by Anita Shreve
She sits on the bed, fighting tears and losing. If only she could speak with Haskell, she thinks. If only she could lean upon him just a moment, she would be all right. He would know what to say to her. He would take care of her. But then, in the next moment, Olympia knows this is not true. He cannot take care of her. He is obliged to take care of someone else. She wrenches the combs from her hair and lets it fall in a tangle, undoing with one stroke the patient fashioning of just an hour before. She does not care. She will not go down to the gala. She will remain in her room, and no one will be able to make her leave it. She has at least that much control over her own life, does she not? No one can force her to the party, no one can compel her to have to enter into polite conversation with John Haskell and his wife.
But then, as she sits there, the disarray of her hair all about her shoulders, her sobbing begins to subside and she lifts her head. She will have to go down to the gala, she tells herself. Of course she will. For if she were to remain in her room, the hurt to her father would be irreparable. And how selfish of her even to contemplate such a thing. Is she so weak, so hopelessly childish, that she cannot be at the same gathering as John Haskell and his wife? She thinks of the suffering that others endure on a daily basis — the Rivard woman and her children, for example — and feels shame for her overimagined torment. So little is asked of her. Can she not at least give that? Haskell has said there might be many such gatherings. Will she absent herself from those as well?
Repairing the damage she has done to her appearance takes so long that by the time she is finished, the guests have already begun arriving. As soon as she opens the door to her room, she can hear those first ripples of greetings of an early evening that presage a sea of voices, the surf rising continuously as the night progresses. When she stands at the top of the stairs, looking down, she can see that there are perhaps twenty or thirty persons, to whom navy-bordered vellum invitations have gone out, already gathered in the hallway, the women in swaths of white silk and challis and chiffon and crinoline and moiré and satin and voile, the men all in the elegant uniform of white tie. At the bottom of the stairs, in a reception line of two, stand her parents, who make a handsome pair. Her mother, whose hair has been fashioned into an intricate series of loose knots caught with fine ropes of pearls, stands with brilliant posture and bestows a smile only Olympia and her father know as foreign, a smile that suggests complete well-being and welcome. It is a marvelous performance, nevertheless, and Olympia is, for a moment, unable to leave her perch on the upper landing for watching them.
It is said of her mother that she will be able to remember each guest’s name and make a personal greeting. That she will know the names of her visitors’ children and closest friends as well. And how she is able to do this when she is so seldom in society, Olympia does not know. She sometimes imagines her mother in her rooms, studying long lists of names like a schoolgirl prepping for exams. Her father, who also has singular posture, has achieved that rare but necessary combination in a host: poise and affability. Unlike her mother, her father does actually know all of the guests, since he has drawn up the lists himself. And unlike her mother, her father is genuinely fond of most of the people whom he has invited. He has spent considerable time thinking about the introductions he will make and how best to place a particular guest at a table or with a group of people so as to enhance the liveliness of the evening. Many of the visitors this night will be from the worlds her father inhabits: literature, journalism, art, music, and architecture. But he will include as well a fair mixture of men of business, such as Rufus Philbrick, to ensure that his gatherings are never dull. For a time, Olympia observes her parents, noting with interest that her mother has contrived to wear the faintest shades of aqua in certain panels of her dress and that her pendant earrings are opals with a blue fire; and in this way her mother remains loyal to her nearly obsessive habits. Despite whatever longings or disappointments may trouble them, her parents radiate an air of ease and wealth and considerable respect, which in turn lends the guests a sense of security and comfort. And all of this contributes to form the desirable and necessary notion (if a party is to succeed) that this particular house on this particular evening is the only place in the world to be.
Olympia takes a breath and slowly releases it. She makes her way down the stairs. Her father looks up, and then her mother, and after that, one by one, the other guests in the immediate hallway as well, so that she descends with an audience she might have done without. But she cannot entirely mind, since it is her father’s gala, and he is proud of her; and she knows enough to have the generosity to allow him this paternal pride. She can see the face of Philbrick, who smiles so broadly, one might think Olympia was his daughter, and the faces of several young men she has not met before, young men from Newburyport and Exeter and Boston who have been coming north to Fortune’s Rocks with their families for years, if not for generations. Men who might, in a year or two, be considered appropriate suitors for Olympia. And she is assaulted then, as she approaches the bottom landing, with a sudden ache that nearly stops her: How will I be able to do that?
She has a detailed image of a succession of young men coming to call and pursuing her and perhaps asking for her hand, and her all the while having to ward them off for the secret that is in her. And it is then that she understands that she will not ever marry and will not ever have children, that she has forfeited her future. She puts her hand out to steady herself. She can see that her father is momentarily disconcerted. And then she thinks, in the next instant: I must not think of such things now. I cannot. I cannot. She regains her composure and continues her progress.
When she reaches the bottom of the stairs, her father comes forward and takes her hand. Both of her parents greet her with kisses on her cheek. Her father says so that many can hear, “Olympia, you are a vision.” And her mother, who is less effusive but seemingly no less pleased by the effect of Olympia’s gown and coiffure, smiles at her and smooths a strand of hair behind her ear.
“You make me proud tonight, Olympia dear,” her father says more privately to her. And Olympia can see what might be the imminent swell of tears in her father’s eyes. But in an instant, he draws himself up once again to say hello to Zachariah Cote.
Cote greets her father and then hastily — too hastily, even rudely, Olympia thinks — turns in her direction.
“Miss Biddeford,” the poet says, taking her gloved hand and bowing. Though he lifts his head up, he holds her fingers tightly. She feels herself to be caught in a trap meant for a small animal. She fancies that she can actually smell the oil of Cote’s hair — a cloying, sickening smell that makes her want to gag.
“You look ravishing,” he says, once again forming a smile that does not include his eyes. “Like a young woman on the night of her engagement party, I should think. Or even on her wedding day.”
Appalled that the man’s impertinent thoughts should so closely echo her own of just an hour ago, she snaps her hand away from his fingers, like a fisherman roughly shaking off a slimy creature he has brought up with his catch.
“Oh, surely not,” her mother says beside her, taking up Cote’s hand. “Whatever made you say such a thing, Zachariah? I think the evening’s gaiety has gone to your head. Olympia is only sixteen, as you well know. There can be no thought of her marrying yet.”
Her mother says this with a lighthearted tone appropriate to the evening, but before he leaves Olympia, Cote casts a look in her direction, and there is no mistaking the coldness, the knowingness of his gaze. As if saying to her: “If you persist in this charade . . .”
Though Olympia is shaken by the encounter, it is understood that she will remain with her parents and greet the other guests, who begin arriving then in great numbers. She does this until she can bear it no longer. She excuses herself to walk out onto the porch.
A diffuse sunlit mist has rolled in with the sea and has filtered the light so that all objects are lent a salmon tinge, particularly the white dre
sses of the women and the long scallops of the tent. With a trick of light she does not quite comprehend, the pinkened mist has also produced an aquamarine sea with much white froth at the shoreline. It is a sight to fill the soul with the nearly unbearable sweetness of the best that Nature has to offer, an awareness that is made all the more keen and poignant with the realization that such beauty is transient, that it will soon be gone and might not, because of the unique physics of light, which she does not understand well at all, ever come again. She thinks her father must be chuffed to have Nature as well dressed on this most important evening as his family and his guests.
The beauty of the night begins to erase the memory of the unpleasant episode with Cote. Olympia makes her way down to the tent and strolls through it, looking at the tables with their elaborate settings of Limoges and heavy sterling, which bear her mother’s initials in gold on the stems. Opaline flutes are ready for the champagne, and white candles flicker on every table. Already there are some guests moving along the edges, peering in. Waiters stand ready to serve them oysters and spirits.
“Olympia,” a voice calls to her.
She turns just as Victoria Farragut reaches out one white-gloved hand and seizes Olympia’s arm. “This is all so grand,” she says. “You look ever so nice. I could not get my hair to lie smooth no matter what I did. It is this wretched humidity.”
Olympia looks at Victoria’s hair, which has frizzed all about her face in a way she thinks is rather becoming, and she tells her so.
“Oh, no,” Victoria exclaims. “I am a fright. But you look lovely. I know that dress is from Paris because my mother told me.”
Both Victoria and Olympia, somewhat to Olympia’s surprise, are offered champagne. Olympia has tasted swallows of champagne at other formal parties, but until she met Haskell, she had not ever drunk an entire glass. Now, however, the dry bubbles seem achingly familiar, and for a moment she is seized with the kind of physical memories that are triggered not by thoughts but by sensations.
“This is tickling my throat,” Victoria says, coughing slightly. “I do not know half of the people here. Are they all from Fortune’s Rocks? No, surely, they cannot be.”
“There are some guests up from Boston and Newburyport. But I hardly know most of them myself.”
“My mother fussed so with her dress,” Victoria confesses. “She means to find a husband. No, I should not tell you that.”
Olympia smiles. “I hope she finds one,” she says. “There seem to be enough eligible men here,” she adds, scanning the crowd, in which men of all ages appear to outnumber the women.
“But no one wants a woman with nearly grown children,” Victoria says with a small sigh. “Particularly not a woman who has little money of her own.”
“I do not think a man chooses a woman solely on the basis of her fortune or lack of it,” Olympia says. “Or will refuse to be interested in the woman because of a grown daughter. Is there not the matter of love?”
“Oh, I doubt very much my mother has much hope of love,” Victoria says. “It is a husband she wants. With an income. Will you dance if someone asks you?”
“I suppose I shall have to,” Olympia says.
“Olympia, you sound like an old woman who is tired of life already.”
“I am sorry,” she says. “Perhaps I am simply tired.” She takes another sip of champagne and watches as Rufus Philbrick, in white beard and white tie, his studs near to bursting from his shirt, approaches them.
“Here comes someone now to ask you,” Victoria says conspiratorially.
“For heaven’s sake, Victoria, the man is older than my father,” Olympia says, thinking immediately of, and then dismissing, the irony inherent in the statement.
Rufus Philbrick takes Olympia’s hand. She introduces him to Victoria. Philbrick bows slightly in her direction. “I knew your father,” Philbrick says. “We did some business together. I liked him very much. I hope you and your mother are enjoying your summer?”
“Oh, we are,” Victoria says. “Thank you. And I am reminded that I should go to her. If you will excuse me . . .”
Together, Philbrick and Olympia watch Victoria thread her way through the guests who have come out onto the lawn.
“Have you made any other friends this summer?” Philbrick asks her, and Olympia has a sudden image of the night Philbrick and Haskell sat at the dinner table together.
“Actually, I have been much occupied with other matters,” she says.
“I hope nothing serious?” he asks.
“No,” she says. “Nothing too serious.”
Olympia has an unbidden and powerful urge to tell the gruff and well-intentioned man the story of her and Haskell. To tell someone, however inappropriate. To say the words aloud, to give them life. It is a reckless urge, not unlike that of standing at the edge of a precipice and having an overwhelming desire to jump.
“To your very good health, my dear,” Philbrick says, summoning a waiter to refill his champagne glass. “I think the chap who will one day snatch you away will be very lucky indeed.”
Olympia looks up at the man who owns hotels and thinks how different in tone his words are from those of Cote, for Philbrick’s contain nothing of the suggestiveness of the poet’s.
“Oh, I hope I shall not be snatched too far away from my father and mother,” she says lightly to forestall the rest of the sentence.
“You seem adventurous to me, Olympia Biddeford.” He thinks for a moment. “Yes, I can see it. You will meet a cattle rancher and will go west and will own hotels and will have eight children.”
She laughs. “I hope you are not as good at prophecy as you are at business.”
He smiles and regards her over the lip of his glass. Around them, there seems to be a change in the pitch of the general conversation, a ratcheting up of the volume, which causes them both to turn in the direction of the porch, nearly filled now with guests.
“I had a look through your telescope,” Philbrick says. “I am told it is your father’s present to you on your birthday.”
She nods.
“Marvelous instrument. Quite keen. I could see all the way out to Appledore with it earlier this week.”
“One could not tonight,” she says.
“No, but the mist is always intriguing, do you not think?”
Olympia wonders suddenly why she never sees Philbrick with a wife or children. Does he live alone? In one of his hotels? She studies the porch, where the guests seem to be converging in a cluster. She reflects once again, there in the presence of Philbrick, that each of the glittering and perfectly groomed persons at the party has come into the world in the manner of the Rivard child; and further, that most on the porch have at one time or another, if not actually often, opened their mouths and their legs and been naked in the presence of a lover and have strained for pleasure and have cried out, and perhaps have even made indecent or terrible sounds; and further, that there are couples at her house who have known each other in these intimate ways this very day. And all of this causes her to wonder at the disparity between the silk dresses and the natural postures of the body, and to think: How far, how far, we are willing to go to pretend we are not of the body at all.
“Ah,” says Philbrick. “Hale has arrived. Our guest of honor.”
“No more honored than you,” Olympia replies.
He looks at her and smiles broadly. “I knew you for a democrat,” he says.
They watch together as the personage makes his way out onto the porch, a woman on his arm. Olympia has a glimpse of a pale face, thinning hair. Because the man is surrounded by guests who either want to make his acquaintance or want to watch those who do, it is hard to keep sight of him; but Olympia knows that she will be introduced to Hale soon enough. It is an event she is not much looking forward to, since she has not read the man’s sermons as she was instructed to do by her father. She doubts very much that Hale himself will care, but she knows that her father will mind. She hopes her father will be so distr
acted by the evening, however, that he will not think to question her on the matter in front of Hale himself.
But as it happens, she never does meet Hale, either that night or later.
“There is John Haskell and his wife,” Rufus Philbrick says beside her.
Her heart stammers a beat inside her chest. She scans the crowd quickly and sees the couple emerging from the front door onto the porch. She notices immediately that something is amiss. It is in the solicitous way Catherine hovers near to her husband, or perhaps it is in the strain on Haskell’s face. They move not toward Hale, but away, as if by tacit agreement they had decided to drift to the fringe of the gathering. Slowly, they make progress toward the railing nearest to where Philbrick and Olympia are standing.
Philbrick walks forward a few steps to greet them, but Olympia cannot move.
Haskell’s hair is slightly disheveled, as if he had combed it and then, unthinkingly, run his fingers through it. His tie is poorly knotted. Catherine, in long white silk gloves, touches her husband’s arm briefly. He seems not to see Olympia, who stands in his direct line of sight, but rather he appears to be gazing into that middle distance that reflects only the viewer’s own thoughts. Philbrick walks up onto the porch and greets Catherine, kissing her hand. Haskell turns briefly in Philbrick’s direction but seems not to be able to say much beyond the absolutely necessary.
He is not himself, Olympia thinks. He is ill.
She does not know whether to leave the area altogether or to go to them on the porch. Philbrick, doubtless made uncomfortable by Haskell’s silence, begins to involve himself in a conversation with a man from Rye whom Olympia vaguely recognizes. Haskell puts his hands onto the railing and leans forward and looks down at his feet in the posture of a man who might need to be sick. From time to time, Catherine makes half turns of her head, trying to monitor her husband’s behavior. She seems more puzzled than anything else — concerned certainly, but also disconcerted by Haskell’s uncharacteristic rudeness.