Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [28]
She looks quickly to the water and back at Haskell. She knows it will be only moments before the others return, wet and chilled and wrapped in rugs, their feet encrusted with fine wet sand, wanting food and drink and feeling both virtuous and vigorous for their exercise in the sea. She saw Haskell with the camera often enough earlier this morning to know how it is done. Quietly, so as not to disturb him, she lifts the camera from its case and peers through the viewfinder.
Beyond Haskell, in the background, is a fish house and a large family of bathers, some of whom, Olympia realizes, are watching her with the camera. They must be a family from Ely Falls, she decides, for they do not have much in the way of a picnic. They are crowded, all eleven or twelve of them, onto only one rug, so that those at the periphery are half sitting on the sand and have to lean into the center of the group. They have all been swimming, she determines, even the women, for their hair is unkempt and slicked back against their heads. They stare in a curiously impolite manner. She thinks that at least one or two of the children must be undernourished, as they have a sunken appearance about the cheeks.
She squeezes the shutter.
Startled, Haskell opens his eyes. She sets the camera back into its case.
“Olympia,” he says, sitting up.
She closes the top and fastens the latch.
Simultaneously, they see Olympia’s father emerging from the sea and draping himself in a robe he has left by the water’s edge so as not to have to appear too long in public in his wet bathing costume. She watches her father walk from the sea to where they sit, wondering if he has seen her take Haskell’s picture. When he reaches them, she thinks he cannot fail to note the strain which lies between Haskell and her and which they both immediately seek to defuse with over-attention to her father’s needs, Haskell standing with a wrap, Olympia preparing a plate of food. But her father does not ask her about the time she has spent with Haskell, either then or later.
The others soon follow her father, Zachariah Cote a somewhat comical spectacle in his union suit, which reveals rather large hips and suggests that the man is better suited to a frock coat. (But which man is not? Olympia wonders.) Philbrick, with little modesty or self-consciousness, walks briskly to the rug, sits down to lunch, and begins to consume his meal with enthusiasm. Unable to remain calm in their company, Olympia stands and walks to the water’s edge with wraps for the girls, who twirl themselves into the dry cloths as if forming cocoons. Even Martha seems happy to see her, although somehow the girl has gotten sand into her stockings and they bag with the weight and make odd lumps against her legs.
They walk back to the rug as if Olympia were a governess and they her waterlogged charges. Along the way, when she chances to look up, she sees that Haskell has gone.
• • •
He does not reappear for dinner in the evening. When Olympia inquires as to his whereabouts, Catherine says that he has been called away to the clinic. Olympia struggles through the meal with little appetite. She minds Haskell’s absence more than she ever could have anticipated. It is the first of many nights she will now spend when her life, which seemed complete enough only the night before, appears to be missing an essential piece.
Wishing to be alone, she pushes her chair back. Thunder shakes the house, and Olympia can feel the vibrations through the floorboards. A streak of lightning needles the sky outside the windows of the dining room.
“A storm,” Catherine says.
“The man who brings the lobsters said there would be,” her mother answers.
“I must go upstairs to close my window,” Olympia says, relieved to have an excuse to leave the table.
“Did you know,” her father asks the gathering, “that