by Anita Shreve
“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 Enlightenment, I fear, has been replaced by successive layers of contempt and neglect.”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.
AFTER 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.
“She looks fine to me,” says Philbrick, who, having already had his sitting and having examined every aspect of the camera, is now impatient to reach the beach during the family bathing hours of noon to one and, perhaps more important, to eat the picnic that will be brought there.
“Lovely pose,” says Catherine, who is knitting.
“I think she should sit up straighter,” her mother says. “Olympia often slouches.”
“Relax your arm,” Haskell says, “and tilt your head like this.”
He demonstrates.
Slightly annoyed at all the instruction, Olympia lifts her arms and removes the pin that secures her hat to her hair. She pulls the hat off quickly and tosses it to the steps. She folds her hands in her lap. She thinks her mother, sitting near the railing, actually says, “Oh no,” for no female has been photographed this morning without a hat, not even the girls.
Haskell stands unmoving for a moment. And then he steps forward. She thinks he might speak to her. Instead, he lifts her chin with his fingertips. He raises her chin high and then higher, so that she is forced to look into his eyes. He holds this pose at its apex, studying her face, and then he allows his hand, which she is quite certain is hidden from the others’ view, to trail under her chin, to her throat. The touch is so brief and soft, it might be a hair floating across the skin.
This fleeting brush of his fingers, the first intimate touch she has ever had from a man, triggers a sudden image from the previous night’s dreams. Her gaze loosens and swims, and color comes into her face. There must be on her cheeks the hectic flush of confusion, she thinks. And she is afraid that she will, in the several seconds she is required to remain still, betray the content of the scenes and pictures that float before her eyes.
She waits for some confirmation that the others have observed Haskell’s touch. But she realizes, from the impatient and bored tones of the onlookers, that no one has noticed the moment at all. And she wonders then: Did it really happen, or did she imagine it?
Later, when she sees the photographs for the first time, she will be surprised at how calm her face looks — how steady her gaze, how erect her posture. In the picture, her eyes will be slightly closed, and there will be a shadow on her neck. The shawl will be draped around her shoulders, and her hands will rest in her lap. In this deceptive photograph, she will look a young woman who is not at all disturbed or embarrassed, but instead appears to be rather serious. And she will wonder if, in its ability to deceive, photography is not unlike the sea, which may offer a benign surface to the observer even as it conceals depths and currents below.
“Very good,” says Philbrick, standing. “I, at least, am off to the beach.”
• • •
As promised, they make their expedition at noon, all of them, that is, except for her mother, and then Catherine, who remains behind to keep her mother company. Josiah has packed an elaborate picnic in a wicker basket, so large it requires two boys to haul it. The day continues to be bright and breezy, and although the surf is decidedly energetic, everyone except Olympia and Haskell ventures into the water. Olympia has deliberately chosen not to wear a bathing costume, being uncomfortable in that company to be in such a state of undress. Haskell has not had time to change, since he has been working with the camera until the last minute. Indeed, he still has it w
ith him in its mahogany box.
The day and the hour seem to have brought out nearly all of the population of Fortune’s Rocks. Olympia observes many children under the watchful eye of governesses. One woman, taking care of eight babies, has placed her charges in laundry baskets. From where Haskell and Olympia sit, they can see only tiny heads and faces bobbing and peering out over the baskets’ rims, altogether a most comical sight. In other groupings, there are women overdressed in black taffeta dresses with elaborate hats and gloves and boots and ruffled parasols, as though desperate not to let a single grain of sand or ray of sunshine touch their bodies. Olympia wonders how it is they do not melt from being swathed as they are in so many garments. In other gatherings, men stand in bathing costumes that quite cost them their dignity: The apparel has the impoverished look of union suits, and the cloth sags in an unfortunate manner when wet. But at the beach, she thinks, is there not a certain license in dress, a latitude in custom?
After they have set up their picnic on the rug, Philbrick and Cote and (reluctantly) her father accompany Martha and the other children, in sailors’ costumes and dark stockings, to the water’s edge, some fifty feet away. Haskell and Olympia are left behind. This is not contrivance on their part, Olympia knows, although she is certain they are both aware of the somewhat awkward circumstances as the others leave them. Haskell sheds his jacket and his shoes, removes his tie and his socks, and rolls the white flannel of his trousers to just below the knees. He leans back on the rug, propped up on one elbow, and watches the bathing party proceed to the ocean.
To busy herself, Olympia prepares a plate of boiled eggs and rolled tongue and bread and butter, and hands it to Haskell, who takes it from her. She makes a plate of food for herself. They eat side by side, Olympia on a small stool that has been brought for the occasion. They do not speak for some time. Occasionally, a gust of wind makes one or the other of them reach forward to anchor a corner of the rug or to lay a hand on a hat that threatens to stray. She pours lemonade into glasses and gives him one.