The Education of Harriet Hatfield (9 page)

“Sit down for a minute. There is something I want to ask you. But first my name is Harriet Hatfield.”

“Mine is Fanny Arthur, and my friend is Ruth Phillipson.” I am relieved that Fanny does not say “and my lover is …”

“I’m happy to meet you. You appear to be one of those serendipitous happenings.” Fanny is clasping the book in her hands. “How would you like to mind the store on Saturdays?”

They beam at each other. “We’d love it, Miss Hatfield, but …” She looks over at Ruth with obvious distress.

“You could even study. It’s not been that busy so far.”

“Fanny does not know how to say it, but you see, cleaning we make ten dollars an hour, eighty dollars on Saturdays. That would be too much, wouldn’t it?” Fanny is blushing.

It is my turn to be distressed and to frown as I make quick calculations in my head. If we sold two hundred dollars’ worth on Saturdays, and that is not really that much, would that cover their eighty dollars? Joan will be appalled, I fear.

“Oh dear,” Fanny sighs.

“Well,” I say slowly, still weighing the deal, still asking myself to go slow and be careful, “after all, I’ve found the right people for the shop, I think. I’ll make a deal with you. Let’s try it for a month, shall we? If you sell enough books it will work out for the shop. How about it?”

“It’s wonderful, it’s marvelous.” Fanny leaps to her feet and does a little dance. “It’s unbelievable.”

“The only thing is we have to honor a promise about cleaning for someone this Saturday, so we can’t start until next Saturday,” says Ruth. I am entertained by the way she reacts as against Fanny’s ebullience. Ruth perhaps is one of those people who reacts to good news with solemnity.

“But just imagine”—Fanny is not to be beaten down—“what it will be like to run a bookstore instead of cleaning out bathrooms!”

Patapouf, who always reacts to movement and gaiety, emerges from under my desk in a flurry of barks. “It’s a deal,” I say. But then I must tell them about the jeopardy we may be in. “You must give me your address, by the way, while I think of it.”

“I live with my family,” says Ruth. “I’ll give you their address.” So they are not a couple after all. Will they understand, I wonder.

“There is something you must know,” I say, after writing their addresses down. “Sit down and let me explain.”

They listen in silence while I tell them about the letter, about O’Reilly, and end by saying that the last thing I had imagined when I opened the store would be such hatred. I admit that I am frightened by it.

“Well, it’s just disgusting,” Fanny bursts out.

“It’s the way things are,” Ruth says quietly. “You see,” she says slowly, feeling her way, “we are not lovers, just good friends. But so many people take it for granted that we must be lesbians, it upsets Fanny, and me too. So we get it the other way.”

“The obsession with coming out, with being honest, telling the world. People just don’t believe in a real friendship any more!” Fanny says. “It’s out of fashion.”

“So maybe you don’t feel you want to hold the fort on Saturdays?” I am disappointed.

“Of course we want to come,” Ruth says. “Fanny loves a fight!”

“You see,” I explain, “I lived for thirty years with a woman, the publisher Victoria Chilton. When she died last year she left me money and that is how I can afford to run a bookstore at a perpetual deficit—at least so far.”

“You mustn’t think we are against such relationships,” Ruth answers.

“For heaven’s sake, of course not,” Fanny says. “I feel any relationship that lasts thirty years must be real and fulfilling. I sort of envy you that, even though you must have felt cut in two when she died.”

“I tell you what,” I say, “think my offer over, talk it over, understand what you may be risking if you decide to take the job, and whether you can really live in the atmosphere here. Maybe you could come a week from tomorrow and let my manager Joan fill you in, and then see how it strikes you. Have a trial run. How about that as a solution?”

“But there’s no problem,” Ruth says in her quiet way.

And at this the whole situation strikes me as hilarious and I laugh aloud. “What a kettle of fish!” I say, still laughing.

“We had better let you go,” Fanny says, “but we’ll come on Saturday a week from tomorrow. You can count on us.” We shake hands, and they leave.

When they have gone I turn out the lights and stand for a moment in the dark, looking out on the street—wondering who might be lurking there. Patapouf, sensing fear in the air, gives a loud, deep bark. “It’s time we went upstairs, old dog.”

I am suddenly so tired it is an effort to climb to the second floor. It has been an extraordinary day. One hard problem, one splendid solution. But when I call Joan to tell her about Fanny and Ruth she is upset.

“You can’t mean you hired these women off the street, without knowing anything about them?” she asks, dismay in her voice. I had expected relief.

“I like them, Joan. I have to trust my instincts.”

“Very well.” But I can tell she is not convinced. “You are such an innocent,” she says. “It scares the pants off me.”

“I suppose I am an innocent. I prefer that to being a cynic.” It is the closest we have come to a disagreement.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says coldly, “hope nothing happens tonight.” I sit down then and pour myself a double scotch. For once I do not turn on the news. The television can drown out slight sounds, and I must be alert. It is no way to live, but, strangely enough, when I get into bed after eating a poached egg on toast, I fall asleep at once.

The last thing I expect at nine the next morning, before Joan arrives at ten, is a ring at my door. And the very last thing I expect is to find Fred standing there with a parcel in his hands.

“Hey, what are you doing roving around here so early in the morning?” I ask, not very warmly.

“Well, let me in and I’ll explain.”

“Come up and have a cup of coffee.”

“Thanks, but what I need right now is a pail of water, a hard sponge, and some detergent.” My heart sinks. “I don’t suppose you’ve been out yet, have you?”

“I was just going to walk Patapouf when you rang.”

“Someone has chalked an obscenity on your windows. If it’s chalk, not paint, I can rub it off in a minute.”

“Oh.”

“Angelica called me,” he explains while I obey his orders, find a pail under the sink and fill it. “I happen to have a very strong lock on hand, came over to install it as a matter of fact.” He smiles his secretive smile, then, “You have to admit I am a useful brother to have.”

But I am cross, feel betrayed, and Fred is the last person I want around at this point. “Damn Angelica. She had no right to call you!”

“She was pretty upset,” he says, “and she’s a good friend. You need good friends.”

“If there’s any trouble the police will come.” I am shaking with anger and close to tears.

“Come on, Harriet. This sort of thing is pretty hard to take. Don’t get on your high horse with me.”

“Oh, to hell with it, if you can rub off whatever those clods wrote on the window, I’ll be grateful. But don’t put me down as crazy or something. I’m doing what I dreamed of doing.” I beg him not to tell Andrew. “Don’t spoil it for me, Fred.”

“Who’s spoiling it, I or those clods, as you call them? For God’s sake!” He stomps down the stairs and I put Patapouf on the leash and prepare to follow him.

When I get to the street I find Fred talking with two men in jogging suits. Whatever had been written on the shop windows has been erased. “Here’s my sister. Harriet,” Fred says, “meet Joe Hunter and Eddie North.” Joe is tall, over six feet, with a short black beard, and he must be over forty. Eddie, much younger, is not as handsome, has blond, crew-cut hair and small, bright blue eyes. It seems in order to shake hands.

“We want you to know that we’re nearby if you need help,” Joe says, looking at me hard, though kindly. “I gave your brother my card with the phone number.”

“Joe’s a psychiatrist,” Eddie says. “I work in the garage down the street. You are a brave woman to open a women’s bookstore here. It’s a tough neighborhood.”

“So I am learning.”

“These days,” Joe says, “every neighborhood is tough for gays. People think they have a weapon against us now, and it’s AIDS, of course.”

Everything is happening so fast—Fred turning up, two gay men entering my orbit—that I do not know what to say, or how. “It’s awfully kind of you to come,” I say. “The best thing about trouble is that you learn who your friends are! Thanks a lot.”

“We jog usually around half-past seven,” Joe says, “so if there are any more remarks on your windows we’ll clean up for you.”

“Every day?”

At this Fred laughs. “You are a pessimist, Harriet. It may never happen again.”

“Presumably it will,” says Joe. “Well, see you!” And they are off.

Fred and I go back to my apartment now to have a cup of coffee. “Nice fellows,” he says when we have settled at the table, “even though they are obviously faggots.”

“The father of two has to feel superior, does he?” Keyed up as I am, I cannot let that tone of his pass.

“You may think you have to take on the whole world but you do not have to take your brother on, Harriet. For God’s sake, woman!”

“Sorry, but you see I have had to absorb a lot in these first weeks. I guess I’m supersensitive.”

“Now you have a handy psychiatrist. He might help.”

“I don’t need a psychiatrist, Fred. Who was it who said ‘Very few people can stand reality,’ or words to that effect? I feel I’m beginning to learn about reality. And high time.”

“And what is reality?”

It takes me a moment to answer and I drink my coffee in silence while Fred looks at me with an inquisitive, slightly patronizing air. “Whatever it is it is not the sheltered life I led with Vicky. I’m suddenly in a big open space with nowhere to hide. And I’m meeting people who live in that open space and take the risks.”

“At least you can have a proper lock on your door, so I had better get to work.”

“I wish you understood,” I say. “It would make it easier to thank you.”

“How do you know I don’t understand?” he asks, taking the lock, screws, a screwdriver, and a hammer out of the bag.

“I always feel that you think I’m daft, that, as they say, I need help. It diminishes me.”

“That’s your interpretation,” Fred says coldly. “I’ll be gone in a half-hour,” and he runs down the stairs where I follow him, after washing the cups, and sit at my desk wondering why I have to be on the defensive, why he always manages to rub me the wrong way like a cat.

But there is no way to mend things now and I am glad when Joan arrives and I can go upstairs and call Angelica. I feel beleaguered. Joan is cross because of the Saturday deal; Fred is suggesting I see a psychiatrist; Angelica is betraying me … Oh dear, what is wrong with me? I ask myself.

“Why are you cross?” Angelica asks when she hears my tone of voice.

“You should not have called Fred.”

“I felt so anxious, Harriet, and why not call your brother?”

“He’s here now putting a new lock on the door in the shop. I am capable of doing that myself. My family are the last people I need to get involved in what is, after all, a problem I can only solve alone.” I can hear my voice suddenly shrill.

“My dear, it is exactly because it is not a problem you can solve alone that I intervened.”

“It was an invasion of privacy, Angelica. I don’t care what you think or feel.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever help I need must and will come from here, from the neighbors. Already a couple of men turned up to offer to help. They will erase any obscenities those goons write on my windows. You see …” But I have let the cat out of the bag by revealing there have been obscenities and have to explain that now. That done, I cut Angelica short by saying I have to go down and say goodbye to Fred.

I do not do that. I sit down in a state of great confusion and distress. The only thing that can help me, I know, is to be in the world I am trying to create—to be down in the store. There can be no salvation in arguing with a good old friend. Or with my stuffed-shirt brother for that matter. Joan, however, must be tamed somehow, and I invite her to come up for a sandwich lunch at noon and close the store for an hour.

Meanwhile I decide to take off until noon, get away for a couple of hours, take Patapouf with me, perhaps for a walk in the Mount Auburn Cemetery, where the trees must be already turning. There, perhaps, I can compose my mind.

7

For all the chaos inside me, outside it proves to be a perfect morning, and, when I have parked the car and released Patapouf, I stand there for a minute drinking in the light, one maple brilliant yellow and beyond it a scarlet one. The dogwood around a small formal garden near the entrance is the purple and dark red Vicky had always remarked on, for we had come here fairly often for a walk, especially in spring and fall. Her parents and various aunts and uncles are buried here, but what she enjoyed most was examining the amazing variety of tombs—huge classic temples, Victorian angels on top of granite peristyles, and even under what looked like a red marble table, a large dog! The marvelous trees … Mount Auburn is really an arboretum. The small ponds where ducks swim and dive for morsels below the surface. Dug into the hillside surrounding one of the ponds is a series of huge temples, which are tombs with wrought-iron gates and family names carved into the marble. They look like a village of stone houses for the dead.

As I walk along with Patapouf decorously on the leash beside me, I miss Vicky more than I have since her death. She would have recognized a brownish bird who flies past and might be a thrush. When I wander down a hillside to one of the ponds where we had often sat and picnicked on a stone bench, I sit down, trying to contain a wave of nostalgia for those safe days we shared, and to keep back the tears that are pricking my eyes.

But what keeps grief from engulfing me is my knowledge, my having to admit that Vicky would not have liked at all what has been happening at the shop. The idea of her disapproval sharpens my wits, for I begin to think of all the people who have already found refuge in the bookstore, the woman I had called a bag-lady at first, Martha with her conflict about painting, the two generous nuns who seem at this moment like sparklers lighting up the dark, the two lesbians and their dog, the older woman who is founding a home caretakers’ organization as a way of handling her husband’s death, the young women who are best friends and clean houses, and this very morning two men who appeared out of nowhere to give me support. “O brave new world that has such people in it!”