This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!

by Jonathan Evison

  “Maybe she’s right,” says Kurt. “Maybe y’all ought to have that talk, Caroline.”

  Caroline slams the highball glass down with gusto. “Fine,” she says, pushing off of the bar, her stool tipping backward, as she stands. “Let’s have a little talk.”

  Behind her, Kurt pantomimes an elaborate apology. How could he know?

  Harriet leads Caroline out by the elbow, though halfway down the corridor Caroline wrests her elbow free and steps up her pace, arriving at the elevator well in advance of Harriet, where she pushes the call button and shifts her weight impatiently from one foot to the other. Harriet knows better than to breach the silence at this point. Having been there herself so many times, she knows that any appeal to Caroline whatsoever at this moment, anything besides a strict observance of silence over the next minute or two, will only result in escalation.

  But something happens to Caroline in the close quarters of the elevator: all the defiance seems to drain out of her, right before Harriet’s eyes. Every muscle of her body seems to slacken at once.

  “Thanks for getting me out of there,” she says.

  Harriet reaches out and clutches her daughter’s hand, but Caroline pulls away as the elevator eases to a stop.

  In the blustery air of the observation deck, Caroline, her kinky hair blowing sideways, crosses her arms over her chest.

  “Dear, maybe we should go fetch your coat,” says Harriet.

  “No.”

  “But darling, you’ll freeze.”

  “I want to freeze.”

  The deck is deserted, as they drift wordlessly toward the stern, with the wind at their backs.

  “Well, I don’t know how you can stand it,” says Harriet.

  At midship, a steady blast from the heating vents envelops them suddenly in the illusion of a tropical night.

  “Now that’s more like it,” says Harriet, lowering herself onto a wide bench. “Sit down, dear.”

  But Caroline moves to the rail, where she stares into the darkness. Harriet wonders whether she should go to the rail or stay put and give Caroline her space. Watching her daughter’s back, the slow rhythmic convulsing of her shoulders, her dark mess of hair blowing crazily, Harriet contemplates the distance between them and wishes with an ache that the gap was only the mere ten or twelve feet now separating them. If only she could will her daughter back through the years.

  Harriet is about to go to her when Caroline turns. “Five years thirty-one days,” she says, plopping down next to Harriet. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

  “It’s my fault, dear.”

  “I’ve been looking for an excuse. You and Skip just made it convenient for me.”

  “Oh, Caroline. I’m so sorry. I’m a wicked person.”

  “What are we even talking about, here, Mom? Who am I? Who should I be begrudging?”

  Harriet balls her fists in her lap. She doesn’t know where to begin. She supposes, with the vague personal dissatisfaction and the ancient self-loathing, for which Charlie Fitzsimmons was only an antidote, or perhaps a symptom of or, at most, only part of the cause. But where did that begin? And what was it? And how, at nearly eighty years old, could she not know this about herself?

  “You know what?” says Caroline. “Maybe I don’t wanna know. To tell you the truth, that might be too much right now.”

  She bows her head, her ragged breath giving way to a sob. “Goddamnit, I fucked up again. Why do I always fuck up? I swear to God, it’s like I wanna fail. Skip’s right.”

  “Forget Skip,” says Harriet. “Don’t talk like that. Part of it is genetic, you know. At least you’ve had the courage to face it. My God, Caroline, what did I ever do? And that may be the least of my problems. Lately, I’m discovering all kinds of deficits in myself. I don’t even know who I am anymore, Caroline.”

  “Pfff. You’re telling me. I never have, Mom, not my whole life.”

  “You’d think the growing pains would end at some point, or at least slow down,” says Harriet. “But oh no.”

  “If anything, they accelerate,” Caroline says.

  Harriet scoots closer and tentatively takes her daughter’s hand. This time, she accepts it.

  “I’m sorry, dear. I’ve been a terrible mother. You did nothing to deserve me.”

  “Who is he?” she asks.

  “His name is—was—Charlie Fitzsimmons.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “He must be.”

  “You loved him?”

  “Never.”

  “Does he know about me?”

  “No.”

  “Did Dad know?”

  “No.”

  “So, I was . . . what, then? A mistake?”

  “Don’t ever say that.”

  “Well? Then what?”

  And so, Harriet breathes deeply of the warm air, bows her head, falters once, falters twice, gives pause, and finally begins her explanation. It begins in the waning minutes of 1936, with a little girl, confetti in her hair, hanging upside down in a bassinet.

  August 17, 1946

  (HARRIET AT NINE)

  Ding-dong-ding, thwack-thwack-thwack, how on earth did we arrive way back here, Harriet? It’s 1946, and Vaughn Monroe is on the radio. If you listen closely, you can still hear them celebrating victory in Times Square.

  Welcome to postwar America, where spirits are high. It’s been another prosperous year in the Nathan household, and nobody throws a company barbecue like the boys at Nathan, Montgomery, Ferris, and Fitzsimmons. We’re talking Indian smoked salmon. Waldorf salad. Frankfurters the size of Chiquita bananas. All the Coca-Cola a nine-year-old girl can drink.

  And lucky you, Harriet, of all the youngsters, you get a ride on Charlie Fitzsimmons’ speedboat, and boy, she’s a beaut. Good old Charlie Fitzsimmons. The whiz kid is now a wizened veteran of the law. One of the best in the city. A silver-tongued fox, a real asset to the firm. Your father venerates the man, talks about him like the son he never had, though Charlie’s only ten years younger.

  But you don’t like Charlie, do you, Harriet? Or maybe that’s not entirely accurate. You are acutely ambiguous about Charlie.

  On the drive home, in the backseat of your father’s Hudson Commodore, top down, you finally muster the courage to say so.

  “What do you mean you don’t like the way he talks to you?” says your father, slightly tipsy—slightly, that is, by Nathan, Montgomery, Ferris, and Fitzsimmons standards.

  “Like I’m already grown up,” you say.

  “Well, that’s because you’re a smart little girl,” he says, his eyes smiling in the rear view mirror. “He respects you.”

  “Goodness,” says your mother. “I hope you weren’t rude. If you said anything impolite, young lady, we’re driving right back to Charlie’s this instant, and you’re going to apologize.”

  “No,” you say. “I promise I wasn’t rude.”

  The thought of seeing Uncle Charlie (as he insists you call him) again, his coarse hands, his hairy knuckles, his gap-toothed smile, fills you with dread and anxiety. And the worst part is, you’re ashamed for feeling thus, because Charlie thinks you’re smart. Charlie respects you. Apparently, he’s among the first. Charlie doesn’t think you’re fat. He forever goes out of his way to tell you how special you are.

  “Well, then,” says your mother, as though she can hear your thoughts. “Maybe you ought to work on being a little more grateful.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” you say.

  Obviously, there’s no use telling your parents why else you don’t like Charlie Fitzsimmons, and his thin lips pressed against your forehead, and his hairy fingers groping beneath your bathing suit to pet you there. No use in telling them about the gentle way he spoke to you as he fondled you where your breasts had yet to begin their miraculous budding, nor the adoring things he said with his face buried in your lap. They wouldn’t believe you anyway. There’s no use telling anybody. Even Ginger, your golden retriever, doesn’t seem to want to hear it. That will be your little secret f
or the next seventy years, Harriet. Just you and Uncle Charlie.

  Charlie will continue to treat you with respect. He’ll always make a point of telling you how smart and capable you are. How he could see right from the beginning how special you were, how he knew he could always trust you. Like your parents, he will regale you with the story of the upside-down baby girl. He’ll tell you these things your whole life, right up to that after-hours dalliance on your office desk, twenty years hence, by which time, his speedboat will be a distant memory, buried deeply.

  This is your life, Harriet, the one you didn’t choose.

  August 17, 1946

  (HARRIET AT NINE)

  Now, now, not so fast, Harriet. We’ve still got business on Charlie’s boat. Isn’t it about time we revisit the scene of the . . . what shall we call it? The crime? That’s what the proper authorities would call it—the proper authorities not being your parents, of course. How about “the event”? “Event” makes it sound singular. Though it was not singular, was it, Harriet? It was multiple. Serial might be a better word choice. But let’s not quibble.

  Let’s just call it “the First Time.”

  It’s summer, but out here on the open water, the wind cuts right through your chubby limbs. You’ve got goose flesh. The chill is thrilling. Charlie guns the engine, skittering over the chop, the boat leaping dolphinlike out of the water, the hull thrashing against the surface upon its rejoinder.

  Look at you, Harriet, wide-eyed and grinning as your rump bounces up and down, half a foot off the padded berth, the horizon jumping right along with it. And Charlie is grinning, too, nay, Charlie is smiling like a madman. You can practically hear the wind whistling though his teeth.

  It’s not until Uncle Charlie stops the boat and leaves it to bob on the water like a cork that the chill is discomforting. The fact that he stopped the boat at all is discomforting in its own right. The craft is, after all, built for speed.

  When Charlie sees you start to shiver, he comes to you, surefooted across the slippery deck of the bobbing boat and helps you out of your wet life preserver. Deftly, he begins to unclasp the—

  Okay, fine, objection withheld. No need to dwell on the odious details, not for our purpose. This isn’t hypnotherapy, Harriet, this is your life, an unsentimental accounting of it. You get to be judge, jury, and arbiter. You get to decide what’s admissible. So strike the stuff about the offending fingers, the coarse stubble against your face, the whispered assurances. For the record, let’s just say that once Charlie unfastens the straps, your life preserver, like your parents, ceases to protect you. And you, Harriet, you cease protecting yourself.

  Yes, you were only nine years old, and no, it wasn’t consensual, not by the letter of the law, anyway. Well, not by any letter, actually. But still, let’s talk about your complicity in the affair. You could have resisted. Sure, you were in open water with no one around for a half mile. Still, you might have put up some kind of fuss. Sound travels a long ways across water. Surely, you must have learned that somewhere along the line by third grade. Think about it: Charlie was never about brute force, not in the courtroom or anywhere else. Charlie was about finesse, remember? Persuasion. He never threatened you. Quite the contrary. You had an unspoken understanding all those years.

  Not to let Charlie off of the hook, but in hindsight, a little kicking and screaming might have saved you some trouble. Any kind of resistance at all might’ve done the trick. Even a simple no would have bought you some time. Rest assured, the other you would have put up a fight.

  But you always were a quiet child, Harriet. Too quiet. And let’s face it, Charlie wasn’t used to taking no for an answer.

  Now that we’re getting right down to the nitty-gritty, let’s give voice, at long last, to that unspoken understanding you shared with Uncle Charlie, from the First Time, to hallway gropings, to the office desk.

  If you can name it, Harriet, maybe you can tame it.

  You owed Charlie Fitzsimmons, didn’t you? You owed him your life. And he took it from you, didn’t he? It all began on that motorboat, that’s when you started paying, that’s where your path diverged from the other you. Bit by bit, he stole your confidence, little by little, he widened the gap between you and the you you might have become. He took your newly developed voice and stripped you of the power to tell your own story. He exacted his debt in self-esteem. You paid silently in shame, Harriet, in unfulfilled potential, in unexplored possibility. And you’re still paying, all these years later.

  And somehow, in spite of it all, Charlie Fitzsimmons never lost your respect, exercising that same finesse and expert persuasion that made him such a formidable opponent in the courtroom and such a hero at the dinner table. You can’t fault yourself for being bested by the best, Harriet. You weren’t even in fourth grade.

  It ought to seem obvious. Lordy, it ought to go without saying, but somehow, some way, inconceivably, through the warped lens of your wounded self-image, the verdict has been lost on you all these years:

  You are not guilty, Harriet. At least of this offense.

  August 23, 2015

  (HARRIET AT SEVENTY-EIGHT)

  Harriet is awakened by the squalling of the public address system, signaling the Zuiderdam’s imminent arrival in Glacier Bay. Having been up half the night with Caroline, Harriet feels ten years older as she drags herself out of bed to find her daughter on the love seat, flipping absently through Mariner magazine.

  “Morning, Mom.”

  “Good morning, dear.”

  Indeed, it is a good morning. It’s overcast, which bodes well. The pamphlets say that the glaciers look their best beneath gray skies.

  Upon Caroline’s suggestion, they order breakfast from room service, and Wayan soon wheels in their omelets, with a sly wink for Harriet.

  “No crab today, eh, Ms. Chance?”

  “Good day, Wayan,” she says.

  The boy smiles. Releasing the cart, he fashions his hands into pincers and snaps them a few times for Harriet’s benefit.

  “Little smart-ass,” she says, upon his departure.

  “I don’t follow,” says Caroline.

  “It’s a long story. And not one I’m proud of.”

  They eat side by side on the love seat with the curtains open.

  “So, look, I know I’ve said some crummy things about Dad. But would it be okay if I go with you?”

  “Of course, dear. He’d want you there.”

  Everything feels different after last night. Having cleared the air after all these years, Harriet feels lighter. Her lone regret, aside from the fact that Skip isn’t here so she can wring his neck, is that she didn’t clear the air thirty years ago.

  With Caroline by her side and a chill breeze thundering past her ears, Harriet clutches the yogurt container firmly to her chest. Everything feels wrong for the occasion. It isn’t just the indifference of this eternal landscape forged by ice. She failed to consider the crowds, the incessant click of camera shutters, the oohing and aahing, the children darting about, squealing with laughter, horning in on her real estate, and stepping on her toes.

  Harriet clutches the ashes still closer as she stares straight ahead into the wind, her eyes fixed on the glacier that is glowing eerily blue against the white backdrop. Beyond its fissured facade, the glacier runs a smooth ribbon of ice into the mountains, through valleys carved violently and patiently over eons as far as the eye can see. Everything about this place—its stillness and scope and magnitude—seems to suggest permanence. But in fifty years, it will be gone.

  “Remember those Mentholatum cough drops?” says a voice, startling Harriet from her reverie. “The ones I used to like?”

  Harriet turns. There, beside her, in Caroline’s place, leaning against the rail in his blue windbreaker, stands Bernard. At ninety, he cuts a stooped figure, hatless, and gaunter than ever. His hair has thinned, now, only a few windblown wisps of white remaining. The hair growing out of his ears, meanwhile, has thickened.

  Sudde
nly the deck all around them is deserted. The children, the camera snappers, have all disappeared without a trace. Caroline is nowhere to be seen. Only Harriet and Bernard remain amid the sprawl of mountain and ice.

  “Dirtier than I thought it would be,” he observes. “But they really got the color right, didn’t they? Halls, I mean.”

  “Vicks,” she says. “Please don’t try to talk me out of this, Bernard.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “But hurry up. I haven’t got much time.”

  “Why are you here, Bernard? I think you owe me an explanation by now. To warn me, is that it? I want to know why you’re happening to me.”

  “Trust me, I haven’t got time to explain. I’d rather just savor these moments.”

  They trail off into silence, turning their attention overboard, where countless chunks of ice bob on the choppy surface of the bay.

  “I forgive you, Bernard.”

  Bernard fashions a sad smile, gathering a few wisps of hair between his fingers, before smoothing them back.

  “You don’t have to, you know? That’s not why I came. And anyway, I don’t deserve it.”

  “Maybe not,” she says. “But forgiveness isn’t something you earn.”

  From the glacier comes a deep rumbling and a yawning, and finally a thunderlike peel, as a massive wedge of ice splinters off the face, splashing down into the bay. Seconds later, the great, still silence returns, impervious to the disruption.

  “So it goes,” says Bernard, looking over his shoulder. Then without warning, he releases the rail and takes off, trotting lamely down the deck. “Gotta go,” he calls. “I’ll try to come back.”

  Harriet watches him struggle with the heavy door to the stairwell, then hobble down two steps before the door closes behind him.

  Slowly, she turns back to the rail and fixes her eyes on the massive glacier; for all its ancient grandeur, for all its size and determination, impermanent. And just as sure as the frigid air kisses her face, she feels the cool certainty of death. Though heaven knows she ought to be accustomed to the idea by now, it suddenly occurs to Harriet that she might die sooner rather than later. The yogurt container slips from her grasp. She fumbles to recover it as it crashes to the deck. The lid bursts open. A cloud of soot and ash explode into the wind.