Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [180]
The bailiff brings the boy past Haskell, who holds himself as if at church or at some solemn occasion requiring respect. The resemblance between the boy and the father is so acute that Olympia thinks that all must now see. The boy looks quizzically at Olympia and Tucker and Littlefield and then, midway down the aisle, spots his foster mother.
“Maman,” he cries, breaking loose. “Maman.”
He runs on fat legs along the aisle to Albertine. With an instinctive gesture, long practiced, Albertine bends and picks up the boy and holds him tightly to her breast. He burrows into the wool of Albertine’s suit. And then she holds him slightly away from her, his legs hooked around her waist, his arms around her neck. She speaks to the boy in French, and he cocks his head slightly to the side, as if pondering his mother’s instructions. But when he looks at his mother’s face again — red and swollen — Olympia can see that he senses something is not as it should be. Albertine turns and hands the boy to Telesphore, who buries his huge head in the boy’s neck, unwilling to have the child see his devastation. With a quick kiss on the cheek, he gives his foster son back to Albertine. The sleeves of Albertine’s misshapen suit envelop the child. Her hat slides off her head. The entire room seems on the verge of some large and terrible explosion.
And then, though minutes pass — and it is too soon, even Olympia can feel that it is too soon — Albertine is forced to help the boy slide down off her body. She turns him around so that he is facing Olympia.
Albertine fixes Olympia with a stony look. Her face is puffed and raw. The boy, bewildered, does not move. The aisle might be a chasm. The bailiff once again takes the boy’s hand.
“Maman?” the boy calls over his shoulder, questioning.
It seems an obscenity to Olympia to hold out her own arms in Albertine’s presence, but she must welcome the boy somehow. She crouches down so that she is his height. She says his name.
“Pierre.”
The boy studies this new person before him. Why has his mother told him to go with her? Perhaps she is a friend of his mother’s? But if she is a friend, why are Maman and Papa crying?
“Maman?” he calls again over his shoulder.
Olympia reaches out a hand and touches the boy. Tentatively, he moves in closer to her.
A terrible sob — elemental and primitive — escapes Albertine.
The boy freezes, as if suddenly comprehending the meaning of the small tableau.
“Non!” he cries, pushing Olympia’s hand away. He runs back to his mother, who bends double over him, sheltering him in the folds of her skirt.
A long moment passes.
“Bailiff,” says Littlefield with obvious reluctance.
The bailiff, his face red, clearly hating this job, awkwardly reaches in to try to snatch the boy.
“Mr. Sears,” says Littlefield. “Please speak to your client.”
Sears reaches around Telesphore and touches Albertine on the arm.
Albertine straightens, then bends to face the boy. She speaks to him and points to Olympia. The child is silent. Albertine tilts her foster son’s chin upward so that she and he are gazing directly into each other’s eyes.
From across the aisle, Olympia can see the look that passes between mother and child — a look that will have to last a lifetime, a lifetime of lost days, a lifetime of days that must now always be something less.
Olympia glances up at Tucker, who has gone gray in the face with this responsibility. She searches down the aisle for Haskell, who stands tight-lipped, his hands folded in front of him. And then she dares to look again at Albertine Bolduc, who in this moment