This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!

by Jonathan Evison

  August 13, 2015

  (HARRIET AT SEVENTY-EIGHT)

  When Harriet arrives home from Sunny Acres, she’s thrilled to discover Skip’s silver SUV in the driveway in spite of the fact that it’s parked perilously close to her dahlias. She thinks guiltily of the creased fender, for which Skip—like his father, a zealous maintainer—will surely expect an accounting.

  Halfway up the drive, Harriet’s stomach tightens as she spots Caroline peering out the kitchen window. Smiling stiffly, Harriet issues a little wave. Suddenly, her thoughts are racing. What will she make for lunch? Does she have time to bake something? She hopes the living room isn’t a mess. Sandwiches, she can make sandwiches. They can eat outside on the patio! Maybe they’ll stay the night. Oh, what a surprise!

  She finds Skip in the living room in front of the TV, eating dill pickles straight from the jar. Snapping off the television, he swings his feet off the coffee table and sets the remote aside.

  “Hello, dear, what a surprise!” she says.

  He walks to the kitchen and bends down to hug her. At fifty-five, with flecks of gray marking his wavy hair above the ears, he still manages to look boyish in his purple UW hat and running shoes.

  “Hello, dear,” she says to Caroline, who makes no move to hug her.

  At forty-eight, with sallow cheeks and scarecrow hair, Caroline looks like Skip’s elder by at least five years.

  “What are you two doing here? I had no idea!”

  We thought we’d pop by for a visit,” says Skip. “We both had the day off, so we figured, you know, let’s drop in on Mom.”

  “How wonderful! Oh, but I do wish you would have called ahead, dear, so I could prepare something. Let me make you a sandwich.”

  “Nah, it’s all right, Ma, I just had a few pickles. I’m good.” “Caroline, honey, let me make you a sandwich. You look so thin.”

  “Gee, thanks, Mom. You always know how to make me feel good about myself.”

  “Honey, I didn’t mean it like that. C’mon, I’ll set up the patio. I do hope you’re staying the night? We can rent a DVD!”

  “Look, Mom,” says Skip. “The thing is, we didn’t just pop by for a visit.”

  “Oh,” says Harriet, crestfallen. “You mean, you’re not staying?”

  “We can’t, Mom.”

  “Surely you can at least stay for dinner?”

  “Mom,” says Skip. “I got a call last night from Father Mulligan.”

  “Mullinix, dear. Where on earth did he get your number?”

  “He told Skip about the phantom WD-40,” says Caroline, lowering herself into Bernard’s recliner.

  Skip sits down on the sofa, and immediately leans forward. “He said you were acting really strange, Mom. He was worried.”

  Harriet feels herself blush, at once from embarrassment and irritation. “I was exhausted,” she says. “I served downtown all day at the prayer station. There’s no air-conditioning down there. Did Father Mullinix tell you that? I was overheated. But I’m perfectly fine now, I assure you.”

  It comforts her to know that Skip genuinely worries about her.

  “Mom,” he says. “We’re just concerned. He said you thought you had dinner with dad at the Bon Marche.”

  “Frederick and Nelson.”

  “Right. Frederick and Nelson.” Skip doffs his cap, runs a hand through his thick hair. “Mom, Frederick and Nelson closed twenty years ago! I don’t even think that old buffet did dinners.”

  “I saw him, Skip, with my own eyes. I touched him.”

  “Mom, I had a dream my hands were made of soap. But look, they’re not!” He submits his outthrust hands as evidence.

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “It is, Mom. It was a dream.”

  “No. It wasn’t.”

  “Okay, what then? A hallucination?”

  “Not exactly,” says Harriet.

  “Whatever it was, Mom, it has nothing to do with reality.”

  “Fine, maybe it doesn’t mean anything. There, are you satisfied? But just suppose I took a little comfort in it, how about that? Well, then, I suppose you two would want to deprive me of that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Mom, that’s not how it is,” Skip insists, fishing a fresh pickle from the jar. “What have we deprived you of?”

  “He’s right,” says Caroline. “We’re just concerned about your well-being.”

  “Oh, stop Caroline. Like you were concerned with your father’s well-being?”

  “Mom,” Skip says. “This is different. Dad was incapacitated.”

  “He’s reaching out,” says Harriet. “Don’t you see? That’s what this is about. I’ve been thinking long and hard about it, and I’m sure he’s come to help. Maybe to guide me.”

  “Let’s hope not,” says Skip.

  “That would be a first,” mutters Caroline.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means he was never much help while he was alive.”

  “Take that back, Caroline.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Mom. You did everything. You cleaned, you cooked, you did every single thing he ever told you to do. The Major just sat around polishing his belt buckles and reading newspapers.”

  Though Harriet appreciates the affirmation, it annoys her that she should have to defend a protocol designed specifically to eradicate obstacles for her children. Why should Harriet apologize when she tended to every runny nose and broken bone, prepared every meal, consoled every heartbreak and disappointment, all so that Caroline and Skip could enjoy a better quality of life than her own? It breaks Harriet’s heart that Caroline squandered every opportunity, that she sabotaged her life with bad decisions. It breaks her heart that Caroline never gave her grandchildren and that Caroline’s unofficial “foster daughter” is, and always has been, something of a problem, much like Caroline herself. But what breaks Harriet’s heart the most is that things might have been different. She might have saved Caroline. Or Bernard, for that matter.

  “That doesn’t change the fact that he was your father,” says Harriet. “Or that I failed him.”

  “He was a bully, Mom. Quit saying you failed him. You were his servant, his nurse, you were practically his mother. The only meal Dad could cook was toast.”

  “And beans,” says Harriet.

  “Fine, and beans. I mean, who gets to be ninety years old and never cooks a single meal for himself besides beans and toast?”

  “He made tapioca pudding, too. Oh, Caroline dear. I know you had your differences. But you’re nearly fifty years old. Isn’t it time to forgive your father?”

  “Why, because you did?”

  “I fell apart, Caroline.”

  “He’s the one who fell apart.”

  “C’mon, you guys,” says Skip, brandishing his pickle like a traffic wand. “We’re not getting anywhere here.”

  “Where are we supposed to be getting to? Is this another intervention?”

  “Settle down, Mom.”

  “You vacuumed under some sofa cushions at your father’s wake. You made a few calls to the insurance company. But when did I ever ask either of you for help? Darlings, if you really want to help me, fix that garage door, and pressure-wash those steps. Clean the gutters. If you want to comfort me, how about sending an Easter card? Or reminding my grandchildren that I exist?”

  Caroline looks away.

  “Okay, Mom,” says Skip. “I get it.”

  Skip takes Harriet’s elbow and leads her the first few steps to the sofa. Halfway there, she breaks free.

  “My goodness, a few phone calls, a couple trips to the dump—that’s all I ever asked.”

  “Mom,” says Skip. “The thing is, look: we just think this cruise is too much right now. Caroline, back me up here. We really think you ought to call Mildred and postpone the thing. Maybe in a few months, when—”

  “Absolutely not,” Harriet says, surprising herself. “I intend to honor your father, no matter what the two of you might think of him. He bought thi
s cruise for me; he intended it for the two of us, the least I can do is go on the darn thing. And I’m taking his ashes with me.”

  “Mom, is that even legal?”

  “Don’t try to talk me out of this, Skip.”

  “But Mom, you—”

  “Please. Let me do this.”

  Her children exchange glances. Caroline shrugs.

  “And Mildred, she’s good to go?” says Skip.

  “Yes,” lies Harriet. She knows it may be her only chance.

  “You’ll take it easy, right?” he says. “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Skip looks to Caroline for approval.

  “Why are you looking at me?” she says.

  September 8, 1962

  (HARRIET AT TWENTY-FIVE)

  Then, after a few wearisome years of domestic drudgery, a few years sequestered in your little house, in your little neighborhood, with your little problems, something happens. The outside world calls. On the north end of downtown, they’ve erected a futuristic wonderland, a marvelous, humming other-world full of possibilities, punctuated by a six hundred foot exclamation point. It’s impossible not to get caught up in the excitement. Suddenly your life, by mere extension, does not seem so small.

  Is that a smile, Harriet Chance?

  Look at you, on the global stage! All the world is taking notice of you and your gorgeous city, drinking you up like a Sloe Gin Fizz. The traffic jams are horrific. The lines are soul-crushing. But there is magic at the end of each one.

  There you are, Harriet, on the amazing Bubbleator, Skipper, nearly three years old, clutching your hand tightly, World’s Fair lariat cinched securely around his neck, smiling up at you. At 130 pounds, you’ve never looked better. And look at Bernard, fit as ever, his arm, strong and able, around your waist, as the Bubbleator ascends into the unknown. The future is on everybody’s mind, and you’re on a rocket ship speeding toward middle age, but suddenly you’re okay with that.

  Maybe, like everyone else on the Bubbleator, you’re no longer taking your future for granted. A single phone call, a little red button, and poof, it could all disappear. Have you finally embraced domestic life, Mrs. Bernard Chance? Have you released your independence at long last? Have you finally stopped tracking the progress of that other incarnation of yourself, the one who didn’t bow to the expectations of society, the one who didn’t opt for the easy way out, the one who wasn’t going to have children until she was thirty?

  Or have you simply lowered your standards?

  It helps that Bernard has started to notice you again lately. He’s showing signs of tenderness, displays of affection. Rarely does he pass you in the hallway or in the kitchen without some physical communication—the grazing of an elbow, the touch of a hand, and yes, even a pat on the fanny. What’s more, he’s taken an interest in Skip now that the boy can talk. Together, they go to the Montlake landfill on Sunday, where they sit in the Buick and eat BurgerMeister fries, marveling at the perfectly good things people throw away.

  Perhaps it’s that promotion to general manager that has put a little spring back in Bernard’s step. Weekends, he’s sporting a Hawaiian shirt, to which he attributes good fortune. If not a friend, you’ve found an amusement in Margaret Blum. On Friday nights, the four of you, Gene and Bernard, you and Margaret, dine together at the Blums’ house in Madison Park. You play cards: pinochle, poker, bridge. You drink Zombies and Stingers and Pink Squirrels. And sometimes you surprise yourself with your candor and familiarity.

  By the time you get home to release the sitter, you’re already missing your little Skipper. Some Friday nights, you wobble to his room and listen to the excited sound of your own breathing in the darkness as you watch him sleep. You want to pick him up and hold him, caress the downy hair on the back of his neck. You want to wake him from his sleep, so you can hear the singsong of his little voice, so you can answer his thousand questions. There, there, that’s all you needed, Harriet: a little space once in a while to decompress, a little time for abstraction, a little distance from which to count your blessings. And yes, a few Zombies never hurt.

  If the hustle and bustle of Fourth and Union still seems a long ways off, so does the thankless malaise of last year.

  It’s the good life, Harriet Chance, drink it up!

  August 19, 2015

  (HARRIET AT SEVENTY-EIGHT)

  I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, dear,” says Harriet, answering her doorbell the morning of the cruise. “Please come in. I’ll just be a minute.”

  She’s sorely misjudged Dwight Honeycutt, and the guilt of this miscalculation has been needling at her conscience for two days. All these years, Harriet’s been looking at Dwight with a jaundiced eye. Yes, he was the chief proponent of Mildred’s move to Sunny Acres, the liquidation of her automobile, the downsizing of her existence. Yes, he dresses like a fallen oil baron, in bolo ties and ten-gallon hats, cowboy boots with khaki dress suits. And then there’s the matter of the silver Jaguar, out there in the driveway, crouched in the pink dawn, quietly belching a plume of exhaust into her dahlias. It’s true he landed a tidy sum listing the bluff house. But why shouldn’t he? It was going to be his someday, anyway. The truth is, all of it was probably in Mildred’s best interest. Harriet can see that now.

  Dwight has been a doll the past two days. He feels terrible that his mother has canceled. Yesterday he called to confirm the ride for the second time. He even offered to come over and take a look around the house, make sure everything was in working order. Not only that, he offered to house-sit, and pick up the mail in her absence. She feels terrible for underestimating him.

  “Take your time, take your time,” Dwight says, from the open kitchen, admiring the stainless-steel appliances, running a hand cleanly across the marble countertop. “You sure you don’t need a hand?”

  “No, no, dear. I’m almost ready.”

  It’s no small kindness, Dwight’s offering to drive Harriet as far as Kingston—and at 6:00 a.m., no less. That he was considerate enough to arrive twenty minutes ahead of schedule just puts a fine point on it.

  No, there’s nothing shifty about Dwight Honeycutt as he sashays from room to room, flipping light switches, turning water spigots on and off, knocking on walls, inquiring about square footage, admiring views, peering keenly out at the patio.

  “Hot tub work?”

  “As far as I know, dear. Bernard maintained it scrupulously.”

  “Nice amenity.”

  “I really ought to use it more, you’re right.”

  The relative dryness of the banana belt, sheltered as it was by the rain shadow, had been the decisive selling point, when shortly after his retirement from Blum Bearing in ’88, Bernard made the mutual decision that they were leaving the city for the peninsula. Oh, not that there hadn’t been some discussion on the subject. Harriet’s objections had been heard, among them not wanting to leave the kids (though Skip was nearly thirty), not wanting to sell the family home (though truth be told, it was a drafty old Edwardian with all the frigid corners of a haunted house), and not wanting to say good-bye to their friends (though, let’s face it, how exciting did twenty more years of playing pinochle with Gene and Margaret Blum sound?). In the end, it was a game of inches. Only eighteen inches of precipitation annually in Sequim, according to the real estate agent. Nearly thirty inches less than Seattle. More than pollution, more than crime, traffic, high property taxes, or any symptom of urban decay, Bernard could not abide rust. A corrosive menace. An insidious predator.

  “Gotta love this rain shadow,” says Dwight, as though he can hear her thoughts. “No wonder everybody wants to retire here.”

  Harriet never wanted to leave the north end, it’s true. She and Bernard had both been born and come of age in Seattle. They’d raised their children in the Ravenna house. But twenty-seven years later, hunched in the passenger’s seat next to Dwight, Harriet thinks of Sequim as the place she’s spent the best years of her life.

  It all started with th
e house—the one decision over which Bernard had been willing to grant Harriet the final word. Because she saw to its upkeep, organization, and operation, the home and hearth would ever remain Harriet’s domain. Long after Bernard had lost patience (having viewed a dozen listings and attended half as many open houses), Harriet was finally swept off her feet by a cedar-sided one-of-a-kind in the Carlsborg flats. It was everything the family house in Ravenna was not, with its river-rock chimney, spacious sunroom, and jetted tub in the master suite. The kitchen was a dream, airy and uncluttered, with counter space galore. She loved the cedar-scented charm of her new home. The luxurious sparsity of the open floor plan. There were even two darling guest rooms for the kids when they visited, and a rec room in the basement for the grandchildren (if Skip would hurry up and produce some). Out back, through the sliding glass double doors, lay a wide flagstone patio facing the Olympics, flanked on all sides by raised garden beds. And all of it for barely two-thirds of what they’d managed to get for the Ravenna house.

  “Oh yeah,” says Dwight, reaching for the glove box, from which he proffers a white envelope. “Mom said to wait until the cruise until you read it. And no, it’s not money—I already checked.”

  The unmarked envelope is stuffed tight and sealed neatly.

  “What’s this? An explanation?”

  “I can’t honestly say. All I know is that she wanted you to wait.”

  In spite of an unhealthy curiosity, Harriet tucks the envelope neatly in the side pouch of her oversized purse. She turns her attention back to the scenery, which like virtually everything else in the modern world, seems to be changing too fast. Goodness, but how they’ve built up Sequim in the past ten years. The box stores, the hotels, the thoughtless housing developments spreading like gray rashes into the hills. Harriet can remember when there was practically nothing along this strip of Highway 101, she could remember Sequim before the bypass, when the banana belt was a rural outpost, an oddball menagerie of gutsy merchants, not the shopping hub of the peninsula. Fifteen years on, and she still thinks of it as the new highway.