Olive, Again Read online

  As she opened the back door of her car, Olive saw the girl’s face and realized: This is it. This girl was going to have her baby. “Take your pants off,” Olive said to her. “Now. Take them off.” Ashley tried, but she was writhing in pain, and Olive looked through her bag, her hands shaking, and found the shears she always carried with her. “Lie back.” Olive leaned into the car, but she was afraid she would poke the girl’s belly with the shears, so she went around to the door on the other side and opened that, and she was able to cut the pants successfully. Then she walked back around the car again and pulled the pants off the girl. “Stay lying back,” she said firmly, oh, she was a schoolteacher all right.

  The girl spread her knees, and Olive stared. She was amazed. Pudendum went through her mind. She had never seen a young woman’s—pudendum. My word! The amount of hair—and it was—well, it was wide open! There was blood and gooey stuff coming out; what a thing! Ashley was making grunting sounds, and Olive said, “Okay, okay, stay calm.” She had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do. “Stay calm!” She yelled this. She reached and touched Ashley’s knees, opening them more. In a few minutes—Olive had no idea how many minutes—Ashley let out a huge sound, a large groan and screech combined. And out slipped something.

  Olive thought the girl had not delivered a baby at all, but rather some lumpish thing, almost like clay. Then Olive saw the face, the eyes, the arms— “Oh my goodness,” she said. “You have a baby.”

  She was hardly aware of the man’s hand on her shoulder as he said, “All right then, let’s see what we have.” He was from the ambulance, she had not even heard it drive in. But when she turned and saw his face, so in charge, she felt a rush of love for him. Marlene stood on the lawn, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Olive,” she said. “Oh, my word.”

  * * *

  Olive stood up now and walked through her house. It felt no longer a house but more a nest where a mouse lived. It had felt this way for a long time. She sat down in the small kitchen, then she got up and walked past “the bump-out room,” as she and Henry had called it, now with the purple quilt spread messily on the large window seat—this is where Olive had slept since her husband’s death—and then she went back to the living room, where pale water streaks from last winter’s snow showed on the wallpaper near the fireplace. She sat on the big chair by the window and rocked her foot up and down. The evenings were interminable these days, and she remembered when she had loved the long evenings. Across the bay the sun twinkled, now low in the sky. A shaft of light cut over the floorboards and onto the rug in the living room.

  Olive’s unease grew; she could almost not stand it. She rocked her foot higher and higher, and then when the sky had just turned dark she said out loud, “Let’s get this over with.” She dialed Jack Kennison’s number. She had lain down beside the man almost a month ago; it still felt like she had dreamed it. Well, if Bertha Babcock answered the phone, Olive would just hang up. Or if any woman did.

  Jack answered on the second ring. “Hello?” he said, sounding bored. “Is this Olive Kitteridge calling?”

  “How did you know that?” she asked; a wave of terror went through her as though he could see her sitting in her house.

  “Oh, I have a thing called caller ID, so I always know who’s calling. And this says—hold on, let me take another look—yes, this says ‘Henry Kitteridge.’ And we know it can’t be Henry. So I thought perhaps it was you. Hello, Olive. How are you tonight? I’m very glad you called. I was wondering if we’d ever speak again. I’ve missed you, Olive.”

  “I delivered a baby two days ago.” Olive said this sitting on the edge of her chair, looking through the window at the darkened bay.

  There was a moment before Jack said, “You did? You delivered a baby?”

  She told him the story, leaning back a bit, holding the phone with one hand, then switching it to the other. Jack roared with laughter. “I love that, Olive. My God, you delivered a baby. That’s wonderful!”

  “Well, when I called my son and told him, he didn’t think it was so wonderful. He sounded— I don’t know how he sounded. Just wanted to talk about himself.”

  She felt she heard Jack considering this. Then he said, “Oh, Olive, that boy of yours is a great disappointment.”

  “Yes, he is,” she said.

  “Come over,” Jack told her. “Get in your car and come on over to see me.”

  “Now? It’s dark out.”

  “If you don’t drive in the dark, I’ll come pick you up,” he said.

  “I still drive in the dark. I’ll see you soon. Goodbye,” she said, and hung up. She went and got her new jacket that was hanging in the bathroom, the spot was dry.

  * * *

  Jack was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and his arms looked flabby. His stomach seemed huge beneath his shirt, but Olive’s stomach was big too; she knew this. At least her hind end was covered up. Jack’s blue eyes twinkled slightly as he bowed and ushered her inside. “Hello, Olive.”

  Olive wished she had not come.

  “May I take your jacket?” he asked, and she said, “Nope.” She added, “It’s part of my outfit.”

  She saw him look at her jacket, and he said, “Very nice.”

  “I made it yesterday,” she said, and Jack said, “You made that?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, I’m impressed. Have a seat.” And Jack brought her into the living room, where the windows were dark from the outside. He nodded to an armchair and sat down in the one opposite it. “You’re nervous,” he said. And just as she was about to answer him what in hell did she have to be nervous about, he said, “I am too.” Then he added, “But we’re grown-ups, and we’ll manage.”

  “I suppose we will,” she said. She thought he could have been nicer about her new jacket. Looking around, she was disappointed at what she saw: a wooden carved duck, a lampshade with a ruffle—had this stuff been there all along? It must have been and she had not noticed it; how could she not have noticed such foolishness?

  “My daughter’s upset with me,” Jack said. “I told you that she’s a lesbian.”

  “Yes, you did. And I told you—”

  “I know, Olive. You told me I was a beast to care. And I thought about it, and I decided you were right. So I called her a few days ago and I tried, I tried—in a goofy way—to tell her that I knew I was a shit. She’d have none of it. I suppose she thinks I’m just so lonely with her mother gone that now I’ve decided to accept her.” Jack sighed; he looked tired, and he put a hand over his thinning hair.

  “Is that true?” Olive asked.

  “Well, I wondered. I gave it some thought. And I don’t know. It could be true. But it’s also true that your response got me thinking.” Jack shook his head slowly, looking down at his socks, which made Olive look down at them as well, and she was surprised to see his toe sticking out of a hole in one. His toenail needed to be cut. “God, that’s unattractive,” he said. He covered his toe with his other foot briefly, then let it loose. “My point here is— Children. Your son. My daughter. They don’t like us, Olive.”

  Olive considered this. “No,” she finally agreed. “I don’t think Christopher does like me. Why is that?”

  Jack said, looking up at her, his head on one hand, “You were a crummy mother? Who knows, Olive? He could have just been born that way too.”

  Olive sat and looked at her hands, which she held together on her lap.

  Jack said, “Wait a minute. Didn’t he just have a new baby?”

  “It died. She had to wait and push the baby out dead.”

  “Oh, Olive, that’s awful. God, that’s an awful thing.” Now Jack sat up straight.

  “Yup. It is.” Olive whisked some lint off the knee of her black pants.

  “Well, maybe that’s why he didn’t want to hear you talking about how you delivered one.” Jack
gave a shrug. “I’m just saying—”

  “No. You’re right. Of course.” The thought had not occurred to her, and she felt her face grow warm. “Anyway, she’s trying to get pregnant again and this one will be born in a pool. A little kiddie swimming pool. That’s what he told me.”

  Jack leaned his head back and laughed. Olive was surprised at the sound of his laughter—it was so genuine.

  “Jack.” She spoke sharply.

  “Yes, Olive?” He said this with dry humor.

  “I have to tell you how stupid that baby shower was. Marlene’s daughter—well, the poor girl sat in a chair and put all her ribbons on a paper plate and then every single damned gift had to be passed around from one woman to the next. Every single gift! And everyone said, Oh, how lovely, and isn’t that nice, and honest to good God, Jack, I thought I would die.”

  He watched her for a moment, then his eyes crinkled with mirth.

  “Olive,” he finally said, “I don’t know where you’ve been. I tried calling you a few times, and I thought perhaps you’d gone to New York to see your grandson. You don’t have an answering machine? I could have sworn you did, I’ve left you messages on it before.”

  “I’ve never seen my grandson,” Olive said. “And of course I have an answering machine.” Then Olive said, “Oh. I turned it off one day, someone kept calling me about a vacation I’d won. Maybe I never turned it back on.” She understood now that this was true; she had never turned the damned machine back on.

  Jack was quiet; he studied his toenail. Then he looked up and said, “Well. Let’s get you a cellphone. I will buy it for you, and I will show you how to use it. Now, why haven’t you seen your grandson?”

  A ripple of something went through Olive, almost a fleeting sense of unreality. This man, Jack Kennison, was going to buy her a cellphone! She said, “Because I haven’t been invited. I told you how badly things went when I went to New York before.”

  “Yes, you did. Have you invited them to come see you?”

  “No.” Olive looked at the lampshade with its ruffle around the bottom.

  “Why don’t you do that?”

  “Because they have those three kids, I told you—she had two different kids with two different men—and they have Little Henry now, and I’m sure they couldn’t make the trip.”

  Jack opened a hand. “Maybe not. But I think it would be nice for you to invite them.”

  “They don’t need to be invited, they can just come.” Olive put both hands on the armchair’s armrests, then put them back in her lap.

  Jack leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Olive, sometimes people like to be invited. I, for example, would have loved to be invited to your house on many occasions, but you’ve not invited me except for that one time when I asked you to take me over. And so I have felt rebuffed. Do you see that?”

  Olive exhaled loudly. “You could have called.”

  “Olive, I just told you I did call. I called you a couple of times, and because you turned off your friggin’ answering machine, you didn’t know I called.” He sat back and wagged a finger at her. “Only pointing out here that people can’t read your mind. And I sent you an email as well.”

  “Ay-yuh,” Olive said. “Well, I don’t call a bunch of question marks an email.”

  “I like you, Olive.” Jack gave her half a smile, then shook his head slightly. “I’m not sure why, really. But I do.”

  “Ay-yuh,” said Olive again, and her face felt warm again, but they talked then. They talked of their children, and after a while Jack told her about his day a few days ago, how he was stopped by the police for speeding.

  “They were unbelievably rude to me, Olive. You would have thought I was wanted for murder, the way both of them spoke to me.” Jack opened his hand in dismay after he said this to her.

  “Probably thought you were an out-of-stater.”

  “I have Maine plates.”

  Olive shrugged. “Still, you’re an old man running around in your zippy little sports car. They know an out-of-stater when they see one.” Olive raised her eyebrows. “I’m perfectly serious, Jack. They could smell you a mile away.” She glanced down at the huge watch of Henry’s she was wearing. “It’s late,” she said, and she stood up.

  “Olive, would you stay here tonight?” Jack shifted in his chair. “No, no, just listen to me. Right now I am wearing a half-diaper because of prostate surgery I had right before Betsy was diagnosed.”

  “What?” asked Olive.

  “I’m just trying to reassure you. I’m not going to assault you. You do know what Depends are, right?”

  “Depends?” asked Olive. “What do you mean—? Oh.” She realized she had seen them on television ads.

  “I’m telling you that I’m wearing half a Depends, a thing for people who pee their pants. Men who pee after this surgery. They say it will get better, but it hasn’t yet. Olive, I’m only telling you this because—”

  She waved her hand for him to stop. “Godfrey, Jack,” she said. “I’d say you’ve been through quite a lot.” But she was aware of feeling relief.

  Jack said, “Why don’t you stay in the guest room, and I will stay in the guest room across the hall? I just want you here when I wake up, Olive.”

  “Just when you wake up? Well, I’ll come back. I get up early.” When he didn’t answer, she added, “I don’t have my nightgown or my toothbrush. And I don’t think I’d sleep a wink.”

  Jack nodded. “I get that. About the toothbrush—we have a few new unused toothbrushes, don’t ask me why. But Betsy always had extra on hand, and I can give you a T-shirt, if you care to wear it.”

  They were silent, and Olive understood. He wanted her there for the whole night. What was she going to do? Go home to the rat’s nest she now lived in? Yes, she was. At the doorway, she turned. “Jack,” she said. “Listen to me.”

  “I’m listening.” He had remained in his chair.

  She stood there, staring at the ridiculous lampshade with its ruffled business going on. “I just don’t want to have to bump into you talking to that Bertha Babcock in the grocery store—”

  “Bertha Babcock, that’s her name. God, I couldn’t remember her name.” He sat back and clapped his hands once. “She talks about the weather, Olive. The weather. Look, Olive, I’m just saying, I would like you to stay here tonight. I promise: You get your own room, and so do I.”

  She came close. She did. But then she said, “I will see you in the morning, if you like.” It wasn’t until she had pulled open the door that Jack rose and went to the door as well.

  He waved his hand. “Goodbye, then.”

  “Good night, Jack.” She waved her hand over her head.

  Outside, the evening air assaulted her with the smells of the field and she heard the peepers as she walked to her car. Reaching for the handle of her car door, she thought: Olive, you fool. She pictured herself at home, sleeping on the big window seat in “the bump-out room,” she thought how she would listen to the little transistor radio against her ear all night, as she had since Henry died.

  She turned and walked back to Jack’s door. She rang the bell, and Jack answered the door almost immediately. “All right,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  She used the new toothbrush that his poor dead wife had somehow bought (Olive didn’t have an extra toothbrush in her house), then she closed the door of the guest room with the double bed, and pulled on a huge T-shirt he had given her. The T-shirt smelled of fresh laundry and something else—vaguely cinnamon? It did not smell like Henry. She thought: This is the stupidest thing I have ever done. And then she thought: It’s no stupider than that stupid baby shower I went to. She folded her clothes and put them on the chair by the bed. She was not unhappy. Then she opened the door a crack. She could just see that he had settled himself into the single bed in the gu
est room across the hall. “Jack?” she called to him.

  “Yes, Olive?” he called back.

  “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.” She didn’t know why she had said that.

  “The stupidest thing you ever did was go to that baby shower,” he called back, and Olive felt stunned for a moment. “Except for the baby you delivered,” he called out.

  She left the door partly open and got into bed and turned over on her side, away from the door. “Good night, Jack.” She practically yelled the words.

  “Good night, Olive.”

  * * *

  That night!

  It was as though waves swung her up and then down, tossing her high—high—and then the darkness came from below and she felt terror and struggled. Because she saw that her life—her life, what a silly foolish notion, her life—that her life was different, might possibly be very different or might not be different at all, and both ideas were unspeakably awful to her, except for when the waves took her high and she felt such gladness, but it did not last long, and she was down again, deep under the waves, and it was like that—back and forth, up and down, she was exhausted and could not sleep.

  It was not until dawn broke that she drifted off.

  “Good morning,” Jack said. He stood, his hair messy, in the doorway of her room. He wore a bathrobe that was navy blue and stopped halfway down his calves. He was unfamiliar; she felt put off.

  Olive flapped a hand from the bed. “Go away,” she said. “I’m sleeping.”

  He roared with laughter. And what a sound it was; Olive felt a physical sensation, a thrill. At the very same time she felt terror, as though a match had been lit on her and she had been soaked in oil. The terror, the thrill of his laughter—it was nightmarish, but also as though a huge can she had been stuffed into had just opened.

  “I mean it,” Olive said. She turned over in the bed. “Right now. Go away, Jack,” she said. She squeezed her eyes shut. Please, she thought. But she did not know what she meant by that. Please, she thought again. Please.