Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout Read Free Book Online Page B

agonizing itch, and he ran his hands back and forth over his knees, found the hole in his jeans. “I think my mother was bipolar,” he said. “Never diagnosed, though.”
    â€œI see.” Mrs. Kitteridge nodded. “She could’ve been helped today. My father wasn’t bipolar. He was depressed. And he never talked. Maybe they could’ve helped him today.”
    Kevin was silent. And maybe they couldn’t, he thought.
    â€œMy son. He’s got the depression.”
    Kevin looked at her. Small drops of perspiration had appeared in the pockets beneath her eyes. He saw that she did, in fact, look much older. Of course she wouldn’t look the same as she had back then—the seventh-grade math teacher that kids were scared of. He’d been scared of her, even while liking her.
    â€œWhat’s he do?” Kevin asked.
    â€œA podiatrist.”
    He felt the stain of some sadness make its way from her to him. Gusts of wind were now swooping in all directions, so that the bay looked like a blue and white crazily frosted cake, peaks rising one way, then another. Poplar leaves beside the marina were fluttering upward, their branches all bent to one side.
    â€œI’ve thought of you, Kevin Coulson,” she said. “I have.”
    He closed his eyes. He could hear as she shifted her weight beside him, heard the gravel again on the rubber mat as her foot scraped over it. He was going to say
I don’t want you thinking about me,
when she said, “I liked your mother.”
    He opened his eyes. Patty Howe had stepped back out of the restaurant; she was walking toward the path in front of the place, and a nervousness touched his chest; it was sheer rock in front there, if he remembered right, a straight drop down. But she would know that.
    â€œI know you did,” Kevin said, turning to the big, intelligent face of Mrs. Kitteridge. “She liked you.”
    Olive Kitteridge nodded. “Smart. She was a smart woman.”
    He wondered how long this would have to go on. And yet it meant something to him, that she had known his mother. In New York no one knew.
    â€œDon’t know if you know this or not, but that was the case with my father.”
    â€œWhat was?” He frowned, passed his index knuckle briefly through his mouth.
    â€œSuicide.”
    He wanted her to leave; it was time for her to leave.
    â€œAre you married?”
    He shook his head.
    â€œNo, my son isn’t either. Drives my poor husband nuts. Henry wants everyone married, everyone happy. I say, for God’s sake, let him take his time. Up here the pickings can be slim. Down there in New York, I suppose you—”
    â€œI’m not in New York.”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œI’m not—I’m not in New York anymore.”
    He could hear that she was about to ask something; he thought he could almost feel her desire to turn around and look at the backseat, see what was in his car. If she did, he would have to say he needed to go, ask her to leave. He watched from the corner of his eye, but she was still looking straight ahead.
    Patty Howe, he saw, had shears in her hand. With her skirt blowing about her, she was standing by the rugosa, cutting some of the white blossoms. He kept his eye on Patty, the choppy bay spread out behind her. “How’d he do it?” He rubbed his hand over his thigh.
    â€œMy father? Shot himself.”
    The moored sailboats now were heaving their bows high, then swooping back down as though pulled by an angry underwater creature. The white blossoms of the wild rugosa bent, straightened, bent again, the scraggly leaves around them bobbing as though they too were an ocean. He saw Patty Howe step back from them, and give her hand a shake, as though she had been pricked by the thorns.
    â€œNo note,” Mrs. Kitteridge said. “Oh, Mother had such a hard time with that no-note business. She thought the least he could’ve done was