Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [177]
Olympia studies her plate. On it is an enormous piece of roasted beef that just moments earlier a waiter sliced for her on a silver cart at tableside. She cuts a small bite and dips it into the horseradish sauce. “I had no idea that such a place was here,” she says.
“It is the only decent restaurant in town. I eat here often.”
“Do you?”
She watches as he cuts into his beef. She guesses he has on his best coat for the judgment: a fine charcoal worsted, and with it a blue and black silk tie against a snowy shirtfront. His hair has been polished back from his head in a nearly unbroken line. Only his slight impatience with the waiter, and even perhaps with her, betrays his anxiety. Her own anxiety appears to have manifested itself as a complete lack of appetite, so that it is an effort even to chew the small piece of beef she has put into her mouth. She takes a sip of water.
“What was the bet?” she asks.
“The bet?”
“Littlefield said your father still owed him a barrel of apples.”
“My father bet Littlefield I would never go into the law. Littlefield took the bet. My father sent the apples the very next day.”
She thinks: Would it not be better to love Tucker? Was that not the way it was supposed to be?
“You understand what will happen today,” Tucker is saying. “We will walk into the chamber and sit, and Littlefield will come out, and then he will read the judgment.”
“And then it will be over.”
“And then it will be over.”
He lifts his glass of wine. “You wore that suit the night we had dinner at the Highland,” he says.
She looks down at the green velvet, scarcely knowing what she has on.
“I will give you and the boy a ride back to Fortune’s Rocks,” Tucker says.
“The boy has probably never been in a motorcar,” Olympia says. “He may be frightened.”
“It will be better in an automobile than on the trolley so late in the evening. And there may be some unpleasantness.”
He means the Francos, she thinks. “Thank you,” she says. She attempts another bite. “What I find most difficult is the absolute finality of the judgment. It seems there ought to be an easing. Not so abrupt.”
“Custody suits are always exceptionally difficult,” says Tucker. “But the courts have found over the years that a clean break is actually better for the child, particularly at this age. Most children, when they are grown, do not remember anything of when they were three.”
“Then if I win, he will not remember her.”
“Probably not.”
“It seems unduly harsh,” she says.
This morning, Olympia made Haskell leave the cottage early. She washed her hair and then cooked a meal of roasted chicken and cornbread, her own favorite meal as a child, so that she and the boy might have a supper waiting for them when they returned to Fortune’s Rocks in the evening. Lacking anyone to consult, she has read two books on maternal care and family life. She has also purchased a French grammar, which she has been reviewing daily for weeks, having had the realization that of course the boy will not speak English.
“Mr. Tucker, you have been very kind to me. I hope it shall go well today for my own sake, but also for yours.”
“You cannot eat,” he says, looking down at her plate.
“No, I cannot. I am sorry.”
“It is perfectly understandable.”
He reaches his hand across the table, and as he does so an entirely new anxiety presents itself: After the judgment is read — perhaps not today, not this afternoon, but one day soon — she will have to tell Tucker that she cannot, after all, offer him any hope.
• • •
When they reach the courthouse, it is as before, with newspaper reporters and Franco supporters standing all about the entrance. Tucker, who has left his motorcar at the restaurant and has walked Olympia to the courthouse, sees the crowd before they see him. He makes an abrupt about-face, taking Olympia with him. “I know of a side entrance,” he says. “I should like to avoid the crowd both coming and going today if I can.”
Tucker holds her