Always laughing, thought Beth Ellen; always laughing at someone. “May I see it?” she asked.
“Absolutely not,” said Wallace.
“Of course,” said Zeeney excitedly and handed it to Beth Ellen. Wallace dove for the note but couldn’t get it. He scurried behind the newspaper.
Beth Ellen read:
HE THAT MAKETH HASTE TO BE RICH
SHALL NOT BE INNOCENT
Beth Ellen giggled. She couldn’t help it.
Zeeney laughed pleasantly, pleased with herself. “Agatha,” she said pointedly, “is no fool.”
Beth Ellen excused herself and ran into the house. She got to the phone as fast as she could and called Harriet.
“Oh, tell, quick!” said Harriet.
Beth Ellen told her.
“And were they written in exactly the same way?” asked Harriet in a very detective voice.
“Yes.”
“I wish we could get that paper analyzed.”
“What does that mean?”
“Then we could tell where the person bought it. If only I were on the police force.”
Beth Ellen had a vision of Harriet in uniform.
“What did Zeeney say when she read it?”
“She thinks Agatha Plumber sent them.”
“She’s wrong,” said Harriet in a curious voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Because I know who’s been sending ’em,” said Harriet in a voice like a snake.
“WHAT?” Beth Ellen heard herself scream. “WHO?”
“I’m not talking.”
“Aw, come on, Harriet, who is it?”
“I can’t say until I have all my information in. I think I’ll run along now.”
“HARRIET! Tell me!”
“The work must go on. Have to go now.”
“Harriet, you’re impossible. Tell me.”
“Signing off,” said Harriet in her most infuriating way and hung up abruptly.
Beth Ellen slammed the phone down and looked up to see the maid looking at her strangely.
“Your grandmother wants to see you,” she said.
“Okay,” said Beth Ellen. “Thanks,” she added absently.
She walked down the hall to her grandmother’s room. Mrs. Hansen looked up at her with a curious hawklike eye and a faint smile.
Beth Ellen sat down on the chaise across from the bed.
“How is it going?” Mrs. Hansen seemed to be repressing a laugh.
“What?” Beth Ellen still felt such irritation at Harriet that she could feel little else.
“The visit.”
“Visit?” Beth Ellen felt like a fog on the road.
“Your mother … and Wallace … how are you getting on?”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that. How is it going?”
“Well…” said Beth Ellen, thinking: What can I say? … I want to flush them both down a toilet?
“I see …” said her grandmother, as though she could read minds. She turned her face toward the window. The light made a soft line along her nose. “I know my daughter, after all. I thought perhaps her travels … I thought she might have grown, have learned a bit.” She turned briskly toward Beth Ellen. “But she hasn’t changed a whit. She is just as silly as ever; a silly woman who contributes nothing whatever to life. She might as well not be alive except that she consumes. That’s all she does. She consumes … food, clothing, shelter, seats on airplanes, and people.” She looked steadily at Beth Ellen.
Beth Ellen looked steadily back.
“I will not let her consume you.”
Beth Ellen’s eyes widened.
“You don’t seem to understand, child. Zeeney feels you’re under some bad influence here. She says you’ve talked to her about a profession….” She hesitated and smiled at Beth Ellen. “I think it’s an admirable thing to be thinking of, but you must remember something”—she smiled again—“and that is that there is nothing the chic hate quite so much as the thought of work.” She looked out the window again. “I think it probably turns their stomachs.” She looked back at Beth Ellen. “So, because your brain and heart have been poisoned…” She looked at Beth Ellen expectantly.
Beth Ellen looked back at her.
“I don’t think you understand, child; she wants to take you with her.”
Beth Ellen felt rather than heard the scream tear from her throat. She banged the door after her and felt the slap-slap of her shoes on the hall floor and she ran, ran wildly, ran zigzag, ran as though chased by her grandmother’s cries of “Child, child” floating after her.
She ran into her room and slammed the door as hard as she could. She ran into her bathroom and slammed the door as hard as she could. As she slammed the bathroom door she thought, That is the third door I have ever slammed in my life. I don’t care. I don’t care anymore. I will slam every door I run into for the rest of my life. She ran up and down the bathroom. She couldn’t stop.
It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, ran through her head. I’m not a child, she thought with a wild scream in her head. I never was a child and now I’m really not. I’m going from a troll to an old woman. It isn’t fair.
It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair. Before she knew it, before she even heard her own voice, she was screaming at the top of her lungs and throwing everything in sight. She started with the towels, which she tried to tear up and couldn’t. She broke the glass sitting on the sink. She threw her toothbrush on the floor and stepped on it, grinding her heel in. She tried to pick up the scale and throw it through the window, but it was too heavy, and she dropped it on the tiles, where it made a satisfying, resounding, thundering crash.
Then she opened the door and slammed it. She opened it again and slammed it again. She didn’t even know what she was doing. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. She heard only that. Over and over and over. The slamming door rang out like punctuation—a big, bang period at the end of each phrase.
She stopped that and ran over and turned on the shower. Then she turned the nozzle of the shower so the spray hit the floor.
Through the water she ran into her room. She threw everything on the dresser across the room. Then she opened the door to her room and slammed it. The water was now pouring out of the bathroom into her room. She slammed the door again. She slammed it three times and the fourth time she opened it there were Zeeney, Wallace, and the maid. She got only a glimpse of their three startled faces before she slammed it again, plunged through the cascading water into the bathroom, and locked the door.
They started banging on the bathroom door. Beth Ellen sat down on the tub and pretended she was sitting under Niagara Falls. She hugged her knees. I will flood the house, she thought. Then I will begin to grow and be huge. I will get so monstrously big that I will break the bathroom out and fill the house, the yard, all of Water Mill. I will tower over the Montauk Highway like a colossus. They will all run away like ants.
The cold water ran down on her, on her head, her clothes. It beat around her ears like the safe rain of a summer’s day.
The chauffeur broke the door down. Zeeney congratulated him, as did Wallace, before they thought to run into the bathroom. The maid and chauffeur picked Beth Ellen up off the floor because neither Zeeney nor Wallace wanted to get wet. The maid put her on the bed and started to undress her. Wallace and Harry went out. The maid took off the wet clothes and put warm pajamas on Beth Ellen while Zeeney stood there saying things like “What’s got into you?” “You’re a spoiled brat. Imagine, a tantrum like that!” and “You’ll learn a thing or two, just wait and see!” She finished with “Best thing for a tantrum is to just let someone scream their head off and not pay a jot of attention,” and having offered this brilliant solution, she turned on her heel and swished from the room.
The maid dried Beth Ellen’s hair. It stood up in great bouncing curls. It’s me. It’s my hair, thought Beth Ellen.
When she was all warm and dry and tucked into bed, the
maid brought her a cup of hot chocolate and then opened the door very wide. “There’s someone here to see you,” she said, and through the door came her grandmother in her wheelchair.
“Hello, darling,” she said, and Beth Ellen burst into tears. Her grandmother came close to the bed and Beth Ellen leaned way out and put her head down in her lap. She cried until she thought she could never stop. Her grandmother patted her hair and leaned down to kiss her many times.
he next morning when Beth Ellen woke up she felt wonderful. When she remembered what had happened the day before, she felt a hundred years old. Her grandmother had said she wanted to talk to her in the morning, and remembering that, she felt afraid. I certainly was no lady, she thought to herself.
She got out of bed and was surprised to feel stiff. She pulled on her shorts. I want to get it over with, she thought, before breakfast. She opened her door and went down the hall.
“Come in,” her grandmother sang out when she knocked on the door. She doesn’t sound mad, Beth Ellen thought. She went in.
“Good morning, darling. Sit down.” Her grandmother was reading the morning paper. She looked extraordinarily cheerful.
Beth Ellen sat down. Her grandmother looked at her. She looked back.
“How do you feel this morning?” asked Mrs. Hansen.
“Okay,” said Beth Ellen.
Mrs. Hansen folded her paper and took off her reading glasses. “I’ve thought a great deal about yesterday, as I’m sure you have too.” Mrs. Hansen seemed to get embarrassed suddenly, because she looked out the window. “But we’ll talk about that in a minute.” She turned and looked directly into Beth Ellen’s eyes. Over the hawk nose the large eyes were violet in the morning light. “You’re very timid, aren’t you?”
“What?” Beth Ellen was caught completely unaware.
Her grandmother looked away. “I suppose you’re timid because you’ve had to grow up here with an old lady. You haven’t had any real life. But there’s something I want to tell you about timidity, about shyness.”
Beth Ellen searched her grandmother’s face to see if she was angry, but the face looked impassive. I’m going to be told I’m bad, she thought.
“Shy people are angry people,” said Mrs. Hansen and snapped her head around to see Beth Ellen’s reaction.
I am not a lady, thought Beth Ellen. It’s coming now. She’s going to say I am not a lady.
“You know,” said her grandmother, smiling, “it’s important to be a lady, but not if you lose everything else, not if you lose yourself in the process.”
Beth Ellen felt her mouth drop open.
“There are times when we must express what we feel even if it is anger. If you can feel it and not express it… it might be better, but you must try to know what you feel. If we don’t know what we feel, we get into trouble.” She looked hard at Beth Ellen. “You’re a very angry little girl. I have no idea what you’ve been doing about it because you’ve never shown any of it before yesterday, to my knowledge.”
Beth Ellen turned pale.
Mrs. Hansen looked away, took a deep breath, then looked back.
“Now,” she said slowly, “would you like to tell me whether you want to go to Europe with Zeeney or not?”
“I wouldn’t go to the corner with Zeeney.” This burst out so loudly that Beth Ellen sat in total astonishment, listening to it float across the room. I’ll be killed, she thought.
It took a second for her grandmother to realize what had been said but when she did she laughed the biggest, most enchanting laugh Beth Ellen had ever heard. She continued to laugh for a little while and then she said, “Well! I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more honest statement.” She wiped her eyes and smiled across the bed. “And I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear it. It’s settled then. You’ll live with me and I’m very glad.”
She smiled so sweetly that Beth Ellen got up and ran across the room. Her grandmother held out her arms and gave her a big hug. Her grandmother held her away from her and they laughed together as though they shared a secret.
“Can I ask Harriet to spend the night?” Beth Ellen asked rapidly.
“Of course, darling. I think they’ve disrupted our lives quite enough, don’t you think? It’s time we got back to normal. Ask her for tonight.”
“And I don’t have to go to the Bath and Tennis anymore?”
“As far as I’m concerned”—her grandmother laughed—“you don’t ever have to go there again for the rest of your life.”
“HOORAY!” Beth Ellen yelled, hugged her grandmother, and ran out of the room. I sound just like Harriet, she thought as she ran along the hall; and then wildly in her head rang over and over again the phrase, I live somewhere, I live somewhere, I live somewhere.
She dialed Harriet’s number.
“HI, HARRIET,” she said loudly.
“Who is this?” said Harriet suspiciously.
“BETH ELLEN!” She shouted it. It was fun to talk loud, she discovered.
“Well, don’t break my eardrum,” said Harriet grumpily, then cleverly: “Are you sure you’re Beth Ellen? You don’t sound like her a bit. Say, what is this? Who is this?”
Beth Ellen laughed. “It’s me. Listen, can you come spend the night?”
“Sure. Well, I mean, I don’t know; I have to ask.”
“Well, ASK, stupid.” Beth Ellen felt her heart race with glee.
“All right, all right,” grumbled Harriet and let the phone clatter out of her hands. Feet stomped away.
Beth Ellen stood humming. She saw her secret book peeking out from under the bed and she kicked it across the room. “Who needs you?” she yelled.
“What?” said Harriet. “Listen, Beth Ellen, are you drunk?”
“No.” Beth Ellen giggled. “Can you come?”
“Yes. When?”
“For dinner. We can have it in front of the television.”
“Have the creeps left?”
“They’re leaving,” yelled Beth Ellen, “and I’m staying here.”
“Of course you are, silly; you live there.”
“Come over at five,” said Beth Ellen and hung up, blissful that she hadn’t even said good-bye. Oh, Harriet, she thought as she walked away, for all your spying how little you know.
Zeeney was coming up the steps. She snapped her fingers at Beth Ellen. “Get into your yellow dress. We’re going to brunch at the Bath and Tennis; although, after that performance yesterday, I don’t know why I take you anywhere.”
Beth Ellen’s heart raced. “You’re not taking me anywhere,” she said simply.
“What?” said Zeeney as though a chair had spoken.
Beth Ellen snapped her fingers right in Zeeney’s face. “I’m not going,” she said loudly. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”
Zeeney’s mouth dropped open and Beth Ellen laughed, turned on her heel, went to the front steps, and without looking back, slid down the banister, down past the grinning satyr, down past the ghost sculpture, past the family portraits—sour face by sour face, one by one—down and down until she landed with a bump at the end. She looked up at Zeeney’s astonished face looking over the banister, gave a great whoop of laughter, jumped off, and ran with all her might.
fter dinner that night Beth Ellen and Harriet were watching television. Beth Ellen was switching from channel to channel, which meant back and forth between two, looking for something good, when Harriet said, “I hate television.”
“I like it,” said Beth Ellen smartly.
“It’s dumb,” said Harriet, her mouth full of popcorn. She grabbed the television program and looked it over in disgust. “Look at these things. Look at all these dumb people. Look at these rotten things. I never saw such dumb things. There isn’t anything I’d like to see. There’s never anything I’d like to see. What a bunch of ridiculous … HEY!” she suddenly yelled. “There’s a GREAT Nazi movie on!”
She turned to Beth Ellen, who was flipping channels like a zombie.
“Quick,”
she screamed, “turn it to that!” She leapt across the room.
Beth Ellen looked over her shoulder at the program, then turned to the right channel. Some Nazis were beating up an old woman on the street.
“Look at those rotten things! Oh, boy!” said Harriet and sat down, stuffing a great gob of popcorn in her mouth.
Beth Ellen glanced at Harriet. Harriet had been strange ever since she walked in the door. First of all she had looked at Beth Ellen with narrowed eyes and said, “Think I’m stupid, don’t you?” Beth Ellen had said No, but it hadn’t stopped Harriet from nodding her head and looking very mysterious. Beth Ellen had decided to ignore her. When they had gone into Beth Ellen’s room, Harriet had begun opening closets, dresser drawers, and everything in sight as though she was looking for something. “What are you doing?” Beth Ellen had asked, and Harriet had replied, “You’ll see! Think I don’t know anything, don’t you?”
After a great deal of looking around, the fit seemed to pass and Harriet had settled down to dinner and television.
“Rotten things, rotten Nazis … Hey! Something about this reminds me of Norman and Jessie Mae,” said Harriet through the popcorn.
“What do you mean?” asked Beth Ellen politely even though, truth be told, she couldn’t have cared less.
“WELL,” said Harriet as though she was just waiting for someone to ask her that, “I stopped by the Sharks Tooth Inn today!”
Beth Ellen cringed at the name as at an embarrassing memory.
“So?” she said, a bit truculently. She looked at Harriet. Harriet looked as though she was waiting to have the information pulled out of her.
“AND … everything is completely different!” Harriet’s eyes were glistening with the suspense she thought she was creating.
“Hmmm,” said Beth Ellen and looked at the television. Two can play at this, she thought.
“Well! Don’t you even want to know?”
“Not particularly.”
“You’re impossible, Beth Ellen; not one shred of curiosity in your whole body.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I don’t CARE about anybody there?”
The Long Secret Page 16