Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout Page A

question of genes, DNA, RNA, chromosome 6, the dopamine, serotonin crap; he had lost interest in all that. In fact, it angered him the way a betrayal might. “We are on the edge of understanding the essence of how the mind works in a molecular, real way,” a noted academic had said at a lecture last year. The dawning of a new age.
    There was always a new age dawning.
    â€œNot that the kid didn’t get a few wicky-wacky genes from Henry’s side, God knows. His mother was a complete nut, you know. Horrid.”
    â€œWhose mother?”
    â€œHenry’s. My husband’s.” Mrs. Kitteridge pulled out her sunglasses and put them on. “I guess you’re not supposed to say ‘nut’ these days, are you?” She looked over at him. He’d been about to start with his wrist again, but he put his hands back into his lap.
    Please go, he thought.
    â€œBut she had three breakdowns and shock treatments. Doesn’t that qualify?”
    He shrugged.
    â€œWell, she was wired funny. I guess I can at least say that.”
    Nuts was when you took a razor blade and cut long strips into your torso. Your thighs, your arms. COMPLETELY CRAZY CLARA. That was nuts. The first night together in the dark he had felt the lines. “I fell,” she had whispered. He had pictured living with her. Art on the wall, light shining through a bedroom window. Friends at Thanksgiving, a Christmas tree because Clara would want one.
    â€œThe girl is nothing but trouble,” Dr. Goldstein had said.
    It was not Dr. Goldstein’s place to say such a thing. But she had been nothing but trouble: loving and tender one minute, furious the next. The business of cutting herself—it had made him crazy. Crazy breeds crazy. And then she had left, because that’s what Clara did—left people and everything else. Off to somewhere new with her obsessions. She was crazy about the lunatic Carrie A. Nation, the first woman prohibitionist who had gone around chopping up saloons with hatchets, and then selling the hatchets. “Is that the coolest thing you ever heard?” Clara had asked, sipping her soy milk. It was like that. Cartwheeling from one thing to the next.
    â€œEveryone suffers through a bad love affair,” Dr. Goldstein had said.
    That—actually—was just not true. Kevin knew people who had not suffered through a bad love affair. Not many, perhaps, but a few. Olive Kitteridge blew her nose.
    â€œYour son,” Kevin said suddenly. “He’s still able to practice?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWith his depression? He still goes to work every day?”
    â€œOh, sure.” Mrs. Kitteridge took off her sunglasses, gave him a quick, penetrating look.
    â€œAnd Mr. Kitteridge. Is he well?”
    â€œYes, he is. He’s thinking about retiring early. They sold the pharmacy, you know, and he’d have to work for the new chain, and they require all sorts of goofy regulations. Sad, the way the world is going.”
    It was always sad, the way the world was going. And always a new age dawning.
    â€œWhat’s your brother up to?” Mrs. Kitteridge asked.
    Kevin felt weary now. Maybe that was good. “The last I knew he was living on the streets of Berkeley. He’s a drug addict.” Most of the time Kevin didn’t think of himself as having a brother.
    â€œWhere’d you go after here? Texas? Is that what I remember? Your father took a job there?”
    Kevin nodded.
    â€œI suppose he wanted to get as far away from here as possible. Time and distance, they always say. I don’t know as that’s true.”
    To get the conversation over with, Kevin said, dully, “My father died last year of liver cancer. He never remarried. And I never saw much of him once I left.”
    All the degrees Kevin had acquired, the colleges and universities he had gone to with the fellowships and scholarships he had received, his father had never