Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [116]
Moving carefully down the hall stairway, the words repeated in her head. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right—You have the right—You have the right.
It would be worth the arrest if they put it like that.
River
The day before, she almost backed into him in the parking lot of the library, and though he didn’t shout, he raised an arm as though to ward off the coming car, or perhaps just out of surprise. In either case, Olive had stepped on the brake in time, and Jack Kennison did not look at her, just kept walking to his own car—a small, shiny red one, parked a few feet away.
Old horror, Olive thought. He was a tall man with a big belly, slouching shoulders, and—in her mind—a kind of arrogant furtiveness in the way he held his head thrust forward and didn’t look at people. He had gone to Harvard, had lived in New Jersey—whether teaching at Princeton or somewhere else, Olive didn’t know—but a number of years ago he had retired with his wife to a house they’d built on the edge of a small field here in Crosby, Maine. At the time, Olive had said to her husband, “Stupid to pour all that money into a place not even on the water,” and Henry had agreed. The reason she knew Jack Kennison had gone to Harvard was because the waitress at the marina told Olive that he let everyone know.
“How obnoxious,” Henry had said, with real disgust. They had never had a conversation with the Kennisons, had only passed them sometimes in town, or had seen them at the marina for breakfast. Henry always said hello, and Mrs. Kennison said hello back. She was a small woman, with a quick smile.
“I expect she’s spent her life making up for his boorishness,” said Olive, and Henry nodded. Henry did not always warm up to summer people or retirees, those who came up the coast to live out their last days in a setting of slanting light. They were apt to have money, and, often, a grating sense of entitlement. For example, one man felt entitled to write an article in the local paper, poking fun at the natives, saying they were cold and aloof. And there was the woman who’d been overheard at Moody’s store, asking her husband, “Why is everyone in this state fat, and why do they all look retarded?” She was, according to whoever had told the story, a Jew from New York, and so there was that. Even now, there were people who’d have preferred a Muslim family to move in rather than be insulted by a Jew from New York. Jack Kennison was neither, but he was not a native, and he had an arrogant look.
When the waitress at the marina reported that the Kennisons had a daughter who was gay, living in Oregon, and that it was Mr. Kennison who wouldn’t accept it, Henry said, “Oh, that’s wrong. You need to accept your children either way.”
Henry had never been tested, of course; Christopher was not gay. Henry had lived long enough to see his son divorced; but a massive stroke soon after—and Olive would never be convinced the divorce hadn’t done it—had kept Henry paralyzed and unknowing when Christopher married again. Henry died in the nursing home before the baby was born.
One and a half years later, this still squeezed Olive so hard she felt like a package of vacuum-packed coffee, as she clutched the steering wheel, leaning forward in the dawn’s light to peer through the windshield. She had left the house while it was still dark—she often did—and it would grow light on the winding tree-lined road into town, a twenty-minute drive. Every morning was the same: the long drive, the stop at Dunkin’ Donuts, where the Filipino waitress knew she liked extra milk in her coffee, and Olive would take the newspaper and some doughnut holes—she’d ask for three, but the girl would always toss in extra—and go back into the car to read the paper, feeding a