Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout Page A

stands up and very slowly moves along the wall closer to the open window. A shaft of the late-afternoon sun falls over the side of her face as she strains her head forward to make out words in the sounds of the women’s murmuring.
    â€œOh, God, yes,” says Suzanne, her quiet words suddenly distinct. “I couldn’t believe it. I mean that she would really
wear
it.”
    The dress, Olive thinks. She pulls herself back against the wall.
    â€œWell, people dress differently up here.”
    By God, we do, Olive thinks. But she is stunned in her underwater way.
    Seaweed Friend murmurs again. Her voice is difficult to make out, but Olive hears her say, “Chris.”
    â€œVery special,” Suzanne answers seriously, and for Olive it is as if these women are sitting in a rowboat above her while she sinks into the murky water. “He’s had a hard time, you know. And being an only child—that really sucked for him.”
    Seaweed murmurs, and Suzanne’s oar slices through the water again. “The expec
ta
tions, you know.”
    Olive turns and gazes slowly around the room. Her son’s bedroom. She built it, and there are familiar things in here, too, like the bureau, and the rug she braided a long time ago. But something stunned and fat and black moves through her.
    He’s had a hard time, you know.
    Almost crouching, Olive creeps slowly back to the bed, where she sits down cautiously. What did he tell Suzanne?
A hard time.
Underneath her tongue, back up by her molars, Olive’s mouth begins to secrete. She pictures fleetingly, again, how Suzanne’s hand so easily, gently cupped that little girl’s head. What had Christopher said? What had he remembered? A person can only move forward, she thinks. A person
should
only move forward.
    And there is the sting of deep embarrassment, because she loves this dress. Her heart really opened when she came across the gauzy muslin in So-Fro’s; sunlight let into the anxious gloom of the upcoming wedding; those flowers skimming over the table in her sewing room. Becoming this dress that she took comfort in all day.
    She hears Suzanne say something about her guests, and then the screen door slams and it is quiet in the garden. Olive touches her open palm to her cheeks, her mouth. She is going to have to go back into the living room before somebody finds her in here. She will have to bend down and kiss the cheek of that bride, who will be smiling and looking around, with her know-it-all face.
    Oh, it hurts—actually makes Olive groan as she sits on the bed. What does Suzanne know about a heart that aches so badly at times that a few months ago it almost gave out, gave up altogether? It is true she doesn’t exercise, her cholesterol is sky-high. But all that is only a good excuse, hiding how it’s her soul, really, that is wearing out.
    Her son came to her last Christmastime, before any Dr. Sue was on the scene, and told her what he sometimes thought about.
Sometimes I think about just ending it all—
    An uncanny echo of Olive’s father, thirty-nine years before. Only, that time, newly married (with disappointments of her own, and pregnant, too, but she hadn’t known that part then), she said lightly, “Oh, Father, we all have times when we feel blue.” The wrong response, as it turned out.
    Olive, on the edge of the bed, leans her face into her hands. She can almost not remember the first decade of Christopher’s life, although some things she does remember and doesn’t want to. She tried teaching him to play the piano and he wouldn’t play the notes right. It was how scared he was of her that made her go all wacky. But she loved him! She would like to say this to Suzanne. She would like to say, Listen, Dr. Sue, deep down there is a thing inside me, and sometimes it swells up like the head of a squid and shoots blackness through me. I haven’t wanted to be this way, but so help me, I have