Harriet Spies Again

by Louise Fitzhugh

  “Pardon?”

  “I heard her say it, Mr. Waldenstein. She whispered it into the telephone to my mother, just like this: ‘I’m innocent.’ No, wait. It was more like this: ‘I’m innossssennnt.’ She sounded so scared.”

  Harriet could hear Mr. Waldenstein take a startled breath. For a moment he was silent. Then he said gruffly, “Harriet, I’ll be there Thursday. I’ll find a way. There must be a train.”

  CHAPTER 15

  The silverware and plates were on the table, and the menu was propped in the center. Cook was in the kitchen, and outdoors it was still snowing. The drifts were mountainous, the streets were unplowed, and the snow was still falling.

  And Harriet’s parents, who had been due to arrive in New York earlier that day, were still not home.

  “Darling,” Mrs. Welsch had said to Harriet over the telephone, “Quel dommage! What an absolute shame! Here we are at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and they say there’s a blizzard in New York, so our plane can’t leave!”

  “Cook’s making the stuffing right now,” Harriet said. “She put chestnuts in it.”

  “Well, it says DELAYED on the monitor, so we’ll just sit here and wait. I’m certain we’ll get there before long. Your father’s in a foul mood, though, I must say.”

  Much later in the day, another call came from Paris.

  “Is it really snowing there, or is all this just some big hoax because Air France doesn’t feel like flying this plane?” Harriet’s father demanded when she answered.

  “It’s really snowing hard, Dad.”

  “We’ve been sitting in this damn airport for six hours,” he said. “Your mother is furious.”

  “I think the snow will stop before long, Dad.” Harriet lied to reassure him. “The flakes are getting bigger.” It was not true. Cook had reluctantly decided to spend the night because she was not at all certain she could even make it to Brooklyn.

  “I’ll tell her that, and maybe we’ll tell Air France as well. The seats in this airport are incredibly uncomfortable.”

  Later, as Harriet was getting ready for bed, the telephone rang again. This time it was her mother.

  “It’s two in the morning here!” Mrs. Welsch said angrily. “Do you realize that? It probably feels like early evening to you, Harriet, but you’re forgetting that there is a six-hour time difference! Do you understand that your parents are sitting in an airport at two A.M.? And they still won’t tell us exactly when this plane is going to depart?”

  “I’m sorry, Mother. I do know about the time difference.”

  “Your father is livid. I’ve never seen him so outraged. He’s in the bar, drinking red wine. Oops. I must go, Harriet. They’re making an announcement.”

  • • •

  There was so much to do the next day that Harriet forgot to worry about her parents’ plight. She brought the fancy serving dishes from the dining room cupboard to the kitchen and lined them up on the pine table so they would be ready for Cook to fill them with mashed potatoes and creamed onions and peas and gravy and all the things Harriet loved.

  Yeasty dough for rolls had been rising in a blue bowl covered with a cloth, and now Harriet watched as Cook poked at it one more time, shaped the dough into crescents, placed them in neat rows on a baking sheet, and covered them again.

  “I’ll never bother learning to cook, because I won’t need to. I’ll always be off on spying assignments, probably in Eastern Europe or the Mideast,” Harriet commented.

  “Even spies eat.”

  “Yes, but they never cook. They eat in restaurants.”

  “News to me. I never knew a spy. Except you, of course, Harriet. Hey, watch it. Don’t go sticking your fingers into everything.” Cook slapped at Harriet’s hand.

  “It was just the smidgeniest smidgen of cranberry sauce,” Harriet said. She sucked on her finger.

  “What time is it?” Cook asked.

  “Three o’clock. Why don’t you ever look at the clock like a normal person?”

  “If I was a normal person, Harriet Welsch, I would be in Brooklyn with my family on Thanksgiving. Put some olives in a bowl. Use that nice crystal one there. People are going to be arriving soon.”

  “We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing,” Harriet sang loudly as she filled the small crystal bowl with olives from a jar.

  “He hastens and chastens his will to make known,” Cook joined in with her big trembling voice.

  The doorbell rang. “Ole Golly?” Harriet called up the stairs. “Can you answer the door?”

  But there was no reply. Ole Golly had gone to her room after breakfast and had not emerged. “I have packing to do,” she had announced. “I’ll be busy in my room.”

  “Ole Golly is depressed,” Harriet had said to Cook after Ole Golly left the kitchen.

  “Holidays always bring on depression,” Cook had said, “or make it worse. Junior is feeling very depressed.”

  The doorbell rang again. At the same moment the telephone rang. Cook and Harriet looked at each other. “I’ll do the door,” Cook decided. She wiped her hands on her apron. Harriet picked up the phone.

  “Darling?” Her mother’s voice was staticky.

  “Mother? Where are you? Are you still in Paris?” Upstairs Harriet could hear Simon and his parents entering and stamping snow from their boots.

  “No, we’ve made it to Hartford. The storm doesn’t seem to have hit quite as hard here yet. Oh! They’re announcing the final call for our flight to New York. Daddy is very anxious for us to board the plane. But I just wanted to let you know we’re on our way.”

  Harriet heard the Rocques go into the living room. “People are arriving, Mother!”

  “Yes, we’ll be arriving in just a few hours, dear,” Mrs. Welsch said in a sprightly voice. “They say the planes are all stacked up because flights from all over were delayed.”

  “What about trains, Mother? Do you know if trains are delayed, too?”

  “Harriet, you silly thing. We couldn’t have taken a train from Paris!”

  “I just heard the Rocques arrive, Mother. I have to go,” Harriet said.

  “Of course you do, darling! Don’t wait dinner for us, but we’ll be there before too terribly long. We have a limo waiting at the airport. Oh, wait, Harriet, Daddy is saying something to me.”

  Harriet waited. Because Cook was out of the room, she reached over and poked her finger into the cranberry sauce. She licked it quickly. She could hear Cook coming down the stairs.

  “What did Daddy want? I have to hang up.”

  “He wanted to tell me to hang up, darling; we’re about to miss our flight. See you soon!”

  Harriet hung up and licked her finger one more time as Cook entered the kitchen carrying the two pies Sport had made.

  “The Rocques came on skis, Harriet. Damnedest thing I ever saw! On skis and carrying pies!

  “I served the grown-ups some wine. Go be sociable, and see if you can get Miss Golly to come down. We’ll be eating in another half hour. I hope the Connellys can get here. I wonder if they ski. There aren’t any taxis.”

  “We gather together . . .” Harriet began the Thanksgiving song again. She marched up the stairs, singing, and greeted Sport and his parents, who were rosy-cheeked and hungry.

  “It wasn’t easy, Harriet,” Sport said, “carrying those pies on skis. I think the crust got cracked on one.”

  Harriet continued to the second floor and then the third, still singing. “He forgets not his own,” she concluded loudly, and knocked on Ole Golly’s door.

  “Time to come down and see everybody!” Harriet called cheerfully. “And then dinner, and then who knows what might happen after dinner? There might be a surprise! A pièce de résistance!”

  Ole Golly opened the door. Behind her, on the bed, Harriet could see the open suitcase. She could see folded underwear in it. She averted her eyes quickly. It felt rude to look at Ole Golly’s underwear.

  “My parents are in Hartford!” Harriet added.
r />   Ole Golly sighed.

  “Look! I’m wearing the sweater you made me!” Harriet posed, modeling the colorful sweater. “Are you knitting anything new? Maybe something, ah, small? Why don’t you bring your knitting downstairs with you?” She peered at Ole Golly’s knitting basket on the floor beside the chair, trying to see if some tiny garment was in progress. If so, Ole Golly could shyly hold up a small pink or pale blue sweater as a way of announcing things to Mr. Waldenstein, just the way—was it Doris Day?—had in an old movie once.

  “Over the river and through the woods,” she sang as she descended the stairs. Harriet M. Welsch knew a lot of Thanksgiving songs.

  The Connellys called at 4:37 and said they would not make it.

  Harriet graciously accepted their regrets over the phone. Then, after hanging up, she did a little dance. “Thank you, snooow!” she sang.

  Ole Golly came downstairs, wearing her things, and sat in the living room with Sport’s parents. She sipped a few sips of wine. Harriet pulled Sport aside and whispered to him in the hall.

  “George Waldenstein promised he’d be here at five. He’s the pièce de résistance. But look out the window, Sport! There’s not a single cab on the streets. He’ll never make it!”

  “It’s already five, Harriet. Weren’t we supposed to eat at four? I’m hungry!”

  Cook called in a low voice from the stairs to the kitchen. “This turkey’s practically ruined, Harriet! I think we ought to serve dinner!”

  So Harriet and the Rocques arranged themselves at the table set for eleven. Ole Golly joined them after all, so only one of the places set for Harriet’s parents was empty. The four places set for the Connellys were empty. The place set for the mystery guest was empty.

  Cook served the turkey and someone began to pass the bowl of mashed potatoes. Outside, it had begun to get dark, in the eerie way that darkness comes through snow. Streetlights came on and made cones of golden light, through which the snow continued to swirl.

  At 5:22, as Harriet spooned gravy onto her plate, she heard the doorbell ring. She heard Cook head across the kitchen and up the stairs to the front door.

  She glanced at Ole Golly, who was buttering a roll and talking to Kate Rocque about a poetry reading that Kate had attended at the Ninety-second Street Y. She glanced at Sport and grinned. Sport grinned back. It had to be George Waldenstein at the door. Her parents had keys and wouldn’t ring the bell. The Connellys had said they weren’t coming. There was no one else.

  “Harriet!” Cook’s voice was urgent, and it wasn’t just a Harriet-get-your-butt-down-here-now voice. Cook was scared. “Miss Golly! I need help! Hurry!”

  They heard a large thump on the hall floor above.

  • • •

  Harriet was very glad that Morris Feigenbaum answered the door. She had been worried that she might have to deal with Rosarita Sauvage and a lot of frivolous, mysterious conversation directed at H’spy. But the psychiatrist himself was the one who came at last in answer to her desperate repeated punching of the buzzer.

  “We’re in the middle of our Thanksgiving dinner,” he said, looking down at Harriet not unkindly.

  “I know!” Harriet told him. “Everyone is! But we need a doctor! We need you right away, across the street! And your wife!”

  Dr. Feigenbaum’s face had a puzzled what-on-earth-are-you-talking-about look.

  “It’s an emergency!” Harriet explained. “George Waldenstein came all the way from Montreal by train, and he got to Penn Station and there were no taxis, so he took the subway to Fifty-ninth Street, and he waited and waited but the number four train didn’t come, or the five, or the six—none of them came, I suppose because it’s Thanksgiving and it’s a blizzard—and he had promised, absolutely promised, that he’d be here by five P.M. because he’s to be the pièce de résistance, so he started walking, and the snow is a foot deep, but Mr. Waldenstein is only five feet tall, and he kept falling over, so he kept saying to himself, ‘Catherine, Catherine,’ just like the guy in that movie, Wuthering Heights? And he got up again, and up again, and finally he made it to our front door, but he’s covered in snow and he can’t unbend, and his lips are blue, and—oh please, just come!”

  “Well,” Dr. Feigenbaum said, after thinking it over, “let me put on some boots.”

  “Dr. Feigenbaum,” Harriet implored, “you can walk where my feet were. See? I made deep holes in the snow. You don’t have time to put on boots!”

  He looked at Harriet, looked at her foot holes in the snow, and sighed. “Holidays are tough. People always seem to have these problems in the middle of holiday dinners,” he said, grumbling slightly. He reached for a small medical bag that was on the hall floor. “But all right. Lead on.

  “Barbara!” he called up the stairs. “Medical emergency across the street, at the Welsches’!”

  He followed Harriet through the snow back to the Welsches’ house. Cook was standing in the front hall wringing her hands in her apron.

  “Your parents called from Connecticut,” Cook told Harriet. “The storm did hit Hartford, so their plane couldn’t take off. They’re stuck and they’re in a very bad mood. I didn’t even tell them about this.”

  This was George Waldenstein, horizontal on the hall floor. Ole Golly was on her knees beside him on the Oriental rug, gently rubbing his face. He was looking up at her with affection, embarrassment, and chattering teeth. The rest of him was still encased in snow.

  Dr. Morris Feigenbaum was reaching into his bag of medical equipment just as the door opened again and Dr. Barbara Feigenbaum appeared. “What’s going on?” she said. “Morris, why did you come? Catherine’s my patient!” Then she saw Ole Golly kneeling on the floor. “Catherine? What is it? Are you all right? You’re not due until April! And who’s this?”

  “It’s my husband!” Ole Golly said. “He came all the way from Montreal to bring me this. It was his when he was a baby.” She pried open the stiffened fingers of Mr. Waldenstein’s right hand, removed the snow-covered object he was holding, and held it up. It was a little silver cup with the name GEORGIE engraved on the side.

  “That reminds me. I got your amnio results,” Barbara Feigenbaum said as she leaned down to examine Mr. Waldenstein. “I wrote myself a note to call you on Monday. Georgie won’t do. It’s a girl.”

  “A girl!” Ole Golly said. She leaned over Mr. Waldenstein’s frozen face. “George? Did you hear? We’re having a baby, and—”

  He fluttered his eyelids. There were little icicles in his eyelashes. “I know,” he said, shivering. “Harriet told me.”

  “I didn’t! I swear I didn’t! I wanted Ole Golly to be the one to tell you! I wanted her to hold up a little knitted garment!” Harriet insisted. “The only thing I told you, Mr. Waldenstein, was that Ole Golly missed you and that she was innocent!”

  “Harriet, I didn’t say innocent. I said enceinte, which is French for pregnant. I was afraid you might be listening in on my phone conversation with your mother.”

  Then Ole Golly turned to her husband. “It’s true, George,” she said. “I’m enceinte.” She stroked his face affectionately, and Harriet could see that it wasn’t quite as blue as it had been. “Try to wiggle your upper lip, dear,” Ole Golly instructed him. “See if you can break your mustache.”

  Simon Rocque was plugging a hair dryer into an electrical outlet at the foot of the stairs. “Stand back, everyone,” he said. “I’m going to melt him.”

  • • •

  The house was quiet. Carefully Sport cut the pies and Harriet passed the slices around. The Rocques were back at the table, and now the two Dr. Feigenbaums were there, as well, waiting attentively to make certain that Mr. Waldenstein didn’t relapse into frozenness. Cook had joined them at the table, too. Upstairs, George Waldenstein, melted, wearing Harriet’s father’s pajamas, was tucked into Harriet’s parents’ bed, under Harriet’s parents’ electric blanket. Ole Golly was holding his hand and giving him small sips of tea with brandy in it.

  “T
his is yummy, Sport,” Kate said. “Truly yummy.”

  Sport beamed. “More, anyone?” he offered.

  The doorbell rang abruptly. Then they could hear the unlocked door pushed open, and footsteps in the hall. “Where is everybody?” a vaguely familiar voice called, and the footsteps stomped toward the dining room.

  “I got left sitting all alone in front of a turkey!” the girl said angrily from the doorway. “Like I’m supposed to know how to carve? What’s going on?”

  Sport, standing in front of a half-eaten pumpkin chiffon pie, gasped and stammered, “Yo—Yolanda Montezuma!”

  Harriet faced the girl and demanded, “What are you doing in my house, Rosarita Sauvage? You said you were being held prisoner!”

  The girl frowned. “My name at the moment is Zoe Carpaccio, and I’m looking for my family. They all dashed out into the snow and left me sitting there like a stupe. Now I find them lounging around eating pie. What kind of pie is that? It looks good. I’ll have a piece. Pass the pie, H’spy.

  “And by the way,” she said to Harriet, “how do you do? I’m actually Annie Smith. I’m starting at your school on Monday. The guy there said maybe you’d walk with me, so I’ve already put it on my time line: STARTING SCHOOL WITH HARRIET M. WELSCH.”

  “Your time line?” Harriet said. “I thought I was the only person with a time line!”

  • • •

  “So,” Harriet said, pointing, “I listed the most important things for each year. Firsts. See this? LOSES FIRST TOOTH? Under AGE SIX?”

  She was kneeling on her bedroom floor with Annie while they examined her time line.

  “I put you here, under AGE ELEVEN, but now I have to figure out how to change it. Maybe I can use Wite-Out.” Harriet rubbed her finger along the phrase MEETS ROSARITA SAUVAGE.

  “Don’t change it,” Annie said. “You did meet me when I was being Rosarita. I still am Rosarita sometimes, when I’m feeling savage.”

  “Did you know that sauvage means fierce in French?”

  “No. I never took French. I’ll be way behind in French at the Gregory School. I’ll have to be in French class with the babies.”