I've been good about being productive today. What follows is two chunks from the story of Olive. The first part (through the asterisks) is from chapter seven, which is in part two. After the asterisks is the continuation of the story in chapter nineteen, part four. As you might imagine, there is a lot that transpires between II-7 and IV-19. To help you follow it, you need to know that Emily moves to Sacramento in between. Since the book isn't entirely chronological, these excerpts, quite separated within the story, actually follow each other.
Stay tuned to find out what happens...
Despite the enormous visor built onto Olive's old car, the glare of the early afternoon sun on the dirty windshield made it nearly impossible for the family to see their new home of Sacramento as they crossed the city limits. Olive leaned her head out of the passenger window and squinted to see down the highway. A motel was coming up on the right, and she told Adam to pull in.
"I don't see it," he said.
"It's coming up," she replied. "It's the big blue sign coming up."
"It's ugly," William murmured from the back seat.
"You can't even see it, yet, Bill," Adam said.
"Sacramento is ugly," he replied.
"Billy, please," Olive said.
Everything was sensitive; she was desperate to make this new life work, and she knew she would have to be the constant optimist for that to happen. William had proven during their cross-country journey he would be the biggest obstacle, the heaviest drain on her enthusiasm. He was sullen. She knew she had ripped him away from his newly forming social life. At seven (and a half, he would point out), his awareness of a bigger world, of the importance of relationships, and even of his actions' consequences were developing. Now, in carting her son away to California, she had, she feared, halted that development, or at best delayed it. Her optimism had to step over the guilt in order to come through.
Adam hadn't been a bundle of joy during the escapade either. For this, she was not guilty but angry. It was his damned idea, for goodness sake. Some of his grumbling she could get over, attributing it to his moody tendencies and to simple exhaustion. It'd been a long trip. There seemed to be another level of irritation, though. It peeked out at times when Olive was talking to no one in particular in the car about her thoughts on what life would be like in Sacramento.
"Wouldn't it be nice," she asked, "if we could find a whole house to rent, rather than an apartment? I mean, we're a pretty big family now. Don't you think it'd feel tight in an apartment? And a house just feels so much more stable, more comfortable than a crumby apartment."
"Olive," Adam interrupted, "I can't drive with you talking so much."
While she sat in silence, she turned the comment over in her head, considering possible retorts, possible ways to get back at him for being mean, during which her thoughts got off track until she realized she was talking aloud again about unrelated things.
"Olive, can you please stop talking for just ten minutes?"
"Fine," she said. She really wanted to say no, she wouldn't stay quiet for one, let alone ten, minutes.
Adam seemed more pleasant at the moment, maybe because they'd finally reached the end and could rest.
"Oh, Adam, there it goes!" she exclaimed.
"I didn't like the way it looked," Adam replied.
She sighed and wished he didn't have to be so contradictory. Did he not like that motel just because she's the one who noticed it?
"Here we go," he said, pointing to one farther up the road.
"Do Billy and I have to share a bed?" Jack asked.
Adam said "yes" at the same time Olive said "we'll see." Always so contradictory, she thought again.
Over the next several days, while they stayed in the motel (which Olive was quite certain wasn't as nice as the one she'd first seen), they rattled around the streets of downtown Sacramento in Olive's dirty old Nash four-door, apartment hunting. Olive wasn't sure if it was a sign of William's maturing thinking or just his sulking, but he seemed to have quite reasonable reactions (always objections) to the apartments they saw. Usually, it was his insistence that they have a proper dining room.
"It's where we're supposed to eat," he said.
"But there's a nice big kitchen in this apartment," Olive explained. "Our table will fit."
"It's not the same," he said. "It's not right to not eat in a dining room."
After two more apartment previews, the discussion devolved into a temper tantrum. What was the big deal about a dining room? "I guess we've always had a dining room," she considered, but his demand for it seemed so fierce she doubted there was just familiarity behind it.
They settled on an apartment; the second floor flat of a duplex, with a breakfast room. It wasn't a whole house, but it was close. It didn't have a dining room, but it was close.
A few weeks later, after her things had arrived from storage in Hartford and they'd settled in, Olive arrived home from a doctor's appointment.
"Adam," she reported, "I'm pregnant! Isn't it wonderful? I was pregnant during our whole trip across the country. Isn't that a gas? What a wonderful surprise. It makes me feel like our family will really be settled here in California, once we have a child here."
"It is," Adam replied. "It is wonderful, Olive. I sure hope we can afford it. But I'm sure we'll make do, right?"
Way to bring the mood down, Adam Loews, Olive thought. She was the one who already had found a good job. She was the one who would "make it work." She laughed.
"You old poop. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were the old one in this relationship," she joked. "I have to tell Emily!"
"Honestly, Mother," Emily said over the phone. "Don't you think it's a lot to take on? A new job and city and now a baby?"
"It wasn't on purpose, and if I'd known before we moved we might have put it off," she replied. "But it's happened and I would appreciate it if someone could be a little, oh, I don't know, happy for me?"
"What's my step-father think? Was he happy?" Emily asked.
"Of course."
"Oh," Emily continued, after a pause, "I am happy for you, Mother, if you're happy. I'm sorry to be so critical; it was really thoughtless of me. Congratulations. Are Billy, Jack, and Camille excited about having a new baby brother or sister?"
"You know, Emily," she said, rather seriously, "William seems to be having a hard time adjusting--to the whole move I mean. I think he's looking forward to the baby. But I just don't know if there's something more I need to do to help him feel more at home here."
When their boxes had arrived, William dove into the china and arranged it systematically in the built-in hutch in the breakfast room. With each meal, he scanned the shelves for appropriately-sized plates, dug through the drawers for cloth napkins and silver, and carefully and deliberately set the table. Olive felt it might be getting out of hand; it was compulsive. They'd not had an informal meal. William screamed at Jack when he left the table after a Saturday morning breakfast without excusing himself properly.
"Billy, Dear," Olive said later in the day, "would you like to let Camille set the table for dinner?"
His lower lip quivered immediately and tears were nearly instantaneous.
"She won't do it right," he said between sobs.
"Alright," she said in a panic. "Alright, it's... it's no big deal. You can--you're right; maybe she's not ready for such a big responsibility."
The response seemed to calm him, but Olive was unnerved. This just isn't right, she thought.
On December 1, 1956, Avery Loews was born. Adam sat next to Olive, holding her hand, watching her caress their new son. To Olive's admittedly exhausted and possibly misinterpreting eyes, he looked cross.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Absolutely nothing in the world is wrong right now," he replied.
Olive was juggling a newborn, a wooden spoon, and an oven mitt when the phone rang.
"Emily!" she gushed into the phone. "Sweety, how are you?"
"I'm just fine, Mother," Emily replied. "More importantly, how are you?"
"Dandy!" she said with a joyous lilt. "I forgot how much fun it is to have a baby by your side."
Emily laughed.
"You're something special, Mother," Emily said. "I was going to ask you if you're surviving, but clearly you are."
"Emm, I didn't even think it would be this good. I'm trying to make dinner and everything is a mess, but I'm so happy, I can't even tell you."
"Just make Adam make dinner," Emily said lightheartedly.
Olive did not respond.
"Mom?"
"Oh, you know Adam is nobody's wizard in the kitchen," Olive quietly replied.
"He's not there, is he?" Emily asked.
"Well, not at the moment."
"So he's working," Emily posed, suspiciously.
Olive again made no response.
"Mother! Are you serious?" Emily demanded.
"Yes, yes," Olive lied. "Yes, he's at work; I'm pretty sure."
She could imagine Emily's expression on the other end of the phone. Olive could sense the anger.
"This is the third time I've called this week that he's not been there," Emily said. "Frankly, Mother, I'm getting angry. And I'm getting worried."
Olive couldn't react in time to deflect Emily's reaction.
"That son-of-a-bitch better watch his step. Listen," Emily insisted, "I want you to call me the next time he walks through that door. I want to know what's going on."
"I will not," Olive said, defiantly. "He'll be back any minute now and we're going to have our dinner together as a family, and I don't need to prove to anyone it's happening."
"I just can't understand you, Mother," Emily said with a cracking voice. "Good night, then. Have a good night and tell the kids I love them."
"And give Adam my best, if you see him," she added, sarcastically.
"When!" Olive shouted into the phone as Emily hung up.
* * *
Emily went out to the garage and found Adam inside, smoking a joint.
"Do you have to do that here?" she asked.
"Would you rather I did it in the house?"
"It's so good for kids," she said sarcastically, "to look out the window and see Pop getting led away in cuffs to a police car."
"Nobody gets arrested for pot around here, Emily," he said.
"Are you going to go to work stoned tonight?" she asked, continuing without waiting for answer. "Oh, let me guess, you're not working tonight, are you? Wouldn't want to exhaust yourself."
"Did you want something, Emily, or did you just come out here in the freezing cold to bitch at me?" he asked.
"I would love to stand here and bitch at you for hours," she said, "but I have a job to go to."
"I hope you're in a better mood when you get back."
"I hope you're dead when I get back," she replied.
That night was the first that Adam did not come home. At first, Emily cared. She was just nineteen and she had the stamina to make a big deal out of it. In fact, she was just seven years younger than Adam, and she knew she could play games right along with him. She could smoke up, she could drink plenty, she could stay up late, and, more importantly, she could out-will him. She ran into Adam in a seedy bar room on the south side of downtown. When she noticed he was alone, she approached him.
"Listen to me," she hissed, taking him by the collar and pulling in close to his face. "I hate you completely, but I can't get my fool of a mother to see it. So you need to get back to that house, to her, and your son. You remember, you have a son?"
"Get away from me," Adam said, pulling away and leaning against the wall, resentful and deflated.
"She's already practically forced me out of his life," he said.
"Don't you dare pretend you're a victim," Emily said, more intent than before. "You are a shiftless, awful piece of garbage that my mother can't let go of."
Awash in an adrenaline driven heat, Emily let herself go.
"I wish!" she continued, feeling a blur of anger and alcohol come over her, "I wish I could cut off her arm so she would let go of you and we could be rid of you... forever."
"You're the only one who hates me, here," Adam replied, recoiling from from Emily's sudden strength and anger. "You're the one breaking my family apart, Emily."
She looked at him for a moment with squinted double-vision. Her distrusting eyes brightened with a realization. He prepared to speak, but she interrupted him.
"Don't bother, you lying bastard," she said, waving her hand in front of his face. "You can try to blame this on me, or my mother, or anyone else in the world, but the fact is you are... worthless, pointless."
A wave of relief and release came over her.
"We won't miss you," she said.
"What do you mean, we?" he shouted after her as she walked away. She decided not to hear him.
The next day Emily convinced Olive to leave Adam and return with the family to Springfield.
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