seemed to Olive to have a pulse of sadness going through her.
“Do you know—oh, this was years ago now—” Olive sat down at the empty chair at the table. “Your mother called me a cunt.”
Suzanne Larkin’s hand went to her throat, and she looked at her husband, and then at Bernie. Bernie started to chuckle.
“Oh, I deserved it,” Olive said. “I went to see her after my first husband died, and I went there because I thought her problems were worse than my own, and she knew that was why I was there, it was extraordinary, really, I never forgot it. But my word, what a word to use.”
Suzanne Larkin looked at Olive, and then a sudden kindness came to her face. “I’m so sorry about that,” she said.
And Olive said there was no reason to be sorry at all.
“She just passed away this week,” the girl said.
“Oh Godfrey,” Olive said. Then she said, “Well, I’m sorry. For you.”
And the girl reached to touch Olive’s hand lightly. “No reason to be sorry.” She leaned in toward Olive. “At all.”
* * *
Mostly, Olive and Isabelle spoke of their husbands, and also a little bit of their childhoods; Olive had told Isabelle right away that her father had killed himself in the kitchen of his house when Olive was thirty years old, and Isabelle’s face had shown genuine sorrow. This was important to Olive; had the woman appeared judgmental, Olive thought they might have stopped being friends. Only seldom did they mention their grandchildren, and one day Olive asked Isabelle why she didn’t talk more about her grandson, the fellow in California doing computer stuff. Isabelle put her hand to her chin as though thinking about this. “Well, talking about grandchildren can be boring for others, and also—” Here Isabelle sighed and looked around Olive’s living room—they traded off their places to visit—and said, “And also, I don’t really know him very well. The truth is, Olive, Amy is good to me, but she does live in Iowa, and I sometimes think when a child moves that far away they’re really trying to get away from something, and in this case I suspect it’s me.”
Only then—in a certain way—did Olive fully understand why Christopher lived in New York City. “I guess you’re right,” she said slowly, the pain of this a reticulation spreading through her. And then she thought about Amy. That’s what her slight coolness had been: Amy loved her mother, but she was not close to her. The things that happen in childhood do not go away.
“I love my grandson,” Isabelle was saying. “Oh, I do, but he’s not really a part of my life.”
Olive swung her foot up and down. After a minute she told Isabelle how she had written a letter to Little Henry and one to his older brother, who had suddenly been nice to Olive, and they had both written back, and then she got a call from Christopher saying, “Mom, you need to write the girls as well.” And Olive had been stung by that, so she wrote the girls, and never heard a thing back from them.
Isabelle listened, and shook her head slowly. “I don’t know, Olive,” she said.
And Olive said, “I don’t either.”
* * *
And then one day Isabelle did not show up for supper. Olive went and banged on her door, and Isabelle came to the door—though it took her a long time—and she had bruises up and down her arm, which she showed to Olive as soon as Olive got inside. “Oh, Olive,” she said. “I fell.” And she told Olive how she had been getting into the shower when she fell and for a few moments it seemed she wouldn’t be able to get up, but she did, and now she was very scared. Tears glistened behind her glasses. “I’m scared they’ll move me over the bridge,” she said. And Olive understood.
* * *
—
That day they each gave the other an extra key to their apartments, and it was decided that every morning and every evening one of them would slip the key into the other’s door and make sure the other was okay, and then just walk out. Olive was surprised at the amount of safety she felt the first time—that night—when she heard her door open at eight o’clock and saw Isabelle walking into her bedroom. Olive waved, and Isabelle waved, and then Isabelle walked out. So it got like that. Olive checked on Isabelle