They could be charming.
They cared only about themselves.
They only helped other people to make themselves look good.
If you criticize them, they will gaslight you.
And so forth…
So Bob told Lucy about the parishioner who had said that years ago about Margaret. And Lucy stopped walking and said, “He said that to you?”
“Yeah,” Bob said.
“Jesus.” They kept walking then, and after a moment Lucy said, “Well, anyway. I hope it helps Becka figure Trey out.”
“Don’t think about it,” Bob said to Lucy, and she nodded. It was a small joke, the don’t-think-about-it line between them, because they both felt like they thought about things too much. “Okay,” Lucy said.
And then, as they walked the pathway, strewn with yellow leaves and sunshine, Lucy took a quick step and turned to Bob and said, “Bob, I wish I could still do cartwheels!”
“You did cartwheels?” Bob thought of Lucy’s childhood as being so dismal that she never would have done a cartwheel. But then he remembered in a memoir Lucy had written about William, that William had told her he married her because she was filled with joy, and how could she have been filled with joy coming from the wretched background she had come from?
“Yes! My brother and sister never did, but I did, I just loved it. The body. Oh, the body weighs us down.”
“I’ve never done a cartwheel in my life,” Bob said.
They reached the granite bench where Bob smoked his cigarettes and they sat down, and he said, “Thanks, Lucy,” he meant for her not caring about his cigarette, and she said, “Of course, Bob.” They said this each time. Because of the way the wind was today, Bob could sit while he smoked, the smoke blew away from them. If the wind was different, or if there was no wind, Bob would get up and move around while he smoked, because, as he had told Lucy, he had learned this about surreptitious cigarette smoking: Keep moving, and the smell won’t get on your clothes so much.
“Oh Bob! I meant to tell you this.” Lucy turned to him. “Little Annie has been dropping her leaves—and I finally realized she needs to be transplanted.”
Bob said, “Is that so hard to do?” He knew that she was speaking of her plant. Lucy had two plants: One had come from New York and reached almost to the ceiling of her house—Bob had seen this when he and Margaret had gone to Lucy and William’s home for dinner a few times—and the other plant, the same kind of plant, Lucy had bought about a year ago. She had bought it at the local pharmacy, and she loved it; Bob was surprised by Lucy’s ability to love certain things, and he had looked at the two plants in their living room one night and said, “Hey, your plant has a little sister.”
“Exactly! Her name is Little Annie.” And Lucy had touched the leaves of it lightly.
“What’s the big one named?” Bob asked, and Lucy just shook her head and said, “Doesn’t have a name.”
William had said, from the couch, running a hand through his white hair, which made it stand up, “She talks to her plants, you know. And I have to say, she’s convinced me. I mean, I don’t think it’s crazy.” He added, “You guys know I think Lucy is a spirit. She’s different from the rest of us.” He had tugged on his full white mustache after he spoke.
Now Lucy said with a sigh, “It seems too hard for me to do, transplanting her.” She added, “So many things these days seem hard for me to do. I don’t know why, I just feel a little scrambled in my head or something. Something about Chrissy finally having her baby and then getting postpartum, and…I don’t know, Bob. The girls don’t need me like they used to.”
“I hear you,” Bob said. She had told him this before.
They sat in silence for a while longer. When Bob had first started to take walks with Lucy during the pandemic, she had spoken frequently of her second husband, David. He had been a cellist with the Philharmonic, and he had died two years before the pandemic. She had clearly cherished David and had been cherished by him. But she hadn’t spoken of him for a while now; Bob had noticed this and did not feel comfortable bringing him up.
Bob said, squinting at Lucy, “You know what I figured out recently? The reason I used to drink too much is because I’m terrified. I’m always terrified. But now I only have my one glass every night. But that’s why I have my glass of wine. Terror.” He inhaled and said, “That’s why I smoke these too. Terror.”
He watched her while he exhaled. Lucy looked straight at him, he felt he saw her receive this. “Oh, I get it,” she said.
“I know you do,” Bob said.
3
There are many back roads in Maine. Meaning narrow tarred roads with trees reaching overhead from both sides, and the roads themselves are often filled with bumps from the long winters of freezing and then thawing. These roads wind around from one small town to another, and if you are not familiar with them it is easy enough to get lost. But most of the people who are on these curving back roads know exactly where they are going, and in November there can be a stark beauty as you drive along these places because the trees are bare and the trunks and the branches of these trees stand out against the sky, and if the sun is out it can sink with a sharp display of yellow on the deep blue horizon. It might be fair to say that people who have lived there for years take this beauty internally; it enters them without their fully knowing it. But it is there; it is part of the landscape of their lives.
*
Two weeks after Lucy visited with Olive Kitteridge, this happened:
—
On one of these back roads a man named Matthew Beach lived with his mother; this was in the town of Shirley Falls. Matthew Beach’s mother, Gloria Beach, was eighty-six years old and she had been living with her son for ten years; they lived far down a narrow road with no other houses in sight; this was the house that Matthew had grown up in and had lived in his whole life.
One Friday evening Matthew drove to the grocery store, and when he got back, Gloria Beach had disappeared from their home. This was toward the beginning of November and a small bit of the foliage was still clinging to the trees, but mostly that golden shattering of color was gone.
—
Matt had called the police right away, and there had been a search with the state troopers and their very bright flashlights. The woods of mostly pine trees and cedars around the house had been examined in a five-mile radius, and there was no sight or sign of her. Naturally, this was in the newspapers. Bob Burgess and his twin sister, Susan Olson, who still lived in the town of Shirley Falls, had spoken to each other about it on the telephone. “Bitch Ball disappearing!” Susan said. “I didn’t even know she was still alive!”
Gloria Beach and her family had lived in Shirley Falls for years, and the middle child, a girl named Diana, had been in Bob and Susan’s class at school.
The newspaper said that Walter Beach, Gloria’s husband, had divorced her many years before—and he had been deceased for many years as well. Also, in the newspaper—for reasons no one quite understood—were three current photographs of the children, all grown up now: Thomas, Diana, and Matthew. Thomas was a psychiatrist in Oregon. His photograph showed a sturdy face and kind eyes (yet sort of cold, if you really looked). And Diana lived in Connecticut and had been a high school guidance counselor her whole adult life. In the—apparently current—photograph she looked beautiful. People did comment on that. She had been a pretty girl, but now that she was older, she still looked attractive! How had that happened? One woman in town suggested that she had had plastic surgery, and Susan Olson, peering at the photograph, realized that was probably it. The photograph of Matt, who had been living with his mother, was disturbing. He looked frightened and unkempt, and his hair was half over his eyes, which were covered by huge black-framed glasses.
“If he killed her, I don’t blame him,” Susan said to Bob. Bitch Ball had worked in the school cafeteria. Everyone had been terrified of her. Everyone.
Anyway, the case soon went cold.
—
But two hours south, in the town of Saco, around the same time Gloria Beach had gone missing, a car had been rented and not returned. The missing car had apparently been rented by one Ashley Munroe from Shirley Falls, but when she was investigated for auto theft after the car was not brought back, she said that she had never rented a car, that her driver’s license and credit card had been stolen. In addition, Ashley Munroe had alibis all over the place. She had just given birth to a baby and was in Shirley Falls the entire time the car had been rented so far away and then gone missing. Ashley Munroe was not charged with theft, the car was not found, and nobody thought any more about it. Meaning, nobody put the two incidents together at that time.
