Fortune's Rocks

  Lisette volunteers to break the news to her father, but Olympia tells her that she has courage enough for that. The next morning before breakfast, Olympia dresses carefully in a staid blue frock that does not entirely hide her condition but does not flaunt it either. Her father is reading Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter when she enters the dining room, a coincidence she finds so disconcerting that she nearly turns and walks out right then. There is a sharp, pinging rain against the glass, and the smell of the coffee makes the bile rise at the back of her throat. She wills herself not to be sick, to betray no weakness to her father.

  He does not at first acknowledge her, although she senses he is discomfited by her presence. She does not ordinarily breakfast with him, so her arrival is somewhat suspect. As calmly as she can, she takes her eggs and biscuits from the buffet and pours herself a cup of hot milk. But as soon as she puts the plate and cup in front of her, she sees that she will not be able to remain long in the presence of this food without embarrassing herself. She therefore launches immediately into her overly rehearsed speech.

  “Father, there is something important that I must tell you, for there is no hiding this, and I do not wish you to have this knowledge from — ”

  He turns his head and looks at her.

  “I am so sorry . . . ,” she says.

  “Olympia, what is this?” he asks.

  “I am . . . ,” she begins. “There is . . .”

  She touches her dress at the waist.

  “No.”

  He says the single word quietly, too quietly, and she hears his shocked disbelief. He is rigid in his posture, and his face has gone white. He will not look at her, but rather stares straight ahead, his fingers still on his book. She has never seen a man struggle so for control. He wets his lips with his tongue. He takes a glass of water.

  “Tell me this is not true,” he says.

  She is silent.

  He takes another sip of water. She sees that his fingers are trembling. There is a long silence.

  “Arrangements will have to be made,” he says in a voice that is slightly hoarse with his shock.

  She bends her head and nods. Arrangements for her lying-in.

  “Good God!” her father explodes. “Did the man not think?”

  “None of this was done to hurt you,” she says.

  “I shall have no reason ever again to believe anything you say,” her father says calmly.

  She shuts her eyes.

  “This will kill your mother,” he says.

  And perhaps it is the exaggeration in this statement that piques her ire.

  “This is not about Mother!” Olympia cries, abandoning her resolve to remain steady. “I am the one who is with child. I am the one who has lost her lover. I am the one who has suffered.”

  “Enough,” he says sharply. He wipes his lips with his napkin and sets it on the table. “Make no mistake about this, Olympia,” he says, his mouth tight with strain, his head shaking as if with palsy. “I worry about you every second of my life. But this is about your mother. This is about your mother and myself and our life together. This is about the unborn and innocent child you tell me now you are carrying within you. This is about Catherine Haskell and her children. This is about Josiah and Lisette, who have had to live through all of this horror with us. And though I can barely utter his name, this is about John Haskell as well, a man whose life is nevertheless ruined for all he is to blame. This is not, and I repeat not, only about Olympia Biddeford.”

  And with that her father stands. Carefully he pushes his chair in and picks up The Scarlet Letter, only then, it would seem, realizing the coincidence of the book, for he drops it on the table. He leaves the room without further word.

  • • •

  After that day, her father communicates with her by means of notes left at the dining table in the morning or brought to her by Lisette, who shakes her head at her task. One note reads: “Your mother and I will be away for a fortnight.” Another: “The electrician is making repairs on Friday, so please have your room prepared.” Olympia is now allowed to read, however, and because all has been lost already, she is allowed a fair variety of reading matter: Walt Whitman and Jack London and some verse by Christina Rossetti. There is also a medical text, The Family Library of Health, the purpose of which she assumes is to educate her further about the coming labor and birth. She reads the volume as though inhaling it, and years later she will be able to recite word for word certain key passages: The dress of the patient should be the usual chemise and night-dress rolled up around her waist, so as to keep them from being soiled. . . . The cries emitted are generally more like prolonged grunts, and can be readily recognized at a considerable distance by one who is familiar with their peculiarities. . . . Puerperal Mania is a form of insanity liable to come on a week or ten days after confinement, in which there is frequently a singular aversion to the child, and perhaps to the husband also. A tendency to suicide is also prominent, and patients thus affected should be watched with the most unremitting care. But she is, despite these alarming pronouncements, not as afraid of the birth as she might be; for it is difficult for the uninitiated to imagine pain.

  Through all of this, her thoughts are constantly of John Haskell. To be told not to love is useless, she discovers, for the spirit will rebel. Though she thinks it unlikely she will ever see Haskell again, she cannot stop herself from remembering him, from wondering what has happened to him, from wondering if he thinks of her as she does him. She knows only (her father entering her room and making another announcement) that the Haskell home in Cambridge has been sold. She understands that Catherine and the children will remain in York with Catherine’s mother for the foreseeable future, although one day she happens to notice their names in the newspaper as prospective passengers aboard the SS Lundgren, bound for Le Havre. Olympia tries to imagine, in the confines of her room, exactly what happened during the early morning hours of August 11 at the Haskell cottage. What did Haskell say to Catherine, and she to him? Did he leave his wife and children that evening? Or was it the other way around, Catherine rousing the children and dressing them in the dark and making a chauffeur drive them to York?

  • • •

  On the thirty-first of December 1899, Olympia sits at the bow window of her father’s town house, which overlooks the Public Garden. Through the lavender glass, she watches as both the reverent and the revelers pass up and down the street. A light snow is beginning to fall, thickening the dusk. Already there are people all about, most in their best cloaks and hats, hurrying in the snow to their destinations. Cabs and horses clutter the street, and as she watches, a traffic jam tightens its ring around the Garden. She has not yet lit the electric lights in the parlor, so as to better see outside the windows; and as a result, the dusk inside the room is becoming nearly impenetrable. Her father and mother and Josiah and Lisette are somewhere in the house, but Olympia can hear no sounds of human activity. Josiah and Lisette, who now live together on the top floor of the house, having been quietly married over the Thanksgiving holiday, later will go out on this new century’s eve. Her mother and father will not.

  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 ab
out 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 on the window that obliterates the revelers outside.

  “Lisette,” Olympia asks, “do you suppose we could go now for our walk? My legs are nearly bursting for want of exercise.”

  “It is not Lisette,” her father says quietly.

  Olympia turns in her chair.

  “Do not get up,” he says. He walks to where she is sitting and draws a chair near to her. Her chest is tight, for he has not voluntarily entered into conversation with her alone since the day she told him of her pregnancy. Her father has lost considerable weight and has passed in his appearance, over the past few months, from a middle-aged man to an almost elderly one, and this is but one more thing for which Olympia blames herself. He has on an ordinary wool frock coat, and he has shaved his mustaches. Since he has lost some hair as well, he seems altogether smaller than he was in the summer.

  “There are some matters which we must discuss,” her father says, and although his pronouncement is formal, his tone is not. It contains a softness she has not heard in some time. Perhaps, she thinks, even her father cannot sustain the intensity of his anger.

  “You have borne your punishment with grace, Olympia,” he says to her, and her heart begins to ease at the words. “I have been too harsh.”

  “Father — ,” she begins.

  He holds up his hand. “There is no more to be said about that.”

  Although he draws himself up and strains for his former nearly military bearing, she notices that the center, the heart of his body, has slipped, so that he is now somewhat hunched in his posture, even as he sits.

  “I have made arrangements,” he says, unable to help himself from glancing at her swollen body.

  “And what are they?” she asks.

  He averts his eyes, turning his gaze toward the window.

  “It is better if we do not talk of specific arrangements,” he says.

  She starts to speak, but he shakes his head.

  “There can be no thought of your keeping the child,” he says quickly. “It will be well taken care of, I assure you.”

  Though Olympia has known that such an outcome might be possible, she has prevented herself from fully imagining an absolute separation. “But, Father,” she says, leaning forward, “I wish to keep the child.”

  “There can be no thought of your keeping the child,” he repeats. “Your mother will not permit this, nor will I, and you must see that you cannot possibly survive without our support.”

  “But, Father — ,” Olympia protests.

  “Olympia, listen to me. You must trust me. In time, this entire dreadful episode will be behind you. By the fall of next year, I predict you will have recovered from this disaster entirely. And while some damage has been done that can never be repaired, I have been thinking that you can have a life for yourself. It is, after all, the modern era. Young women do go off on their own and make their own way. It is not entirely unthinkable. But you will need some schooling, some training for future occupation.”

  “The child is mine!” Olympia cries out. “He is mine and John Haskell’s! It is we who should decide what happens to him.”

  Red blotches appear on her father’s cheeks, and it is some moments before he can compose himself.

  “How dare you mention that man’s name in my presence,” he says coldly.

  She opens her mouth to speak further, but he holds up a hand.

  “In the fall, I will send you out to the western part of the state, to the Hastings Seminary for Females,” he says, and it is clear from his tone that he will not listen to opposition to this plan. “The best course for you — the only course for you — is to become a teacher. There is a severe need for good teachers, particularly in the rural parts of New England, and in this way your life will have some value to others.”

  “Father, do not do this to me.”

  He looks long and hard at his daughter’s face. Olympia can imagine what he sees: an overplump sixteen-year-old girl whose judgment can no longer be trusted.

  “There is nothing more to be said on this subject,” he says.

  She bites her lip hard to keep from crying out further. She holds the arms of her chair so tightly that she later will have cramps in her fingers.

  She will refuse to obey him, she thinks. She will accept his implied challenge and set off on her own. But in the next moment, she asks herself: How will she be able to do that? Without her father’s support, she cannot hope to survive. And if she herself does not survive, then a child cannot live.

  Her father pretends to be examining the revelers, but Olympia knows that all he can see is himself and her, framed by the cream molding of the window’s deep sill. He seems not to like what he sees, and turns back to her.

  “After your training, I should like you to find a position somewhere away from Boston, where your story will not immediately be known,” he says, and it is clear that he has been thinking this through for days. “Even so, you must be prepared for a life in which people will eventually know your circumstances, for I doubt there is anywhere you could go where there will not at least be a possibility of the story reaching those around you. Unless you change your name . . .”

  He considers this idea for a moment.

  “No,” he says. “No, you will not do that. There is no need for cowardice in this family. Of course, you will be provided for. I do not think you could live very well on a teacher’s salary. I shall not be lavish, merely adequate. Olympia, despite all” — she looks sharply up at him, for she detects a tiny crack in his composure — “your mother and I do love you.”

  Her eyes sting at this pronouncement, for she does not believe that her father has ever spoke
n of love to her.

  Her father sighs, as though this confession has taken more out of him than he anticipated. He raises his chin and takes a quick breath.

  “So, now,” her father says, having ventured too far into sentiment for comfort. “Fetch your cloak and hat. I shall take you for your walk this evening in the park. And then we will come back and make ourselves some cocoa, and in this modest way we shall celebrate the new century, in which I hope you will have a life of contentment, if not actually of happiness.”

  Olympia tries to stand. Her father reaches for her arm, and she sees that he is disconcerted to realize just how large she has become, for it has been some time since he has stood this close to her.

  She disentangles her arm from his. “You are wrong in one thing, Father,” she says as calmly as she can. “Quite wrong.”

  “And what is that?” he asks almost absently, having discharged his duty in a timely fashion and now somewhat more relaxed than he was when he entered the room.

  She looks at his face and waits until his eyes meet hers.

  “You predict that by the fall of next year, I will be entirely recovered from this ‘episode,’ as you call it. But you are wrong. I will never recover, Father. Never. If you take the child from me, I will never get over it.”

  He studies her for some seconds.

  “Olympia,” he says. “You are so very young.”

  • • •

  Shortly after midnight, in the early morning of April 14, Olympia wakes to a sensation of wetness. On further inspection, she discovers that her gown and her bed are soaked with warm fluid. Heavily, she climbs out of the bed and changes into a dry nightdress. She knows from the medical book what this means. She walks to the bottom of the stairs leading to the third floor and knocks as hard as she dares against the wall. She does not want to rouse either of her parents.