Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [11]
“And I am John Haskell,” she hears a voice announce behind her.
Olympia makes a half turn. She sees walnut hair, hazel eyes. The man nods almost imperceptibly. His shirt is wilted in the humidity, and the hems of his trousers are frosted with a fine layer of wet sand. He stands with his hands in his pockets, his braces making indentations in his shoulders. The cuffs of his shirt are undone, though he has not gone so far as to roll them. She guesses, in the brief period of time it takes him to cross the porch and extend his hand, that he is about the age of her father, perhaps a year or two younger, which would put him at about forty. He is not stocky exactly, because he has height, but he is broad-shouldered. She has the sense that his clothes confine him.
As he takes her hand, he steps from the shade of the porch into a rectangle of sunlight. Perhaps there is the barest trembling of her fingers in his palm, for he quickly tilts his head so that the sun is not in his eyes. He glances down at their clasped hands and then again at her face. He does not speak for some seconds after that, nor does she. Not a word, not a greeting, not a pleasantry. And Olympia thinks that her mother, who is just coming out onto the porch at this time, must see this silence between them.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” Olympia says finally.
“And I yours,” he says, releasing her hand. “You have met Martha.”
Olympia nods.
“And this is Clementine,” he says, gesturing to the shy middle girl. He turns around to find the smaller children. “And those in motion are Randall and May.”
Olympia feels, through the body, a sensation that is a combination of both shame and confusion.
“Do you swim?” Martha asks beside her, her voice breaking through the warm bath of John Haskell’s greeting like a spill of ice water upon the skin.
“Yes, I do,” Olympia says.
“Are there shells upon the beach?”
“Many,” she answers.
Olympia wants suddenly to leave the porch and the watchfulness of her mother, who has not moved over the threshold of the doorway nor spoken a word.
“What kind?”
“What kind of what?” Olympia asks distractedly.
“Shells,” Martha says with some impatience.
“Well, there are oysters and mussels, of course. And clams.”
“Do you have a basket?”
“I think one can be found,” she says.
John Haskell walks away from them. He leans against the railing of the porch and studies the view.
“Where?” Martha asks.
“There are several in the kitchen,” she says.
“What are you working on?”
Olympia does not at first understand the question. Martha points to the sketchbook under her arm.
“A picture,” she says. “It is not very good.”
“Let me see it.”
Although she does not want to, Olympia can find no reason to refuse Martha this request.
“No, it is not,” Martha says in a disarmingly forthright manner when she has looked at the drawing.
“Martha,” John Haskell says in mild admonition. “We should not detain Miss Biddeford any longer. Walk with me, please.”
Olympia watches as John Haskell and his daughter descend the wide front steps of the porch and make their way across the lawn, Martha not reaching his shoulders. Olympia turns and looks at her mother, who regards her thoughtfully. Olympia moves toward her and makes as if to brush past her, and asks (and she can hear the new false note in her voice) if she should take the smaller children out for a walk along the seawall. And then immediately, before her mother has a chance to speak, Olympia answers herself: “Let me just change my boots and fetch a shawl,” she says, slipping past her mother. And if her mother speaks a word to her, Olympia does not hear it.
• • •
Olympia’s room is soothing to the eye, and she is not unlike her mother in that within its four walls she often seeks refuge. It has been papered in a pale azure that echoes the sky; against this background are tiny bouquets of miniature cream roses. The room is large enough for only her single bed, a small bedside table, a dresser, a ladies’ writing desk, and a chair. Olympia has put the writing