The Education of Harriet Hatfield (26 page)

“What is happening, Nan, is very strange. The death of Patapouf—or rather the life of Patapouf before she died—was keeping me alive and keeping mourning away. Now it is almost as though Vicky were the one who was shot in the field. I can’t talk about it,” I say, blowing my nose on a Kleenex.

There is a silence. Nan always knows when not to push. “You have not had time to mourn,” she says quietly. “I am going to leave you in peace but could you come over and have supper with us? We’ve talked about it for so long. Perhaps this is the time.” But as she sees me hesitate she says, “Maybe tomorrow.”

I think about the children, the expected response to their interests, about meeting Nan’s husband. For a second I think I simply cannot do it. I want to creep into a corner alone. What comes out is, “I feel so old, Nan.”

“Anyone would, after what you have been through these past months. But the children, of course, are totally innocent about age. Somehow or other I have noticed that children take you as being their own age. That is a genius you have.”

“Really?” It is an encouraging thought, true or not. “All right, I’ll come tomorrow. It’s a help to know I can be my childish self.” That childish self is warmed by Nan’s hug before she leaves.

“Come about six-thirty when we can have a drink and the children are fed. I’ll call Phil and tell him to be home early. He will be so pleased to meet you at last. You have become a legend in our family.”

I am sitting here thinking that life is like a tapestry that is always being woven with new patterns and colors, and it never stops, nor can we hold it back. So it is no surprise when the phone rings and it is Angelica, who weaves herself in and out of the pattern, and has done so for years. “I’m coming to take you out for lunch,” she announces without preliminary.

“All right, but it has to be early as I have to be back at the store by half-past one.”

“Two,” I hear Joan’s voice. “Take your time.”

“I’ll be there at noon.” She has sounded quite calm but her voice breaks as she says, “I still don’t believe … the dear dog …”

“Please, Angelica, I can’t talk now,” and I hang up rather rudely. At the moment I do not want to hear her grief, which I know is real. I want to get on with my work … with my life. I am clinging to it desperately as to a raft in a rough ocean. “I am not drowning,” I hear myself say aloud.

“No, you appear to be staying afloat,” Joan says and laughs.

“Good God, am I talking aloud now? What am I coming to?” I get up and walk up and down for a minute, suddenly very glad Joan is there and we can talk. “Joan, what I need is to think about the store. That is my lifesaver.”

“What’s your idea of a compelling undertaking?”

“I have two ideas about windows. One is that we really must do one on AIDS.”

“Yes, but I suggest we keep it on hold for a while. Let things die down a bit.”

“Maybe. The other is self-indulgent but I want to do it: a kind of memorial window for Patapouf, books about what animals do for people.”

“That,” Joan says in her most definite tone, “is a splendid idea. It has occurred to you, no doubt, that the murder of an old dog will move a lot more people than that piece in the
Globe
did.”

“No.” I am shocked by the very idea which seems implicit in Joan’s remark. “I am not about to exploit Patapouf’s death for publicity purposes!”

“Don’t be cross, Harriet. I was not thinking of a newspaper story, God forbid, but that people who were on the other side may well come over to your side when this gets out around the neighborhood.”

Perhaps she is right and, if so, it will be very interesting to see. In an instant we have an inkling, for the door is pushed open by a rather seedy old man carrying a copy of the
Chronicle
. He peers at Joan and then at me and decides evidently that I am the woman he is after, for he raps the paper with his hand and asks, “Are you the woman whose dog was shot yesterday?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Those punks should be shot at dawn. It’s a dirty thing to do. I came to apologize for this neighborhood, which is running downhill so fast it’s amazing anyone stays here, and quite beyond me, if I may say so, that you chose to open a bookstore here and expose yourself as you are doing.”

“Sit down, won’t you?” The man has penetrating, dark eyes under tufted eyebrows and has not smiled since he came in. I like this man.

“Oh, I can’t stay. I just wanted you to know someone is on your side.”

“You say ‘punks’ but someone saw who shot Patapouf, and she says it was a woman with a rifle. I don’t suppose you have any idea who that might be?”

“No, I don’t. God knows there are enough crazies around here.” He does not want to get involved and is anxious now to leave.

“I appreciate your coming very much. My name, as I expect you know, is Harriet Hatfield.”

“Mine is Shawn Fleming. Everyone knows me around here. I used to run a secondhand furniture store, so if you need anything let me know. And a good morning to you, Miss Hatfield—or,” he catches himself, “is it Mrs.?”

“No, Miss.”

Now he smiles for the first time. “You escaped prison, did you, just like me. I wasn’t about to be tied down for life to someone who can’t make as good a cup of coffee as I do.”

“Do you like living alone?” I really wish this curious creature would stay and talk some more.

“Well, I don’t, you see. I have a black cat called Timothy. That’s why I got so mad when I read about your dog. Why, if Timothy died I don’t know what I would do.”

He is at the door and now slips away. Joan and I agree it is amazing that someone has come out of the blue like that to express condolences.

“I told you,” Joan says triumphantly, but we have no time to discuss Mr. Fleming because it is noon and Angelica is at the door.

22

Angelica wants to take me right away from the neighborhood but agrees on my insistence that we go to the French restaurant nearby since I must be back at two to release Joan. I am afraid of the emotion Angelica brings with her. I dread her tears and mine. A perfect stranger is easier to take at this point and I quickly tell her about Mr. Fleming to ward off the too personal and raw, but Angelica is too full of her own anger and grief to stay away for long from the subject, and over a glass of wine while we wait for our soup, bursts into tears suddenly.

“She was such a gentle soul,” she says, “the way she looked at one, such fondness in her old eyes. At least she was old,” she says, wiping her eyes, “and had had a very good life.”

“I can’t talk about it,” I say.

“But what is going to happen now? What are you going to do now?”

“Jonathan is getting a private detective, so until he finds one—and I want a woman if possible—”

“Are there women detectives?” Angelica interrupts.

“I don’t know.”

“Why can’t the police handle it? After all, that’s what they’re for!”

“One would suppose so, but I have been harassed for months, Angelica, as you know, and they are simply not interested or have been bought off long ago.”

“You are cynical.”

“Maybe. The brouhaha over the
Globe
article taught me something at least—and that is that the police are not out to defend homosexuals.”

“Oh.” Angelica ponders this.

“Besides, there must be more than an old woman involved. How would one old woman steal a cord of wood all by herself?”

“I keep forgetting how much you have had to take of threats and actual attacks. It is appalling.”

“I am sick and tired of it! There is so much I want to do with the store. We are just beginning to make a go of it, and more and more young people are discovering that we exist. It is frustrating, I must say, to have to spend so much energy on anxiety and grief.” But even as I say this I feel grief swallowing me again. “Oh, Angelica, poor Patapouf has somehow opened the door into all I need still to mourn about Vicky. That is the real thing that has happened.” I push the soup away, feeling suddenly sick. “She would feel it is my fault—that I killed our dog,” I say, as cold as ice.

“Try to be sensible, Harriet. I know you are under frightful stress and if all this has brought you to mourning, more than a year after Vicky’s death, perhaps that is a good thing. You held back the mourning, but sooner or later it has to be experienced or it becomes a wall between you and your life. I have wondered sometimes how you could launch yourself into a wholly new life as rapidly as you did—extraordinary of you. Such strength, Harriet, strength and imagination!” This is the Angelica of the deep steadfast caring, and I cannot meet her eyes, I am so close to tears. Still it is true, and I sense it is true now, that sometimes things can be said in a public place that could never be uttered in a silent room.

“I don’t understand how I was able to do it, but you see, what I am finding out is that as long as I had Patapouf, I somehow still had Vicky, and now I am alone. I could not know till now how hard that would be.” And I have to add, “I feel she is angry with me, disapproving of all I have done. Oh dear, I sound quite crazy.”

“No, not crazy, but I think grief makes one a child again, terribly lonely. That is how I felt when my sister died. It is as though loss after middle age takes us very deep down, back perhaps into early childhood or even infancy. It takes with it a whole past, a kind of deprivation one cannot even believe for months.”

“Yes,” I say. It is, beyond words, comforting to hear all this from Angelica.

“When will you come and find a place in my garden for the ashes?” Angelica asks, as the bill comes and we get ourselves together.

“I’ll call when I can fetch them, and we’ll decide on a day.”

So that is decided and when, after our walk back, we see how many people are gathered in the store, we say goodbye on the street. “I don’t know how you meet all this, day after day,” Angelica says, peering in.

“It’s rarely a crowd,” I murmur. “Oh dear …”

“Force et confiance!”
she calls as she gets into her car. That is something we used to say years and years ago. In fact it was a phrase of Vicky’s which she had read in a biography of Eleonora Duse. Fortified by it, I push open the door.

Joan comes over from her desk to explain in a whisper, “It’s Patapouf.”

I recognize the three Lesley girls as they hurry over, then stand, blushing with embarrassment, not knowing what to say. “It’s because … your dog … we heard about it. We just want to say …” They all speak together.

Then one says, “She was such a dear dog. We can’t stand it.”

“We want to kill the person who shot her,” says another.

Sue Bagley has been listening of course, as usual. “A lot of good that would do,” she says, then turns to me. “I told you it is a bad neighborhood. I knew from the start you couldn’t make a go of it.” This is so typical of Bagley, who is a genius at putting people down, that I almost laugh.

“But I am making a go of it,” I say gently, “and I have no intention whatever of leaving.”

“You don’t?” Sue Bagley is amazed. “I thought this brutal act would be the last straw. Your poor dog …”

I manage to push myself through the gathering and take refuge by sitting down at my desk where Joan joins me to ask if I would like her to stay. “It’s been like this since you left,” she says.

“No, you go along. It’s really rather heartening, isn’t it?”

“In a way, but people are so upset they aren’t here to purchase.”

“It’s Patapouf’s funeral,” I whisper.

“What can we do?” someone asks quite loudly after Joan leaves.

“Oh, Martha!” Here she is in her black hat, looking animated for once. “What can you do?” I glance around at the eager faces. “Nothing, my friends. It’s your coming that is doing something. It’s your support. Thanks.” I find it a little hard to be stared at with so much eager compassion. I have not, after all, let these people into my private life … or have I?

Now I do have an idea. “I hope those of you who live in the neighborhood will tell me if you hear anything that might give us a clue. I’ve about had it now as far as harassment goes.”

“Murder,” says one of the Lesley girls passionately, “is more than harassment surely.”

“Are you here alone at night?” someone I do not remember now asks.

“My brother Andrew insisted on staying last night. He slept in the store in his sleeping bag. But I am all right—except—except,” and with awful inevitability I feel the tears rising, “I listen for the dog’s breathing and it isn’t there,” but I catch myself and say, “I must not begin to cry or I’ll never stop. Look,” I say, shuffling some papers around to save face, “it is awfully kind of you to come, but …”

“She needs to be left alone, for God’s sake,” says Bagley’s harsh relentless voice. It is her way of helping of course, but I wish she could do it with a little grace.

“Goodbye, goodbye,” the air is full of goodbyes and before I know it, they have all gone like a bevy of birds taking flight and I am alone.

It has been quite a day so far and I wish I could go and lie down somewhere and sleep, but there are three hours to go before I close up shop. Fortunately a young professor from Wellesley comes to ask me for advice about books in women’s studies she has not been able to find. She has limp, fair hair tied in a bow, a very broad face with wide-apart gray eyes, wears a very long skirt, high boots, and a dark blue vest over a ruffled white blouse. Her name is Emily Woods.

She and I sit down for a half-hour and share a cup of tea. This visit does more for me than anything. It is my normal life, and what I mean it to be. Besides I find her congenial and eager to talk. She is impressed by the stock and finally dares to ask me whether I am breaking even financially.

“Not quite,” I have to answer, “but I expect to within a full year. It takes time to develop a clientele, you know, and I am off the beaten track.”

“You certainly are. Why did you choose such a rundown community? Why not Wellesley? There is no longer a good bookstore in town these days.”

“Why not Wellesley?” The very idea repels me but I can’t say that, of course. “I guess I wanted an environment which contains various kinds of people, not just my kind.”