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A Novel
by Anita Shreve
After Olympia has returned the tray to the kitchen, she walks into her father's study, where he sits, in an oversized mahogany captain's chair, reading, she can see, The Shores of Saco Bay by John Staples Locke, the first of the many volumes he will devour during the summer. Her father is, both by profession and by inclination, a disciplined and learned man, discipline being, in his belief, a necessary hedge against dissolution; therefore, he does not like to change his routine even on this first day of vacation, despite the lack of preparation for their arrival and the resulting chaos.
During this summer, as in past summers, her father will invite to their cottage a succession of guests whom he has met largely through his position as president of The Atlantic Literary Club or as editor of The Bay Quarterly, a periodical of no small literary reputation. He will hold lengthy discussions with these people, who are most often poets or essayists or artists, in a kind of continuous salon. During the day, he will oversee the recreation of the visitors, which will be bathing at the beach or tennis at the Ely Tennis Club or boating through the pink-tinged marshes of the bay at sunset. Evening meals will be long and will last well into the night, even though his wife will excuse herself early. The women who will come to these dinners will wear white linen dresses and shawls of woven silk. Olympia has always been fascinated by the clothing and accessories of their female guests.
Her father glances down at the hem of her own dress, which is still damp. She asks him what he recommends that she read first that summer. He removes his spectacles and sets them on the green marble table beside his chair, which is a replica of the one he has by his chair in his library in Boston. Around them, the windows are thrown open, and the room is flooded with the peculiar salt musk of the outgoing tide.
"I should like you to read the essays of John Warren Haskell," he says, reaching for a volume and handing it to her. "And then you and I will discuss its contents, for the author is here at Fortune's Rocks and is coming to stay with us for the weekend."
And that is the first time she hears John Haskell's name.
"Haskell is bringing his wife and children with him," her father adds, "and I hope you will help to entertain them."
"Of course," she says, smoothing her palm across the book's brown silk cover and fingering its gilt-embossed title, "but as to these essays, I do not know the author."
"Haskell is a man of medicine and lectures occasionally at the college, which is where I originally met him; but his true calling, in my estimation, is as an essayist, and I have published several of his best. Haskell's interests lie with labor, and he seems most particularly keen on improving living and working conditions for mill girls. Hence his further interest in Ely Falls."
"I see," she says to her father as she riffles through the pages of the modest book. And though she is already slightly bored with this topic, later she will sift and resift through the memory of this conversation for any tiny morsel she might have missed and thus might savor.
"Haskell keeps a clinic in East Cambridge," her father says. "He is offering his services at Ely Falls for the season, as he is replacing one of the staff physicians who is taking a leave." Her father clears his throat. "Haskell regards this as the most fortunate of circumstances, for not only will it allow him to remain close by while his own cottage is being constructed further down the beach, but he should be able to study first-hand the conditions that interest him so. And as for me, I also regard his visit as a fortunate circumstance, for I do enjoy the man's wit and company. I think you will be charmed by Catherine, who is Haskell's wife, as well as by the children."
© 1999 by Anita Shreve
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