58 THENEWYORKER,AUGUST 5 &12, 2019
she turned away as she said it. Then she
said, “Theodore, would you like a drink
of water?” The boy stared at her with
huge eyes. Then he shook his head
slightly and walked over to his mother,
who, even as she held the baby, was
shrugging her way out of a thick black
sweater. Olive could see that Ann’s stom-
ach bulged through her black stretch
pants, although her arms seemed skinny
in her white nylon blouse.
Ann sat down at the
kitchen table and said, “I’d
like a glass of water, Olive,”
and when Olive turned
around to hand it to her she
saw a breast—just sticking
out in plain view, right there
in the kitchen, the nipple
large and dark—and she
felt a tiny bit ill. Ann pressed
the baby to her breast, and Olive saw the
little thing, eyes closed, clasp on to the
nipple. Ann smiled up at Olive, but Olive
didn’t think it was a real smile. “Phew,”
Ann said.
Christopher said nothing more about
his father’s possessions, and Olive took
that as a good sign. “Christopher,” she
said. “Make yourself at home.”
Then a look passed over her son’s face
that let her know that this was not his
home anymore—that was what Olive
thought she saw on his face—but he sat
down at the kitchen table, his long legs
stretched out.
“What would you like?” Olive asked
him.
“What do you mean, what would I
like?” Christopher looked up at the clock,
then back at her.
“I mean, would you also like a glass
of water?”
“I’d like a drink.”
“O.K., a drink of what?”
“A drink-drink, but I don’t imagine
you have anything like that.”
“I do,” Olive said. She opened the
refrigerator. “I have some white wine.
Would you like some white wine?”
“You have wine?” Christopher asked.
“Yes, I would love some white wine, thank
you, Mom.” He stood. “Wait, I’ll get it.”
And he took the wine bottle, which was
half full, and poured the wine into a tum-
bler, as though it were lemonade. “Thank
you.” He raised the glass and drank from
it. “When did you start drinking wine?”
“Oh—” Olive stopped herself from
saying Jack’s name. “I just started to drink
a little, that’s all.”
Christopher’s grin was sardonic. “No,
you didn’t, Mom. Tell me the truth—
when did you start drinking wine?” He
sat back down at the table.
“Sometimes I’ll have friends over, and
they drink it.” Olive had to turn away;
she opened a cupboard and brought out
a box of saltine crackers. “Have a cracker?
I even have some cheese.”
“You have friends over?”
But Christopher didn’t seem
to require an answer, and he
sat at the table with his wife,
who finally stuck her breast
back inside her shirt. Chris-
topher ate all the cheese and
most of the crackers, and
Ann sipped at his wine,
which he drank quickly.
“More?” He pushed the glass forward,
and Olive, who thought he’d had enough
wine, said, “O.K., then,” and gave him the
bottle, which he emptied into his glass.
Olive needed to sit down. She real-
ized that there were only two chairs at
the table; how had she not noticed that
before? She said, “Let’s go into the liv-
ing room.” But they did not get up, and
so she stood at the counter, feeling shaky.
“Tell me about the drive up,” she said.
“Long,” Christopher said, his mouth
full of cracker, and Ann said, “Long.”
Neither of Ann’s children spoke a
word to Olive. Not a “thank you” or a
“please”—not one word did they say. She
thought they were horrible children. She
said, “Here’s a peanut-butter-and-jelly
sandwich,” pointing to the ones that sat
on the counter, and they said nothing.
“All right, fine,” she said.
But Little Henry was a sweet thing,
in his way. In the living room—where
they finally went, because Olive said
again, “Let’s go into the living room”—
he toddled over to her and pulled his
wet hand from his mouth and put it on
Olive’s leg as she sat on the couch, and
he banged her knee a few times, and she
said, “Hello, Henry!” The child said, “Hi.”
“Hello!” she said again, and he said, “Hi,
hi.” Well, that was fun.
But when Olive—only because she
felt it was expected of her—asked to hold
Natalie, the baby started screaming as
soon as she was in Olive’s arms. Just
screamed her little head off. “O.K., then,
all right, then,” Olive said, and handedher back to her mother, who took some
time getting her calmed down. Ann had
to pull out her breast again to do this,
and Olive was pretty sick of seeing her
daughter-in-law’s breast; it was so naked,
all huge with milk, and veins running
over it. Honestly, Olive did not care to
see it anymore. She stood up and said,
“I’ll get supper started.”
Christopher said, “Oh, I don’t think
we’re hungry yet.”
“No problem,” Olive called over her
shoulder. In the kitchen, she lit the oven
and put in the casserole that she had
made that morning, with scallops and
sour cream. Then she returned to the liv-
ing room.O
live had expected chaos. She had
not expected the silence of these
children, or even the silence of Ann, who
was different than Olive remembered.
“I’m tired,” Ann said to her at one point,
and Olive said, “I should think so.” So
maybe that was it.
Christopher was more talkative.
Sprawled on the couch in the living room,
he spoke of the traffic they had run into
outside Worcester, he spoke of their
Christmas, their friends, his job as a po-
diatrist. She wanted to hear it all. But
Ann interrupted and said, “Olive, where
did you put your Christmas tree? By the
front window?”
“I didn’t have a Christmas tree,” Olive
said. “Why in the world would I have a
Christmas tree?”
Ann raised her eyebrows. “Because it
was Christmas?”
Olive didn’t care for that. “Not in this
house it wasn’t,” she said.
After Ann had taken the older chil-
dren into the study, where the couch had
been turned into a bed, Olive sat with
Christopher and Little Henry, who dan-
gled from his father’s lap. “Cute kid,”
Olive said, and Christopher said, “He
really is, right?”
From the study she could hear Ann
murmuring and the higher-pitched
voices—but not the words—of the chil-
dren. Olive stood up and said, “Oh, Chris-
topher, I knit Little Henry a scarf.”
She went into the study—the two
older kids just stood silently and watched
her—and got the scarf she had knitted,
bright red, and brought it out, and she
gave it to Christopher, who said, “Hey,
Henry, look what your grandmother made