Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [175]
“I want him with me passionately,” she says.
“I should like to see him.”
“You could see him as I have had to,” she says harshly. “Standing across the street and hoping to catch a glimpse of him.”
“I am sorry you have had to do that.”
“I had to answer questions about you,” she says. “I had to tell them of us. When we were at the hotel together and at the cottage.”
“My God.”
“It was unspeakable,” she says. “Not the admitting to the deed. That I have long since gotten over. It was having to tell it aloud, having to tell it to people I did not know and did not want ever again to see. When I was sitting in the witness box, I felt I was being stripped of my clothing. Worse.”
“Olympia, I am so sorry.”
She shrugs, as if to say, It does not matter now. She asks him: “Do you enjoy practicing medicine in Minnesota?”
“The need is desperate.” He glances around. “Do you live here alone?”
“Yes.”
“How extraordinary.”
“Is it?”
“I think so.”
“I came in here to say I did not make the tea.”
“I am not sure I could hold a teacup steady,” he says.
“Would you like a drink of spirits? I was having one when you came.”
“Were you? How unlike you. But then how would I know what is like you now? Yes, thank you.”
She walks into the pantry and pours him a glass of the whiskey. When she returns, he is staring out the windows again. He takes the drink from her. There is within him, she thinks, some great strength that she herself does not have access to.
“I am so very sorry, Olympia. To think of your giving birth so young and losing the child in the same moment. It is more than anyone should have to bear.”
“I would not wish you to be sorry,” she says.
“I am happy simply to be in this room,” he says. “I have imagined this a thousand times.”
But even this happiness, she sees as she glances up at his eyes, must necessarily be less than it was. He has sacrificed his children. He has made them sacrifice him. What happiness can there be after such a loss?
“I did not ever stop loving you,” he says. “Not for one minute.” He takes a drink of the whiskey. “It must be said. There is joy, even now, in saying it. I would not have thought such love could be maintained over so long a time. But there it is. There is no point in saying anything but the truth,” he adds.
“I have felt relief in speaking the truth to Mr. Tucker,” she says. She wraps her arms around herself. With the sun down, the room is colder. “There is something I want you to see,” she says. “Upstairs. But wait here a minute.”
She walks into the kitchen to fetch the nightshirt. When she returns, she asks: “Will you come with me?”
He follows her into the front hallway and up the wide staircase. They move along a darkened corridor. She pauses outside a room, not her own, and opens the door. She walks to a table and turns on a lamp, revealing a child’s bed covered with a blue and white crocheted coverlet. On the floor is a navy hooked rug with a red star in its center. There is a nursery table and chairs, a wooden toy box, painted red. Blue curtains with a star pattern are at the window. From the ceiling hangs a mobile of tin stars.
“I found the furniture in the attic,” she says. “It used to be mine. I made the rug and the curtains and the mobile,” she adds, not without a note of pride. “My room is next door. I thought he would want to be close to me. I am sure he will be frightened. I am frightened.”
She walks to a tin trunk, kneels, and opens it. Inside is the boy’s wardrobe. She folds the nightshirt carefully and lays it on the top. She closes the trunk.
“I know that you will be a good mother to him,” Haskell says.
She looks up at him in the doorway.
“I shall go now,” he says.
She is not prepared for this so soon, and, in not being prepared, she resorts to manners. “You have a carriage?” she asks.
“I shall walk to Ely and take the trolley from there. The walk will do me good. Though I shall falter in the marshes.”
She stands.
“You have not said anything about how these years