Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [134]
And what precisely was it that passed between her and Haskell on the beach for those few seconds near daybreak? It cannot have been love — no, of course it cannot — nor even infatuation, which needs, she imagines, rather more experience with each other than they had then, so early in the summer. No, it was instead a kind of recognition, she believes, as though each of them knew the other not only from the day before but also from some future date.
The rain assaults the house from a nearly horizontal angle, sneaking in under the eaves of the porch. A gust of wind knocks over a wicker chair on the porch, and too late she remembers that there are sheets on the line.
But it was love, she tells herself. Of course it was. Even then. Even that night. For had not she and Haskell already entered into that dangerous state of thrall which may be called love or obsession or romance or simply delusion, depending upon one’s proximity to the event and one’s ability to believe in the notion that two souls which stir in the universe may be destined to meet and may be meant only for each other?
Already the sea is clawing at the sand, eroding the beach and creating great gullies. The erosion will endanger the cottages, she knows. Leaning against a windowpane, she can feel the wind vibrating the glass. Did she not understand the consequences of allowing herself to fall in love with John Haskell? Can she ever have been that heedless? Or did she imagine herself charmed, untouchable, merely skimming the surface of disastrous and lethal matters, as a gull will fly above the ocean, alighting neither here nor there, but always teasing the waves?
She glances up, draws the shawl more tightly around her. Where will the boy be now? she wonders. And where do he and the woman go on their walks? Why did the woman have on a black apron? Olympia recalls the boy’s worn brown leather shoes, nearly heartbreaking in their shabbiness. Hand-me-downs surely, for the boy cannot have used them so himself.
Great love comes once and one time only, Olympia understands now. For by definition, there cannot be two such occurrences: The one great love remains in the memory and on the tongue and in the eyes of the once beloved and cannot ever be forgotten.
She puts her head in her hands.
Why must love be so punishing?
• • •
A monstrous wind catches the house, and she can feel the wood shudder in its embrace. With awe, she watches as the wind beats along the beach, blowing the tips off the breakers, heaving stray brush and driftwood and seaweed high into the air. A gull remains motionless over the water, unable to make headway against the wind, and then is blown backward by a gust. Farther down the shore, a large piece of tin is lifted off a fishing shack. The wicker chairs slide along the painted porch floor and hit the railing with a series of dull thuds. Upstairs, Olympia can hear glass breaking.
The hurricane pummels the coastline all the way up to Bar Harbor. Through the night, Olympia huddles in the kitchen, listening to the crack of wood, the heaving of the sea, and the high whine of the wind. Near to the side of the house, a pine tree falls, missing the cottage by inches, and, once or twice, when the wind is particularly fierce, Olympia climbs under the kitchen table for safety. She thinks of Ezra and hopes that he made it in to shore before the storm. No one out in a boat would survive the seas this night.
From time to time, Olympia walks to the window at the north side of the house and looks out to the lifesaving cottage. Its beacon is lit, and she can hear, intermittently, like Morse code being sounded from a great instrument, the foghorn from Granite Point. The wind strains the beams of her own cottage, and Olympia is sometimes startled by the creaking of the wood, as if the house were a ship foundering at sea.
By daybreak, parts of the beach have been eroded nearly to the seawall. Houses have been lifted off their foundations and porches have been sheared clean from their pilings. Olympia’s own front lawn is