60 THENEWYORKER,AUGUST 5 &12, 2019
voice murmuring, and Olive thought,
Honest to God, what a brat. But Olive
was on her computer, and there was an
e-mail from Jack: “How’s it going????
I miss you, Olive. Please, please write
me when you can.” And she wrote back,
“Oh, too much to say! I miss you, too.”
A part of Olive thought, Come on,
Jack, I have my hands full here, I can’t
be there with you, too! It was as though
she had five hundred bees buzzing in
her head.
O
live did not fall asleep for many
hours that night. She kept going
over her conversation with Chris, like a
giddy schoolgirl—oh, she had missed
him!—and when she woke she heard
people in the kitchen. She got out of bed
quickly; she was a very early riser, and
she had not expected Ann and Christo-
pher—and all their children—to get up
earlier than she did. But they had. Every
one of them was right there in the kitchen,
fully dressed, when she went downstairs.
Olive was not one to wear a bathrobe in
front of people she felt she barely knew.
“Well, hello,” she said, tugging her bath-
robe tightly closed. And no one said any-
thing. The older children looked at her
with open hostility—Olive felt this—
and even Little Henry was silent, on his
mother’s lap.
Christopher said, “Mom, you didn’t
get Cheerios? I told you we needed
Cheerios.”
“You did?” Olive could not remem-
ber her son’s mentioning Cheerios. “Well,
there’s oatmeal,” she said. She thought
she saw Christopher and Ann exchange
a look.
“I’ll go,” Ann said. “Just tell me how
to get there.”
“No,” Christopher said. “I’ll go. You
stay here.”
And then—God, just in the nick of
time—Olive said, “No, I’ll go. Everyone
just stay put.”
And so Olive went back upstairs
and put some clothes on, and then she
took her coat and her big black hand-
bag and she walked through the kitchen
as fast as she could and drove over to
Cottle’s. All she wanted was to speak
to Jack. But she had walked out the
door without her cell phone! And what
had happened to pay phones? She felt
hurried and upset, knowing that the
kids were waiting for their Cheerios.
“Jack, Jack,” she called out in her head.
“Help me, Jack.” What good was the
fact that Jack had bought her a cell
phone when she didn’t even remember
to take it with her? Finally, after she
had bought the Cheerios, as she was
pulling out of the parking lot, she saw
a pay phone near the back of the lot,
and she parked again. She couldn’t find
a quarter at first, but then she found
one and she slipped it into the phone,
and there was no dial tone. The god-
dam phone didn’t work. Oh, she was
fit to be tied.
Olive had trouble driving home;
she really had to concentrate. After she
tossed the Cheerios in the paper bag
onto the kitchen table, she said, “If you’ll
excuse me just a moment,” and she went
upstairs to her room, and she e-mailed
Jack with fingers that were almost trem-
bling. “Help me,” she wrote. “I don’t
know what to do.” Then she realized
that he couldn’t help her, he couldn’t
call her—they had agreed not to speak
by phone until Olive had told Chris—
and so she deleted what she had writ-
ten and wrote instead, “It’s O.K. I just
miss you. Hang in there!” Then she
added, “(More soon.).”
Down in the kitchen, the silence re-
mained. “What’s the matter?” Olive
asked; she heard the anger in her voice.
“There’s not much milk, Mom. There
was only a little. So Annabelle got it, and
Theodore has to have his Cheerios plain.”
Christopher was leaning against the
counter as he said this, one ankle crossed
over the other.
“Are you serious?” Olive asked. “Well,
I’ll go back—”
“No, it’s O.K. Just sit, Mom.” Chris-
topher nodded toward the chair that
Theodore sat in. “Theodore, give your
grandmother a chair.” The child, with
his eyes down, slid off the chair and stood.
Ann’s back was to her, and Olive could
see Little Henry on one of his mother’s
knees. Ann was holding the baby, too.
“What about the rest of you?” Olive asked.
“What can I get for you? How about
some toast?”
“It’s O.K., Mom,” Christopher said
again. “I’ll make some toast. You sit.”
So she sat at the table across from
her daughter-in-law, who turned and
smiled her phony smile at Olive. The-
odore moved to his mother and whis-
pered something into her ear. Ann
rubbed his arm and said quietly, “I know,
honey. But people live differently.”
Christopher said, “What’s up,
Theodore?”
And Ann said, “He was just com-
menting on the paper bag the Cheerios
came in, wondering why Olive didn’t
have a reusable bag.” She looked at Olive
and shrugged a shoulder. “In New York,
we recycle. We bring our own bags to
the store.”
“Is that right?” Olive said. “Well, good
for you.” She turned around and opened
the bottom cupboard and just about flung
the reusable grocery bag onto the table.
“If I hadn’t been in such a hurry, I would
have used this.”
“Oh,” Ann said. “Look at that, The-
odore.” And the child moved away from
the table, then he turned and went into
the study. Ann was handing Little Henry
a Cheerio. Little Henry did not seem in
such a good mood this morning. “Hello,
Little Henry,” Olive said, and he didn’t
look at her, just gazed for a long moment
at the Cheerio in his hand before put-
ting it into his mouth.
T
he day was very sunny and bright;
all the clouds from yesterday had
gone, and the sun shone through the
house. Outside, the bay was brilliant, and
the lobster buoys bobbed just slightly; a
lobster boat was headed out. It was de-
cided that they would all drive out to
Reid State Park to watch the surf. “The
kids have never really seen the ocean,”
Christopher said. “The real ocean. I’d
like them to see the Maine coast.”
“Well, let’s go, then,” Olive said.
“We’ll have to take two cars,” Chris-
topher said.
“So we’ll take two cars.” Olive stood
up and scraped Theodore’s uneaten toast
into the garbage. Olive would never have
allowed Christopher to waste toast like
this, but what did she care? Let that
beastly child waste all the food he wanted.
Once outside, Olive was surprised to
hear Christopher say, “Mom, when did
you get a Subaru?” He didn’t say it pleas-
antly, was what she felt. She had put the
car in the garage the day before; it was
out now because of her trip to the store.
“Oh,” she said. “I had to get a new
car, and I thought, I’m an old lady on my
own, I’ll get a good car for the snow.”
She could not believe she had said that.
It was a lie. She had just lied to her son.
