And it is true, Marlene Bonney is sweet—and as thick as molasses, to boot. Years ago it was Olive who taught Marlene math in the seventh grade; Olive thinks she knows better than most how hard it must’ve been for the poor girl to take on that cash register when the time came. Still, the reason Olive has come here today, volunteered to help out, is that she knows Henry would be here if things weren’t as they are; Henry, who went to church every Sunday, believed in this community stuff. But there they are—Marlene has come out of the church, Eddie Junior next to her, and the girls right behind. Marlene has been crying of course, but she is smiling now, the dimples high on her cheeks twinkling as she thanks people, standing on the side porch of the church in a blue coat that spreads over her rounded behind, but is not long enough to cover the rest of the green flowered dress that sticks to her nylons with static cling.
Kerry Monroe, one of Marlene’s cousins (who was in trouble with the law a few years ago, and Marlene helped her out, took her in, gave her a job at the store), stands behind Marlene, slick as a whistle with her black hair and black suit and sunglasses, giving a nod to Eddie Junior, who nudges his mother toward a car and helps her get in. Those people going to the cemetery, and this includes the husband of Molly Collins, get into their cars as well, switching on their headlights in the midst of this sunny day, waiting for the hearse to pull away, then for the black car carrying the rest of the Bonneys to follow. All of it costing an arm and a leg, Olive thinks, walking to her own car along with Molly.
“Direct cremation,” Olive says, as she waits for Molly to dig out a seat belt from the mess of dog hairs. “No frills. Door to door. They’ll come right down from Belfast and take you away.”
“What are you talking about?” Molly turns her head toward Olive, and Olive can smell the woman’s breath from those false teeth she’s had for years.
“They don’t advertise,” Olive says. “No frills. I told Henry that’s the outfit we’ll be using when the time comes.”
She pulls out of the parking lot and starts down the road toward the Bonneys’ house, which is way down at the end of the point. She has offered to go back with Molly to help lay out the sandwiches, avoiding, that way, the cemetery. The lowering of the casket and all that business—she can do without.
“Well, it’s a nice day, anyway,” says Molly, as they pass the Bullock place on the corner. “Helps a little bit, I think.” And it’s true the sun is strong, the sky very blue behind the Bullocks’ red barn.
“Is Henry able to understand, then?” Molly asks a few minutes later.
For Olive, this is like someone has swung a lobster buoy and slammed her in the breastbone. But she answers simply, “Some days. I think so, yes.” Lying is not what makes her angry. It’s the question that has somehow made her angry. And yet, she also has an urge to tell this woman, sitting stupidly beside her, how she took the dog over last week on that day the weather was so warm; how she brought Henry out to the parking lot and the dog licked his hands.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Molly says quietly. “Going there every day, Olive. You’re a saint.”
“I’m hardly a saint, and you know it,” Olive answers, but she is so angry she could drive right off the road.
“I wonder what Marlene is going to do for money,” says Molly. “Do you mind if I open a window? I think you are a saint, Olive, but no offense, it smells a little doggy in here.”
“Offense is not taken, I assure you,” says Olive. “Open any windows you like.” She has turned onto Eldridge Road, and this is a mistake because now she will have to drive by the house where her son, Christopher, used to live. She almost always makes a point of going the other way, taking the old route down to the bay, but here she is, and now she prepares herself to turn her head away, feigning nonchalance.
“Life insurance,” Molly is saying. “Cousin Kerry—she told someone there was life insurance, and I guess Marlene’s also thinking of selling the store. Apparently Kerry’s the one who’s been running the business this year.”
Olive’s eye has caught the clutter of cars in the front yard, and she turns her head as though to glance through the spruce trees out to the water, but the afterimage of the junky front yard remains in her eye; and oh, it had been a beautiful place! The lilac by the back door would have its tight little buds now, the forsythia at the kitchen window probably ready to burst—if those beastly people haven’t knocked it down, living there like pigs. Why buy a beautiful house and junk it up with broken cars and tricycles and plastic swimming pools and swing sets? Why do a thing like that?
As they come over the crest where only juniper bushes and blueberry bushes grow, the sun is so bright above the water that Olive has to put the sun visor down. They pass by Moody’s Marina, down into the little gully where the Bonney house is. “Hope I haven’t lost the key she gave me,” says Molly Collins, fishing through her handbag. She holds up a key as the car stops. “Pull up a little farther there, Olive. There’ll be a lot of cars here when they get back from the cemetery.” Years ago, Molly Collins taught home ec at the same school where Olive taught math, and even back then she was a bossy thing. But Olive pulls the car up farther.
“She probably ought to sell the store,” says Molly as they walk around to the side door of the Bonneys’ big old house. “Why bother with the headache of all that, if she doesn’t need to?”
Inside, standing in the kitchen looking around, Molly muses, “Maybe she ought to sell this place, too.”
Olive, having never been inside before, thinks the place looks tired. It’s not just because some tiles are missing from the floor by the stove, or that part of the counter has bubbled up along the edge. The place simply has an air of exhaustion. Dying. Not dying. Either way, it tires you out. Olive peeks into the living room, where a large window looks over the ocean. It is a lot to take care of. On the other hand, it’s Marlene’s home. Of course, if Marlene sells the place, then Kerry, who lives in the room above the garage, will have to move out as well. Too bad, Olive thinks, closing the closet door with their coats hung up, heading back into the kitchen. Kerry Monroe had her eye on Christopher a few years back, smelled some money in that practice of his. Even Henry felt compelled to tell him to watch out. Don’t worry, Christopher said, she’s not my type. Which is pretty funny to think of now. “You could laugh your head off with that one, ha-ha thud,” says Olive to no one, as she comes into the kitchen, knocks her knuckles a few times on the table. “Put me to work, Molly.”
“See if there’s any milk in the refrigerator, and pour it into these creamers.” Molly is wearing a bib apron that she must have found here in the kitchen somewhere. Or maybe she brought it along. One way or another, she appears to have made herself at home. “Now, Olive, tell me. I’ve been wanting to ask. How is Christopher these days?”
Molly sets out plates on the table as quick as playing cards.
“He’s fine,” says Olive. “Now, what else do you want me to do?”
“Arrange these brownies on this. He likes it out there in California?”
“He’s very happy out there. Got a nice practice going.” Little tiny brownies. What was wrong with making a brownie big enough to sink your teeth into?
“How can people in California have problems with their feet?” asks Molly, moving around Olive with a plate of sandwiches. “Don’t they drive everywhere?”
Olive has to actually look at the wall and roll her eyes because of how stupid this woman can be. “But feet they have. And Chris has a very nice practice.”
“Any grandchildren on the way?” Molly draws the words out with a kind of coyness, while she shakes sugar cubes into a little bowl.
“Haven’t heard,” says Olive. “And I don’t believe in asking.” She takes one of the little brownies and puts it into her mouth, making her eyes big at Molly. Olive and Henry had told no one except their old friends Bill and Bunny Newton, who lived two hours away, that Christopher was now divorced. Why tell anyone that? It was nobody’s business
, and Christopher living so far away—who needed to know that his new wife had walked out after moving him across the country? And that he didn’t want to come home? No wonder Henry had a stroke! How unbelievable it was! Never, in a hundred years, would Olive tell Molly Collins, or anyone else, how terrible it was when Christopher came back to visit his father in the nursing home, how terse he was with her, how he went back early—this man who was her dearly loved son. A woman, even Marlene Bonney’s age, could expect one day to outlive her husband. A woman could even expect her husband to get old and have a stroke and stay slumped in a chair at a nursing home. But a woman did not expect to raise a son, help him build a lovely house nearby, get started in a steady podiatry business, then have him marry and move across the country and never move home again, even when he found himself deserted by a beast of a wife. No woman, no mother, expected that. To have a son stolen away.
“Leave enough for others, Olive,” says Molly Collins, and then, “Well, at least Marlene has her kids. Wonderful kids they are, too.”
Olive takes another brownie and puts it into her mouth, but then—here they are, the kids themselves, coming through the back door with Marlene, moving through the kitchen as the sound of cars pulling into the gravel alongside the driveway can be heard, and then doors slamming shut. And Marlene Bonney herself, standing now in the hallway, holding her pocketbook slightly up and away from her body, as though the pocketbook belongs to someone else, standing there until someone leads her into the living room, where she sits down politely on her own couch.
“We were just saying,” Molly Collins says to her, “that honestly, Marlene, you and Ed turned out the three best kids in town.” And it’s true they are something to be proud of: Eddie Junior in the coast guard, smart the way his father was (although he is not as outgoing; there is a wariness in his dark eyes), Lee Ann studying to be a nurse, Cheryl about to graduate from high school; you never heard about any trouble they were in.
But Marlene says, “Oh, there’s lots of nice kids around,” taking the coffee that Molly hands her. Marlene’s brown eyes seem a little out of focus, the flesh of her cheeks a little more droopy. Olive sits down in a chair across from her.
“That cemetery stuff’s bad business,” Olive says, and Marlene smiles, her dimples twinkling like tiny imprints of stars high up on her cheeks.
“Oh, hello, Olive,” she says. It has taken Marlene years to stop calling her Mrs. Kitteridge, which is what happens when you have people in school. And of course the opposite is true, which is that Olive continues to see half the town as kids, as she can still see Ed Bonney and Marlene Monroe as young schoolkids, falling in love, walking home day after day from school. When they reached the Crossbow Corners, they would stand and talk, and sometimes Olive would see them there as late as five o’clock, because Marlene had to go one way and Ed the other.
Tears have appeared in Marlene’s eyes, and she blinks fast. She leans toward Olive and whispers, “Kerry says nobody likes a crybaby.”
“Hells bells,” answers Olive.
But Marlene sits back as Kerry appears, stick-thin and high-heeled, thrusting out that black-suited pelvic bone as soon as she stops walking, and it crosses Olive’s mind suddenly that maybe Kerry was bullied when she was very young, skinny little kid. Kerry asks, “You want a beer, Marlene? Instead of that coffee?” She is holding a beer herself, her elbow tucked to her waist, and her dark eyes are keen, taking it in, the still-full cup of coffee in Marlene’s hand, and the presence of Olive Kitteridge, too, who years ago sent Kerry to the principal’s office more than once, before Kerry got shipped off to live with relatives somewhere. “Or would you like a little whiskey?”
Henry might have remembered why they sent the girl away. Olive has never been one for remembering things.
“A drop of whiskey sounds good,” says Marlene. “You want any, Olive?”
“Nope. Thanks.” If she drank, she’d be a guzzler. She stays away from it, always has. She wonders if Christopher’s ex-wife might have been a secret guzzler, out there drinking all that California wine.
The house is filling up. People move down the hallway and out onto the front porch. Some of the fishermen have come over from Sabbatus Cove, all scrubbed-looking. Their big shoulders slumped, they seem sheepish, apologetic, as they move into the living room, taking the tiny brownies with their big hands. Soon the living room is so full that Olive can no longer see out to the water. People’s skirts, belt buckles move past her. “I just wanted to say, Marlene”—and here, in a sudden clearing of people, is Susie Bradford, pushing herself between the coffee table and the couch—“that he was so brave during his sickness. I never saw him complain.”
“No,” says Marlene. “He didn’t complain.” And then: “He had his basket of trips.” At least that’s what Olive thinks she’s heard. Whatever Marlene has said seems to embarrass her. Olive sees the woman’s cheeks flush, as though she has just divulged some private, very intimate secret that she shared with her husband. But Susie Bradford has spilled jelly from one of the cookies down her front, and now Marlene is saying, “Oh, Susie, go into the bathroom down the hall. Such a pretty blouse, what a shame.”
“No ashtrays in this house,” says a woman on her way past Olive, and because of a little crush of people, the woman has to stand there in front of Olive for a moment; she takes a deep drag from her cigarette, squinting her eyes against the smoke. Some tiny ping of recognition, of knowledge, takes place in Olive, but she could not tell you who this woman is—she knows only that she doesn’t like the looks of her, with her long, stringy hair that contains a lot of unflattering gray. Olive thinks when your hair gets gray, it’s time to chop it off, or pin it up on top of your head, no point in thinking you’re still a schoolgirl. “I can’t find an ashtray in this house,” the woman says, tilting her face up quickly as she breathes out a stream of smoke.
“Well,” says Olive, “I guess that’s too bad.” And the woman moves away.
The couch comes into view again. Kerry Monroe is drinking a tumbler of brown stuff—the whiskey she was offering earlier, Olive suspects—and while Kerry’s lipstick remains bright, her cheekbones and jawline still impressively proportioned, it’s as though inside her black clothes her joints have become loosened. Her crossed leg swings, a foot bobs, some inner wobbliness is there. “Nice service, Marlene,” Kerry says, leaning forward to pick up a meatball with a toothpick. “Really nice service; you’ve done him proud.” And Olive nods, because she would like Marlene to be comforted by this.
But Marlene doesn’t see Kerry, she is smiling upward, taking hold of someone’s hand, and says, “The kids planned it all.” And the hand belongs to Marlene’s youngest girl, who in her blue velour jersey and navy-blue skirt squeezes between Marlene and Kerry, putting her head on Marlene’s shoulder, nestling her big-girl’s body close.
“Everyone’s saying how nice the service was,” Marlene says, smoothing the girl’s long bangs away from her eyes. “You did a real nice job.”
The girl nods, her head pressed against her mother’s arm.
“Great job,” says Kerry, tossing back the rest of the whiskey in her glass as though it were merely iced tea.
And Olive, watching all this, feels—what? Jealousy? No, you don’t feel jealous of a woman whose husband has been lost. But an unreachability, that’s how she’d put it. This plump, kind-natured woman sitting on the couch surrounded by children, her cousin, friends—she is unreachable to Olive. Olive is aware of the disappointment this brings. Because why, after all, did she come here today? Not just because Henry would have said to go to Ed Bonney’s funeral. No, she came here hoping that in the presence of someone else’s sorrow, a tiny crack of light would somehow come through her own dark encasement. But it remains separate from her, this old house filled with people, except one voice is beginning to rise above the others.
Kerry Monroe is drunk. In her black suit she stands by the couch and raises an arm. “Cop Kerry,” she says, loudly. “Yep. That sh
ould have been me.” Laughing, she sways. People say, “Watch it, Kerry,” “Careful there,” and Kerry ends up sitting on the arm of the couch, slips a black high heel off and flips up and down her black-stockinged foot. “Up against the wall, buster!”
It’s disgusting. Olive rises from her chair. Time to leave; goodbyes aren’t necessary. No one will miss her.
The tide is going out. Near the shore the water is flat, metal-colored, although out past Longway Rock, it’s starting to get choppy; there’s even a whitecap or two. Lobster buoys down in the cove bob slightly, and seagulls circle the wharf near the marina. The sky is still blue, but off to the northeast, the horizon is lined with a rising cloud bank, and the tops of the pine trees are bending, over there on Diamond Island.
Olive is not able to leave after all. Her car is blocked in the driveway by other cars, and she would have to ask around and make a fuss, and she doesn’t want to do that. So she has found herself a nice private spot, a wooden chair right below the deck, off to one corner, in which to sit and watch the clouds move in slowly over the bay.
Eddie Junior walks by on his way down to the shore with some of his cousins. They don’t notice her sitting there, and they disappear down the skinny path between the bayberry bushes and the rugosa, and then reappear again on the shore, Eddie Junior lagging behind the rest. Olive watches as he picks up stones and skips them through the water.
Above her on the deck she hears footsteps, big men’s boot-shoes clump, clump. Matt Grearson’s voice says in a long drawl, “Be a real high tide later tonight.”
“Yep,” says someone else—Donny Madden.
“Marlene’s going to get lonesome out here this winter,” says Matt Grearson after a while.
Godfrey, thinks Olive from her chair below—run like hell, Marlene. Big flub-dub Matt Grearson.
“I guess she’ll manage,” answers Donny, eventually. “People do.”