Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [26]
“I put a rinse through it these days, I’m afraid.”
He just looked at her; his coat hung loosely. His clothes had always hung loosely.
“Are you still a lawyer, Simon? I heard you were a lawyer.”
He nodded. “The truth is, Angie, I’m good at it. It’s nice to be good at something.”
“Yes. Of course it is. What kind of law?”
“Real estate.” He looked down. But he raised his chin in a moment. “It’s fun. Like a puzzle.”
“Oh. Well, that’s nice.” She crossed her left hand over, did a light run.
“Ever marry, Angie?”
“No. No, I didn’t. And you?” She had already seen the wedding ring. A broad band. She would not have thought him the type to wear such a broad band.
“Yes. I have three children. Two boys and a girl, all grown.” He shifted his feet, still leaning against the piano.
“Oh, lovely, Simon. That’s lovely.” She had forgotten “O Come All Ye Faithful.” She began playing that, her fingers reaching deeply into it; sometimes when she played, it was like being a sculptress, she thought, pulling at the lovely thick clay.
He looked at his watch. “You’re off at nine, then?”
“I am. Yes. But I have to skedaddle right out of here, I’m afraid. Sorry to say.” She had stopped blushing; her skin felt chilly now. She had quite a headache.
“Okay, Angie.” He stood up straight. “I’ll be taking off. Nice to see you after all these years.”
“Yes, Simon. Nice to see you.”
Betty’s arm placed a cup of coffee down on the other side. “From Walter,” Betty said, moving past.
Angie turned her head, gave Walter that small blink of a wink; Walter, watching her, bleary in his eyes.
Simon was walking away. And there were the Kitteridges, leaving, Henry waving his hand. “Good Night, Irene,” she played.
Simon turned back; in two jerky motions he was at her side, leaning his face next to hers. “You know, your mother came to Boston to see me.”
Angie’s face got very warm.
“She took the Greyhound bus,” said Simon’s voice in her ear. “And then took a taxi to my apartment. When I let her in, she asked for a drink and started taking off her clothes. Unbuttoned that button slowly at the top of her neck.”
Angie’s mouth had gone dry.
“And I’ve been feeling pretty sorry for you, Angie, all these years.”
She smiled straight ahead of her. “Good night, Simon,” she said.
She drank, with one hand, all the Irish coffee. And then she played all sorts of songs. She didn’t know what she played, couldn’t have said, but she was inside the music, and the lights on the Christmas tree were bright and seemed far away. Inside the music like this, she understood many things. She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at this age, to tell her he had pitied her for years. She understood that as he drove his car back down the coast toward Boston, toward his wife with whom he had raised three children, that something in him would be satisfied to have witnessed her the way he had tonight, and she understood that this form of comfort was true for many people, as it made Malcolm feel better to call Walter Dalton a pathetic fairy, but it was thin milk, this form of nourishment; it could not change that you had wanted to be a concert pianist and ended up a real estate lawyer, that you had married a woman and stayed married to her for thirty years, when she did not ever find you lovely in bed.
The lounge was mostly empty now. And warmer, since the door wasn’t being opened all the time. She played “We Shall Overcome” she played it twice, slowly, grandly, and looked over at the bar to where Walter was smiling at her. He raised a fist into the air.
“Want a ride, there, Angie?” Joe asked as she closed the top of the piano, went and gathered her coat and pocketbook.
“No, thank you, dear,” she said as Walter helped her into her white fake fur coat. “The walk will do me good.”
Clutching her little blue pocketbook, she picked her way over the snowbank by the sidewalk, across the parking lot of the post office. The green numbers by the bank said minus three degrees, but she didn’t feel cold. Her mascara was frozen, though. Her mother had taught