Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [59]
She watches as he takes off his collar and unbuttons his shirt. For the first time in her life, Olympia sees a man undress. She is struck by the way Haskell tussles with his cuff links, the way he removes the collar of his shirt as if freeing himself from a yoke. She feels odd and cold beneath the sateen puff and frightened at the thought of a man’s nudity, which, in fact, she does not entirely see this day. Haskell stops short of removing his undergarments before he slides into the bed with her.
She rolls into the crook of his arm and rests her head there. She puts the palm of one hand against his vest. Uneasy and expectant, they are silent for a time. There is nothing impetuous in their actions, nothing at all. Though impetuosity will come soon enough, it is as though each movement toward the other must be taken with some forethought, some understanding of what it is they do.
He shifts his position and dislodges her from his arm, so that she is now lying beneath him. “I saw you at the beach that day. You do not remember me.”
“I am not sure.”
“I think I loved you then. Yes, I am certain of this.”
“How is that possible?”
“I do not know,” he says. “But I am sure of it. And then when I saw you on the porch the night of the solstice, I experienced . . .” He searches for the words. “As though I had known you. Will know you.”
“Yes,” she says, for she has felt it, too.
“You cannot know how precious this is,” he says. “You will think that this is how it always is. But it is not.”
He supports his weight on his forearms. He kisses her slowly on her neck. As if they have all the time in the world, which, in fact, they do not.
“I envy you,” he says. “I envy your not having known anything else.”
She can feel him pressing into her, a weight lowering itself, even as his hands draw up her vest and push away the rest of her underclothing. For a moment, he fumbles with something he must have had in his hand when he entered the bed, something she cannot now identify, though later he will explain his caution to her.
Does she feel pain? Not exactly. Not terrible pain. It is more a sense of greater weight, of a thrusting against her, though she does not resist. She wants to take him in.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks once.
“No,” she says, struggling for breath. “No.”
She is thrilled, tremulous with the event. The sun moves and makes a hot oblong of light on the topaz sateen puff, so oddly unmasculine, a spread similar to her mother’s. All around them is the soft cotton of overwashed sheets — almost silky, almost white — and beyond these the austere mahogany of the carved furnishings: the wardrobe, the bed, the side tables. There are a man’s garments strewn upon a chair and on the floorcloth, which has been painted to resemble a rug. She looks up at the pattern on the sage tin ceiling.
Only near the end, just at the end, does she feel a quickening within herself, the barest suggestion of pleasure, a foretaste of what she will one day have. Oddly, she understands this prophecy, even as she hears for the first time the low hush, the quick exhalation of breath, and knows that the event is over.
His weight, which has been great upon her, becomes even heavier. She thinks he does not understand that he will crush her. She shifts slightly beneath him, and he slides away. But as he does so, he pulls her with him, nestling her within the comma that his body makes, as one might cradle a child, as, indeed, he may have nestled his own children. She arranges herself to fit within his larger embrace.
For a time, Olympia listens to his breathing as Haskell dozes in and out of consciousness, a particular form of sleeping that she will come to treasure over time, to feel privileged to witness.
He wakes with a start.
“Olympia.”
“I am here.”
“My God. How extraordinary.”
“Yes,” she says.
“I will not say that I am sorry.”
“No, we must not say that.”
She moves so that she can see his face.
“I feel different now,” she says.
“Do you? It