Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [21]
Olympia is glad that it is dark and that her face cannot be seen, for she can feel it becoming suffused with color.
“What I mean to say, my dear,” Catherine adds, “is that I believe you are just on the cusp of your moment.”
Olympia looks down at her lap.
“Your beauty is in your mouth,” Catherine says further, and Olympia is jolted by this frank pronouncement.
“Of course, it is in your face,” the older woman adds hastily, “but primarily your mouth, in its unconventional shape, its fullness. Your mouth is worthy of its own portrait.”
Olympia hears the deliberate repetition of the word portrait. In the darkness, the kitchen’s screen door squeaks as it is opened and then slapped to. The cook must be on her way home. Olympia is too unsettled to form a reply that is not fatuous, and she is as well a bit alarmed by the intimacy in Catherine Haskell’s comment, for she hardly knows the woman at all. Although later, from the perspective of years, Olympia will think that Catherine’s pronouncement was delivered more to herself than to Olympia, as if by defining a thing, one could successfully defuse its power.
“Well, you are lovely altogether,” Catherine Haskell says, employing a different tone, the casual voice of a favorite aunt or a cousin, as if she has sensed Olympia’s misgivings. “And I have no doubt that this will be your summer.”
“You flatter me too much, Mrs. Haskell.”
“Catherine.”
“Catherine.”
“And I do not flatter you half enough. As you shall see. If I may ask a favor?”
Olympia nods.
“I wonder if you would take the older girls boating while we are here. I know that Martha would adore it.”
“I would be happy to,” Olympia says.
“Martha and Clementine only, I think. The others are too young.”
“We have the lifesaving dresses,” Olympia says.
“Even so, I would rather you take them, if you would. I do not trust Millicent’s judgment. You have met the children’s governess? On other matters, yes. But not boating. She has little experience with the water.”
A masculine voice, wheedling and insistent, rises a note above the others. Instinctively, Catherine Haskell and Olympia glance together toward the men by the porch door, at the flurry of moths over their heads.
“Cote seems such an ass,” Catherine whispers. And Olympia laughs, at least as much in relief as in recognition of her own thoughts.
But as she laughs, and perhaps this is only a trick in the moonlight, the white skin of Catherine Haskell’s face seems fleetingly to become thin and drawn.
“Do not be up late,” the older woman says, putting a hand on Olympia’s wrist for support as she stands, and Olympia is again reminded of her limp. Catherine’s fingers are shockingly cold.
“How warm you are,” she says, looking down.
Her face hovers only inches from Olympia’s, so close that she can smell Catherine’s breath, which is sweet with the mint from the lamb. For a moment, Olympia thinks that Catherine will kiss her.
• • •
Olympia knows other facts about the solstice. That it rests in Gemini, and that on this day at Aswan, which lies five hundred miles southeast of Alexandria, the sun’s rays fall precisely vertically at noon. That visionary cults paint their bodies in symbols on the solstice and salute the sun with lamentations until they either fall unconscious or have their expected visions. That the solstice produces the highest tides of the year, particularly so if it happens in concert with a full moon. The moon is not entirely full this night, but nearly so, and will be a source of worry, Olympia knows, for those few who inhabit houses too near to the beach at Fortune’s Rocks.
She slips off the porch and walks along the edge of the lawn in shadow, so as not to attract the attention of the men. She makes her way to the seawall and finds