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
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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
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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
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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
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Olire Kitteridge
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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
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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
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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
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