The Education of Harriet Hatfield (21 page)

“This time I’m the source of mere astonishment. I gather you are not happy to be having a baby.”

“You know I don’t want one,” she says quite crossly. “I told you when I first came in here that David and I were at loggerheads, that he wants a child and I don’t.”

“That was theoretical, Martha. You could decide not to.”

“Apparently I couldn’t. We use contraceptives of course. So why did this have to happen?”

“Does David know?”

“No.” I take this in and wait for what she might have to say. “I can have an abortion and he will never know.”

Bravado? Was she really considering that? I remember all I have read lately in my explorations of feminist philosophy. Women are too often betrayed by their bodies. But Martha took precautions and still she is caught. What can I say? “Theoretically an abortion makes sense, but actually does it? Inside yourself does it?”

“How can I tell? All I know is that I have work to do and if I have a baby I’ll be caught for years.” She sounds definite and hard.

“If you have an abortion you think you won’t be?”

“Hundreds of women have abortions, Harriet. You are behind the times.”

“Yes, I guess I am. All this is new to me. I have never had to face such a decision.”

“There are advantages to being a lesbian,” says Martha.

“No doubt there are.” I am not going to be drawn into an argument. “Also I am over sixty, so the whole idea is outside my ken.”

“I came to ask you to lend me the money to do it.”

Now I am staggered. I feel a little as though someone had asked me for money to buy cocaine and my reaction is impulsive and quick, “I can’t do that, Martha.”

“Why not? I thought we were friends.”

“You say I am a source of wisdom. I do not believe it is wise to help someone do something one can’t understand or believe in. I don’t want to be part of this, a conspirator behind David’s back. I think you must see Joe. I’ll gladly pay for that, Martha, if you don’t want David to know.” I hurry on, as I see she is red in the face, blushing or furious, I cannot read the message. “Joe at least has knowledge and experience to bring to bear. For all I know he may be on your side.”

“He’s a man, Harriet. Men do not understand anything about a woman’s body and what it does when you cannot control it, when you are being forced against your will into a radical change of life, into bondage.”

Am I wrong? Is she right? Am I imagining she will have regrets when she insists that she won’t? What would Caroline say, I ask myself, she who was so tolerant, so all-accepting? I cannot answer that. I am in the dark.

“You are silent.”

“I’m upset, Martha. If you counted on my help and feel let down, I can’t blame you, but …”

“Very well, you can’t do it. Maybe I just have to fall downstairs or drink something. One reads about such things.”

“I am not responsible, Martha, for whatever you decide to do and you can’t threaten me.” I am angry now myself. I am being blackmailed.

“Please don’t be angry,” and she begins to cry, pulls her hat off the table, and uses it to hide her eyes in a violent gesture, rejecting me.

“Listen, we can find a woman psychiatrist for you. Tomorrow night I’m having dinner with an old friend who will surely know someone you can talk to in confidence. I meant it when I said I would gladly pay for that.”

“I hate you for being so good,” she murmurs. “You always win, don’t you?”

“Oh for God’s sake, Martha, it’s not a matter of winning. And besides, I’m not that good,” and I manage a laugh. “No fool like an old fool.” I feel I have made a complete mess of this conversation out of sheer ignorance.

I am mighty glad when the old bag lady comes in, delighted of course to find Martha there, since she bought that painting. “Oh Mrs. Blackstone, how glad I am to see you again! I brought my ten dollars for you, too. I was going to ask Miss Hatfield to give it to you.”

“I feel bad to take your money,” Martha says, suddenly genuine and herself because, I suppose, her painting is concerned, not her mixed-up life with David. I am delighted when she calls the old woman by name as she takes the ten-dollar bill and says, “Mrs. Stoneworth, this is the first money I have ever earned. Maybe I should frame it.”

“Put it in the bank,” Stoneworth says, “put it in the bank.” She has now settled with two large packages on the side of her chair and looks at her watch. “I have to keep an eye out for the bus.”

“I’ll do that,” Martha volunteers. “I’ll just stand and keep a lookout and help you gather things together when I see it.”

Mrs. Stoneworth sighs, “Thanks, dear,” then she murmurs, “Coffee’s gone up again, hamburger is out of this world.” This, I think, is addressed to me for then she turns around so she can see Martha and tells her that she wakes every morning and sees that painting and thinks about roots. “It starts the day right, makes me feel strong. I don’t know why.”

“I hear it,” Martha cries out, “we’d better get going,” and somehow everything is gathered up and off they go.

I have just time to say to Martha, “I’ll have an address for you day after tomorrow, so be sure to call, won’t you?” But there is always the risk nevertheless that she will rush off and have the abortion, and I wonder whether I should call Joe. But I must not believe for a moment that I am in any way necessary or the source of wisdom poor Martha imagines me to be. I’m not God and it is not for me to take decisions out of her hands.

So I sit down again at my desk and rough out another ad, this time for the Smith
Quarterly
. It would be fun to get some support from my classmates, who have presumably not all read the
Globe
interview.

That has proved to be more troubling than I cared to admit at the time. I notice that something in me cringes still at being identified with a suspect and beleaguered minority. I do not feel comfortable with it. I have to admit this.

18

Here I am at Angelica’s, basking in the open fire with Patapouf lying at my feet, basking in the charm of this big living room I know so well: over the mantel the Sargent portrait of Angelica’s mother as a glowing young woman, a small Vuillard of an intimate interior where a husband and wife appear to be breakfasting, the easy unselfconscious warmth of it all, emerald green velvet armchair and sofa, English chintz pillows here and there and repeated in the flowery curtains. I sit and dream while Angelica is making our drinks in the pantry. When she comes back I look up at her as she hands me my scotch. I smile with the joy of being here. “It’s heaven. I don’t suppose I have felt this laid-back since I opened the store!”

“It’s heaven to have you come. Just like old times,” she says, taking her Dubonnet over to a chair facing mine, “but, darling Harriet, must you use expressions like ‘laid-back’?”

“I saw you wince. Oh dear, well, I am taking in the language of my present environment. That is inevitable.”

“Was it wise,” she asks, after a short pause while we sip our drinks and settle in to the pleasure of the occasion, “I mean wise to try to educate through a feminist bookstore in such a mixed neighborhood?”

“It wasn’t wise, but it is not they who are being educated. It’s I, Angelica, and being educated is what I need. I learn something new every day. I live in a perpetual state of astonishment.”

Angelica cannot help laughing and I know I sound absurd—innocent abroad, as I am told I am almost every day by someone or other. And so it is natural to tell her about Martha’s dilemma and ask her advice about a possible therapist. “Poor woman,” Angelica says instantly and I realize this is something, an unwanted pregnancy, that she deals with often at the family planning agency. She is on the board. On this subject at least Angelica is far more with it than I am. And after a few seconds’ thought she comes up with a name and writes Dr. Frances Willoughby down on a card with her phone number and I slip it into my purse.

“Thanks. I knew you would be able to help.”

“You don’t sound very sympathetic yourself,” Angelica says.

“Oh dear, how perspicacious you are! Martha has attached herself to me, you see, but I do not really like her. She seems terribly selfish, for one thing.”

“But you gave her wall space for her paintings. That was generous.”

And I tell Angelica about Mrs. Stoneworth, how strange it seems that she fell in love with that painting, and how at first I thought she was a bag lady, and how she hates Gothic novels and reads history. “Maybe I just don’t understand creative people, whereas you always have.” And that is true. The young artists and writers Angelica has helped are innumerable. “For instance, I am really drawn to a stunning young black woman, Nan Blakeley, who gave up her career as a journalist to marry and now has two little girls. She is so warm and alive she lights up the store.” I want to talk about Nan as I don’t, really, about Martha. “I have never had a black friend till now, but Nan is going to invite me to meet her husband and little girls some evening when he gets home early enough. Can’t you see how happy I am these days, Angelica? It is a
vita nuova
. It nourishes me.”

“You look ten years younger,” Angelica says, smiling. “It’s quite visible that you are happy.”

“I wish I were younger though. I get flattened out at times.”

I am aware that we are picking up the threads of our long friendship one by one, but somewhere there is a knot that has to be untied. How to approach that?

It is Angelica who does it. “The bookshop seems to be a store for lesbian women to patronize? At least so I hear.”

“And where do you hear that?” I am instantly on the defensive.

“Word gets around,” she says tentatively, “and of course that interview in the
Globe
exposed you and what your chief interest is.”

“What rot! I am not chiefly interested in lesbians or the very little lesbian literature there is, not at all. The store is a feminist bookstore, which means there are a lot of philosophical and sociological books about women, ‘herstory’ as against history, books most women do not even know exist. You’d be amazed, Angelica, at all I have learned by reading them. The subject is inexhaustible.”

“I don’t doubt that for a moment.” There is a silence now. We are each wondering how to tackle the essential thing. “Of course,” Angelica says slowly, feeling for words, and it reminds me of a game where you pile up small sticks until finally one makes the whole structure fall down, “I always presumed that you and Vicky were …” Here she hesitates.

“‘Lovers’ is the word,” I suggest with a smile.

“What I can’t understand is your willingness to exhibit what most people consider a private matter.”

I stand up now and back up to the fire, a move that startles Patapouf and makes her give a short bark. Angelica and I exchange amused glances, and the ice is broken.

“Patapouf senses danger,” she says gently. “Well, go ahead. Enlighten this old-fashioned porcupine.”

“As a lesbian—and believe me, Angelica, it is still hard for me to use the word—I am part of an absurd minority that threatens a lot of ordinary people just in the way the black minority does. The difference is that blacks can’t hide, nor can Orientals, but homosexuals are not visible targets.”

“So why make yourself one? You are already paying a high price for it—those threats.”

“Because I am comparatively safe and because I am not the stereotype. No one can fire me; I am not young. I am—don’t laugh—a ‘lady.’ So can’t you see that I must stand up for the hundreds of women who can’t, who don’t dare because for them the risk is too great?”

“No one can fault your courage, Harriet. I admire you for it. But …”

“You don’t like to have to admit that lesbians are and always will be a part of our society and it’s high time this was accepted.”

“I suppose so.” At this moment Alice comes in to announce that dinner is ready and Angelica says, “Give us a few minutes, Alice, we haven’t quite finished our drinks.”

“Now I’ll tell you something,” Angelica says and it is clear that she has had it in mind and wants me to hear whatever it may be. “Sit down and listen to me.” She leans forward in her chair, her hands clasped on her knee. “Ever since this whole business began with that article and all the talk I have had to listen to ever since, I have found myself examining my own relationships with women since I was a child.”

“Good, and what have you found?”

“A lot of things I had buried. For instance, that I adored the headmistress at Winsor School and used to write her what amounts to love poems when I was about thirteen. I used to wait for her to leave school and sometimes walk a little way with her, as she lived nearby. Holding her hand very occasionally was a tremendous excitement—I can’t find the word—stirred me to the depths.”

“And,” I suggest, “you were not afraid because you were too young to have been brainwashed. And you did not feel guilty, did you?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t. I felt elated and privileged.”

“So you do understand that a woman can be drawn to another woman.”

“In a way, I suppose I do. But I was a child, Harriet. It’s rather different, isn’t it?”

“In a way it is, but what seems to happen as one grows up is an increasing fear of one’s own feelings. If you had felt as you did then when you were in college it might have been more troubling.”

“My dear, it was,” Angelica says. “In my sophomore year at Mount Holyoke a girl called Emily fell in love with me, I suppose, and I was in a state of such ambivalence toward her that I think I must have been cruel. I was terrified because I found I rather liked being kissed, but at the same time it was too disturbing, so I went to the college psychiatrist, who was a man, and he assured me that there was nothing wrong with me, but possibly Emily needed some help. She did not come back for the junior year and I have no idea what has become of her. I have never told anyone this, Harriet. But I’ve been rather upset since that article appeared in the
Globe
. I guess I am still too disturbed to be quite reasonable.”

“But you are honest. So many women are not and perhaps they are the ones who take it out on lesbians like me because it makes them feel safer.”