The Education of Harriet Hatfield (2 page)

“I wonder what she did envisage,” John Fremont murmured. “She was such a definite woman herself.”

“Vicky never felt more at home than in a bookstore, you know,” I ventured, “and actually our library will be an asset as I start building up an inventory … if that is the word.”

“You are not intending to sell the library?” Mr. Fremont was acutely upset and red in the face.

“Oh not the important first editions, not the books we loved, but there might be five thousand or more accumulated over the years and all in good condition.”

“I can see that you have very clear ideas about all this,” Mr. Fremont admitted grudgingly, “but you have no business experience, after all.”

“I intend to hire an accountant, a business manager, whatever it is called.”

“Very good, but you can expect, from what I hear, to lose money for at least five years.”

“Where did you hear that?” Fred asked.

“I have made it my business to look into things.”

At this I glanced over at Fred, who had taken out his pipe and was busy filling it. “It’s going to take months to get work done in the house and it’s my intention to make a survey of women’s bookstores in various cities, talk to the managers, get some idea what the special problems and assets are. Do that while workmen are busy …”

“It’s to be a women’s bookstore, is it?”

“Yes.”

It was Fred who had asked the question, puffing a cloud of delicious sweet hay smell from his pipe, but I sensed at once a certain chill in the air emanating from both these men.

“What in hell is a women’s bookstore? Books have no gender, do they?”

“Oh Fred,” I winced, remembering all the times he had put me down when I wanted to ride a boy’s bicycle, when I played Hamlet in a school production—always, it seemed, when I wanted to do something women were not supposed to do. He is five years older than I and his power always has been in his ability to make me feel ridiculous in some way. But at the same instant I realized with a sense of triumph that I had gone beyond his ironies now because I had money. I had real power to do what I wanted to do, regardless of what anyone might say.

And I plunged in forcefully. “The women’s bookstores are the equivalent these days of men’s clubs, I suppose. Places where women can talk to each other, find sustenance, and come to some idea of who they really are.”

“And complain about how insensitive and brutal men like your brother are, I presume.” Fred blew out a cloud of smoke.

There they were, already, I thought, two men who have no idea what I am up to and already resent whatever it may be. “Sorry, but my mind is made up. I know what I want to do and I am going to do it.”

“Thanks to Victoria’s money,” said Mr. Fremont.

“Let me tell you something, Mr. Fremont. For thirty years I helped Vicky run her business. I kept the household going. I made the garden. I ran her errands. I considered myself, and I was, an active helpmeet. I have earned that money, and Vicky, I feel sure, would be the first to back this adventure of the bookstore.”

“Are you so sure?” Fred asked, putting on now that familiar mask of knowing it all. “I did not get the impression that Vicky was a feminist.”

That was, and he knew it, a body blow, for Vicky had been rather violently antifeminist. Like many powerful women with successful careers she was apt to identify with men rather than women and felt a little superior, perhaps, to women. “Any woman who proves that she can do successfully what men do, in her case running a publishing house, is by her action rather than her belief, a feminist.” It was said vehemently out of my own convictions, but once said, I saw the humor of it, and laughed. “No feminist she, but don’t you see she taught me to be one by being what she was?”

“My little sister is growing up,” Fred said then.

“Yes, Fred, she is,” and I looked him straight in the eye.

“It is going to be an interesting experiment, Harriet, and I wish you well, wish you what your heart desires.”

That was my first confrontation about the bookstore. And I felt that I had won, won at least my own self-respect. How long would it be before I could put my dream to the test?

It soon became clear to me that I am not a practical person, so at times in the next year I was in a state of panic because of a whole lot of business affairs that had to be concluded. Here I have to admit that Mr. Fremont was a helpful watchdog. The hardest thing was breaking up our house, selling furniture, for instance. But I kept Vicky’s big desk for myself, a kind of anchor for me in the bookstore part of the house, and was able to furnish my apartment upstairs very comfortably.

Angelica Lamb stepped in with an excellent suggestion of a young architect to draw up plans for the bookstore. Most of our friends were supportive even though most of them had no real sympathy with what I wanted to do. Angelica really behaved like a sister and without insisting made several other good suggestions. One was to draw people in with something other than books—cheese and wine, for instance. But I disagreed with her on that. I felt sure that once the shop existed and could be seen it would draw women in little by little. I also balked at her idea that I might have poetry readings, for I am not very interested in poetry. Vicky was, and I always felt ashamed that I just could not react as she did. In college at Smith I had majored in history and I had been fascinated for years by all that was coming out about “herstory,” how much had been buried about women’s lives in the past and was now being discovered.

Slowly my rather vague ideas were coming into focus. There must be a table or set of shelves devoted to what has become a kind of canon in the women’s study programs. There must be a large selection of paperbacks, of course.

But even Angelica raised doubts about the emphasis on women. “Why does it have to be limited at all? A good bookstore should be open to all literature,” she felt.

But here I was adamant. In the women’s bookstores I visited in Philadelphia, Washington, and New York I always had the sense not of limitation but of a door that had been opened and always I saw a great variety of customers.

I suppose the hardest day was when Vicky’s and my house in Chestnut Hill was emptied. It had sold for a very handsome price but I had not somehow faced the actual uprooting and every time a piece of furniture was carted off, I felt a sharp pang, as though it had become a piece of my own flesh. Then there was the garden. There would be no garden in the new house, no seed catalogs and plant catalogs; only book catalogs would come to me from now on. Would the new owners care for the garden? the tree peonies? the old-fashioned roses?

“Oh Angelica,” I cried out, “what am I doing?”

“You simply must close it off,” she said, “you can’t look back now. You can’t afford to, Harriet.” And she had dragged me off at five for a drink and supper at her house where I would find dear old Patapouf, our ancient Labrador retriever, waiting for me. Angelica had offered to take her in until I could have her back. And I hugged her and sat down beside her for she was really all that was left of my life with Vicky now. Patapouf licked my face and licked off the tears.

When we had settled down with a drink, Angelica looked across at me and raised her glass, “To the
vita nuova,
” she said, “and a brave woman.”

“Not brave, just driven,” I said, taking a good gulp of scotch.

“I see that, and I sometimes wonder what it is that drives you. You have chosen not to mourn. You have given yourself no time for that.”

This surprised me. Had I not mourned? I had to admit to myself that there was some truth in her remark. “I don’t know. I guess I have been fighting for a life of my own. I know it sounds odd, but really for years I have been living Vicky’s life.”

“You seemed an exemplary couple, you know. I often envied you.” Angelica had not married, was involved in innumerable charities and good works, and took off on long travels until very recently. She was now over seventy, and although she often said she did not feel her age, I had noticed and so had Vicky that she was no longer embarking on journeys to Tibet or Timbuktu.

“I loved Vicky, you know, and when one loves someone living their life does not feel limiting. I enjoyed Vicky’s powerful life and all that it drew into the house. But when she died, Angelica—this will shock you—I did not feel extreme grief.”

“Weren’t you lonely? Didn’t you feel cut in two?”

“Don’t laugh at me, but I think I felt very much as I did when I graduated from Smith, lots of woe at the loss of all that those four years had held and which was gone forever, but also a wild excitement. Now I can begin to live!”

“It is rather odd,” Angelica granted. Her large pale gray eyes opened wide. She had never been a beauty but her unwavering eyes made her rather plain face arresting. “I miss Vicky. She was such a life-giver. When she walked into a room the atmosphere became electric at once.”

“She took over.”

“Yes, I suppose she did.” And she got up. “I must see what Alice is up to in the kitchen. Excuse me for a moment.”

For the rest of the evening we talked about the bookstore. Angelica was looking around for someone who could help me with the business side.

“An efficient mouse is what I need.”

“One who will not take you over?”

“Exactly. One who does not displace very much atmosphere.”

“Joan Hampstead might do …”

“And who is that?”

“Oh, someone I have been on a committee with, the committee for the library, actually. She is a divorcée, needs a job, I think, and most important you would feel at ease with her. A very intelligent mouse.”

And that is exactly what she turned out to be.

But after dinner I was suddenly exhausted and got a taxi to take me to the hotel where I was stowed until I could move into the new place. There I lay in bed, unable to sleep for hours. I missed Patapouf’s warmth beside me though she had become awfully heavy to lift onto the bed. And I wondered in a kind of anguish how I was going to manage this new life, what a lot I still had to prove to myself and the skeptical Mr. Fremont.

3

After all the frustrations and exhilarations of getting ready I sent out invitations to the opening of Hatfield House in early September for September tenth from three to six. Of course my list had had to be chiefly mutual friends of mine and Victoria’s, for whom else did I know? But I had posters stuck up at the Coop and a few other bookstores or shops that would accept one. Joan Hampstead was invaluable in helping do this as I was too shy to ask for myself.

By now we had established an easygoing working relationship and had some good laughs as we unpacked boxes and boxes and filled and arranged the shelves.

“Should I shelve M. F. K. Fisher with cooking, women, or lit.?” Joan asked, and we pondered and agreed that she really included too much else to be placed with Julia Child, the queen of the cooking shelf. I did succeed in my idea of a table filled with the classics of the feminist movement and a dazzling table of art books, biographies, and the newest poetry in Vicky’s honor. This table would be referred to as “Harriet’s Choice.”

I decided on champagne as the easiest and most festive drink, with orange juice in reserve for nondrinkers. Angelica insisted on having a huge cake catered for me, and that meant plates which we dashed out to get, paper napkins, of course, and plastic forks. Since the new owners of the house had not moved in I plundered the garden of chrysanthemums and asters, a glorious bunch in the middle of the round table in front of the fireplace. It was, as I had dreamed, surrounded by four small round leather armchairs where people could sit and read comfortably. I had placed my desk at the back where I could see what was going on but not obtrusively, and at half-past two I am saying a little prayer to Sylvia Beach, my heroine among women booksellers, to hover over us and give us her blessing. But when at three no one has showed, I begin to feel horribly nervous.

“What if no one comes, Joan?”

Patapouf, lying under my desk, gives a growl. No doubt she is dreaming. I had imagined that she would help put people at their ease, be the welcomer, waving her great black plume of a tail, but what if she thinks I am being invaded by hostile strangers? For the moment every single thing so carefully prepared seems to be in peril.

But at this moment a chauffeured limousine stops at the door and, of all people I dread to see, Vivyan Powers emerges and walks in and shakes my hand and turns to Joan, whom I quickly introduce. She is dressed, I note with some surprise, in expensive stone-washed jeans and jacket and purple Reeboks.

“I didn’t know how to dress,” she announces. “After all, what in hell is a women’s bookstore about? What are you up to, Harriet? You look awfully tame in that old tweed suit, I must say.”

“Did you expect a clown of some sort?”

But Vivyan is already wandering around, picking up Adrienne Rich and laying her down like a hot cake. “Am I the first victim?” she asks.

“The first customer so far.”

Patapouf now emerges and goes right over to Vivyan and smells her shoes. “So you’re still alive,” she says, bending down to pat her huge black head.

“Champagne?” Joan brings a glass on a tray.

“Never say no,” Vivyan says, and then, “You must join me so we can have a toast.”

I do not intend to drink so early in the day and am relieved to see two old friends, Professor and Mrs. House, looking in the windows. “Welcome, friends!”

Helen comes in the door first and gives me a hug. “It’s so exciting,” she says, and Harold follows and kisses me on the cheek.

“What an achievement!” he says after I introduce them to Joan and Vivyan. “You really are an amazing woman to have managed all this in less than a year!”

“We’ve worked like dogs,” I say, including Joan.

“Mr. House is brave to dare enter this sanctuary,” Vivyan says.

“Really? But I am much too curious to be held at bay,” he answers, laughing his short bark of a laugh. “Who knows? I might get converted.”

It is really a thrill when at last three young women in very long skirts, peasant blouses, and high boots troop in shyly. “We saw the sign,” one says, “in the Coop.”