Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [67]
“Put them in that pot,” Olive said, pointing to an old blue vase. The flowers sat there on the wooden table in the kitchen. Henry came and put his arms around her; it was early autumn and chilly, and his woolen shirt smelled faintly of wood chips and mustiness. She stood, waiting for the hug to end. Then she went outside and planted her tulip bulbs.
A week later—just a morning with errands to do—they drove into town, into the parking lot of the big Shop ’n Save. Olive was going to stay in the car and read the paper while he went in to get the milk and orange juice and a jar of jam. “Anything else?” He said those words. Olive shook her head. Henry opened the door, swinging his long legs out. The creak of the opening car door, the back of his plaid jacket, then the bizarre, unnatural motion of him falling right from that position to the ground.
“Henry!” she shouted.
She shouted at him, waiting for the ambulance to come. His mouth moved, and his eyes were open, and one hand kept jerking through the air, as though reaching for something beyond her.
The tulips bloomed in ridiculous splendor. The midafternoon sun hit them in a wide wash of light where they grew on the hill, almost down to the water. From the kitchen window, Olive could see them: yellow, white, pink, bright red. She had planted them at different depths and they had a lovely unevenness to them. When a breeze bent them slightly, it seemed like an underwater field of something magical, all those colors floating out there. Even lying in the “bum-pout room”—the room Henry had added a few years before, with a bay window big enough to have a small bed tucked right under it—she could see the tops of the tulips, the sun hitting the blooms, and sometimes she dozed briefly, listening to the transistor radio she held to her ear whenever she lay down. She got tired this time of day because she was up so early, before the sun. The sky would just be lightening as she got into her car with the dog and drove to the river, where she walked the three miles one way and the three miles back as the sun rose over the wide ribbon of water where her ancestors had paddled their canoes from one inlet to another.
The walkway had been newly paved, and by the time Olive made her way back, Rollerbladers would be passing by, young and ferociously healthy, their spandexed thighs pumping past her. She’d drive to Dunkin’ Donuts and read the paper and give the dog some doughnut holes. And then she would drive to the nursing home. Mary Blackwell was working there now. Olive might have said, “Hope you’ve learned to keep your mouth shut,” because Mary looked at her oddly, but Mary Blackwell could go to hell—they all could go to hell. Propped up in his wheelchair, blind, always smiling, Henry was wheeled by Olive to the recreation room, over by the piano. She said, “Squeeze my hand if you understand me,” but his hand did not squeeze her hand. “Blink,” she said, “if you hear me.” He smiled straight ahead. In the evenings, she went back to spoon the food into his mouth. They let her wheel him into the parking lot one day so the dog could lick his hand. Henry smiled. “Christopher is coming,” she told him.
When Christopher arrived, Henry still smiled. Christopher had gained weight, and he wore a collared shirt to the nursing home. When he saw his father, he looked at Olive with a face stricken. “Talk to him,” Olive directed. “Tell him you’re here.” She walked away so they could have some privacy, but it wasn’t long before Christopher came to find her.
“Where have you been?” he asked, peevishly. But his eyes were red, and Olive’s heart unfolded.
“Are you eating all right out there in California?” she asked.
“My God, how can you stand this place?” her son asked.
“I can’t,” she said. “The smell stays all over you.” She was like some helpless schoolgirl, careful not to let it show: how glad she was to have him there, to not have to go there alone, to have him in the car beside