The Education of Harriet Hatfield (12 page)

A solemn young woman in blue jeans and a leather jacket comes over and shakes my hand. “I think you are great.”

She is joined at once by two or three other women, one about my age, who says, “Hurrah for you.”

“You’re a gutsy lady,” says another.

I suppose this is the most unlikely moment in my life so far. What seemed a few minutes ago like a disaster is turning into a triumph.

The crowd is standing in the way of the table and chairs and my heart sinks when I see that Jonathan is sitting in one of them and Fred in another. “Oh hello,” I say, “sorry I didn’t see you at once.”

Jonathan coughs. Fred is smiling his irritating superior smile. I sit down in the third chair. “I suppose you think this chair should be in a corner with dunce written on it,” I say to Fred.

“Not really,” he says. “You appear to have found a splendid way to bring in customers.”

“Why are you here?” I ask Jonathan. I feel suddenly furious, hemmed in. I understand why Gide said
“Je hais les families.”
What business is all this of theirs?

Jonathan seems flustered and has risen to his feet. “I just wanted to be sure you were all right,” he says. “I did not know about the threats.”

“You didn’t tell him?” I needle Fred.

“No, but we have been talking and Mr. Fremont thinks you should install a much more efficient security system than the primitive lock I put in last week.”

“Nonsense. I would surely set it off by mistake, dunce that I am.”

“Perhaps we could talk about it some other time,” Jonathan says. “I’ll call you,” and mercifully he makes his way out, watched by all eyes, as though it had been he who uttered threats.

I go back to my desk without a word to Fred. “Well, let’s do a little business for a change,” I say to the three or four people patiently waiting to pay for books.

“We’ll take care of that,” says Ruth. “That’s what we’re here for after all.”

“You’ve certainly had quite an introduction to the store! Saturdays are not usually like this.”

“We’re having fun,” Fanny says.

On an impulse I suggest to Fred that we take a short walk with Patapouf. It is no place to talk if that is what he wants. And also I feel overcome by shyness. All this attention is really more of a shock than reading the interview was. I don’t know quite how to behave, especially with Fred observing me, smiling his secret smile. Patapouf is delighted and precedes us, waving her tail in pleasure. She adores Fred.

“What an ugly neighborhood it is,” Fred remarks, looking up and down the street littered with paper and beer cans, the Saturday clutter, and dismal shops selling liquor, or army and navy surplus clothes.

I have never really looked at it before, I realize. And in a way I like it. It seems a lot more real than posh enclaves of smart stores in Chestnut Hill. “It’s not beautiful, but it’s alive,” I answer. “So what’s on your mind, Fred?”

He slips an arm through mine and is silent for a moment while we wait for Patapouf, who has decided to sit down in the middle of the sidewalk, an awkward obstruction to the Saturday people milling around. “I’m trying to puzzle you out, Harriet. Why in heaven’s name you chose to expose yourself when I should think you are already in trouble enough.”

“I don’t really know the answer to that,” I say, and then add, “Our parents are dead, after all.”

“What has that got to do with it, for God’s sake?”

“Everything.”

“They would have been shocked, but, after all, you have lots of family, nieces and nephews, to reckon with, Harriet.”

“Are you shocked?” I am beginning to feel cornered and miserable. Had I said what I did on a crazy impulse? Must I be forced to regret it forever?

“I suppose I am,” Fred admits. At least he is not sneering for once.

“But you must have known, Fred? After all …”

“Maybe. But I never thought about you as a sexual being, you see. Besides, it just doesn’t seem to me anyone’s business. That word makes what might have seemed normal, I mean two women living together in friendship, suddenly abnormal and peculiar and frightening, I suppose.”

I see that Fred is unnerved for once, shaken out of all his superior attitudes, and I am glad. “Are you aware that this is the first time we have ever talked seriously about ourselves?” I ask.

“Really?” He frowns. “The thing is, Harriet, that as long as Vicky was alive you seemed secure, taken care of, and, let’s face it, acceptable.”

“Because she was so rich?”

“Maybe partly. And she was a powerful personality so we all took her for granted and did not ask ourselves embarrassing questions.”

“Well, the family is allowed to cut me out, Fred. Besides, they don’t read the
Globe
, do they?” I am laughing at him now and he winces. “You really can’t face your little sister growing up, can you?” I speak on the tide of being my real self.

“It’s not especially grown-up to blurt out unpleasant truths, is it?”

“When one is sixty years old and in a position to do some good by an unpleasant truth, maybe it is.”

“What good is it to expose yourself to threats and insults?”

“If someone with money, who cannot be fired from a job, who has no children, whose lover is dead, comes out it may be one way to change the public mind about that word you can’t bring yourself to utter. I said what I did in the hope of building a bridge across all this homophobia.”

“All we need in this family is a martyr,” he teases. This is the old Fred, at ease with me, so my laughter is spontaneous and we both laugh.

“Patapouf wants to go home,” I say. She hates any exhibition of anger or hurt in those she loves and had been pulling at the leash Fred holds. “I’m having dinner with those two kind men, Joe and Eddie,” I say, “you will be glad to hear.”

“You seem to be making friends,” he grants. “I was surprised at all that brouhaha just now in the store.”

“So was I—thunderstruck, as a matter of fact.”

We have reached my door, avoiding the few people standing outside the store. Fred gives me a funny little look, half amused, half something else I can’t figure out. “I’ll be off. I’m not exactly proud of my sister, but I have to admit you are quite a person, Harriet.”

“Thanks.”

It is odd to feel so close to tears. But after all it has been rather a strange day, half pain, half triumph, half good news, half fear. I feel all mixed up.

A little later Joe calls to say he will pick me up at six. I guess Joe is coming to fetch me so I will be protected. I go out rarely after dark, except to walk Patapouf. I decide to wear a red paisley dress and get out of my tweed suit and loafers for a change. And then, before I have a bath, I lie down on my bed and fall fast asleep.

Sleep doesn’t always “knit up the ragged sleeve of care,” but this little nap did me a world of good. Sometimes sixty feels young and sometimes it feels old, and when I wake up at five, I feel young and ready for anything. The curious effect of the last hours of crisis is a sense of relief. Something has happened that had to happen sooner or later, and now I am free in a new way and—I have to laugh at this—finally grown up.

So at a little before six I go down with Patapouf, who will guard the store while I am gone, feeling excited and happy to be going out to dinner with two new friends.

Fanny and Ruth are getting ready to close and there are only two customers in the store whom I am glad to see leave without fanfare. “What a day!” I say to Fanny, who is totting up figures. “You must be exhausted.”

“Nothing like when we have cleaned two houses in a day,” Ruth says.

“There!” Fanny closes the account book. “You know what you took in? Over a thousand dollars.”

“I can’t believe it,” I say. “That is almost as good as the day of the opening party.”

“People were so supportive,” Fanny says. “It was awfully touching.”

“We felt proud,” Ruth says, “and Fanny was great when one older woman came in and asked for you and said we could tell you that she had not imagined a degenerate beast would move into the neighborhood.”

“Oh my, I’m glad I was not here,” I say.

“You know what Fanny said?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“She said, ‘That’s odd, that’s what Hitler said of the Jews.’ And several people milling around applauded. So that woman left, and good riddance we all felt.”

“It’s the start of what may be rather a long battle,” I say, sitting down.

“Two nuns, Sisters of Loretto, they said they were, came by and told us to tell you they were thinking of you. They brought brownies—over there in a tin box.”

“Degenerate beasts love brownies,” I say, amused at the form Chris and Mary’s support has taken.

And now here is Joe knocking on the door. I introduce them and leave Fanny and Ruth to lock up from the inside with Fred’s new lock, and explain about leaving by my door. “See you next Saturday!”

“It’s been a wonderful day,” Ruth says, “maybe not for you, but we’re grateful to be working with you.”

As we walk along, Joe says that he came over twice to see how things were but there was such a crowd all seemed to be well. “No flack from that piece in the
Globe?
”

“Of course, but I have no regrets.”

Joe slips his arm through mine but says nothing for a minute. “You make me feel ashamed,” he says then. “I couldn’t help wondering if you had meant to be quoted or whether the reporter took it as open season on gays—or what?”

“Well, she did not misquote me, but I did not envision a headline, I must admit.” I stop to shift the bottle from my left arm to my right and Joe notices and takes it from me at once. “It’s wine,” I explain. “I hope you like Vouvray.”

“Love it. Eddie and I spent a week in the Loire valley two or three years ago. We were shown the caves back of Vouvray where they store the wine.”

And then as he tells me more about that trip, which had taken them also to the Dordogne and south to Albi, we reach the Victorian house where they have an apartment on the top floor. The rather dingy staircase does not prepare me for the charm and style of their quarters, including two ravishing Siamese cats. It is appallingly neat, I think, guilty about my own lack of housekeeping skill, and it is peaceful and beautiful as well. The living room is dominated by a magnificent Navajo rug hanging on the wall. The furniture is modern, two armchairs echoing the blue bands in the rug, the walls white.

“I’ve never seen a Navajo rug with blues like that,” I say. “It has to be an old one. Is it?”

“I bought it at an auction years ago,” Joe explains, “for a hundred dollars, believe it or not.”

Through an arched door I can see another room lined with books from floor to ceiling. “I brought you some wine,” I say to Eddie.

“Oh wonderful. I’m making coq au vin for you. This will be perfect.”

“What would you like to drink?” Joe asks when he has taken my coat and I am sitting on the nubby white sofa.

“Scotch with a little water.”

“Ah,” Eddie registers from the kitchen, “I was right. Joe thought it would be a martini!”

“Vicky and I used to drink martinis, so you were both right.”

“That
Globe
reporter said Vicky was a publisher and I recognized the name,” Joe says. “How hard that she is not with you now.”

“Well,” I fumble for the words and suddenly, a little shy, say, “Vicky would not have approved. We led middle-class lives in Chestnut Hill. It’s her money, so sometimes I feel anxious. I mean, what would she say or think?”

“But surely you must do what you feel, not what she might have felt,” Joe says. I remember now that he had said he is a psychiatrist, and the fact that he is does not alarm me as it might have. I feel very much at ease and am asking myself why, as I sip my drink and Joe brings in Brie and some water biscuits.

“What a wonderful atmosphere you create,” I say as he offers me a biscuit and spreads it with cheese. “Thanks.”

“Do we?” Joe asks.

“I feel I can say anything and you will understand, whereas my brother Fred dropped by to accuse me of letting the family down.”

“In what way?” Eddie asks as he comes back to sit down with a martini.

“That awful word in the
Globe
headline. I find it hard to say it myself,” and I realize that I am blushing.

“But did you say it to that reporter?” Joe asks. “If so, you are a brave woman.”

“And the saints come marching in,” Eddie sings, smiling.

“Watching all sorts of women come and go in the store, hearing their stories … I have learned a lot,” I say. “I have changed, I guess. Some people would say not for the better. By the way, have you had to erase any obscenities lately?” They exchange a look. “I have to know,” I say. “Come on, tell me.”

“Only two or three,” Joe says. “It’s always the same crap.”

I had felt so happy a moment before but now the reality hits me. Other people are being involved, other people at risk.

“Joe is a black belt,” Eddie says, smiling happily. “One day we caught some young men at it and one of them called us a dirty name, and the next thing he knew he was flat on the sidewalk. What a moment! I had always hoped to see Joe do his stuff. I wouldn’t have missed it … his face. Total amazement.”

“Wow!” I say. “The stuffed-shirt lawyer who runs my business affairs came by and he wants me to have some fancy security system installed. Ha! I’ve just had an idea. Maybe it could be rigged to pour water on the head of anyone painting the windows. That and a siren going off at the same time.” It is all so ludicrous suddenly that I am laughing almost hysterically. “Oh my,” I sigh, “laughter is the only way I can handle all this,” and now, because I really have had enough of it, “Let’s change the subject.”

I want to know more about Joe and Eddie, how they met and how long they have lived together. “It was so amazing the way you turned up to help me out, out of the blue like that. I can’t get over it.”

“Pure self-interest,” says Joe. “We need a bookstore like yours, people like you. The neighborhood is changing. I suppose gentrification is a dirty word because it is putting workers out of some housing. But, on the other hand, the dreariness is beginning to be diluted, thank God.”