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Incoming Tide I 31 ther and brother. He was as much a stranger up here now as any tourist might be, and yet gazing back at the sun-sliced bay, he noted how familiar it felt; he had not expected that. The salt air filled his nose, the wild rugosa bushes with their white blossoms brought him a vague confusion; a sense of sad ignorance seemed cloaked in their benign white petals. Patty Howe poured coffee into two white mugs, placed them on the counter, said quietly, "You're welcome," and moved back to arrange the corn muffins that had just been passed through the opening from the kitchen. She had seen the man sitting in the car-he'd been there Incoming Tide well over an hour-but people did that sometimes, drove out from town just to gaze at the water. Still, there was something about him that was troubling her. "They're perfect," she said to the cook, because the tops of the muffins were crispy at the edges, yellow as rising suns. ~rhe bay had small whitecaps and the tide was coming in, so the The fact that their newly baked scent did not touch off a queasiness in smaller rocks could be heard moving as the water shifted them. Also her, as they had two times in the past year, made her sad; a soft dismal- there was the twanging sound of the cables hitting the masts of the ness settled over her. The doctor had said to them, For three months sailboats moored. A few seagulls gave squawking cries as they dove you are not to even think of it. down to pick up the fish heads and tails and shining insides that the The screen door opened, banged shut. Through the large window, boy was tossing from the dock as he cleaned the mackerel. All this Patty saw that the man in the car still sat looking at the water, and as Kevin saw as he sat in his car with the windows partly open. The car Patty poured coffee for an elderly couple that had seated themselves was parked on the grassy area, not far from the marina. Two trucks slowly into a booth, as she asked how they were this nice morning, she were parked farther over, on the gravel by the dock. suddenly knew who the man was, and something passed over her, like How much time went by, Kevin didn't know. a shadow crossing in front of the sun. "There you go," she said to the At one point, the marina's screen door opened wheezily and couple, and didn't glance out the window again. slammed shut, and Kevin watched as a man moved in slow steps in his "Say, why doesn't Kevin come over here instead," Patty's mother had dark rubber boots, tossing a coil of heavy rope into the back of the suggested, when Patty had been so small her head had only reached truck. If the man noticed Kevin, he gave no sign, even when he backed .the kitchen counter, shaking it No, no, no, she didn't want to go there. up his truck and turned his head in Kevin's direction. There was no She'd been scared of him; in kindergarten he had sucked on his wrist reason they would recognize each other. Kevin had not been to this so hard it was always a brilliant disk of a bruise, and his mother-tall, town since he was a child; thirteen, when he moved away with his fa- dark-haired, deep-voiced-had scared her, too. Now, as Patty put the 32 I Incoming Tide Olil'e Kitteridge I 33 corn muffins onto a plate, she thought that her mother's response had porch added, and the old kitchen gone. Of course: they'd have wanted been graceful, brilliant almost. Kevin had come to her house instead, the kitchen gone. A sense of umbrage pricked him, then left. He and he'd patiently swung a jump rope whose other end was tied around slowed the car, peering carefully for any signs of children. He saw no a tree, while Patty had jumped and jumped. On her way home from bicycles, no swing set, no tree house, no basketball hoop-just a hang- work today, Patty would stop by her mother's house. You'll never guess ing pink impatiens plant by the front door. who I saw, she'd say. Relief came, arriving as a sensation beneath his ribs, like a gentle lapping of the water's edge at low tide, a comforting quiescence. In the back of the car was a blanket, and he would still use it, even if there 'The boyan the dock stood up, holding a yellow pail in one hand, a were no children in the house. Right now the blanket was wrapped knife in the other. A seagull swooped in and the boy waved his arm around the rifle, but when he returned (soon, while this relief still with the knife. Kevin watched as the boy turned to come up the ramp, touched, quietly, the inner blankness he had felt on the long ride up), but a man was sauntering down onto the wharf. "Son, put the knife in he would lie down on the pine needles and put the blanket over him. the pail," the man called out, and the boy did that, carefully, and then If it was the man of the house who found him-so what? The woman grabbed the rail and climbed up the ramp to meet his father. He was who had hung the pink impatiens? She wouldn't look' for long. But to still young enough that he took the man's hand. Together they peered have a child-no, Kevin could not abide the thought of any child dis- into the pail, and then they got into the truck and drove off. covering what he had discovered; that his mother's need to devour her Kevin, watching all this from his car, thought, Good, and what he life had been so huge and urgent as to spray remnants of corporeality meant was that he had felt no emotion watching this, the man and the across the kitchen cupboards. Never mind, his mind said to him qui- son. etly, as he drove on past. Never mind. The woods were there, and that's "A lot of people don't have families," Dr. Goldstein had said, all he wanted, to lie on the pine needles, touch the thin, ripping bark scratching his white beard, then unabashedly brushing away anything of a cedar tree, have the hackmatack needles above his head, the wild that had fallen onto his chest. "But they still have homes." Folding his lilies of the valley with their green, open leaves near him. The hidden hands, calmly, across his big stomach. white starflowers, the wild violets; his mother had shown him all these. On his way here to the marina, Kevin had driven past his childhood The extra noise of the clanking sailboat masts made him realize the home. The road was still dirt, with deep ruts, but there were a few new wind had picked up. The seagulls had stopped their squawking now homes tucked back into the woods. Tree trunks should have doubled that the fish entrails were gone. A fat gull that had been standing on in girth, and perhaps they had, but the \voods remained as he remem- the rail of the ramp not far from him took off-its wings flapping only bered them, thick and tangled and rough, an uneven patch of sky twice before the breeze carried it along. Hollow-boned; Kevin had seen showing through as he turned up the hill to where his house was. It gull bones as a child, out on Puckerbrush Island. He had shouted with was the shed that made him certain he'd not taken a wrong turn-the panic when his brother had collected some to take back to the house. deep red shed beside the house, and, right next to that, the granite Leave them where they are, Kevin had shouted. rock that had been large enough that Kevin used to think of it as a mountain, as he climbed it in his little-boy sneakers. The rock was still there-and the house, but it had been renovated; a wraparound front "States and traits," Dr. Goldstein had said. "Traits don't change, states of mind do." Two cars drove in and parked near the marina. He hadn't thought 34 Olive Kitteridge I ncoming Tide I 35 there would be so much activity here on a weekday, but it was almost "Jesus," Kevin said quietly. "Does everybody know everything?" July, and people had their boats to sail; he watched a couple, not much "Oh, sure," she said comfortably. "What else is there to do?" older than he \vas, take a big basket down the ramp, which already, She had her face turned to him, but he didn't want to meet her \vith the tide coming in, was not so steep. And then the screen door of eyes. The wind on the bay seemed to be picking up more. He put his the diner opened and a woman came out, wearing a skirt that went hands into his pockets, so as not to suck on his knuckles. \vell over her knees, as well as an apron-she could have stepped out of a different century. She had a metal pail in her hand, and as she "Get a lot of tourists now," Mrs. Kitteridge said. "Crawling all over the place this time of year." moved toward the dock, he watched her shoulders, the long back, her He made a sound in his throat, acknowledging not the fact-what thin hips as she moved-she was lovely, the way a sapling might be as did he care?-but that she had spoken to him. He watched the slim the afternoon sun moved over it. A yearning stirred in him that was not woman with the pail, her head tilted down as she went back inside, sexual but a kind of reaching to\vard her simplicity of form. He looked closing the screen door carefully. "That's Patty Howe," Mrs. Kitteridge a\vay, and his body jumped a little to see a woman staring through the said. "Remember her? Patty Crane. She married the older Howe boy. passenger window, her face close, staring straight at him. Nice girl. She keeps having miscarriages and it makes her sad." Mrs. Kitteridge. Holy shit. She looked exactly the same as she had Olive Kitteridge sighed, rearranged her feet, pushed the lever- in the classroom in seventh grade, that forthright, high-cheekboned ex- much to Kevin's surprise-to make herself more comfortable, moving pression; her hair was still dark. He had liked her; not everyone had. the seat back. "I suspect they'll get her fixed up one of these days, and He would have waved her away now, or started the car, but the mem- then she'll be pregnant with triplets." ory of respect held him back. She rapped her hand on the glass, and after hesitating, he leaned and unrolled the window the rest of the way. "Kevin Coulson. Hello." He nodded. "You going to invite me to sit in your car?" His hands made fists in his lap. He started to shake his head. "No, I'monly-" Kevin took his hands from his pockets, cracked his knuckles. "Patty was nice," he said. "I had forgotten about Patty." "She's still nice. That's what I said. What are you doing in New York?" "Oh." He raised a hand, saw the reddened marks that spotted them, crossed his arms. "I'm in training. I got my medical degree four years ago." But she had already let herself in-a big woman, taking up the "Say, that's impressive. What kind of doctor are you training to be?" whole bucket seat, her knees close to the dashboard. She hauled a big He looked at the dashboard, couldn't believe he hadn't noticed the black handbag across her lap. "What brings you here?" she asked. He looked out toward the water. The young woman was moving back up from the dock; the seagulls were screeching furiously behind her, beating their large wings and darting down; she'd have been throwing out clamshells, most likely. "Visiting?" Mrs. Kitteridge prompted. "From New York City? Isn't that where you live now?" filth of it. There in the sunlight it seemed to be telling her he was a slob, pathetic, not a shred of dignity. He took in a breath and said, "Psychiatry. " He expected her to say "Ahhh ..." and when she said nothing, he glanced at her, and found that she was giving a simple matter-of-fact nod. "It's beautiful here," he said, squinting back toward the bay. The re- 36 I Olive Kitteridge Incoming Tide I 37 mark held gratitude for what he felt was her discretion, and it was true, something? She ought to have been wearing a billboard around her as well, for the bay-which he seemed to view from behind a large pane neck: of glass, larger than the windshield-and which did have, he under- COMPLETELY CRAZY CLARA. "You know the old saying, I'm sure," Mrs. Kitteridge said. "Psychia- stood, a kind of splendor, the twanging, rocking sailboats, the whipped trists are nutty, cardiologists are hard-hearted-" water, the wild rugosa. How much better to be a fisherman, to spend He turned to look at her. "And pediatricians?" one's day in the midst of this. He thought of the PET scans he had "Tyrants," Mrs. Kitteridge acknowledged. She gave one shrug to her studied, always looking for his mother, hands in his pockets, nodding as the radiologists spoke, and sometimes tears twinkling behind his lids-the enlargement of the amygdala, the increase in the whitematter lesions, the severe depletion in the number of glial cells. The brains of the bipolar. shoulder. Kevin nodded. "Yeah," he said softly. After a moment, Mrs. Kitteridge said, "Well, your mother may not have been able to help it." He was surprised. His urge to suck on his knuckles was like an ag- "But I'm not going to be a psychiatrist," he said. onizing itch, and he ran his hands back and forth over his knees, found The wind was really picking up now, making the ramp to the float the hole in his jeans. "I think my mother was bipolar," he said. "Never bob up and down. "I imagine you get a lot of wicky-wackies in that business," Mrs. Kitteridge said, adjusting her feet, making a scraping sound as she moved them across the grit of the car floor. "Some." He had gone to medical school thinking he'd become a pediatri- diagnosed, though." "I 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. cian, as his mother had been, but he had been drawn to psychiatry, in "My son. He's got the depression." spite of his recognition that those who became psychiatrists did so as a Kevin looked at her. Small drops of perspiration had appeared in the result of their own messed-up childhoods, always looking, looking, pockets beneath her eyes. He saw that she did, in fact, look much looking for the answer in the writings of Freud, Horney, Reich, of why older. Of course she wouldn't look the same as she had back then-the they were the anal, narcissistic, self-absorbed freaks that they were, seventh-grade math teacher that kids were scared of. He'd been scared and yet at the same time denying it, of course-what bullshit he had of her, even while liking her. witnessed among his colleagues, his professors! His own interest had "What's he do?" Kevin asked. become narrowed to victims of torture, but that had also led him to de- "A podiatrist." spair, and when he had finally come under the care of Murray Gold- He felt the stain of some sadness make its way from her to him. stein, Ph.D., M.D., and had told the man his plans to work at the Gusts of wind were now swooping in all directions, so that the bay Hague with those whose feet had been beaten raw, whose bodies and looked like a blue and white crazily frosted cake, peaks rising one way, minds lay in ruinous disorder, Dr. Goldstein had said, "What are you, then another. Poplar leaves beside the marina were fluttering upward, crazy?" their branches all bent to one side. He'd been attracted to crazy. Clara-what a name-Clara Pilkington appeared to be the sanest person he'd ever met. And wasn't that "I've thought of you, Kevin Coulson," she said. "I have." He closed his eyes. He could hear as she shifted her weight ~eside 38 I Incoming Tide Olive Kitteridge I 39 him, heard the gravel again on the rubber mat as her foot scraped over about her, she was standing by the rugosa, cutting some of the white it. He was going to say I don't want you thinking about me, when she blossoms. He kept his eye on Patty, the choppy bay spread out behind said, "I liked your mother." her. "How'd he do it?" He rubbed his hand over his thigh. He opened his eyes. Patty Howe had stepped back out of the "My father? Shot himself." restaurant; she was walking toward the path in front of the place, and The moored sailboats now were heaving their bows high, then a nervousness touched his chest; it was sheer rock in front there, if he swooping back down as though pulled by an angry underwater crea- remembered right, a straight drop down. But she would know that. "I know you did," Kevin said, turning to the big, intelligent face of ture. The white blossoms of the wild rugosa bent, straightened, bent again, the scraggly leaves around them bobbing as though they too Mrs. Kitteridge. "She liked you." were an ocean. He saw Patty Howe step back from them, and give her Olive Kitteridge nodded. "Smart. She was a smart woman." hand a shake, as though she had been pricked by the thorns. He wondered how long this would have to go on. And yet it meant "No note," Mrs. Kitteridge said. "Oh, Mother had such a hard time something to him, that she had known his mother. In New York no one with that no-note business. She thought the least he could've done was knew. "Don't know if you know this or not, but that was the case with my father." "What was?" He frowned, passed his index knuckle briefly through his mouth. leave a note, the way he did if he'd walked to the grocery store. Mother would say, 'He was always considerate enough to leave me a note when he went anywhere.' But he hadn't really gone anywhere. He was there in the kitchen, poor thing." "Do these boats ever get loose?" Kevin pictured his own childhood "Suicide." kitchen. He knew that a .22 caliber bullet could travel for one mile, go He wanted her to leave; it was time for her to leave. through nine inches of ordinary board. But after the roof of a mouth, "Are you married?" the roof of a house-after that, how far did it go? He shook his head. "Oh, sometimes. Not so much as you'd think, given how fierce "No, my son isn't either. Drives my poor husband nuts. Henry wants these squalls can be. But every so often one does, you know-causes a everyone married, everyone happy. I say, for God's sake, let him take ruckus. They have to go after it, hope it doesn't smash up on the rocks." his time. Up here the pickings can be slim. Down there in New York, I "Then the marina gets sued for malpractice?" He said this to divert suppose you-" "I'm not in New York." her. "I don't know," Mrs. Kitteridge said, "how they handle that kind of "Excuse me?" thing. Different insurance arrangements, I guess. Acts of negligence or "I'm not-I'm not in New York anymore." acts of God." He could hear that she was about to ask something; he thought he At the very moment Kevin became aware of liking the sound of her could almost feel her desire to turn around and look at the backseat, voice, he felt adrenaline pour through him, the familiar, awful inten- see what was in his car. If she did, he would have to say he needed to sity, the indefatigable system that wanted to endure. He squinted hard go, ask her to leave. He watched from the corner of his eye, but she toward the ocean. Great gray clouds were blowing in, and yet the sun, was still looking straight ahead. as though in contest, streamed yellow rays beneath them so that parts Patty Howe, he saw, had shears in her hand. With her skirt blowing of the water sparkled with frenzied gaiety. -10 I Incoming Tide Olire Kitteridge I 41 IOUnusual for a woman to use a gun," Mrs. Kitteridge said, musingly. responsibility about Dr. Goldstein, whom Kevin had genuinely come to He looked at her; she did not return the look, just gazed out at the love, but even that had receded as he had driven up the turnpike. s\virling incoming tide. "Well, my mother was an unusual woman," he Olive Kitteridge was taking a Kleenex from her big black bag. She touched it to her forehead, her hairline, didn't look at Kevin. She said, said grimly. "I wish I hadn't passed those genes on to him." "Yes," lVlrs. Kitteridge said. "She was." Kevin gave the slightest roll of his eyes. The question of genes, DNA, RNA, chromosome 6, the dopamine, serotonin crap; he had lost When Patty Howe had gotten done with her shift, taken her apron off, interest in all that. In fact, it angered him the way a betrayal might. and gone to hang it in the back room, she had seen through the dusty "We are on the edge of understanding the essence of how the mind window the yellow daylilies that grew in the small patch of lawn on the works in a molecular, real way," a noted academic had said at a lecture far side of the marina. She pictured them in a jar next to her bed. "I'm last year. The dawning of a new age. disappointed too," her husband had said, the second time, adding, "but There was always a new age dawning. I it must feel like it happens just to you." Her eyes moistened "Not that the kid didn't get a few wicky-wacky genes from Henry's no\v, remembering this; a great swelling of love filled her. The lilies side, God knows. His mother was a complete nut, you know. Horrid." knO\V would not be missed. No one went to the far side of the marina, partly because the path that ran right in front was so narrow, the drop-off so "Henry's. My husband's." Mrs. Kitteridge pulled out her sunglasses KEEP and put them on. "I guess you're not supposed to say 'nut' these days, sign, and there was even talk of fencing it off before some sma~l are you?" She looked over at him. He'd been about to start with his steep. For insurance purposes the place had recently 'posted a OUT "Whose mother?" child, unwatched, scrambled off into the brush there. But Patty would just snip a few lilies and get going. She found the shears in a drawer and \-vent out to get her bouquet, noticing when she stepped out that 1\'1rs. Kitteridge had joined Kevin Coulson in the car, and it gave her a wrist again, but he put his hands back into his lap. Please go, he thought. "But she had three breakdowns and shock treatments. Doesn't that qualify?" feeling of safety, having Mrs. Kitteridge with him. She couldn't have He shrugged. said why, and didn't dwell on it. The wind had picked up amazingly. "Well, she was wired funny. I guess I can at least say that." She'd hurry and get her flowers, wrap them in a wet paper towel, and Nuts was when you took a razor blade and cut long strips into your stop off by her mother's on the way home. She bent over the rugosa torso. Your thighs, your arms. bushes first, thinking what a sweet combination the yellow and white The first night together in the dark he had felt the lines. "I fell," she would be, but they were alive in the wind and her fingers were pricked. had whispered. He had pictured living with her. Art on the wall, light She turned to start along the path to where the lilies were. shining through a bedroom window. Friends at Thanksgiving, a Christ- COMPLETELY CRAZY CLARA. That was nuts. mas tree because Clara would want one. "The girl is nothing but trouble," Dr. Goldstein had said. Kevin said, "Well, it was nice seeing you, Mrs. Kitteridge." He glanced It was not Dr. Goldstein's place to say such a thing. But she had at her with a nod meant to signal a goodbye. It was bad luck that she'd been nothing but trouble: loving and tender one minute, furious the encountered him, but he could not be responsible for that. He had felt next. The business of cutting herself-it had made him crazy. Crazy 42 I Ofire Kitteridge Incoming Tide I 43 breeds crazy. And then she had left, because that's what Clara did- All the degrees Kevin had acquired, the colleges and universities he left people and everything else. Off to somewhere new with her obses- had gone to with the fellowships and scholarships he had received, his sions. She was crazy about the lunatic Carrie A. Nation, the first father had never showed up. But every town had been promising. 'Every woman prohibitionist who had gone around chopping up saloons with place at· first had said, Here you go-You can live here. You can rest hatchets, and then selling the hatchets. "Is that the coolest thing you here. You can fit. The enormous skies of the Southwest, the shadows ever heard?" Clara had asked, sipping her soy milk. It was like that. that fell over the desert mountains, the innumerable cacti-red-tipped, Cartwheeling from one thing to the next. or yellow-blossomed, or flat-headed-all this had lightened him when "Everyone suffers through a bad love affair," Dr. Goldstein had said. he'd first moved to Tucson, taking hikes by himself, then with others That-actually-was just not true. Kevin knew people who had not from the university. Perhaps Tucson had been his favorite, had he been suffered through a bad love affair. Not many, perhaps, but a few. Olive forced to choose-the stark difference between the open dustiness Kitteridge blew her nose. there and the ragged coastline here. "Your son," Kevin said suddenly. "He's still able to practice?" But as with them all, the same hopeful differences-the tall, hot "What do you mean?" white glassed buildings of Dallas; the tree-lined streets of Hyde Park in "With his depression? He still goes to work every day?" Chicago, with the wooden stairs behind each apartment (he had loved "Oh, sure." Mrs. Kitteridge took off her sunglasses, gave him a quick, penetrating look. those, especially); the neighborhoods of West Hartford, where it looked like a storybook, the houses, the perfect lawns-they all be- "And Mr. Kitteridge. Is he well?" came places that sooner or later, one way or another, assured him that "Yes, he is. He's thinking about retiring early. They sold the phar- he didn't, in fact, fit. macy, you know, and he'd have to work for the new chain, and they require all sorts of goofy regulations. Sad, the way the world is going." It was always sad, the way the world was going. And always a new age dawning. When he got his medical degree from Chicago, attending the ceremony only because of one of his teachers-a kind woman, who had said it would sadden her to have him not there-he sat beneath the full sun, listening to the president of the university say, in his final "What's your brother up to?" Mrs. Kitteridge asked. words to them, "To love and be loved is the most important thing in Kevin felt weary now. Maybe that was good. "The last I knew he was life," causing Kevin to feel an inward fear that grew and spread through living on the streets of Berkeley. He's a drug addict." Most of the time him, as though his very soul were tightening. But what a thing to say- Kevin didn't think of himself as having a brother. the man in his venerable robe, white hair, grandfatherly face-he "Where'd you go after here? Texas? Is that what I remember? Your father took a job there?" must've had no idea those words could cause such an exacerbation of the silent dread in Kevin. Even Freud had said, "We must love or we Kevin nodded. grow ilL" They were spelling it out for him. Every billboard, movie, "I suppose he wanted to get as far away from here as possible. Time magazine cover, television ad-it all spelled it out for him: We belong and distance, they always say. I don't know as that's true." to the world of family and love. And you don't. T'o get the conversation over with, Kevin said, dully, "My father died New York, the most recent, had held the largest hopes. The sub- last year of liver cancer. He never remarried. And I never saw much of ways filled with such a variety of dull colors and edgy-looking people; him once I left." it relaxed him, the different clothes, the shopping bags, people sleep- -l-l 1ncoming Tide OUlie Kitteridge I 45 ing or reading or nodding their heads to some earphoned tune; he had a gesture as possible, looking down at the steering wheel. He felt her loved the subways, and for a while the activities of the hospitals. But big presence, and imagined-fleetingly-that an elephant sat next to his affair with Clara, and the end of it, had caused him to recoil from him, one that wanted to be a member of the human kingdom, and the place, so that the streets now seemed crowded and tiresome-all sweet in an innocent way, as though her stubs of forelegs were folded the same. Dr. Goldstein he loved, but that was it-everyone else had on her lap, her trunk moving just a little as she finished speaking. become tiresome, and he had thought more and more how provincial "That's a nice story," he said. New Yorkers were, and how they didn't know it. He thought of the boy cleaning the fish, how his father had held his What he began to want was to see his childhood house-a house he hand out to him. He thought again of John Berryman. Save us from believed, even as he sat in his car now, that he had never once been shotguns & fathers' suicides . .. Mercy! ... do not pull the trigger or all happy in. And yet, oddly, the fact of its unhappiness seemed to have a my life I'll suffer from your anger. ... He wondered if Mrs. Kitteridge, hold on him with the sweetness of a remembered love affair. For Kevin being a math teacher, knew much poetry. had some memories of sweet, brief love affairs-so different from the "Look how the wind's picked up," she said. "Always kind of exciting, long-drawn-out mess with Clara-and none measured up to the inner long as you don't have a wharf that floats away, like ours used to do. desire, the longing he felt for that place. That house where the sweat- Henry'd be down on those rocks with the waves-Dh, God what a fra- shirts and woolen jackets stank like moist salt and musty wood-the cas it was." smell made him sick, as did the smell of a wood fire, which his father Again, Kevin found himself liking the sound of her voice. Through had sometimes made in the fireplace, poking at it in a distracted way. the windshield he saw the waves coming in higher now, hitting the Kevin thought he must be the only person in the country who hated ledge in front of the marina hard enough to send a spray far into the air, the smell of a wood fire. But the house, the trees tangled with wood- the spray then falling back languidly, the drops sifting through shards bine, the surprise of a lady's slipper in the midst of pine needles, the of sunlight that still cracked its way between the dark clouds. The in- open leaves of the wild lilies of the valley-he missed it. side of his head began to feel as choppy as the surf before him. Don't He missed his mother. I've made this awful pilgrimage . .. I've come back for more . .. Kevin wished, as he often did, that he had known the poet John Berryman. go, his mind said to Mrs. Kitteridge. Don't go. But this turbulence in him was torture. He thought how yesterday morning, in New York, as he'd walked to his car, he had for one mo- "When I was young," Mrs. Kitteridge said, holding her sunglasses in ment not seen it. And there was that prick of fear, because he'd had it her hand, "-little, you know-I'd hide in the wood box when my fa- all planned and wrapped up, and where was the car? But there it was, ther came home. And he'd sit down on the wood box and say, 'Where's right there, the old Subaru wagon, and then he knew what he'd felt had Olive? Where can Olive be?' This would go on, till I'd knock on the been hope. Hope was a cancer inside him. He didn't want it; he did not side, and he'd act surprised. 'Olive,' he'd say, 'I had no idea where you want it. He could not bear these shoots of tender green hope springing were!' And I'd laugh, and he'd laugh." Kevin looked over at her; she put her sunglasses on. She said, "I up within him any longer. That awful story of the man who jumpedand survived-walking back and forth for an hour on the Golden Gate don't know how long that continued, probably until I was too big to get Bridge, weeping, saying that had anyone stopped to ask why he was into the wood box." weeping, he wouldn't have jumped. He didn't know what to say to this. He squeezed his hands in as tiny "Mrs. Kitteridge, you have to-" -16 I Olive Kitteridge Incanting Tide I 47 But she was leaning forward, squinting through the windshield. her arm to let her know: He would not let her go. Even though, staring "\\lait, what in hell-" And moving faster than he would have thought into her open eyes in the swirling salt-filled w·ater, with sun flashing possible, she was out of the car, the door left open, and had gone to the through each wave, he thought he would like this moment to be for- front of the marina, her black bag left on the grass. For a moment ever: the dark-haired woman on shore calling for their safety, the girl she disappeared, then reappeared, waving her arms, shouting, though who had once jumped rope like a queen, now holding him with a he couldn't hear what she was saying. fierceness that matched the power of the ocean-oh, insane, ludi- He stepped from the car, and was surprised by the force of the wind that whipped through his shirt. Mrs. Kitteridge was shouting, "Hurry up! Hurry!" Waving her arms like a huge seagull. He ran to where she \vas and looked down into the water, the tide higher than he'd have thought. Mrs. Kitteridge pointed with a repeated thrust of her arm, and he saw the head of Patty Howe rise briefly above the choppy water, like a seal's head, her hair wet and darkened, and then she disappeared again, her skirt swirling with the swirling dark ropes of seaweed. Kevin turned, so that as he slid down the high sheet of rock, his arms were spread as though to hug it, but there was nothing to hug, just the flat scraping against his chest, ripping his clothes, his skin, his cheek, and then the cold water rose over him. It stunned him, how cold the water was, as though he'd been dropped into a huge test tube containing a pernicious chemical eating at his skin. His foot hit something steady in the massive swooshing of the water; he turned and saw her reaching for him, her eyes open, her skirt swirled around her waist; her fingers reached for him, missed, reached for him again, and he got hold of her. The water receded for a moment, and as a wave came back to cover them, he pulled her hard, and her grip on him was so tight he would not have thought it possible with her thin arms that she could hold anything as tightly as she held him. Again the water rose, they both took a breath; again they were submerged and his leg hooked over something, an old pipe, unmoving. rrhe next time, they both reached their heads high as the water rushed back, another breath taken. He heard Mrs. Kitteridge yelling from above. He couldn't hear the words, but he understood that help was con1ing. He had only to keep Patty from falling away, and as they went again beneath the swirling, sucking water, he strengthened his grip on crous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look how she wanted to hold on. .l-J ~ ~ c:: 0 0 .l-J ~ rJ) I.l.J ~ >- z -C .l-J ~ ~ l? 0 ~ rJ) ~ -0 v ~ < N .~ ~ UJ c::l c:: I.l.J c.. < c.. I.l.J ~ 0 ~ f- ~ ~ ~ < c:: I.l.J rJ) ::J 0 :I: ::;; ~ 0 ~ -< ex: 0 z > ~ ~ 0 This is a \\'()rk of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents arc the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, II\ing or dead, is entirely coincidental. 200H Handom House Trade Paperback Edition Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth Strout Reading group guide copyright © 2008 by Random House, Inc. I \11 rights reserved. Publi~hed in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. For my mother who can make life nzagical Il00j"t TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc. R\NDOI\\ R\:'iDOI\I HOUSE READER'S CIRCLE and colophon are trademarks of Handom House, Inc. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2008. Excerpts from Dream Songs #235 and #384 from "] 'hi! Dream Songs by John Berryman. Copyright © 1969 by John Berryman. Copyright renewed 1997 by Kate Donahue Berryman. Heprinted by permission of farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. ";\ Different Road" was published in Tin House in 2007. ",,\ Little Burst" was published in The Netli Yorker in 1998. "\Vintcr Concert" "vas published in l'vls. in 1999. "Basket of Trips" was published in 0: The Oprah l'vlagazine in 2000. "Ship in a Bottle" was published as "Running Away" in Seventeen in 1992. "Criminal" was published in South Carolina Review in 1994. ISBN 97H-0-8129-7183-5 Printed in the United States of America \\"\\"\v.randomhousereaderscircle.com 987654321 litle page plzotogra1711 hy Pierre deJordy Blanchette Hook design IJ) Dana Leigh Blanchette and is the best storyteller I knotv
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Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Personal Details


Name



Tutor



Course



Date

Introduction


Brief introduction of the short story ‘Incoming Tide’



Thesis statement/ Objective of the essay

Discussion


Discussion of the theme of depression



Instances of depression within the play

Conclusion
Concluding remarks with regard to how depression has been depicted in the short story
Works Cited
Strout, Elizabeth. Incoming Tide in Olive Kitteridge. Simon and Schuster, 2013.


Name
Tutor
Course
Date
Incoming Tide
Introduction
The theme of depression is evident in the story. Different characters exhibit depression in
different ways. In some instances, the depression leads them into committing suicide. The
objective of this essay is to demonstrate instances where the characters portray depression in the
story. In the novel depression leads to most of the vices taking place. Kevin and his father moved
away from the marina after the death of his mother. Kevin's mother committed suicide (P31). His
return to the old house reminds him of how his own mother had an irresistible urge to terminate
her life (p33). The discovery of this matter depressed him to the core and ripped him of all
happiness and joy. Instead, all that was left in its place was gloom. The thought of another kid
discovering what he himself had discovered as a kid frightened him....


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