Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [60]
The music started, and he winked one eye at her slowly, reassuringly.
During Debussy he fell asleep, his arms folded across his chest. Glancing at her husband, Jane felt her heart swell with the music, and with love for him, this man next to her, this old (!) man, who had been followed through life by his own childhood troubles—a mother always, always mad at him. In his face right now she felt she could see the little boy, furtive, forever scared; even as he slept here at this very moment there was a tautness of anxiety on his face. A gift, she thought again, placing her mittened hand lightly on his leg, a gift to be able to know someone for so many years.
Mrs. Lydia had had her eyes done; they stared out of her head like a sixteen-year-old’s.
“You look wonderful,” Jane told her, although close-up the effect was frightening. “Just wonderful,” she repeated, because it must have been scary, having someone take a scalpel so close to your eyes. “How’s Lydia?” Jane asked. “And the others?”
“Lydia’s getting married again,” Mrs. Lydia said, moving aside to let someone get by. “We’re happy about it.”
Her husband, squatty, round-shouldered, rolled his eyes and jiggled change in his pocket. “Gets expensive,” he said, and his wife, a red felt hat tucked over her gold hair, gave him a fleeting look, which he seemed to ignore. “All those damn psychiatrist bills,” he added, saying this to Bob with a kind of man-to-man laugh.
“Sure,” said Bob, affably.
“But tell us, what are your bunny rabbits up to?” Mrs. Lydia’s lipstick was dark, perfectly lined on her lips.
And so Jane recited the ages of their grandchildren, described the jobs held by her sons-in-law, the girl they were hoping Tim would marry soon. And because the Lydias only nodded at all this, without even saying “How nice,” Jane felt compelled to go on, to fill the space between their close, almost hovering, faces. “Tim went skydiving this year,” she said, and told them how this had scared her to death. It seemed he’d gotten over it after a few times; he hadn’t mentioned it again. “But honestly,” Jane said, shivering, hugging her black coat close. “Jumping out of a plane, can you imagine?” She herself could imagine it only too well, and it made her heart race.
“Not really a risk taker, are you, Jane?” Mrs. Lydia was looking at her with those new eyes; unnerving to have a sixteen-year old’s eyes looking at you from an old woman’s head.
“No,” said Jane, but she felt indistinctly that she had been insulted, and when Bob’s arm came up to touch her elbow, she felt he had received this, for her, in that way, too.
“You’ve always been a favorite of mine, Janie Houlton,” said the squat, red-faced Mr. Lydia then, abruptly reaching over and rubbing her shoulder through her nice black coat.
She felt exhausted, suddenly, by this silliness. What were you supposed to say when a squat, homely little man whose path you had crossed briefly for a number of years said you had always been a favorite of his? “Do you have any plans to retire soon, Alan?” is what she pleasantly said.
“Never,” the man answered. “I’ll retire the day I die.” He laughed, and they laughed with him, and in the quick glance he gave to Mrs. Lydia, the way she briefly rolled her brand-new eyes, Jane Houlton realized that he did not want to be home all day with his wife, that his wife did not want him there either. Mrs. Lydia said to Bob, “You’ve retired now, since we last saw you? Wasn’t it funny, meeting you in the Miami airport the way we