Bob leaned over and picked up a box, which he then took down in the elevator to his car parked on the street right outside the building. It was a Sunday, so he could park there, and not another person was around now that Matt Beach and his girlfriend had passed by. As he slammed the car door shut before heading back upstairs for another load, Bob caught a glimpse of himself in the store window that was right there. He was startled. Who was that tall older man? Was that him? A sense of bewilderment came to him. He turned away, then turned back to the window once again.
—
And he saw that it was him. It was not an unacceptable image. Bob stood for a moment, and then he gave himself a very slight nod and headed into the building again.
*
Olive Kitteridge was sad.
She was now ninety-one years old, and her friend Isabelle Goodrow was sleeping more and more; she had even fallen asleep as Olive read her the paper just the other day. So Olive was glad when Lucy called and said, “I have a story for you, Olive.”
And Olive said to come on over anytime.
So—not long after Bob cleaned out his office—Lucy arrived at Olive’s apartment, and she looked—to Olive’s eyes—to be radiant. She was wearing a pair of jeans with her green sneakers and a simple yellow top. Lucy sat down on the couch and said, “Okay, Olive—here is a story. It is not the saddest story ever told, that would be a false sentence to say that, but it has sadness in it and beauty. Tell me if you think this story isn’t one of real beauty.” Lucy’s eyes were shining as she said this, and Olive said, “Okay. Go.”
Lucy began.
And for two hours Olive sat there and listened; she was transfixed. Only once did she get up to use the bathroom, her bowels making horrible sounds as she emptied them, but she didn’t care; it was Lucy out there.
Returning, Olive said, “Keep going.”
Lucy told the story, sometimes weeping (Olive wept too and snapped her fingers at Lucy to give her a tissue, which Lucy did, returning to her seat still talking). And then at other times Lucy’s face glowed with a happiness, and Olive felt this too.
When Lucy was done, they sat in a long silence together.
Olive finally said, “That’s one hell of a story, Lucy. You should write that down, you’ve written personal things before.”
“Never going to write it. You are the receptacle.” Lucy opened her hands in a gesture of giving.
“But I’m going to die, and this should be out there.”
“It’s in you, I gave it to you.” Lucy said this open-faced and calmly.
And after a long silence, Olive said quietly, “Thank you.”
Lucy looked at her and said, “You’re welcome, Olive Kitteridge. Thank you.”
After a few moments the tree by Olive’s window sent down one leaf. And then one more followed. “Why are the green leaves falling?” Lucy asked, and Olive, glancing out the window, said, “Who knows.”
“Exactly. Who knows anything,” Lucy said.
—
When Lucy left, Olive sat for a long while.
The story that Lucy had told her was this: Lucy’s love affair with Bob Burgess, which had never happened. The part that made Lucy and Olive cry was when Lucy told of meeting Bob after his haircut, and how Lucy had loved him even more as soon as she had seen him. “He looked so innocent, Olive, he looked like a child, and it just slayed me. I wanted to take him in my arms and say: Bob! You are you! But at that very moment I somehow realized: We will never run away together, because you are Bob. And I got so mad at him for that, Olive, I was just so mad at him, because I loved him more than anyone except my daughters and David, but Bob was not available. Something about that moment, when I could have taken him in my arms, with that sad, adorable haircut he had—
“And we kind of broke up that day. Because Bob, being Bob, saved us both from getting together in that way, which would have been a terrible mistake. And I understood after a while that—I told you I thought Bob was a sin-eater—that he was eating my sin of wanting him, oh that poor man! And then later I agreed to marry William. Which was right. I met William when I was practically a child, and we’ve gone through so much together, I love him, and also— It’s odd, but he makes me feel safe. And Bob is with Margaret, which is right too. So it’s not the saddest story ever told. Love is love, Olive.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you what I mean. Years ago I read an article and the title was ‘Love Is Love,’ and in it the writer said that when she was in college and had her first boyfriend and was desperately in love with him, her great-aunt, recently widowed, came to stay at her parents’ house, and the writer remembered standing in the bedroom with this tiny old woman who was frightened and had terrible breath and realizing: I love her the same way that I love my boyfriend! She didn’t want to go to bed with this old woman, but the love she felt for her was distinctly related, of the very same cloth. And I’ve always remembered that. Because I understood it. Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love. If it is love, then it is love.”
—
Olive roused herself now, and she got her cane and made her way across the bridge to tell Isabelle. But Isabelle was asleep. And so Olive sat there and waited. She watched the small rising and falling of Isabelle’s thin chest, the purple veins that ran across her aged hands, twisted with arthritis. Love is love. Olive kept thinking about that as she waited.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the following people for their help in my writing this book:
Ellen Crosby, Jeannie Crocker, Jeff McCarthy, Marcus Hinchey, my editor Andy Ward, my agents Molly Friedrich and Lucy Carson, Maria Braeckel (the best publicist in the world), and last but never, ever least, Benjamin Dreyer.
About the Author
Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lucy by the Sea; Oh William!, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Olive, Again; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton; The Burgess Boys; Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine.
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