The Education of Harriet Hatfield (32 page)

“Eddie or Joe?”

“Joe, of course. He watches his lover die because of sexual encounters that didn’t mean anything at the time. He sees a man committing suicide, one might say, in brief moments of lust. Joe has become bitter inside, but so far he has held the demons down. He’s a disciplined person. I do admire him, Harriet.”

“But somehow you identify with Eddie—that is what I sense. I may be wrong.”

“I suppose I love Eddie. He is like a piece of me. I told you when we first talked about my world that I don’t want a permanent relationship, that I prefer to pick someone up for one night.” Saying this he gives a short bark which is, I presume, a laugh. “Not possible these days. Too dangerous.”

“I have to admit, Andrew, that I don’t understand it and never will.” I soften this by quickly adding, “But I think I do understand that there has been an earthquake in your orderly surroundings.”

“Yes. It was time for an earthquake.” He smiles at me at last, coming back to normal, some of the stress melted away for the moment. “I’m learning quite a lot, Harriet. A lot that is painful, as you can imagine.”

“Yes, I can. I’m learning a lot, too, these days.”

“My remarkable sister.” He is smiling at me in an almost fatherly way, as if I were the younger one.

“I have observed that people treat me often as you seem to, as a slightly retarded person who manages somehow to live a normal life. There are liabilities to being an innocent.”

My response is not what Andrew expects and he is taken aback. “I didn’t mean it that way, for heaven’s sake! What’s got into you, Harriet?” He studies my face very intently. “I think you are one of the bravest people I ever encountered, and I honor you for it.” Now he smiles a mischievous smile. “Fred, of course, does think you are mildly off your rocker.”

“All I can say, Andrew, is that most of what I hoped would happen for the bookstore is happening—I mean as a human endeavor. I am still ignorant about a lot of things I should know, still haven’t read two-thirds of what I should, but it is all immensely interesting. I am never bored and, as I said just now, I am learning a lot about other people and about myself.”

“And what more can one ask?” He is still smiling at me, but then he frowns and settles back in his chair and rubs his forehead. “I’m not as lucky as you are, Harriet, for what I am learning about myself is not very pretty, I must say. Getting to know Eddie and Joe is forcing me to change everything or almost everything about the way I am living and have lived. It’s almost gruesome.”

“Really? Of course growth is painful. You are being forced to grow, aren’t you? It seems like a religious conversion. Forgive me if that sounds stupid. It’s what happens when one begins to think aloud. But what’s so good is that we can think aloud with each other. Would you ever have imagined that when you put thumbtacks in my chair and knocked down my snowman?”

“It’s awesome to think how horrible I was.” But both images as we remember them make us burst into laughter.

“Pretty hard to take.”

“You used the word ‘conversion.’ It’s not unlike that in a way. I am confronted over there by something I have never imagined possible.”

“What? True love?”

“Not exactly. The phrase that haunts me is ‘exemplary lives.’ On the whole gay men do not lead exemplary lives. There is too much tension about sex. The drive to indulge that side at the expense of every other is too powerful, I suppose. Things like Joe’s fidelity are new to me and the responsibility gays have toward each other. Joe is such a compassionate person, Harriet. I watch him with Eddie, the way he takes Eddie in his arms and leans Eddie’s head against his shoulder and just stays there for a long time, and sometimes Eddie goes to sleep. Sleep is the best present he can be given now. Sometimes when I am reading aloud he falls asleep and I keep right on for fear he may wake up.” Now Andrew’s eyes narrow and he leans his chin on his right fist. “When he wakes, all hell breaks loose. Pain is always there, and fear, the fear of dying. Sometimes he cries and I wonder when Joe will ever get home to rescue me. That’s how selfish and inadequate I am.”

“It sounds to me as though you have become as necessary as some relieving drug. What would they do without you, Andrew?”

“That’s what Joe says, but for Eddie I am mostly a receptacle for bitterness and woe. To me he can let off steam and curse when he wants to.”

“And that spares Joe. They are lucky to have you and I think you must occasionally put a laurel on your head and admit that. Otherwise you would be a saint. Who wants that?”

“I don’t, that’s for sure. What I want is the kind of love they have but I don’t suppose I’ll ever find it.” Now he looks up, a bright quick glance at me. “You and Vicky had it, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I think we did, but it wasn’t perfect, Andrew—no relationship is.”

“You must miss her terribly.”

“I do.” I wonder whether to go in a little more deeply to prevent Andrew from building up an illusion of perfect love. Why not be honest? “Especially at night, or when I am dying to talk something over, I feel awfully lonely. Now that Patapouf is not here—she was the last link between us—it is worse. But, Andrew, I am more myself, I am more of a whole person now than when I was a kind of appendage to Vicky. She dominated our life and I willingly went along with it. We were happy and peaceful, but we were also shut off from a lot of things. So it is not so much mourning and missing her now as building and moving forward into what feels like my real life.”

“I am too old for all that,” Andrew says. “I’m an old man, Harriet.”

“Nonsense, you’re ten years younger than I am!”

But Andrew is not in the mood for teasing. “Do you really believe that in any successful relationship one person dominates?”

“It looks that way. Joe dominates Eddie, partly because Eddie is so much younger. The strange thing is that I think Mother dominated Father.”

Andrew chuckles, “At least he let her think that was true.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, if the relationship is life-giving for both parties, who cares who dominates?”

“No doubt that is wisdom, but I don’t buy it, Harriet.”

“You sound like your old self, Andrew, always putting your sister down.”

“Frankly I don’t understand how you can say first that Vicky dominated your lives and that seemed perfectly fine, and then say that you are now able to live your real life. It doesn’t make sense. What is your real life, anyway?”

Spoken like that, so rationally, I have to admit that it does not make sense, but I can try, for my own sake as well as his, to answer the last question. “I’ll try to tell you, Andrew. Maybe my real life has to do with other people, with being available to other people, with stretching to meet lives totally apart from mine. Here in the store there are no walls. Vicky and I lived very happily not caring what was happening beyond our walls, you see. Maybe we did not want to know, did not want to get involved …” I must be honest, I tell myself. “At least Vicky did not want life in any disturbing shape to knock at our door.”

“She was quite a person,” Andrew muses. “She terrified me, of course. I expect she didn’t much like having your family around.”

“I think she may have been a little jealous. After all, she was an only child, and in a funny way she demanded that I be an only child.”

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

“One thing I am learning is that people are stranger and more mysterious than one can imagine.” I am tempted to tell him about Rose Donovan but feel I had better wait till Fred and Jonathan and possibly another lawyer have met with Earl. Not telling Andrew cramps my style. I hate not telling him, and he no doubt senses some barrier and gets up to go. “I hate to see you go, Andrew. At least give me a hug.” The hug is warm and very satisfactory. “Whatever I may say, I do get awfully lonely. So when you come it’s always good and nourishing. I guess it’s lonely for you, Andrew.”

“I don’t know why.”

“Because they are two and you are one, but you are the needed one. Not easy, I should think.”

“It’s hell,” he says, letting me go. “So long, Harriet. Enjoy your real life.”

28

After I’m in bed Earl calls to say there will be a meeting at Jonathan’s office to hear and discuss what he has to report—at eleven o’clock tomorrow. I am glad to think that something will be decided, but I wonder what, and how Rose Donovan and her sons can be tamed or removed, at least for a while, from the vicinity. It flashes through my mind that Joe would be a wonderful person to talk with her, but I guess it is too much to lay that on him at the moment. I go to sleep finally, uneasy and undecided.

I decide to be a little late and call Fred to warn him and explain that I’ve heard the whole strange story from Earl so there’s no point in my being on time at the meeting. “He is quite a wizard to have found out all that he has. I am impressed and awfully glad you and Jonathan persuaded me to get a detective.”

So when I walk in at a quarter to twelve I find the three men I know and a fourth, a Mr. Firestone, who turns out to be a lawyer Jonathan asked to join us to “give us his wisdom,” as Jonathan explains. Firestone is a heavyset, square-faced, owlish man.

“Proud to meet you, Miss Hatfield,” he says as we shake hands.

“I don’t know why, but I’m glad you are,” I say. We are seated in a semicircle around Jonathan’s huge desk. “Isn’t this an amazing story Earl has unearthed?” I say to Jonathan, and then turn to Fred, who is on my left, and ask him, “Can you believe it?”

“You have stepped on a hornet’s nest all right,” Fred answers, “but then you have been crazily honest.”

“Let’s get down to business,” Jonathan interrupts. It is not the place for family squabbling.

Mr. Firestone turns to me. “We must, I feel, if possible, keep this whole business out of the courts.”

“I wouldn’t get a fair trial? Is that it?” I am really furious inside. Here we are back in the maze of homophobia. It makes me sick.

“Well”—Firestone’s “well” is a long drawn-out “well”—“I wouldn’t say that, but some of the material that would have to come up is inflammatory. Why take a risk?”

“But if we don’t go to court, what do we do?” I ask. “I do hope those devilish boys will get their comeuppance.”

“It is Rose Donovan who is the real problem,” Jonathan says.

“Luckily,” Fred interrupts, “from what Earl says, she is terrified now and is getting her punishment from the community. Her neighbors have rejected her because she shot your dog. Who would have believed that Patapouf’s death, poor thing, would prove to be such a help?”

“What can we do?” I ask Firestone. He appears to be in command, undaunted by Jonathan’s formidable desk. “All I want is to get the whole thing settled so I can go on with my work in peace. We are just about making a go of the bookstore, but there is a lot to be done. This whole mess has been distracting.”

“To put it mildly,” Firestone says, smiling broadly. “Many women in your place would have moved away.”

“Maybe,” I answer, “but I think most women would have decided to tough it out as I have. If Rose Donovan were me I feel sure she would do as I am doing, not give in, not be scared off, stick to her guns.”

The word “guns” causes a ripple of amusement, but it is brief as Jonathan proposes that Firestone pay a call on Mrs. Donovan and put the fear of God into her. That must include her sending the boys to his office within twenty-four hours. Otherwise, Firestone will make it clear that we have evidence, witnesses, and are prepared to go to court.

“I’m still puzzled,” I say, as I try to sort out this plan. It sounds a little too easy, maybe, to work. “Who first bought the so-called obscene book and took it to the police? Either Joan or I would have been aware, I think, that this was no ordinary customer. Something would have given her or him away.”

“The police must know,” Earl says, “and of course I did not talk to them.”

“When Joan and I asked, they were very evasive. We got nowhere. I remember how I felt when we walked back—cross, put down, and treated like a crazy old woman.”

“When the wood was stolen,” Fred asks, “how did the police behave?”

“As usual, voluminous notes were taken, but nothing whatever was done, as far as I know. By then, of course, Rose Donovan was egging those boys on. I can’t help laughing when I realize how infuriated she must have been when the wood was replaced the very next day.” I am laughing to think of it. “Whatever has gone wrong I have to admit people have been supportive and kind. That’s one reason I want to stay. People have invested in the shop. They feel it is theirs as well as mine. Can you understand?” I ask Firestone.

“I am beginning, perhaps, to understand that your endeavor is rather more complex and more interesting than just an ordinary bookstore.” He directs this remark to Fred actually, although it is addressed to me.

“Thanks. But, Mr. Firestone, are we getting near to a solution? Since Patapouf’s death there is a less hostile atmosphere in the neighborhood, but is anything going to be settled?”

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Firestone asks, before he answers my question.

“Of course not. I smoke myself.”

“Like one of these?” He offers me an elegant cigar case.

“Well, I’m not Amy Lowell, I’m afraid, but thanks just the same.”

“I’d like to see what I can do rather quietly behind the scenes if you all feel I can be trusted. I am pretty sure we have them on the run, you know. They may even be glad to be given an out, since they are now the hunted and the despised, and, except for Rose Donovan, they appear to be cowards.”

“By the way, Hal,” Jonathan says then, “we’ve got to get hold of that gun. She can’t hang around with a gun any longer.”

“That,” Firestone answers with absolute certainty, “I know the police will act on. Stupid as they have been, they are aware that a loose gun in the hands of someone not quite sane is a threat to them as well as to anyone else.”

“What I would like to see,” I say suddenly, although it has been on my mind since yesterday, “is Rose Donovan freed from her son and his wife and baby who are making her life hell, from what Earl told me yesterday.”