Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [53]
At some point the doctor, whose white lab coat had been partly bunched beneath his leg that was closest to Olive, had said, “What’s your name?” using the same pleasant voice he’d used earlier with Olive.
“Listen,” said Blue-Mask. “Fuck you. Okay?”
At different times Olive thought: I remember this clearly, but then later couldn’t remember when she’d thought that. Paint streaks, though, of this: They were quiet. They were waiting. Her legs had stopped shaking. Outside the door a telephone rang. It rang and rang, then stopped. Almost immediately it rang again. Olive’s kneecaps bumped up, like big, uneven saucers beyond the edge of the papery blue robe. She didn’t think she would have picked them out as her own, if someone had passed before her a series of photographs of old ladies’ fat knees. Her ankles and bunioned toes seemed more familiar, stuck out in the middle of the room. The doctor’s legs were not as long as hers, and his shoes didn’t seem very big. Plain as a child’s, his shoes. Brown leather and rubber-soled.
Where Henry’s pant leg was caught up, the liver spots showed on his white hairless shin. He said, “Oh, gosh,” quietly. And then: “Do you think you could find a blanket for my wife? Her teeth are chattering.”
“You think this is a fucking hotel?” said Blue-Mask. “Just shut the fuck up.”
“But she’s—”
“Henry,” Olive said sharply. “Be quiet.”
The nurse kept crying silently.
No, Olive could not get the splotches arranged in order, but Blue-Mask was very nervous; she understood early on he was frightened to death. He kept bouncing his knees up and down. Young—she had understood that right away, too. When he pushed up the sleeves of his nylon jacket, his wrists were moist with perspiration. And then she saw how he had almost no fingernails. She had never, in all her years of school teaching, come across nails that had been bitten so extremely to the quick. He kept bringing his fingertips to his mouth, pressing them into the slots of the mask with a ferociousness; even the hand that held the gun would move to his mouth and he would chew the thumb tip quickly; a big bump of bright red.
“Get your fucking head down,” he said to Henry. “Stop fucking watching me.”
“You don’t need to speak so filthy,” Henry said, looking at the floor, his wavy hair headed in the wrong direction across his head.
“What’d you say?” The boy’s voice rose like it was going to break. “What the fuck did you say, old man?”
“Henry, please,” Olive said. “Keep quiet before you get us all killed.”
This: Blue-Mask leaning forward, interested in Henry. “Old man. What the fucking-fuck did you say to me?” Henry turning his face to the side, his big eyebrows frowning. Blue-Mask getting up and pushing the gun into Henry’s shoulder. “Answer me! What the fuck did you say to me?” (And Olive, turning down past the mill now, approaching the town, remembered the familiarity of that kind of frenzied frustration, saying to Christopher when he was a child, Answer me! Christopher always a quiet child, quiet the way her father had been.)
Henry blurted: “I said you don’t need to talk so filthy.” Blurted out further: “You should be ashamed of your mouth.” And then the guy had pushed the gun against Henry’s face, right into his cheek, his hand on the trigger.
“Please!” Olive cried out. “Please. He got that from his mother. His mother was impossible. Just ignore him.”
Her heart thumped so hard she thought it made her papery blue gown move on her chest. The boy stood there watching Henry, then finally stepped back, tripping over the nurse’s white shoes. He kept the gun pointed at Henry but turned to look at Olive. “This guy’s your husband?”
Olive nodded.
“Well, he’s a fuckin