Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [93]
Olympia and her parents have recently passed a grim Christmas, the pall of the immediate and unknowable future smothering even her father’s forced attempts at cheer. There were few gifts. Olympia had crocheted her mother a lace shawl and had knitted her father a muffler, since she could not leave the house to go to the shops to buy anything else for them. Their gifts to her were ludicrously inappropriate — a pair of ice skates and a blue velvet cape — as though they wished to deny her present reality altogether. Only Lisette’s gift to her, which she brought to Olympia’s room on Christmas Eve (after all the others had gone to services), acknowledged her condition: a quilted yellow box filled with infant’s linens, all hand embroidered with tiny yellow flowers. The woman’s kindness brought fresh tears.
The fire in the grate takes the edge off the chill, but it is damp in the parlor nevertheless. Olympia wraps her shawl about her and lets the fringe fall into her lap. How she would like to be out on the last evening of the century, if only to be physically a part of the centenary milestone. Though she thinks the date an arbitrary one — for who could say on what day the counting of the millennia began? — and not possessing mystical powers, she is much intrigued by the near hysteria and spate of prophecies that have infected the country as the last minutes of the century have drawn to a close. Already she can sense that the revelers are carousing with a license not equaled in previous New Year’s celebrations. Some persons, she knows from reading the Boston newspapers, have actually built underground bunkers in order that they might survive the unfolding of the specific prophecies of Revelation, which they attach to the first day of the year 1900. Others will attend church services well into the evening. Still others have planned elaborate parties that will last until morning. Under normal circumstances, her parents would be dressing now to attend one of these celebrations. Or perhaps they might have planned, before August tenth, to hold a New Year’s gala themselves; invitations for this evening went out, in some circumstances, a year ago. But, of course, all that has changed now. Her parents have not been in society once since leaving Fortune’s Rocks.
As Olympia listens to the ticking of the walnut clock in the corner of the parlor, it is impossible not to imagine that her life is ticking away as well in that oppressive room of heavy damask and ornate mahogany and Persian rugs of competing patterns. How she longs for a room with large windows curtained only with diffuse sunlight. She feels the now familiar movement within her, which she has likened to bubbles of champagne rising, an image Lisette is particularly fond of. Together they have let out all of her dresses, but it is clear that even that strategy will no longer provide Olympia with a wardrobe. With little exercise, Olympia is growing bigger by the week and has long since lost any desire to hide her condition. She smooths the wool flannel over her belly and thinks, as she often does, of the impending birth, about which, curiously, she has little fear, and of the father of the child, whose whereabouts she still does not know. When it grows entirely dark, Olympia will be allowed a walk along the periphery of the park. It will be her only outing of the day, as indeed has been true all fall and winter. Josiah and Lisette will be her companions.
A light is turned on in the room, immediately creating a reflection