is not possessed: Every moment that has passed between Haskell and her is examined and reexamined; every word that they have exchanged is heard and reheard; every look, gesture, and nuance interpreted and reinterpreted. While she sits at the dining table, or writes letters on the porch, or reads to her mother in her room, Olympia invents dialogue and debate with Haskell and weaves amusing anecdotes for him around the most seemingly banal events of her daily life. In truth, her normal routines appear now to exist solely for the purpose of self-revelation, of revealing herself to a man she hardly knows. But though she repeats the same conversations and scenes over and over in her mind, she cannot exhaust them. It is as if she drinks from a glass that continuously refills itself, the last long, cool swallow as necessary as the first, her thirst unquenchable. Occasionally, her relentless scrutiny of the brief time she has spent in Haskell’s presence is an agony to her, for she can see no satisfactory conclusion to what has begun, nor any possible way at all to go forward. She is only fifteen, and Haskell is nearly her father’s age. He is married and has children. She is still in her father’s care. She is but a child herself, perhaps even a deranged and obstinate child, fixed upon a fantasy that has for its roots only a few brief episodes that, for all she knows, she may have misinterpreted. Even so, she tortures herself with her endless imaginings, and there is no hour in which Haskell does not dominate her thoughts. Which causes her to wonder if there is not, existing simultaneously with the torment, an intensely pleasurable element to her self-created distress. Despite the fact that she seems barely present in the universe her physical body inhabits, the days seem more alive and arresting than any she has ever experienced before. Colors enhance themselves; music, which has before been only pleasant or difficult, now has the ability to transfix; the sea, to which she has always been drawn, takes on an epic grandeur and seems endlessly seductive — so much so that she is often sharply impatient of any demand upon her time that takes her away from simply gazing at the water and letting her thoughts float upon its surface.
• • •
The beach at Fortune’s Rocks has always been a democratic one, and at no time more so than on the Fourth of July, when all of the population of the summer community, as well as that of Ely and Ely Falls, gathers for the traditional clambake. The stretch of sand from the seawall to the water’s edge is crowded with summerfolk, tradesmen and their families, and many Franco-Americans and Irish from the mills. An enormous fire is built and covered with wet seaweed, so that the steam that arises appears to be rising from the sand itself. And all around this fire stand men of every class and economic means, some in formal dress, others in more casual and festive attire, nearly all of them enjoying the potent liquid refreshment in the stoneware jugs that have been dug into the sand. Periodically, large slatted baskets of clams are carried down to the fire and heaped, along with potatoes, upon the seaweed. When a particular batch is considered properly steamed, tin dishes are brought out and filled with the food. The women, some with parasols, rest on wooden stools, while the children sit cross-legged on the rugs. Since there is a kind of lawlessness associated with this event, both men and women have on bathing costumes and are frolicking in the breakers. Occasionally a bather is carried to the surf by a servant and lowered into the water to lessen the shock of the cold. The water seldom rises above sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature that is announced each noon hour by blasts from the Highland Hotel (six long blasts, five short). Near the bathers, Olympia can see that the Ely Club is conducting footraces along the low-tide flats on sand so hard, one could play tennis on it. Parked along one portion of the seawall are carriages and horses and one or two motorcars as well, novelties that quite intrigue