Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [12]
But this day, there is no peace to be had in that room or in any other. She walks to the window and away again. She lies on the bed and then is immediately up and pacing. She walks to the glass over the dresser and peers at her face, turning her face from side to side to observe it, trying to imagine how it might be seen in the first few seconds of a greeting, what judgments might be made about her physical beauty or lack thereof. She turns sideways and studies the length of her figure and the manner in which her dress falls from her bosom. She leans forward almost into the glass itself to peer at the skin above the scalloped collar of her dress, and in doing so, she sees that her face is mottled at the cheekbones. She is suddenly certain her mother must have noticed this staining as well. She wonders then about her mother, who surely is waiting to see if Olympia will descend soon with shawl and boots to take the children for a walk on the beach, as she has promised. And at that moment, as if in answer, there is a knock.
Composing herself as best she can, Olympia moves to the door and opens it. Her mother stands across the threshold, her arms folded, her mouth open in a question that does not entirely emerge. It is purely serendipitous, and more fortunate than Olympia deserves, that she looks as ill as she professes to be. She lies to her mother, shamelessly and extravagantly, and tells her she is uneasy in her bowels, possibly from something she has eaten. She does not feel feverish, she adds, but she has been resting for a moment. And then before her mother can speak, Olympia asks if her mother has told the children yet about the walk, for she doubts she will be able to take them to the beach as she planned.
“I see,” her mother says, though Olympia notes the doubt in the cast of her mother’s mouth. Olympia has lied before, white lies to protect her mother from discovering some small truth that might worry her needlessly, but Olympia is not aware of ever having lied to protect or excuse herself. And she thinks then that though her mother often chooses to dwell in a world in which few decisions need to be made, she is making one then. And that her mother is, in her way, nearly as discomfited by Olympia’s obviously agitated state as she is.
“You will not come down then for supper,” her mother says, and Olympia hears in her voice that this is not a question, but a statement.
When she is gone, Olympia lies on her bed. She stares at nothing at all and tries to calm herself with the sound of the waves breaking against the sand. And after a time, this effort begins to bring the reward of regular breath. So much so, in fact, that she sits up, searching the room for occupation. Her knitting is in a carpetbag by the dresser, her sketchbook abandoned on her desk. On her bedside table, she sees the book her father gave her the day before. She picks it up and fingers the slightly raised lettering of the gilt title. She takes the book with her to the room’s single chair and begins to read.
That afternoon, Olympia reads John Haskell’s entire book, not to educate herself or to understand its contents, which only yesterday seemed a tedious challenge, but to search for clues as to another’s mind in the specific combination of words, as if the structure of the sentences and the words therein were formulas that once deciphered might reveal small secrets. But she is, as she reads, despite her true intentions, absorbed in the matter of the book itself. The premise is deceptively simple and unusual, at least in Olympia’s limited