Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [33]
Down the hall now comes the sudden sound of clinking crystal. “A toast to Fidelity Select,” a man’s voice calls out.
Olive straightens up and runs her hand across the sun-warmed bureau top. It is the bureau that Christopher grew up with, and that stain from a jar of Vicks VapoRub is still there. Next to it now is a stack of folders with Dr. Sue’s handwriting on them, and three black Magic Markers, too. Slowly, Olive slides open the top drawer of the bureau. Once a place for a boy’s socks and T-shirts, the drawer is now filled with her daughter-in-law’s underwear—tumbled together, slippery, lacy, colorful things. Olive tugs on a strap and out comes a shiny pale blue bra, small-cupped and delicate. She turns it slowly in her thick hand, then balls it up and pokes it down into her roomy handbag. Her legs feel swollen, not good.
She looks at the Magic Markers lying on the bureau, next to Suzanne’s folders. Miss Smarty, Olive thinks, reaching for a marker and uncapping it, smelling the schoolroom smell of it. Olive wants to smear the marker across the pale bedspread that this bride has brought with her. Looking around the invaded bedroom, she wants to mark every item brought in here over the last month.
Olive walks to the closet, pulls open the door. The dresses there do make her feel violent, though. She wants to snatch them down, twist the expensive dark fabric of these small dresses hanging pompously on wooden hangers. And there are sweaters, different shades of brown and green, folded neatly on a plastic quilted hanging shelf. One of them near the bottom is actually beige. For God’s sake, what’s wrong with a little color? Olive’s fingers shake because she is angry, and because anyone of course could walk down the hall right now and stick his head through the open door.
The beige sweater is thick, and this is good, because it means the girl won’t wear it until fall. Olive unfolds it quickly and smears a black line of Magic Marker down one arm. Then she holds the marker in her mouth and refolds the sweater hurriedly, folding it again, and even again, to get it as neat as it was at first. But she manages. You would never, opening this closet door, know that someone had pawed through it, everything so neat.
Except for the shoes. All over the floor of the closet shoes are tossed and scattered. Olive chooses a dark, scuffed loafer that looks as though it is worn frequently; in fact, Olive has often seen Suzanne wearing these loafers—having bagged a husband, Olive supposes, she can now flop around in beaten-up shoes. Bending over, scared for a moment that she won’t get up, Olive pushes the loafer down inside her handbag, and then, hoisting herself, she does get up, panting slightly, and arranges the tinfoil-wrapped package of blueberry cake so that it covers the shoe.
“You all set?”
Henry is standing in the doorway, his face shiny and happy now that he’s made the rounds, now that he’s been the sort of man who is well liked, a doll. Much as she wants to tell him what she has just heard, much as she wants relief from the solitary burden of what she’s done, she will not tell.
“You want to stop at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way?” Henry asks, his big ocean-colored eyes looking at her. He is an innocent. It’s how he has learned to get through life.
“Oh,” says Olive, “I don’t know if I need a doughnut, Henry.”
“That’s all right. I just thought you said—”
“Okay. Sure, let’s stop.”
Olive tucks her handbag under her large arm, pressing it to her as she walks toward the door. It does not help much, but it does help some, to know that at least there will be moments now when Suzanne will doubt herself. Calling out, “Christopher, are you sure you haven’t seen my shoe?” Looking through the laundry, her underwear drawer, some anxiety will flutter through her. “I must be losing my mind, I can’t keep track of anything…. And, my God, what happened to my sweater?” And she would never know, would she? Because who would mark a sweater, steal a bra, take one shoe?
The sweater will be ruined, and the shoe will be gone, along with the bra,