Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [137]
Olympia places a number of coins on the table and leaves the shop unobserved. She follows the pair at a discreet distance. She is aware of a particular form of madness that has overtaken her and that is making her behave in ways she would not have believed were possible. She feels uncomfortably like a spy, which, of course, she is. But even understanding the absurdity of her actions, she cannot turn her eyes away, nor can she let the woman and child disappear from sight. Remaining at least a block behind them, Olympia follows the pair down to the corner of Alfred and Washington, and then along Washington to Pembroke, which is lined with boardinghouses, identical brick buildings with small windows and unpainted picket fences bordering scruffy front lawns. Albertine and the boy enter one of these boardinghouses, the boy running up the front steps and pushing open the door as though he has done this a hundred times.
Olympia, unable to follow the woman and boy onto Pembroke for fear of being caught out, stands at the corner and watches this small tableau. She wants to sit down and wait for the boy to come out again, for to leave is to let the boy go, and it is some minutes before she can bear to turn away and head back to the trolley stop. It is nearly five, and she must, she knows, catch the last car to Ely or be stranded in Ely Falls.
For a time, she walks blindly, unable to stop thinking about the boy. Will this be all she has of him? Ever? These stolen glimpses? For there can never be any interaction with Albertine, Olympia understands now. Never. Nor can Olympia continue these clandestine sightings without risking discovery. And that she is not prepared to do.
She cannot go on like this. She cannot. She must put this obsession away, as she once vowed to do. She must forget the boy and move on with her life. She must find a position, perhaps as a governess or a teacher. Possibly she could ask Rufus Philbrick for assistance in this matter. She imagines the man would be considerably more enthusiastic about helping Olympia find employment than he was about aiding her in her search for her son.
Consumed with these thoughts, Olympia walks without noticing where she is going, so that after a time, when she looks up, she discovers that although she still remains in the business district of Ely Falls, she does not know where she is. When she glances around, she notes the Bank of New Hampshire and the office of the Ely Falls Sentinel. There is a funeral parlor and an insurance company that seems to occupy all of one massive stone office building. There are various other offices with signs out front or in the windows or, more discreetly, on brass plates beside doorbells. She notices, across the street, on the ground level, a black sign over a door. A black sign with names carved in gold. TUCKER & TUCKER. ATTORNEYS AT LAW. She turns away from the sign and stares through the glass window of the bank into the lobby. The bank is closed, and she wonders what time it is.
The offices will be shut, too, she tells herself. Even if she were to knock on the door, there would be no answer. And if no one is there, this will be a sign, a message, will it not? She will then be able to walk away from this matter. She will go back to Fortune’s Rocks and stay there and not return to Ely Falls. Yes, this will be a sign. A sign she will not be able to ignore.
And thus armed with these fragile delusions, Olympia walks across Dover Street, Ely Falls, on September 14, 1903, and enters the law offices of Tucker & Tucker, father and son, attorneys at law, to announce that she intends to reclaim her boy, Pierre Francis Haskell, and that they must help her do it.
• IV •
The Writ
AND YOU SAY you met him at your father’s house,” Payson Tucker is saying.