by Anita Shreve
“Even so, I have heard,” says Rufus Philbrick, “that the girls worked ten or twelve hours a day, six days a week, and to ruin one’s eyesight or to become diseased was not uncommon.”
“This is absolutely true, Philbrick. But my point is that when the Yankee girls began to go home and were replaced by the Irish and French Canadians, conditions deteriorated rapidly. These immigrants have come in families, large families that are forced to crowd into rooms previously meant only for two. The original housing cannot sustain such a large population, and the sanitary and health conditions have broken down. It is only in the past several years that progressive groups have begun to take on the cause of better housing and clinics and care for children.”
“I have heard something of these progressive groups,” Zachariah Cote says, looking around at the assembled group.
“Last April,” says Haskell, “I and several other physicians from Cambridge journeyed up to Ely Falls and conducted a survey of as many men, women, and children as we could cajole into participating. The inducement, seven dollars per family, was sufficiently appealing that we were able to examine five hundred and thirty-five persons. Of these, only sixty could be considered to be entirely healthy.”
“That is an astoundingly poor ratio,” Olympia’s mother says.
“Yes, it is. The boardinghouses, we discovered, were riddled with disease — tuberculosis, measles, white lung, cholera, consumption, scarlet fever, pleurisy — I could go on and on. I have already gone on and on.”
“One of the difficulties, John, as I understand it,” says Olympia’s father, “is that some of the immigrants do not have strong cultural opposition to child labor. The Francos, for example, see whole families as working families, and thus they try to evade the child-labor laws by having the children do piecework at home, sometimes, depending upon how desperate the family is, for fourteen hours a day in a room with little or no ventilation.”
“What sort of piecework?” Catherine Haskell asks.
“The children sew or baste or rip out stitches,” her husband explains. “Simple, repetitive tasks.” He shakes his head. “You would not believe these children if you saw them, Philbrick. Many are diseased. Some are stunted in their growth and have ruined their eyesight. And these children are not twelve years old.”
The conversation pauses for the contemplation of this startling fact that must be properly digested before the talk can continue. Olympia pokes at her rice croquettes. With the fleeting bravery that comes of being encouraged in conversation, she once again addresses John Haskell.
“And something else, Mr. Haskell,” she says. “There is a fondness in your portraits. I think you must bear these workers no small amount of affection.”
John Haskell responds with a small but distinct smile in her direction. “I had quite hoped that such affection would be apparent to the reader,” he says, “but it seems to have escaped the notice of my reviewers entirely.”
“I believe the critic Benjamin Harrow is better known for his gravity than for his good humor,” says her father, smiling.
“I wonder if these are not, strictly speaking, something other than essays, John,” says Zachariah Cote, still trying to find a way into the conversation, which has been moving along well enough without him.
“They are not essays in the strictest sense, to be sure,” says John Haskell. “They are profiles only. But I like to think the details of a life form a mosaic that in turn informs the reader about something larger than the life. I have drawings as well of these workers, which I commissioned and which I should have liked to have included in my book, but my publisher persuaded me that pictures would detract from the seriousness of my work, and so I did not — a decision I regret, by the way.”
“I regret it as well,” Olympia says. “I, for one, would very much like to see drawings of the people you have written of.”
“Then I shall oblige you, Miss Biddeford,” he says.
And Olympia can see, in the quick turn of her mother’s head, that she has perhaps been too bold with her request.
“But does that not destroy the very purpose of the written portrait?” Philbrick asks. “How can one’s words ever equal the accuracy of a picture?”
“Surely there remains a great deal that cannot be caught in a likeness,” John Haskell says. “Historical facts, for example, or the joy of a marriage. The anguish resulting from the death of a child. Or simply a broken spirit.”
“But I for one have always thought that a life can be read on a face,” says Philbrick. “It is how I do my business, by what I see in a face. Loyalty. Honesty. Cunning. Weakness.”
“Well, then, we are in luck,” says Catherine Haskell brightly. “For my husband has brought his camera with him. Perhaps we may persuade him to make photographs of each of us tomorrow. After which we can decide for ourselves whether character may be read in the face.”
“Oh, surely not!” exclaims Olympia’s mother, mistaking the gentle teasing of her guest for a summons. “I shall never have a photograph made of myself. Never!”
This note of alarm, as inappropriate to the evening as any note sounded, yet as significant to the summer as if a pianist had inadvertently fingered the wrong keys and had produced a measure of heartbreakingly beautiful music, vibrates through the room and then slowly dies away.
“My dear,” says her husband, reaching across to touch, and then to still, his wife’s trembling hand in a gesture Olympia will always think of as one of infinite grace, “I should never permit anyone to photograph your beauty, for I should be insanely jealous both of the photographer and of anyone who dared to look at the finished product.”
And whether it is the faint reminder of danger or the humbling recognition of the generosity of married love, each of the guests is rendered silent as Lisette brings to the table the Sunderland pudding, which she begins to spoon and serve.
• • •
The notes of Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu” float through the tiny squares of the wire screens and onto the porch, where the men sit with cigars and large delicate bubbles of brandy. Olympia’s mother has, as expected, excused herself, and her father has returned from seeing her to her bedroom. Catherine Haskell plays with an accomplished, even plaintive, touch that is, Olympia thinks, to be much admired. Moths flutter about the lanterns, and she sits away from their light as well as from the men. Since there are no women on the porch, she cannot join the men, but neither can she bear to be kept inside on such a fine evening.
The moon makes long cones upon the sea, which has settled with the darkness and resembles, as it approaches high tide, a magnificent lake. The continuous susurrus of the surf is soothing in and about the conversation and the piano’s notes. Olympia cannot hear what the men are saying, but the sound of their voices is instantly recognizable: the assured and gracious, if sometimes pedantic, pronouncements of her father; the short staccato bursts of enthusiasm and advice from Rufus Philbrick; the somewhat breathy and all too deferential note of Zachariah Cote; and, finally, the low, steady sentences of John Haskell, his voice seldom rising or falling. She strains to pick out words from the talk: merchandise . . . Manchester . . . carriage-maker . . . travesty . . . benefits . . . Masculine words drenched in smoke and slightly slurred on the tongue. From time to time, the men lower their voices conspiratorially, with heads bent toward one another, and then suddenly, with harsh bursts of laughter, they move apart. At these moments, Olympia thinks perhaps she should leave the porch. But so deep are her lassitude and physical contentment that she cannot rouse herself to action. It strikes her as possible that she might simply fall asleep in the chair and remain in it the entire night, this entire short night of the summer solstice. That she might watch the sun rise over the sea at dawn. And so it is that she does not notice that Catherine Haskell has stopped her playing until she hears the woman’s voice behind her.
“Did you know that nearly all civilizations have regarded the night of the summer solstice as possessing mystica
l powers?” she asks.
Olympia sits up straighter, but Catherine puts a restraining hand on her shoulder. She takes a seat near to Olympia and looks out over the railing.
“Your playing is very beautiful,” Olympia says.
Catherine Haskell smiles vaguely and waves her hand, as if to dismiss such an unearned compliment.
“Not as beautiful as your mother’s, or so I have heard,” she says. The heliotrope crepe de chine of her dress has the effect, in the darkness, of disappearing altogether, so that she seems, in the dim light of the lanterns, to be merely two slender arms, a throat, a face, and all that hair.
“And that the earliest setting of the blue stones at Stonehenge is aligned with the moment of sunrise on the summer solstice? On that day, sacrifices were made. Some think human sacrifices.”
“On this night I could believe anything possible,” Olympia says.
“Yes. Quite.”
Olympia can hear the creak of wicker as Mrs. Haskell leans back and begins to rock in the chair. Her white slippers glow faintly in the moonlight.
“Your mother is not unwell, I hope,” Catherine says.
“She tires easily,” Olympia explains.
“Yes, of course.”
Olympia hesitates. “She is delicate in her constitution,” she says.
“I see,” Catherine Haskell says quickly, as though this is something she has already divined. She turns her head toward Olympia, but Olympia can see only a quarter moon of face.
“I think you must be like your father,” Catherine says.
“How is that?” Olympia asks.
“Protective. Strong, I think.”
Beyond them there is another short burst of laughter, causing them both to glance in the direction of the men. The two women examine the tableau in the lantern light.
“Of course, you have your mother’s beauty,” Catherine adds. She smooths out an invisible skirt with her alabaster arms. “I have always thought there is a moment in the life of a girl,” she begins, and then pauses. They hear John Haskell’s voice rise briefly above the others with a fragment of a sentence: have deteriorated with the coming of the . . . “By ‘moment,’” Catherine continues, “I mean a period of time, a week, or months perhaps. But finite. A moment for which the bones have been forming themselves. . . .” She stops, as if searching for the appropriate words with which to continue. “And in that moment, a girl becomes a woman. The bud of a woman perhaps. And she is never so beautiful as in this period of time, however brief.”
Olympia is glad that it is dark and that her face cannot be seen, for she can feel it becoming suffused with color.
“What I mean to say, my dear,” Catherine adds, “is that I believe you are just on the cusp of your moment.”
Olympia looks down at her lap.
“Your beauty is in your mouth,” Catherine says further, and Olympia is jolted by this frank pronouncement.
“Of course, it is in your face,” the older woman adds hastily, “but primarily your mouth, in its unconventional shape, its fullness. Your mouth is worthy of its own portrait.”
Olympia hears the deliberate repetition of the word portrait. In the darkness, the kitchen’s screen door squeaks as it is opened and then slapped to. The cook must be on her way home. Olympia is too unsettled to form a reply that is not fatuous, and she is as well a bit alarmed by the intimacy in Catherine Haskell’s comment, for she hardly knows the woman at all. Although later, from the perspective of years, Olympia will think that Catherine’s pronouncement was delivered more to herself than to Olympia, as if by defining a thing, one could successfully defuse its power.
“Well, you are lovely altogether,” Catherine Haskell says, employing a different tone, the casual voice of a favorite aunt or a cousin, as if she has sensed Olympia’s misgivings. “And I have no doubt that this will be your summer.”
“You flatter me too much, Mrs. Haskell.”
“Catherine.”
“Catherine.”
“And I do not flatter you half enough. As you shall see. If I may ask a favor?”
Olympia nods.
“I wonder if you would take the older girls boating while we are here. I know that Martha would adore it.”
“I would be happy to,” Olympia says.
“Martha and Clementine only, I think. The others are too young.”
“We have the lifesaving dresses,” Olympia says.
“Even so, I would rather you take them, if you would. I do not trust Millicent’s judgment. You have met the children’s governess? On other matters, yes. But not boating. She has little experience with the water.”
A masculine voice, wheedling and insistent, rises a note above the others. Instinctively, Catherine Haskell and Olympia glance together toward the men by the porch door, at the flurry of moths over their heads.
“Cote seems such an ass,” Catherine whispers. And Olympia laughs, at least as much in relief as in recognition of her own thoughts.
But as she laughs, and perhaps this is only a trick in the moonlight, the white skin of Catherine Haskell’s face seems fleetingly to become thin and drawn.
“Do not be up late,” the older woman says, putting a hand on Olympia’s wrist for support as she stands, and Olympia is again reminded of her limp. Catherine’s fingers are shockingly cold.
“How warm you are,” she says, looking down.
Her face hovers only inches from Olympia’s, so close that she can smell Catherine’s breath, which is sweet with the mint from the lamb. For a moment, Olympia thinks that Catherine will kiss her.
• • •
Olympia knows other facts about the solstice. That it rests in Gemini, and that on this day at Aswan, which lies five hundred miles southeast of Alexandria, the sun’s rays fall precisely vertically at noon. That visionary cults paint their bodies in symbols on the solstice and salute the sun with lamentations until they either fall unconscious or have their expected visions. That the solstice produces the highest tides of the year, particularly so if it happens in concert with a full moon. The moon is not entirely full this night, but nearly so, and will be a source of worry, Olympia knows, for those few who inhabit houses too near to the beach at Fortune’s Rocks.
She slips off the porch and walks along the edge of the lawn in shadow, so as not to attract the attention of the men. She makes her way to the seawall and finds a dry rock on which to sit. She perches herself on a natural ledge over a glistening calligraphy of seaweed that is remoistened each time the waves enter the rock crevice nearest to her and send up a spray. The tide is indeed high and teases even the uppermost of the stones. As one draws closer to the water, the temperature drops accordingly, and she is somewhat chilled as she sits with her legs bent under her. The porch of the house, some hundred feet away, is bathed in pools of yellow light that flicker in the light breeze. Though she can see the cluster of men by the door, she cannot hear their voices for the surf.
She removes her slippers and stockings and sets them near to her. She presses the soles of her feet into the slippery sea moss of the rock below. The sensation is a queasy one, immediately giving rise to thoughts of the thousands of forms of sea life just beneath the deceptively calm surface of the water. The summer previous to this one, her father insisted that Olympia have bathing lessons, since he does not allow anyone who cannot swim to use the boat alone. They went to the bay for these lessons, and she was at first so frightened by the feel of the muck between her naked toes, and by possible contact with any number of slippery sea creatures, that she learned to swim in near record time. At least well enough to permit her to have some chance of saving herself should she fall overboard reasonably close to shore. And all this despite the extraordinary, if not altogether comical, appearance her father made in his bathing costume, and his extreme embarrassment to be so unarmored. (And it occurs to her now that the speed with which she learned to swim may, in addition to her fear of touching the slimy unknown, have been a result of his haste to change into m
ore suitable attire.)
She does not know how long she sits upon the rocks, watching the tide rise to its highest point. She is having thoughts of returning to the house when an errant wave washes up over the rock on which she is sitting and steals a slipper like a thief vanishing instantly into the night. She stands up at once, physically shocked by the icy water, which has soaked the back of her skirt. She bends to snatch the slipper, which she sees bobbing just out of reach, and in doing so receives another frigid soaking as a result of a wave that claims not only the other slipper but also her stockings. She scuttles backward and then stands up again. It is clear that she will never retrieve the slippers and stockings. She watches them make slow progress outward from the rocks, one of the shoes disappearing altogether. Shivering slightly, and wet all along the back of her petticoat, she turns to make her way to the house. She crosses the lawn, which is glistening with dew and blackened in the dark. She is fervently hoping that no one will hear the screen door open and close when she enters the house.
She is halfway across the lawn when she begins to discern, in the shadows of the porch, a lone figure. Her heart plummets to a cold place within her chest. Her father, vexed, has been waiting for her, and he will be furious to have been kept up for so long. But when she takes a few steps farther, she can tell, by the posture and size of the person, that it is not her father. Anxiety is replaced by relief, but that relief quickly gives way to apprehension.
She stops mid-stride and pauses for a moment. She has been seen and now cannot turn around without seeming either rude or frightened, neither of which she wishes to appear to be. With forced ease, she continues on her walk. John Haskell stands and walks over to the steps. He gives her his hand, which she briefly takes.
