THENEWYORKER,AUGUST 5 &12, 2019 57
T
hey were late.
Olive Kitteridge hated peo-
ple who were late. A little after
lunchtime, they had said, and Olive had
the lunch things out, peanut butter and
jelly for the two oldest kids, and tuna-fish
sandwiches for her son, Christopher, and
his wife, Ann. For the little ones, she had
no idea. The baby was only six weeks old
and wouldn’t be eating anything solid
yet; Little Henry was over two, but what
did two-year-olds eat? Olive couldn’t re-
member what Christopher had eaten
when he was that age.
The phone rang, and Olive quickly
answered it. Christopher said, “O.K.,
Mom, we’re just leaving Portland. We
had to stop for lunch.”
“Lunch?” Olive said. It was two o’clock
in the afternoon. Through the window,
the late-April sun was milky over the
bay, which shone with a steely lightness,
no whitecaps today.
“We had to get something for the
kids to eat. So we’ll be there soon.”
Portland was an hour away. Olive said,
“O.K., then. Will you still be needing
supper?”
“Supper?” Christopher asked, as
though she had proposed that they take
a shuttle to the moon. “Sure, I guess so.”
In the background Olive heard a scream.
Christopher said, “Annabelle, shut up!
Stop it right now. Annabelle, I’m count-
ing to three. Mom, I’ll have to call you
back,” and the phone went dead.
“Oh, Godfrey,” Olive murmured, sit-
ting down at the kitchen table. She hadn’t
yet taken the pictures off the wall, but
the place looked remarkably different, as
though—as was the case—she would be
moving out of it soon. She did not think
of herself as a person who had knick-
knacks, but there was a box of stuff in
the back corner of the kitchen, and when
she glanced into the living room from
where she sat that room seemed to her
to have changed even more; there was
only the furniture and the two paintings
on the wall. The books were gone—she
had given them to the library a week
ago—and the lamps, except for one, were
packed into a box as well.
The phone rang again. “Sorry about
that,” her son said.
“Are you supposed to be talking on a
cell phone and driving?” Olive asked.
“I’m not driving. Ann’s driving. Any-
way, we’ll be there when we get there.”
“All right, then,” Olive said. She added,
“I’ll be awful glad to see you.”
“Me, too,” her son said.
Me, too.
Hanging up, she walked through the
house, and trepidation fluttered through
her. “You’re doing this all wrong,” she
said quietly to herself. Almost three
years it had been since she had seen her
son. This did not seem natural or right
to Olive. And yet when she had gone
to visit him in New York City—when
Ann was pregnant with Little Henry,
and way before the birth of this other
child, Natalie, a baby now—the visit
had gone so poorly that her son had es-
sentially asked her to leave. And she
had left. She had seen him only once
since, soon afterward, when he had flown
to Maine for his father’s funeral and
spoken before the whole church, tears
running down his face. “I never heard
my father swear” was one thing her son
had said that day.
Olive checked the bathroom, made
sure there were clean towels. She knew
that there were clean towels, but she
could not stop herself from checking
again. They had said not to worry about
not having a crib, but Olive did worry.
Little Henry was two and a half years
old, and Natalie was six weeks—how
could they not need a crib? Well, judg-
ing by how she had seen them living in
New York—God, what a mess that place
had been—she decided that they could
make do with just about anything. Anna-
belle was almost four now; Theodore
was six. What did a six-year-old boy
like to do? And why were there so many
children? Ann had had Theodore with
one man, Annabelle with another, and
now she had spat out two more babies
with Christopher. What in God’s name
was that about? Christopher was not a
young man.I
n fact, when Olive saw him stepping
out of the car she could not believe—
she could not believe—that he had gray
in his hair now. Christopher! She walked
toward him, but he was opening the
doors of the car, and little children spilled
out. “Hi, Mom.” He nodded at her. There
was a little dark-haired girl, dressed in
a bulky pink nylon coat and a pair of
knee-high rubber boots, robin’s-egg blue,
who turned away immediately, and a
blond boy, older, who stared at Olive.Ann was taking her time getting the
baby out of the car. Olive went to Chris-
topher, and she put her arms around
him, and felt the awkwardness of his
older man’s body in her arms. She
stepped back, and he stepped back, then
he reached into the car and leaned over
an apparatus that looked like a small
pilot seat for a child headed to outer
space; he lifted the kid out, and said to
his mother, “Here’s Henry.”
The child looked with large slumber-
ing eyes at Olive, as he was placed, stand-
ing, on the ground. “Hello, Henry,” Olive
said, and the child’s eyes rolled up slightly,
then he pressed his face into his father’s
pant leg. “Is he all right?” Olive demanded,
because the sight of him, dark-haired
like his mother, dark-eyed as well, caused
her to think immediately, This is not
Henry Kitteridge! What had she thought?
She had thought that she would see her
late husband in the little boy, but instead
she saw a stranger.
“He’s just waking up,” Christopher
said, picking the child up.
“Well, come in, come in,” Olive said,
realizing then that she had not yet spoken
to Ann, who held the baby patiently
nearby. “Hello there, Ann,” Olive said,
and Ann said, “Hello, Olive.”
“Your boots are as blue as your hat,”
Olive said to the little girl, and the little
girl looked puzzled. “It’s an expression,”
Olive explained—the child wore no hat.
Ann said, “We got those boots for
this trip to Maine,” and this confused
Olive.
“Well, take them off before you come
inside,” Olive said.
In New York, Ann had asked if she
could call Olive “Mom.” Now Ann did
not move toward Olive, and so Olive did
not move toward Ann, but turned and
walked into the house instead.
Three nights they were to stay.O
nce in the kitchen, Olive watched
her son carefully. His face at first
seemed open, pleased, as he looked
around. “Jesus, Mom, you’ve really cleaned
up. Wow.” Then she saw the shadow
come. “Wait, have you given away ev-
erything of Dad’s? What’s the story?”
“No, of course I haven’t.” Then she
said, “Well, sure, some of it. He’s been
gone awhile, Chris.”
He looked at her. “What?”
She repeated what she had said, but