Olive Kitteridge

Kevin Coulson returns to Crosby for the first time since his childhood. Patty Howe, from inside the diner where she works, notices Kevin sitting in his car as he stares at the sea; she recognizes him from their time growing up together. Kevin, in turn, recalls driving past his childhood home earlier in the day. Kevin has a rifle in his car, and it soon becomes clear that he plans to kill himself at his childhood home—though he is worried about the child of the family who lives there now finding his body. He understands how traumatizing such a discovery could be, as he found his own mother’s body after she had died by suicide.

Kevin is surprised when a face appears beside his car window. It’s Olive Kitteridge, and she bluntly invites herself into the car to talk with him. Kevin lives in New York City, she knows, and they talk about Patty, who “keeps having miscarriages and it makes her sad” (35). Kevin, who has been training to become a psychiatrist, has bipolar disorder; he believes that everyone in his field is striving to figure out what’s wrong with themselves, though they rarely know it. Once, Kevin notes, he had planned to work in the Hauge with torture victims: “he’d been attracted to crazy” (36). Olive tells him that her father and her son both struggle with depression. In discussing Kevin’s mother, Olive further reveals that her father also died by suicide. Kevin wants to end the conversation, though he does not know how. He imagines a bullet and wonders where it will go after passing through “the roof of a mouth” (39), but he talks about the boats in the harbor instead. Olive observes that it is unusual for a woman to kill herself with a gun, as Kevin’s mother did, and they agree that his mother was an “unusual woman” (40).

Patty, intending to cut a bouquet of lilies for her mother, approaches the far side of the marina—an area notorious for its dangerous, steep drop into the water. She passes Kevin and Olive talking in his car.

Kevin and Olive discuss the mental health conditions of Olive’s son, Christopher Kitteridge; Kevin oscillates between wanting the conversation to end, disliking the sound of Olive’s voice, and being drawn back into the discussion. He thinks of his apparently disastrous romantic relationship with a woman named Clara Pilkington, who was covered in self-harm scars. Kevin asks a bit more after Olive’s husband and son, and when Olive asks after Kevin’s brother, he reveals that his brother has a drug addiction and lives on the streets.

Kevin reflects on having lived in many places in effort to combat his isolation. Though each seemed promising at first, “all became places that sooner or later, one way or another, assured him that he didn’t, in fact, fit” (43). He has developed a longing for his childhood house—not out of love, but out of nostalgia. Kevin finally finds solace in the sound of Olive’s voice as she seems to prepare to leave. The waves crash against the marina walls. Suddenly, he does not want Olive to go. He feels that “hope [is] a cancer inside him” (45).

Olive spots something and hops out of the car. She runs to the marina, shouting; Patty has fallen into the water. Kevin acts on instinct, jumping into the freezing water. On his second attempt, he manages to grab hold of Patty. He fights to keep her “from falling away” (47) as Olive gets help. He seems deeply moved as he sees in Patty’s face “how she wanted to live […] how she wanted to hold on” (47).

Angie O’Meara is a piano player. It is nearly Christmas, and she is performing four nights a week at the same bar and grill she has played at for many years. Now in her fifties, her beauty is slipping, but elements of her attractive appearance remain. Joe, the bartender, is aware that her breath regularly smells of alcohol and mints, and he assumes that she experiences stage fright. He is right. A self-taught pianist, Angie was a child prodigy. As a child who always wanted to play music, she would often say “my hands are hungry” (51). Nonetheless, for years, Angie has started drinking vodka several hours before each performance to calm her nerves. Specifically, she fears playing her first notes, which carries with it the “responsibility” of “changing the atmosphere in the room” (50).

Olive and Henry Kitteridge arrive in the bar. Angie makes a note to play “Good Night, Irene” when Henry leaves, knowing it is his favorite song. She often tries to make such adjustments for patrons. However, Angie also notices that, tonight, her hands are trembling; this has become more common lately, as the vodka is no longer doing “what it had done for many years, which was to make her happy and make everything feel pleasantly at a distance” (51). As she begins to play tonight, she thinks about how Malcolm Moody, a married selectman with whom she has been having an affair for several years; Malcolm’s treatment of her has lately grown colder, and his judgmental attitude toward others always gave her pause.

A man in a dark coat enters and sinks into a chair. Angie asks for an Irish coffee, and shortly after, the man submits a request for her to play “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Angie keeps playing Christmas carols, now trying to ignore the man whose name is Simon. Simon, she notes, “had once been a piano player, too” (53). When Angie runs out of carols, for the time in years, she avails herself of her 20-minute break. Then, for the first time ever, in their 22-year affair, Angie goes to the payphone and calls Malcolm at his home. As soon as the phone picks up, she says that she cannot see him anymore and apologizes. The line is silent, and Angie suspects that “his wife was probably right there” (54). She returns to the piano and plays “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Near the end, she looks at Simon, but he does not return her smile.

Returning to her piano, she thinks about Simon. They dated when she had been “just a girl” (55), so many of her memories of him feature her mother in the background. Simon had been the piano player in the bar before her, though his playing lacked feeling. He broke up with Angie, complaining that he felt it was as though he had “to date both [her] and [her] mother” (55). Later, he accused her of being “neurotic” and wounded.

Simon was the only person who knew Angie’s mother had “taken money from men” (55), which the text indicates was for sex work. Later, after music school rejected Simon, he became a real estate lawyer in Boston. At age 15, Angie was offered a scholarship, though her mother refused to allow Angie to leave for the school. Angie wonders whether Simon is having a midlife crisis. Eventually, he comes to stand beside the piano; he has aged and become unremarkable.

They talk. Simon’s eyes lack the warmth they once held. He wears a thick wedding ring, and when Angie asks, he talks about his wife and three children, “all grown” (56). He asks whether she finishes at nine tonight; Angie confirms she does, but she says that she has to “skedaddle right out of here” (57). Simon seems to accept her goodbye. A regular sends Angie another coffee, and as Henry Kitteridge leaves, she starts to play “Good Night, Irene.”

Simon suddenly returns to the piano. He bends down and whispers into Angie’s ear that her mother once visited him in Boston. She “asked for a drink and started taking off her clothes” (57). Simon claims he has pitied Angie ever since. Angie gives no reaction besides bidding Simon goodnight. She then quickly drinks the entire Irish coffee and slips into her music, and “[i]nside the music like this, she understood many things” (58). Among those things is that while Simon likely took comfort from what he said, “it was thin milk, this form of nourishment” (58).

Angie finishes playing and leaves the bar. As she stumbles through the cold, she slips and swears. Malcolm appears from the shadows. He is angry that she called his house and accuses her of having an alcohol addiction. Malcolm tells her to call him at work tomorrow when she sobers up, but even drunk, Angie knows that she won’t. She returns home and sits in the stairwell, convinced that everyone she knows is pathetic in their own way. Angie decides to visit the church the following day and play the piano—just as she did when she was young.