“Well, I like the sunlight you get here,” she said.
* * *
Then something happened that made Olive far more concerned than the lack of sun in her apartment. Olive’s bowels began to leak. She had first had this occur at night, it had woken her each time with a terrific sense of dread, and then one day on her way out of the dining room, she thought: I’d better hurry back to the bathroom, but she didn’t get there quite in time. For Olive, this was absolutely appalling.
She rose at six in the morning the next day and got into her car—she passed Barbara Paznik and her husband, who were out walking, and Barbara waved with enthusiasm—and Olive drove to the Walmart far out of town. Walking as quickly as she could with her cane, she bought a box of those atrocious diapers for old people, and she brought them back and put them in the top of her bathroom closet. She wondered when she should put one on. She never knew when these episodes would occur.
A few nights later after supper, as she and Isabelle walked down the hallway, she felt the urge, and when Isabelle said, “Do you want to come in?,” Olive said, “Yes, and hurry,” and she walked directly into Isabelle’s bathroom. “Whew,” she said, and as she was straightening herself out a few minutes later, she glanced up and saw—a box of Depends!
Olive came out and sat down and said, “Isabelle Goodrow Daignault. You wear those foolish diapers for old people,” and Isabelle’s face became pink. Olive said, “Well, so do I! Or at least I’d better start occasionally wearing them.”
Isabelle pushed her glasses up her nose with the back of her swollen wrist and said, “My bladder can’t seem to control itself, so I had to start wearing them. Not always, but at night I do.”
Olive said, “Well, my back end leaks, I’d say that was far worse.”
Isabelle’s mouth opened in dismay. “Oh, good heavens, Olive. That is worse.”
“I guess to God it is. And I think after I eat is when this happens. Honest to good God, Isabelle. I’m going to have to make sure I have my foolish poopie panties on. Even my granddaughter’s outgrown them—years ago!”
Isabelle seemed to enjoy that; she laughed until tears came from her eyes. Then she told Olive how she was always embarrassed to buy them when she took the van to the store with the other old people (she did not have a car); she always tried to sneak off and get them, and Olive said, “Hell, I’ll buy all you want, I go to Walmart when it opens at six in the morning is what I do.”
“Olive.” Isabelle let out a sigh. “I’m awful glad I met you.”
* * *
—
When Olive returned to her apartment she didn’t write up any memories; she just sat in the chair and watched her birds at the feeder outside her window and thought that she was not unhappy.
* * *
And so the year went by. At Christmas, Olive met Amy Goodrow and her husband, who was Asian—Olive already knew this from the photographs—and she was surprised by Amy in person; there was something at once kind about her, but also cool. Olive didn’t know what to make of her, but she told Isabelle after they had left—they had flown into town for three days—that she was a nice girl. “Oh, she is wonderful,” Isabelle said, and Olive thought about that, how much Isabelle adored this girl.
Olive’s own family stayed in New York for Christmas. “They have all those little kids and the tree and all that foolishness,” Olive told Isabelle. And Isabelle said, “Of course they do.”
* * *
Another spring slowly arrived.
One evening Olive noticed that Bernie Green had some guests with him at supper. She watched from the doorway as she entered. They were a couple, maybe in their fifties, but as she watched she suddenly realized: Why, that’s the Larkin girl! So Olive walked over to their table, and she said, “Hello, are you the Larkin girl?”
And the woman looked up at her, closing her dark red cardigan with one hand, and said, tentatively, “Yes?”
Olive said, “I thought so. You look like your mother. I’m Olive Kitteridge. She used to be a guidance counselor at the school where I worked.”
The woman said, “Well, I’m Suzanne, and this is my husband.” The man nodded at Olive pleasantly. Olive thought Suzanne was a pretty thing, though she