“A marvelous enterprise.”
“Our neighbors do not think so.”
He smiles. “No, perhaps not. But more and more are understanding the need for settlement houses such as yours. I always said you would have a remarkable future, Olympia.”
“And I hope that future shall include me,” says Haskell, crossing the small room to greet Philbrick.
“John,” says Philbrick, standing once again. “I have heard nothing but good things about your clinic.”
“Thank you, Philbrick. Please sit. It has been a rewarding venture. And we have been fortunate in our funding.”
“So I understand. It is always difficult to maintain a private hospital. But your endowment is substantial now?”
“Yes, it is, and I am able to hire two new physicians this year. Indeed, I am afraid I must leave you now to go to interview a young man from New York about one of the positions. I shall be back for dinner, though, and I hope you will stay and dine with us?”
“Thank you,” Philbrick says. “I should like that very much.”
Haskell bends toward Olympia and kisses her. “Unfortunately, Rufus, with this household and my clinic, Olympia and I must often make appointments simply to see each other,” Haskell says.
Philbrick considers the couple. “It does not appear to have bruised the marriage any,” he says amiably.
“Nothing shall ever do that,” says Haskell. Olympia glances quickly up at her husband, who smiles genially at Philbrick, and perhaps only she can see the thing that has gone out of him and can never be replaced, no matter how much pride he has in his work, no matter how much love he has for his wife. For he has had to forfeit his children — once, as a result of having chosen love; twice, as he watched Olympia walk away from the boy; and now, a third time, in marrying a woman who most likely will not have another. Olympia thinks often about desire — desire that stops the breath, that causes a preoccupied pause in the midst of uttering a sentence — and how it may upend a life and threaten to dissolve the soul.
• • •
“Tell me, how are your father and mother?” Philbrick asks when Haskell has gone.
“My father visits often,” Olympia says. “Indeed, it is he who supports us. My mother is well and will come for the summer.”
“I hope I shall see them.”
“Then you shall. They are taking a cottage farther down the beach.”
“Olympia, I have come on a serious matter.”
The abrupt change in Philbrick’s tone takes Olympia by surprise. “Yes?” she asks.
“Albertine Bolduc has passed away.”
The handle of Olympia’s teacup slips from her fingers, and the cup rattles into its saucer. She sets it down on the marble table for fear of dropping it altogether.
“She died six months ago,” Philbrick says. “From the white lung. One might have anticipated it.”
Olympia looks away. She seldom allows herself to think of the boy, to imagine him. She has, over the years, tried to put such thoughts away. She has tried not to think:
He is nine now. And now he is ten.
“Telesphore Bolduc has been caring for the boy,” Philbrick says, “but he is ill himself. Tuberculosis. The boy is eleven.”
Olympia says nothing.
“A tender age, as you know,” Philbrick says, eyeing her carefully. “It was Telesphore who asked me to come to you.”
“Was it?” she asks, scarcely believing what she is hearing.
“As you know, you are, by decree of the court, still his legal guardian.”
“I surrendered that responsibility,” she says.
“Yes, I know. And it was an extraordinary thing you did.”
“I have sent money from time to time,” she says, “but I have felt it necessary to keep myself at a remove.”
“Of course,” Philbrick says. “But it is not only money that the boy is needing right now.”
“Then I do not understand.”
“I know that this is neither here nor there in terms of your responsibility to the child, considering past events, but it would be necessary for you to approve any decision to place the boy back with the orphanage.”
“He must go to the orphanage?” she asks.
“I am afraid so. He is still a minor. And I would guess that he would not have much success at being placed out from there, since parents looking for children are rarely if ever interested in eleven-year-old boys.”
“What about the rest of the family?”
“Most are gone now. The family has been hard hit by the closing of the mills. Many have already had to move farther south.”
“Yes, I see.”
“I have taken an interest in the boy from the very beginning,” Philbrick says. “Well, I felt bound to, didn’t I? I visit him from time to time. I would take him in myself, but it is not me whom the boy needs. He is still sad. But you will find that he is quick. He has an untutored intelligence.”
“I will find . . . ?”
“He is here,” Philbrick says quickly.
“He is here? In this house?”
“I have brought him with me. The boy does not know anything about you,” he adds. “I have merely told him I needed to pay a visit to a friend. Forgive me for this intrusion upon your privacy, Olympia, but I did think it best. I felt it important for you at least to set eyes upon the boy before you decide his future.”
“Mr. Philbrick, you have given me a shock.”
“No greater than you can bear, or have I gravely misjudged the woman?”
“Where is he?” she asks.
“On your porch. I rather think he has taken a fancy to your telescope.”
• • •
With an unsteady gait, she walks from the study to the front room, overstuffed now with furniture to accommodate all of the girls and their infants when the entire household gathers in the parlor after the evening meal. Through the windows, she can see the boy on the porch. He is tall, his hair badly cut. He has on a sweater that perhaps once was ivory. She watches as he circles the telescope, bending to peer through it, moving it back and forth, seemingly searching the sea for something important.
She takes a shawl from the back of a chair and walks out onto the porch.
“Hello,” she says.
“Oh, hello,” the boy says, looking up from the telescope. He takes a step forward and holds out his hand.
Polite, she thinks. Well mannered. His fingers are cold from having been so long outside.
“You must be freezing,” she says.
“Oh no,” he says quickly, snatching his hand away, clearly not wanting to be told to go back into the house. “You live here?”
“Yes,” she says. “I am Olympia Haskell.”
He is spindly, at an age when the bones grow too fast for the rest of the body. And spindly, he does not resemble Haskell as much as he used to. Though the hazel eyes are the same. Strikingly the same.
“You are the woman Mr. Philbrick has come to visit,” the boy says. Awkwardly, and perhaps cold after all, he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his trousers.
“Yes.”
“Is this yours?” he asks, gesturing with his elbow to the telescope.
“Yes, it is.”
His English, though accented, is not poor. He has had some schooling somewhere, she thinks.
“Do you go to school?” she asks.
“I used to,” he says.
Olympia nods.
“Mr. Philbrick is taking me to Boston with him in June,” the boy says. “We shall see the science museum and the Public Garden.”
“I used to live at the edge of the Public Garden,” she says.
“Did you?” he asks with keen interest. “Is it true that in the spring the children have races with miniature boats in the pond?”
“Yes. If you are there on the right day.”
“Last year we went into Portsmouth.”
“And what did you think of that city?”
“I liked the place where they build the ships.”
“The shipyard.”
“Yes. Can you see France?” he asks, gesturing again toward the telescope.
“No.”
“Can you see the stars?”
“Yes.”
“How is it that one can see the stars, which are so far away, and cannot see France, which is closer?”
“That is an interesting question,” she says. “I think it has something to do with the curvature of the Earth. And also the stars are brighter.”
“Could we see Ely Falls if we pointed the telescope in the right direction?” he asks.
“I am not sure. Perhaps if we got onto the roof, we would be able to see the steeple of Saint Andre’s.”
“I should like to do that,” he says.
“Then you shall come back to visit and we will do that.”
“Well, surely you would not go onto the roof,” he says, seemingly alarmed at the thought of a grown woman on a rooftop.
“No, probably not. But my husband would.”
“Is your husband here now?”
“No, he will be back this evening.”
“Oh,” says the boy with evident disappointment.
“Well, you shall definitely come back to visit in the daytime when he is here,” Olympia says.
“I have been to this beach,” he says.
“Have you? When was this?”
“I came for the Fourth of July.”
“And did you have fun?”
“Oh, yes. My mother made a picnic, and she went into the water with me.”
The boy’s face tightens suddenly.
“There is a man in that fishing boat out there,” Olympia says quickly, pointing out to sea.
The boy stoops to the telescope. “I can see him,” he says. “He must be a lobster fisherman. Here. Would you like to see?”
The boy takes a step backward to make room for Olympia. She, too, bends to look. In his excitement, the boy stands so close to her that she can feel his elbow and his upper arm.
She can see the lawn, too close, the chapel that will shortly be made over into a dormitory. The rocky ledge. The sea. She turns the knobs, focusing. There is the fishing boat, a man in oilskins pulling in a pot. In the distance, hardly visible, she sees another boat and behind that the Isles of Shoals, merely a hazy suggestion. Beyond the islands, there is France. And then there are the stars. And farther still, there are the lost years and a history written upon the bones.
But here there is a boy, and his name is Pierre.
Acknowledgments
The court opinions cited in italics in this work of fiction are, in fact, true ones, and portions of the final judgment are taken from the court transcript of the Pennsylvania case of
d’Hauteville
v.
Sears, Sears and d’Hauteville
. I am grateful to John Martland for reading and editing the trial section of my novel and to the following works for providing me with information regarding child custody law in the late nineteenth century:
A Judgment for Solomon
by Michael Grossberg;
From Father’s Property to Children’s Rights
by Mary Ann Mason; and
Governing the Hearth
by Michael Grossberg.
I also found inspiration or bits of history in these works:
Gleanings from the Sea
by Joseph W. Smith;
The Cities on the Saco
by Jacques Downs;
La Foi, La Langue, La Culture
by Dr. Michael Guignard;
Biddeford in Old Photographs,
compiled by Loretta M. Turner; The Images of America series for Saco, Hampton, and Rye;
From Humors to Medical Science
by John Duffy;
The Library of Health,
edited by Frank Scholl;
America 1900, The Turning Point
by Judy Crichton;
A World Within a World: Manchester, the Mills and the Immigrant Experience
by Gary Samson;
Working People of Holyoke
by William Hartford;
Women at Home in Victorian America
by Ellen Plante; and
A Memory Book: Mt. Holyoke College 1837–1987
by Anne Carey Edmonds.
I would like to thank Michael Pietsch for his continuing encouragement and brilliant editing; Stephen Lamont for his elegant copyediting; Ginger Barber for her wisdom in literary and financial matters; and John Osborn for his guidance and assistance, as well as for his confident eye and ear.
Fortune’s Rocks
by Anita Shreve
A READING GROUP GUIDE
In a summer community on the coast of New Hampshire at the turn of the last century, a girl is drawn into a passionate affair with a man nearly three times her age. . . .
Fortune’s Rocks
is the story of Olympia Biddeford — privileged, well educated, and mature beyond her years — and her affair with John Haskell, a married doctor with four children. Drawn together on the night of the summer solstice, the pair set in motion a series of events with surprising and far-reaching consequences.