Olive, Again (ARC) by Elizabeth Strout

Author:Elizabeth Strout [Strout, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780812996548
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Published: 2019-03-13T16:27:53+00:00

Pedicure

It was November.

No snow had fallen yet in Crosby, Maine, and because the sun was out on this particular Wednesday there was a kind of horrifying beauty to the world: The oak trees held their leaves, golden and shriveled, and the evergreens stood at attention as though cold, but the other trees were bare and dark-limbed, stretching into the sky with dwindling spikiness, and the roads were bare, and the fields were swept clean-looking, everything sort of ghastly and absolutely gorgeous with the sunlight that fell at an angle, never reaching the top of the sky. The sky was a darkish blue.

Jack Kennison suggested to Olive Kitteridge that they take a ride in the car. “Oh, I love rides,” she said, and he said he knew that, he was suggesting a ride to make her happy. “I’m happy,” she said, and he said he was too. So they got into their new Subaru—Olive didn’t care for his sports car—and off they went; they decided to head for Shirley Falls, an hour away, where Olive had gone to high school, and where her first husband, Henry, had come from.

Jack and Olive had been together now for five years; Jack was seventy-nine and Olive seventy-eight. The first months, they had slept holding each other. Neither one of them had held another person in bed all night for years. When Jack had been able to be away with Elaine, they sort of held each other at night in whatever hotel they were in, but it was not the same as what he and Olive did their first months together. Olive would put her leg over both of his, she would put her head on his chest, and during the night they would shift, but always they were holding each other, and Jack thought of their large old bodies, shipwrecked, thrown up upon the shore—and how they held on for dear life!

He would never have imagined it. The Olive-ness of her, the neediness of himself; never in his life would he have imagined that he would spend his final years with such a woman in such a way.

It’s that he could be himself with her. This is what he thought during those first number of months with a sleeping, slightly snoring Olive in his arms; this is what he still thought.

She irritated him.

She would not have breakfast, but would get going right away, as if she had things to do. “Olive, you don’t have anything to do,” he would say. And she thumbed her nose at him. Thumbed her nose. God.

It was not until after they married that he began to understand that her anxiety level was high. She rocked her foot constantly as she sat in her chair, she would suddenly leave the house, saying she had to buy some fabric at the Joann fabric store, and she would be gone within moments. But she still clung to him at night, and he still clung to her. And then after another year they

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