Those Harper Women

by Stephen Birmingham

  They stopped in front of the house and got out of the carriage. “I had it built for you and Charles,” he said, and handed her the key. “Your wedding present from me.”

  As they walked through the empty rooms of the house, her father stopped her once with his hand. Smiling at her he said softly, “Are the ceilings high enough, princess?” Then he said, “Furniture is part of the present too, but I wanted you to choose your own.” And a peculiar remark that may have meant nothing at all: “Perhaps you’d prefer furniture in the French style?”

  After he left them alone in the house, Charles was silent, and so was she. They walked slowly through the rooms again.

  “This house echoes,” he said.

  “A new house always echoes. When we’ve lived in it a while, the echo will go.”

  They went out into the wide, empty veranda and looked at the yard, which was nothing but heaps of tossed earth and rocks and wheelbarrow trails and scraps from the builders. Charles went down the steps and picked up a handful of dry dirt in his hand, and crumbled it. “We could build a garden,” he said. “We may not have been able to build our own house, but we could build a garden.”

  It was several months after they had moved into the house that it dawned on Edith Harper Blakewell that what her father had said about having the house built for her and Charles was a lie. It had to be a lie, because work on the house had been started the preceding spring, before she and Charles had even met. Perhaps—since she had never known on which of their Paris summers Monique had come into her father’s life—the house had been built for Monique; perhaps for some other purpose or person. It may also have occurred to Charles, at some point, that the house could not have been built for them. It must have occurred to him. But in the seven years they lived there together he did not mention it to her, nor did Edith ever mention it to him. They had accepted the house on the termas Meredith Harper set. It was too late to ask questions.

  Morning comes tentatively to tropical places. It pricks out the hilltops with a certain hesitancy, and seems uncertain about invading the deeply shadowed valleys. Leona, up early, and without having said a word to anyone, is descending the streets of Government Hill in a taxi through this cautious mixture of light and shadow. “I’ll walk from here,” she tells the driver finally. She pays him, and gets out of the taxi.

  Very well. Walk where? She is at the foot of the hill, in the center of the town. Across the street is Fort Christian and, ahead of her, Kings Wharf and the Harbor. Already, though it is barely six o’clock and a Sunday morning, the streets are alive and busy; there is a shrill air of hurry and importance everywhere. Bicycles scoot by with bells jangling, and native women, in their long skirts, move nodding and talking up and down the street with their baskets balanced miraculously on their kerchiefed heads—baskets of wash, baskets of bread, baskets of coal. The baskets nod and sway as necks turn and faces smile at her. In front of the town pump a queue of women—carrying heavy jugs and pails, pitchers roped together at the handles—is forming, lining up for the day’s water. (If I could paint, I would paint this, Leona thinks.) And, as does everyone who rediscovers what the glitter of very early morning is like, Leona wonders why she doesn’t do this oftener: get up early and watch the beginning of day. She walks slowly toward Kings Wharf.

  Self-preservation—that is the phrase that has been hammering in her head for the past few hours. Having burned a number of her bridges behind her, it is now time—high time—to start erecting new ones. Perhaps she was wrong to have turned to the old bridges, to have tried to recross them; bridges like Granny, like Eddie. Perhaps that is why they failed her. Or did she fail them? The sun in her hair is warm, but there is a cool breeze blowing off the Harbor, and the air is full of smells—the smell of coffee brewing, the smell of fruit from the little streetside stalls just opening their shuttered fronts, and the smell of the sea. Flags flutter in the wind from their masts above the towers of the old Fort. Leona tries to feel like a flag herself—bright and buffeted and whipped by the wind; confident, self-preserving.

  And her marriages were bridges too—brief ones. But why three? Why three divorces? Is there something in you that compels you to kill kindness, or love, whenever you encounter it? she asks herself. Walking toward the long pier, the dreary headings of all those divorce papers file in front of her: Breed vs. Breed, Paine vs. Paine, Para-Diaz vs. Para-Diaz. Now it seems to be a case of the People vs. Leona Ware Breed Paine Para-Diaz. And, indeed, the People seem to have quite a case against her.

  Walking slowly out along the pier, she begins to feel that a new beginning, whatever it is, will be offered to her here, and soon. This is what the urgency of the morning seems to be saying, that the idea will come soon, the inspiration. Swinging her hands deep in the pockets of her cotton skirt, she passes an ancient, white-haired Negro who squats on his haunches on the pier, whittling a piece of bamboo. Bright yellow shards of wood scatter across his knees and at his feet. He nods and grins at her. “Good morning, Miss Leona Harper. You up early.”

  Queer, how all the natives know her, but call her by her great-grandfather’s name. She smiles at the old man. “Isn’t it a splendid day?”

  At the end of the pier she stands looking out—at the lobster boats rocking gently in the harbor, at the profile of Hassel Island serrated like the back of a green sea-serpent with hills, and at the short, stout tower of Cowell Battery Light. Oh yes, this is a new day, a day for starting over. One thing does not have to lead to another; life would be unlivable if that were true. She makes a promise to the morning. (“Leona Ware pressed on regardless with her plan.”) Suppose she went back, right now, and told Granny that she is sorry. She even thinks of a little joke. When she gets back to the house, and her grandmother asks her what she wants for breakfast, she will say, “Granny, dear, do you have any humble pie?”

  But perhaps that isn’t a very funny joke. And besides, that seems more like a retreat than a moving forward. New beginnings should be tougher than that.

  They see her standing there, and word spreads—the native boys, singly and in pairs, come running in their swim suits. They run down the pier toward her. “Dive for coins, Miss? Dive for coins?” They cluster, laughing, around her.

  Laughing too, she looks at them as they gather. “Oh, but there are so many of you,” she says. “Well, let’s see—” She opens her purse.

  And how beautiful they are, these little boys, ranging from eight or nine to perhaps sixteen—beautiful, with the sun glinting on the cords of muscle under their black, almost purpleblack skins, wiry—even the little bunched businesses in their tight suits are beautiful—and she and the boys laugh together as, from Leona’s awkward underhand, the first coin flies straight up and practically lands on top of her head. She retrieves it. “Don’t you think I’m as good as Sandy Koufax?” she says.

  The second toss is better. As the coin spins and flashes in the air, the boys spring like seals into the water after it. Leona steps to the edge of the pier and looks down to watch them as, arms and legs scissoring, they pursue the silver through the water. Then, with a shout, one of them surfaces, holds up the coin to show her, and pops it deftly inside his trunks. The others wave and shout for more, and she tosses another coin, and then another.

  Tossing coins, she practices her aim, trying to spread the bounty among them. One boy has become her favorite—the smallest of the lot and, by now, there must be twenty of them splashing there. The little one is always being outdistanced by the bigger boys. His waving arm is frantic, and his cry is plaintive.

  “Here!” she calls. “For you!” And she tries to aim a quarter directly at him but, once more, another boy is faster.

  “Hey!” she cries. “No fair!” And she tries to reach the little one again. “Swim in closer!” she calls to him. He obeys, and she drops a fifty-cent piece directly in front of him in the water. He seizes it, looks up gratefully at her, and she says, “Bravo!”

  Now they are all swimming in closer to the pier, and s
he tosses a coin far out—and, after a good deal of diving, no one gets it.

  At last she is out of silver, and she gives them a wide, open-armed gesture. “Sorry,” she calls. “That’s all I have.”

  Once more, they swim closer, calling, “More! More!”

  She shows them her empty change purse, turns it inside out. “See?”

  The boys clamber up the pier toward her.

  “Miss Leona Harper, you got more!”

  “Honestly, I don’t,” she says, and starts to turn.

  “Miss Leona Harper! You got more!” Moving toward her, one of the older boys begins clapping his hands to the rhythm of the words. “More! More! Miss Leona Harper! You got more!”

  She starts quickly away from them, back along the pier. Following her, stamping their feet, clapping their hands, they shout, “Miss Leona Harper! You got more!” They slap the laden fronts of their bathing trunks where the coins jingle. “You got more! You got more!”

  The old man, sitting on the piling with his whittled stick, grins up at her again as she approaches, and she gives him a helpless look. “Stop them,” she says. “Tell them I haven’t got any more.”

  Still smiling at her, he hunches forward and says softly, “Hey, Miss Leona Harper—you pretty petticoat is hanging down.”

  “Oh, please,” she says, turning away from him in dismay, “please …” As she turns, the heel of her shoe wedges between the planks of the pier and she almost falls.

  And the boys, hearing the new taunt, approach her in a wide half-circle, clapping their hands, pounding their bare feet against the hollow planking of the pier, shouting catcalls, whistling, chanting, “Hey, Miss Leona Harper! You pretty petticoat is hanging down!” And in all of them she sees only jeering, black and hostile faces, mouths spread open showing white teeth, pink tongues, shouting at her. Like beaters, they come closer as she struggles to extract the jammed heel of her shoe.

  One boy springs to a crouch by her feet and looks up her dress. “Hey, Miss Leona Harper! You pretty petticoat is pretty!”

  “Oh, stop!” she screams. “Leave me alone!” She kicks off the shoe, reaches down, and pulls it loose. Then she turns, while the boys shout and laugh after her, and runs stumblingly, one shoe on and the other in her hand, down the pier. The shouts and the clapping pursue her. A pebble flies through the air and strikes the pier in front of her. Another glances stingingly against her arm. She runs from the pier into the street in front of flying pebbles and there, on the corner of the square, she sees the sanctuary of an outdoor telephone booth and runs to it, squeezes herself inside it, and slams the door with her foot braced hard against it. She lifts the receiver, and a final barrage of pebbles strikes the wall of the booth as she fishes in her purse for change and realizes, of course, that she has none. And who is there to call now anyway? Leaning against the mouthpiece, she sobs into the dead telephone.

  It is eleven o’clock. Breakfast for Edith is long since over, and she sits on her veranda with the Sunday newspaper, hearing the sound of church bells from the town below. Leona has not come down; this is the latest Leona has ever been for breakfast and, Edith thinks, it is now simply too late. She does not run a hotel; her guests cannot be fed at whatever odd hour they choose. If Leona comes down now and says she wants to eat, she will simply have to wait for lunch. After the scene last night, Edith has no intention of going up and rousing Leona. She is probably, Edith thinks, simply sulking up there. Very well. Let her sulk. A good sulk, coupled with hunger, may be therapeutic. She picks up the newspaper again.

  Then, a little later, she puts the newspaper down. There is something about a house that is missing one of its regular occupants. It is not a silence because it is more like an added presence. Sitting on her veranda Edith has been feeling its gathering approaches; now it is fully in her consciousness. She knows, now, without having looked into Leona’s room at all, that Leona is not sulking there, but is no longer physically in the house and, furthermore, that she has been out of the house for some time. She sits very still. Then she rings for Nellie.

  “What time did Miss Leona go out this morning?” she asked casually.

  “Oh, she left real early, Miss Edith. Five or five-thirty. Right after I got up, I saw her go.”

  “I just wondered if she was up in time to meet the person who was calling for her.”

  “Nobody called for her, Miss Edith. She left in a taxi.”

  “That’s what I meant, Nellie. A taxi was calling for her.”

  “Will she be here for dinner tonight, ma’am?”

  “I don’t know,” Edith says, and to allay any further suspicion she adds, “I rather doubt it. Unless there’s change of plans. She’s visiting friends. You know how indefinite these young people are.”

  “Yes, Miss Edith.”

  Somewhat later, when Nellie is busy in the kitchen, Edith goes quietly upstairs to Leona’s room. The door is unlocked. Inside, the shape of Leona’s absence is even more pronounced. Not that there is anything out of order in the room. In fact, that may be why the absence is so striking. Everything in the room is too much in order. The bedspread is smooth, the curtains are still. Leona’s dresses hang evenly in the closet and below them on the floor in a neat row are her shoes. Such tidiness is not like Leona, and Edith doubts that Nellie is responsible for it either. High on the closet shelf are Leona’s suitcases, stacked. Edith quickly counts them and finds, with a certain amount of relief, that they are all there. Cosmetics are arranged on the bathroom shelf. A half-filled pack of Leona’s cigarettes is on the candle stand by the bed. Yet, despite all this evidence of Leona, it is absolutely clear from the appearance, the waiting look, of that room, that Leona is gone and will not immediately be back. Edith studies the room. It is now after one o’clock. Edith wonders what is to be done, if anything. And, if something is to be done, what?

  On the terrace of the Virgin Isle Hotel the early lunchers are leaving and, from the table where Leona and Arch sit, which is at the outer perimeter of the terrace, the sunlight on the harbor below is so brilliant and refracted that it gives an illusion of spray in the air. Pelicans plunge into the blue water, emerge, seconds later, wings flapping, struggling upward with their catch. All life, Leona thinks, is feeding, voracious. She puts down her wineglass. Arch is scribbling on a corner of the tablecloth with a gold pencil. “Okay,” he says. “We’ve got the rent, light, and heat figured out. What about telephone? What do you figure for telephone?”

  “Oh—the minimum.”

  “What is the minimum?”

  “Oh, I’d say twenty-five dollars a month? Thirty dollars?”

  Glancing at her, he says, “Well, let’s put down fifty dollars a month. How about your furniture? Were you planning to buy that or rent it?”

  “Buy it, of course.”

  “Sometimes it works out better to rent those things, buddy. Same thing with typewriters, adding machines …”

  “A friend of Daddy’s is in the office-supply business. I could get things like that from him at a discount.”

  “How much of a discount?”

  “Well, I don’t know—exactly. I haven’t approached him yet.”

  “I see. Now what about printing? You’re going to need brochures, folders.…”

  “A friend of mine, an art director, has offered to help me design some brochures. He knows a printer who—”

  “How’ll the printing be done? Offset?”

  “What’s offset?”

  He shakes his head. “Never mind. Now what about advertising? Are you planning to advertise?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Look, let’s make it simple. Suppose you run a hundred lines in The New York Times once a week. What does a hundred lines in The Times cost?”

  “I haven’t checked on—rates.”

  “Well, maybe you’d better—don’t you think?” he says, looking at her. “If you’re planning to advertise?”

  She nods. Then she says, “Arch, all these little technical things—” />
  “All these little technical things have got to be figured in your overhead, buddy. They’re what’s going to determine whether you make any profit or not. In fact, as far as I can see—”

  “As far as you can see I’m not!” she says. “Is that what you mean?”

  “No,” he says easily, “that’s not what I mean at all.” He continues with his pencil-work on the cloth. “So let’s put question marks on some of these items you’re not sure about. Now what about insurance? I should think you’d need insurance.”

  “Yes. I wondered about that,” Leona says.

  “Sure. If a picture got stolen or damaged while it was in your possession, I guess you’d be in a hell of a mess. Well,” he says, “let’s put another question mark next to the cost of your insurance. Okay. Now taxes—”

  “I’ll have an accountant handle all that.”

  “Okay. Then there’s your New York City tax.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Mayor Wagner gets a share of your profits, you know.”

  “Really?”

  Grinning, he says, “Yeah—really.” He writes on the table: “Taxes, question mark.”

  “Arch—all these details—”

  “They aren’t even details yet, buddy,” he says. “They’re just question marks.” Looking at the tablecloth, he says, “Boy, we’ve got an awful lot of them too. There seems to be a lot about running an art gallery that you just don’t know.”

  “Now look here, Arch. Of course—there are a lot of things I’m going to have to learn. But once I get into it, once I get things going—”

  “Oh, sure. You’ll learn. But there’s just one other thing I’d like to know. Let’s suppose you’re all set. You’ve got your two painters, and you’ve got a couple of dozen pictures hanging on your walls, and you’re all set to open your doors—for your first two-man show.”

  “Yes, I plan to do it with a cocktail party—you know, for the press, the critics, and the—”

  “Okay, your show is open, it runs for three or four weeks, and nobody—not a soul—buys any of your pictures. What do you do then?”