Lucy by the Sea (34)

I thought about this. “Why one shoe?” I asked. I was really curious.

Charlene nodded and said, “Because the first woman I cleaned for that morning—her name is Olive Kitteridge, and she was just sitting in her chair like a big bullfrog—and then Olive said, ‘I’ve been sitting here thinking about a young woman that I stole one shoe from once.’ And I asked her why one shoe, and she turned and said to me, ‘I thought it might make her feel crazy.’ And I said, Did it? And Olive shrugged and said, ‘Dunno.’?”



—

I liked this woman, Charlene Bibber.



—

When we walked the bags and boxes out to the waiting cars, most of the people who were driving the cars were women. Some had children in their cars. And the children looked at me and then looked away. And I understood. Some of the women were very grateful, but most of them just took the food and said “Thanks” and drove away. And I understood that too.



—

As we left the place for the day, I saw that on Charlene’s car was a bumper sticker for the current president of our country. I thought that was fascinating, it intrigued me, really.



—

When I told William about Charlene, and mentioned the bumper sticker, he said “Huh,” as though really considering it. “You don’t think about his supporters working at a food pantry, but of course they can—and do.” He looked at me. “Jesus, look at how small-minded I am.”

And I said, “Yes, exactly.” I said, “I think we don’t get it. I mean, obviously we don’t get it—their point of view.”

And he said, “I get it.”

I was surprised. “Tell me,” I said.

And William crossed one leg over the other and said, “They’re angry. Their lives have been hard. Look at your sister, Vicky. She’s working a dangerous job right now, because she has to. But she still can’t get ahead.” Then he said, “Lucy, people are in trouble. And those who aren’t in trouble, they just don’t get it. Look how I just didn’t get it—being surprised that this Charlene woman was working in a food pantry. And also, we make the people who are in trouble feel stupid. It’s not good.”

v

Along those lines, this is important, I think:

I need to tell you about one summer evening: William and I took a drive after we ate dinner—it was still light out—and we stopped at a roadside place that was selling ice cream. The place that sold the ice cream was a small blue shack with a lot of lawn around it, and a tree stood in the middle of the lawn. When we first got there, people—not many—were milling about on the lawn, and we got out of our car and stood in line, at a safe distance from the woman ahead of us, who wore no mask. The woman who was serving the ice cream was not a young woman and she wore a mask but she wore it below her nose, and I wondered if William would say we shouldn’t get ice cream from her, but he said nothing, and this is what I want to say:

An old man with a white beard was sitting on a stool beneath the tree, playing the guitar and singing a song, and there was another man, who had just gotten his ice cream, even I could tell immediately that he was from out of state, maybe even New York, and the car he got into was expensive-looking and slung low to the ground, but I could not see the license plates. This man wore dark pink shorts and a blue collared shirt tucked into them, and he wore loafers with no socks, and I heard behind me some people speaking of him. “Fucking out-of-stater.” And I turned and they were men who wore no masks who had said that, and they looked a little frightening to me. And then the woman ahead of me in line—who was not wearing a mask—saw another woman who got out of her car, and they threw their arms around each other and said, “Hi!”

What I am trying to say is that for a few minutes I had what almost felt like a vision: that there was deep, deep unrest in the country and that the whisperings of a civil war seemed to move around me like a breeze I could not quite feel but could sense. We got our ice cream and we left, and I told William what I had felt and he said, “I know.”

It has stayed with me. That feeling I had that evening.





In the toy chest one day we found beneath some rags two fire engines that were kind of incredible. I mean they were each about a foot long and made of metal, and had rubber tires; they seemed very old but in good shape because they had been made so well, and one had a metal ladder on the back that still worked. “Look at these,” William said. He was sort of blown away by them, and I did not blame him; it seemed they had been made back at a time when toys were taken really seriously. He cleaned them off and put them on the windowsills of the porch, these two old toy fire engines from days far gone by.





Four

i

One night as we ate our supper I said, “William, how’s your tower?” I said this sort of jokingly, but he responded with seriousness.

“My tower, as you put it,” he said, glancing at me with his eyebrows raised, “built to watch for German submarines, is there as a reminder to me every day of what this world went through, and how it can go through that again.” I waited, and he continued. “This country is in so much trouble, Lucy. The whole world is. It’s like—” William put his fork down. “It’s like some seizure is taking place around the world, and I’m just saying I think we’re headed for real trouble. We are just tearing each other up. I don’t know how long our democracy can work.”