Harold and Maude (8 page)

“How ingenious!” cried Maude. “Tell me about them.”

“Well, it's a question of timing and the right equipment…. You really want to hear about this?”

“Of course.”

Harold grinned. “Okay,” he said, and leaned forward eagerly. “The first time it wasn't even planned. I was at boarding school and they were getting ready for the Centennial Celebration. They put all the fireworks and stuff in the west wing below the chemistry lab. Well, I was in the lab cleaning up, and I decided to do a little experimenting. I got all this stuff together and started measuring it all out. I was very scientific. Then, suddenly, there was this big fizzing sound and this kind of white porridge stuff came slurping out of the beaker and ran along the table, onto the floor. So I took the hose.”

Harold stood up to demonstrate.

“I turned it on to wash the stuff into the sink, and POW! There was this massive explosion. It cracked the table, blew a hole in the floor. Knocked me against the wall. Smoke and stink everywhere. I got up. I was stunned. Then suddenly—bombs started going off. Flames shot up through the floor, and PACHAU! skyrockets and pinwheels were flying about the room. Fireballs whizzing and bouncing. Singed my hair. I couldn't get to the door. But behind me was the old laundry chute, so I slid down it to the basement. And when I got outside—wow! The whole top of the building was on fire. It was crazy! Alarms ringing, and people running about. Boy! So I decided to go home.”

He sat down by Maude and brushed his hair off his forehead.

“When I got there my mother was giving a party, so I crept up the back stairs to my room. Then there was a ring at the front door. It was the police. I leaned over the banister and heard them tell my mother that I had died in an accident at school. I couldn't see her face, but she looked at the people around her and began to stagger.”

Speaking very softly and slowly, Harold continued, tears welling in his eyes.

“She put one hand to her forehead. With the other she reached out, as if groping for support. Two men rushed to her side, and then—with a long, low sigh—she collapsed in their arms.”

He stopped for a long pause.

“I decided then,” he said solemnly, “I enjoyed being dead.”

Maude said nothing for a moment. Then she spoke quietly.

“Yes. I understand. A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they're not dead, really. They're just backing away from life. They're players, but they think life is a practice game and they'll save themselves for later. So they sit on the bench, and the only championship they'll ever see goes on before them. The clock ticks away the quarters. At any moment they can join in.”

Maude jumped up, shouting encouragement. “Go on, guys! Reach out! Take a chance! Get hurt, maybe.
But play as well as you can.” Leading a cheer before a packed stadium, she cried, “Go team, go! Give me an ‘L.' Give me an ‘I.' Give me a ‘V.' Give me an ‘E.' L—I—V—E. LIVE!”

She sat down beside Harold, very ladylike and composed. “Otherwise,” she informed him, “you'll have nothing to talk about in the locker room.”

Harold smiled. “I like you, Maude,” he said.

Maude smiled back. “I like you, Harold. Come, I'll teach you to waltz.”

She gave him her hand and together they walked to the Victrola. She turned it on, and the lilting melodies of Strauss filled the room. Taking the hem of her kimono in her hand, she held out her arms. He put his arm around her waist and took her hand in his. He looked down at her and grinned. Her head barely came up to his shoulder. She counted to the music and then, smiling, she began to move. He picked it up, and before long they were dancing together—round and round the lantern-lit room, happily in step, twirling and circling as effortlessly as young lovers waltzing in a Viennese café.

M
RS.
C
HASEN MET
H
AROLD'S
second computer date on the front porch.

“You must be Edith Phern,” she said to the
bespectacled little girl with the closely cropped red hair.

“Yes, I am,” said Edith.

“I'm Mrs. Chasen, Harold's mother. Harold is out by the garage. Let's go meet him, shall we?”

“All right,” said Edith, dropping her purse and spilling out all the contents.

Mrs. Chasen waited till she picked them up, and then together they walked around to the back of the house.

“Harold has a new car,” explained Mrs. Chasen. “And he's been tuning it up. He's very mechanical.”

“Oh,” said Edith. “What kind of a car is it?”

“It's a little Jaguar roadster,” said Mrs. Chasen, coming around the corner as Harold put the final polish on his new car.

The car had been somewhat changed. Its back end had been squared off like a small station wagon, its back window was frosted glass with a wreath of ferns etched across it, and the whole car had been redone in black, except for some tasteful chrome trimming on the front and sides, and the velvet curtains, which were a kind of funereal purple.

“It's very nice,” Edith said sweetly. “Looks like a hearse.”

Mrs. Chasen clenched her teeth and smiled.

Harold looked at her blankly.

“Very unique,” Edith added. “
Compact
.”

Despite the blow this mini-hearse had dealt her, Mrs. Chasen managed to remain collected. “Edith,” she said serenely, “I'd like you to meet my son, Harold. Harold, this is Edith … eh?”

“Phern,” said Edith. “I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Harold nodded a greeting.

“Harold, dear,” said Mrs. Chasen, “I think you should go wash up and meet us in the library. And remember what I said to you. Let's make Edith feel at home.”

Mrs. Chasen had decided on a small buffet luncheon in the library. While they waited for Harold, she offered Edith some sandwiches and poured her some coffee. Edith placed her napkin on her knees and balanced the plate on her napkin. She was a little nervous but she overcame it by smiling pleasantly at everything.

Mrs. Chasen handed her a cup of coffee. “And what do you do, my dear?” she asked.

“I'm a file clerk. At Harrison Feed and Grain.”

“Oh, how interesting.”

“Yes, it's very challenging,” said Edith.

They sipped their coffee.

Edith smiled.

“Well, what is it exactly that you do?” asked Mrs. Chasen, trying once more.

“I'm in charge of all the invoices for the Southwest. We supply, for example, most of the egg farmers in Petaluma. So you can
imagine!
” She tittered conspiratorially and took another sip of coffee.

“Mmm, yes,” said Mrs. Chasen.

She smiled at Edith.

Edith smiled back.

“Oh, here's Harold now,” said Mrs. Chasen as Harold entered the room.

Edith attempted to stand up to greet him.

“Please, Edith,” said Mrs. Chasen. “Don't get up.”

Edith sat down. Harold sat between them and rested his arm on a small table. Edith smiled at him, and he smiled back.

“Edith was just telling me about her job,” said Mrs. Chasen, as she poured Harold a cup of coffee.

“I'm a file clerk.”

“Yes. Henderson Feed and Grain.”

“No, Harrison,” corrected Edith good-naturedly. “Harrison Feed and Grain. At Hamilton and Fourth. I'm in charge of the invoices….”

She smiled.

Mrs. Chasen handed the coffee to Harold, who placed it on the table beside him.

“And I type up the schedule for the trucking fleet.”

“She supplies the whole Southwest with chicken feed,” said Mrs. Chasen, rather caustically.

“Well, not the
whole
Southwest,” said Edith with a modest snicker. “Although we do have a large business. Barley was very big last week. Fifteen hundred bushels….”

Harold took a large meat cleaver from inside his jacket, swung it high, and cut off his left hand at the wrist. The cleaver embedded itself in the table, and, as he picked up the stump, blood dribbled from the plastic hand.

Mrs. Chasen was astonished. She glared at Harold and slowly shook her head.

Edith, fighting for composure, put down her cup and saucer. She stood up. She smiled. “I think I'd better …” was all she was able to say before collapsing in a dead faint under the coffee table.

Harold glanced at his mother.

She looked up, speechless, from the fallen Edith. All she could think of were the words of her brother Victor: “I'd put him in the Army, Helen!”

H
AROLD DROVE ALONG
in his Jaguar-hearse, explaining to Maude how he made the transformation.

“The back of a Datsun station wagon fitted just fine, and, after welding, I laid down the black Naugahyde roof. Then it was only a matter of incidentals—chrome landaus from a Ford Thunderbird, windows,
curtains, and, of course, spray painting and rubbing it out.”

“It seems to have worked very well,” Maude said.

“Yes. I think I like it better than my old one.”

“Oh? Why's that?”

“I guess because I've put a lot of myself into it. Fixing it up and making it run. It runs beautifully. I like working with cars.”

“I knew a man once who used to like working with cars. A German, wonderful person, but he would spend all his time fixing his car and making it run beautifully. Then came the war, and he lost his car. He had to walk everywhere, and so he found himself spending his time making his body fit and trim. He fixed it up, and it ran beautifully. After the war, he decided not to go back to cars. ‘Cars come and go,' he said, ‘but your body is your transportation for life.'”

Harold looked over at Maude. “Are you trying to tell me something?” he asked.

Maude smiled. “I just did,” she said.

They drove past rolling hills where cows grazed indolently in the sunshine, and finally settled on a picnic spot near a solitary oak in a large pasture.

After a lunch of bread and cheese, wine, carrots, fruit, and nuts, they settled back on the grass.

“Would you like a little licorice, Harold?” Maude
asked. “It has no nutritional value, but then, consistency is not always a human trait.”

Harold took a piece and lay down with his hands behind his head. Maude leaned against the tree and opened her bag. She took out her tatting and began busily working the thread.

“Look at the sky,” said Harold, chewing thoughtfully. “It's so big.”

“And so blue.”

“Beyond the blue is the vast blackness of the cosmos.”

“Yes. But speckled with uncountable stars. They're shining right now. We just can't see them. I suppose that's just another instance of all that's going on that is beyond human perception.”

“Maude,” said Harold, after a pause. “Are you religious?”

“What does that mean?”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Oh, yes! Everyone does.”

“Do they?”

“Absolutely. Deep down. It's part of being human.”

“Well then, who do you think God is?”

“Oh, He has a lot of names. Brahma, the Tao, Jove. And for the metaphysically inclined, there's The First Cause, The One Reality, or The Eternal Root. For me, I like what it says in the Koran—‘God is Love.'”

Harold grimaced. “It says that in the Bible,” he corrected. “And anyway, it's just a cliché.”

“Well, a cliché today is a profundity tomorrow—and vice versa.” She held up her tatting. “Isn't that pretty? I only learned how to do that last year.”

“Maude, do you pray?”

“Well, we communicate.”

“How?”

“Lot of ways. Through living. Through loving. Different levels of consciousness require different levels of communication. Language isn't the only way of talking.”

Harold smiled. “Yes,” he said. “There's always waltzing.”

“Right,” said Maude. “One dances for grace—in the theological sense.”

“But where is He? Is He inside us or outside us?”

“Both, I imagine. There is a little God inside us to show us where we've been, and a little God outside us to show us where we're going.”

“That's pretty mystical.”

“You're right, Harold. It's a mystery. Frankly, I'm not sure if He's Our Father or Our Mother. I only know,” she said, patting the trunk of the tree, “He's very
creative
.”

Harold laughed and stretched out on the grass. “This is really nice here,” he said. “Makes me feel like a kid.”

Maude laughed.

“Let's have a race to the top of that hill,” he said, leaping up.

“All right,” said Maude. “Let me put this away first.”

“You know what I'd like to do?”

“What?”

“Cartwheels.”

“Well, why don't you?”

“Naw, I'd feel stupid.”

“Come on, now, Harold. Everyone has the right to be an ass. You just can't let the world judge you too much.”

“All right,” said Harold, and he did a very spindly cartwheel. He did another and laughed.

“Want to join me in some somersaults?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” said Maude. “I'm going to beat you to the top of the hill.”

They raced off, running down the slope, past the cows in the next pasture, and on up the hill. They reached the top together and collapsed, laughing and out of breath.

“My, my,” said Maude, lying back on the grass. “I feel I could evaporate.”

Harold fell alongside her. “You'd turn into one of those clouds,” he said. “I think you'd be a nice cloud. You could float around the skies all day.”

“No, not me,” said Maude. “I'd be a very bad cloud. I'd always want to dissolve into rain.”

T
HEY SPENT THE AFTERNOON
at the beach, running along the sand and tempting the waves to wash over their feet. Then they walked out by the rocks and cliffs and examined the smooth stones in the tide pools.