Harold and Maude

Copyright © 1971 by Colin Higgins Trust

All rights reserved

This edition published in 2015 by

Chicago Review Press Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-61373-126-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Higgins, Colin, 1941–1988.

Harold and Maude : a novel / Colin Higgins.

pages ; cm

ISBN 978-1-61373-126-0 (softcover)

I. Title.

PS3558.I355H28 2015

813′.54—dc23

2015002302

Cover design: Natalya Balnova

Interior design: Jonathan Hahn

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

“It's
very
provoking,” Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, “to be called an egg,—
very
!”

Through the Looking-Glass

L
EWIS
C
ARROLL

H
AROLD
C
HASEN STEPPED UP
on the chair and placed the noose about his neck. He pulled it tight and tugged on the knot. It would hold. He looked about the den. The Chopin was playing softly. The envelope was propped up on the desk. Everything was ready. He waited. Outside, a car pulled into the driveway. It stopped, and he heard his mother get out. With barely a smile he knocked over the chair and fell jerkily into space. In a few moments his feet had stopped kicking, and his body swayed with the rope.

Mrs. Chasen put her keys down on the entrance table and called to the maid to take the packages out of the car. It had been a boring luncheon and she was
tired. She looked at herself in the mirror and absently pushed at her hair. The frosted wig would be fine for dinner this evening, she decided. She'd cancel her appointment with René and take a nap for the rest of the afternoon. After all, she deserved to indulge herself once in a while. She went into the den and sat at the desk. As she flipped through her book for the hairdresser's number, she listened to the Chopin playing softly. How soothing, she thought, and began to dial. René would be furious but it couldn't be helped. The phone buzzed, and she settled back, drumming her fingers on the arm of the chair. She noticed on the desk the envelope addressed to her. She looked up and saw, suspended from the ceiling, the hanging body of her son.

She paused.

The body swayed slightly from side to side, making the rope around the large oak beam squeak rhythmically to the sound of the piano.

Mrs. Chasen stared at the bulging eyes, at the protruding tongue, at the knot stretched tight about the grotesquely twisted neck.

“I'm sorry,” said a tiny voice. “You have reached a disconnected number. Please be sure you are dialing the right number and are dialing correctly. This is …”

Mrs. Chasen put down the phone. “Really, Harold,” she said as she dialed again. “I suppose you think
this is all very funny. Apparently it means nothing to you that the Crawfords are coming to dinner.”

“O
H,
H
AROLD WAS
ALWAYS
a well-mannered boy,” said Mrs. Chasen to the elderly Mrs. Crawford at dinner that evening. “Yes, indeed. I had him using a little knife and fork at three. He was never any trouble as a baby, although he was perhaps more susceptible to illness than the average child. He probably got that from his father, because I've never been sick a day in my life. And, of course, he did inherit his father's strange sense of values—that
penchant
for the absurd. I remember once we were in Paris, Charlie stepped out for some cigarettes and the next thing I heard, he was arrested for floating nude down the Seine—experimenting in river currents with a pair of yellow rubber water wings. Well, that cost quite a bit of
enfluence
and
d'argent
to hush up, I can tell you.”

The younger Mrs. Crawford laughed appreciatively, as did Mr. Crawford, Mr. Fisher, and Mr. and Mrs. Truscott-Jones. The elderly Mrs. Crawford sipped her champagne and smiled.

“Are you ready for dessert?” Mrs. Chasen asked her. “Is everyone ready for a delightful Peach Melba? Harold, dear, you haven't finished your beets.”

Harold looked up from the end of the table.

“Did you hear me, dear? Eat up your beets. They're very nutritious. Very good for the system.”

Harold looked at his mother and then quietly put down his fork.

“What ever is the matter?” asked Mrs. Chasen. “Aren't you feeling well?”

“I have a sore throat,” he said softly.

“Oh, dear. Then perhaps you'd best go up to bed immediately. Excuse yourself and say good night to everyone.”

“Excuse me,” said Harold, “and good night everyone.” He got up from the table and left the room.

“Good night,” everyone echoed.

“Take some aspirin,” Mrs. Chasen called after him. “And lots of water.” She turned back to her guests. “Dear me,” she said, “I don't know what I'm going to do with that boy. Lately he's become quite trying. I'm sending him to Dr. Harley, my psychiatrist, and, of course, my brother Victor—the brigadier general—keeps telling me the Army is the answer. But I don't want him off in some jungle battling natives. That's how I lost Charlie. Of course, Charlie wasn't battling. He was photographing parrots in Polynesia when that—”

“More champagne!” cried the elderly Mrs. Crawford, and burped.

“Mother!” said young Mrs. Crawford.

“Mother, please!” said Mr. Crawford.

“I'm sorry,” said the elderly Mrs. Crawford. “I thought I saw a bat.”

A momentary silence overtook the table until Mr. Truscott-Jones said that he had never tasted such a wonderful Peach Melba, and Mrs. Chasen told the story of how she had got the original recipe from a tenor in Tokyo who claimed to be Dame Nellie's bastard son.

W
HY THEY BRING THAT OLD WOMAN
to parties, thought Mrs. Chasen as she sat down at her vanity table and took off her wig, is beyond anyone's comprehension. After all, she is practically senile. It's always so embarrassing, particularly for the family, and, of course, so trying for the hostess.

Why don't they put her in a home? she asked herself, picking up her dressing gown from the bed. She could be well taken care of and be able to live there with her own kind until her time comes.

She stopped by her bathroom door and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Throwing back her shoulders, she patted her stomach. Not bad, she thought. Staying young is purely a question of staying slim.

She opened the door and turned on the bathroom
light. Harold lay wide-eyed in the bathtub, his throat slashed, and blood dripping from his neck and wrists.

“My God! My God!” shrieked Mrs. Chasen. “Ohhh! Ohhh! This is too much. Too much!” She turned and fled crying down the hall.

Harold turned his head and listened. In the distance he could hear his mother's hysterical wailing. He looked at himself in the blood-streaked mirror and broke into a faint, satisfied smile.

“W
E HAVE HAD SEVERAL SESSIONS
now, Harold,” Dr. Harley said, “but I don't think we can truthfully say there has been much progress. Would you agree?”

Harold, lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling, nodded in agreement.

“And why is that?”

Harold thought for a moment. “I don't know,” he said.

Dr. Harley walked over to the window. “I think it is perhaps your reluctance to articulate or elaborate. We must communicate, Harold. Otherwise, I'll never understand. Now, let's go over these pretended suicides of yours once again. Since our last session your mother has reported three more. As I calculate, that makes a total of fifteen. Is that correct?”

Harold looked intently at the ceiling. “Yes,” he
said, thoughtfully, “if you don't count the first one, and the time the bomb in the greenhouse exploded overnight.”

Dr. Harley ran his hand over his thinning hair. “Fifteen,” he said. “And they were all done for your mother's benefit?”

Harold considered that for a moment. “I wouldn't say ‘benefit,'” he concluded.

“No,” said Dr. Harley, “I suppose not.” He sat at his desk. “But they were all designed to elicit a particular response from your mother, isn't that so? For example, the squashed-skull incident we talked about last time. You placed the dummy with the cantaloupe behind the rear wheel of your mother's car so that when she backed over it she thought she had run over your head. Now, the hysterics she displayed then would be the kind of thing you have been aiming for in these last three attempts. Am I right?”

“Well,” said Harold. “That was one of the first. It was easier then.”

“Uh, yes,” said Dr. Harley. He leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about the bathroom incident last night.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Would you rate it a success?”

Harold mulled that over. “It was the best response I've had in the last few weeks,” he said.

“Did you leave a suicide note?”

“No. But I did write ‘Farewell' on the mirror in blood. I don't think she saw it.”

“Did you leave a suicide note for the hanging in the den?”

“Yes. I left it right on the desk. She didn't even pick it up.”

“The hanging then was a failure?”

“Maybe it was the rigging,” Harold mused. “Maybe I should have used a different harness.”

“You seem to use very elaborate paraphernalia for these, uh, performances. The pool, for example. That must have taken a lot of work.”

Harold took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said with a slight smile of satisfaction. “It did. I had to build floats for the shoes and the suit. I even had to design a little oxygen device that lets you breathe underwater. It was a nice job.”

“But not a success. At least, judging from what your mother told me.”

Harold looked over at the doctor. “What did she say?” he asked.

“She said that she saw you floating in the swimming pool face down and fully clothed with a note saying ‘Good-by World' pinned to your back. She told the maid to give you hot cocoa for lunch because she didn't want you to catch cold.”

Harold looked back at the ceiling. It was a long time before he spoke. “It took me three days to set that up,” he said finally.

Dr. Harley leaned forward in his chair. “Tell me, Harold,” he said, changing the subject, “what do you do with your time?”

“You mean, when I'm not planning …”

“Yes. What is your daily activity? You don't go to school.”

“No.”

“And you don't go to work.”

“No.”

“So, how do you spend your day?”

Harold paused. “I go to junk yards.”

“And what is your purpose in going there?”

Harold thought for a moment. “The junk,” he said. “I like to look at junk.”

“I see. What else do you do?”

“I like to watch the automobile crusher at the scrap-metal yard.”

“And what else?”

“I like demolitions.”

“You mean tearing down old buildings and things like that?”

“Yes, particularly with that great iron ball.”

“That's very illuminating, Harold, and I think opens up several avenues for exploration in our next
session. Right now your time is up. Give my best to your mother. I think I shall be seeing her early next week.”

Harold got up off the couch and said good-by.

“Are you off to the junk yard?” Dr. Harley asked pleasantly.

“No,” said Harold, “the cemetery.”

The doctor was taken aback. “Oh—I'm sorry. Is it someone in the family?”

“No,” said Harold as he opened the door, “I just like to go to funerals.”

H
AROLD STOOD ON THE EDGE
of the crowd and listened to the minister say the final prayers. He preferred smaller funerals, he decided. With only a few people around the grave, the emotion seemed more intense. And, of course, with smaller funerals it was possible to get closer to the coffin and actually see it being lowered into the ground.