“I know exactly who you mean. God.”
“He was the best thing that happened to me, except for my girls.”
“Ah, Lucy.” After a moment Bob asked, with tentativeness, “What made you think of him?”
“Oh, I think of him a lot. Lots and lots I think of David. But just now remembering that lawyer who would tell me stuff he shouldn’t have— Well, David was very different from that sort of person.” She glanced up at Bob and said, “But keep talking. Please.” And she started to walk again.
So now Bob told her that Jim did not want to be buried with Helen, that he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread over the Androscoggin River.
“Aha, of course he does,” Lucy said.
They had reached the spot where Bob always had his smoke. “Why of course?” Bob asked.
“It makes perfect sense to me. Returning to the scene of his crime, and because frequently people return to their childhoods.” Lucy sat down next to him on the granite bench. “Why do I feel so bad for your brother?” And then Lucy poked Bob’s leg a few times and said, “This is why. Because when you were telling me about him that day, when he confessed to you that he thought he was the one who killed your father— You know what I’ve never forgotten about that story?”
Bob squinted at her above his smoke. He was happy—he felt happiness—just to be in Lucy’s presence.
“The fact that he said that every day at school he would think, I’m going to go home and tell her, meaning your mother. Today I am going to do that. Starting at the age of eight, Bob. Your brother kept thinking: Today I am going to tell her, today I am going to confess. And then he couldn’t. And as time went by he couldn’t do it even more, and meanwhile your mother was so loving to you because she thought you had done it, and so this was confusing to the small boy Jim, maybe he thought he wouldn’t be believed. And then in college, and then at Harvard Law School, he still kept thinking, I’m going to tell her. I’ll write her a letter.” Lucy shook her head and sighed. “Oh Bob. What a tortured way to live. No wonder he had to become one of the best defense attorneys in this country. He thought of himself as a criminal.”
“Oh, I know. I know. I hear you.” Bob sucked long and hard on his cigarette. And then he had to stand because the wind was blowing the smoke straight at him. He walked around in circles before squishing the cigarette out. He held it up before putting it back into the pack. “Thanks, Lucy,” he said.
“Of course,” Lucy answered.
—
As they walked back to the parking lot, Bob felt again that just to be in the company of Lucy gave him a respite from everything; this went through his mind. So he told her that. He said, “It makes me glad to be with you, Lucy. You give me a break from…well, you know, life.”
“A break from your sin-eating,” she said, with an open smile. “I’m so glad.” Then she added, “I feel the exact same way. Only I’m not eating sins.”
When they reached their cars, Bob opened his arms and said, “Big hug to you, Lucy.”
And she opened her arms and said, “To you too, Bob.”
But they did not hug.
Book Three
...
1
By the middle of April, the forsythia bush out in front of Bob and Margaret’s house had still not begun to bloom. But the purple crocuses had come up by the basement edges of the house, and other houses had tiny sprinklings of purple and yellow crocuses. There were no daffodils yet as there had been in New York, although their stalks were up and the buds were there, and certainly no tulips, although their stalks were showing through the ground now as well, deep reddish green.
—
Bob called up Olive Kitteridge and asked her about the person she had gone square dancing with who had said something about the Beach family; the memory of Olive’s calling him in his office months ago to speak to him about the Beach case came back to him one day. Olive sounded listless on the telephone. “I can’t remember now. Something about sex, I think.”
“Sex?” Bob asked.
“Bob, I’m sorry, I just can’t remember.”
“What was the name of the person who said this? The person who was at square dancing?”
“It was years ago, Bob. I just can’t remember. Goodbye.” And she hung up.
*
Oh, Olive.
Here is what was happening with Olive. Her best friend—at this point in her life, the best friend she felt she had ever had in the whole world—Isabelle Goodrow, who lived “over the bridge” in a horrible room with the aides going in whenever they wanted to, or more likely they didn’t want to go in and so stayed away—Isabelle Goodrow was going to be leaving to live in California near where her daughter lived. This is what Isabelle had told Olive the day before, even before Olive had settled herself down, intending to read the newspaper to Isabelle from front to back.
Amy Goodrow, Isabelle’s daughter, was some high muckety-muck doctor out there in California, and she was married to some other high muckety-muck doctor, and apparently Amy and her husband had decided to have Isabelle come live in a facility near where they lived. This is what Isabelle had reported to Olive the day before, on Thursday. They were flying in this weekend, and they would take Isabelle back with them. They had this new place all arranged.
Isabelle had wept as she told this to Olive. Olive had not said a word. She had not been able to say a word. When she finally got up to leave, she said, “I will miss you, Isabelle.”
When she got back to her apartment, Olive sat for a very long time. She thought to herself: Isabelle was meek and mousy the first time I met her, and she’s still meek and mousy, she’ll do whatever she is told to do. Olive sat until it got dark outside, and then she rose and put a light on. She did not fall asleep that night until it was almost dawn, and when she woke four hours later, she felt wretched. She called Isabelle up and said, “When do they arrive?” It was now Friday. And Isabelle said, “Later this afternoon.”
“Okay,” Olive said. And she hung up.
Isabelle called her back. “I’m sure Amy would love to see you,” she said, and Olive said “Ay-yuh” and hung up.
Around two o’clock that afternoon, Olive wrote down on a piece of paper: LUCY BARTON SAYS— And then Olive stopped. She didn’t really know what Lucy had said. But she picked up the paper again and continued: THERE ARE VERY FEW PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WE FEEL CONNECTED TO. I FEEL CONNECTED TO YOU. LOVE, OLIVE
She put the piece of paper into an envelope and walked over the bridge to the nurses’ station without passing by Isabelle’s room. “Will you please make sure you deliver this to Isabelle Goodrow before she leaves?” Olive asked, and the aide looked surprised and said, “She’s leaving?”
And then Olive walked back to her own apartment. It was like waiting for a death. She simply wanted Isabelle gone now. Although she did not want Isabelle gone at all. Olive was as distressed as she could remember feeling since Henry had his stroke. But then she had had something to do, which was to visit him in his awful stroke home, every day she had gone there, she had even—when the weather permitted—taken their dog, and she would wheel Henry into the parking lot so that the dog could lick his hands. And Henry had sat in his wheelchair with a smile on his face, not able to say a word. He had never spoken a word again after he had the stroke.
But now Olive had no place to go, she had absolutely nothing to do. All Friday afternoon she waited to hear from Isabelle, and she did not, and when she got into bed that night she began to swear in a way that she had not—could not remember, anyway—sworn for years. “You goddamn asshole,” she said quietly into her pillow, meaning Amy Goodrow. “You stupid, stupid goddamn pig.” These are the sorts of things she said as she lay sleepless on her bed.
