Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

like her that way, can’t stand the blah-blah-blah. And they’d just as soon blah-blah-blah about you when your back is turned. “Never trust folks,” Olive’s mother told her years ago, after someone left a basket of cow flaps by their front door. Henry got irritated by that way of thinking. But Henry was pretty irritating himself, with his steadfast way of remaining naïve, as though life were just what a Sears catalogue told you it was: everyone standing around smiling.
    Still, Olive herself has been worried about Christopher’s being lonely. She was especially haunted this past winter by the thought of her son’s becoming an old man, returning home from work in the darkness, after she and Henry were gone. So she is glad, really, about Suzanne. It was sudden, and will take getting used to, but all things considered, Dr. Sue will do fine. And the girl has been perfectly friendly to her. (“I can’t believe you did the blueprints
yourself
!” Blond eyebrows raised sky-high.) Besides, Christopher, let’s face it, is gaga over her. Of course, right now their sex life is probably very exciting, and they undoubtedly think that will last, the way new couples do. They think they’re finished with loneliness, too.
    This thought causes Olive to nod her head slowly as she lies on the bed. She knows that loneliness can kill people—in different ways can actually make you die. Olive’s private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as “big bursts” and “little bursts.” Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee’s, let’s say, or the waitress at Dunkin’ Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really.
    â€œNice spot Suzanne’s getting here,” says one of the deep voices outside the window. Heard very clearly; they must have shifted their feet around now, facing the house.
    â€œGreat spot,” says the other voice. “We came up here when I was a kid and stayed at Speckled Egg Harbor, I think. Something like that.”
    Polite men having their cigarettes. Just keep your feet off the glads, Olive thinks, and don’t burn down that fence. She is sleepy, and the feeling is not unpleasant. She could take a nap right here if they’d give her twenty minutes, then go make her rounds and say goodbye, clear-headed and calm from a little sleep. She will take Janice Bernstein’s hand and hold it a moment; she will be a gracious gray-haired, pleasantly large woman in her soft, red-flowered dress.
    A screen door slams. “The emphysema brigade,” comes Suzanne’s bright voice, and the clapping of her hands.
    Olive’s eyes flip open. She feels a jolt of panic, as if she herself has just been caught smoking in the woods.
    â€œDo you know those things will kill you?”
    â€œOh, I’ve never heard that,” the man says jovially. “Suzanne, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before.”
    The screen door opens and closes again; someone has gone in. Olive sits up, her nap spoiled.
    Now a softer voice comes through the window. That skinny little friend of Suzanne’s, Olive thinks, whose dress looks like a piece of wrapped seaweed. “You holding up okay?”
    â€œYeah.” Suzanne draws the word out, somehow—enjoying the attention, Olive thinks.
    â€œSo, Suzie, how do you like your new in-laws?”
    Olive’s heart goes beat-beat as she sits on the edge of the bed.
    â€œIt’s interesting,” Suzanne says, her voice lowered and serious: Dr. Sue, the professional, about to give a paper on intestinal parasites. Her voice drops and Olive can’t hear.
    â€œI can see that.” Murmur, murmur. “The father—”
    â€œOh, Henry’s a
doll.
”
    Olive