Chapter One
Pharmacy
For many years Henry Kitteridge was a pharmacist in the next town over, driving
every morning on snowy roads, or rainy roads, or summertime roads, when the wild
raspberries shot their new growth in brambles along the last section of town
before he turned off to where the wider road led to the pharmacy. Retired now,
he still wakes early and remembers how mornings used to be his favorite, as
though the world were his secret, tires rumbling softly beneath him and the
light emerging through the early fog, the brief sight of the bay off to his
right, then the pines, tall and slender, and almost always he rode with the
window partly open because he loved the smell of the pines and the heavy salt
air, and in the winter he loved the smell of the cold. The pharmacy was a small
two-story building attached to another building that housed separately a
hardware store and a small grocery. Each morning Henry parked in the back by the
large metal bins, and then entered the pharmacy’s back door, and went about
switching on the lights, turning up the thermostat, or, if it was summer,
getting the fans going. He would open the safe, put money in the register,
unlock the front door, wash his hands, put on his white lab coat. The ritual was
pleasing, as though the old store-with its shelves of toothpaste, vitamins,
cosmetics, hair adornments, even sewing needles and greeting cards, as well as
red rubber hot water bottles, enema pumps-was a person altogether steady and
steadfast. And any unpleasantness that may have occurred back in his home, any
uneasiness at the way his wife often left their bed to wander through their home
in the night’s dark hours-all this receded like a shoreline as he walked through
the safety of his pharmacy. Standing in the back, with the drawers and rows of
pills, Henry was cheerful when the phone began to ring, cheerful when Mrs.
Merriman came for her blood pressure medicine, or old Cliff Mott arrived for his
digitalis, cheerful when he prepared the Valium for Rachel Jones, whose husband
ran off the night their baby was born. It was Henry’s nature to listen, and many
times during the week he would say, “Gosh, I’m awful sorry to hear that,” or
“Say, isn’t that something?” Inwardly, he suffered the quiet trepidations of a
man who had witnessed twice in childhood the nervous breakdowns of a mother who
had otherwise cared for him with stridency. And so if, as rarely happened, a
customer was distressed over a price, or irritated by the quality of an Ace
bandage or ice pack, Henry did what he could to rectify things quickly. For many
years Mrs. Granger worked for him; her husband was a lobster fisherman, and she
seemed to carry with her the cold breeze of the open water, not so eager to
please a wary customer. He had to listen with half an ear as he filled
prescriptions, to make sure she was not at the cash register dismissing a
complaint. More than once he was reminded of that same sensation in watching to
see that his wife, Olive, did not bear down too hard on Christopher over a
homework assignment or a chore left undone; that sense of his attention
hovering-the need to keep everyone content. When he heard a briskness in Mrs.
Granger’s voice, he would step down from his back post, moving toward the center
of the store to talk with the customer himself. Otherwise, Mrs. Granger did her
job well. He appreciated that she was not chatty, kept perfect inventory, and
almost never called in sick. That she died in her sleep one night astonished
him, and left him with some feeling of responsibility, as though he had missed,
working alongside her for years, whatever symptom might have shown itself that
he, handling his pills and syrups and syringes, could have fixed. “Mousy,” his
wife said, when he hired the new girl. “Looks just like a mouse.” Denise
Thibodeau had round cheeks, and small eyes that peeped through her brown-framed
glasses. “But a nice mouse,” Henry said. “A cute one.” “No one’s cute who can’t
stand up straight,” Olive said. It was true that Denise’s narrow shoulders
sloped forward, as though apologizing for something. She was twenty-two, just
out of the state university of Vermont. Her husband was also named Henry, and
Henry Kitteridge, meeting Henry Thibodeau for the first time, was taken with
what he saw as an unself-conscious excellence. The young man was vigorous and
sturdy-featured with a light in his eye that seemed to lend a flickering
resplendence to his decent, ordinary face. He was a plumber, working in a
business owned by his uncle. He and Denise had been married one year. “Not keen
on it,” Olive said, when he suggested they have the young couple to dinner.
Henry let it drop. This was a time when his son-not yet showing the physical
signs of adolescence-had become suddenly and strenuously sullen, his mood like a
poison shot through the air, and Olive seemed as changed and changeable as
Christopher, the two having fast and furious fights that became just as suddenly
some blanket of silent intimacy where Henry, clueless, stupefied, would find
himself to be the odd man out. But standing in the back parking lot at the end
of a late summer day, while he spoke with Denise and Henry Thibodeau, and the
sun tucked itself behind the spruce trees, Henry Kitteridge felt such a longing
to be in the presence of this young couple, their faces turned to him with a
diffident but eager interest as he recalled his own days at the university many
years ago, that he said, “Now, say. Olive and I would like you to come for
supper soon.” He drove home, past the tall pines, past the glimpse of the bay,
and thought of the Thibodeaus driving the other way, to their trailer on the
outskirts of town. He pictured the trailer, cozy and picked up-for Denise was
neat in her habits-and imagined them sharing the news of their day. Denise might
say, “He’s an easy boss.” And Henry might say, “Oh, I like the guy a lot.” He
pulled into his driveway, which was not a driveway so much as a patch of lawn on
top of the hill, and saw Olive in the garden. “Hello, Olive,” he said, walking
to her. He wanted to put his arms around her, but she had a darkness that seemed
to stand beside her like an acquaintance that would not go away. He told her the
Thibodeaus were coming for supper. “It’s only right,” he said. Olive wiped sweat
from her upper lip, turned to rip up a clump of onion grass. “Then that’s that,
Mr. President,” she said. “Give your order to the cook.” On Friday night the
couple followed him home, and the young Henry shook Olive’s hand. “Nice place
here,” he said. “With that view of the water. Mr. Kitteridge says you two built
this yourselves.” “Indeed, we did.” Christopher sat sideways at the table,
slumped in adolescent gracelessness, and did not respond when Henry Thibodeau
asked him if he played any sports at school. Henry Kitteridge felt an unexpected
fury sprout inside him; he wanted to shout at the boy, whose poor manners, he
felt, revealed something unpleasant not expected to be found in the Kitteridge
home. “When you work in a pharmacy,” Olive told Denise, setting before her a
plate of baked beans, “you learn the secrets of everyone in town.” Olive sat
down across from her, pushed forward a bottle of ketchup. “Have to know to keep
your mouth shut. But seems like you know how to do that.” “Denise understands,”
Henry Kitteridge said. Denise’s husband said, “Oh, sure. You couldn’t find
someone more trustworthy than Denise.” “I believe you,” Henry said, passing the
man a basket of rolls. “And please. Call me Henry. One of my favorite names,” he
added. Denise laughed quietly; she liked him, he could see this. Christopher
slumped farther into his seat. Henry Thibodeau’s parents lived on a farm inland,
and so the two Henrys discussed crops, and pole beans, and the corn not being as
sweet this summer from the lack of rain, and how to get a good asparagus bed.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Olive, when, in passing the ketchup to the young man,
Henry Kitteridge knocked it over, and ketchup lurched out like thickened blood
across the oak table. Trying to pick up the bottle, he caused it to roll
unsteadily, and ketchup ended up on his fingertips, then on his white shirt.
“Leave it,” Olive commanded, standing up. “Just leave it alone, Henry. For God’s
sake.” And Henry Thibodeau, perhaps at the sound of his own name being spoken
sharply, sat back, looking stricken. “Gosh, what a mess I’ve made,” Henry
Kitteridge said. For dessert they were each handed a blue bowl with a scoop of
vanilla ice cream sliding in its center. “Vanilla’s my favorite,” Denise said.
“Is it,” said Olive. “Mine, too,” Henry Kitteridge said. As autumn came, the
mornings darker, and the pharmacy getting only a short sliver of the direct sun
before it passed over the building and left the store lit by its own overhead
lights, Henry stood in the back filling the small plastic bottles, answering the
telephone, while Denise stayed up front near the cash register. At lunchtime,
she unwrapped a sandwich she brought from home, and ate it in the back where the
storage was, and then he would eat his lunch, and sometimes when there was no
one in the store, they would linger with a cup of coffee bought from the grocer
next door. Denise seemed a naturally quiet girl, but she was given to spurts of
sudden talkativeness. “My mother’s had MS for years, you know, so starting way
back we all learned to help out. All three of my brothers are different. Don’t
you think it’s funny when it happens that way?” The oldest brother, Denise said,
straightening a bottle of shampoo, had been her father’s favorite until he’d
married a girl her father didn’t like. Her own in-laws were wonderful, she said.
She’d had a boyfriend before Henry, a Protestant, and his parents had not been
so kind to her. “It wouldn’t have worked out,” she said, tucking a strand of
hair behind her ear. “Well, Henry’s a terrific young man,” Henry answered. She
nodded, smiling through her glasses like a thirteen-year-old girl. Again, he
pictured her trailer, the two of them like overgrown puppies tumbling together;
he could not have said why this gave him the particular kind of happiness it
did, like liquid gold being poured through him. She was as efficient as Mrs.
Granger had been, but more relaxed. “Right beneath the vitamins in the second
aisle,” she would tell a customer. “Here, I’ll show you.” Once, she told Henry
she sometimes let a person wander around the store before asking if she could
help them. “That way, see, they might find something they didn’t know they
needed. And your sales will go up.” A block of winter sun was splayed across the
glass of the cosmetics shelf; a strip of wooden floor shone like honey. He
raised his eyebrows appreciatively. “Lucky for me, Denise, when you came through
that door.” She pushed up her glasses with the back of her hand, then ran the
duster over the ointment jars. Jerry McCarthy, the boy who delivered the
pharmaceuticals once a week from Portland-or more often if needed-would
sometimes have his lunch in the back room. He was eighteen, right out of high
school; a big, fat kid with a smooth face, who perspired so much that splotches
of his shirt would be wet, at times even down over his breasts, so the poor
fellow looked to be lactating. Seated on a crate, his big knees practically to
his ears, he’d eat a sandwich that had spilling from it mayonnaisey clumps of
egg salad or tuna fish, landing on his shirt. More than once Henry saw Denise
hand him a paper towel. “That happens to me,” Henry heard her say one day.
“Whenever I eat a sandwich that isn’t just cold cuts, I end up a mess.” It
couldn’t have been true. The girl was neat as a pin, if plain as a plate. “Good
afternoon,” she’d say when the telephone rang. “This is the Village Pharmacy.
How can I help you today?” Like a girl playing grown-up. And then: On a Monday
morning when the air in the pharmacy held a sharp chill, he went about opening
up the store, saying, “How was your weekend, Denise?” Olive had refused to go to
church the day before, and Henry, uncharacteristically, had spoken to her
sharply. “Is it too much to ask,” he had found himself saying, as he stood in
the kitchen in his undershorts, ironing his trousers. “A man’s wife accompanying
him to church?” Going without her seemed a public exposure of familial failure.
“Yes, it most certainly is too goddamn much to ask!” Olive had almost spit, her
fury’s door flung open. “You have no idea how tired I am, teaching all day,
going to foolish meetings where the goddamn principal is a moron! Shopping.
Cooking. Ironing. Laundry. Doing Christopher’s homework with him! And you-” She
had grabbed on to the back of a dining room chair, and her dark hair, still
uncombed from its night’s disarrangement, had fallen across her eyes. “You, Mr.
Head Deacon Claptrap Nice Guy, expect me to give up my Sunday mornings and go
sit among a bunch of snot-wots!” Very suddenly she had sat down in the chair.
“Well, I’m sick and tired of it,” she’d said, calmly. “Sick to death.” A
darkness had rumbled through him; his soul was suffocating in tar. The next
morning, Olive spoke to him conversationally. “Jim’s car smelled like upchuck
last week. Hope he’s cleaned it out.” Jim O’Casey taught with Olive, and for
years took both Christopher and Olive to school. “Hope so,” said Henry, and in
that way their fight was done. “Oh, I had a wonderful weekend,” said Denise, her
small eyes behind her glasses looking at him with an eagerness that was so
childlike it could have cracked his heart in two. “We went to Henry’s folks and
dug potatoes at night. Henry put the headlights on from the car and we dug
potatoes. Finding the potatoes in that cold soil-like an Easter egg hunt!” He
stopped unpacking a shipment of penicillin, and stepped down to talk to her.
There were no customers yet, and below the front window the radiator hissed. He
said, “Isn’t that lovely, Denise.” She nodded, touching the top of the vitamin
shelf beside her. A small motion of fear seemed to pass over her face. “I got
cold and went and sat in the car and watched Henry digging potatoes, and I
thought: It’s too good to be true.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth Strout.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Random House
Copyright © 2008
Elizabeth Strout
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6208-9
