Fortune's Rocks Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    “Where?” Martha asks.
    “There are several in the kitchen,” she says.
    “What are you working on?”
    Olympia does not at first understand the question. Martha points to the sketchbook under her arm.
    “A picture,” she says. “It is not very good.”
    “Let me see it.”
    Although she does not want to, Olympia can find no reason to refuse Martha this request.
    “No, it is not,” Martha says in a disarmingly forthright manner when she has looked at the drawing.
    “Martha,” John Haskell says in mild admonition. “We should not detain Miss Biddeford any longer. Walk with me, please.”
    Olympia watches as John Haskell and his daughter descend the wide front steps of the porch and make their way across the lawn, Martha not reaching his shoulders. Olympia turns and looks at her mother, who regards her thoughtfully. Olympia moves toward her and makes as if to brush past her, and asks (and she can hear the new false note in her voice) if she should take the smaller children out for a walk along the seawall. And then immediately, before her mother has a chance to speak, Olympia answers herself: “Let me just change my boots and fetch a shawl,” she says, slipping past her mother. And if her mother speaks a word to her, Olympia does not hear it.
    • • •
    Olympia’s room is soothing to the eye, and she is not unlike her mother in that within its four walls she often seeks refuge. It has been papered in a pale azure that echoes the sky; against this background are tiny bouquets of miniature cream roses. The room is large enough for only her single bed, a small bedside table, a dresser, a ladies’ writing desk, and a chair. Olympia has put the writing desk up against the window so that she might see out across the lawn and to the ocean, a view she never tires of, not even on the worst of days the New Hampshire coast has to offer. Framing the window are white muslin curtains with their panels tied back so that the soft cloth provides a diamond opening to the sea. She thinks it may be the diffused light through the white gauze that almost always causes a sensation of tranquillity to descend upon her whenever she shuts the door and realizes that at last she is alone.
    But this day, there is no peace to be had in that room or in any other. She walks to the window and away again. She lies on the bed and then is immediately up and pacing. She walks to the glass over the dresser and peers at her face, turning her face from side to side to observe it, trying to imagine how it might be seen in the first few seconds of a greeting, what judgments might be made about her physical beauty or lack thereof. She turns sideways and studies the length of her figure and the manner in which her dress falls from her bosom. She leans forward almost into the glass itself to peer at the skin above the scalloped collar of her dress, and in doing so, she sees that her face is mottled at the cheekbones. She is suddenly certain her mother must have noticed this staining as well. She wonders then about her mother, who surely is waiting to see if Olympia will descend soon with shawl and boots to take the children for a walk on the beach, as she has promised. And at that moment, as if in answer, there is a knock.
    Composing herself as best she can, Olympia moves to the door and opens it. Her mother stands across the threshold, her arms folded, her mouth open in a question that does not entirely emerge. It is purely serendipitous, and more fortunate than Olympia deserves, that she looks as ill as she professes to be. She lies to her mother, shamelessly and extravagantly, and tells her she is uneasy in her bowels, possibly from something she has eaten. She does not feel feverish, she adds, but she has been resting for a moment. And then before her mother can speak, Olympia asks if her mother has told the children yet about the walk, for she doubts she will be able to take them to the beach as she planned.
    “I see,” her mother says,