home. Hope you don’t mind.” He winked at her.
And she could not believe the flight home. She had her own seat that stretched backward and forward. It was like she was an astronaut, in her own little cubbyhole. There was a kit, with socks and a mask and a toothbrush, all for her! She ate a roast beef sandwich and had ice cream for dessert, and she could not stop looking across the aisle at Jack. He made a kissing sound and said, “Now, don’t disturb me.” And drank his glass of wine.
* * *
The second week of October, Olive went to get her hair cut by Janice Tucker, a woman who worked from her home. Olive always had the first appointment of the day, at eight o’clock, and as she settled into her chair, Janice wrapped the plastic apron around her and said, “I heard you had breakfast with Andrea L’Rieux.”
“I did,” said Olive. “I certainly did.”
“Then you must feel terrible about her accident.”
“What did you say?” Olive turned her head.
“In the paper just yesterday. I thought you’d have seen it. Wait, I’ll get it for you.” Janice turned around and went through a pile of newspapers on the table in the waiting area. She brought back the paper and said, “Here. Look at this. Oh, Olive, I thought you knew.”
The small headline read: Former Poet Laureate Struck by Bus, Survives. And a small paragraph said that Andrea L’Rieux had been hit by a bus on a street in Boston, that she was in stable condition with a broken pelvis and internal injuries. A complete recovery was expected.
Olive felt a secretion from the back corners of her mouth. She put the paper on the counter and sat back and said nothing, while Janice got her little scissors and began to snip at Olive’s hair. “So sad, right?” Janice asked, and Olive nodded. She felt awful. As the woman snipped tenderly at her hair, Olive felt worse and worse. And then realizing she had no Jack—or Henry, her first husband—to go home and tell this to, she said suddenly, “Janice, I think the girl was trying to kill herself.”
Janice stood back, the scissors near her chest. “Olive, stop.”
“No, I think she was. I’ve been sitting here thinking about it, and she talked about suicide to me. She said how men use guns and women tend not to use guns, they mostly use pills, and I should have known, I should have realized—”
“Now, Olive. Don’t you think that. Do not even think that. I’m sure it’s not true. She was hit by a bus, it happens, Olive.”
“Janice, you didn’t see her. She looked like hell. She wore a ratty little sweater, and she was smoking. She hated her father, and then he died. And that can make a person messed up too.”
Janice seemed to think about this. And then she said, “Olive, I just don’t believe that she tried to kill herself. I don’t want to believe it, and so I’m not going to.”
“Fine,” said Olive. “Fine, fine, fine.”
She did not tip Janice, as she usually did, and then she left, waving one hand above her shoulder as she went down the steps with her cane.
* * *
It was a glorious autumn. The leaves clung to the trees and were more vivid than they had been in years. People said this to one another, and it was true. And the sun shone down on all of it, day after day. It rained mostly at night, and the nights were cold, and the days were not too cold, but they were not warm. The world sparkled, and the yellows and reds, and orange and pale pinks, were just splendid for anyone driving down the road out to the bay. Olive could see this without driving; from her front door she saw the woods, and every morning when she opened the door she was aware of the beauty of the world.
This surprised her. When her first husband had died, she had not been aware of anything. This is what she thought. But here was the world, screeching its beauty at her day after day, and she felt grateful for it. Inside the front closet, Jack’s coats and sweaters remained. And this was different too. She had gotten rid of Henry’s clothes quickly, once he died. She had even started getting rid of them while he was still in the nursing home, the new pair of shoes he had on the day