by Donna Tartt
What worried her was the clipping. It had been incredibly stupid of Hely to send it. At least no one had seen it; that was the main thing. Apart from the headline, she’d hardly seen it herself; she’d shredded it thoroughly, along with Hely’s letter, and mashed the pieces together in her pocket.
Something, she realized, had changed in the clearing. Zach had stopped talking and all the girls had got very still and quiet all of a sudden. In the silence, a thrill of panic ran through Harriet. She expected the heads to turn all at once, to look at her, but then Zach cleared his throat, and Harriet understood, as if waking from a dream, that the silence wasn’t about her at all, that it was only the prayer. Quickly, she shut her eyes and bowed her head.
————
As soon as the prayer was finished, and the girls stretched and giggled and began to gather in conversational groups (Jada and Dawn and Darci, too, obviously talking about Harriet, arms folded across their chests, hostile stares across the clearing in her direction) Mel (in tennis visor, swipe of zinc oxide down her nose) collared Harriet. “Forget swimming. The Vances want to see you.”
Harriet tried to conceal her dismay.
“Up at the office,” said Mel, and ran her tongue over her braces. She was looking over Harriet’s head—for the glorious Zach, no doubt, worried that he might slip back to the boys’ camp without talking to her.
Harriet nodded and tried to look indifferent. What could they do to her? Make her sit by herself in the wigwam all day?
“Hey,” Mel called after her—she’d already spotted Zach, had a hand up and was threading through the girls towards him—“if the Vances get finished with you before Bible study, just come on out to the tennis court and do drills with the ten o’clock group, okay?”
The pines were dark—a welcome respite from the sun-bleached brightness of “chapel”—and the path through the woods was soft and sticky. Harriet walked with her head down. That was quick, she thought. Though Jada was a thug and a bully, Harriet hadn’t figured her for a tattletale.
But who knew? Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Dr. Vance just wanted to drag her off for what he called a “session” (where he repeated a lot of Bible verses about Obedience and then asked if Harriet accepted Jesus as her personal savior). Or maybe he wanted to question her about the Star Wars figure. (Two nights before, he had called the whole camp together, boys and girls, and screamed at them for an hour because one of them—he said—had stolen a Star Wars figure belonging to Brantley, his grunting little kindergarten-aged son.)
Or possibly she had a phone call. The phone was in Dr. Vance’s office. But who would call her? Hely?
Maybe it’s the police, she thought uneasily, maybe they found the wagon. And she tried to push the thought from her mind.
She emerged from the woods, warily. Outside the office, beside the mini-bus, and Dr. Vance’s station wagon, was a car with dealer’s plates—from Dial Chevrolet. Before Harriet had time to wonder what it had to do with her, the door to the office opened with a melodious cascade of wind chimes and out stepped Dr. Vance, followed by Edie.
Harriet was too shocked to move. Edie looked different—wan, subdued—and for a moment Harriet wondered if she was mistaken but no, it was Edie all right: she was just wearing an old pair of eyeglasses that Harriet wasn’t used to, with mannish black frames that were too heavy for her face and made her look pale.
Dr. Vance saw Harriet, and waved: with both arms, as if he were waving from across a crowded stadium. Harriet was reluctant to approach. She had the idea she might be in real trouble, deep trouble—but then Edie saw her too and smiled: and somehow (the glasses, maybe?) it was the old Edie, prehistoric, the Edie of the heart-shaped box, who had whistled and tossed baseballs to Robin under haunted Kodachrome skies.
“Hottentot,” she called.
Dr. Vance stood by with composed benevolence as Harriet—bursting with love at the dear old pet name, seldom used—hurried to her across the graveled clearing; as Edie bobbed down (swift, soldierly) and pecked her on the cheek.
“Yes, maam! Mighty glad to see Grandma!” boomed Dr. Vance, rolling his eyes up, rocking on his heels. He spoke with exorbitant warmth, but also as if he had his mind on other matters.
“Harriet,” said Edie, “are these all your things?” and Harriet saw, on the gravel by Edie’s feet, her suitcase and her knapsack and her tennis racket.
After a slight, disoriented pause—during which her possessions on the ground did not register—Harriet said: “You’ve got new glasses.”
“Old glasses. The car is new.” Edie nodded at the new automobile parked beside Dr. Vance’s. “If you’ve got something else back at the cabin you’d better run along and get it.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Never mind. Hurry along.”
Harriet—not one to look a gift horse in the mouth—scurried away. She was perplexed by rescue from this unlikely quarter; more so because she had been prepared to throw herself on the ground at Edie’s feet and beg and scream to be taken home.
Apart from some art projects she didn’t want (a grubby potholder, a decoupage pencil-box, not yet dry) the only things Harriet had to pick up were her shower sandals and her towels. Someone had swiped one of her towels to go swimming with, so she grabbed the other and ran back to Dr. Vance’s cabin.
Dr. Vance was loading the trunk of the new car for Edie—who, Harriet noticed for the first time, was moving a little stiffly.
Maybe it’s Ida, thought Harriet, suddenly. Maybe Ida decided not to quit. Or maybe she decided she had to see me one last time before she left. But Harriet knew that neither of these things was really the truth.
Edie was eyeing her suspiciously. “I thought you had two towels.”
“No, maam.” She noticed a trace of some dark, caked matter at the base of Edie’s nostrils: snuff? Chester took snuff.
Before she could climb in the car, Dr. Vance came around and—stepping sideways between Harriet and the passenger door—leaned down and gave Harriet his hand to shake.
“God has His own plan, Harriet.” He said it to her as if telling her a little secret. “Does that mean we’ll always like it? No. Does that mean we’ll always understand it? No. Does that mean that we should wail and complain about it? No indeed!”
Harriet—burning with embarrassment—stared into Dr. Vance’s hard gray eyes. In Nursie’s discussion group after “Your Developing Body” there had been lots of talk about God’s Plan, about how all the tubes and hormones and degrading excretions in the filmstrips were God’s Plan for Girls.
“And why is that? Why does God try us? Why testeth He our resolve? Why must we reflect on these universal challenges?” Dr. Vance’s eyes searched her face. “What do they teach us on our Christian walk?”
Silence. Harriet was too revolted to draw her hand back. High in the pines, a blue jay shrieked.
“Part of our challenge, Harriet, is accepting that His plan is always for the best. And what does acceptance mean? We must bend to His will! We must bend to it joyously! This is the challenge that we face as Christians!”
All of a sudden Harriet—her face only inches from his—felt very afraid. With great concentration, she stared at a tiny spot of reddish stubble in the cleft of his chin, where the razor had missed.
“Let us pray,” said Dr. Vance suddenly, and squeezed her hand. “Dear Jesus,” he said, pressing thumb and forefinger into his tightly shut eyes. “What a privilege it is to stand before You this day! What a blessing to pray with You! Let us be joyful, joyful, in Your presence!”
What’s he talking about? thought Harriet, dazed. Her mosquito bites itched, but she didn’t dare scratch them. Through half-closed eyes, she stared at her feet.
“Oh Lard. Please be with Harriet and her family in the days to come. Watch over them. Keep, guide, and shepherd them. Help them understand, Lard,” said Dr. Vance—pronouncing all his consonants and syllables very distinctly—“that these sorrows and trials are a part of their Christian wa
lk.…”
Where is Edie? thought Harriet, eyes shut. In the car? Dr. Vance’s hand was sticky and unpleasant to the touch; how embarrassing if Marcy and the girls from the cabin came by and saw her standing in the parking lot holding hands with Dr. Vance of all people.
“Oh Lard. Help them not to turn their backs on You. Help them submit. Help them walk uncomplainingly. Help them not to disobey, or be rebellient, but to accept Your ways and keep Your covenant …”
Submit to what? thought Harriet, with a nasty little shock.
“… in the name of Christ Jesus we ask it, AMEN,” said Dr. Vance, so loudly that Harriet started. She looked around. Edie was on the driver’s side of the car with her hand on the hood—although whether she’d been standing there the whole time or had eased over after the prayer moment who could say.
Nursie Vance had appeared from nowhere. She swooped down on Harriet with a smothering, bosomy hug.
“The Lord loves you!” she said, in her twinkly voice. “Just you remember that!”
She patted Harriet on the bottom and turned, beaming, to Edie, as if expecting to start up a regular old conversation. “Well, hay!” But Edie wasn’t in such a tolerant or sociable mood as she’d been when dropping Harriet off at camp. She gave Nursie a curt nod, and that was that.
They got in the car; Edie—after peering over her glasses for a moment at the unfamiliar instrument panel—put the car in gear and drove away. The Vances came and stood out in the middle of the graveled clearing and—with their arms around each other’s waists—they waved until Edie turned the corner.
The new car had air-conditioning, which made it much, much quieter. Harriet took it all in—the new radio; the power windows—and settled uneasily in her seat. In hermetically sealed chill they purred along, through the liquid leaf-shade of the gravel road, glossing springily over potholes that had jolted the Oldsmobile to its frame. Not until they reached the very end of the dark road, and turned onto the sunny highway, did Harriet dare steal a look at her grandmother.
But Edie’s attention seemed elsewhere. On they rolled. The road was wide and empty: no cars, cloudless sky, margins of rusty red dust that converged to a pinpoint at the horizon. Suddenly, Edie cleared her throat—a loud awkward AHEM.
Harriet—startled—glanced away from the window and at Edie, who said: “I’m sorry, little girl.”
For a moment, Harriet didn’t breathe. Everything was frozen: the shadows, her heart, the red hands of the dashboard clock. “What’s the matter?” she said.
But Edie didn’t look away from the road. Her face was like stone.
The air conditioner was up too high. Harriet hugged her bare arms. Mother’s dead, she thought. Or Allison. Or Dad. And in the same breath, she knew in her heart that she could handle any of those things. Aloud, she said: “What happened?”
“It’s Libby.”
————
In the hubbub following the accident, no one had stopped to consider that anything might be seriously wrong with any of the old ladies. Apart from a few cuts and bruises—and Edie’s bloody nose, which looked worse than it was—everyone was more shaken up than hurt. And the paramedics had checked them out with irritating thoroughness before permitting them to leave. “Not a scratch on this one,” said the smart-aleck ambulance attendant who had assisted Libby—all white hair, and pearls, and powder-pink dress—from the crumpled car.
Libby had seemed stunned. The worst of the collision had been on her side; but though she kept pressing the base of her neck with her fingertips—gingerly, as if to locate a pulse—she fluttered her hand and said, “Oh, don’t worry about me!” when, against the protest of the paramedics, Edie climbed out of the back of the ambulance to see about her sisters.
Everybody had a stiff neck. Edie’s neck felt as though it had been cracked like a bullwhip. Adelaide, pacing in a circle by the Oldsmobile, kept pinching her ears to see if she still had both earrings and exclaiming: “It’s a wonder we’re not dead! Edith, it’s a wonder you didn’t kill us all!”
But after everyone was checked for concussions, and broken bones (why, thought Edie, why hadn’t she insisted that those idiots take Libby’s blood pressure? She was a trained nurse; she knew about such things), in the end, the only one the paramedics wanted to carry to the hospital was Edie: which was infuriating, because Edie wasn’t hurt—nothing broken, no internal injuries and she knew it. She had permitted herself to be caught up in argument. Nothing was the matter with her but her ribs, which she had cracked on the steering wheel, and from her days as an army nurse Edie knew there was nothing in the world to do for cracked ribs except to tape them up and send the soldier on his way.
“But you’ve got a cracked rib, maam,” said the other paramedic—not the smart-aleck, but the one who had a great big head like a pumpkin.
“Yes, I’m aware of that!” Edie had practically screamed at him.
“But maam …” Intrusive hands stretching towards her. “You’d better let us take you to the hospital, maam.…”
“Why? All they’ll do is tape me up and charge me a hundred dollars! For a hundred dollars I can tape up my own ribs!”
“An emergency room visit is going to run you a whole lot more than a hundred dollars,” said the smart-aleck, leaning on the hood of Edie’s poor smashed car (the car! the car! her heart sank every time she looked at it). “The X-rays alone will run you seventy-five.”
By this time, a slight crowd had gathered: busybodies from the branch bank, mostly, giggling little gum-chewing girls with teased hair and brown lipstick. Tat—who signalled to the police car to stop by shaking her yellow pocketbook at it—climbed into the back seat of the wrecked Oldsmobile (even though the horn was blaring) and sat there with Libby for most of the business with the policemen and the other driver, which had taken forever. He was a spry and irritating little old know-it-all man named Lyle Pettit Rixey: very thin, with long, pointy shoes, and a hooked nose like a Jack-in-the-box, and a delicate way of lifting his knees high in the air when he walked. He seemed very proud of the fact that he was from Attala County; also of his name, which he took pleasure at repeating in full. He kept pointing at Edie with a querulous bony finger and saying: “that woman there.” He made it sound as if Edie was drunk or an alcoholic. “That woman run right out in front of me. That woman got no business driving an automobile.” Edie turned, loftily, and stood with her back to him as she answered the officer’s questions.
The accident was her fault; she had refused to yield; and the best that she could do was accept the blame with dignity. Her glasses were broken, and from where she stood, in the shimmering heat (“that woman sure picked herself a hot day to dart out in front of me,” complained Mr. Rixey to the ambulance attendants), Libby and Tat were little more than pink and yellow blurs in the backseat of the wrecked Oldsmobile. Edie blotted her forehead with a damp tissue. At Tribulation every Christmas, there had been dresses in four different colors laid out under the tree—pink for Libby, blue for Edie, yellow for Tat and lavender for baby Adelaide. Colored penwipers, colored ribbons and letter paper … blond china dolls identical but for their dresses, each a different pastel.…
“Did you,” said the policeman, “or did you not execute a U-turn?”
“I did not. I turned around right here in the parking lot.” From the highway, a car mirror flashed distractingly in the corner of Edie’s vision, and at the same time an inexplicable memory from childhood leapt up in her mind: Tatty’s old tin doll—dressed in draggled yellow—lying windmill-legged in the dust of Tribulation’s kitchen yard, beneath the fig trees where the chickens sometimes escaped to scratch. Edie herself had never played with dolls—never been the slightest bit interested in them—but she could see the tin doll now with a curious clarity: her body brown cloth, her nose glinting a macabre metallic silver where the paint had rubbed away. How many years had Tatty dragged that battered thing with its metal death’s head around the yard; how many years since Edie had thought of that eerie litt
le face with the nose missing?
The policeman interrogated Edie for half an hour. With his droning voice, and his mirror sunglasses, it was slightly like being interrogated by The Fly in the Vincent Price horror movie of the same name. Edie, shading her eyes with her hand, tried to keep her mind on his questions but her eyes kept straying to the cars flashing past on the bright highway and all she could think of was Tatty’s ghastly old doll with the silver nose. What on earth had the thing been called? For the life of her, Edie couldn’t remember. Tatty hadn’t talked plain until she went to school; all Tat’s dolls had had ridiculous-sounding names, names she made up out of her head, names like Gryce and Lillium and Artemo.…
The little girls from the branch bank got bored and—inspecting their nails, twirling their hair around their fingertips—drifted back inside. Adelaide—whom Edie blamed, bitterly, for the whole business (she and her Sanka!)—appeared very put out, and stood a cool distance from the scene as if she weren’t a part of it, talking to a nosy choir friend, Mrs. Cartrett, who had pulled over to see what was going on. At some point she’d hopped in the car with Mrs. Cartrett and driven off without even telling Edie. “We’re driving to McDonald’s to get a sausage and biscuit,” she’d called out to Tat and poor Libby. McDonald’s! And—to top it all off—when the insect-faced policeman finally gave Edie permission to leave, her poor old car had of course refused to start, and she had been forced to square her shoulders and walk back into the horrible chilly branch bank, back in front of all the saucy little tellers, to ask if she could use the telephone. And all the while, Libby and Tat had sat, uncomplainingly, in the back of the Oldsmobile, in the frightful heat.
Their cab hadn’t taken long to come. From where she stood, at the manager’s desk in the front, talking on the phone to the man from the garage, Edie watched the two of them walking to the taxi through the plate-glass window: arm in arm, picking their way across the gravel in their Sunday shoes. She rapped on the glass; Tat, in the glare, turned halfway and raised an arm and all of a sudden the name of Tatty’s old doll came to Edie so suddenly that she laughed out loud. “What?” said the garage man; the manager—wall-eyed behind thick glasses—glanced up at Edie as if she were crazy but she didn’t care. Lycobus. Of course. That was the tin doll’s name. Lycobus, who was naughty, and sassed her mother; Lycobus, who invited Adelaide’s dolls to a tea party, and served them only water and radishes.
