Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [108]
The story was about an ordinary, balding, kind of out-of-shape man who came home for lunch every day and sat at the kitchen table with his wife, eating sandwiches and talking about things like getting the lawn mower fixed. It gave Rebecca the same hopeful feeling that she got sometimes when she walked down a side street at night and saw through the window some kid playing in his pajamas, with a father ruffling the kid’s hair.
So when the nurse opened her glass window and called out a name, Rebecca rolled up the magazine and slipped it into her knapsack. She didn’t feel bad about it. She felt pleased when she got on the bus and knew she could finish the story.
But the man’s wife wanted more from life than Saturday trips to the hardware store and eating sandwiches every day just because lunchtime had rolled around, and by the end of the story, the wife had packed up and left, and the man stopped coming home for lunch. He just stayed in his office at lunchtime, not eating anything. Rebecca felt sick when she finished the story; she was not a person who should read on a bus. The bus went around a corner and the magazine fell, and when Rebecca picked it up, it was open to a picture of an ad for a man’s shirt. The shirt looked like a painter’s smock, gathered across the chest and kind of billowy. Rebecca turned the magazine, looked at it more. By the time she stepped off the bus, she had decided to order the shirt for David.
“You’ll love it,” the woman said over the telephone. “It’s all hand sewn and all. A beautiful shirt.” The number had been an 800 number, and this woman taking the order had a Southern accent. Rebecca thought her voice was like stepping into one of those television commercials for laundry soap where sunlight streams through a window across a shiny floor.
“Now, let’s see,” the woman said. “These come in small, medium, and large. Oh, honey, I’ve got to put you on hold.”
“That’s all right,” Rebecca said. On the bus ride home, her stomach had started to feel like a wet balloon was in there, with its insides stuck together, so she put the phone between her neck and shoulder and reached across the counter for the Maalox spoon. Maalox sticks to everything. You can’t put the spoon in the dishwasher because even the glasses come out flecked with white. They had a serving spoon David called the Maalox spoon, and it stayed right there by the corner of the sink. Rebecca was standing there licking the Maalox spoon when her father’s voice came into her head. It was in her head, but it was clear as a bell. I hate a person who steals, he said.
The day her father died, Rebecca read in a magazine about a psychic woman who helped police solve murders. The woman said she did it by reading the thoughts of the dead people, that dead people still had thoughts even after they were dead.
“I’m sorry about that,” said the woman with her Southern accent.
“It’s okay,” Rebecca said.
“Now,” said the woman. “Is your husband’s width more in his shoulders or in his stomach region?”
“He’s not my husband,” Rebecca said. “Not exactly. I mean, he’s my boyfriend.”
“Well, sure,” the woman said. “And is your boyfriend’s width in his shoulders, or his stomach region?”
“Shoulders,” Rebecca said. “He runs a health club and he always works out.”
“Okay,” said the woman slowly, like she was writing this down. “Now, I’m just wondering if a large would be too loose around the waist.”
“We probably will get married,” Rebecca said. “You know, someday.”
“Well, of course,” the woman said. “What size suit does he wear? That might help us out.”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him in a suit.”
“Why don’t we go with the large,” the woman said.
“I don’t usually order things like this,” Rebecca told her. “To get sent to me, I mean. And I’ve never ordered anything online. I’d never