Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [106]
Ann was mopping at the milk with a sponge, still holding the baby. Christopher stood calmly in front of her. “You kind of behave like a paranoid, Mom,” he said. “You always have. At least a lot, anyway. And I never see you taking any responsibility for it. One minute you’re one way, the next—you’re furious. It’s tiring, very wearing for those around you.”
Beneath the table, Olive’s foot bounced like the devil. Quietly, she said, “I don’t need to sit here and be called a schizoid. I’ve never heard of such a thing in all my life. A son turning around and calling his mother schizoid. God knows, I didn’t like my mother, but I never—”
“Olive,” said Ann. “Please, please stay calm. No one called you any names. Chris was only trying to tell you that your moods change kind of fast sometimes, and it’s been hard. For him growing up, you know. Never knowing.”
“What in God’s name would you know about it? Were you there?” Olive’s head was all twirly inside. Her eyesight didn’t seem right. “I suppose both of you now have degrees in family psychology.”
“Olive,” Ann said.
“No, let her go. Go, Mom. That’s fine. I’ll call you a car service to get you to the airport.”
“You’re going to send me out there alone? For God’s sake!”
“In one hour I have to go to work, and Ann has the kids to take care of. We can’t drive you to the airport. The car service will be fine. Ann, why don’t you call them? You’ll have to go to the ticket counter, Mom, to get your ticket changed. But there shouldn’t be a problem.”
Amazingly, her son started to collect dirty dishes from the counter and load the dishwasher.
“You’re kicking me out, just like that?” Olive said, her heart pumping ferociously.
“See, there’s an example,” Chris answered, calmly. Loading the dishwasher, calmly. “You say you want to leave, then accuse me of kicking you out. In the past, it would make me feel terrible, but I’m not going to feel terrible now. Because this is not my doing. You just don’t seem to notice that your actions bring reactions.”
She got up, holding the edge of the table, and made her way to the basement, where her bag was already packed. She had packed it in the night. She brought it back up the stairs, panting.
“The car will be here in twenty minutes,” Ann said to Christopher, and he nodded, still loading the dishwasher.
“I can’t believe this,” Olive said.
“I shouldn’t wonder.” Christopher had started scrubbing a pot now. “I always found it unbelievable myself. But I just don’t want to put up with it anymore.”
“You haven’t put up with me for years!” Olive shouted. “You have treated me poorly for years!”
“No,” said her son, quietly. “I think if you think about it, you’ll see that the story is quite different. You have a bad temper. At least I think it’s a temper, I don’t really know what it is. But you can make people feel terrible. You made Daddy feel terrible.”
“Chris,” said Ann, in a warning kind of way.
But Christopher shook his head. “I’m not going to be ruled by my fear of you, Mom.”
Fear of her? How could anyone be afraid of her? She was the one who was afraid! He kept scrubbing the pots, the pans, wiping down the counters, all the while answering her calmly. Whatever she said, he answered calmly. Calm as the Muslim who sold him a newspaper each morning, before sending him off on a subway to blow up. (Wasn’t that paranoid? Her son was the one who was paranoid!)
She heard Theodore call from the top of the stairs, “Mummy, come here. Mummy!” Olive started to cry.
Everything became blurry, not just her eyes. She said things, with more and more fury—and Christopher answered, calmly, still washing kitchen things calmly. She kept crying. Christopher was saying something about Jim O’Casey. Something about him being a drunk, driving into a tree. “You’d scream at Daddy like Jim’s death was his fault. How could you do that, Mom? I don’t know what I hated more—when you went after him and