“Guess not.” William sat on the couch with his arms spread out across the top of it. “He was older, I didn’t know that part. And I guess he was of the generation where some men didn’t want to be gay.”
“Oh William, that’s so sad,” I said. I added, “For all of them.”
“Not sad for Bridget.”
“But does Estelle seem okay?”
“Seems to be. She was cheerful as she told me this. Who knows? She’s Estelle. She’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, well, still—” I said.
“Oh, I know, I know.” But he began to whistle, which I had not heard him do in years.
* * *
“Hey, Lucy, do you want to buy this place?” William asked me this the next morning. We still had the screens on the big porch and we ate our breakfast out there, though it was chilly. I had wanted to put the plexiglass back up, but every time I mentioned it William said, “Not yet, Lucy.”
“Buy this place? You’re kidding.” I was almost standing up, but I sat down again; we had just finished breakfast. There was a steady rain falling outside and the water was swirling like mad.
“Not really. Bob just offered me a very good price on it.”
So I sat and looked at this man I had been married to, with whom I had two daughters, and with whom I was, so many years later, now sharing a bed again. Finally I said, “Is it already predetermined?”
And he laughed in a way and took my hand and said, “No, Lucy.” Then he looked at me and said, “Probably.” He shrugged. “Whatever.”
I said, “We’ll die in this house if we buy it.”
And William said, “Well, we have to die someplace.” And I said, “That’s true.”
He got up and went inside and I followed him. He walked slightly stooped; he was no longer a young man; he was no longer even a middle-aged man. Sitting down on the couch he said, patting his thigh, “Come here, Lucy. Sit on my lap. I love it when you sit on my lap.”
I sat on his lap and he said, “Now listen. We need to become residents of Maine. There’s going to be a vaccine, maybe even by the end of the year, and we’re sure not going back to New York to get it. We’ll have to get it here.”
I pulled back to look at him. “Seriously?” I said.
“Seriously.”
We sat quietly for many moments, and then I said, “Let’s buy the house.”
William said, “I already did.”
* * *
So we became residents of Maine. I could not believe it, but we did. William had no trouble with this, his sister lived here, his nephews and nieces, and he had his whole new career. But I called my accountant, my dear accountant—he had left the city, given up his office, and moved upstate—and he said, Yes, he could still do my taxes, but he said, “Lucy, if you do this, you have to mean it. You can’t move back to New York next year. You have to spend more than half the year in Maine,” and I said: Okay. There was a sense of unreality to it for me.
* * *
—
We went and got Maine driver’s licenses, and I worried that when the man who sat behind the counter saw that I was from New York he might say something. But he said nothing, and took two pictures of me, because he thought the first one was not good.
* * *
I called Estelle one day not long after that. “Oh Lucy!” she said. “How nice to hear your voice!” I told her we had become residents of Maine, and she said she thought that was probably the best thing to do. “But it’s strange,” I said to her, and she said, “Oh, it must be!” Then she said how it hadn’t worked out with her partner—this is what she called him—and I said I was sorry about that, and she said, “Well, I knew he was bisexual, I just didn’t know that he wouldn’t want to give up men once he was with me.” I did not quite know what to say to that, and Estelle said, “But it’s okay.” She laughed her burbling laughter and she said, “Oh Lucy, don’t you sometimes just feel sorry for everyone in this whole wide world?” And I understood then why William had fallen in love with her. “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. We talked more, and she was very cheerful. “Bye-bye!” she said, right before we hung up.
* * *
I still felt that my mind was odd. I still would not remember what it was that I had been about to say. I still walked into a room and wondered why I had come into the room. It worried me, though Bob kept telling me he was the same way.
* * *
—
And Charlene Bibber said she kept feeling the same way. We still walked together—or mostly sat on the granite slab—every other week, and one time she said to me, “I’m glad we don’t talk politics.” I turned to look at her. “We never have to talk politics,” I said, and she said she knew that. “I just appreciate it,” she said. And I said, “Of course.”
The river walk was beautiful now, so many oranges and yellows, and that day there were many yellow leaves on the ground because it had been windy the night before, it was like a carpet of yellow we walked on. And the sun streamed down on it.
We sat on one of the granite slab benches, and Charlene told me she was glad she had the job cleaning at the Maple Tree Retirement Home.
She told me again about Olive Kitteridge. “She’s very liberal, she talks about the president all the time, she just hates him. But it’s okay, because she’s nice to me. Well, not nice, Olive isn’t exactly nice to anyone, but I can tell she likes me, and she’s really lonely. Sometimes I just sit and we talk for a long time. She loves birds. And she talks about her first husband, Henry, that’s her favorite subject, and I talk about my husband.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
Charlene put her hand on her chin.
“It is,” she said.
When we parted she said, “Lucy, you’ve got to tell me if you think I’m losing my mind.”
“All right,” I said. “You have to tell me the same thing.”
And we waved goodbye.
As I drove home from the river that day, this thought arrived: There was a faint odor of loneliness that came from Charlene. And the awful truth is this: It had made me draw back just slightly inside myself. And I knew this was because I had always been afraid of giving off that odor myself.
* * *
William was really excited about the potato parasites. He was on the phone a great deal with Dave and other members of Lois’s family, and he was also on the phone with Lois herself—they were planning one more get-together in Orono before the weather got too cold, and Dave was going to come with her. The climate change issue was becoming more interesting to William, and he was trying to help them develop a new kind of potato, one that could survive wet and warmth. He spoke about all this to me, and the people he had come to know, and I found myself getting interested. I thought how when a person is really excited about something, it can be contagious.
I first noticed this years ago when I was very young and taught at that community college in Manhattan. I was so enthusiastic about the books I had read that I could see my students watching me and getting interested in these books too—just because I was so excited about these books that I had recently read.
viii
Toward the end of October it was supposed to rain straight through one weekend, and I noticed, but only vaguely, that William seemed to be checking the weather a lot, and he seemed disturbed by the rain that was supposed to come. I had asked him again if we could please put the plexiglass back up on the porch—we were no longer eating out there, it was too cold, although the porch had a heater—and he again said, “We’ll do it soon.”
But on Friday it was not yet raining, and he said, “Come on, Lucy, let’s drive to Freeport, to L.L.Bean. We don’t have to go in, let’s just drive there.”
So we did. I was always willing to go anywhere, because there was so little to do.