Harriet Spies Again

by Louise Fitzhugh

  Ole Golly snipped a piece of yarn with her tiny scissors. “I have a position here. That is not the same thing. And no, I am not at all tired of it. I am grateful for it.”

  Harriet picked up the narrow yellow tape measure that Ole Golly used for her knitting. She held one end to her left eyebrow. “Well, are you tired of New York?” she asked.

  “No. I’m tired of the photography gallery of the Museum of Modern Art; it’s too confusing. I’m tired of taxi drivers: too impolite. Times Square: too many tourists. Bloomingdale’s: too expensive. And certain movie theaters that poison the mind. But I avoid them. On the whole, I like New York very much,” Ole Golly said.

  Harriet held the measuring tape across her left eyebrow carefully. She stood and went to the mirror over the fireplace. The numbers were backward in the mirror, but she could read them if she set her mind to it. Her left eyebrow seemed to be 1.6 inches horizontally, but that didn’t account for the slight arch. Harriet tried to make the tape measure curve slightly to match the brow.

  “Were you tired of Montreal?” she asked. The tape measure uncurled and dangled in front of her eyes, making it difficult to read the number over her eyebrow.

  Ole Golly said no. “I liked Montreal,” she said. “It’s pretty there.” While Harriet watched in the mirror, Ole Golly turned the sweater inside out and looked at the many bits of dangling yarn. From her little zippered bag she took a needle and threaded one of the yarn bits into its large eye. Carefully she began to weave the yarn into the inside of the sweater, where it wouldn’t show.

  Harriet gave up on her eyebrows. She replaced the tape measure in Ole Golly’s knitting basket. Trying to sound casual, she asked, “Were you tired of Mr. Waldenstein?”

  From below on the street, they could hear the squealing whir of a tire caught on freezing snow. Harriet glanced down through the window and watched a yellow taxi rock back and forth as the driver tried to get it loose; finally it eased away and continued slowly down the snowy street. There was not another vehicle in sight.

  “Harriet, I was not going to discuss this with you. But I will tell you that George Waldenstein misrepresented himself,” Ole Golly said suddenly. “I was not at all tired of him. But a person does not tolerate deception.”

  “But how—”

  “Enough. Nothing more will be forthcoming on that topic.”

  When Ole Golly spoke firmly, she was not to be budged, Harriet knew. She sat down and stared at the fire, which flickered blue and orange.

  “Are you tired of me?” she asked at last.

  “Only of your questions,” Ole Golly said with a sigh. “Here.” She tossed the finished sweater to Harriet. “Try this on.”

  • • •

  “Pumpkin chiffon, with a crushed-gingersnap-and-pecan crust,” Sport announced over the telephone. “And—”

  “Wait,” Harriet said. “I can’t type very fast.”

  She began to add it to the list of food she was creating. She planned to type the menu for Thanksgiving dinner and place it in the center of the table the way a fine restaurant might.

  Sport continued. “And I’m also making—”

  “Wait,” Harriet said again. She put the telephone receiver on the desk so she could use both hands. Then she typed:

  PUMPKIN CHIFFON PIE

  crushed-gingersnap-&-pecan crust

  She looked at it and smiled. Then she typed an addition to it, so that it said:

  PUMPKIN CHIFFON PIE

  crushed-gingersnap-&-pecan crust à la Simon Rocque

  “Sport,” she told him, “you’re going to be amazed. Okay, what else?”

  “Apple pie.”

  Harriet typed some more.

  APPLE PIE SIMONESQUE

  “Just wait till you see this, Sport. This dinner is going to be so spectacular I don’t even mind that the Connelly twins are coming.”

  “I mind,” Sport grumbled. “They always torture me. They give me wedgies at every opportunity.”

  Harriet knew that. She had seen it happen. But she had decided that Thanksgiving would be wonderful despite the Connellys. “I’ll tell my dad to keep an eye on them in case they try anything,” she reassured Sport.

  “Also,” she said, “I have another idea. For the culmination of the celebration.”

  “The pièce de résistance?”

  “You sound like my mother, Sport. But yes, that’s exactly what it will be.”

  After Harriet hung up the phone, she worked some more on the menu.

  COFFEE OR TEA

  She had thought that would be the final notation, and maybe she could use a marking pen to make a decorative little swirl below it. But then she decided to add one more thing:

  VERY SPECIAL SURPRISE

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER DINNER

  Harriet made certain Ole Golly was still in her bedroom with the door tightly closed. The house was silent. No one was eavesdropping. Through the window, she could see that across the street the Feigenbaums’ house was dark, with the draperies drawn across the windows. The wind whistled in the snow-filled street below.

  Harriet took a deep breath, picked up the phone, and dialed Montreal.

  CHAPTER 14

  Harriet recognized his voice when he answered the telephone. She had heard it often during those days last year when he had come shyly to the Welsches’ house to woo Ole Golly. Despite the fact that his method of transportation was a delivery bike, George Waldenstein had been sweetly formal, carefully shaking out his creased trousers when he dismounted and saying “Good evening” to Harriet with a small nod, as if she were an adult.

  She could almost picture his head making that bashful nod again as she identified herself. “Maybe you don’t remember me—” she began.

  “Good evening to you, Harriet,” he said. “Of course I remember you. You were a wonderful companion to Catherine. And when I was privileged to be in your company, to me, as well. I recall that we once went to the cinema together.”

  Harriet smiled. “Yes, I remember that! We saw that movie where Paul Newman was Apollo, and I rode in the container on your delivery bike! It was more fun than anything!”

  They were silent together for a moment, and Harriet knew somehow that they were both remembering one of the happiest nights of their lives. It had been the night that Mr. Waldenstein proposed to Ole Golly. Harriet hadn’t known at the time. A proposal was a very private thing, as loving was. She had only known that riding there, curled in the delivery box with the lid down on top of her, and Ole Golly sitting primly behind George Waldenstein on the bike whisking them through New York on their way to the movies, they had all three been part of something very big and wonderful and filled with future.

  Harriet thought for a moment that she might cry.

  “It’s snowing here,” she said quickly. Talking about the weather was a good way to make tears go away.

  “Here, too,” George Waldenstein said, and she heard him sniff and knew that he had been about to cry as well.

  “Il neige,” Harriet said, to show him that she knew a little French.

  “Oui, il neige.”

  Then they were silent.

  “Mr. Waldenstein—”

  “Harriet—”

  They both laughed. “You first,” George Waldenstein said politely.

  Harriet plunged in. “Did you know that Ole Golly is here?” she asked. “I mean Catherine? I mean your wife?”

  “Yes. She told me where she was going. If she hadn’t, I would have been frantic with worry, Harriet. But I knew she was going to a good place.”

  “But you haven’t called or anything! It’s been three whole months since she came, and you haven’t called once!”

  “I promised her I wouldn’t,” he said solemnly.

  “She’s very, very sad,” Harriet said. She had decided she could not tell Mr. Waldenstein about the baby. It was not her place. Only a wife could tell a husband that news. Sometimes in movies the wife knit a tiny sweater and showed it to the husband with a know
ing smile, and then they hugged and violins played. Harriet hoped Ole Golly and George Waldenstein could have a scene like that. But first she had to get him to New York.

  “So am I,” George Waldenstein said, and Harriet could tell from his voice that it was true. “I, too, am very sad.”

  “Mr. Waldenstein, she told me just today—just this very afternoon—that she was not tired of you. That is the absolute truth. She said it.”

  She could hear him sigh. “That may be, Harriet, but she became tired of my deception. I misrepresented myself. There is no excuse. She was right to leave me.”

  “What did you do? What could have been that bad?” Harriet knew it was a nosy question, what Ole Golly would have called a busybody question. But she didn’t care. She needed to know.

  “I told her that we would go to Montreal to begin a wonderful life together. That we would buy a little convenience store, and we would perhaps live above it in a cozy flat. We pictured how she would be cooking dinner upstairs and I would be below, selling milk and potato chips and la litière du chat to people from the neighborhood—”

  “I’m sorry but I don’t know what that is. We haven’t had that in vocabulary yet.”

  “Kitty litter,” Mr. Waldenstein explained.

  “Oh.”

  “—and small children would pop in to buy candy,” he went on, “and we would know each one by name—that was important to Catherine, to be near children; she loves them so—”

  His voice broke slightly.

  “Oh, please don’t cry, Mr. Waldenstein. Talk about the weather for a minute,” Harriet suggested. Her own voice was a little shaky.

  She heard him take a deep breath. “It seems to be changing to sleet here,” he said.

  “It’s very windy here,” Harriet said.

  “The forecast is for much more snow,” Mr. Waldenstein said.

  “Yes, here, too. I think we already have six inches.”

  “All right, I can go on now,” Mr. Waldenstein said in a stronger voice.

  “Please do.”

  “So we pooled our savings and opened a bank account, and we moved in with my mother while we looked around for a shop with a flat above it.”

  “So far,” Harriet commented, “I haven’t heard anything about deception. Not a single word.”

  “My mother was very, very old,” Mr. Waldenstein said. “She needed a lot of looking after.”

  “My goodness.”

  “And she was not very pleasant. I have to admit that, even though she was my mother. She was never pleasant, even when she was younger.”

  “That’s very sad, Mr. Waldenstein. Did you deceive Ole Golly by pretending that your mother would be jolly and fun?”

  He sighed. “No. I told Catherine that Mother would be difficult.”

  “So you didn’t misrepresent anything.”

  “Well, nothing about Mother. Catherine said that she had certainly had to deal with unpleasant people before. She didn’t mean you, Harriet—”

  “No. But probably I was difficult occasionally when I was younger,” Harriet acknowledged. “I had tantrums.”

  He sighed again. “So did Mother. Anyway, every day I set out to look at real estate and Catherine stayed with Mother, dressing her and feeding her, and being no-nonsense when Mother was particularly difficult. One day Mother threw a coffeepot at Catherine. It pains me to tell you this, Harriet.”

  “Was there hot coffee in it? Did she get scalded?” Harriet was horrified. She pictured poor Ole Golly burned and wet.

  “No, it was empty. And Mother missed. Her aim wasn’t good.”

  “Oh.”

  “Each evening I came home, and after Catherine got Mother put to bed, we would talk about our day. Sometimes we would have a small glass of wine. I would tell Catherine about the stores I had looked at, with flats above, but none of them was cozy enough for us, or the price was too high, or the neighborhood not good enough. Catherine was so patient. She was so certain that we would find just the right place. We would sit there sipping our wine, talking about how happy we would be in our own cozy place—”

  “Oh dear.” Harriet could hear his voice tremble again. “How’s the weather now, Mr. Waldenstein? Still sleeting?”

  “Yes. But they do predict sun by Saturday. That’s only four days away.”

  “It’s very windy here,” Harriet said.

  “I’m all right now.”

  “Go on, then. You were sipping wine, and talking about cozy flats—”

  “Yes, each evening.”

  “Mr. Waldenstein, it doesn’t sound as if you did anything wrong. It wasn’t your fault about the coffeepot. Anyway, she missed.”

  “I’m getting to the hard part now, Harriet. Bear with me. The truth is, I never looked at a single convenience store, or any cozy flats, or even noncozy flats.”

  “Mr. Waldenstein! You were lying to Ole Golly!”

  “Yes, dear heart, I was.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I wanted it so badly: the store, the flat, the life we had imagined. But—oh dear; this is hard.

  “The truth is, there was not enough money. Do you remember that I told you we pooled our savings and opened a bank account?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it was all her savings. Dear Catherine’s. I didn’t have any savings at all. I had never earned enough as a deliveryman in New York. I had nothing. Nothing but my love for Catherine, and my hope that we—” He paused.

  “It’s very windy here, Mr. Waldenstein, and they say the snow will continue all through tomorrow.”

  She could hear him take several deep breaths. Then he continued. “So there was not enough money. Catherine had been very prudent, and your parents had paid her very well, but her savings were small. And I had none at all, though she didn’t know that, because I had deceived her. So each day I went out, leaving her to tend that miserable mother of mine, dodging the things that were thrown at her. Once it was a box of raisin bran, I remember.”

  “But what did you do each day, Mr. Waldenstein, if you weren’t looking for a convenience store with a cozy flat above?”

  “I tried to get the money.”

  Harriet was shocked. “Mr. Waldenstein! You weren’t robbing banks, were you?”

  “No, of course not. Harriet, do you speak French?”

  Harriet hesitated. “Well, you and I said ‘Il neige’ to each other. And Cook thinks I do. I told Cook that I’m fluent in French. But I’m really not. I know some words, though.”

  “La Poule aux Oeufs d’Or,” Mr. Waldenstein said.

  Harriet repeated it to herself but she didn’t understand what it meant. “I give up,” she said.

  “The Hen that Lays Golden Eggs,” he told her. “That’s what I did every day.”

  “I don’t get it. You took up chicken farming?”

  “No, it’s the name of one of the Canadian lottery games. There are others. Québec Banco. Mini. La Quotidienne. I played them all.”

  “You gambled? And you were using Ole Golly’s savings? Mr. Waldenstein!”

  “Using Catherine’s savings, and losing Catherine’s savings. It’s true,” he said. “It was despicable. I just wanted it all so much.” He fell silent.

  “One time,” Harriet told him, “I asked Ole Golly how it felt to be in love, and you know what she said?”

  “Tell me,” he said in a small voice.

  “She said it felt as if doors were opening all over the world. She said it was bigger than the world itself.”

  She could hear him begin to cry, and it was too sad a crying to be deflected by talk about the weather. Also, Harriet felt somehow that he needed the crying. Sometimes people did. Sometimes she did.

  “I closed all those doors,” he said when he could talk again.

  “Yes, you did. You slammed them in her face. It wasn’t fair.”

  “I ruined her life, and my own,” George Waldenstein said.

  “And now for punishment, you have to live with your terr
ible mother and dodge when she throws things at you.”

  “No,” he said, “my mother died two months ago. My punishment is living without Catherine. And to make it worse, my mother left me a good bit of money, so now I have the convenience store and the cozy flat. But it isn’t cozy all alone. Every day I think about how it might have been.” He gave a long sigh. Harriet sighed with him.

  “Mr. Waldenstein?”

  “Yes, dear heart?”

  “Here’s what I think you should do. Here’s what you must do. You must take a plane to New York, and you must appear on our doorstep and ring the bell at exactly five P.M. on Thursday. I’ve written you onto the menu.”

  She could hear Mr. Waldenstein give a small sad laugh, not a happy one. Maybe, Harriet thought, recalling her list of adjectives, it was rueful.

  “She would slam the door, Harriet, in a mad, thunking way. You know how she gets sometimes.”

  “But she misses you, Mr. Waldenstein! Take the chance! Sometimes you just have to take the chance and let the chips fall where they may.” Even as she said it, Harriet knew that she would add LET THE CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY to her list of dumb phrases.

  “It’s tempting, Harriet. But impossible. It’s Thanksgiving in the U.S.A., you know.”

  “Of course I know. I’ve set a place for you—for dessert, not the main course. You’re to be the pièce de résistance.”

  “Thank you, ma chérie. But I’ve been watching the news on television. And just today they were talking about how this is the busiest holiday in U.S. airports all year. There are no tickets available. All flights are overbooked. So although it is tempting—although for a moment you made me feel that it would be the right thing to do—it is impossible.”

  Harriet’s heart sank, even though SINKING HEART was also on her list of dumb phrases. There was no hope. Her parents were arriving home, and Ole Golly was planning to move to Far Rockaway on the first of December, immediately after Thanksgiving. Spying, Harriet had seen that Ole Golly had taken her big suitcase out of the closet where it had been stored. Somehow she knew things could never be repaired once Ole Golly had moved to Far Rockaway.

  “But she has something very important to tell you. And she’s innocent, too,” Harriet added glumly, not even knowing what Ole Golly was innocent of.