Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout [82]
“Is she asleep?” Olive asks, walking farther into the room.
“Passed out,” Marlene answers. “Upchucked first in Eddie’s room, then fell asleep here.”
“I see. Well, it’s a nice place you’ve given her here.” Olive walks over toward the little dining alcove and brings back a chair, sits down by Marlene.
For a while neither woman speaks, then Marlene says pleasantly, “I’ve been thinking about killing Kerry.” She raises a hand from her lap and exposes a small paring knife lying on her green flowered dress.
“Oh,” says Olive.
Marlene bends over the sleeping Kerry and touches the woman’s bare neck. “Isn’t this some major vein?” she asks, and puts the knife flat against Kerry’s neck, even poking slightly at the vague throbbing of the pulse there.
“Yuh. Okay. Might want to be a little careful there.” Olive sits forward.
In a moment Marlene sighs, sits back. “Okay, here.” And she hands the paring knife to Olive.
“Do better with a pillow,” Olive tells her. “Cut her throat, there’s going to be a lot of blood.”
A sudden, soft, deep eruption of a giggle comes from Marlene. “Never thought of a pillow.”
“I’ve had some time to think about pillows,” Olive says, but Marlene nods vacantly, like she’s really not listening.
“Mrs. Kitteridge, did you know?”
“Know what?” says Olive, but she feels her stomach turn choppy, whitecaps in her stomach.
“What Kerry told me today? She said it happened with her and Ed only once. Just one time. But I don’t believe that—it had to be more. The summer after Ed Junior graduated from high school.” Marlene has started to cry, is shaking her head. Olive looks away; a woman needs her privacy. She holds the paring knife in her lap and gazes out through the window above the bed, only gray sky and gray ocean; too high up to see any shoreline, only gray water and sky out there, far as the eye can see.
“I never heard anything,” says Olive. “Why would she choose today to tell you?”
“Thought I knew.” Marlene has pulled a Kleenex from somewhere, from inside her sleeve maybe, and she dabs at her face, blows her nose. “She thought I knew all along, and I was just punishing her by keeping on being nice to her. She got drunk today and started saying how good I got her, killing her and Ed with kindness that way.”
“Jesum Crow,” is all Olive can think to say.
“Isn’t that funny, Olive?” Again, out of nowhere comes Marlene’s deep giggle.
“Well,” says Olive. “I guess it’s not the funniest thing I ever heard.”
Olive looks at the black-suited body of Kerry sprawled there on the bed and wishes there were a door to close or a curtain to draw so they didn’t have to see the rise of this girl’s rear end, her black stockings outlining the slim calves of her legs. “Does Eddie Junior know?”
“Yuh. Seems she told him yesterday. Thought he knew, too, but he says he didn’t. He says he doesn’t believe it’s true.”
“It may not be.”
“Shit,” says Marlene, shaking her head, crying again. “Mrs. Kitteridge, if you don’t mind, I’d like to just say shit.”
“Say shit,” says Olive, who never uses the word herself.
“Shit,” says Marlene. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“I guess so.” Olive breathes in deeply. “I guess so,” she says again, slowly. She looks around her with little interest—a picture of a cat is on one wall—and her glance comes back to Marlene, who is squeezing her nose. “Quite a day, kiddo. Vomit upstairs, and cigarette butts downstairs.” The woman with the long gray hair has really shaken Olive up: Seismic spells itself across her fog-colored mind. She says, “That creature who bought Christopher’s house, she’s walking around putting her cigarettes out in your plants.”
“Oh, her,” says Marlene. “She’s a piece of shit, too.”
“I guess so.” She’s going to tell