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By Root 634 0

or careens off in a direction unthought of, a direction that has seemed to be too fantastical or too harrowing to have been previously contemplated. These moments may come unbidden, when one least expects them, and often under awkward or disastrously wrong or even banal circumstances; and they may alight so softly or so fleetingly that they seem only like small birds swooping down upon the outermost branch of a tree. Except that these particular birds do not then fly away. Such a moment may be had within an evasive glance on a lover’s face, or the first unwary sighting of a single word in a telegram (and there, one can almost see it, the life begins to veer away from its initial advance). And, most extraordinary of all, in the finite continuum of time along which each person travels, the terrible moment is fixed, immovable, incapable of being blotted out, however fervently or passionately one may later wish for this erasure.

The moment she met Haskell on the porch was one such moment, Olympia knows; and surely another was the precise instant in time when Catherine bent to the telescope, a moment Olympia shudders even to bring to consciousness (and if only one could erase such a moment as that, she thinks now). But was there not as well, she asks herself, a point in time when a life was made? And when was that moment exactly? That first afternoon in Haskell’s room? When they lay together in the half-built cottage? In the sand, in the dark of night, when she had slipped out of the house unseen? Haskell once explained to her the manner in which he tried to prevent conception, and she sometimes saw and felt the small, wet balloons; but he also told her that such a method might not always be effective. And thus, lying on the floor of the unfinished cottage, he asked her about her monthlies, and it moves her now to think that they once had such a conversation, that she once spoke to a man of such intimate considerations; and yet how easy that was to do then. A new sadness takes hold of her, a sadness she has to shake roughly from her body as she stands up and abandons the porch for the beach.

• • •

For ten days, Olympia lives at the boardinghouse of Alice Stebbins, sister to Ezra, the fisherman who has befriended her. Olympia has a small room at the top of the house, and three meals are provided for her daily. Since the boardinghouse is in Ely, she cannot easily visit her father’s cottage during this time, but she arranges nevertheless to hire a new caretaker. Water is drawn from the well and is seen to flow freely through the pumps. The electrical wires leading into the house are discovered to be in poor condition and in need of extensive repairs, a fact that does not deter Olympia from deciding to take up residence at Fortune’s Rocks, as there are many kerosene lamps in the cottage. When she finally moves in, Olympia has cause to be grateful for her years at Hastings, since they have taught her enough of the rudiments of housekeeping and cooking to allow her to make the house habitable, a source of great satisfaction to her. She sweeps floors and shakes out rugs. With the water from the hand pump in the kitchen, she launders linens and bedclothes and washes windows. She rids cupboards of generations of moths; she captures cobwebs, prunes bushes, dusts furniture, and irons blouses. She airs clothing that has been abandoned, and where there are holes, she mends. She puts paper liners in all of the drawers and drags the mattresses out into the sun and beats them with a stick. She scours pots, mops floors, polishes woodwork, and takes the tarnish off the brass andirons. Gradually, the cottage begins to emerge from its neglect and even to gleam in the sunlight. The bedclothes smell of sun and sea air, and it is a joy to slip, exhausted, between the sweet, clean sheets at night.

With the small amount of money she has left from the travel expenses her father gave her before the summer began, she is able to buy food and some supplies in the village. It is a considerable walk to the store, but she goes early in the mornings, when