movement, the fact that the world was much smaller now, people connected in new ways Mrs. Ringrose had never imagined.
And then Kayley thought about Mr. Ringrose, who, in a way, she had never stopped thinking about, the loneliness he must have endured, and was enduring still, now just a few feet away.
Kayley shook her head, and pulled her arms up to cover her face. At the moment—only for this moment—it was all she wanted, just to be near him again.
Motherless Child
They were late.
* * *
—
Olive Kitteridge hated people who were late. A little after lunchtime, they had said, and Olive had the lunch things out, peanut butter and jelly for the two oldest kids, and tuna fish sandwiches for her son and his wife, Ann. About the little ones, she had no idea; the baby must not eat anything solid yet, only being six weeks old; Little Henry was over two, but what did two-year-olds eat? Olive couldn’t remember what Christopher ate when he was that age. She walked into the living room, looking at everything through the eyes of her son; he would have to realize as soon as he walked in. The phone rang, and Olive moved quickly back to the kitchen to answer it. Christopher said, “Okay, Mom, we’re just leaving Portland, we had to stop for lunch.”
“Lunch?” said Olive. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The late April sun was a milky sun, seen through the window over the bay, which shone with a steely lightness, no whitecaps today.
“We had to get something for the kids to eat. So we’ll be there soon.”
Portland was an hour away. Olive said, “Okay, then. Will you still be needing supper?”
“Supper?” asked Christopher, as though she had proposed they take a shuttle to the moon. “Sure, I guess so.” In the background Olive heard a scream. Christopher said, “Annabelle, shut up! Stop it right now. Annabelle, I’m counting to three….Mom, I’ll have to call you back,” and the phone went dead.
“Oh Godfrey,” Olive murmured, sitting down at the kitchen table. She had still not taken the pictures from the wall, yet the place looked remarkably different, as though—as was the case—she would be moving out of it soon. She did not think of herself as a person who had knickknacks, but there was a box of stuff in the back corner of the kitchen, and as she glanced into the living room from where she sat, that room seemed to her to be even more guilty; there was only the furniture and the two paintings on the wall. The books were gone—she had given them to the library a week ago—and the lamps, except for one, were packed into a box as well.
The phone rang again. “Sorry about that,” said her son.
“Are you supposed to be talking on a cellphone and driving?” Olive asked.
“I’m not driving. Ann’s driving. Anyway, we’ll be there when we get there.”
“All right then,” Olive said. She added, “I’ll be awful glad to see you.”
“Me too,” said her son.
Me too.
Hanging up she walked through the house, and trepidation fluttered through her. “You’re doing this all wrong,” she said quietly to herself. “Oh Godfrey Mighty, Olive.” Almost three years it had been since she had seen her son. This did not seem natural or right to Olive. And yet when she had gone to visit him in New York City—when Ann was pregnant with Little Henry, and way before Ann had this other child, Natalie, a baby now—the visit had gone so poorly that her son had essentially asked her to leave. And she had left. And she had seen him only once since, soon after, when he had flown to Maine for his father’s funeral and spoken before the whole church, tears coming down his face. “I never heard my father swear” was one thing her son had said that day.
Olive checked the bathroom, made sure there were clean towels, she knew there were clean towels, but she could not stop herself from checking again. They had said not to worry about not having a crib, but Olive did worry. Little Henry was two and a half years old, and Natalie was six weeks, how could they not have a crib? Well, judging by how she had seen them living in New York—God, what a mess that house had been—she decided they could make do with about anything. Annabelle was almost four now, Theodore was six. What did a six-year-old boy want