Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [8]
Six young men carried the casket down the center aisle. Olive nudged Henry with her elbow, and Henry nodded. One of the pallbearers—one of the last ones—had a face that was so white and stunned that Henry was afraid he would drop the casket. This was Tony Kuzio, who, thinking Henry Thibodeau was a deer in the early morning darkness just a few days ago, had pulled the trigger of his rifle and killed his best friend.
Who was to help her? Her father lived far upstate in Vermont with a wife who was an invalid, her brothers and their wives lived hours away, her in-laws were immobilized by grief. She stayed with her in-laws for two weeks, and when she came back to work, she told Henry she couldn’t stay with them much longer; they were kind, but she could hear her mother-in-law weeping all night, and it gave her the willies; she needed to be alone so she could cry by herself.
“Of course you do, Denise.”
“But I can’t go back to the trailer.”
“No.”
That night he sat up in bed, his chin resting on both hands. “Olive,” he said, “the girl is utterly helpless. Why, she can’t drive a car, and she’s never written a check.”
“How can it be,” said Olive, “that you grow up in Vermont and can’t even drive a car?”
“I don’t know,” Henry acknowledged. “I had no idea she couldn’t drive a car.”
“Well, I can see why Henry married her. I wasn’t sure at first. But when I got a look at his mother at the funeral—ah, poor thing. But she didn’t seem to have a bit of oomph to her.”
“Well, she’s about broken with grief.”
“I understand that,” Olive said patiently. “I’m simply telling you he married his mother. Men do.” After a pause. “Except for you.”
“She’s going to have to learn to drive,” Henry said. “That’s the first thing. And she needs a place to live.”
“Sign her up for driving school.”
Instead, he took her in his car along the back dirt roads. The snow had arrived, but on the roads that led down to the water, the fishermen’s trucks had flattened it. “That’s right. Slowly up on the clutch.” The car bucked like a wild horse, and Henry put his hand against the dashboard.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Denise whispered.
“No, no. You’re doing fine.”
“I’m just scared. Gosh.”
“Because it’s brand-new. But, Denise, nitwits can drive cars.”
She looked at him, a sudden giggle coming from her, and he laughed himself then, without wanting to, while her giggle grew, spilling out so that tears came to her eyes, and she had to stop the car and take the white handkerchief he offered. She took her glasses off and he looked out the window the other way while she used the handkerchief. Snow had made the woods alongside the road seem like a picture in black and white. Even the evergreens seemed dark, spreading their boughs above the black trunks.
“Okay,” said Denise. She started the car again; again he was thrown forward. If she burned out the clutch, Olive would be furious.
“That’s perfectly all right,” he told Denise. “Practice makes perfect, that’s all.”
In a few weeks, he drove her to Augusta, where she passed the driving test, and then he went with her to buy a car. She had money for this. Henry Thibodeau, it turned out, had had a good life insurance policy, so at least there was that. Now Henry Kitteridge helped her get the car insurance, explained how to make the payments. Earlier, he had taken her to the bank, and for the first time in her life she had a checking account. He had shown her how to write a check.
He was appalled when she mentioned at work one day the amount of money she had sent the Church of the Holy Mother of Contrition, to ensure that candles were lit for Henry every week, a mass said for him each month. He said, “Well, that’s nice, Denise.” She had lost weight, and when, at the end of the day, he stood in the darkened parking lot, watching from beneath one of the lights on the side of the building, he was struck by the image of her anxious head peering over the steering