by Anita Shreve
With a sudden and impatient gesture, Olympia puts down the book she has been pretending to read, a dull treatise on Italian landscape painting. All her thoughts circle in upon themselves, and no progress is ever made. It is this wretched idleness, this hideous state of suspension to which she has sentenced herself. Seven, eight, sometimes ten times a day, she walks to the back door with its letter chute and stares at the barren floor, willing an envelope to the painted surface. Although the post is often irregular, she has come to know well the postman’s habits, and she frequently finds herself at the place where the back walkway meets the street, engaging the slightly bewildered man in conversation, ever hopeful of an envelope with her name on it.
She stands up and begins to pace along the length of the porch. Why is it taking Rufus Philbrick so long to reply? Is it possible he has simply decided not to pursue the inquiry after all? But would he not then write to her of this decision? He has seemed always to be a man of his word, and if he said he would try to help her, then surely he must be doing so.
Patience, she counsels herself. But she is tired of being patient, weary of remaining passive.
She picks up her book and then immediately puts it down. Surely there must be something more lively to read than the nearly impenetrable prose of an uninspired Italian art critic. She makes her way through the house and into her father’s study, where some few volumes remain, damp and swollen and sadly misshapen though they are. She has scarcely ventured into this room since her return to Fortune’s Rocks, the presence of her father having permeated the very walls and flooring of this small chamber, so that it seems that he is always here, sitting in the captain’s chair, eyeing her judgmentally.
So with a sidelong movement (and avoiding for the moment the sight of the captain’s chair), she enters the study and searches the nearly barren shelves for a book that can at least physically be read and that might hold the promise of engagement. As she scans the titles, however, Clapp’s Marine Biology, A Short History of the Zulu Nation, and Nepos De Vita Excellentium Imperatorum, hope of success begins to dwindle. Disappointed, she turns to leave the study, meaning to go back to the porch, but her eye then lights upon a dark volume with gilt lettering, a book held together with string and lying facedown on the floor beside her father’s chair, almost as though he had dropped it. And when Olympia realizes its title, she marvels that the book has survived at all, that it was not flung across a room or burned in the grate, for it is the very same volume that once introduced her to the breadth and scope of John Haskell’s mind.
She picks up the book and sits in the only chair in the room, forgetting for the moment its spectral occupant. She unknots the string that binds the book, and immediately a number of letters slip from the pages onto her lap. She knows well the pen, that masculine hand, not her father’s, and the sight of Haskell’s writing makes her sit back in the chair. It is some time before she can open the letters themselves. Of course, she thinks, when she unfolds the first one; of course, Haskell would have corresponded with her father that summer.
10 June 1899
My dear Biddeford,
Thank you for your most welcome invitation to join you and your family at Fortune’s Rocks the weekend of June 21st. You are quite right in discerning that Catherine and the children will not much care for hotel life on their weekend visits, but neither do we wish to . . .
26 June 1899
Dear Biddeford,
How can I possibly describe to you how very delightful our visit with your family was during this past weekend? Such an excellent stay it was, apart from the tragedy of the shipwreck, and what a considerable wrench it was for us to have to leave you all! Catherine is in high spirits, feeling as she does that she has found a true companion and future confidante in Rosamund. I, of course, enjoyed my discussions with you and Philbrick immensely as always. And the children are in thrall to your astonishing daughter, Olympia. . . .
2 July 1899
My estimable Biddeford,
No, I confess I do not see the point of your argument regarding the merits of Zachariah Cote as a poet and should be indifferent to the publication of his shorter works in your much-admired Quarterly. I find he lacks the muscle to temper his verse, which is shot through with baroque description and feminine whimpers. But of course, this is why you are the editor of this excellent journal and I am only a man of science. . . .
11 July 1899
Dear Biddeford,
Thank you for your kind invitation to join you for dinner at the Rye Club on the 14th, but I am expecting that day a visit from the eminent physician Dwight Williston of Baltimore, and thus will be engaged. . . .
18 July 1899
Dearest Rosamund and Phillip,
John and I accept with pleasure your kind invitation to a Gala evening on the Tenth of August, 1899, in honor of the Sixteenth birthday of your daughter, Olympia.
With Anticipation and Fond Regards,
Catherine Haskell
Olympia crumples the letters in her fists, and then, regretting this impulse, lays them flat against her lap. How extraordinary that all that summer there was this other bond between her father and John Haskell, a man her father much admired, an admiration that was much reciprocated. And how twice (no, thrice) betrayed her father must have felt — by his daughter, by his friend, and by this fraudulent correspondence with its attendant ironies. Had her father reread these letters in light of the discoveries the night of the gala? No, she thinks, he could not have, for certainly he would have destroyed them in a fury.
The book falls open at its flyleaf, and she reads the inscription there. For Phillip Biddeford and his engaging intellect, this humble offering. Yours sincerely, John Haskell.
She tucks the letters back into the book and closes its covers. Is Haskell once again working in a mill town? she wonders. Or can he have forfeited his training as a physician? Has he abandoned the writing as well? Or might she one day wander into a library and open a literary or political journal there and come across his name as the author of an essay published therein? She looks through the open door that gives onto the dining room, that elegant room with its double mirrors and buffets, its graceful proportions and its view leading down to the sea. She glances up at the chandelier, a crystal confection that resembles nothing so much as a necklace strung upon a woman’s throat. She fingers, at her own neck, the locket Haskell once gave her, a locket she has never been without, not during her time at the seminary, not during her exile in Boston, and not even during the difficult moments of her son’s (their son’s) birth.
She closes her eyes and lets the memories wash over her, as they are wont to do, an incoming tide she has learned to let overtake her and then ebb away. And when it is over, she sets the book down upon the marble table beside her father’s chair, and stands. She will go mad if she stays in this house a moment longer.
• • •
The sand has a crust upon it that crumbles as she walks. Men and women, in heavy cotton bathing dresses, stand at the water’s edge, looking forlornly out to sea. Almost every summer Olympia can remember, there is a week in August when the water seems stagnant with dark clots of seaweed, slimy with jellyfish on its surface. No one bathes in the sea during this week for fear of the stings from these gelatinous creatures. Most know well the story of the hapless Tommy Yeaton, once the lone constable of Fortune’s Rocks, who went bathing for pleasure on a Saturday afternoon in August and had the misfortune to be assaulted by a school of jellyfish. The man perished on the following morning as a result of fever caused by the stings, and Olympia remembers her father telling her this story from time to time as they walked along the beach, doubtless wishing to deliver a cautionary tale.
But soon, she knows, the beach will be deserted. There is only a week remaining until the end of the season, when most of the summerfolk will leave Fortune’s Rocks. She finds that she is looking forward intensely to the fall, when the beach will be silent but for the gulls and the sea, and the cottages wil
l be boarded up. The days will grow colder, and inland the leaves on the trees will change their color. She will get in a good supply of tinned fruit and vegetables and dried cod, and coal as well for the stoves. It might be necessary to move downstairs for the winter, she thinks; indeed, she almost certainly will have to do that. She imagines herself alone in the front room, looking through the long floor-to-ceiling windows on a cold November day, gazing down the expanse of beach, thinking of each of the other cottages shuttered and waiting for its owner once again to return to bring it back to life; and that image causes such a sudden and unexpected pang of something like grief that she stops in her progress. It is, surprisingly, she recognizes at once, grief for her father; for she sees, more clearly than she ever has (and perhaps she has not, until now, been able to allow herself to see this before), how crushed her father must have been to have his daughter, his only child, fall so far from grace, to have all his hopes dashed beyond reclamation. Was Olympia not his experiment, his pride? She remembers the night of the dinner party with Haskell and Philbrick in attendance, and the manner in which her father spoke of his daughter’s superior learning. And it was true then, she thinks; she did have a singular education. But for what purpose?
Olympia crouches on the sand and wraps her arms around her legs, resting her forehead on her knees. Her hat slips backward off her head. She thinks of all the hours her father spent instructing her, all the days of lessons and debate. What will he be doing with those hours now?
“You all right, miss?” she hears a voice beside her ask.
She looks up quickly into the face of a boy. He is frowning and seems slightly puzzled by her odd posture. She sits back on the sand and props herself up with her hands.
“Yes,” she says, reassuring him. “I am fine now.”
He stands politely, in his dry navy bathing costume, his hands folded neatly behind his back, a position that incongruously suggests the military. The boy has yellow curls and a splash of freckles below his eyes, which are a blue so pale as to resemble water in a glass.
“You are sad,” he says.
“A bit.”
“Because of the jellyfish?”
She smiles. “No, not exactly.”
“What is your name?”
“Olympia.”
“Oh.”
“What is yours?”
“Edward. I am nine.”
She offers her hand, which he takes, as a boy trying to be a man will do.
“Are you on holiday?” the boy asks.
“No, I live here.”
“Oh, you are lucky.”
Olympia sits up and wraps her arms around her knees. “But I have not lived through a winter yet. They say the winters are difficult.”
“I live in Boston,” the boy volunteers, sitting down beside her. “May I?”
“Yes, of course,” she says, smiling at his attention to manners. “You are here with your brothers and sisters?”
“One sister, but she is only a baby,” he says, implying that a baby is of not much use.
Olympia glances around her and sees no concerned adult. “Will your mother and father not worry where you are?”
“I shouldn’t think so, miss. They are in France now. I am here with my governess.”
“And will she not worry about where you have got to?”
“When I left her, she was sleeping on the porch.” He gestures toward a large, weathered-shingled cottage with white trim beyond the seawall.
Olympia nods. “But you do know all about how you should not go into the water without an adult with you?”
“Oh, yes. But I should not go in today anyway.”
“No.”
She watches the boy stretch out his legs, which are long and spindly and dry. He digs his heels into the sand.
“Are they terrible?” the boy asks suddenly. “The stings?”
“I have never been stung myself. But I have heard that they are.”
“And you die?”
“You can die from them. But not always. Sometimes you just have the fever. There once was a policeman who got stung. His name was Tommy Yeaton. He swam into a school of jellyfish and got stung dozens of times. He died the next day.”
The boy seems to consider this new fact.
“Would you like to have a footrace?” he asks her suddenly.
“A footrace?” she asks, laughing.
“Yes,” he says. “We could start here and . . .” He scans the length of the beach. “Do you see there? That striped umbrella in the distance?”
“Yes.”
“Shall we say the first one to the umbrella wins?”
“Well . . . ,” she says, hesitating. She cannot remember the last time she participated in a footrace. Surely not since she was a child herself. But the boy’s request is so earnest, she finds it hard to resist.
“Why not?” she says, beginning to unlace her boots.
The boy jumps up. He draws a long line in the sand. “This will be our start,” he announces excitedly.
“All right,” she says. She discreetly pulls off her stockings and stuffs them into her boots.
The boy steps up to the start, leans forward, and puts a foot behind him in the traditional racing stance. Olympia leaves her boots and stockings with her hat, stands on the line beside the boy, and lifts the skirts of her yellow gingham just enough so that she will not trip.
“Are you ready, miss?”
“Yes, I think I am.”
“When I count three then?”
The boy races flat out, his chin up, his hair flying behind him, as if he had been taught to run this way at school. Olympia, feeling slightly awkward at first, bends into the run and tries to keep pace with him. Almost immediately her hair comes loose from its pins and flaps heavily against her neck. The boy, both wiry and strong, looks over his shoulder, and, seeing her so close to him, picks up his pace. The balls of Olympia’s feet dig into the sand. Her muscles feel pleasantly strong after so many weeks of domestic work. She lifts her skirts higher so that she can stretch her legs. She feels at first mildly embarrassed to be cavorting so, but then this embarrassment turns to a distinct sense of exuberance until she is nearly giddy with the event. She raises her face to the sun. My goodness, she thinks, it has been so long since I have felt like this.
As they draw closer to the striped umbrella, Olympia glances over at the boy and can see that she might inadvertently win the race. The boy runs with grace and determination, but his young legs are tiring. Olympia pretends then to be winded and slows her pace slightly. With the prize in sight, the boy, finding new energy, sprints forward to the umbrella, startling its owners, who are sitting on canvas chairs beneath it, and gathering so much momentum that he pitches into the sand. When Olympia reaches him, he is sprawled with his legs splayed open, trying to get his breath. She bends, taking in air. The boy has sand on his forehead and on his upper lip.
“You won!” she says breathlessly with her hands on her knees.
He is so winded that he cannot even smile. In a moment, however, a look of concern crosses his face. “You did not let me win, did you?” he asks.
She rights herself. “Of course not,” she says. “I would never do that.”
He brushes the sand from his face and limbs.
“I would race you again tomorrow if you like,” he offers.
“That would be fine,” she says.
“And perhaps tomorrow you will win,” he adds shyly.
She tries not to smile. “Then I shall look for you,” she says, “and tomorrow I will win.”
“Well,” the boy says. He stands up, but he seems reluctant to leave. “Do you have a boy?” he asks suddenly.
“Yes,” she says simply.
“What is his name?”
“Peter.”
“Would he like to race with us, do you think?”
“I think that perhaps he would, but actually I think we would beat him rather badly. He is only three years old.”
“Oh,�
� says the boy with evident disappointment.
“But I know he would like to meet you one day,” Olympia adds quickly. “He is very fond of nine-year-old boys just like yourself.”
“Is he?”
“Oh, yes.”
The statement produces an unexpected smile. He glances in the direction of the shingled cottage.
“You had better go back now,” Olympia says. “I shall look for you tomorrow,” she says.
He nods. He begins to walk slowly away, then turns and waves once quickly. She waves back to him. He breaks into a run then, and Olympia watches him sprint to the place where they met on the beach, as if he were already practicing for tomorrow’s event.
She watches him until he is only a speck.
Yes, she thinks. I have a boy who is three.
She glances at her feet, encrusted with sand. She touches her hair, which lies tangled in knots along her back. Inside her dress, she is perspiring from her exertion. She makes a feeble attempt to tie up her hair without pins, but its weight almost immediately pulls it loose.
She does not want to go back to the cottage just yet, for to return to the house is to wait for a letter, and she does not want to reenter that numbing state of suspension. She sets off once again toward the far end of the beach. She will collect her shoes and socks and hat later.
She walks briskly, still buoyant with her earlier exercise, and it is only when she sees the Highland Hotel in the distance that she slows her steps. She has not ventured this far along the beach since she returned to Fortune’s Rocks. She takes in the porch, the guests sitting in the rockers, the windows in the upper stories, a certain window through which a gaily colored cloth snaps repeatedly, as if a woman inside were shaking out a bedspread. The hotel looks remarkably unchanged, although it seems there are more people about than she remembers from before. She recalls a sea of white linen, an opened ledger with slanted cursive. She can see muslin curtains at the windows, the way a shirt was flung upon an ochre floorcloth. She can hear a voice: If only you knew . . . She can almost feel the silky cotton of the overwashed sheets, can nearly make out the sage tin ceiling with its raised pattern. She can hear the echo of her own footsteps in the stairwell.
