Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [7]
“Henry goes with Tony Kuzio.” Denise slipped the cash drawer into the register, and stepped around to arrange the breath mints and gum that were neatly laid out by the front counter. “His best friend since he was five.”
“And what does Tony do now?”
“Tony’s married with two little kids. He works for Midcoast Power, and fights with his wife.” Denise looked over at Henry. “Don’t say that I said so.”
“No.”
“She’s tense a lot, and yells. Boy, I wouldn’t want to live like that.”
“No, it’d be no way to live.”
The telephone rang and Denise, turning on her toe playfully, went to answer it. “The Village Pharmacy. Good morning. How may I help you?” A pause. “Oh, yes, we have multivitamins with no iron…. You’re very welcome.”
On lunch break, Denise told the hefty, baby-faced Jerry, “My husband talked about Tony the whole time we were going out. The scrapes they’d get into when they were kids. Once, they went off and didn’t get back till way after dark, and Tony’s mother said to him, ‘I was so worried, Tony. I could kill you.’ ” Denise picked lint off the sleeve of her gray sweater. “I always thought that was funny. Worrying that your child might be dead and then saying you’ll kill him.”
“You wait,” Henry Kitteridge said, stepping around the boxes Jerry had brought into the back room. “From their very first fever, you never stop worrying.”
“I can’t wait,” Denise said, and for the first time it occurred to Henry that soon she would have children and not work for him anymore.
Unexpectedly Jerry spoke. “Do you like him? Tony? You two get along?”
“I do like him,” Denise said. “Thank goodness. I was scared enough to meet him. Do you have a best friend from childhood?”
“I guess,” Jerry said, color rising in his fat, smooth cheeks. “But we kind of went our separate ways.”
“My best friend,” said Denise, “when we got to junior high school, she got kind of fast. Do you want another soda?”
A Saturday at home: Lunch was crabmeat sandwiches, grilled with cheese. Christopher was putting one into his mouth, but the telephone rang, and Olive went to answer it. Christopher, without being asked, waited, the sandwich held in his hand. Henry’s mind seemed to take a picture of that moment, his son’s instinctive deference at the very same time they heard Olive’s voice in the next room. “Oh, you poor child,” she said, in a voice Henry would always remember—filled with such dismay that all her outer Olive-ness seemed stripped away. “You poor, poor child.”
And then Henry rose and went into the other room, and he didn’t remember much, only the tiny voice of Denise, and then speaking for a few moments to her father-in-law.
The funeral was held in the Church of the Holy Mother of Contrition, three hours away in Henry Thibodeau’s hometown. The church was large and dark with its huge stained-glass windows, the priest up front in a layered white robe, swinging incense back and forth; Denise already seated in the front near her parents and sisters by the time Olive and Henry arrived. The casket was closed, and had been closed at the wake the evening before. The church was almost full. Henry, seated next to Olive toward the back, recognized no one, until a silent large presence made him look up, and there was Jerry McCarthy. Henry and Olive moved over to make room for him.
Jerry whispered, “I read about it in the paper,” and Henry briefly rested a hand on the boy’s fat knee.
The service went on and on; there were readings from the Bible, and other readings, and then an elaborate getting ready for Communion. The priest took cloths and unfolded them and draped them over a table, and then people were leaving their seats aisle by aisle to go up and kneel and open their mouths for a wafer, all sipping from the same large silver goblet, while Henry and Olive stayed where they were. In spite of the sense of unreality that had descended over Henry, he was struck with the unhygienic nature of all these