Fortune's Rocks (36 page)
Olympia hears the note of near hysteria in her voice and tries to compose herself. “Mr. Philbrick, I cannot argue my case, for it is an argument written in the blood of my body. It is a debate more heartfelt than reasoned.”
Philbrick stands up then and walks to a window.
“Am I to be eternally punished by not even being allowed to know the whereabouts of my own child?” Olympia asks. “Shall you not at the very least tell me whether he is well cared for and what his situation is? Am I to be denied that simple knowledge for the rest of my life?”
Philbrick turns. “Let me think about these matters, Olympia. They are difficult.”
“I know.”
“I believe I can answer at least one question for you,” Philbrick says. “I cannot say for sure what name the child has now, but I do know he once had the name of Haskell.”
“My father gave the name Haskell to the boy?” Olympia asks.
“It was John who brought the child,” he says quietly.
Olympia turns her head away and stares through the screen at an old lilac bush, now divested of its blooms. Philbrick leans toward her, but she waves him off.
“No, I did not know,” she says. “I thought only that my father, having heard about the orphanage and reasoning that it was far from Boston, had made arrangements.”
“And doubtless he did,” Philbrick says. “But he made them with Haskell.”
She shakes her head. It is inconceivable to her that her father communicated with John Haskell during that terrible time before the birth. Inconceivable that Haskell would have given over his own child. But then, as she removes a handkerchief from her purse beside her, she remembers an argument she and Haskell once had in a carriage on the way back from the Rivard birth, and how he advocated life in an orphanage for a child over life with an unwed mother who was ill prepared for her lot.
“You never heard from John himself then?” Philbrick asks, again quietly.
“No.”
Philbrick clears his throat. “I daresay the child is thriving,” he says. “Although it has been some time since I inquired. Actually, I am ashamed to say that it has been years. This is news to me that the child was placed out.”
“How dare my father and Haskell conspire to take the child from me!” Olympia blurts out suddenly. In an instant, anger has replaced shock.
“Oh, my dear,” Philbrick says. “Of course, you know they did it for you. I am certain they thought it best for you.”
“They could not possibly know what was best for me,” Olympia says heatedly. She stands. “I must leave you now,” she says, only then remembering her manners and the lovely lunch. “Mr. Philbrick, thank you for a truly wonderful luncheon. And I do mean that sincerely. I envy you your house.”
“Do you indeed?”
She studies him for some sign of how he lives in this modest cottage, some clue to his secret life; but he remains, in his blue linen, only a kindly, if blunt, man of finance. “You will not write my father?” she asks.
“No,” he says, walking her to the door. “I can promise you that. This matter is between you and me.”
They move out onto the front lawn. In the lane, Ezra is waiting.
“I will try to discover the whereabouts of the child,” Philbrick says, “and then determine for myself if he is being well cared for before we will discuss this again. I do not like to be the arbiter of your future, but you have placed me in this position.”
“I can think of nothing else to do.”
“I shall write to you,” he says. And with that he bends and kisses Olympia at the side of her mouth, which is nearly as astonishing to her as the news she has so recently had to digest.
A
S SHE HAS
been doing each of the eleven afternoons since she visited Rufus Philbrick’s cottage, Olympia sits looking out to sea, an occupation that consumes nearly all of her time. Sometimes she brings a book with her onto the porch, even occasionally her mending, but these, she has come to understand, are mere accessories to the true task at hand, which is no task at all, but rather the necessity merely to be patient, to sit and look out over the water and to wait for a letter.
S SHE HAS
been doing each of the eleven afternoons since she visited Rufus Philbrick’s cottage, Olympia sits looking out to sea, an occupation that consumes nearly all of her time. Sometimes she brings a book with her onto the porch, even occasionally her mending, but these, she has come to understand, are mere accessories to the true task at hand, which is no task at all, but rather the necessity merely to be patient, to sit and look out over the water and to wait for a letter.
She watches a fisherman working from his boat not fifty feet off the rocks at the end of the lawn. A not unfamiliar sight, the boat bobs in the slight chop while the man hauls in wooden pots from the bottom of the ocean. The craft is a sloop, no, perhaps a schooner, laden with barrels of bait and catch — a charming sight, but testament only to a life more harsh than any Olympia has ever had to endure, even during those wretched weeks at the Hardy farm. Prior to meeting Ezra, Olympia had hardly ever given any thought to such men or to their families. She has passed by the rude fish shanties from which the lobstermen work dozens of times, seeing the shacks and the boats themselves and even the men aboard them as mere backdrop to the true theater of Fortune’s Rocks, the life of the privileged summer colony at its leisure; when of course it was much the other way around, these farmers of the sea being the time-honored inheritors of the native beach and its environs. And it strikes her again, as it has so often lately, how easy it is not to see what is actually there.
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.
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. . . .
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
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.
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.
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