Olive Kitteridge (9 page)

Something else happened the year Derrick went off to college. While their bedroom life had slowed considerably, Harmon had accepted this, had sensed for some time that Bonnie was “accommodating” him. But one night he turned to her in bed, and she pulled away. After a long moment she said quietly, “Harmon, I think I'm just done with that stuff.”

They lay there in the dark; what gripped him from his bowels on up was the horrible, blank knowledge that she meant this. Still, nobody can accept losses right away.

“Done?” he asked. She could have piled twenty bricks onto his stomach, that was the pain he felt.

“I'm sorry. But I'm just done. There's no point in my pretending. That isn't pretty for either of us.”

He asked if it was because he'd gotten fat. She said he hadn't really gotten
fat,
please not to think that way. She was just done.

But maybe I've been selfish, he said. What can I do to please you? (They had never really talked about things in this way—in the dark he blushed.)

She said, couldn't he understand—it wasn't
him,
it was her. She was just done.

He opened the
Newsweek
again now, thinking how in a few years the house would be full again; if not all the time, at least a lot. They'd be good grandparents. He read the magazine's paragraph over again. They were making a film about the towers going down. It seemed to him he should have some opinion about this, but he did not know what to think. When had he stopped having opinions on things? He turned and looked out at the water.

The words
cheating on Bonnie
were as far away as seagulls circling Longway Rock, not even dots to the eye of anyone standing on shore—they had no real meaning to Harmon. Why would they? They implied a passion that would turn him away from his wife, and this was not the case. Bonnie was the central heating of his life. His brief Sunday moments with Daisy were not untender, but it was more a shared interest, like bird-watching. He turned back to the magazine, an inner shudder to think if one of his sons had gone down in one of those planes.

         

On Thursday it was just getting dark when the couple came into the hardware store. Harmon heard the high voice of the girl before he actually saw her. Stepping around from behind the rack of drill bits, he was surprised at her forthright “Hi.” She said it in almost two syllables, and while she didn't smile, her face had that same matter-of-factness that he had seen outside the marina.

“Hi there,” Harmon said. “How're you folks today?”

“Good. We're just looking.” The girl put her hand into the boy's pocket. Harmon gave a little bow, and they wandered down toward the lightbulbs. He heard her say, “He reminds me of Luke in the hospital. I wonder what happened to him. Remember Muffin Luke who ran the fucking place?”

The boy answered in a murmur.

“Luke was fucking weird. Remember I told you he said he was going in for heart surgery? I bet he made a terrible patient—he was so used to being in charge. He got scared about his stupid heart, though. Remember I told you he said he didn't know if he'd wake up dead or alive?”

Again, a murmur, and Harmon got the broom from the back of the store. Sweeping, he glanced at the back of them, the girl standing close to the boy, who had a coat with baggy pockets. “But you don't wake up dead, do you?”

“Let me know if you need my help,” Harmon said, and they both turned, the girl looking startled.

“Okay,” she said.

He took the broom up front. Cliff Mott came in to ask if there were snow shovels yet, and Harmon told him the new ones would be in next week. He showed Cliff one from last year and Cliff looked at it a long time, said he'd be back.

“We should get this for Victoria,” Harmon heard the girl say. With the broom, he moved up to the front of the gardening aisle, and saw she had picked up a watering can. “Victoria says her plants listen when she talks, and I believe her.” The girl put the can back on the shelf, and the boy, slouchy, easygoing, nodded. He was looking at the coiled hoses hanging on the wall. Harmon wondered why they would want a hose this time of year.

“You know how she's been such a bitch?” The girl was wearing the same denim jacket with the fake fur at the cuffs. “It's because the guy she likes has a fuck buddy and he didn't tell her. She found out from someone else.”

Harmon stopped sweeping.

“But a fuck buddy—I mean, who cares. That's the point of a fuck buddy.” The girl put her head against her boyfriend's shoulder.

The boy nudged her toward the door. “Night, now,” Harmon said. The girl pulled the handle with her small hand. On her feet were big suede shapeless boots, her legs as skinny as spider legs rising from them. It was not until they were out of sight down the sidewalk that Harmon recognized the uneasy feeling he had. He didn't know, but years of experience in the store made him think the boy had shoplifted something.

         

The next morning, he called his son Kevin at work.

“Everything all right, Dad?” the kid asked.

“Oh, sure, sure.” Harmon was suddenly overcome with a bashfulness. “Everything okay with you?” he asked.

“The same. Work's okay. Martha's talking about wanting a kid, but I say we wait.”

“You're both young,” Harmon said. “You can wait.
I
can't wait. But don't rush. You just got married.”

“It makes you feel old, though, doesn't it? Once that ring is on the finger.”

“It does, I guess.” It was hard for Harmon to remember the emotions of his first years of marriage. “Say, listen, Kev. Are you smoking pot?”

Kevin laughed through the phone. It was, to Harmon's ear, a healthy sound, straightforward, relaxed. “Jesus, Dad. What's gotten into you?”

“I wondered, is all. Couple of kids have moved into the Washburn place. People are afraid they're potheads.”

“Weed makes me antisocial,” Kevin said. “Makes me turn my face to the wall. So no, I don't smoke it anymore.”

“Let me ask you something,” Harmon said. “And don't tell your mother, for Christ's sake. But these kids came in the store yesterday, they were talking, casual, you know, and they mentioned ‘fuck buddies.' You heard of that?”

“You're kind of surprising me here, Dad. What's going on?”

“I know, I know.” Harmon waved a hand. “I just hate getting old, one of those old people that don't know anything about young people. So I thought I'd ask.”

“Fuck buddies. Yeah. That's a thing these days. Just what it says. People who get together to get laid. No strings attached.”

“I see.” Now Harmon didn't know what more to say.

“I gotta go, Dad. But listen, stay cool. You're cool, Dad. You're not an old fart, don't worry about that.”

“All right,” Harmon said, and after he hung up, he stared out the window for a long time.

         

“That's fine, honestly,” Daisy said when he called her the next morning. “I mean it, Harmon.” He could hear her smoking as they spoke. “You're not to worry,” she said.

Within fifteen minutes, she called back. He had a customer in the store, but Daisy said, “Say, listen. Why don't you stop by anyway and we'll just talk. Talk.”

“All right,” he said. Cliff Mott brought the snow shovel up to the register. Cliff Mott, who had heart disease, and could go any minute. “All set, then,” Harmon said, handing the man his change.

Harmon still did not sit in Copper's chair; he sat on the couch beside Daisy, and once or twice they might briefly touch hands. Otherwise, they did what she had suggested—talked. He told her of trips to his grandmother's house, the way her pantry smelled of ammonia, the homesickness he had felt. “I was small, see,” he said to the responsive face of Daisy. “And I understood it was meant to be
fun.
That was the idea, you see. But I couldn't tell anyone it wasn't fun.”

“Oh, Harmon,” said Daisy, her eyes moistening. “Yes. I know what you mean.”

She told him about the morning she took a pear from the front yard of Mrs. Kettleworth, and her mother made her take it back, how embarrassed she'd been. He told about finding the quarter in the mud puddle. She told of going to her first high school dance, wearing a dress of her mother's, and the only person who asked her to dance was the principal.

“I'd have asked you,” Harmon said.

She told him her favorite song was “Whenever I Feel Afraid,” and she sang it to him softly, her blue eyes sparkling with warmth. He said the first time he heard Elvis on the radio singing “Fools Rush In,” it made him feel like he and Elvis were friends.

Walking back to his car at the marina on those mornings, he was sometimes surprised to feel that the earth was altered, the crisp air a nice thing to move through, the rustle of the oak leaves like a murmuring friend. For the first time in years he thought about God, who seemed a piggy bank Harmon had stuck up on a shelf and had now brought down to look at with a new considering eye. He wondered if this was what kids felt like when they smoked pot, or took that drug ecstasy.

         

One Monday in October, there was an article in the local paper saying arrests had been made at the Washburn residence. Police broke up a party where marijuana was found growing in pots along a windowsill. Harmon perused the paper carefully, finding the name Timothy Burnham, and his “girlfriend, Nina White,” who had the extra charge of assaulting a police officer.

Harmon couldn't imagine the girl with the cinnamon hair and skinny legs assaulting a police officer. He pondered this as he moved around the hardware store, finding some ball bearings for Greg Marston, a toilet plunger for Marlene Bonney. He made a sign that said 10%
OFF,
and put it on the one remaining barbecue up front. He hoped Kathleen Burnham would come in, or someone from the sawmill so he could ask, but they didn't, and none of his customers mentioned it. He telephoned Daisy, who said she'd seen the article, and hoped the girl was all right. “Poor little thing,” Daisy said, “must've been scared.”

Bonnie came home from her book club that night and reported how Kathleen said her nephew Tim just had the bad luck of inviting a bunch of friends over who turned up the music too loud, and some were smoking pot, including Tim's girlfriend. When the police came, the girl, Nina, started to kick like a wildcat and they had to cuff her, though probably the charges would be dropped, and they'd just all have to pay a fine, and be on probation a year.

“Idiots,” Bonnie said, shaking her head.

Harmon said nothing.

“She's sick, you know,” Bonnie added, dropping the book onto the couch. It was a book by Anne Lindbergh; she'd told him about it. Anne Lindbergh liked to get away from it all.

“Who's sick?”

“That girl. The girlfriend of Tim Burnham.”

“What do you mean
sick
?”

“She's got that disease where you don't eat anything. Apparently she's had it long enough there's some damage to her heart, so she really
is
an idiot.”

Harmon felt a sprinkle of perspiration arrive on his forehead. “Are you sure?”

“That she's an idiot? Think about it, Harmon. If you're young and you've got heart damage, then you're not supposed to be partying. And you're
certainly
not supposed to go on starving yourself.”

“She's not starving herself. I saw her in the marina with the fellow. They were sitting in a booth, ordering breakfast.”

“And how much of the breakfast did she eat?”

“I don't know,” he admitted, remembering her small back as she'd leaned over the table. “But she doesn't look sick. She's a pretty girl.”

“That's what Kathleen says. Tim met her when he was driving around the country following some band. I guess people just follow this band around, Fish or Pish. Something. Remember Kevin talking about Dead Heads, people who followed around that mess—what were they called? The Grateful Dead? I always found that offensive.”

“He died,” said Harmon. “That fat fellow Jerry of that band.”

“Well, I hope he died gratefully,” Bonnie said.

         

The leaves were half-gone now. The Norway maples still hung on to their yellow, but most of the orangey-red of the sugar maples had found their way to the ground, leaving behind the stark branches that seemed to hang like stuck-out arms and tiny fingers, skeletal and bleak. Harmon sat on the couch next to Daisy. He had just mentioned to her that he never saw the young couple anymore, and she told him that Les Washburn had kicked them out after the party that had led to the arrests, but she didn't know where they were living, only that Tim still worked at the sawmill.

“Bonnie said the girl had that disease where you starve yourself,” Harmon said. “But I don't know if that's true.”

Daisy shook her head. “Pretty young girls starving themselves. I've read articles about it. They do it so they can feel in control, and then
it
goes out of control and they can't stop. It's just the saddest thing.”

Harmon himself had been losing weight. It wasn't that hard to do; he just stopped taking the extra portion at night, had a smaller slice of cake. He felt better. He told this to Daisy, and she nodded.

“Same with my smoking. I've been putting off the first cigarette of the day, and I've got it pushed back now—three in the afternoon.”

“That's great, Daisy.” He had seen that she'd not been smoking on Sunday mornings, but wasn't going to mention it. The appetites of the body were private battles.

“Tell me, Harmon,” Daisy said, brushing something from her pant leg, glancing over with a mischievous smile. “Who was your first girlfriend?”

In fourth grade he'd had a crush on Candy Connelly. He'd stand behind her to watch her take the steps up the big metal slide on the playground, and one time she had fallen. When she'd cried, he had felt helpless with love. All that at nine years old. Daisy said when she was nine, her mother sewed her a yellow dress to wear to the spring concert the school had every year. “She pinned a white lilac to it just as we left that evening,” Daisy said, with her soft laugh. “Walking to the school—oh, I felt so pretty.”