by Anita Shreve
“What did he look like?” asks Catherine.
“He had pale blond eyebrows and thick blond eyelashes,” Olympia’s mother says.
“What was his name?” asks Cote.
“Gerald,” her mother says. “He used to say that he was Welsh, but my father insisted that he was Irish. I liked him very much. We talked for quite a while that day. So that by the time Papa returned, Gerald and I had somehow already arranged a meeting at a tennis club the following morning.” She pauses. “Over the next several weeks, he and I contrived to meet often. I would leave the house and walk a ways, and we would meet at an arranged place. I do not know why, but on the last morning we were to be together, I had decided that I was going to tell him that I liked him, for I sensed that he liked me greatly in return.”
She is thoughtful for a moment, as though if she waits long enough, she might be given a reprieve and be allowed another ending to her story. “We had planned that day to drive to the beach in Hampton for a picnic. And as we were walking onto the sand, he leaned over toward me and said something to me that in all these years I have tried to reconstruct, to hear. But before he could repeat the phrase to me, a man my father had paid to follow us came up behind him and took him away.”
“Rosamund, no,” Catherine says.
“I spent the rest of the summer more or less locked in my room.”
“How dreadful,” Cote says.
“I never heard from Gerald again,” Olympia’s mother says. “You see, I had no way to reach him, nor any access to anyone who would have known him. I did not even have an address to write to. But later that summer, I was allowed out of the house to attend a tennis match in Exeter. Since I was going with my father and mother, I suppose they thought little harm could come to me.
“During the interval, however, when I went in search of a glass of water, I came across a trophy case in the lobby. Inside it were medals and plaques and photographs of winning teams. Gerald’s picture was in one of those photographs. I slid the glass open and reached in and removed the photograph. I hid it in my dress. When I got home, I took a pair of scissors from my sewing box and cut out his picture. I have it still.”
“You must show us this photograph,” says Cote.
“Perhaps I will,” she says, bringing her glass to her lips. And as she does so, she suddenly looks different to Olympia, physically different, as though a portrait had been altered. And Olympia thinks that possibly such adjustments might have to be made for everyone she knows. Upon meeting a person, a sketch is formed, and for the life of the relationship, however intimate or not, a portrait is painted, with oils or with pastels or with black ink or with watercolor, and only at the person’s death can the portrait be considered finished. Perhaps not even at the person’s death.
“It is a lovely story,” says Catherine, though Olympia is hard-pressed to see the value of having one’s destiny arbitrarily denied.
“I never knew what he said,” Olympia’s mother adds. “How often I have wished that I could just go back and hear him.”
Catherine reaches over and briefly holds Olympia’s mother’s hand.
“Doubtless you have been missing that handsome husband of yours,” says Cote to Catherine, changing the subject rather too soon, Olympia thinks.
“I do miss him terribly,” Catherine says. “Yes, of course I do. I cannot wait for the cottage to be finished. I am just on my way there now.”
Olympia can feel the perspiration trickling down her spine.
“And where is the good doctor this afternoon?” Cote asks.
“I believe he is working at the clinic,” Catherine answers. “In fact, he does not even know I am here. I mean to surprise him.”
“And he will, I am sure, be very much surprised,” Cote says. He turns to look over the porch railing. “My God, what a beautiful view. And, if I am not mistaken, I actually feel a breeze. What a relief to be on this lovely porch and not in Ely Falls.”
“You were in Ely Falls just now?” Olympia’s mother asks.
“I had need of a tailor. Some last-minute alterations. For the gala.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I must say, I cannot abide these Francos,” Cote says.
“Really?” asks Olympia’s mother, glancing quickly at Olympia.
“My tailor, such an impertinent little man with his oiled mustaches, pretending to be grander than he is. As do all the Francos, I might add.”
“Olympia, dear, do you know the time?” Olympia’s mother asks.
“It is common knowledge that they are all libertines and profoundly corrupt. Not to mention drunkards and dullards both.”
“Zachariah,” Olympia’s mother says finally in mild reproof, reminding him of Olympia’s presence.
“Forgive me, Rosamund. One does get carried away. But I will say they are a blight upon our Yankee cities. I fear their encroachment upon Ely and Fortune’s Rocks. Indeed, some days the beach is positively teeming with them.”
An odd comment, Olympia thinks, from someone who himself is not even a summer resident of Fortune’s Rocks. And then, as she studies his face — its handsome planes, the aquiline nose, the lavender eyes (possibly too close together?) — she has a sudden image of a sign she once passed on the way to Ely Falls: Coté and Reny. And then she has a thought that leads wickedly to another thought and a temptation she cannot resist.
“I am surprised at your distaste for the Franco-Americans, Mr. Cote,” Olympia says. “Indeed, I was just wondering: Is not Coté French?” she asks, giving the name its foreign pronunciation.
Her astute, though inexcusably rude, guess causes him to look rebuffed and to hold himself upright. He compresses his lips into a thin smile. “No, actually, it is an old English name,” he says, and Olympia is suddenly certain that he is lying.
There is an awkward silence, during which Olympia can feel her mother’s cold stare.
“Pity John is not here, Catherine,” says Cote, “for I know he bears Olympia, and of course Rosamund as well, a special affection, does he not?”
The comment sends a small jolt of alarm through Olympia.
Catherine seems not to notice the reference to her husband and Olympia in the same sentence, even though the suggestive way in which Cote has put Olympia’s name before her mother’s is unsettling, not to say rude.
“He . . . well, of course . . . I think he regards Rosamund . . . and Olympia . . . Yes, surely,” Catherine finishes, uncharacteristically flustered.
“Has Hale arrived yet?” Cote asks Olympia’s mother, giving away, Olympia thinks, the reason for his visit.
“No. Phillip says he will not arrive until Saturday.”
A quick flash of disappointment crosses the poet’s face. “He will come up from Exeter or Boston?” he asks.
“Boston. Do you know the family?”
“Well, yes, I do rather,” Cote says. “The New York branch. Hale’s cousin married a Plaisted, did he not?”
“Lavinia. Yes.”
“She is a second cousin to my aunt,” Cote says, perhaps wishing to emphasize his Yankee connections. “Of course, my cousins regard Hale as something of a black sheep. Not done to have a writer in the family, is it?” he asks in what is meant to be self-deprecating wit but which somehow fails to elicit the proper response in his audience. He takes a long sip of lemonade and turns toward Olympia. “We were sorry to miss you on the Fourth. I rather think the Farraguts were expecting you at their party.”
The mention of Haskell and the holiday within seconds of each other cannot be unintentional on Cote’s part, Olympia thinks. She breathes shallowly so as not to betray her concern. For Cote, she realizes, is cannily feral in his instincts and will smell out any note of fear.
“I was engaged elsewhere,” Olympia says.
“I daresay you were,” says Cote. “But I have had the great joy of running into Olympia this summer in all manner of places,” he adds to the two older women.
“Oh?” asks Olympia’s mother, loo
king at her daughter. “And where might that have been? I should most sincerely like to know. Olympia has been rather a puzzle to me for weeks.”
“Has she indeed?” he says. He gestures toward the sandwiches. “May I?”
“Of course,” her mother says. “Olympia, a sandwich?”
“I am not hungry,” she says quickly. “And, actually, I must go. I told Julia I would ride with her.”
“In this heat?” Cote asks. “Surely not. It would be a crime upon the horses.”
Olympia thinks, The gall of the man.
“Of course, we now have the pleasurable anticipation of the gala in Olympia’s honor,” Cote says, ignoring Olympia’s discomfort and fastidiously wiping a dab of mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth. “You will be how old?”
“Sixteen,” she says.
“Such a lovely age, do you not think, Catherine?”
“Indeed,” says Catherine. “A lovely age. I was just saying so to Rosamund before you arrived.”
Cote gazes at Olympia with open impertinence. “Why so glum, child?” he asks, taking another bite of sandwich. “Smile. Life cannot possibly be all that bad.”
And Olympia, never having liked being told to smile by anyone, much less Zachariah Cote, and suddenly weary of innuendo, sycophantic banter, and a nearly intolerable moral unease, stands up from her chair and excuses herself. She walks through the house, out the back door, and down to the seawall, where she takes off her boots and her stockings, abandons them where they lie, and runs as fast as ever she has along the hard-packed surface of the beach.
ON THE MORNING of the tenth, Olympia sits in her room, gazing out the window, unable to move or speak or read or think, enclosed within a catatonic state, as if deaf and dumb. Try as she might to banish such thoughts, she can think of nothing other than the fact that Catherine and the children are moving into the new cottage right at this very hour; and she cannot help but be pierced with the irony of Mrs. Haskell’s gliding about the house, unaware of its previous tenants, thinking it is her own, all her own, which of course it now is. Olympia tries to imagine, her imagination sharpened by intimate knowledge of both Haskell and the cottage, how he will manage in such an awkward and painful situation. Surely he will not be able to share in his wife’s joy. But can he feign interest? Or is he, like her, enveloped in a similar catatonic state? And if so, does Catherine notice and then comment?
Haskell and Olympia parted only yesterday, by tacit agreement not speaking of their plight, for to give it more words was to give it more life. And to give it life was to find no words, no satisfactory answers. She could not release him from his marriage, nor could she properly bid him farewell, and so they stood, mute, at the entrance to his rooms, looking at each other and then apart, Olympia having the greater burden, for it was her lot to have to walk away.
Her footsteps echoed in the stairwell. She was surprised that her legs worked at all. At the bottom of the stairs, she had to lean against the newel post before walking through the etched glass doors. It was, for her, a tearing away, not only from Haskell himself, the person of Haskell, but also from the idyll that had been the summer. For she knew that even if Haskell and she were to devise a way to be together, it would not ever be the same.
Occasionally, over the past few weeks, in the privacy of her own thoughts, she has envisioned for Haskell and herself a life together, the two of them living in rooms in Ely Falls or in Cambridge. Perhaps Olympia would help him with the clinic, or she could become a teacher. They would have children together and would make a home. But after a few moments, she cannot much enjoy these thoughts, for simultaneous with these fantasies is the realization that such a life can be had only with the unhappiness of a spurned wife and of real children; and Olympia knows that no man could sustain any happiness of his own at such an exorbitant cost. Even assuming Haskell could bear Catherine’s pain, he would not be able to forfeit Martha and Clementine and Randall and May without irreparable damage. Worse than all the other horrors is the image of her and Haskell one day sitting across a table, unable to look each other in the eye. Surely it is better to long for each other than to despise each other, she thinks.
Below her on the ground floor, she can hear much activity, as deliverymen and servants call to one another across the rooms, or furniture is moved, or flowers are brought into the house. Her father has sent to Boston for the family’s best china and silver and crystal, and as a result, wooden packing crates and straw litter the porch. Her parents expect a hundred and forty guests for dinner and dancing, and have set up a long white tent upon the lawn. There the visitors will dine at midnight on lobster and champagne and oysters and blueberries. Masses of lavender-blue hydrangea blossoms crowd the railing of the porch. The lawn has been groomed so fine that it resembles a putting green. Normally, Olympia would have enjoyed the preparations, and would particularly have welcomed that hour before the guests arrived, when all the house was entirely dressed, but still and silent, and she could wander through the rooms and out onto the lawn, admiring a brief moment of perfection.
She gets up from the bed and walks to the shallow closet, on the door of which hangs her dress for the evening. It is white, as indeed all of the dresses this night will be. She fingers the satin underdress with its rows of seed pearls at the bodice, and then the overgown of white chiffon that seems more like a cloud than a garment, so light and ephemeral is the material. It is an exquisite dress, a confection her mother has sent to Paris for, a dress one might wear to a summer cotillion or even to one’s own engagement dinner. Since her mother has suggested pearls, Olympia is engaged in searching through her jewelry case for suitable earrings when she hears a knock at her door.
When she opens it, she sees that it is Josiah with a tray. Although Olympia is not hungry, she is immediately moved by his kindness.
They have encountered each other throughout the house many times since the day she found him with Lisette in the kitchen. Though Olympia had not known that Josiah and Lisette cared for each other before that day, she has since seen many small gestures and looks passing between the couple that, had she been more observant, might have helped her to guess earlier. At first, Josiah appeared to be alarmed each time he saw Olympia after the kitchen incident, but then, when it was evident that she would not reveal what she had seen, he seemed grateful for her silence. She wanted to tell him that it was all right and even that she was, in a way she could not explain very well, glad for him; but of course it would have embarrassed them both greatly to speak of this. Olympia has not been able to help, however, regarding Josiah somewhat differently than she always has, and she senses that he must be at least partially aware of that difference. Sometimes she wants to tell him that she, too, has a love of her own. That she, too, understands what it is to have to steal moments to be together.
But, of course, that is unthinkable.
“Thank you, Josiah,” she says, taking the tray from him.
He hesitates and does not leave the doorway. She puts the tray on the dresser. She has the window raised as far as it will go. With the door open, a gust of wind blows all the papers off her desk and causes the curtains to fly up toward the ceiling.
“There is quite a stir in the household,” she says, hastily bending with Josiah to retrieve the papers from the floor. “You must be insanely busy,” she adds.
“We have been up since four, miss. And doubtless, we shall be up at least until four tomorrow morning. But it is a grand occasion, and your father is quite cheerful with all the preparations.”
Wordlessly, she looks at Josiah, and she thinks it is the first time — the first time ever? — their eyes have truly met.
“You are not well,” he says.
“No,” she answers honestly.
“I am sorry to hear that.”
He hands her the papers he has collected and stands with his hands clasped behind his back, his feet apart, anchored.
“Thank you,” she says.
His waistcoat is stained with d
ark smudges, possibly tarnish from the silver. “Lisette and I . . . ,” he says. “We are to be married. We plan to discuss the matter with your father tomorrow when the event is over.”
“And he will be glad,” she says quickly.
“I did not want you to think . . .”
“I did not think,” she says.
“Shall I call your mother? Or Lisette?”
“No,” Olympia says. “No, I am fine. And I shall be fine this evening. It is only the grippe.”
It is an obvious untruth, but she senses he does not know what to ask or to say further.
“Just leave the tray outside the door, miss, if you do not want to be disturbed.”
“I will do that. Thank you.”
“And I hope you will have some enjoyment in the evening.”
“I will try, Josiah.”
Her limbs are heavy with a lethargy that makes it difficult to raise them to her head to fix her hair. She wonders how she will survive the evening if her energy does not return to her. Lisette has offered to come and make a chignon after she has finished with her mother, but Olympia does not think she can bear to engage in polite chitchat about the night to come with a young woman who has every expectation of imminent happiness whilst she does not.
With some effort, Olympia finishes dressing herself. She stands before the mirror to assess the outcome. She sees a young woman who looks considerably older than she did in June, who is somewhat fuller in her face and limbs, whose bosom is more prominent than it was two months earlier. Her hair has taken on some golden highlights from her reckless exposure to the sun, and there is a spray of freckles on her chest that she has not entirely been able to hide with powder. She has done her hair in a double bun and has secured it with pearl combs. The silk of the dress clings to her figure and is more revealing than anything she has ever worn before.
Altogether, Olympia thinks the sight of herself in the mirror satisfactory, but not beautiful: A smile is missing, a certain light about the eyes. For how very different a woman will look when she has happiness, Olympia knows, when her beauty emanates from a sense of well-being or from knowing herself to be greatly loved. Even a plain woman will attract the eye if she is happy, while the most elaborately coiffed and bejeweled woman in a room, if she cannot summon contentment, will seem to be merely decorative.