Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [42]
“Sit, dear,” said Daisy. The girl sat, her long, long arms placed on the table. Truly, it was as though a skeleton had sat down with them.
“Did he call?” the girl asked Daisy. Her skin was not cinnamon-looking now, but pallid, and her hair, uncombed, looked like the hair of a stuffed animal, not real.
“No, dear. He didn’t.” Daisy handed her a tissue, and Harmon saw the girl was weeping.
“What’m I going to do?” she asked. She looked past Harmon, out the window at the road. “I mean, Victoria, of all people. Jesus, she was my friend.”
“You can stay another day while you get it figured out,” said Daisy. The girl turned her big light-brown eyes toward Daisy, as though studying her from somewhere far off.
“You should eat something, dear,” Daisy said. “I know you don’t want to, but you should.”
“She’s right,” Harmon said. It worried him to think of this girl falling faint or dead in Daisy’s little cottage. He thought of Bonnie saying how she had already damaged her heart. “Look.” He pushed forward the two bags from the marina. “Doughnuts.”
The girl eyed the bags. “Doughnuts?”
“How about just half a glass of milk, and a bit of doughnut?” Daisy asked. The girl began to weep again. While Daisy went to get the milk, Harmon reached into his pocket and handed her his white folded handkerchief. The girl stopped crying, started to laugh.
“Hey, cool,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone used these anymore.”
“Go ahead and use it,” Harmon said. “But for the love of God, drink that milk.”
Daisy brought in the milk, took the doughnut from its bag, broke it in two.
“Fucking Luke,” the girl said, with sudden energy. “He put me on fucking probation for being a muffin cutter.”
“A what?” asked Daisy, sitting down.
“In the hospital. One time I cut my muffin in half. The rules are, you’re not supposed to engage—that’s the word they use, engage—with the food except to eat it. So I have this plastic knife in my pocket and I cut the muffin in half, and I get reported to Luke. ‘We heard you’ve been cutting your muffins, Nina,’ he said, with his arms folded across his chest.” The girl rolled her eyes extravagantly when she finished telling this. “Muffin Luke. The fucker.”
Daisy and Harmon looked at each other.
“How did you get out of the hospital?” asked Harmon.
“I ran away. But next time, my parents said they’d commit me, and then I’m fucked.”
“Better eat the doughnut,” Harmon said.
The girl giggled. “You’re kind of goofy.”
“He’s not goofy. He’s concerned about you. Now eat the doughnut,” Daisy said, in a melodious voice.
“So, like, what’s the story with you two?” The girl looked from one to the other.
“We’re friends,” said Daisy, but Harmon saw that her cheeks colored.
“Okay.” Nina looked again from one to the other. Tears swelled in her eyes and spilled over. “I don’t know what to do without Tim,” she said. “And I don’t want to go back to the hospital.” She had begun to shiver. Harmon took off his big woolen cardigan and put it over her shoulders.
“Of course you don’t,” said Daisy. “But you need to eat. You’re going to have other boyfriends, you know.”
Harmon realized by a shift in the girl’s expression that this was what she feared—being without love. Who didn’t fear that? But he knew her problems had roots that were long and tangled, and the safety of Daisy’s cottage could not provide any lasting relief. She was very sick. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-three. So you can’t make me go to the hospital. I know this shit,” she added. “So don’t try anything.”
He held both palms toward her. “I am trying nothing.” He put his hands down. “Didn’t you get arrested?”
Nina nodded. “I had to show up in court. We both got ACD’s, but I got an extra lecture because I’d been, you know, an asshole to that fucker police.”
“What’s an ACD?”
But Nina was exhausted; she folded her arms, putting her