Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [87]
“Olympia, good evening,” he says. “Forgive me.”
For what? Olympia wants to cry out. For what should I forgive you?
The fact that Haskell has spoken at all produces some small measure of relief in Catherine’s features. She manages a smile.
“Come up here, Olympia, or I shall come down myself and fetch you,” she says.
Olympia does as she is asked. She lifts her skirts and climbs the side stairs, the very stairs Haskell once stood at the top of as he watched her come back from the water’s edge. But it is Catherine who is there to greet her this time, extending her gloved hand. Olympia is enveloped in an embrace of gardenias and castile and, underneath this, just the faintest whiff of stale breath.
Catherine’s dress is gathered under her bosom in the empire style and drapes appealingly over her waist and hips. She is wearing moonstones. Her hair has been allowed to float about her face, and Olympia has the distinct impression that it is weightless, that it might suddenly dissolve altogether like spun sugar. Catherine holds her arm rather like a maiden aunt who has taken a niece under her wing. Haskell turns and bends and kisses Olympia’s gloved hand. Closer to him now, she can see the tight strain of the muscles of his face.
“How do you like your new cottage?” she is compelled by politeness to ask Catherine.
Haskell turns his head away and gazes out to sea.
“Oh,” Catherine says with evident delight. She brings her hands together as though she might clap them. “It is so wonderful. I have never seen such a house. One can see the water from every window, and the sea air . . . Really, Olympia, you must come to call on us as soon as possible, for I want to show you and your mother all of the rooms. The attention to detail . . . And the girls . . . Each has her own sitting room, and they are, as you can imagine, absolutely enthralled.”
Catherine pauses. Olympia is meant to reply, but she can find no words. The silence extends for seconds. All around them are animated voices, which serve only to underscore that hers is not. Olympia feels a tightness in her chest.
Catherine looks from Haskell to her and back again.
“John is not himself tonight,” Catherine says, apologizing for her husband’s ill manners. “He has been working too hard, I fear.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” Olympia says.
Even Catherine, with all her social skills, can make no further headway into conversation. Haskell’s strained silence is suffocating, and Olympia wants to flee. She cannot stand with this couple any longer. So great is the tension that she fears either she or Haskell will blurt out the true reason for the silence.
“If you will excuse me, I must find my father,” Olympia says hastily. “He will be cross with me if I do not make an effort to introduce myself to Mr. Hale early in the evening.”
Before either Catherine or Haskell can answer, Olympia leaves them and begins to make her way along the porch and into the house. Does the crowd part for her, or does she push them away? No, no, it is not so dramatic as that. She merely moves, nodding politely, slipping through breaks in the throng, feinting away from engagement. She walks into the house and through the sitting room, which is awash with persons and gaiety. She continues gliding, having no destination, wanting only to put a distance between herself and Catherine Haskell, to whom she can no longer in good conscience allow herself to speak.
As she walks, she silently chastises herself: She must never, under any circumstances, visit the woman again. She must discourage Catherine from ever coming to the house. She must avoid, at all costs, any possible chance encounters, all social engagements at which they might meet. She must leave Fortune’s Rocks and go back to Boston. An excuse will have to be invented, but she can do that. Her father can be persuaded to send her back. She will go immediately. In the morning. She is in a hallway, moving away from people. She hears an orchestra tuning its instruments. The music will soon begin. Oh God, she thinks, how will