attention, and she was surprised, the mail would not be here for hours. It said American Poetry Review, and then she saw there was a Post-it someone had put near the front as though to mark a page. Taking it, she went inside and closed the door, and before she had even left the foyer, she saw on the cover that it said: New Poetry by Andrea L’Rieux.
Seated now at the breakfast nook, she opened it to the page that had the Post-it and read: Accosted. Olive did not understand why that had been marked, until slowly, as she read the poem, it came to her, like she was moving—very, very slowly—under water. Who taught me math thirty-four years ago / terrified me and is now terrified herself / sat before me at the breakfast counter / white whiskered / told me I had always been lonely / no idea she was speaking of herself. Olive read on. It was all there, her father’s suicide, her son being a needle in her heart; the poem’s theme, pounded home again and again, was that she—Olive—was the lonely, terrified one. It finished, Use it for a poem, she said / All yours.
Olive stood unsteadily and walked to the garbage and put the magazine in it. Then she sat down again and looked out at the field. She tried to understand what had happened, all the while knowing—but not believing—what had happened. And then she realized that someone in town had dropped the magazine off at night, had driven up to her house and put that damned magazine in her mailbox, having stuck that Post-it to the page so that Olive would be sure to see it, and this stung her even more deeply than the poem had. She recalled how years and years ago her mother had opened the door one morning and a basket of cow flaps had sat there on the step, with a note that said, For Olive. She never knew who had brought the cow flaps, and she could not think who would have brought this magazine.
After a few minutes, or maybe an hour—Olive did not know how much time went by, how long she sat immobile at her table—she went and got the magazine from the garbage and read the poem again. This time she spoke out loud: “Andrea, this poem stinks.” But her cheeks became very warm; she could not remember her cheeks ever becoming as warm as they did while she sat there looking at the poem. She started to rise to put the magazine in the garbage again, but she did not want it even in the house, and so she found her cane and walked to her car and drove out past Juniper Bay, where she found a garbage can for the public, and there was no one around, and so Olive, taking the Post-it from it, threw the magazine in there.
When she got back to the house she telephoned Edith. Edith said, “Olive, how are you?”
“What do you mean, how am I? I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?” She thought she heard in Edith’s voice some knowledge of the poem.
“Well, I don’t know,” Edith said. “I don’t know how you are, that’s why I’m asking.”
“How’s Buzzy these days?” Olive asked.
“Oh, Buzzy’s fine. You know, he’s Buzzy. Gets up at the crack of dawn, goes out and gets our coffee and brings it back, same as always.”
“Well, you’re lucky he’s around,” Olive said.
“Oh yes, my word. I am lucky.” Edith said this with more feeling than Olive thought she needed to.
“Goodbye,” Olive said.
She walked around the house that day and thought about Buzzy getting up early, driving to get their coffee. But where in the world would Buzzy get a copy of American Poetry Review? Buzzy wouldn’t have known poetry if it walked up and introduced itself to him. Buzzy had built houses for a living. But still, Edith had asked her how she was. Christopher had said to her one time, “You’re paranoid, Mom.” She hadn’t liked that a bit, and she didn’t like it now, thinking of it.
* * *
That night, Olive soiled herself while she was asleep, and she woke immediately with the warmth of her excrement seeping from her. “Horrors,” she whispered to herself. This had happened twice before, since Jack died, and Olive would not tell her doctor, or anyone. As she changed the sheet and showered—it was one in the morning—she thought about Andrea.