“You can call yourself a baby name, then. Like Polly Golly.” It seemed a very strange name to Harriet, but Ole Golly and George had chosen it for their daughter and said that it had insouciance.
Harriet smoothed the time line and looked at the place under AGE TWELVE, subcategory THANKSGIVING DAY, where Polly’s impending birth had been announced:
POLLY GOLLY WALDENSTEIN DUE IN APRIL.
Ole Golly and George Waldenstein had returned together by train to Montreal on the same day Harriet’s parents had finally arrived home.
“You’ll come to visit when Polly is born, Harriet,” Ole Golly had said, “won’t you? And I’ll wear my blue silk dress with the embroidered belt. It will fit by then.” She laughed and smoothed her tweed things over her swollen middle.
“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” Harriet replied with a sniff. She was sulking a little. She didn’t want Ole Golly to leave.
“I humbly beg,” Ole Golly said, and Harriet blinked. Ole Golly had never humbly begged before, ever.
“Well, all right, I’ll come to visit,” Harriet told her. “And,” she added, “I humbly beg you to hug me goodbye.”
“I was going to anyway,” Ole Golly told her briskly, and she did.
It was nice, remembering the hug. Harriet wished they had taught her the word for hug in French class. “French class is stupid,” Harriet told Annie. “They only teach us to talk about food. Les pommes frites.”
“I don’t mind learning food words. Sport’s going to give me cooking lessons,” Annie said.
“Sport’s in love with you. At least he’s in love with Yolanda Montezuma.”
“That’s the name I used at Sport’s school. It’s probably one of the reasons I got kicked out. I always call myself Yolanda when I’m feeling aloof.”
Harriet thought about aloof and decided it was worthy of inclusion on her list of adjectives. “What are you feeling when you’re Zoe Carpaccio?” she asked Annie.
Annie thought about it. “Estranged,” she said at last, and Harriet decided to add that one to her list too.
“You’ll be feeling aloof and estranged at the Gregory School,” Harriet warned her, “at least at first. But my advice is: don’t act weird.”
“No, I’ll be okay,” Annie said, “because you’ll be there, Harriet M. Welsch.”
“Except in French class,” Harriet reminded her. “And I have to tell you, Annie, I’m feeling a little sauvage toward my French teacher. My French teacher never once told me that enceinte means pregnant. If I had just known that, I could have saved myself a whole lot of fruitless spying.”
“But you like spying,” Annie pointed out.
“I like most parts of it. But I made Sport walk thirty-six blocks on a mission, and it turned out that Ole Golly was simply going to the lab at the hospital for an amnio test to make sure the baby was okay.
“And also,” Harriet said, beginning to feel a little outraged, “I couldn’t figure out why she kept carrying a little bag around, and you know what it was?”
“What?”
“A urine specimen. My mother says they call it pipi in French. I am definitely never having a baby if you have to carry pipi around.”
“Look, I have more stuff than you under AGE TWELVE on my time line,” Annie said. “But I’ve been twelve longer. My birthday was in September. My uncle and aunt took me to a play.”
“What do you have under AGE ELEVEN?”
“PARENTS SPLIT AND TURN INTO BASKETS,” Annie replied matter-of-factly.
“Excuse me?”
“Basket cases. My parents split up and they turned into basket cases. So I did, too, of course. That’s why I act so weird.
“Then below that,” Annie went on, “it says GOES TO NEW YORK TO LIVE WITH UNCLE MORRIE AND AUNT BARB.”
Harriet gulped. “Forever?” she asked.
“No. Just until my parents start acting normal. Like your parents.”
Harriet thought about her own parents, stranded in airports, sipping martinis.
She thought about Mr. Waldenstein and Ole Golly, soon to be parents: a roly-poly father who had been deceitful and been forgiven, and a frowny-faced mother who quoted poetry and Dostoievsky and wore tweed things.
Harriet found herself wondering what in the world normal meant, after all, and whether it was something that a masterful spy could someday figure out.
She thought for a moment about bad things and good things and how there were always so many of each, and how sometimes they happened in a heap. And then the mixture of things could be rolled up in a rubber band, and it would always be there—in your toy box or your memory or your heart—so you could examine it whenever you wanted, in absolute privacy, wearing your pajamas, or sometimes in the company of an understanding friend.
Other books featuring Harriet the Spy:
Harriet the Spy
The Long Secret
Sport
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Copyright © 2002 by Lois Anne Morehead
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March 2002
eISBN: 978-0-375-89004-8
v3.0
Harriet Spies Again Page 14