The Long Secret

by Louise Fitzhugh

  “No,” said Harriet quickly. Once she had been taken to church because a former nurse by the name of Ole Golly had said that she should at least see what it was like. It had made her itch.

  “Well,” said her mother, taking a breath, “what do you feel about God?”

  “I don’t know,” said Harriet. “I don’t know what to think.”

  Mrs. Welsch went back to her mending, then looked up again. “I happen to believe in God. I turn to him for solace and I also feel that I would be lost without him. But it is purely a personal matter. I think a person should think about it, not simply accept what is handed them, but think about it. You should draw your own conclusions. You’ll know in time what you feel.”

  Harriet sat thinking about that. She found a piece of the puzzle that fitted and felt a resounding satisfaction. How silly, she thought, that that should make me feel so good; that a piece of cardboard cut out of another piece of cardboard and then fitted back in should make a person feel so good.

  What my mother says sounds fairly sensible, she thought, but I wish I could ask her what she feels. What does it feel like to believe in God? What does Jessie Mae feel? Or The Preacher?

  “Do fanatics froth at the mouth?” she asked her mother suddenly.

  Her mother burst out laughing. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “I heard it once,” said Harriet. She had been very upset by this idea of frothing. It was one thing to think of The Preacher frothing at the mouth, rolling his eyes, and talking endlessly, but the idea of Jessie Mae doing this seemed ridiculous. Jessie Mae seemed altogether too cheerful to froth.

  “It’s an old idea,” said Mrs. Welsch, “a very old-fashioned idea that fanatics are crazy and froth at the mouth. It’s very hard to tell one fanatic from another these days. They look like very ordinary people until you get to know them, and then you find out they’re obsessed.”

  “Hhrumph,” said Harriet loudly. This was very irritating. It meant that Janie was right. This fanatic could be anyone. She yawned.

  “What about bed, darling?” asked her mother, folding up her mending. “You’ll want to get up early for the beach.” Mrs. Welsch went into the kitchen. “Want something before bed?” she called back.

  Harriet thought hurriedly. What do I want? I don’t want space. I don’t know if I want there to be a God. Wouldn’t He spy on me all the time and know everything I thought? Where is He, anyway?

  “Darling?” Mrs. Welsch was at the kitchen door. Harriet looked up into her mother’s warm smile. She felt a rush of love, a safety and a joy in the simple warm routine of bed, of being given food, of mother, of the house, of her own room, of herself.

  “YES!” She laughed because it came out in a shout. “I want something. I want everything. I want corn flakes and sardines and lobsters and clams and shells with tomato sauce …” She made her mother laugh by running to the icebox, grabbing open the door, and shouting into the interior, “… and pickles and ‘wettice’ and orange juice and steak and potatoes and cake and ketchup and fourteen tomato sandwiches and everything, everything, everything!”

  he next morning Harriet got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, and jumped on her bike. She rushed to Beth Ellen’s house without telephoning first. She felt sure that if she called, Beth Ellen wouldn’t let her come over and she was determined to see more of Beth Ellen’s parents.

  She rode up the long driveway feeling that there were probably a million eyes looking at her from behind the dark windows which stood in rows across the front of the house. She parked her bike and went through the screened door which led to the back porch.

  She looked through the back door into the kitchen where Harry sat reading the paper. The cook was at the stove and the maid was in the pantry. Suppose they have left word that no one can see Beth Ellen? she thought. They may try and stop me. I’ll have to make a dash for it.

  She opened the screened door, shot through the kitchen, through the pantry, and out the pantry door in a split second. The maid screamed and Harry put down the paper with “What was that?” The cook turned around and said, “It felt like a wind. You’d better fix that screen door. I don’t want flies in here this summer.”

  Harriet slammed up the front stairs and around the dark corner to Beth Ellen’s door. She knocked.

  “Yes?” came a timid little sound from inside.

  “It’s me,” said Harriet in a stage whisper.

  Beth Ellen opened the door quickly. “Sshush,” she said and looked frightened, “they’re asleep.”

  “I’m quiet,” said Harriet gruffly. Beth Ellen closed the door. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at Harriet as though she’d forgotten who she was.

  “Well,” said Harriet, sitting on a chair, “what are they like? Do you like them? Your mother’s pretty, don’t you think? I think she’s pretty. Janie and I talked about it. She’s the prettiest mother we’ve ever seen. Do you like Wallace? Does he like you? Do you have fun with them?”

  Beth Ellen just stared at her.

  “BETH ELLEN!” yelled Harriet.

  “I’m thinking,” said Beth Ellen. “And anyway, I’m to be called Beth now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my mother says that Beth Ellen is tacky.”

  Harriet didn’t know how to proceed with this information. She decided it had better be left alone. “Well, tell me. What happened yesterday? After they picked you up off the ground and took you inside, what happened?”

  “We sat down, and then we got up and went to the Shark’s Tooth.”

  “You’re KIDDING!” Harriet was overjoyed. “Did you ask them to take you there?”

  “No,” said Beth Ellen, wondering how in the world Harriet would think of such a thing, “they wanted to go. They know Bunny.”

  “REALLY?” Harriet almost leapt across the room. “Well, tell me, tell me.”

  “There’s nothing more to tell.”

  This was one of the more infuriating things about Beth Ellen. Harriet looked at her and wanted to strangle her. Just as a story got good she would invariably tell you there was nothing more to say. It’s a good thing she doesn’t want to be a writer, thought Harriet, because all her books would get thrown across the room.

  Patiently she said, “Something must have happened, Beth. You didn’t go to the Shark’s Tooth and then just go up in smoke!”

  “We went there, and they went in the bar and saw Bunny and I sat on the porch.”

  “And?”

  “And … Norman was there.”

  “WHAT?” Harriet stood up. “And you waited all this time to tell me?”

  Beth Ellen looked at her.

  “I just don’t understand you. The most important part of the whole thing you wait till last to tell me.”

  “Shut up,” said Beth Ellen.

  “What?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Well,” said Harriet and moved to look out the window to give herself time to plot. She was too curious to allow herself to be insulted just yet. “You have to admit, it’s like pulling teeth to get anything out of you.” She turned back to look at Beth Ellen and suddenly noticed that Beth Ellen’s eyes were red and swollen. She’s been crying, she thought. Maybe they’re hateful and she isn’t telling me.

  “What was Norman doing there?” she asked gently.

  “He has a job parking cars,” said Beth Ellen and seemed to be grateful that they were talking.

  “I didn’t know that,” said Harriet, pacing the floor. “Hmmmm. Do you realize, if he’s there all the time, maybe he’s the one leaving the notes?”

  “Oh,” said Beth Ellen, “I’d forgotten about the notes.”

  “FORGOTTEN?” yelled Harriet, then remembered that she had better be on her good behavior. She turned and said casually, “Which one is their room?”

  “Oh, no, you can’t…” said Beth Ellen, looking terrified, “you can’t do that.”

  “Oh, yes, I can,” said Harriet and jumped to the door. She grabbed Beth E
llen’s hand as she went by and said, “Don’t you want to know what they’re really like? They’re your parents. You’re the one oughta be pulling me down the hall. Come on. Don’t you want to find out about them before it’s too late?”

  Beth Ellen’s eyes got huge.

  “Come on,” said Harriet as to a child at the dentist’s. “This won’t take but a minute.”

  She pulled Beth Ellen up. Beth Ellen allowed herself to be pulled like someone hypnotized.

  They crept down the hall. Beth Ellen finally pointed to a door. When they got to it, Harriet bent to the keyhole. She could see a beautiful room with sunlight flooding through the windows. Zeeney was standing in front of an enormous closet choked with clothes. She wore a long white peignoir. Wallace was sitting at a small desk wearing white flannels and a white tennis sweater. He looks tweedy, thought Harriet, no matter what he’s wearing. She let Beth Ellen get a glimpse, then pushed her away again.

  Zeeney was talking. They could hear her very clearly. Even Beth Ellen leaned forward and listened eagerly.

  “Darling? What, what should I wear tonight? Should I wear the wild red roses or this demure … Wallace, you aren’t listening.”

  “Hup,” said Wallace, who was jotting down something at the desk.

  “The red one?” She looked at him. Her eyes widened as she looked at the back of his neck. “It all depends…. Darling, is it definite that Agatha will be there?”

  “Hup.”

  “DARLING!”

  Wallace jumped. He wore glasses which made him look as though he’d jumped from another century. “What? Hup, what?”

  “Will Agatha be there?”

  “Hmmm. Yes.” He went back to his work.

  “Are they going to the Shark’s Tooth tonight?” asked Harriet in such a loud whisper that Beth Ellen shrank back in terror. She nodded. “Wow!” said Harriet. “Are you?” Beth Ellen nodded again.

  “What’s that rustling noise?” asked Zeeney.

  “Mice, perhaps,” muttered Wallace.

  “What are you doing?” asked Zeeney in an angry way.

  “Hmmmm, hup, working on my mountain, working out a deal about my mountain.” Wallace began to whistle a strange discordant tune.

  Zeeney stiffened. “You’re what?”

  “There’s been an indication of some interest in my mountain. Do be a good sort, Zeen, and don’t bother me. I’m working.”

  “On exactly what?”

  “On a sale.”

  There was a moment of silence. Zeeney stood in an attitude that, had Wallace looked up, would have frozen him with terror.

  “Do you mean the mountain that I gave you?”

  “Hup.”

  “Wallace …” She frowned, then continued. “Wallace, do you think Agatha is trying to get you?”

  “What? Oh, hup.” He looked up with a wicked grin. “Yes, yes, I’d say so.” He went back to his papers.

  “Someone wants to buy the mountain?”

  “Mmm.”

  “It wouldn’t by any chance be Agatha, would it?”

  “Hup.”

  “I do so hate that noise you make. It is Agatha?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, dear heart, I think I’ll wear the yellow. Yellow always puts her out terribly because she can never wear it. Hideous next to that sallow skin of hers. There, that’s decided… and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she turns green—no! white! I shall wear white! I am ravishing in white! She will DIE!” She looked over at him, and knowing for sure that he heard not a word, she said, with no change of tone, “The way I’ll look when I get back from Elizabeth Arden’s! Jimmy is going to do my hair so high that I won’t be able to get through the door. Dear Jimmy. He’ll do the brat too, of course. Her hair is unspeakable.”

  She swirled around in a half turn which Wallace never noticed. “And you really needn’t bother with what you’re doing at all, you know, because I only gave you half that mountain. It’s in the deed that one half can’t be sold without the other. Your little Zeeney is smarter than you think. Agatha will have a fit. Although why she thinks you go with the mountain, I can’t imagine. Breakfast, dear?”

  “Hup.”

  Well, thought Harriet. He’s just been had and doesn’t even know it. Beth Ellen’s eyes were the largest Harriet had ever seen them.

  “Shall I ring for breakfast?” Zeeney came toward the door.

  Harriet and Beth Ellen fled pell-mell down the hall. They fell, panting, into Beth Ellen’s room. Harriet fell across the bed.

  Beth Ellen seemed suddenly to want to change, because she rushed to the closet and began tearing out clothes. Shirt, shorts, sneakers, and with one jump she was into the bathroom and had slammed the door in Harriet’s face.

  Harriet lay on the bed thinking of her story about Zeeney and Wallace. Zeeney could murder Agatha, or run over Wallace with a potato picker. Why did Agatha think that getting the mountain would get him? Could you buy people? She suddenly wanted to go to the beach and work on her story. She pounded on the bathroom door.

  “Beth Ellen?”

  “What?” said Beth Ellen, turning off the water.

  “Can you go to the beach?”

  “No,” came the answer, “I have to go to Elizabeth Arden’s.”

  “Rats,” said Harriet. “After, maybe?”

  “No, I have to keep my hair clean for tonight,” said Beth Ellen with a kind of desperation.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m leaving,” said Harriet and stomped through the door and down the steps, carrying with her the picture of Beth Ellen with her hair combed so high she couldn’t get through a door.

  “Lucky stiff,” she muttered to herself. “Gets to go to the hotel and doesn’t even care.”

  She shot through the kitchen again, just to amuse herself, and laughed when the maid jumped a foot in the air.

  hat afternoon Harriet hurried back from the beach and began pleading with her mother. “Please, oh, please, oh, please, Mother.”

  “Harriet, what’s gotten into you? Why in the world do you want to go there? What put the Sharks Tooth into your head, anyway?”

  “I TOLD you. Beth Ellen is going there with her parents for dinner. Why can’t we go there? Why don’t you and Daddy ever go there? It’s a nice place and there’s a good piano player….” She gulped and hoped her mother wouldn’t ask how she knew that.

  “I just can’t imagine what’s so exciting about going there.”

  “Please, oh, please, oh, please, Mother. I’ll do anything you say, anything, ANYTHING, for a month, for a year, for TWO YEARS I’LL DO ANYTHING YOU SAY!”

  “Stop shouting, darling. You’ll do anything I say anyway. Do you want to eat out tonight? Is that it? Are you bored with the cooking at home?”

  “I want to eat there!”

  “Darling, it isn’t the kind of place one takes children.”

  “BETH ELLEN’S GOING AND SHE’S A CHILD!”

  “But her parents … I just can’t explain it. There are some places that you can take children, but it would just be better if you didn’t take children. Now, we could go get a good lobster if you’d like that. We could drive to Montauk or to Amagansett. Would you like that?”

  “MOTHER. That isn’t the point.” Harriet began again very patiently. “Beth Ellen is going there tonight. I don’t see why we can’t go there sometime, like tonight.”

  “Well, sometime we can maybe. I’ll discuss it with your father on Friday. Maybe we can go when he’s here.”

  “That’s too LATE!” yelled Harriet in a frenzy. She ran past her mother’s startled face, out onto the deck, down to the bay, and plunked herself down in a miserable heap on some extremely wet sand.

  ———

  At that very same moment Beth Ellen lay in the bathtub staring at her body. She and her mother had just gotten back from Elizabeth Arden’s in time to bathe and dress before they went out to dinner.

  She lay there with a blank mind. She arched her neck so that her hair woul
dn’t get wet in the back. Straight hair. She remembered that she now had straight hair. Zeeney had left instructions that Beth Ellen’s hair be brushed out as hard as possible to make it straight. She had even discussed the possibility of straightening the hair by a new process, but Jimmy had advised against it.

  She was reading her favorite book in the tub, having gotten it from its hiding place beneath the bed. She thumbed the pages carefully, if a little wetly.

  I have straight hair. I am called Beth. She had heard Zeeney and Wallace discussing her that morning at breakfast as though she were a piece of toast. Zeeney had said, “I think her head is too little.” Wallace had disagreed but said, “No. I don’t think that, but she does have curious knees.”

  I have straight hair. I am called Beth. My head is too small and I have curious knees.

  She wanted suddenly to duck her head under water and ruin the whole thing. Her head would come up her own, great curling masses popping out with a will of their own. That’s just what Harriet would do, she thought. She tried to imagine Harriet in Elizabeth Arden’s and burst out laughing.

  “Beth? Are you laughing in there?” It was Zeeney.

  “Yes,” said Beth Ellen softly and tried to hide the book behind the shower curtain even though she knew the door was locked.

  “Stop playing in the tub. We are expected at six and I have to get you dressed.” Zeeney’s voice was cold, distracted, tight.

  “I dress myself,” said Beth Ellen.

  “Oh, bother,” said Zeeney and went out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Beth Ellen got out of the tub and dried herself. She hardly recognized herself in the mirror with her strange straight hair.

  There was the noise of her grandmothers wheelchair. Then Mrs. Hansen’s voice, very softly, through the door: “Do hurry, Beth Ellen dear. She gets into the most frightful temper.”

  Beth Ellen’s first instinct was to grab her book and hide it in the linen closet. “Yes, Grandmother,” she said finally.

  “And let her button your dress,” said her grandmother in a strange, rather frightened-sounding voice. “She likes to fuss a bit over you, you know. And even though we know you can dress yourself, it will give her pleasure. You’re to wear the white dress because she is wearing white, dear. Hurry now.”