Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [16]
“Some.”
He had gone to medical school thinking he’d become a pediatrician, as his mother had been, but he had been drawn to psychiatry, in spite of his recognition that those who became psychiatrists did so as a result of their own messed-up childhoods, always looking, looking, looking for the answer in the writings of Freud, Horney, Reich, of why they were the anal, narcissistic, self-absorbed freaks that they were, and yet at the same time denying it, of course—what bullshit he had witnessed among his colleagues, his professors! His own interest had become narrowed to victims of torture, but that had also led him to despair, and when he had finally come under the care of Murray Goldstein, Ph.D., M.D., and had told the man his plans to work at the Hague with those whose feet had been beaten raw, whose bodies and minds lay in ruinous disorder, Dr. Goldstein had said, “What are you, crazy?”
He’d been attracted to crazy. Clara—what a name—Clara Pilkington appeared to be the sanest person he’d ever met. And wasn’t that something? She ought to have been wearing a billboard around her neck: COMPLETELY CRAZY CLARA.
“You know the old saying, I’m sure,” Mrs. Kitteridge said. “Psychiatrists are nutty, cardiologists are hard-hearted—”
He turned to look at her. “And pediatricians?”
“Tyrants,” Mrs. Kitteridge acknowledged. She gave one shrug to her shoulder.
Kevin nodded. “Yeah,” he said softly.
After a moment, Mrs. Kitteridge said, “Well, your mother may not have been able to help it.”
He was surprised. His urge to suck on his knuckles was like an agonizing itch, and he ran his hands back and forth over his knees, found the hole in his jeans. “I think my mother was bipolar,” he said. “Never diagnosed, though.”
“I see.” Mrs. Kitteridge nodded. “She could’ve been helped today. My father wasn’t bipolar. He was depressed. And he never talked. Maybe they could’ve helped him today.”
Kevin was silent. And maybe they couldn’t, he thought.
“My son. He’s got the depression.”
Kevin looked at her. Small drops of perspiration had appeared in the pockets beneath her eyes. He saw that she did, in fact, look much older. Of course she wouldn’t look the same as she had back then—the seventh-grade math teacher that kids were scared of. He’d been scared of her, even while liking her.
“What’s he do?” Kevin asked.
“A podiatrist.”
He felt the stain of some sadness make its way from her to him. Gusts of wind were now swooping in all directions, so that the bay looked like a blue and white crazily frosted cake, peaks rising one way, then another. Poplar leaves beside the marina were fluttering upward, their branches all bent to one side.
“I’ve thought of you, Kevin Coulson,” she said. “I have.”
He closed his eyes. He could hear as she shifted her weight beside him, heard the gravel again on the rubber mat as her foot scraped over it. He was going to say I don’t want you thinking about me, when she said, “I liked your mother.”
He opened his eyes. Patty Howe had stepped back out of the restaurant; she was walking toward the path in front of the place, and a nervousness touched his chest; it was sheer rock in front there, if he remembered right, a straight drop down. But she would know that.
“I know you did,” Kevin said, turning to the big, intelligent face of Mrs. Kitteridge. “She liked you.”
Olive Kitteridge nodded. “Smart. She was a smart woman.”
He wondered how long this would have to go on. And yet it meant something to him, that she had known his mother. In New York no one knew.
“Don’t know if you know this or not, but that was the case with my father.”
“What was?” He frowned, passed his index knuckle briefly through his mouth.
“Suicide.”
He wanted her to leave; it was time for her to leave.
“Are you married?”
He shook his head.
“No, my son isn’t either. Drives my poor husband nuts. Henry wants everyone married, everyone happy. I say, for God’s sake, let him take his time. Up here the pickings can be slim. Down there in New York,