Harriet Spies Again

by Louise Fitzhugh

  But Ole Golly’s frowny face just turned frownier. “I will wear my blue silk dress next Easter,” she replied after a moment.

  Harriet had a sudden urge to rid Ole Golly’s face of that frown. She felt she could lighten Ole Golly’s spirits, ease her mind. If Dr. Feigenbaum wasn’t helping her to unburden herself, maybe it was up to Harriet. Perhaps all Ole Golly needed was the opportunity to open up.

  “Do you have a favorite birthday, Ole Golly?”

  “Dostoievsky’s is always nice. It’s the day before Halloween.”

  “No, I mean one of your own. Maybe your thirtieth or fortieth or forty-third?” Harriet suggested, trying to steer Ole Golly toward her most recent birthday, the one she had shared with George Waldenstein.

  “On my eighth birthday, my third-grade class went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a field trip. We saw a splendid exhibit on Matisse.”

  “Did you do anything special for your last birthday?”

  Harriet felt that she was giving Ole Golly the opportunity to confess her great sadness at Mr. Waldenstein’s sudden passing. To explain exactly why she sighed so, why she moped and stared all alone in her room. Harriet waited for the response.

  “I celebrated in my usual manner. It was very nice, thank you,” Ole Golly replied. And Harriet knew that was the end of that.

  “Join me for tea? I was just going down to the kitchen,” Ole Golly said.

  Harriet looked at her watch. “And it’s time for my cake and milk,” she pointed out.

  “Shall we descend, then?”

  They did. Heading down the stairs behind Ole Golly, Harriet explained, “I was just thinking about my birthday coming up. Did you see that I had written TWELFTH BIRTHDAY on my time line?”

  “I did. It made me think how quickly the years have gone.” Ole Golly paused suddenly, on the step, and began to recite:

  “Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight!

  Make me a child again, just for tonight!”

  “Would you really want to be a child again?” Harriet asked.

  Ole Golly sighed. “I suppose not,” she said. “Roller-skating in Far Rockaway does not appeal. But turning time backward? Doing things differently, if one had the chance—”

  At last, Harriet thought. She’s going to unburden. The therapy has done it. At last we can have a talk about what went wrong in Montreal and why she accidentally killed Mr. Waldenstein, and maybe I can convince her to throw herself on the mercy of the Mounties. It is the flat-brimmed hats that make them look so stern; probably underneath they are kind and forgiving. And maybe she will be pardoned, because after all, she is innocent, and then she and I can resume our lives and the comfortable relationship we once had—

  “What would you do differently, Ole Golly?” Harriet asked.

  But Ole Golly didn’t answer. She simply stood silently on the stairs. Harriet could tell she was thinking.

  “I would have been much nicer to Pinky Whitehead in sixth grade,” Harriet confessed. “He couldn’t help it that he was thin, and dumb.”

  But Ole Golly didn’t respond. She sighed, smoothed her tweed skirt absentmindedly, and looked into space.

  “And, ah, I would have paid more attention in French class. My French is not as good as I’d like. What if I were to visit Montreal, and tried to—”

  Harriet waited, hoping that mention of Montreal would trigger a response. And indeed, Ole Golly did seem to shake herself out of her private thoughts. She looked up, sniffed, and said, “Mmmm. Smell that, Harriet. I think she made a carrot cake. I believe I might go off my diet for an afternoon.” She started down the stairs again.

  “I didn’t even know you were on a diet.” Harriet followed her.

  “Simply watching my weight, as all sensible people do.”

  “Mother’s friend Sylvia Connelly goes off her diet on alternate Thursdays.”

  “I choose not to dignify that information with a response,” Ole Golly said.

  “Do you think Sylvia Connelly is an absolute stupe? I do.” Harriet jumped the last remaining steps and followed Ole Golly into the kitchen just as the teakettle began to whistle. “And her sons, too. They talk dirty all the time behind her back, and she thinks they’re such angels.”

  “Just a thin slice, please, Cook,” Ole Golly said politely.

  “Dirtily, I meant. They talk dirtily. It modifies talk, so it should be an adverb.”

  “A very thin slice,” Ole Golly said, and Harriet knew she wasn’t going to be lured into a conversation about the Connellys. Ole Golly refused to bad-mouth anybody, ever, even if they deserved it, and Harriet was quite certain that the Connelly twins did.

  Cook poured the hot water from the teakettle into the teapot and set it on the table.

  “Absolute stupes,” Harriet repeated, just for her own amusement. “And I would not invite them to my birthday party, even if I were having a birthday party, which I am not. Cut me a huge wide piece, Cooky, would you? I’m not on a diet. I’m thin as a whippet, aren’t I? Look.” She held out her arm. “Whippet arms.”

  “Whippets do not have arms, Harriet,” Ole Golly pointed out. She poured tea into two cups while Cook served the carrot cake and a glass of milk.

  Harriet ignored her. She had no wish to discuss whippet body parts, not being entirely certain what a whippet was.

  “I love your carrot cake, Cook!” Harriet poked her fork with enthusiasm into the thick slice on her plate.

  Cook tasted it herself and got the look on her face, eyes half-closed, forehead furrowed, that meant she was assessing the success of the cake. Then she beamed, pleased with the taste. “I could make you one for your birthday, I suppose.”

  “I can’t decide what to do for my birthday. I could go have a massage. I’ve always wanted to have a massage. Would you go with me, Ole Golly, and have a massage, too?”

  “No,” Ole Golly said, taking a small bite of cake.

  “You know you have to be naked for a massage,” Cook pointed out.

  Harriet was astonished. “Isn’t that illegal?”

  Cook shrugged. “Not according to my niece. It cost her sixty dollars, too. If I’m going to be naked for somebody, they’d better pay me sixty dollars, that’s all I got to say about that.”

  Harriet made a face. “Well, maybe I’ll get a tattoo instead.”

  There was a silence. She looked up and saw that Cook and Ole Golly were both ignoring her very pointedly.

  “Just a small one,” Harriet said. “A tasteful one. Not a mermaid or anything.”

  They both looked at the ceiling. Cook hummed a little.

  “Maybe a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.”

  But they still ignored her.

  “Well, okay, maybe not. I don’t know what I’ll do. May I have some more cake, please?”

  “Have your friends over for ice cream and cake. That’s what people do on birthdays. They’ll bring you presents, too,” Cook said.

  Harriet thought briefly about her friends at school. Janie Gibbs was her best school friend. She lived nearby. But Janie wasn’t much fun at parties; she didn’t like games and only wanted to talk about science experiments. Beth Ellen Hansen would probably bring an expensive present, because she was very rich, but she didn’t understand the kind of gifts Harriet liked, and she would undoubtedly bring some frilly nonunisex clothing, the last thing Harriet wanted for her birthday.

  Then there were Rachel, Marion, Carrie, and Laura. They had once stolen Harriet’s notebook, for which Harriet would never completely forgive them. Still, they were her friends, and they had invited Harriet to their parties over the years. But when Harriet thought about a party filled with seventh-grade girls, she pictured a lot of giggling and gossip, just like what she listened to, bored out of her mind, every day at school lunch. She wished she knew someone unusual and fascinating. Someone mysterious, perhaps, with dark secrets yet to be disclosed. She wished she could invite—

  “Rosarita Sauvage!”

  Cook and
Ole Golly looked startled.

  “She’s a girl I met! I bet she’s a lot more interesting than any girl from my school! I could invite her!”

  “Does she like carrot cake?” Cook asked.

  “Of course. Everyone does. And also Yolanda Montezuma!”

  “Who is that?” asked Ole Golly.

  “A girl Sport has a crush on. She goes to his school. He’s hardly ever talked to her, only worshipped her from afar. But this could be a breakthrough for him. Of course, I’ll invite Sport, too.”

  “What kind of people are those?” Cook muttered. “I never heard such strange names in my whole life, did you, Miss Golly?”

  Ole Golly smashed her last cake crumbs neatly with the back of her fork and ate them. “Actually,” she said, “I know a girl, the niece of a friend of mine, just Harriet’s age or thereabouts, who has an equally odd name.”

  “What is it?” Harriet asked. She could hardly believe there was another name as unusual.

  Ole Golly shook her head in amusement. “Zoe Carpaccio,” she said. “Or so she tells me.”

  That did it. “Invite her,” Harriet commanded. “I’m going right upstairs to make invitations.”

  • • •

  But no one could come. No one but Sport. One after another, they declined.

  Rosarita Sauvage telephoned after Harriet slipped an invitation into the mail slot of the Feigenbaums’ house on her way home from school.

  “H’spy?”

  “Yes. Did you get my invitation?”

  “Don’t cry, H’spy, but parties are forbidden by my religion,” Rosarita said in a haughty voice.

  Harriet had opened her notebook to the page marked with Rosarita’s name. She hoped to find out some facts about the mysterious girl.

  “What is your religion?” she asked politely.

  “Exclusionist.”

  Harriet wrote it down, guessing at the spelling. “What do people with that religion do on their birthdays?” she asked.

  “We don’t believe in birthdays,” Rosarita replied impatiently.

  “But—”

  “I have to go shave my head now. G’bye, H’spy.” Rosarita Sauvage hung up.

  “You’re really rude, you know that?” Harriet said loudly, but she was talking to a dial tone.

  Harriet drew an oval in the notebook, like a head with no hair. She made an N in front of it, turning it into the word NO. She was sitting there staring at it when Ole Golly came up the stairs, looking solemn.

  “Harriet, I’m sorry to tell you this, but my friend’s niece—”

  “Oh yes, Zoe Carpaccio.” Harriet flipped a page in her notebook and found the place where she had written that name. “Don’t tell me she has to shave her head.”

  “Why would I tell you that?” Ole Golly asked. “She has lovely hair. But unfortunately she can’t come to your birthday party.”

  Harriet wrote NO on the page under Zoe Carpaccio’s name. “Why not?” she asked.

  “My friend called while you were at school and said that her niece has other plans that afternoon. She didn’t say what.”

  “That’s impolite, not to say what.”

  “Well, let us not dwell on it.”

  Harriet scowled and closed her notebook. The telephone rang. “That’ll be Sport,” Harriet predicted angrily, reaching for the phone, “saying that Yolanda Montezuma can’t come, either.”

  It was exactly that.

  “What excuse did she give?” Harriet asked Sport.

  “None.”

  “None?”

  “Well, I didn’t really give her a chance. It was the first time I ever approached her, Harriet, and I was very nervous and blushy. So I just went up to her in the hall at school, handed her the invitation, and stood there waiting while she read it. Then she said, ‘Tell her no,’ and I didn’t wait around to hear the reason.”

  “You have no social skills, Sport,” Harriet told him. “None at all.”

  “I know. I’m a total loser.” Poor Sport, she thought. He sounded pathetic.

  Harriet opened her notebook to Yolanda Montezuma’s page and wrote NO below the name. She felt defeated.

  “I feel defeated,” she said to Sport. “I guess I’ll just go visit the homeless on my birthday. Maybe I’ll distribute carrot cake.”

  “I do have some other news, though,” Sport said. He had lowered his voice.

  “Speak up. What other news? Good or bad?”

  “I’m not sure. Good, I think. Is Ole Golly around?”

  “No. She was here, but she went in her room and closed the door. Why?”

  “I don’t want her to hear about this.”

  “Should I write it in my notebook?” Harriet found that she had lowered her voice now, too.

  “Yes,” Sport whispered. “Turn to the George Waldenstein section.”

  “Wait. That’s in my Ole Golly section.” There were several pages, actually, devoted to Mr. Waldenstein; the entries dated back to the days when he had courted Ole Golly, riding his deliveryman’s bike to East Eighty-seventh to have tea in the kitchen or to take Ole Golly, perched behind him, to the movies.

  Harriet remembered one particular evening. The courtship had been new then, and Harriet had stayed awake and spied from her bedroom window to check on the kissing part.

  There were several pages devoted to the romance between Catherine Golly and George Waldenstein. Finally one page simply had three phrases:

  MARRIAGE.

  MOVE TO MONTREAL.

  FAREWELL, OLE GOLLY.

  Tucked between the pages was the goodbye letter Ole Golly had written to Harriet. It still made her feel a little choked up to read it.

  “Are you there, Harriet?”

  Harriet looked at the final page, on which quite recently she had written meticulously with a wide-tipped pen:

  REST IN PEACE, GEORGE WALDENSTEIN.

  She read the final notation to Sport. “I feel that I should add ‘Ole Golly is innocent,’ ” she said, “but I don’t want to ruin the way it looks.”

  “Harriet, here’s the news. Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “George Waldenstein is alive. I just talked to him.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “What do you mean? How can that be?”

  “Well, I kept thinking about it and thinking about it,” Sport explained, “and even though you’re the spying expert, Harriet, I thought maybe you had overlooked something. It occurred to me—”

  “I never overlook anything. Did you just call to insult me, Simon Rocque? Because I have other things I could be doing. I have plenty of homework: a book report to write, and a chapter of history to read. Or I could be visiting the homeless right now.”

  “No, I’m sorry, Harriet. Listen. I called the Vital Statistics Office in Montreal, and—no Waldenstein death.”

  Harriet looked at her elaborate

  REST IN PEACE, GEORGE WALDENSTEIN

  and hoped that she would not have to erase it. It was the best lettering she had ever done.

  “So then,” Sport went on, “I called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—the Mounties—but they had no information about the murder of a George Waldenstein or the flight of his wife.”

  “The flight?”

  “You know what I mean. The fleeing.”

  “Get to the point, Sport.”

  “Well, by then it was pretty clear that there hadn’t been a murder. So I just called Montreal directory assistance and asked for George Waldenstein’s phone number. I thought maybe someone would still be there; maybe some relative who could give me the details about his death. I was going to pretend to be a long-lost cousin. And then I called it, Harriet. My father is going to kill me when the phone bill comes. But I called the number, and he answered. ‘George Waldenstein,’ he said. Not even ‘Hello.’ Just ‘George Waldenstein.’ ”

  “Did he sound healthy?”

  “I guess so. I got flustered. I pretended I had a wrong number, and I hung up.”

  �
�Wait. Shhh.” Ole Golly’s door had opened.

  Harriet looked up at her with a cheerful smile. “I’m just talking to Sport,” she said.

  Ole Golly adjusted her sleeves. She was wearing her usual layers of tweed—her things, as she called them—with a tweed shawl draped over everything. “I have an appointment,” she said. “I’ll be back in time to have a snack with you.”

  “Okay, bye.” Harriet watched as Ole Golly went back into her room and picked up her purse and a small gift bag from Saks, the size that would hold a bottle of perfume. Then she headed down the stairs. Harriet waited, listening, and heard the front door close. Then she adjusted her glasses, tucked her hair behind her ear, and resumed her phone conversation.

  “Sport? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t have waited much longer, Harriet. I have a casserole to make.”

  “Sorry. It was Ole Golly. She went out. And Sport, I watched her as she went down the stairs. She was carrying a small bag again. She goes out with a small bag, and she comes home without it, every time. She’s delivering something.”

  “Making a drop. That’s what they call it.”

  “Who calls it that?”

  “Drug dealers,” Sport said. “She could have brought something down from Canada. They wouldn’t stop her at the border because of the way she looks.”

  “That is absolutely absurd.”

  “Harriet, even Ole Golly was once a very impressionable and rebellious adolescent. She might have gotten hooked on something back then while she searched for her identity in inappropriate and self-destructive ways.”

  “Are you reading from a pamphlet?”

  “Yes,” Sport confessed. “It’s here on my father’s desk. He’s researching an article about the lost dreams of urban youth.”

  “Ole Golly was never an urban youth. She grew up in Far Rockaway. She roller-skated all the time. Her favorite book was A Girl of the Limberlost.”

  “Follow her to the drop,” Sport said. “It might not be too late to extricate her.”

  “Wait a minute. Hang on, Sport. Let me go look out the window.”

  In a moment Harriet was back. “As I guessed,” she said. “She was only going across the street to her psychiatrist. I just watched her enter Dr. Feigenbaum’s front door.”