Elizabeth Strout, Motherless Child

 “Motherless Child” by Elizabeth Strout

Q& A with Deborah Treisman and Elizabeth Strout

Appeared in The New Yorker 7/29/19

This story is an excerpt from Strout’s book, Olive, Again, coming out in October 2019.

Almost nothing goes right in this story---though they all do move forward, in their way. Olive is a complicated character—-strong, confident, not necessarily likable or loving, aware of her desire and feelings but only dimly aware of her impact on people, and then suddenly capable of great love for her son and ultimately, remorse and regret over how she has raised him. Despite this, she moves forward into her new life with her new lover and Christopher returns to the life he is building with his own family. They are all tested by each other, briefly come together, and then move apart. The story raises so many questions about Olive: Has she driven Christopher away or would have he have left Maine for New York anyway? What kind of hold, if any, does this mother have on her son? Will he come back to Maine? Will Olive be invited to his house? We don’t know and we wonder. This is ultimately a story of hope and regret and the complicated mother-son bond. A great story leaves you wondering and worrying about the main characters, as this one does.

Threads of story: Cheerios, sun, water, milk, breast feeding, breasts, children’s manners, cars, mothers—-the loss of them, the need for them, the roles of them.

Maine is a character in the story—-the landscape, the nearness of the ocean, the cold. Olive’s house is also a character in the story, a character that is going to be torn down and replaced.

Page 1: Story starts mise en scene (in the middle of the scene), stakes raised right away. They were late. Olive Kitteridge hated people who were late.

Page 1: Lovely description of weather/sun: Through the window, the late-April sun was milky over the bay, which shone with a steely lightness, no whitecaps today.

Page 2: House is a character, packed up, Olive is moving (forward or backward? We don’t know yet): Oh Godfrey, Olive murmured, sitting down at the kitchen table. She hadn’t yet taken the pictures off the wall, but the place looked remarkably different, as though—as was the case—she would be moving out of it soon. She did not think of herself as a person who had knickknacks, but there was a box of stuff in the back corner of the kitchen, and when she glanced into the living room from where she sat that room seemed to her to have changed even more; there was only the furniture and the two paintings on the wall. The books were gone—she had given them to the library a week ago—and the lamps, except for one, were packed into a box as well.

Page 2: Tension rises, stakes continue to raise, multiple problems introduced: She hasn’t seen her son Christopher in years, reference to husband’s funeral, son had asked her to leave his house: Hanging up, she walked through the house, and trepidation fluttered through her. “You’re doing this all wrong,” she said quietly to herself. Almost three years it had been since she had seen her son. This did not seem natural or right to Olive. And yet when she had gone to visit him in New York City—when Ann was pregnant with Little Henry, and way before the birth of this other child, Natalie, a baby now—the visit had gone so poorly that her son had essentially asked her to leave. And she had left. She had seen him only once since, soon afterward, when he had flown to Maine for his father’s funeral and spoken before the whole church, tears running down his face. “I never heard my father swear” was one thing her son had said that day.

Page 2: Nice reference to relatable, domestic detail: Olive checked the bathroom, made sure there were clean towels. She knew that there were clean towels, but she could not stop herself from checking again.

Pages 4-5: Great, specific, detailed descriptions of kids, Chris and Ann, you can really see them, note the use of color and fabric: There was a little dark-haired girl, dressed in a bulky pink nylon coat and a pair of knee-high rubber boots, robin’s-egg blue, who turned away immediately, and a blond boy, older, who stared at Olive. Ann was taking her time getting the baby out of the car. Olive went to Christopher, and she put her arms around him, and felt the awkwardness of his older man’s body in her arms. She stepped back, and he stepped back, then he reached into the car and leaned over an apparatus that looked like a small pilot seat for a child headed to outer space; he lifted the kid out, and said to his mother, “Here’s Henry.”

The child looked with large slumbering eyes at Olive, as he was placed, standing, on the ground. “Hello, Henry,” Olive said, and the child’s eyes rolled up slightly, then he pressed his face into his father’s pant leg. “Is he all right?” Olive demanded, because the sight of him, dark-haired like his mother, dark-eyed as well, caused her to think immediately, This is not Henry Kitteridge! What had she thought? She had thought that she would see her late husband in the little boy, but instead she saw a stranger.

Page 5: Great, damning description of Ann nursing; Olive is uncomfortable with breast-feeding: Then he shook his head slightly and walked over to his mother, who, even as she held the baby, was shrugging her way out of a thick black sweater. Olive could see that Ann’s stomach bulged through her black stretch pants, although her arms seemed skinny in her white nylon blouse.

Ann sat down at the kitchen table and said, “I’d like a glass of water, Olive,” and when Olive turned around to hand it to her she saw a breast—just sticking out in plain view, right there in the kitchen, the nipple large and dark—and she felt a tiny bit ill. Ann pressed the baby to her breast, and Olive saw the little thing, eyes closed, clasp on to the nipple. Ann smiled up at Olive, but Olive didn’t think it was a real smile. “Phew,” Ann said

Page 5: Stakes raised, Chris wants a drink in the middle of the day, the wine sets a conversation in motion and raises the tension—-why does Chris want it and why does Olive have it?

“I’d like a drink.”

“O.K., a drink of what?”

“A drink-drink, but I don’t imagine you have anything like that.”

“I do,” Olive said. She opened the refrigerator. “I have some white wine. Would you like some white wine?”

“You have wine?” Christopher asked. “Yes, I would love some white wine, thank you, Mom.” He stood. “Wait, I’ll get it.” And he took the wine bottle, which was half full, and poured the wine into a tumbler, as though it were lemonade. “Thank you.” He raised the glass and drank from it. “When did you start drinking wine?”

Page 6: Stakes continue to rise. Not enough chairs at the table. “She realized that there were only two chairs at the table; how had she not noticed that before? She said, “Let’s go into the living room.” But they did not get up, and so she stood at the counter, feeling shaky.”

Page 6: Stakes continue to rise: Ann’s children rude. Manners matter.  Neither of Ann’s children spoke a word to Olive. Not a “thank you” or a “please”—not one word did they say. She thought they were horrible children. She said, “Here’s a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich,” pointing to the ones that sat on the counter, and they said nothing. “All right, fine,” she said.

 Page 7: Stakes continue to rise: Olive’s maternal instincts are not particularly strong. We do not know why—-we are shown this, not told it:, baby Natalie cries when Olive goes to hold her. This is Olive’s new granddaughter, who she’s never met and not that interested in holding. But when Olive—only because she felt it was expected of her—asked to hold Natalie, the baby started screaming as soon as she was in Olive’s arms. Just screamed her little head off. “O.K., then, all right, then,” Olive said, and handed her back to her mother, who took some time getting her calmed down. Ann had to pull out her breast again to do this, and Olive was pretty sick of seeing her daughter-in-law’s breast; it was so naked, all huge with milk, and veins running over it. Honestly, Olive did not care to see it anymore. She stood up and said, “I’ll get supper started.”

Page 7 Stakes rise, no Christmas celebrated in this hose, Olive is testy and dismissive of Ann’s efforts to ask where her tree was: But Ann interrupted and said, “Olive, where did you put your Christmas tree? By the front window?”

“I didn’t have a Christmas tree,” Olive said. “Why in the world would I have a Christmas tree?”

Ann raised her eyebrows. “Because it was Christmas?”

Olive didn’t care for that. “Not in this house it wasn’t,” she said.

Page 8 Stakes continue to rise, tension rises, bad behavior all around, Olive is both hurt by bad manners and vengeful: Olive has only knit a scarf  for one of her grandchildren by blood, and remembers/reminds Ann she has never been thanked for the Christmas presents she sent: 

She went into the study—the two older kids just stood silently and watched her—and got the scarf she had knitted, bright red, and brought it out, and she gave it to Christopher, who said, “Hey, Henry, look what your grandmother made for you,” and the little boy put part of it into his mouth. “Silly thing,” Christopher said to him, and pulled it gently. “You wear it to keep warm.” And the child clapped his hands. Olive thought he was really a fairly amazing child.

Ann appeared in the doorway, flanked by the older kids, who were now in their pajamas. She said, “Um, Olive?” She pursed her lips a moment and then said, “Do you have anything for the other children?”

Olive felt a darkness rising swiftly through her. It took her a moment to trust herself, then she said, “I don’t know what you mean, Ann. Are you talking about Christmas presents? I sent the children Christmas presents.”

Page 8: Tension rises, there is restraint, tongues bitten, imaginary bitter dialogue (great thing to do) and yet after all that tension, there is finally a lovely moment between little Henry and Olive: The child shrugged one shoulder and turned away. And yet they stood there, that beastly mother and her two children from two different men, stood right there in the doorway, as though Olive were supposed to produce—what was she supposed to produce? She really had to bite her tongue not to say, “I guess you didn’t like that truck.” Or not to say to the little girl, “And what about that doll? I suppose you didn’t like that, either?” Olive had to force herself not to say, “In my day, we thanked people who sent us gifts.” Olive really had to work not to say this, but she did not say this, and after a few minutes Ann said to the kids, “Come on, let’s get you to bed. Give Daddy a kiss.” And they walked to Christopher and kissed him, then walked right by Olive, and that was that. Horrible, horrible children, and a horrible mother. But Little Henry suddenly wiggled out of his father’s lap and dragged his new scarf across the floor to Olive. “Hi,” he said. He smiled at her! “Hello,” she said. “Hello, Little Henry.” “Hi, hi,” he said. He held the scarf toward Olive. “Gank you,” he said. Well, he was a Kitteridge. He was surely a Kitteridge, all right. “Oh, your grandfather would have been so proud,” she said to him, and he smiled and smiled, his teeth wet with saliva.

Page 9: Finally, almost at the middle of the story (page 9/23), we have a moment of sweetness and vulnerability for Olive. Strout shows that Olive can be soft, filled with yearning and love towards her son. This is a lovely passage in which Olive revels in talking to her only child---her maternal impulses here are strong, positive—and this is a welcome moment since the reader needs this kind of break in tension of story. Or, to play the devil’s advocate: Do we? Could we read a story about endless hostility between mother/son/daughter-in-law? I would argue, “No.” Olive has to be a little likable, a little vulnerable, in order for us to continue to care about her. She needs to stir in us, the reader, some compassion. We must feel and hurt and yearn for her, with her. 

Her son was talking to her alone. Little Henry had been put to bed upstairs, and his mother and his baby sister were up there as well. The light from the lamp in the corner spilled over her son. This was all she wanted: just this. Chris’s eyes seemed clear; his face seemed clear. The gray in his hair still surprised her, but she thought he looked good. He spoke a great deal about his podiatry practice, the young woman who worked for him, the insurance he had to pay, the insurance that his patients had. Olive didn’t care what he talked about. He talked about their tenant, no longer the guy with the parrot that would screech “Praise God” anytime someone swore but a young man with a girlfriend now; they were probably going to get married soon. On and on he talked, her son. Olive was tired, but she stifled a yawn. She would stay here forever to hear this. He could recite the alphabet to her and she would sit here and listen to it.

Page 9: Jack, Olive’s boyfriend/fiance, is introduced as a character, off stage, via email

Page 10: Tension rises again, Olive didn’t get Cheerios, no breakfast for kids 

Christopher said, “Mom, you didn’t get Cheerios? I told you we needed Cheerios.”

“You did?” Olive could not remember her son’s mentioning Cheerios. “Well, there’s oatmeal,” she said. She thought she saw Christopher and Ann exchange a look.

Pages 11-12: Smack in the middle of the story, tension rises and rises, Olive forgets cell phone, pay phone doesn’t work, there is not enough milk, Theodore notices she didn’t use a recyclable grocery bag…

And so Olive went back upstairs and put some clothes on, and then she took her coat and her big black handbag and she walked through the kitchen as fast as she could and drove over to Cottle’s. All she wanted was to speak to Jack. But she had walked out the door without her cell phone! And what had happened to pay phones? She felt hurried and upset, knowing that the kids were waiting for their Cheerios. “Jack, Jack,” she called out in her head. “Help me, Jack.” What good was the fact that Jack had bought her a cell phone when she didn’t even remember to take it with her? Finally, after she had bought the Cheerios, as she was pulling out of the parking lot, she saw a pay phone near the back of the lot, and she parked again. She couldn’t find a quarter at first, but then she found one and she slipped it into the phone, and there was no dial tone. The goddam phone didn’t work. Oh, she was fit to be tied.

Down in the kitchen, the silence remained. “What’s the matter?” Olive asked; she heard the anger in her voice.

“There’s not much milk, Mom. There was only a little. So Annabelle got it, and Theodore has to have his Cheerios plain.” Christopher was leaning against the counter as he said this, one ankle crossed over the other.

“Are you serious?” Olive asked. “Well, I’ll go back—”

“No, it’s O.K. Just sit, Mom.” Christopher nodded toward the chair that Theodore sat in. “Theodore, give your grandmother a chair.” The child, with his eyes down, slid off the chair and stood.

Ann’s back was to her, and Olive could see Little Henry on one of his mother’s knees. Ann was holding the baby, too. “What about the rest of you?” Olive asked. “What can I get for you? How about some toast?”

“It’s O.K., Mom,” Christopher said again. “I’ll make some toast. You sit.”

So she sat at the table across from her daughter-in-law, who turned and smiled her phony smile at Olive. Theodore moved to his mother and whispered something into her ear. Ann rubbed his arm and said quietly, “I know, honey. But people live differently.”

Page 12: Lovely writing about weather: Nice break in tension

The day was very sunny and bright; all the clouds from yesterday had gone, and the sun shone through the house. Outside, the bay was brilliant, and the lobster buoys bobbed just slightly; a lobster boat was headed out. It was decided that they would all drive out to Reid State Park to watch the surf. “The kids have never really seen the ocean,” Christopher said. “The real ocean. I’d like them to see the Maine coast.”

Page 12: Tension rises, Christopher is surprised Olive has gotten a Subaru, he has trouble buckling car seat in, Olive lies to Christopher about where she got the Subaru

“Oh,” she said. “I had to get a new car, and I thought, I’m an old lady on my own, I’ll get a good car for the snow.” She could not believe she had said that. It was a lie. She had just lied to her son. The truth was that the car belonged to Jack. When her Honda had needed new brake pads, Jack had said, “Take my Subaru, Olive. We’re two people with three cars, and that’s ridiculous, so take the Subaru, and I’ll keep my sports car, because I love it.”

Page 14: The two mothers in the story are finally alone together, and they themselves are both motherless children. Olive and Ann are alone on a rock with the baby girl (a future mother, possibly), and there is a moment of reckoning, Olive asks about Ann’s mother, Ann tells her her mother is dead, Olive tries to offer some comfort, in her way. This is the moment in which Olive holds out an olive branch to Ann, which (I would argue) ultimately prompts Ann to come to Olive’s defense later, when Christopher acts out with Olive’s boyfriend. Ann and Olive are both complicated women, bound by their love for Christopher, ad perhaps similar to each other in other meaningful ways. Since this is only an excerpt from the novel, it’s not clear how or if Ann and Olive will need each other in the larger story but I am guessing, they will, and I am guessing there will be tension as each seeks to satisfy their need for each other.

Ann sat on a rock that looked out at the ocean, even though the rock was windswept and must have been very cold, while Christopher ran back and forth on the beach with the kids. Olive watched this from the edge of the parking lot, her coat pulled tightly around her. After a few minutes, she made her way to Ann, who looked up at her, the baby asleep in her arms. “Hello, Olive,” Ann said.

Olive couldn’t figure out what to do. The rocks were wide, but she couldn’t get herself down to a sitting position. So she stood. Finally, she said, “How’s your mother, Ann?”

‘[Ann said something that got lost in the wind.

“What?” Olive said.

“I said she’s dead!” Ann turned her head to Olive, yelling this.

“She died?” Olive yelled this back. “When did she die?”

“A couple months ago!” Ann yelled in the wind toward Olive.

For several minutes, Olive stood there. She had no idea what to do. But then she decided that she would try to sit next to Ann, and so she bent down and placed her hands carefully on the rock and eventually got herself seated.

Olive said, “So she died right before you had Natalie?”

Ann nodded.

Olive said, “What a hell of a thing.”

“Thank you,” Ann said.

And Olive realized that this girl, this tall, strange girl—who was a middle-aged woman—was grieving. “Did she die suddenly?” Olive asked

Page 15 Lovely, sad description of weather Through the window, the trees were still bare, their limbs dark, poking toward the sky. They passed a field that looked soggy and matted down in parts, the streaming sun revealing it all.

Page 16: Unasked questions about major life decisions, contribute to tension: And Olive nodded. Her question, which she did not ask, was: Why did you marry this woman?

Page 16: Last third of story, tension rises: On their very last morning together, Olive tells Christopher she’s getting married

Page 19: Quiet oasis, Olive is vulnerable, quiet in her grief:

She got into bed, though she did not expect to sleep, and she did not sleep. She took from her bedside drawer a little transistor radio, and she turned it on low and held it to her ear, lying with it that way. The entire night went by and she stared at the dark, shifting only a few times. She watched the red digital clock, and she clung to her little radio, but she heard every word that came from it and understood that she had not even dozed.

Pages 20-21 Great explosive moment, Chris is rude to Jack, Ann yells at Chris, Olive feels sorry for her son and sees that her daughter-in-law can also be an impatient mother. They are all flawed, wounded, and capable of love and remorse here:

Jack gave a small bow in his ironic way, his eyes twinkling, as they often did, and he followed her into the living room. “Hello, Christopher,” he said, and he held out his hand. 

Christopher rose slowly from his chair and said, “Hello.” He shook Jack’s hand as though it were a dead fish he had been offered.

 “Oh, come on now, Chris.” The words were out of Olive’s mouth before she realized what she had done.

Christopher looked at her with open surprise. “Come on?” He said this loudly. “Come on? Jesus, Mom. What do you mean, ‘Oh, come on now, Chris’?”

“I just meant—” And Olive understood that she had been frightened of her son for years.

“Oh, stop it, Christopher! Stop it, for Christ’s sake!” This was Ann’s voice; she had walked into the room after Olive, and Olive, turning toward her, was amazed to see that Ann’s face was red. Her lips seemed bigger, her eyes seemed bigger, and she said, again,“Stop it, Chris. Just stop it! Let the woman get married. What’s the matter with you? Jesus! You can’t even be polite to him? For crying out loud, Christopher, you are such a baby! You think I have four little kids? I have five little kids!”

Then Ann turned toward Jack and Olive and said, “On behalf of my husband, I would like to apologize for his unbelievably childish behavior. He can be so childish, and this is childish, Christopher. Jesus Christ, is this childish of you.”

Jack waved a hand casually and said something about its being no problem, he was sure it was a shock, and he sat down and Christopher sat down and Ann left the room, and Olive stood there. She only barely heard as her son asked Jack—who was still wearing his suède coat—what he had done for work, and she only barely heard Jack say that he had taught at Harvard his whole life, that his subject had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Christopher nodded and said, “Cool, that’s cool.” Ann walked back and forth gathering all the children’s things; the children stood in the doorway watching, sometimes going to their mother, though she shook them off. “Move!” she yelled at one of them. Little Henry began to cry.

Page 22: Sad gesture, Olive throws out the red scarf she has made for Henry: It wasn’t until Olive saw the red scarf that she had knitted for Little Henry lying half under the couch in the living room that she felt something close to terror. She bent down and picked it up, and she took the scarf and returned to the kitchen, where Jack was leaning forward with his arms on the tabletop. Olive opened the door and put the scarf into the garbage bin beside it. 

Page 22: 12 Sad, beautiful paragraph that is a prolonged moment of reckoning for Olive, her own private epiphany. She has a moment of self-awareness, a realization of her own culpability in driving her son away. This moment is crucial: It makes us, the reader, feel compassion for Olive and it might also be the moment that changes her in some way.

“Well,” Jack said. He said it kindly. He placed his large, age-spotted hand over Olive’s. After a moment, he added, “I guess we know who wears the pants in that family.”

“Her mother died recently,” Olive said. “She’s grieving.”But she pulled her hand away. It came to her then, with the whooshing crescendo of truth: She had failed on a colossal level. She must have been failing for years and not realized it. She did not have a family as other people did. Other people had their children come and stay, and they talked and laughed, and the grandchildren sat on the laps of their grandmothers, and they went places and did things, ate meals together, kissed when they parted. Olive had images of this happening in many homes; her friend Edith, for example, before she had moved to that place for old people, her kids would come and stay. Surely they had a better time than what had just happened here. And it had not happened out of the blue. She could not understand what it was about her, but it was something about her that had caused this to happen. And it must have been there for years, maybe all her life, how would she know? As she sat across from Jack—stunned—she felt that she had lived her life as though blind.

Page 23: Sad, final paragraph, moving forward, looking back, combination of regret, epiphany, resignation. Progress is being made, but at what cost? 

Good idea.” Olive stood and got her coat and her big black handbag and she let Jack walk her out to the Subaru. He helped her in, and then got in himself, and they drove away. Olive almost looked back, but she closed her eyes instead. She could see it perfectly, anyway. Her house, the house that she and Henry had built so many years ago, the house that looked small now and would be razed to the ground by whoever bought it, because the property was what mattered. She saw the house behind her closed eyes, and a shiver seemed to go through her bones. The house where she had raised her son—never, ever realizing that she herself was raising a motherless child, now a long, long way from home.