Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [59]
Ever since her heart attack, Jane had been worried about dying in public. She had had her attack in the kitchen of her home, but the idea that she might fall over in front of people made her very anxious. Years ago, she had witnessed such a thing, a man dead on the sidewalk. The medics had ripped his shirt open, and it could still make her cry if she thought about it hard enough—the tender unknowingness, the goneness of his flung-wide arms, his belly showing. Poor darling thing, she had thought, to be lying there dead.
“And I want to sit toward the back,” her husband said. She nodded. His bowels weren’t what they used to be; sometimes he had to leave a place in a hurry.
The church was dark and cold, almost empty. They handed over their tickets and were given programs, which they held with a tentativeness while they walked into one of the back pews, settling in, unbuttoning their coats, but leaving them on.
“Keep an eye out for the Lydias,” Jane said, turning her head.
He held her hand, picked nervously at her fingertips.
“Was it Lydia who slept over every weekend for a while there, or was that her sister?” Bob asked, while Jane craned her neck back, looking up at the ceiling of the church, the large, dark rafters.
“That was Patty, her sister. Not as nice a girl as Lydia.” Jane leaned in closer toward her husband and whispered, “Lydia had an abortion in high school, you know.”
“I know, I remember.”
“You do?” Jane looked at her husband, surprised.
“Sure,” Bob said. “You told me she used to come to your office with cramps. She came in once and cried for two days.”
“That’s right,” said Jane, warmer now inside her coat. “Poor thing. I suspected it right then, frankly, and pretty soon after that Becky told me it was true. I’m really surprised you remember that.” She chewed her lip pensively, rocked her foot up and down a few times.
“What?” Bob said. “You thought I never listened? I listened, Janie.”
But she waved a hand and sighed, and settled herself against the back of the pew before she said, musingly, “I liked working there.” And she had. She had liked, especially, the adolescent girls, the young, bumbling, oily-skinned, scared girls that talked too loud, or snapped their gum ferociously, or slunk through the corridor with their heads down—she’d loved them, really. And they knew it. They would come to her office with their terrible cramps, lying on the couch gray-faced and dry-lipped with pain. “My father says it’s all in my head,” more than one girl had said, and oh, it broke her heart. What a lonely thing to be a young girl! She would let them stay sometimes all afternoon.
The church was slowly beginning to fill up. Olive Kitteridge walked in, tall and broad-shouldered in a navy-blue coat, her husband behind her. Henry Kitteridge touched his wife’s arm, indicating they take a seat in a pew nearby, but Olive shook her head and they sat instead two pews closer to the front of the church. “I don’t know how he can stand her,” Bob murmured to Jane.
They watched the Kitteridges settle into their pew, Olive shaking off her coat, then placing it back on her shoulders, Henry helping her. Olive Kitteridge had taught math at the school Jane had worked at; very seldom had the two women spoken at length. Olive had a way about her that was absolutely without apology, and Jane had kept her distance. In response to Bob’s remark now, Jane merely shrugged.
Turning her head, she saw the Lydias going up the back steps to the balcony. “Oh, there they are,” she said to Bob. “Such a long time since we’ve seen them. She looks pretty good.”
He squeezed her hand and whispered, “So do you.”
The members of the orchestra came out in their black clothes and took their seats up front by the pulpit. Music stands were adjusted, legs set at an angle, chins tilted, bows picked up—and then the disharmonious sound of an orchestra warming up.
It bothered Jane that she knew something about Lydia Granger that Mrs.