Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [102]
Sometimes Mr. Hardy will come back into the house before the afternoon and evening meals and will speak some pleasantry to her; but the true purpose of these visits, Olympia soon discovers, is to go into the parlor, and when he is certain she is not looking, to unlock a cabinet there and partake of spirits in a glass. She does not know when he washes this glass, for she never sees it in the kitchen. But she does, over time, come to understand that Mr. Hardy’s high color is not entirely due to weathering.
One day, after Olympia has been at the farm for three weeks and has mastered the routines of housekeeping as well as the rudiments of teaching, Mr. Hardy lingers at the table after the noon meal. This distresses Olympia mildly, since she is hungry and normally doesn’t sit down to her own meal until after he has left the kitchen. Generally, when she has put the noon meal on the table, she retreats to the second story of the house, where she does some mending in a chair in Mr. Hardy’s room, the room he once shared with his wife and which still holds her sewing table and case. It is a pleasant room in which to linger, quite the most pleasant room in the house, Olympia thinks, and in fact the only room with any light to speak of. Mrs. Hardy was clearly skilled in the domestic arts and decorated her bedroom with much of her handiwork. Olympia is impressed by the multihued and complex-patterned hooked rugs, of which there are many, as well as the hand-pieced and intricately sewn quilts that are folded upon a chest, waiting for the winter months.
When Olympia hears footsteps on the stairs, she is startled and lays down her work. It occurs to her that Mr. Hardy might be ill and that he is returning to his room to lie down on the bed. She gets up from her chair, holding the cloth and needle at her waist.
He comes to the doorway and stands in its span. She sees that his eyes glisten or are watery, and she has a new thought: He is grieving for his lost wife. It is hot in the bedroom, with a rectangle of sun on the varnished floorboards.
“You are a good girl,” Mr. Hardy says from the doorway. She thinks he may be trying to smile at her, although she is not sure of this, since he has never smiled before, and his mouth takes on a curiously crooked aspect, due to his wooden teeth, which are not pleasant to look at. It seems to her as well that Mr. Hardy is, in his demeanor, more nervous than she has seen previously.
Olympia is embarrassed to be standing there and have him speaking to her in this way when she has no hope of forming a suitable reply, and moreover not a clear understanding of why he has come up to his room. She steps toward him, thinking he will move out of the way and allow her to pass. But he takes her movement toward him as something else. There is a confused moment when she does not know where to place her foot.
Mr. Hardy, who is doubtless under the spell of too large an amount of spirits, put his arms clumsily around her and pulls her to him so that she is squashed up against his chest. She tries to resist, but cannot, and she is not certain he understands that she is resisting. Mr. Hardy, who is a foot taller, bends his head and finds her face and kisses her. It is a wet, unpleasant kiss. She feels the blunt edges of his wooden teeth. His beard is abrasive and prickly on her face and throat. She smells his bad breath, which is, she knows better than anyone else, a mixture of drink and sausage and aged cheese. Then, before she has any chance to recover, he places a large palm at the bodice of her apron and pushes against her as if he means to flatten her bosom. In this moment, she struggles and manages to turn away.
“No!” she cries.
He releases her, and she stumbles backward.
“Did you not like that?” Mr. Hardy asks in a hoarse voice. And Olympia is astonished to see that he is genuinely dismayed and possibly even surprised by her reaction.
But Olympia