Olive, Again: A Novel (22 page)

J
im and Helen Burgess flew from New York City to Maine in July with their eldest grandson, Ernie—he was seven years old—to take him to summer camp. They rented a car in Portland, and after dropping the boy off Helen wept a little bit in the car and kept telling Jim she thought the boy was too young to be going away for a month, and Jim said the kid would be all right. They were now on their way to Crosby, where Jim’s brother, Bob, lived with his second wife, Margaret. Helen had met Margaret only once before, a number of years ago when Bob brought Margaret to New York, and Helen had been aware—it was hard to miss—that Margaret had not liked the city at all, she had been afraid—afraid!—and after that, Bob came on his own to New York to visit; he came maybe once a year.

Helen had not been in the state of Maine for almost a decade, and she looked around with interest as they entered the town of Crosby. They had driven along the coast briefly; the spruce trees were standing skinny and straight on the islands, and the water sparkled like crazy, and now they were passing a few white clapboard houses and also brick houses. The sun was bright, and there was a display of some kind taking place on Main Street; there were booths and different people strolling around. “This is really pretty,” she said, and Jim said, Yeah, he guessed it was.

Bob’s house was not difficult to find; it was right off Main Street and was a large old brick house, four stories high. Now it was divided into condos, and as Helen stood on the steps in the afternoon sunshine she felt very glad to be there. But when she saw Margaret she could have just about fallen over; Margaret’s hair—which used to be a streaky blond and piled up sort of messily on her head—was all gray now, and cut right below her ears.

Margaret said “Hello!,” and Helen reached up to kiss her cheek, leaving a lipstick stain, which Helen then tried to rub out with her finger. “Whoopsie,” Helen said, but Margaret said “Oh, don’t worry,” and Helen and Jim followed her up a really steep set of stairs while Margaret was saying that Bob had gone to buy some wine, he’d be back in a minute. The carpet on the stairs was gray, and filthy—Helen was surprised—and then Helen, as she followed Margaret through the door to their apartment, was just as surprised at the place: It was small, only two rooms, a kitchen in one of them, and there was the oddest furniture in that room, a couch right in the kitchen area and two chairs matching, all very old-appearing, and the upholstery had big yellow areas on a red background, and then there was the small living room; apparently their bedroom was upstairs one more flight, there was a stairway in the living room, but Margaret didn’t say and Helen didn’t ask. “What a lovely place,” Helen said as she walked through it, because Jim had said nothing as he shook off his jacket and sat on the couch in the living room. “It’s okay,” said Margaret, and she shrugged, putting her hands forward in a gesture of welcome. “It’s ours.”

Helen thought she would go absolutely batty if she had to live in two rooms like this, although the windows were long, almost to the floor, and the view was quite nice, really, it looked right down on the park where the trees stood with their huge sprays of green leaves and a few children could be seen kicking a ball. “Oh, it’s so cozy,” Helen said, sitting down in a rocking chair whose upholstery had split open.

The door in the kitchen room squeaked, and then there was Bob, walking now into the living room. Jim rose and slapped his brother on the shoulder. “Slob-dog, how are you?” He asked this with an open-faced grin. “Looking good, kid,” Jim said to Bob, and Bob said, “You too,” even though Helen knew that Jim—always in good shape, and always a handsome man—had gained ten pounds during the last year, and she thought it made his eyes seem smallish. “Oh, Bobby,” Helen said, and after kissing him she touched her hand to his cheek. “Hel
lo,
Bobby,” she said. And Bob said, beaming, “Hello, Helen, welcome to Crosby, Maine.”

“It’s just lovely,” Helen said.

A number of years earlier, Bob Burgess had asked his wife—they had been married for five years at that time; Bob had moved up from New York City, where he had lived his entire adult life—if she would mind if they moved out of the town of Shirley Falls and went and lived in Crosby instead, an hour away, and as soon as he asked her this, he could see that she was crestfallen. He said immediately, “No, never mind,” but she asked him why he wanted to, and he answered her honestly: Shirley Falls just made him too sad. They were sitting in their living room at the time, and the ceiling was low, and the room received little natural light even in late June, which it was at the time of this conversation, and he looked around the room and said, “I’m sorry.”

Whenever he thought of that evening he felt a great love for this woman, his second wife, Margaret, the Unitarian minister, because she had continued to question him, and it turned out that what made him sad was not just that the place was so decimated as a town these days, all its Main Street shops closed for years now except for those that the Somalis had; it was not just this—the quiet sense of horror Bob felt at being in a city that had once been vibrant and filled with life—it was that it reminded him on some level all the time of his childhood there, and the car accident that had killed his father when Bob was only four years old. He had been surprised to realize that this was the source of his discomfort, but Margaret had not seemed surprised at all. “It makes sense, because you spent your whole life thinking you were the one who killed him,” she said, uncrossing her legs and crossing them again the other way. “And maybe I did,” said Bob. Margaret shrugged, and said almost hopefully, “And maybe you did.” This had always been the understanding in the family, that Bob had been responsible for the death of his father. But in fact Jim, four years older than Bob, had confessed to Bob a decade before that he—Jim—had been the one playing with the clutch when the car rolled down their driveway and struck their father, who had been checking the mailbox there. And, because Jim, Bob, and Susan—Bob’s twin sister—had grown up in northern New England, in a culture and during a time when no one mentioned these sorts of things, they had—accordingly—never spoken of the accident since it had happened. Until the day when Jim, in his fifties, had told Bob that he—Jim—had done it. And so Bob, as a result, had felt that he had lost something profound. His identity had been taken from him. This was Margaret’s idea, and he had seen immediately that she was right. In any case, she had agreed that day that they would move to the town of Crosby, about an hour away.

A coastal town, and pretty.

It was one o’clock, and the four of them decided they would go for a quick walk. The inn where Helen and Jim were staying that night was just two blocks away, so they all went to check them in; they would bring the bags later. The sidewalk was wide enough only for two people, and Jim walked with Margaret, Bob and Helen walking behind them. Helen said, “Bobby, the last time you came to New York, you were on your way to see Pam before you caught the train. I always meant to ask you, how did that go?” Pam was Bob’s first wife; they had remained friendly, much to Helen’s bafflement, and Bob said now, “Oh, she’s doing great. Yeah, it was great to see her.”

The inn had a large wraparound porch that a few people were sitting on in white rocking chairs, and Helen waved to them and they nodded back. The woman who checked them in was a pretty woman with glossy hair, and when she said she came from New York City originally, Helen was thrilled. “Do you like it up here?” Helen asked, and the woman said she did, she and her family loved it. The woman showed them their room; it was two rooms, really, with a small sitting room and two wingback chairs, then the bedroom. “Oh, how nice!” Helen said. After that, they walked for two more blocks, up Dyer Road, where the trees lined both sides of the street, then walked the back way to Main Street. Helen said, “What a
sweet
town, Bobby,” as they went up those awful filthy stairs to the apartment.

The plan was this: Jim and Bob were going to go to Shirley Falls, and they would be back for dinner. Their sister, Susan, still lived there—she had never left—and because Susan and Helen didn’t especially get along, it had been decided—before the trip, Margaret had offered this—that Helen and Margaret would stay in Crosby and walk through the art display that was being featured on the sidewalks of the town this weekend and then the brothers would meet up with them in a few hours. “Bye, bye,” said Helen, and she gave both men a kiss; Margaret just waved a hand.

Anyway, Helen and Margaret sat in the living room for a few minutes; Helen fingered her gold earring and said “So, how
are
you?” and Margaret said that she and Bob were both just fine. “How are
you
?” Margaret asked, and Helen said she was worried about little Ernie; then Helen brought out her phone and showed Margaret pictures of her grandchildren, Margaret putting on the pair of glasses she wore attached to a black string over her large bosom, peering at the phone and saying, Oh, they were just adorable, weren’t they. “I’ll probably talk about them too much,” Helen said, and Margaret took her glasses off and said, “Oh, no worries,” so Helen showed her two more pictures, then she put her phone away and said, “Shall we go?” And Margaret got her handbag and off they went.

As soon as they were out of Crosby and driving on the back roads to Shirley Falls, Bob felt a happiness rise in him—it overtook the apprehension he had been feeling earlier—and now he was just happy. His brother drove. “Jimmy, it’s so good to see you up here,” Bob said, and his brother turned and smiled at him laconically. “You’re all right, right?” Bob asked then, because he was suddenly aware of something slightly different about his brother—he couldn’t put his finger on it—but it was as though Jim was not
quite
there.

“I’m fine,” Jim said. “Tell me what you’re up to.”

So Bob told him—which Jim already knew—that he still drove to Shirley Falls three days a week to work arraignments, and Jim asked if he had many Somali clients, and Bob said a few but not many. The Somalis had moved to Maine almost twenty years earlier, settling in Shirley Falls because they thought it was safe. Bob had recently had a case where a Somali woman was accused of welfare fraud, and Jim seemed interested in this.

Jim, who had gone to Harvard Law School on a full scholarship, who had been famous at the height of his career for successfully defending the singer Wally Packer after Wally was accused of killing his girlfriend, these days did only a few small defense cases, and when Bob asked him about them now, Jim just waved a hand dismissively. Instead, Jim asked, “What did you think of Helen? You think she looks okay?”

“She looks great,” Bob said. “She’s always looked great. She looks smaller, but not much older.”

“She looks smaller because I’ve gotten bigger,” Jim said. “Nice of you not to say anything.”

“You look pretty good, Jimmy.”

After a moment Jim said, “What’s with Margaret’s hair?”

“Oh.” Bob let out a sigh. “She said she was tired of worrying about it, so she let it go natural and cut it off.”