found them to be pro-vin-ci-al. And I told him what was provincial was the fact that he cared that his daughter is gay—that he should be ashamed about calling anyone provincial when he feels that way, I said it’s more than provincial, Mr. Harvard Smarty Pants, it puts you right back in the Dark Ages. I got so furious that I got into the car and drove, and do you know where I thought I was driving to? Home! I thought I was going to drive back to where I used to live with Henry, and it took me a few minutes to realize that that house isn’t even there anymore. So I drove out to the Point, and I sat in the car, and I bawled like a baby, and then I drove back to Jack’s house, well, our house, I suppose, and— Here’s the thing. He was waiting for me, and he felt terrible. He felt
awful
that he had said those things.

“And I had been thinking about it on the drive back to the house, and I realized I’m a peasant and Jack is not. I mean, it’s a class thing. So when I got back and saw that he was so sorry, I told him that, the business about this being a class thing, very calmly, and do you know? We must have talked for two hours straight, we just talked and talked, and he said he was kind of a peasant too, and that’s why he was so sensitive about people being provincial, because all his life he had deep down felt provincial, and he didn’t want to be. He said, I’m a snob, Olive, and I’m not proud of that. His father was a doctor, you know, outside of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and I thought that was hardly being a peasant, but his father was a general practitioner with an office in the back of their rather small house, and Jack said he felt like he never fit into the school there, and then his first wife, Betsy, well, she
was
to the manor born, she was from Philadelphia, a Bryn Mawr girl—”

Olive stopped talking. Then she said, “Well, we had a wonderful talk, is what happened.”

“I’m glad,” Cindy said. “But, Olive, what do you mean, you’re a peasant?”

“Well, I mean, I am not all la-di-da. My father never graduated from high school, though my mother was a teacher. But we were small-time people, and I’m proud of it. Now you better tell
me
something,” Olive said.

So Cindy told Olive that her hair should start coming back within a month. It would look like fuzz for a while, but then it would come back, and Olive looked at her with interest, nodding slightly.

Then Olive said, “Say, I’ve been meaning to ask. What about your sisters, Cindy? What happened to them? Didn’t you have a sister? Or two?”

Cindy was surprised that Olive remembered. She said, “Yes. One of them lives in Florida. She’s a waitress. And my little sister died many years ago—” Cindy hesitated, then said, “Of a drug overdose.” She added, “She’d had issues for years.”

Olive Kitteridge looked at her, and after a moment she gave a small shake of her head. “Godfrey,” she said. She crossed her ankles, turning her rump slightly on the chair. “Well, then I guess they don’t come and see you.”

“My sister-in-law comes. Anita. Honestly, Olive? She’s the only person other than you who has come to see me consistently.”

“Anita Coombs,” Olive said. “Sure, I know who she is. Works in the town clerk’s office.”

“That’s right.”

“Nice person. She always seemed that to me.”

“Oh, she’s wonderful,” said Cindy. “Boy, she has some problems. But who doesn’t?” And then Cindy sat up straighter, and she said, “Olive, did you tell me about that fight you had with Jack Kennison because you think I’m going to die?”

Olive looked at her with what seemed to be genuine surprise. After a moment she said, crossing her ankles the other way, “No, I told you because I’m an old woman who likes to talk about herself, and there was really no one else I felt comfortable telling.”