Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)

by Elizabeth Strout

“They did? Then your mother couldn’t have been responsible.” Lucy let out a huge sigh and said, “But it’s a sad story. Carrying that clipping with her all her life.” She shook her head and said, “Jesus Christ. All these unrecorded lives, and people just live them.” Then she looked at Olive and said, “Sorry for swearing.”

Lucy said, contemplatively, “I wonder how many people in long marriages live with ghosts beside them.”

“Henry and I never did.” Though as Olive said that she had a quick memory of Henry liking that foolish girl who worked with him for a while in the pharmacy, and she herself had been attracted to a man she taught with. But weren’t those tiny drops of oil in a fry pan? Not like the story she had just told.

People did not care, except for maybe one minute. It was not their fault, most just could not really care past their own experiences.

And so time passed by as it does—often strangely: so slowly and then a chunk is gone.

For many days Bob walked around as though not really here in the physical world. When he went into the grocery store, he would stop and people would bump into him and he would say, “Oh sorry, sorry.”

After they parted, Bob thought again of how he had told both his wives his memory of saying to his mother that he had never really liked Christmas and how both of them had been kind but not—to Bob’s mind—really been able to care. And he thought now as he bought a jug of orange juice, That’s just how it is, that’s all. He thought: God, we are all so alone. — But—Lucy. She did not make him feel alone. He realized this as he walked to the register.

“But you’re right. They are stories of loneliness and love.” Lucy stepped into the tiny kitchen for a moment and returned with a paper towel and she bent down and soaked up the drops of water on the floor left from her boots. Then she picked up her bag and said, “And the small connections we make in this world if we are lucky.”

Olive said, “Wait.” As Lucy turned, Olive said, “Well, phooey. I feel connected to you too. So there.” She stuck out her tongue.

It may be that not enough is said about this sort of thing, older people and how much they might appreciate the touch of another human

Mrs. Hasselbeck, for example: How did she live without any human touch to her skin? Charlene Bibber? Somehow they existed without it, many people do. Yet one has to wonder about the toll it takes, the lack of being touched or held. So many people are not.

Bob squinted at her above his smoke. He was happy—he felt happiness—just to be in Lucy’s presence.

“It makes me glad to be with you, Lucy. You give me a break from…well, you know, life.” “A break from your sin-eating,” she said, with an open smile. “I’m so glad.” Then she added, “I feel the exact same way. Only I’m not eating sins.”

Lucy waved to Bob from where she stood waiting by the wooden fence in the parking lot, and he thought there was an innocence to her that she probably did not understand about herself. As he got out of his car and walked toward her, the sight of her standing there made something gold-colored flicker inside him; it was joy.

And then he had to stop walking, because—at that precise moment—he understood exactly how much he loved her.

To be in love when the outcome is uncertain is an exquisite kind of agony. This is how it was for Bob. At times he felt he was living his very largest life, as though his soul were billowing before him like a huge and rippling sail. For the next few days after that last walk with Lucy, Bob slept profoundly well; he felt in the darkness as though Lucy were lying next to him, close against him, and this was extraordinary for Bob. When he woke, the world seemed magical to him, and he felt that he was experiencing some Large Awareness. But then he would crave Lucy, just to see her, just to be with her, and to really crave anything one might not ever get in this

world is a difficult thing. For anybody. But Bob was a patient fellow. He simply waited until their next walk together.

They could not help themselves, Bob thought. He and Lucy were just happy when they were together.

“No. That’s not evil, Larry. These are broken people. Big difference between being a broken

person and being evil. In case you don’t know. And if you don’t think everyone is broken in some way, you’re wrong. I’m telling you this because you have been so fortunate in your life, you probably don’t even know such broken people exist.”

“We also discussed that day a crush without consequences that a person can have in a marriage and how that’s very different from living with a ghost in the marriage. Now, I have thought all along that you and Lucy lived each with the ghost of the other, but I saw tonight that I was wrong. What you had was a crush.”

“That was about the same thing that every story Lucy and I have shared is about. People suffer. They live, they have hope, they even have love, and they still suffer. Everyone does. Those who think they’ve not suffered are lying to themselves.

As they walked, there was still a very slight frisson between them, as though long ago they had been lovers but were now just old friends.

“I’ll tell you what I mean. Years ago I read an article and the title was ‘Love Is Love,’ and in it the writer said that when she was in college and had her first boyfriend and was desperately in love with him, her great-aunt, recently widowed, came to stay at her parents’ house, and the writer remembered standing in the bedroom with this tiny old woman who was frightened and had terrible breath and realizing: I love her the same way that I love my boyfriend! She didn’t want to go to bed with this old woman, but the love she felt for her was distinctly related, of the very same cloth. And I’ve always remembered that. Because I understood it. Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love. If it is love, then it is love.”