The Education of Harriet Hatfield (19 page)

“What is your word then?”

“Goons, gross goons.”

“Oh.”

“I see that even my vocabulary is changing lately. Yes, gross goons. It is a comfort to be well insured. Thanks, Jonathan.”

After his call I fiddle around with ideas about how we might advertise the store and it comes to me that so far not one of my Smith classmates has dropped in, and there are certainly many in this area. Once Andrew has invented a logo I am going to have something printed that I can send out to my class and those of the year ahead of me and the year after. Of course they are all grandmothers by now but a few at least should be interested in a women’s bookstore. I am jotting down some notes about what to say when a young woman I have not seen before pushes open the door. She is a round young person, which I like, and is dressed in a dark blue coat and white turtleneck sweater. She smiles at me shyly. I think she may be a nurse.

“I wonder,” she asks, “if I might sit down for a few minutes. I’ve been up all night and thought the walk back from Central Square would do me good, but I feel rather weak in the knees suddenly.”

“Sit right down, you are welcome,” I say at once. I am dying to ask what she has been doing all night but don’t quite dare. I say, “It’s a little early for tea, but I’ll be glad to share a cup with you. You do look worn out.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be on my way in a minute.” She looks at me for a second, asking herself, perhaps, whether to say more. Then she looks down at her gloved hands and says, “You see, the person I was with all night died an hour ago. I’m coming from the hospital.”

“How awful for you.”

“No, it is a blessing.”

“Are you a nurse then?”

“No, I work for Hospice. I’ve been on this case for months, going every day to look after Mrs. Dolan, whom I grew to love. She was afraid of dying alone, you see.”

“Didn’t she have any family?”

“Only a brother in Los Angeles and he couldn’t come. She’s been in the hospital for three days. We tried hard to keep her at home till the end. That’s what Hospice aims to do when possible, as you probably know.”

“How hard it must be for you, helping people to die. I do admire you. May I ask your name? Mine is Harriet Hatfield.”

“Mine is Bettina Morgan. You are kind to listen when you surely have better things to do.”

“I am honored to hear all you care to tell,” I say rather lamely.

“I suppose a lot of women come who find it rather wonderful to be in a bookstore like this, where there are books about themselves.”

“That’s my idea—and it seems to be working out. It’s quite an adventure, as you can imagine, for an old person like me.”

This remark makes Bettina smile. “There are days when I feel very old and I am only thirty.”

“Tell me a little about Mrs. Dolan. I would like to know about her and this last night.”

“She was nearly eighty and very frail. She had lung cancer but I think her heart may have just given out. She had the hands of a woman who has worked hard all her life. She had worked in a laundry, then nursed her husband after a stroke. Her hands were crippled by arthritis so it was not easy to hold one and not hurt. But I did learn and held her in my arms when she was afraid.” The story pours out and I listen. In these few minutes I have come to like Bettina a lot. “I’m tired because what I did all night was sing to her.”

“You sang all night? How did you ever do it?”

“I don’t know, but when I stopped she would reach out and touch my sleeve so I knew I must try to remember another song. I sang everything you can imagine from hymns to popular songs. I sang ‘Let It Be’—you know that one Paul McCartney sang. I sang it several times. Mrs. Dolan’s eyes were closed but she was listening and I knew she was by that tug at my sleeve.”

“Where were the nurses all those hours?”

“Oh, they came and went. You know how it is. Her heart was being monitored. They looked at me sometimes as though I were crazy, but I paid no attention. Mrs. Dolan and I were alone on that journey together. That’s all that mattered to me, you know.”

“I don’t know, but I can imagine. The only death I have been close to was the friend I lived with for many years and she died of a heart attack in a few minutes. It was a terrible shock. We had no time to say goodbye. It was like a cliff falling into the sea without any warning.” I had not talked with anyone before about this and it surprises me a little to be doing so now.

“That is a good death for the one who goes, isn’t it? We see so many hard deaths. You must take it as a blessing,” and Bettina looks at me shyly but with understanding.

I feel tears pricking my eyes. “Yes, it is, but the survivors are not prepared. I sometimes think I haven’t even begun to come to terms with it. I simply went on into a wholly new life without looking back. I have not yet mourned, not really.”

“Mourning takes time, too,” says Bettina, clasping and unclasping her still gloved hands. “I really loved Mrs. Dolan,” she says. “I hope I helped her go easily at the end. Her heart stopped, you see, and since her eyes were closed I only knew she had gone when the nurse who was monitoring her came running in and took her pulse.” Now quite suddenly the round face crumples and she brushes tears away. “It seems so wrong that her brother, who said he couldn’t come while she was dying, is flying in for the funeral. I can’t understand that. It hurts.”

“I’m going to make us a cup of tea,” I announce, feeling she perhaps needs to be alone for a few minutes. I like this person, I think, as I put the kettle on. She is not sentimental, but she is very aware. I know that by the way she listened to me just now about Vicky. And I am thinking about Caroline, too, and that I am witnessing an extraordinary death, since she has had time to savor her friends, her garden, her sons, her whole life as she slowly leaves them, but that is because Caroline is such a remarkable woman, containing as she does a fulfilled life, even to her love of a woman.

I bring the tea in and a few cookies for it looks as though Bettina has had no breakfast.

“Thanks. How kind you are,” she says, blowing her nose. Her gloves are lying on the table and she is relaxed, I can see. Before pouring I ask whether I can put a little rum in it and she smiles and says, “Please do.” That means going upstairs and on an impulse I bring Patapouf down with me. She goes right up to Bettina, wagging her tail. Patapouf always knows when I like someone and does not bark.

“Oh, what a darling dog,” Bettina says, rubbing behind the dog’s ears in a way that is rewarded with some licking. “Is she very old?”

“About fifteen, so we don’t have all the time in the world.”

“She must be a comfort.”

“Oh she is. I don’t know what I would do without her. When things get tough she calms me, balances me. Animals are so easy to make happy.”

“Compared to people, yes, I know. I wish we could have a dog, but I have to be away from the house so much and my friend Helen works too, so we have a cat instead. He is very beautiful, a black cat, and we call him Patrick.”

“I have been wanting to ask how you manage the transition. It must be strange when a patient dies and you are left dangling, and then I suppose very soon are called to someone else. So I am glad to hear you have a friend.”

And I am thinking, here, as in the case of Joe and Eddie, is an exemplary life. If only more people knew this! If all the labels and fears and stereotypes could be exchanged for a few exemplary lesbian or gay lives, the actual lives lived, what a difference it might make.

“I read that interview with you in the
Globe
. I suppose that is why I felt drawn here, to stop here today,” Bettina says, and having said so, is too shy to say more. “The thing is that the people we serve are so different one from another. I suppose that helps in a way. I think my next case will be a spastic boy about twelve and the problem we have there is the parents. They have been quite good at taking care of him, but now he is dying of cancer of the marrow of the bones, they are finding facing that very, very hard. His mother looks at him and starts crying, you know.”

“And you are going to walk right into that frightfully difficult situation. You are brave!”

“Not till next week,” Bettina says, brushing aside praise. “It is my life, after all. It is what I have chosen—and perhaps it has chosen me. Who knows?”

“I am awfully glad you came in today,” I say, “and that for once we have not been interrupted by an eruption of customers. That does happen, you know.”

“I expect so.” I see her hesitate before she asks, “Are you really being threatened by ignorant people, and how do you handle that? That seems to me much harder than what I handle—very much harder.”

“Why do you say that? I go along doing my job as best I can.”

“Exactly, and that takes guts,” Bettina says.

“It’s the other side of the coin that brought you here this morning. I have no regrets.”

“But you live alone.”

“I have Patapouf.”

“An army with banners,” and Bettina laughs, stroking Patapouf’s head. She is lying under the table. “Well, I must get myself together,” she says, putting on her gloves. “What shall I take home with me to read?”

“The Stones of Ibarra.”
It pops out as the perfect book for Bettina. “Here you are.” I take it from the shelf. I see her hesitate when she looks at the price. “It’s a present,” I say. “I want to give it to you.”

“Oh my, you’ll never make money if you give books away.”

“Take it,” I say, slipping it into a paper bag.

“How can I thank you for this morning and the book?”

“By coming back and telling me about that boy later on.”

“Oh, I shall.”

“But now get some sleep, Bettina. Curl up with Patrick.”

“I’ll do that, but first I want to play a record, the Fauré Requiem, for Mrs. Dolan.”

And now she is gone. I am amazed that she has chosen one of my favorite records, amazed and pleased. Bettina is one of the best things that has happened lately, I say to myself. No wonder she feels an affinity with that tender beautiful music. It is like her.

16

After locking up at six one evening I take Patapouf for a brief walk. Now in October the days are getting shorter and it is nearly dark. Patapouf is in the mood to linger and smell one small area like a guard dog looking for cocaine. But it is restful not to hurry, to observe the people coming home with their lunch boxes, the students on bicycles weaving in and out of the traffic, old women carrying packages of food, and that makes me think of the old woman who used to come and sit waiting for her bus. I have never asked her name, and I wonder whether she is ill or her husband worse. I should have asked her to sign the book but I forgot. In fact I don’t believe anyone has signed it since the opening. Stupid negligence on my part. Tomorrow I must take a look, and if Joan is forgetting too, we must put it in a prominent place and try to remember. It will eventually become a mailing list. I intend to send out a monthly bulletin recommending certain appropriate new books.

I am thinking about the store rather happily as Patapouf and I wander along. And I am wondering why it is that I am only afraid when I am locked inside the house. I sometimes take Patapouf out quite late in the dark and am not afraid at all. I suppose inside I feel I am a target and more or less defenseless in spite of all the locks. What is going to happen? Things appear to have quieted down since the wood was stolen. No more anonymous letters or window writing. It is too hopeful to think the goons may have moved away themselves. No, that is not possible.

Several times I notice young men go past; just now two do, nudge each other, and laugh when they see me with Patapouf. Are they the criminals? One has red hair, a freckled face, a black leather jacket, heavy high boots. The other has a crew cut and wears a brown sweatshirt with a death’s head painted on it, jeans, and dirty white sneakers. Is it worse to imagine your enemy than not to imagine him? I have not before ever considered a person on the street as a possible enemy.

The neighborhood has become familiar. It is beginning to feel like my neighborhood. I am happy here. I love being among so many different kinds of people. On this walk I have seen no one in any way like me or our Chestnut Hill neighbors.

I wonder now whether Angelica is really so upset that she has deliberately not called in days. Is that possible? How can I lose such a truly kind and bountiful friend, simply by being myself, the self I have been through all the years. She must have known about me and Vicky, after all. Oh, but we were safe and Vicky, at least, notable. Now I am dangerous, marked like a wild animal some people wish to exterminate because the species is accused of killing sheep: a coyote. Who does the lesbian threaten?

I have my head down thinking these disagreeable thoughts and am startled when Chris stops me, and Mary is behind her.

“We hoped to find you,” Chris says, “because we are going back to El Salvador tomorrow. We wanted to say goodbye, but we couldn’t make it before six.”

“Oh my goodness. You are leaving tomorrow? I can’t believe it!” I can’t bear to have them go—and especially into danger. “Walk back with me. Come up to my apartment and have a drink. Can you?”

“We’d love to,” Chris says at once.

“We still have to pack, Chris,” Mary reminds her.

“Maybe you shouldn’t, but please do.” And after exchanging a look, they agree and we walk quickly back to the store.

“How fine to live over the store,” says Mary as they look around while I pour out sherry and open a tin of nuts.

“I thought so until the threats began, and I think so now really because I can hear anyone trying to break in and call the police.”

“And you still don’t know who ‘they’ are?” Chris asks.

“I have no idea.” It is not the time to talk about me and I raise my glass. “Let me drink to good luck on your perilous journey.”

“We are anxious to get back,” Mary says quickly.

“We are so afraid the villagers who have come back to the ruined village will be attacked again,” Chris adds.

I can feel the tug inside these two, the pressure to go where the need is, a need they have seen and know well. “I imagine your presence itself helps. The Duarte soldiers may hesitate if they know you are nuns,” and then I remember, “but that didn’t stop whoever killed the Maryknoll sisters. How stupid can I be?”