When this story begins, Olive is off to New York, full of hope. Christopher is there, now remarried to a woman named Ann who has two small children and is now pregnant with his baby. The relationship between Olive and her son has still been strained -- Chris didn't tell her about his marriage until after the fact -- but now things are looking up. He's asked Olive to come visit, even suggested that she stay for a few weeks. He tells her his wife isn't feeling well from the pregnancy, and Olive thinks he wants, needs, her help.

And when Olive first arrives, things seem to be going well. She thinks her son's new wife is kind of dumb, and much about the city annoys her or leaves her flummoxed. But she is trying -- you can tell. She's trying to fit in and be agreeable. When Ann lights up a cigarette and drinks a beer, Olive screams inside about her unborn grandchild's respiratory system, but she bites her tongue and keeps her feelings in. It's a new way to see Olive.

Along the way, we learn that Christopher has a tenant upstairs, a man named Sean O'Casey, and Olive realizes that this might be the son of Jim O'Casey, who used to drive her and Christopher to school before being killed in a crash. We learned about Jim Casey in passing in "Pharmacy", the first chapter, when Henry wonders if something had existed between Jim and Olive. Now, we learn that much did: Olive had told Jim that she would run away with him if he had asked (unlike Henry, who pondered leaving Olive for Denise Thibodeau and concluded that it would be akin to cutting his leg off, utterly unthinkable.)

But things implode by the end of the story. Olive lashes out over a silly thing -- she sees butterscotch sauce on her blouse after an outing to the ice cream parlor and becomes enraged, thinking that Christopher and Ann saw the smear and deliberately didn't tell her about it. She feels like a pathetic old lady, and blames them for her embarrassment.

This time, though, Christopher fights back. We learn he's been in therapy and he calls Olive on all the things that have hurt him and angered him for years: the "extreme capriciousness" of her moods, how he was frightened of her as a child, how she was mean to Henry. It's not directly said, but implied that she hit him.

So the story ends with a confused, borderline distraught Olive at the airport, on her way home. She makes one last feeble stand: No, she tells the security officers, she will NOT take off her shoes. She doesn't tell them it's because her pantyhose are torn.

I loved this story and thought it was one of the best in the book. I'd been waiting through the whole book to find out what the story with Jim O'Casey had been. I loved how Strout drew the characters -- Ann really came alive for me. And in the climactic showdown between mother and son, my heart broke for Olive, but at the same time, I couldn't fault Christopher for how he felt -- or for drawing the line for his mother and finally expressing how he felt and putting his foot down for how he wanted to be treated by her.

What do you think? Will Olive and Christopher ever patch things up? Could he have handled their confrontation differently?

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