Olive kitteridge incoming tide summary

Incoming Tide I 31 ther and brother. He was as much a stranger up here now as any tourist might be, and yet gazing back at the sun-sliced bay, he noted how familiar it felt; he had not expected that. The salt air filled his nose, the wild rugosa bushes with their white blossoms brought him a vague confusion; a sense of sad ignorance seemed cloaked in their benign white petals. Patty Howe poured coffee into two white mugs, placed them on the counter, said quietly, "You're welcome," and moved back to arrange the corn muffins that had just been passed through the opening from the kitchen. She had seen the man sitting in the car-he'd been there Incoming Tide well over an hour-but people did that sometimes, drove out from town just to gaze at the water. Still, there was something about him that was troubling her. "They're perfect," she said to the cook, because the tops of the muffins were crispy at the edges, yellow as rising suns. ~rhe bay had small whitecaps and the tide was coming in, so the The fact that their newly baked scent did not touch off a queasiness in smaller rocks could be heard moving as the water shifted them. Also her, as they had two times in the past year, made her sad; a soft dismal- there was the twanging sound of the cables hitting the masts of the ness settled over her. The doctor had said to them, For three months sailboats moored. A few seagulls gave squawking cries as they dove you are not to even think of it. down to pick up the fish heads and tails and shining insides that the The screen door opened, banged shut. Through the large window, boy was tossing from the dock as he cleaned the mackerel. All this Patty saw that the man in the car still sat looking at the water, and as Kevin saw as he sat in his car with the windows partly open. The car Patty poured coffee for an elderly couple that had seated themselves was parked on the grassy area, not far from the marina. Two trucks slowly into a booth, as she asked how they were this nice morning, she were parked farther over, on the gravel by the dock. suddenly knew who the man was, and something passed over her, like How much time went by, Kevin didn't know. a shadow crossing in front of the sun. "There you go," she said to the At one point, the marina's screen door opened wheezily and couple, and didn't glance out the window again. slammed shut, and Kevin watched as a man moved in slow steps in his "Say, why doesn't Kevin come over here instead," Patty's mother had dark rubber boots, tossing a coil of heavy rope into the back of the suggested, when Patty had been so small her head had only reached truck. If the man noticed Kevin, he gave no sign, even when he backed .the kitchen counter, shaking it No, no, no, she didn't want to go there. up his truck and turned his head in Kevin's direction. There was no She'd been scared of him; in kindergarten he had sucked on his wrist reason they would recognize each other. Kevin had not been to this so hard it was always a brilliant disk of a bruise, and his mother-tall, town since he was a child; thirteen, when he moved away with his fa- dark-haired, deep-voiced-had scared her, too. Now, as Patty put the 32 I Incoming Tide Olil'e Kitteridge I 33 corn muffins onto a plate, she thought that her mother's response had porch added, and the old kitchen gone. Of course: they'd have wanted been graceful, brilliant almost. Kevin had come to her house instead, the kitchen gone. A sense of umbrage pricked him, then left. He and he'd patiently swung a jump rope whose other end was tied around slowed the car, peering carefully for any signs of children. He saw no a tree, while Patty had jumped and jumped. On her way home from bicycles, no swing set, no tree house, no basketball hoop-just a hang- work today, Patty would stop by her mother's house. You'll never guess ing pink impatiens plant by the front door. who I saw, she'd say. Relief came, arriving as a sensation beneath his ribs, like a gentle lapping of the water's edge at low tide, a comforting quiescence. In the back of the car was a blanket, and he would still use it, even if there 'The boyan the dock stood up, holding a yellow pail in one hand, a were no children in the house. Right now the blanket was wrapped knife in the other. A seagull swooped in and the boy waved his arm around the rifle, but when he returned (soon, while this relief still with the knife. Kevin watched as the boy turned to come up the ramp, touched, quietly, the inner blankness he had felt on the long ride up), but a man was sauntering down onto the wharf. "Son, put the knife in he would lie down on the pine needles and put the blanket over him.