Authors: Anita Shreve

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Boston (Mass.)

Fortune's Rocks (8 page)

BOOK: Fortune's Rocks

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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.

“You have forgotten your shoes,” he says.

“I have lost them to the sea,” she answers.

“And the sea will not give them back, I fear.”

She allows him to lead her onto the porch.

“I told your father I thought you had gone to bed,” he says, “but I can see that I was mistaken. It is very late. You should go up.”

“Yes,” she says.

“You look pale,” he says. “Let me fetch you some hot tea.”

“No,” she says, waving him off. “I will just sit a second and catch my breath.”

She feels a hand at her elbow, guiding her to a chair.

“You are soaked,” he says.

She knows he has seen the back of her skirt.

He hands her a cup. “This is mine,” he says. “Please, humor me and take a sip.”

She takes the cup in her palms and brings it to her lips. The hot tea burns its way through her body and causes a warming tingle to spread to her limbs. She takes another sip and gives the cup back to him.

Since dinner, Haskell has loosened his collar. His jacket lies over the back of the wicker rocker on which he is sitting. She is painfully aware of her bare ankles and feet, which she tries to hide by sitting up straighter and tucking the offending appendages out of sight.

Setting the cup aside, John Haskell leans back in his chair, which is so close to hers that if she extended her hand, she could touch his knee. The shivering begins in earnest in her upper arms.

“You lingered at the seawall too long a time,” he says.

“It is the night of the summer solstice,” she answers, as if that were explanation enough.

“So it is. You were too kind to me in your earlier comments on my book.”

And there it is, she thinks, the dismissal. But she is mistaken.

“You would seem to be my perfect reader,” he adds.

“Of course not,” she says quickly. “Your intent will be apparent to any reader.”

“If I can but reach them,” he says. “I fear I have erred in producing a book that will have only a handful of readers. I should have published a pamphlet, as my instincts originally urged me to. But pride, I fear, got the better of me.”

“You feel some urgency to reach a wide audience?” she asks.

“I must,” he says. “The conditions are appalling. Enlightenment, I fear, has been replaced by successive layers of contempt and neglect.”

“I see,” she says. She knows that she should go up and change into dry clothes, but she is unwilling to leave the porch just at that moment. “And you wish to regain some of that lost ground?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “Nothing so grand,” he says. “It is the health of the millworkers with which I must first concern myself. Their personal health, their sanitary conditions, their medical care, all of which are quite wretched, I can assure you.”

“And so you will work at the clinic.”

“Yes, I have already begun.”

A small silence fills the space between them.

“It is more than kind of you to ask to see the pictures,” he says.

“I
should
like to see them,” she repeats.

“Well, then I shall send for them.”

“I would not want you to go to any trouble,” she says.

“No, none at all.”

“I must go,” she says, standing abruptly. And in doing so, her hair, which has been jostled in her walk across the lawn (or perhaps in the startled movement of her head when the sea soaked her skirt), lists slightly to one side and releases a comb, which clatters to the porch floor. John Haskell, who has stood with her, bends to retrieve it.

“Thank you,” she says, holding the comb in her palm.

“How poised you are,” he says suddenly. He tilts his head, as if to examine her from another angle. “How self-possessed. Quite extraordinary in a young woman of your age. I think it must be a result of your singular education.”

She opens her mouth, but she cannot think how to reply.

“I was there yesterday,” he says. “On the beach. I saw you at the beach.”

She shakes her head wordlessly, then turns on her heel, belying in an instant the truth of Haskell’s compliment.

A
FTER HER ENCOUNTER
with John Haskell on the porch, Olympia climbs up to her bedroom in an agitated state. She opens the window, puts her hands on the sill, and bends her head. A fine dampness covers her face and hair and throat.

She dresses in a white linen nightdress, a garment she has not worn since the previous summer. The thinness of the fabric is a pleasure to her, although she notes that she has grown so much during the winter months that the sleeves are at least an inch too short. At the cuffs is a delicate tatting her mother has knotted, tatting being a skill that suits her invalid status and one she has tried to pass on to her daughter without success. Olympia sits on her bed and, as usual, plaits her hair, her feet bare against the slightly damp wooden floorboards. She has long grown accustomed to the ever present humidity; indeed, it is not uncommon to slip between slightly dampened sheets at night or to retrieve from the armoire dresses that have quite lost their stiffness in the sea air.

Sometime after she has finished tying up her hair, she crawls into her bed and falls into a troubled sleep. Her dreams are different from any she has ever had before, different in their texture and in their substance. They are somewhat shocking, but not terrifying, since they contain the most private and pleasurable of physical sensations she has ever experienced in her short life. She wakes in a state of much confusion, lying in a tangle of twisted linen, believing she has spoken to John Haskell just moments before, when, of course, she has not. And she wonders fleetingly if there might be something wrong with her, if she has been, in fact, hallucinating, if she is in danger of becoming her mother’s daughter after all. But then she dismisses this speculation, for the dreams that she has had, and the sensations that have been visited upon her, feel, in spite of their extraordinary novelty, welcoming, as is a warm bath. And if these sensations do not seem entirely
good,
they feel deep and authentic. And she is, in truth, loath to watch them thin and dissipate with the morning sun.

• • •

That morning, with Philbrick and Cote and, of course, the Haskells still in residence, they are all occupied with photography, an undertaking Olympia finds as intriguing to observe as to participate in. The sittings begin shortly after breakfast, Haskell wisely deciding to start with the children so that they might be released to other pursuits early in the day. The camera is an English one and quite a handsome instrument with its mahogany case and brass fittings. Inside the camera, Haskell explains, is a metal cone lined with black velvet into which one puts the film. Once exposed, it is withdrawn from the other side. The camera holds film for forty exposures, he adds, so there will be enough for several photographs of each of them. Olympia is relieved to see that the camera is one that can be held in the hands and that the enterprise will not be the agonizing one she has heard about — an enterprise in which the unfortunate subject is made to remain still on a chair while the camera, anchored upon a stand, records in a painstakingly long process the rigid expression of the participant, any smile or movement on the part of the subject ruinous to the result.

To capture the best light, which there is in abundance this day, Haskell uses the front steps for his venue. While one of them is being photographed, the others come and go upon the porch and busy themselves with reading or with conversation or simply with gazing out to sea, a seductive activity that can consume many hours in a day. Olympia takes a chair near to the proceedings and watches Haskell work. And as she watches, she discovers that a dream creates a nonexistent intimacy, that one feels, all the next day after the dream, as though certain words have been said or actions taken
which have not.
So that the object of the dream feels familiar, when, in fact, no familiarity exists at all.

Haskell, in a white linen suit and cravat, with a straw hat which he removes when he begins to work in earnest, suggests from time to time a tilt of the head, a placement of an arm. Occasionally he reaches across the photographic space and moves the shoulder just so. As might be expected, the children are impatient, and it is an effort for them just to sit still. Olympia is impressed, however, by Haskell’s lack of sentiment in posing his youngest children, Randall and May, waiting for a moment when both have spotted a fishing boat not far off shore and are gazing with rapt but keen attention, their eyes wide and their mouths slightly parted, at the novel sight. Later Olympia will see the photographs after they and the camera have been sent back to Haskell from Rochester, and she will be impressed with their clarity, a sharp precision of line and facial feature one tends not to observe in reality, since the face may be in shadow or the glance, of polite necessity, too short.

On the porch steps, Martha looks like a young girl aching to be taken seriously; Clementine, someone for whom it is an effort to lift her eyes to the camera. Both wear white dotted Swiss pinafores with pale blue underdresses, and each has a ribbon in her hair. Haskell poses his wife sitting sideways, the slightest suggestion of a pearl-buttoned opera boot peeking out below her skirts, her body and her face in profile. Catherine, Olympia notes, has a lovely profile, not flat or sharp-chinned, but rather one with high cheekbones and a long neck. Mrs. Haskell’s bearing, though seemingly relaxed, is flawless. She has on this day a straw hat with a wide ribbon and many flowers on its brim. It sits atop her head with her abundant hair caught in rolls beneath. Most striking, however, is her costume, a white suit of the finest linen, nipped tightly at the waist, the peplum of the jacket draping itself becomingly over her hips, a suit that suggests both casual elegance and a disdain for frills. As Haskell photographs his wife, he communicates with her in a language of easy gestures and single syllables, a code that signals comfort, if not actually a fair degree of intimacy.

Philbrick, who is much interested in the make and mechanics of the camera, which, Haskell tells him, is called a Luzo, has on his striped jacket of the night before. He refuses to sit still, continually getting up to peer into the viewfinder and to ask why the image is upside down and to marvel how it is that Haskell can accurately make out facial features. Cote has worn a navy frock coat that accentuates the planes of his face, and with it a silky white shirt. Her father, not surprisingly, has Haskell photograph him standing, complete with hat and waistcoat and pocket watch, since he is of the mind that one ought not to promote too much informality at the beach. Even Olympia’s mother, in the end, relents and allows herself to be photographed, albeit behind a veil with her eyes lowered, flinching each time she hears the shutter click, as though she might be shot.

Toward the end of these proceedings, Haskell glances over at Olympia.

“You have been so observant,” he says to her, “I think you could do this yourself.”

“It is fascinating, surely,” she answers, deciding not to add that she thinks one can learn at least as much from watching the subject pose himself as from the finished photograph.

“Well, then, let us see what we can do with you,” he says, and she notes that he, like his wife on the previous night, speaks with the fond tone of a relative. “Please. Sit here on the steps,” he says, gesturing with his hand.

She does as he has asked, smoothing her skirts under her and tilting her knees to the side when the folds of the material rise above her lap. She is determined not to be a difficult subject, but something about her pose feels ungainly. It must strike Haskell as awkward as well, for she is aware of the keenest interest on his part. For a few moments, she feels that every flaw of her face or of her figure must now be apparent to the man; and she thinks that in this it is perhaps not so unusual for Haskell to have been drawn to both photography and medicine. For do not both require severe attention to the body?

She has dressed this day in a white handkerchief linen chemise that billows out over a broad navy sash she has tightened to within an inch of her life. She has a navy shawl about her shoulders, and on her head a white broad-brimmed hat that she thinks would have benefited from a sprig of beach rose or even a single hydrangea blossom had she thought of it earlier. Somewhat restlessly, Haskell moves toward her and then away, to her left and to her right, occasionally looking up from the viewfinder and studying her face.

“Olympia, lift your shoulder . . . ,” he says. “There. Now turn your head toward me. Slowly. Yes. Now stop. Good. Hold that.”

She does as she is told.

He squeezes the shutter, simultaneously looking up and moving the film through the camera.

“No,” he says in a disappointed tone, as much to himself as to anyone else.

BOOK: Fortune's Rocks

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