Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [5]
As a result of these vague disabilities, Olympia’s mother is not the caretaker in the family, but rather the one cared for. Olympia has decided that this must suit both of her parents well enough, for neither of them has ever taken great pains to amend the situation. And as time has gone on, perhaps as a result of actual atrophy, her mother has become something of a valid invalid. She seldom leaves the house, except to have her husband walk her at dusk to the seawall, where she will sit and sing to him. For years, her mother has maintained that the sea air has a salubrious effect on both her spirits and her vocal cords. Despite the humidity, she keeps a piano at Fortune’s Rocks as well and will occasionally leave her rooms and play with some accomplishment. Olympia’s mother has wonderful bones, but Olympia will not inherit her face or the shape of her body or, thankfully, the brittleness of her spirit.
Olympia’s mother, who met her father in Boston at a dinner arranged by her own father when she was twenty-three, did not marry until she was twenty-eight. Although she was considered a handsome woman, it was said that her nerves, which were self-effacing to a degree of near annihilation, rendered her too delicate for marriage. Olympia’s father, ever one for a challenge and captivated by those very characteristics that frightened other men away — that is to say, her mother’s alternating fuguelike states of intense quiet and imaginative flights of fancy — pursued her with an ardor that he himself seldom admits to. Olympia does not know what to make of her parents’ married life, for her mother appears to be, though sensitive to a fault, the least physical of all women and oftentimes, if surprised, can be seen to flinch at her husband’s touch. Olympia’s thoughts balk, however, at crossing the veil to that forbidden place where she might be able to imagine in detail her parents’ marriage. For it is a marriage that has seemed to thin as it has endured, until it appears to Olympia, by the summer of her fifteenth year, that there is only the one child and the vaguest and most formal of connections between them.
“You are quiet, Olympia,” her mother says, eyeing her carefully. Though fragile, her mother can be astute, and it is always difficult to hide from her one’s true thoughts. Olympia has been, indeed, thinking about her walk along the beach, viewing it as if from beside herself, seeing the somewhat blurry and vague figure of a young woman in peach silk conveying herself to the water’s edge under the scrutiny of several dozen men and boys. And in her mother’s room she blushes suddenly, as if she has been caught out.
Her mother shifts slightly on the chaise. “I fear I may already be too . . . too tardy in this discussion,” she begins diffidently, “but I cannot help but notice — indeed, I think I am quite struck by this — that is to say, I am very mindful today of certain physical characteristics of your person, and I think we must soon have a talk about possible future occurrences, about necessary and delicate dilemmas all women have to bear.”
Though the sentence cannot be parsed, her meaning can be; and Olympia shakes her head quickly or waves her hand, as though to tell her she need not go on. For she has relied heavily upon Lisette, her mother’s maid, for information on matters of the body. Her mother looks startled for a moment, in the manner of someone who has hastily prepared a lengthy speech and has been stopped mid-sentence. But then, as she sits there, Olympia observes that relief overtakes her mother and flatters her features.
“Someone has discussed this with you?” her mother asks.
“Lisette,” Olympia says, wishing the conversation over.
“When was this?”
“Some time ago.”
“Oh. I have wondered.”
And Olympia wonders, too, at the silence of Lisette regarding the daughter of her mistress. She hopes the woman will not receive a scolding for this confidence.
“You are settled?” her mother asks quickly, eager now as well to change the subject. “You are happy here?”
“Quite happy,” Olympia answers, which is true and is