Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [61]
“It’s a small world,” Mrs. Lydia added, tugging on her ear with a gloved hand, glancing at Jane, and then turning her head, looking up the balcony stairs.
Bob stepped to the side, ready to go back into the church.
“When was this?” Jane said. “Miami?”
“Couple years ago. We visited those friends we told you about”—Mr. Lydia nodded at Bob—“in their little gated community. That’s not my dish of ice cream, I can tell you.” He shook his head, then squinted up at Bob. “Doesn’t it make you crazy to be home all day?”
“Love it,” Bob said firmly. “I love it.”
“We do things,” Jane added, as though she needed to explain something.
“What things?”
And then Jane hated her, this tall woman with her painted face, the hard eyes staring out from under the red felt hat; she didn’t want to tell Mrs. Lydia how every morning she and Bobby, early, first thing, took a walk, how they came back and made coffee and ate their bran cereal and read the paper to each other. How they planned their day, went shopping—for her coat, for a special pair of shoes since he had such trouble now with his feet.
“We bumped into someone else that trip,” Mr. Lydia said. “The Shepherds. They were at a golf resort north of the city.”
“Small world,” Mrs. Lydia said again, tugging at her ear with her gloved hand again, not looking at Jane this time, just looking up the stairs at the balcony.
Olive Kitteridge was moving through the crowd of people. Taller than most, her head was visible as she seemed to say something to her husband, Henry, who nodded, an expression of suppressed mirth on his face.
“Better get back in there,” said Bob, nodding toward the inside of the church, touching Jane’s elbow.
“Come on,” said Mrs. Lydia, tapping her husband’s sleeve with a program. “Let’s go. Lovely to see you.” She wiggled her fingers at Jane, then moved up the stairs.
Jane squeezed past a group of people standing right in the doorway, and she and Bob went back to their pew, her tugging her coat around her, crossing her legs, cold inside their black wool slacks. “He loves her,” said Jane, with a tone of admonishment. “That’s how he can stand her.”
“Mr. Lydia?”
“No. Henry Kitteridge.”
Bob didn’t answer, and they watched as others came in, took their seats again, the Kitteridges among them. “Miami?” Jane said to her husband. “What was he talking about?” She looked at him.
Bob thrust out his lower lip and shrugged, to indicate he didn’t know.
“When were you in Miami?”
“He must have meant Orlando. Remember when I had that account I was closing down there?”
“You bumped into the Lydias at the airport in Florida? You never told me that.”
“I’m sure I did. It was ages ago.”
The music took over the church. It took up all the space that wasn’t filled with people or coats or pews, it took up all the space in Jane Houlton’s head. She actually moved her neck back and forth as though to shake off the cumbersome weight of the sound, and realized that she had never liked music. It seemed to bring back all the shadows and aches of a lifetime. Let others enjoy it, these people listening so seriously in their fur coats, their red felt hats, their tiresome lives—a pressure on her knee, her husband’s hand.
She gazed at his hand, spread over her black coat that they had bought together. It was the large hand of an old man; a beautiful hand with the long fingers and the veins rising across; as familiar, almost, as her own hand was to her.
“Are you all right?” He had put his mouth against her ear, but she thought he had whispered too loudly. She made a circular motion with two fingers, their own sign language from years back, Let’s go, and he nodded.
“You all right, Janie?” he asked on the sidewalk, his hand under her elbow.
“Oh, I get tired of that heavy music somehow. Do you mind?”
“No. I’d had enough.”
In the car, in the darkness and the silence of the car, she felt some knowledge pass between them. And it had been sitting there in church with them, too, like a child pressed between them in the pew, this thing, this presence that had made its way into their evening.
She