The Little Friend

by Donna Tartt

  ————

  School started in two weeks. Hely was at something called Band Clinic, which involved going out to the football field every day and marching back and forth in the suffocating heat. When the football team came out to practice, they all filed back into the tin-roofed shanty of a gymnasium and sat around in folding chairs practicing their instruments. Afterwards the band director built a bonfire and cooked hot dogs, or got together a softball game or an impromptu “jam session” with the bigger kids. Some nights Hely came home early; but on those nights, he said, he had to practice his trombone after supper.

  In a way, Harriet was glad of his absence. She was embarrassed by her sorrow, which was too huge to conceal, and by the disastrous state of the house. Harriet’s mother had grown more active after Ida’s departure, in a manner recalling certain nocturnal animals at the Memphis zoo: delicate little saucer-eyed marsupials who—deceived by the ultraviolet lamps that illumined their glass case—ate and groomed themselves and scurried gracefully about their leafy business under the illusion that they were safely hidden, beneath cover of night. Secret trails popped up overnight, and ran and crisscrossed throughout the house, trails marked by tissues, asthma inhalers, bottles of pills and hand lotion and nail varnish, glasses of melting ice which left a linkage of white rings on the table-tops. A portable easel appeared in a particularly crowded and dirty corner of the kitchen and—upon it, gradually, day by day—a picture of some watery purple pansies (though she never finished the vase they were in, beyond the pencil sketch). Even her hair took on a rich new brunette tint (“Chocolate Kiss,” said the bottle—covered with sticky black drips—that Harriet discovered in the wicker trash-can in the downstairs bathroom). Unmindful of the unswept carpets, the sticky floors, the sour-smelling towels in the bathroom, she lavished a bewildering amount of care upon trivia. One afternoon, Harriet found her pushing stacks of clutter left and right in order that she might get down on her knees and polish the brass doorknobs with special polish and a special cloth; another afternoon—heedless of the crumbs, the grease specks, the spilled sugar on the kitchen counter, of the dirty tablecloth and the tower of dishes, stacked precariously above cold gray sink-water, heedless above all of certain sweet whiffs of spoilage, emanating from everywhere and nowhere all at once—she spent a whole hour frantically buffing down an old chrome toaster until it shone like the fender of a limousine, and then spent another ten minutes standing back to admire her handiwork. “We’re managing all right, aren’t we?” she said, and: “Ida never did get things really clean, did she, not like this?” (gazing upon the toaster) and “It’s fun, isn’t it? Just the three of us?”

  It wasn’t fun. Still, she was trying. One day, toward the end of August, she got out of bed, took a bubble bath, dressed and put on lipstick, seated herself on a kitchen step-ladder and leafed through The James Beard Cookbook until she found a recipe called Steak Diane, and then walked to the grocery store and bought all the ingredients. Back home, she put on a ruffled cocktail apron (a Christmas gift, never used) over her dress; lit a cigarette, and made herself a Coke on ice with a little bourbon in it, and drank it while she cooked the recipe. Then, holding the platter aloft over her head, they all squeezed single-file into the dining room. Harriet cleared a space on the table; Allison lit a pair of candles, which cast long, wavering shadows on the ceiling. The dinner was the best that Harriet had eaten in a long time—though, three days later, the dishes were still piled in the sink.

  Ida’s presence had been valuable not least in this aspect, previously unforeseen: it had constricted her mother’s range of activity in respects which—only now, too late—Harriet appreciated. How often had Harriet yearned for her mother’s company, wished her up and around and out of the bedroom? Now—in a stroke—this wish was granted; and if Harriet had been lonely, and discouraged by the bedroom door, which was always shut, now she was never sure when that door might creak open and her mother drift out, to hover wistfully about Harriet’s chair, as if waiting for Harriet to speak the word that would break the silence and make everything easy and comfortable between them. Harriet would have helped her mother, gladly, if she’d had any clue what she was supposed to say—Allison knew how to reassure their mother without saying a word, just by the calm of her physical presence—but with Harriet, it was different, it seemed that she was supposed to say or do something, though she wasn’t sure what, and the pressure of that expectant gaze only left her speechless and ashamed, and sometimes—if it was too desperate, or lingered too long—frustrated and angry. Then, willfully, she fixed her gaze on her hands, on the floor, on the wall before her, anything to shut out the appeal of her mother’s eyes.

  Harriet’s mother did not often talk of Libby—she could hardly pronounce Libby’s name without breaking down in tears—but her thoughts ran towards Libby most of the time, and their current was as plain as if she spoke them aloud. Libby was everywhere. Conversations turned about her, even though her name went unmentioned. Oranges? Everyone remembered the orange slices Libby liked to float in Christmas punch, the orange cake (a sad dessert, from a World War II ration cookbook) that Libby sometimes baked. Pears? Pears too were rich in associations: Libby’s gingered pear preserves; the song that Libby sang about the little pear tree; the still life, featuring pears, that Libby had painted at the state college for women at the turn of the century. And somehow—in talking wholly about objects—it was possible to talk about Libby for hours without mentioning her name. Unspoken reference to Libby haunted every conversation; every country or color, every vegetable or tree, every spoon and doorknob and candy dish was steeped and distempered with her memory—and though Harriet did not question the correctness of this devotion, still sometimes it felt uncomfortably as if Libby had been transformed from a person into a sort of sickly omnipresent gas, seeping through keyholes and under the door cracks.

  This was all a very strange design of talk, and it was even stranger because their mother had made it plain in a hundred wordless ways that the girls were not to mention Ida. Even when they referred to Ida indirectly, her displeasure was evident. And she had frozen with her drink halfway to her lips when Harriet (without thinking) had mentioned Libby and Ida in the same, sad breath.

  “How dare you!” she cried, as if Harriet had said something disloyal to Libby—base, unforgivable—and then, to Harriet: “Don’t look at me like that.” She seized the hand of startled Allison; she dropped it and fled from the room.

  But though Harriet was forbidden to confide her own sorrow, her mother’s sorrow was a constant reproach, and Harriet felt vaguely responsible for it. Sometimes—at night, especially—it waxed palpable, like a mist, permeating the entire house; a thick haze of it hung about her mother’s bowed head, her slumped shoulders, as heavy as the whiskey smell that hung over Harriet’s father when he had been drinking. Harriet crept up to the doorway and watched silently, as her mother sat at the kitchen table in the yellowy light of the lamp with her head in her hands and a cigarette burning between her fingertips.

  And yet, when her mother turned and tried to smile, or make small talk, Harriet fled. She hated the shy, girlish way her mother had begun to tiptoe around the house, peeping around corners and looking in cabinets, as if Ida were some tyrant she was glad to be rid of. Whenever she edged close—smiling timidly, in that particular, tremulous way that meant she wanted to “talk,” Harriet felt herself harden to ice. Still as a stone she held herself when her mother sat down beside her on the sofa, when her mother reached out, awkwardly, and patted her hand.

  “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” Her voice was too loud; she sounded like an actress.

  Harriet was silent, staring down sullenly at the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was open in her lap, at an article about the Cavy. It was a family of South American rodents which included the guinea pig.

  “The thing is—” her mother laughed, a choked, dramatic little laugh—“I hope you never have to live through the kind of pain I’ve suffer
ed.”

  Harriet scrutinized a black-and-white photograph of the Capybara, the largest member of the Cavy family. It was the largest rodent alive.

  “You’re young, honey. I’ve done my best to protect you. I just don’t want you to make some of the mistakes I’ve made.”

  She waited. She was sitting far too close. Though Harriet felt uncomfortable, she held herself still and refused to look up. She was determined not to give her mother the slightest opening. All her mother wanted was a display of interest (not genuine interest, just a show) and Harriet knew well enough what would please her: to set the encyclopedia pointedly aside, to fold her hands in her lap and put on a sympathetic frowny face as her mother talked. Poor mother. That was enough; that would do.

  And it wasn’t much. But the unfairness of it made Harriet tremble. Did her mother listen when she wanted to talk? And in the silence, looking fixedly at the encyclopedia (how hard it was to hold firm, not to answer!) she recalled stumbling into her mother’s bedroom, tear-blinded over Ida, the limp, queenly way her mother had raised a fingertip, one fingertip, just like that.…

  Suddenly Harriet became aware that her mother had stood up, and was looking down at her. Her smile was thin and barbed like a fish-hook. “Please don’t let me bother you while you’re reading,” she said.

  Immediately Harriet was struck by regret. “Mother, what?” She pushed the encyclopedia aside.

  “Never mind.” Her mother cut her eyes away, drew the sash of her bathrobe.

  “Mother?” Harriet called after her down the hallway, as the bedroom door—a little too decorously—clicked shut. “Mother, I’m sorry.…”

  Why was she so hateful? Why couldn’t she behave like other people wanted her to? Harriet sat on the sofa, berating herself; and the sharp unpleasant thoughts tumbled through her mind long after she’d picked herself up and trudged up to bed. Her anxiety and guilt were not confined to her mother—or even her immediate situation—but ranged far and wide, and the most torturous of it revolved around Ida. What if Ida had a stroke? Or was struck by a car? It happened, and now Harriet knew it only too well: people died, just like that, fell right over on the ground. Would Ida’s daughter send word? Or—more likely—would she assume that no one at Harriet’s house cared?

  Harriet—with a scratchy crochet afghan thrown over her—tossed, and flopped, and shouted out accusations and orders in her sleep. From time to time, August heat lightning flashed blue through the room. She would never forget how her mother had treated Ida: never forget it, never forgive it, never. Yet angry as she was, she could not harden her heart—not wholly—against the wringing of her mother’s sorrow.

  And this was most excruciating of all when her mother tried to pretend it wasn’t there. She lolloped downstairs in her pyjamas, threw herself down on the sofa before her silent daughters like some sort of goofy baby-sitter, suggested “fun” activities as if they were all just a big bunch of pals sitting around together. Her face was flushed, her eyes were bright; but beneath her cheer was a frantic and pitifully strained quality that made Harriet want to weep. She wanted to play card games. She wanted to make taffy—taffy! She wanted to watch television. She wanted them to go over to the Country Club for a steak—which was impossible, the dining room at the Country Club wasn’t even open on Mondays, what was she thinking? And she was full of horrifying questions. “Do you want a bra?” she asked Harriet; and “Wouldn’t you like to have a friend over?” and “Do you want to drive up and visit your father in Nashville?”

  “I think you should have a party,” she said to Harriet.

  “Party?” said Harriet warily.

  “Oh, you know, a little Coca-Cola or ice-cream party for the girls in your class at school.”

  Harriet was too aghast to speak.

  “You need to … see people. Invite them over. Girls your own age.”

  “Why?”

  Harriet’s mother waved a hand dismissively. “You’ll be in high school soon,” she said. “Before long, it’ll be time for you to think about cotillion. And, you know, cheerleading and modeling squad.”

  Modeling squad? thought Harriet in amazement.

  “The best days of your life are still ahead of you. I think high school’s really going to be your time, Harriet.”

  Harriet had no idea what to say to this.

  “It’s your clothes, is that it, sweetie?” Her mother looked at her appealingly. “Is that why you don’t want to have your little girlfriends over?”

  “No!”

  “We’ll take you to Youngland in Memphis. Buy you some pretty clothes. Let your father pay for it.”

  Their mother’s ups and downs were wearing even upon Allison, or so it seemed, because Allison had begun without explanation to spend afternoons and evenings away from home. The phone began to ring more often. Twice in one week, Harriet had answered when a girl identifying herself as “Trudy” had called for Allison. Who “Trudy” was Harriet didn’t ask, and didn’t care, but she watched through the window as Trudy (a shadowy figure in a brown Chrysler) stopped in front of the house for Allison who waited barefoot by the curb.

  Other times, Pemberton came to pick her up in the baby-blue Cadillac, and they drove away without saying hello or inviting Harriet to come. Harriet sat in the upstairs window seat of her darkened bedroom after they rattled off down the street, staring out into the murky sky over the train tracks. Off in the distance, she saw the lights of the baseball field, the lights of Jumbo’s Drive-In. Where did they go, Pemberton and Allison, when they drove away in the dark, what did they have to say to each other? The street was still slick from the afternoon’s thunderstorm; above it, the moon shone through a ragged hole in thunderhead clouds, so that the billowy edges were washed with a livid, grandiose light. Beyond—through the rift in the sky—all was clarity: cold stars, infinite distance. It was like staring into a clear pool that seemed shallow, inches deep, but you might toss a coin in that glassy water and it would fall and fall, spiraling down forever without ever striking bottom.

  ————

  “What’s Ida’s address?” Harriet asked Allison one morning. “I want to write and tell her about Libby.”

  The house was hot and still; dirty laundry was heaped in great grimy swags on top of the washing machine. Allison looked up blankly from her bowl of cornflakes.

  “No,” said Harriet, after a long moment of disbelief.

  Allison glanced away. She had recently started wearing dark makeup on her eyes, and it gave her an evasive, uncommunicative look.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t get it! What’s wrong with you?”

  “She didn’t give it to me.”

  “Didn’t you ask?”

  Silence.

  “Well, didn’t you? What’s the matter with you?”

  “She knows where we live,” said Allison. “If she wants to write.”

  “Sweetheart?” Their mother’s voice, in the next room: helpful, infuriating. “Are you looking for something?”

  After a long pause, Allison—her eyes down—resumed eating. The crunch of her cornflakes was nauseatingly loud, like the magnified crunch of some leaf-eating insect on a nature program. Harriet pushed back in her chair, cast her eyes about the room in useless panic: what town had Ida said, what town exactly, what was her daughter’s married name? And would it make any difference, even if Harriet knew? In Alexandria, Ida hadn’t had a telephone. Whenever they needed to get in touch with Ida, Edie had to get in the car and drive over to Ida’s house—which wasn’t even a house, only a lopsided brown shack in a yard of packed dirt, no grass and no sidewalk, just mud. Smoke puffing from a rusty little metal stovepipe, up top, when Edie had stopped by one winter evening with Harriet in the car, bringing fruitcake and tangerines for Ida’s Christmas. The memory of Ida appearing in the doorway—surprised, in the car headlights, wiping her hands on a dirty apron—choked Harriet with a sudden, sharp grief. Ida hadn’t let them in, but the glimpse through the open door had flooded Harriet with
confusion and sadness: old coffee cans, an oilcloth-covered table, the raggedy old smoky-smelling sweater—a man’s sweater—that Ida wore in the wintertime, hanging on a peg.

  Harriet unfolded her fingers of her left hand and consulted, in private, the cut she’d made in the meat of her palm with a Swiss Army knife on the day after Libby’s funeral. In the suffocating misery of the quiet house, the stab wound had made her yelp aloud with surprise. The knife clattered to the floor of the bathroom. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes, which were already hot and sore from crying. Harriet wrung her hand and squeezed her lips tight as the black coins of blood dripped on the shadowy tile; around and around she looked, in the corners of the ceiling, as if expecting some help from above. The pain was a strange relief—icy and bracing, and in its harsh way it calmed her and concentrated her thoughts. By the time this stops hurting, she’d said to herself, by the time it heals, I won’t feel so bad about Libby.

  And the cut was better. It didn’t hurt much any more, except when she closed her hand a certain way. A wine-colored welt of scar tissue had bubbled up in the little stab hole; it was interesting to look at, like a small blob of pink glue, and it reminded her in a good way of Lawrence of Arabia, burning himself with matches. Evidently that sort of thing built soldierly character. “The trick,” he’d said in the movie, “is not to mind that it hurts.” In the vast and ingenious scheme of suffering, as Harriet was now beginning to understand it, this was a trick well worth learning.