The Education of Harriet Hatfield (13 page)

It is Eddie who tells how they met seven years ago when he was a student at Rindge Technical School. Joe was for a time the school psychiatrist and had helped Eddie leave home where his father, an alcoholic, used to beat him mercilessly and had nearly killed him when he found out that he was gay.

I listen, once more confronted by how sheltered a life mine has been. These two men are very different. What holds them together? “Seven years …,” I murmur.

“People think gays pick men up all the time. Some do, of course,” Joe explains, “but for some unknown reason, Eddie and I have felt happy being together, solidly happy.”

“Your apartment makes one aware of that somehow,” although even as I say it, I wonder whether it is not almost too neat, self-consciously so. “But are you both such good housekeepers? You put me to shame.”

“It’s a kind of outer skin,” Joe says, “the apartment I mean. A kind of safety maybe, a way of living at the center of all we want from our lives, which are, of course, way out in the wilderness from society’s point of view.”

When I am safely in bed at home I realize that I have never before been with people in a social situation where I could talk as freely, rarely, if ever, felt cherished and applauded in the way those men had, so in a single evening they have become, amazingly enough, family. It is extraordinary to feel that way, to be knit together so fast, so soon.

I have much to think about and sleep very little all night. Twice Patapouf bursts into loud barks and that is unsettling, but nothing sinister happens. When Vicky and I were living together as lovers I never felt the slightest guilt or apprehension. It is true what Fred said, that she was such a powerful woman in her own right nobody questioned her life-style, as it is now called, or mine for living with her. The odd thing is that I felt no guilt or apprehension then, but since the word lesbian has been fastened on me like the “A” on Hester Prynne’s dress, I do feel apprehension and if not exactly guilt, some self-questioning, although I am certainly not leading a lesbian life at present.

What this whole affair has done for me so far is to open me up for the first time to what society is doing to those who do live such lives, often in perfect dignity; contributors to the civilization as we are, how easy it is, still, to be unnerved, to be riddled by self-doubt, and in some cases, self-hatred. Joe, later on in our talk over dinner, had said something about how many of his clients were wracked by guilt and fear, about how enormously important it is for them to find a role model, to be witnesses of an ongoing partnership. “And the problem is,” he had added, “that so many such partnerships stay hidden.”

And I had said, “That’s why I decided I had to come out, since I have, comparatively speaking, so little to lose.”

“Only your store, only your life,” Eddie had said. “Don’t you see why the people turned out today to honor you?”

10

I am rather surprised when Andrew shows up this morning, which is Sunday of course. Ten years younger than I, a personnel manager for one of the high-tech establishments along Route 128, apparently always cheerful with a quirky sense of humor, it is strange that he has not married, but as he seems perfectly happy in his bachelor apartment, no one worries, and he is adored by his nieces and nephews. He and I have never been close, partly because he was intimidated by Vicky and perhaps did not like her or understand why I did. So it was a surprise when he came to the opening of the store and got quite absorbed in reading off in a corner. I have not seen him since, until today.

“What brings you here?” I ask when he has flung off his coat and sits drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. He looks at me rather too intently for my comfort behind his thick glasses.

“Hot stuff in the
Globe
yesterday. So, my revered elder sister is a lesbian!” This comes from his exterior, always merry self and I know very well it is just a ploy.

“Quite frankly, Andrew, I dislike that word.”

“And you are not alone. If you used it on purpose, if you came out, as they say, you are the bravest woman I have ever known. If it was not your doing, then you are the greatest fool.”

I have to laugh, it all seems so senseless suddenly. “Probably a little of both. A brave fool. No, not exactly. You see, I am being attacked by these louts who live around here and are about as tolerant as crocodiles. I got mad enough to tell the truth. Some of the women who come here are lovers and even tell me so, but not all by any means. It’s not in my mind to be labeled as a lesbian bookstore, but a store for all kinds of women and, Andrew, all kinds of women come here. So now there is a dilemma and I am hoist on my own petard.”

I observe Andrew, who seems not to be really listening, bowed over his cup of coffee, playing with the spoon, which makes me aware not for the first time what beautiful hands Andrew has, the hands of a sculptor or a pianist. “What’s on your mind so early in the morning?” I say, for I sense that he has not come with condolences but with something more important to himself.

“It sounds corny,” he says, “but when I read that piece I had quite a strange reaction. I felt that I had a sister.”

“You have always had a sister, though you never paid much attention to me.”

“Vicky bothered me,” he says. “You seemed so safe and protected from all that was going on in the world around you, the emergence of a feminist movement, the attacks on the patriarchy, with which, by the way, I heartily agree.”

“I’ve learned a lot since Vicky died,” I say.

“So now I have a sister,” Andrew looks me suddenly in the eye with that troubling intensity with which he stared at me when he first sat down. “I can tell her that I am gay. I can at last tell someone in the family who can understand. Heigh-ho!”

Over the years it had occurred to me, of course, but then I had brushed the thought aside. “Well, thank you, Andrew. That’s one piece of good news that has come out of the
Globe
article.”

“You call it good news to have a gay brother?”

“It’s quite wonderful! I know it sounds crazy but I have been lonely, too, while all this bore in on me and I had to face all that I had not been willing to face as long as Vicky was alive. Emancipation is all very well, and healthy no doubt, but it is lonely, Andrew, isn’t it?”

“Damned lonely,” he says. “I’m sick and tired of being the odd man at dinner parties, of being teased by Fred about why I don’t marry.”

“Fred would find it hard to understand,” I say quickly. I am thinking aloud for a moment and it pops out. “As far as the words go, ‘gay’ seems to me even worse than ‘lesbian.’”

“Maybe,” Andrew says, stretching out his long legs as though he were suddenly at ease with me and scratching Patapouf’s ears while she groans with pleasure. “For some reason ‘lesbian’ seems primarily sexual.”

“Oh dear, yes, I suppose so. I suppose that is why I have found it so hard, next to impossible, to say it aloud.”

“We were brought up to total silence on such matters, weren’t we?”

Do I dare ask now what Andrew’s life is really like? Is he happy? Has he made his peace with his own self? Has he ever had a more or less permanent love affair? Asking myself these questions while he and Patapouf carry on their dialogue, I decide to tell him about Eddie and Joe.

“Last night I had one of the best times of my life, Andrew. You may not know that when obscenities were first defacing the store windows two men turned up one morning, saw them, and washed them off. Fred was actually here and met them before I did. And since then they have kept a lookout on their morning jog around the neighborhood and just clean up for me without ever mentioning it. Last night they invited me to dinner at their place. My first outing since the
Globe
revelation. They were absolutely dear, cooked a wonderful dinner. Eddie, the younger man, is the cook and made me feel loved and honored because I had come out, willingly or not.”

“What do they do?” Andrew asks.

“Joe is a psychiatrist and met Eddie when Eddie was a student in mechanics at Rindge, helped him get away from a sadistic father, I gather, and they have lived together for years. Eddie is an auto mechanic. But the point is the marvelous sense of community I felt with them, the relief of being able to be open. It was heartwarming, Andrew. And such a beautiful apartment, austere and elegant. I was impressed.” It spills out and Andrew listens intently but now he is silent, withdrawn, as he has always been with me. “Don’t go away, Andrew.”

“God damn it, Harriet, I’m fifty and I’ve never had a good relationship that lasted. I’m jealous, that’s all.”

“I’m going to ask these new friends up for dinner one of these days. Will you come and meet them?”

“What good would that do?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that we might as well all stick together.”

“I’m a loner, Harriet. You know that. I’ve always been a loner.”

And I remember how when we went off on a picnic
en famille
Andrew always disappeared into the woods or along the shore and seemed to choose not to be part of the fun. And his job, I suspect, is a lonely job, interviewing and selecting people for his firm, and not part of management except in a peripheral way. “I was so pleased that you came to the opening and then really looked at the books, as very few others troubled to do.”

At this Andrew laughs his merry concealing laugh. “I was forced into literacy by my shyness,” he says. “Your friends were certainly supportive that day.”

“Yes, I wonder what they are thinking now and who will be upset by all this. Angelica Lamb unfortunately is. She has been an enormous help, financially and in every other way.”

“Let it rest—it’s Sunday after all.” And we share a rather long silence while he pours himself another cup of coffee.

“Why, then, no permanent relationship? Why the loneliness?”

“All I can think of is Yeats to answer that,” and he recites in his clear deep voice:

“Such body lovers have,

Such exacting breath,

That they touch or sigh.

Every touch they give,

Love is nearer death.

Prove that I lie
.”

I ponder the poem for a minute, trying to fathom what Andrew means by reciting it, how to respond. But I have to plunge in, of course. There is no cutting off this conversation. It has to take us wherever it is going. “But isn’t it passionate love, sexual love, that dies with every touch or sigh? It seems to me a rather romantic vision, Andrew. It seems to me that love, which so often begins with sex, doesn’t end there. Maybe you aren’t willing to grow into that second phase which, I suppose, is friendship.”

He sets his cup down and sits with his arms folded on the table and his chin resting on them, an attitude that strikes me as that of a young boy in despair. But as he says nothing, I press on. “What of friendship?”

“Oh well,” he shrugs, “I had two or three good friends at Exeter. They married, of course. Then I just didn’t seem to belong anymore.”

I wait. I light a cigarette and this gets an instantaneous reaction.

Andrew sits up and says sharply, “You still smoke, Harriet? For God’s sake!”

“I realize I am a public nuisance,” I reply, and can’t help laughing. “It’s the generation gap, Andrew. Women of my generation smoked and still do in private. You will just have to accept that your sister is an addict.”

“I can’t go along with someone who willfully commits suicide.”

“We are not going to separate on that issue,” I say, quite cross suddenly. “For God’s sake yourself!”

“How did you stand Vicky’s domineering all those years?” he asks, dropping the subject of smoking while I puff away.

“I guess it bothered me sometimes, but I truly loved her, Andrew, long past the early romantic years. We got built into each other’s lives. We were rarely apart and the publishing business was extremely absorbing, you know. I felt we were partners.”

Andrew lifts an eyebrow. “But she was the boss.”

“And why not? Someone has to be the boss.”

“Well, you are generous, I must say. I would have minded.”

“Were you never in love with someone you wanted to be with day and night, to share a life with, Andrew?”

“Oh yes, but they were always married and quite content to have it that way. Anyway,” he closes his right hand into a fist, “I’m on the way out. Fifty is simply too old.”

“What an awful world then.”

“You know, Harriet, I did not come here this morning to weep but to rejoice and praise.” I sense him willing himself up from the darkness for my sake and I respect him for it. And yet we seem to be in hell together. And as though she senses that Patapouf gives a low growl and then goes to the door and barks. “Good old Patapouf, she’ll defend you, in your awful world, won’t she?”

“But it’s not an awful world, Andrew. I’m happier than I have ever been. I know it sounds strange, but the bookstore is the most interesting thing I have ever imagined. Even the attacks challenge me to be more and to understand more.”