Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [80]
Haskell and Olympia parted only yesterday, by tacit agreement not speaking of their plight, for to give it more words was to give it more life. And to give it life was to find no words, no satisfactory answers. She could not release him from his marriage, nor could she properly bid him farewell, and so they stood, mute, at the entrance to his rooms, looking at each other and then apart, Olympia having the greater burden, for it was her lot to have to walk away.
Her footsteps echoed in the stairwell. She was surprised that her legs worked at all. At the bottom of the stairs, she had to lean against the newel post before walking through the etched glass doors. It was, for her, a tearing away, not only from Haskell himself, the person of Haskell, but also from the idyll that had been the summer. For she knew that even if Haskell and she were to devise a way to be together, it would not ever be the same.
Occasionally, over the past few weeks, in the privacy of her own thoughts, she has envisioned for Haskell and herself a life together, the two of them living in rooms in Ely Falls or in Cambridge. Perhaps Olympia would help him with the clinic, or she could become a teacher. They would have children together and would make a home. But after a few moments, she cannot much enjoy these thoughts, for simultaneous with these fantasies is the realization that such a life can be had only with the unhappiness of a spurned wife and of real children; and Olympia knows that no man could sustain any happiness of his own at such an exorbitant cost. Even assuming Haskell could bear Catherine’s pain, he would not be able to forfeit Martha and Clementine and Randall and May without irreparable damage. Worse than all the other horrors is the image of her and Haskell one day sitting across a table, unable to look each other in the eye. Surely it is better to long for each other than to despise each other, she thinks.
Below her on the ground floor, she can hear much activity, as deliverymen and servants call to one another across the rooms, or furniture is moved, or flowers are brought into the house. Her father has sent to Boston for the family’s best china and silver and crystal, and as a result, wooden packing crates and straw litter the porch. Her parents expect a hundred and forty guests for dinner and dancing, and have set up a long white tent upon the lawn. There the visitors will dine at midnight on lobster and champagne and oysters and blueberries. Masses of lavender-blue hydrangea blossoms crowd the railing of the porch. The lawn has been groomed so fine that it resembles a putting green. Normally, Olympia would have enjoyed the preparations, and would particularly have welcomed that hour before the guests arrived, when all the house was entirely dressed, but still and silent, and she could wander through the rooms and out onto the lawn, admiring a brief moment of perfection.
She gets up from the bed and walks to the shallow closet, on the door of which hangs her dress for the evening. It is white, as indeed all of the dresses this night will be. She fingers the satin underdress with its rows of seed pearls at the bodice, and then the overgown of white chiffon that seems more like a cloud than a garment, so light and ephemeral is the material. It is an exquisite dress, a confection her mother has sent to Paris for, a dress one might wear to a summer cotillion or even to one’s own engagement dinner. Since her mother has suggested pearls, Olympia is engaged in searching through her jewelry case for suitable earrings when she hears a knock at her door.
When she opens it, she sees that it is Josiah with a tray. Although Olympia is not hungry, she is immediately moved by his kindness.
They have encountered each other throughout the house many times since the day she found him with Lisette in the kitchen. Though Olympia had not known