64 THENEWYORKER,AUGUST 5 &12, 2019
it, Chris. Just stop it! Let the woman
get married. What’s the matter with
you? Jesus! You can’t even be polite to
him? For crying out loud, Christopher,
you are such a baby! You think I have
four little kids? I have five little kids!”
Then Ann turned toward Jack and
Olive and said, “On behalf of my hus-
band, I would like to apologize for
his unbelievably childish behavior. He
can be so childish, and this is childish,
Christopher. Jesus Christ, is this child-
ish of you.”
Almost immediately Christopher held
up his hands and said, “She’s right, she’s
right, I am being childish, and I’m sorry.
Jack, let’s start again. How are you?” And
Christopher put his hand out once again
toward Jack, and Jack shook it. But Chris-
topher’s face was as pale as paper, and
Olive felt—in her utter bewilderment—a
terrible pity for him, her son, who had
just been so openly yelled at by his wife.
Jack waved a hand casually and said
something about its being no problem,
he was sure it was a shock, and he sat
down and Christopher sat down and
Ann left the room, and Olive stood there.
She only barely heard as her son asked
Jack—who was still wearing his suède
coat—what he had done for work, and
she only barely heard Jack say that he
had taught at Harvard his whole life,
that his subject had been the Austro-
Hungarian Empire. Christopher nod-
ded and said, “Cool, that’s cool.” Ann
walked back and forth gathering all the
children’s things; the children stood in
the doorway watching, sometimes going
to their mother, though she shook them
off. “Move!” she yelled at one of them.
Little Henry began to cry.
Olive went to him. “Now, now,” she
said. He ran his hand over his wet eyes
and looked up at her. Then—and Olive
was never sure this really happened; for
the rest of her life she didn’t know if she
had imagined it—he stuck his tongue
out at her. “O.K.,” Olive said, “O.K., then,”
and she moved back into the living room,
where Jack and Christopher were now
standing, finishing their talk.
“All set?” Christopher asked Ann as
she passed through the room once more
with a wheelie suitcase. Then he turned
to Jack. “Very nice to have met you. If
you’ll excuse me, I have to help my wife
get our brood together.”
“Oh, of course.” And Jack bowed
again in his ironic way. He stepped back
and put his hands into the pockets of
his khaki pants, and then he took them
out again.
Olive was dazed as they got all their
things together, their coats on, the shoes,
the blue rubber boots; Ann’s expression
remained stony, and Christopher was
obsequious in his attempts to be help-
ful to her. Finally, they were ready to
leave, and Olive put her own coat on so
that she could walk them to the car.
Jack walked them out as well, and Olive
saw her son speak to him once more by
the passenger-side door—Ann was to
drive—and Christopher seemed open-
faced, and even had a smile as he spoke.
The kids were all buckled in, and then
Chris walked over to Olive and gave
her a half hug, barely touching her, and
said, “Bye, Mom,” and Olive said, “Good-
bye, Chris,” and then Ann gave her a
hug, too, not much of one, and said,
“Thanks, Olive.”
And then they drove away.I
t wasn’t until Olive saw the red scarf
that she had knitted for Little Henry
lying half under the couch in the living
room that she felt something close to
terror. She bent down and picked it up,
and she took the scarf and returned to
the kitchen, where Jack was leaning for-
ward with his arms on the tabletop. Olive
opened the door and put the scarf into
the garbage bin beside it. Then she came
back inside and sat across from Jack.
“Well,” she said.
“Well,” Jack said. He said it kindly.
He placed his large, age-spotted hand
over Olive’s. After a moment, he added,
“I guess we know who wears the pants
in that family.”
“Her mother died recently,” Olive
said. “She’s grieving.”
But she pulled her hand away. It came
to her then, with the whooshing cre-
scendo of truth: She had failed on a co-
lossal level. She must have been failing
for years and not realized it. She did not
have a family as other people did. Other
people had their children come and stay,
and they talked and laughed, and the
grandchildren sat on the laps of their
grandmothers, and they went places and
did things, ate meals together, kissed
when they parted. Olive had images of
this happening in many homes; her
friend Edith, for example, before shehad moved to that place for old people,
her kids would come and stay. Surely
they had a better time than what had
just happened here. And it had not hap-
pened out of the blue. She could not
understand what it was about her, but
it was something about her that had
caused this to happen. And it must have
been there for years, maybe all her life,
how would she know? As she sat across
from Jack—stunned—she felt that she
had lived her life as though blind.
“Jack?”
“Yes, Olive?”
She shook her head. She would not
tell Jack about the alarm she had felt
when Ann yelled at her son, and what
came to her as she sat here now was the
certainty that it had not been the first
time that Ann had yelled at him like
that; these were openings into the dark-
ness of a relationship that one saw by
mistake, as if a door had momentarily
blown open and revealed things not
meant to be seen—
But it was more than that.
She had done what Ann had done.
She had yelled at Henry in front of peo-
ple. She could not remember who, ex-
actly, but she had always been fierce
when she felt like it. So there was this,
too: her son had married his mother, as
so many men—in some form or other—
eventually do.
Jack spoke quietly. “Hey, Olive. Let’s
get you out of here for a while. Let’s take
a drive, then go to my place. You need a
break from being here.”
“Good idea.” Olive stood and got her
coat and her big black handbag and she
let Jack walk her out to the Subaru. He
helped her in, and then got in himself,
and they drove away. Olive almost looked
back, but she closed her eyes instead. She
could see it perfectly, anyway. Her house,
the house that she and Henry had built
so many years ago, the house that looked
small now and would be razed to the
ground by whoever bought it, because
the property was what mattered. She saw
the house behind her closed eyes, and a
shiver seemed to go through her bones.
The house where she had raised her son—
never, ever realizing that she herself was
raising a motherless child, now a long,
long way from home. ♦NEWYORKER.COM
Elizabeth Strout on returning to Olive Kitteridge.