Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [34]
“Let’s go,” Olive says finally, and she clutches her bag beneath her arm, preparing for a journey through the living room. Picturing her heart, a big red muscle, banging away beneath her flowered dress.
Starving
At the marina on Sunday morning, Harmon had to work not to stare at the young couple. He had seen them before in town, walking along Main Street; the girl’s thin hand—cuffed at the wrist by fake fur on the end of her denim jacket sleeve—had been holding the boy’s hand loosely as the two had looked in store windows with the same laconic, unqualified comfortableness they had now leaning against the railing by the stairs. The boy was said to be a cousin of Kathleen Burnham and was up from New Hampshire, working at the sawmill, though he was no bigger, and looked no older, than an adolescent sugar maple. But his eyes behind the black-framed glasses were easy, his body was easy. They wore no wedding bands, Harmon noticed, and he turned his gaze out to the bay, which was sparkling in the morning sunlight and was as flat as a coin on the windless day.
“I’m mad at Victoria,” Harmon heard the girl say. Her voice was high, and in that way sounded too loud. She seemed not to care that everyone could hear, though there were just a few of them—Harmon, two fishermen—waiting to get inside. Recently the marina had become a popular breakfast spot on Sunday mornings; a wait for a table was not unusual. Harmon’s wife, Bonnie, wouldn’t do it. “People waiting gets me anxious,” she said.
“Why?” the boy asked. His voice was softer, but Harmon, not far away, could hear it. He turned, gave them a long glance through his squinted eyes.
“Well.” The girl seemed to consider this, her mouth moving back and forth. Her skin was flawless, and had the faintest blush of cinnamon color. Her hair had been dyed to match this coloring—or so Harmon thought. Girls did brilliant things with their hair these days. His niece worked in a salon in Portland and had told Bonnie hair coloring had been a whole different ball game for years. You could make it any number of colors, and it was good for your hair. Bonnie said she didn’t care, she’d take the hair God gave her. Harmon had been sorry.
“She’s been kind of a bitch lately,” the girl said. Her voice was energetic, but ruminative. The boy nodded.
The marina door opened, two fishermen came out, the two waiting went in. The boy took a seat on the wooden bench and the girl, instead of sitting next to him, sat on his lap as though he were a chair. “Here,” she said to Harmon, nodding to the space left.
He started to raise a hand to indicate no, that was all right, but she looked at him with such open-faced matter-of-factness that he sat down next to them.
“Stop smelling me,” the girl said. She was gazing out at the water; her denim jacket with its fake fur lining in the hood caused her head to be thrust forward. “You’re smelling me, I know you are.” She made a small motion, perhaps to hit the boy lightly. Harmon, who had been looking from the corner of his eye, now stared straight ahead. In just those few moments a breeze seemed to have picked up—the bay was one long ripple. He heard the sound of an oar being tossed into a dinghy and watched as the young Coombs boy slipped the rope off the post on the wharf. He’d heard it said the kid didn’t want to take over his father’s store, that he wanted to go into the coast guard instead.
A car driving into the parking lot allowed Harmon to turn his head, and he saw the girl was sniffing herself, the shoulder of her denim jacket. “I know,” she said. “I smell like pot.