The Forgotten Room(67)
A dream, of course, that would never be realized, and to Olive, returning week after week from the glory of the Pratt mansion, the color of the brown stones had become the exact shade of disappointment. The very sight of them, as she turned the corner, would turn her legs into lead. One by one, she would trudge up the steps, as she might drag her way into prison.
But today, Christmas Day, Olive didn’t trudge up the front steps. She bounded. Her heart swooped along for the ride. She was too sore and exhausted and exhilarated to notice the ugly brown color of the wall before her. As she dropped the knocker against the door, and as the noise beat against her ears, she thought for the first time that perhaps her father’s dream had always been impossible. That you couldn’t really enter the hallowed halls just because you had designed them. And even if you could, you might perhaps find that this entrée wasn’t going to make you happy after all. That it wasn’t the beauty of the house itself, but the beauty of what lay inside.
The beauty of who lay inside.
A year after Mr. Van Alan’s death, there was no downstairs maid to open the door on Christmas Day: only Olive’s mother, groomed to her painstaking best in what had once been a fashionable gown of burgundy velvet.
“Merry Christmas!” Olive said, leaning forward to press a cheerful kiss on her mother’s cheek. She did this mostly to disguise the flush that overcame her own skin at the sight of that familiar maternal face; her mother had always seen right through Olive’s angelic expression to guess at the transgressions that lay beneath.
Transgressions that now seemed absurdly trivial, compared to what Olive had done last night.
“Why, Merry Christmas, darling,” Mrs. Van Alan said, a little surprised. “Come into the parlor. It’s so awfully cold outside. I’ve built up the fire, nice and hot.”
If this was nice and hot, Olive thought, then what had the fire been like before Mrs. Van Alan built it up? She unwound her muffler and shrugged out of her wool coat and decided that it must be her imagination, how the ruby underneath her plain gray dress seemed to glow against her chest. Before her mother took the coat away, Olive reached into the pocket. “Here. They gave us each a little Christmas present.”
Mrs. Van Alan looked down at the money in Olive’s palm. “Ten dollars?” she breathed.
“Take it. I don’t have anything to spend it on, anyway.”
Her mother looked at her in wonder, hesitating, and then went to the small walnut desk in the corner, which was populated by Mrs. Van Alan’s beloved china shepherdesses in various pastoral attitudes, along with a few pensive sheep, contemplating a woolly escape (or so Olive had always imagined). She unlocked one of the drawers and tucked the ten-dollar bill inside a leather purse, all without a single word. Just a kind of heartbroken gratitude in her posture, the declining angle of her neck, as if she were too embarrassed to express her thanks.
Olive stared at that vulnerable white nape, bent in humiliation, and a little of the euphoria ebbed away.
Mrs. Van Alan turned from the desk and straightened her woolen shawl around her shoulders. “Did you have a nice Christmas Eve?” she asked, with false brightness.
“Christmas Eve? Oh, yes. Thank you.”
“They didn’t make you work too late, I hope?”
“Work? No.”
“Because you don’t quite look yourself.” Mrs. Van Alan stepped forward—it was not a large parlor—and took Olive’s hand between hers. “You’re not sick, are you? They’re not cruel to you?”
“No, no.” Olive looked away, to the collection of framed photographs on the mantel. Her father’s was the largest, right in the center, looking impossibly youthful and handsome in his pressed black suit and neat beard. He had always seemed young for his age, had always bristled with energy and enthusiasm. You could detect his charisma even in the sepia dimensions of the photograph. A bit like Harry that way, wasn’t he? Even the memory of him could draw Olive’s adoration from between her ribs.
Mrs. Van Alan put her hand to Olive’s forehead. “You’re flushed. You don’t have a fever, do you?”
“Of course not!” Olive stepped away. “I was just walking briskly, that’s all. I didn’t want to waste a moment.”
Her mother didn’t reply, and Olive had the queer sensation that that quiet brown gaze was settling on her skin, sinking beneath her surface, rooting out the truth that lay inside.
That Olive was in love.
That Olive—shameless, glorious Olive—had lain with her love in the early hours of Christmas morning.
That she felt him still upon the hollows of her body, upon every patch of skin, in every nodule. As if she now carried him inside her.
The old story, a maid and her master. But it hadn’t been like that, had it? No, it was Olive who had kissed Harry first, Olive who had placed Harry’s hand on her warm breast. She was not an ignoramus. She had once had all her father’s books at her command, even the ones not intended for young ladies; she knew what was about to happen. She had known it would hurt—and it had—but she had also known that there would be pleasure: that she could give Harry pleasure and he could give it to her in return, and that she might never have this chance again. She might live a hundred years and never again connect with a human being in this perfectly primitive way, this way she could connect with Harry. As if they understood each other better without the interference of language.