The door of the room was unlocked, and he entered it quietly. Jim lay snoring on the bed, and Helen sat, as though asleep, in the chair. On her feet now were thin pink slippers with fluffy pompoms on their ends.
Inside Bob moved a sadness he had not felt in years. He had missed his brother—his brother!—and his brother had missed Maine. But his brother was married to a woman who hated Maine, and Bob understood that they would not come up here again. Jim would live the rest of his life as an exile, in New York City. And Bob would live the rest of his life as an exile in Maine. He would always miss Pam, he would always miss New York, even though he would continue to make his yearly visits there. He was exiled here. And the weirdness of this—how life had turned out, for himself, and Jim, and even Pam—made him feel an ocean of sadness sway through him.
A sound came from the chair, and he saw that Helen was awake, and she was weeping quietly. “Ah, Helen,” he said, and he went to her. He turned and found a box of tissues on the table, then he put a tissue over her nose and said softly, “Blow,” and this made Helen laugh a little, and Bob squatted next to her chair. He put his hand on her hair, drawing it back from her face. “Ah, you’re going to be all right, Helen,” he said. “Don’t you worry. Jim’s going to drive you straight home tomorrow, and you will never have to come back to this awful state.”
She looked at him in the duskiness of the room, her one eye almost swollen shut, the other eye looking at him searchingly. “But you live here,” she said. “It’s not awful for you, is it, Bobby?”
He paused, then whispered, “Sometimes,” and he winked at her and so she laughed again.
“Bobby?”
“What, Helen?”
“I’ve always loved you.”
“I know that. And I’ve always loved you too.”
Helen nodded just slightly. “Okay,” she said, “I’m sleepy.”
“You rest. I’m right here, and Jim is in the next room.”
“Is he snoring?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Bobby.”
And Bob sat back on his heels, and after Helen’s eyes had remained closed for a while he moved back quietly to sit in the chair opposite her. He ached, as though he had walked far longer than his body could walk, his whole entire body ached, and he thought: My soul is aching.
And it came to him then that it should never be taken lightly, the essential loneliness of people, that the choices they made to keep themselves from that gaping darkness were choices that required respect: This was true for Jim and Helen, and for Margaret and himself, as well.
“Bobby?” Helen whispered this.
“What is it, Helen?” He got up and went to her.
“Nothing. I just wanted to know if you’re here.”
“I’m right here.” He stayed by her for a moment, then went back and sat in his chair. “Not going anywhere,” he said.
The Poet
On a Tuesday morning in the middle of September, Olive Kitteridge drove carefully into the parking lot of the marina. It was early—she drove only in the early hours now—and there were not many cars there, as she had expected there would not be. She nosed her car into a space and got out slowly; she was eighty-two years old, and thought of herself as absolutely ancient. For three weeks now she had been using a cane, and she made her way across the rocky pathway, not glancing up so as to be able to watch her footing, but she could feel the early-morning sun and sensed the beauty of the leaves that were turned already to a bright red at the tops of the trees.
Once inside, she sat at a booth that had a view of the ocean and ordered a muffin and scrambled eggs from the girl with the huge hind end. The girl was not a friendly girl; she hadn’t been friendly in the year she’d worked here. Olive stared out at the water. It was low tide, and the seaweed lay like combed rough hair, all in one direction. The boats that remained in the bay sat graciously, their thin masts pointing to the heavens like tiny steeples. Far past them was Eagle Island and also Puckerbrush Island with the evergreens spread across them both, nothing more than a faint line seen from here. When the girl—who