“That’s David,” she said, “when he was touring the front.”
“David,” it turned out, was the familiar name of Prince Edward.
Sarah had met Elinor in France, where she too had volunteered as an ambulance driver. Sarah wanted to write a series of articles about the wastefulness of war. She had at first been hostile to Elinor because of her wealth and title. But the more they knew each other, the more Sarah became impressed with Elinor’s quick mind and willingness to learn new ideas. They developed an odd teacher-student relationship, not unlike mine with Harriet—though ours was based more on age than on intellect.
So I was delighted to be spending time with Sarah and having a most enjoyable luncheon. She was, I think, relating an anecdote Crystal Eastman had told her, and was very near the punch line, when I felt something catch in my throat. Since I had finished my meal and was drinking coffee at the time, it took me by surprise. At first, I merely touched my throat lightly, smiling all the while and not letting on that something was not quite right. But soon the feeling swelled in my throat and I could not swallow. I began to lean forward and try to cough, and Sarah, by this time seeing my difficulty, patted me vigorously on the back. Soon the waiter and a small crowd of patrons had gathered around and I felt my face go hot and then cool. In less than a minute, I guess, the matter was over, and the waiter had brought me a large iced tea, gratis. The management, I suppose, was afraid of the adverse publicity of a woman choking in the middle of the restaurant.
It was a startling experience, because I had no idea what brought it on. The most startling thing was that at the time I was choking and having temperature flashes, the picture I saw most clearly in my mind was of Harriet kissing Amelia Wingate.
Very much later, when she returned from Provincetown, Harriet told me. I could have guessed by the look on her face when I met her at the train station. Because as she stepped off the train, as she saw me there, she averted her eyes for just a split-second. I knew immediately what it was that had choked me.
She did not wait long; she told me at dinner that night, a simple dinner I had prepared for her homecoming. Like our first dinner together, she hardly touched it.
“Something’s bothering you,” I said. “You’re barely eating.”
“I ate a bit on the train,” she explained, but I didn’t believe it. She had hardly looked at me during the entire meal. She pushed her plate away, but kept her fingers along the edge while she spoke. “But this was lovely of you, I don’t deserve it.”
“What nonsense,” I said, “of course you do.”
“No,” she said, staring down at her fingers, pushing the plate ever so slightly further away. “No.” Then after a long sigh, she blurted out, “I’ve been unfaithful to you, Lucy. I feel tremendously guilty about it, and it won’t happen again.”
I breathed deeply, evenly, enough air for both of us. I said nothing.
“It was a woman in the company, no one special, just a little flirtatious thing who complimented me day and night. I didn’t even like her that much. I think I was just lonely for you,” she ended, a bit pathetically, but in a voice so full of remorse it was hard not to cave in.
I, too, pushed my plate away slightly. I got up and brought the coffee that had been brewing in the kitchen. What she said did not surprise me; I’d known all along. It didn’t even hurt very much. All of my hurt, I think, had been packed into that lump in my throat. I returned to the table, and she had started to cry, big tears that slid down her delicate cheeks.
“Say something,” she demanded. “Anything.”
I poured our coffee and sat down, reaching over for the hand that was clutching the fabric of her skirt. She started at my touch, then her fingers wrapped around mine, like a baby clutching her mother, the only person who stands between her and the world.
“It’s all right, Harriet,” I said. “I understand.”
And I went on “understanding” for seven years.
Did I really, though? Did I really understand?
I have asked myself this question so many times, it has become second nature to me. Sometimes, in the middle of a lecture, when I am dissecting for my girls the meaning of, say, a passage from Much Ado About Nothing, the question appears to me as surely on the chalkboard as if I’d written it there with my own hand. And I find myself breaking off mid-sentence for what must be longer than a moment, because always, always, I’m brought back to the classroom by one of the girls asking, politely, “Miss Weir? Miss Weir, are you all right?” I stammer that I simply lost my train of thought, but their young faces always look out at me with concern.
How many times has this happened in the last three years? While Harriet was alive, I tried not to question. We had a special relationship. She gave up California—and possibly fame—for me. I remind myself of these things now, but still I wonder. I have to wonder why our relationship was not enough for her, why she had to find others. Why she even approached my friends, like Sarah. Are there some people who want too much of the world? And others who want too little?
Would we have stayed together? What was the glue that made us stick?
29
October, 1930
It has been three years, and the memory of it is as if it happened three days or three hours or three minutes ago. I had returned from a dinner engagement downtown with Helen Hull and Mabel Robinson. They had been trying to convince me that Harriet and I should take a summer place near them in Maine, and I was explaining that Harriet didn’t share the romantic vision of country life. It was past nine o’clock, and I did not expect Harriet home till much later. They were finishing filming Anything for Rosie, one of those light little things in which Harriet often appeared. She was very excited about the part, because she had six lines, and her good friend, Harry Baum, played her sweetheart in the movie. They had to kiss briefly, and it was a bit strange for both of them, since Harry was of our persuasion as well. They were going to celebrate afterward at a rent party up on 136th Street. Harry was always getting invited to what Harriet described as “swell parties.” I usually did not go. I was not much of a party-goer and thought Harriet and I should have some parts of our lives that were completely separate. Harry and Harriet often went out together down to the speakeasies in the fifties, up to Harlem, to Gladys Bentley’s club or to the Apollo. Some people thought they were a couple, but if they had really known Harry Baum, they would have realized that was ridiculous. Harriet memorized all the details of their outings and told them to me later, so I often felt I had met the people and seen the things she had.
That night, they didn’t get to the party. Harry had a new motorcycle with a sidecar, and they decided to ride to the party in it, in appropriately wild style. He never said if he had been drinking, but he always carried a flask with him.
I never blamed him. He blamed himself enough. At nine thirty-five the telephone rang. Harriet always carried a little chit in her bag that said, “In Case Of Emergency, Please Contact Lucy Weir.” She made me carry one with her name. She was always afraid if something happened, either one of us would not find out till too late.
They had tried me sooner, of course, but I was having dinner. I remembered then that at seven o’clock, I’d glanced at my watch for no particular reason, except to note the time. Then my throat felt very dry, and I drank several glasses of water in quick succession. And then I was myself again.
Harriet died around seven o’clock, instantly, they said, of a blow to the head that snapped her neck.
Of course, I blamed myself for the argument we had the year before. Harriet had been asked to go to Hollywood, to audition for the role of Clara Bow’s roommate in It. Harriet worshipped Clara Bow and admired how she had risen from dire poverty to stardom, and she did not want to miss the opportunity. I thought it would mean the end of us. She would move to California, and I would be left on Eighty-fifth Street. She wanted me to come with her for the audition, and she swore that after that one movie, that one chance to play with Clara Bo
w, she would come back to New York to play in the legitimate theater. I insisted she had to choose: me or the film. So she chose. I suppose, ultimately, no matter what had happened between us, no matter how often or with whom Harriet had carried on, we were still best when we were together. She knew that. She stayed in New York and took bit parts in third-rate movies and went to Astoria every day. And one day she did not come home.
I know that I am not really to blame. Harriet would not blame me. She felt quite happy in New York, though when It was released, she could not bring herself to see it. I remember all of us, Harriet, Elinor, Sarah, and I, going to the premier of The Captive, and Harriet squeezed my arm and said, “Someday I’ll be up there, like Helen Mencken, starring in a really fine play. You’ll be so proud.” I was already proud of her; and if I have one regret, it’s that she didn’t know.
• • •
After that, it was hard to pull myself together. I went to pieces. I had lived so much with Harriet, as half of a couple, rather than as just myself, for so many years, I didn’t know what to do next. Of course, we had had other friends and separate activities, but I had so much based my decisions on how they would affect the two of us, especially after Harriet gave up her California audition, that it seemed wrong somehow to have only myself to consider. Consequently, I could make no decisions at all for months. Choosing from a menu would send me into a panic. Deciding what to wear brought on an avalanche of tears. Not that I wasn’t used to doing those things on my own, but without Harriet, there seemed no sense in doing them.
My friends, particularly Sarah, were very supportive, though Elinor said some horrible things that filtered through to me, as if it were no loss that Harriet was gone. Still, to see people we’d shared our lives with—Sarah, Helen Hull—was more than I could handle. I broke down completely one day, while dining with friends downtown, and had to leave New York altogether.
I went to Mother’s house, back to Glens Falls, but Mother lectured me so long and hard about the temptations to evil facing single women that I stayed there barely two months, just enough time to put things into better perspective. Then I went back to New York and tried to make sense of my life.
For three years I have been unable to write. Every story idea has come to naught, the novel I outlined fell apart when I tried to write it. Distance, Helen Hull told me, that’s what you need. Time to grieve fully. She suggested these journal entries so that I could remember the good and bad of Harriet and allow myself to miss her. But the distance isn’t great enough, this apartment is too full of her. I have allowed myself to miss her, and I do. Oh, how I do.
30
Catherine was eager to live in Elinor Devere’s house, but I was the one holding us back. Fleck had made the offer very attractive. She was already at work having the small kitchenette on the second floor expanded and remodeled. The idea of people she knew being her tenants had driven her to make the place as rentable as possible. The next time we went to see it, most of the furniture had been cleared out and sent to Out of Time to sell. The walls were newly painted a crisp white, and the room in which Elinor had died looked like any sunny guestroom. Catherine was pleading.
“Look, it’s a good compromise for us, this neighborhood,” she pointed out. “The west side for you, downtown for me. And we’ll never be able to find this much room at this price anywhere in Manhattan.”
We could have the entire second floor, a suite of nice-sized rooms, and eventually the third floor, too, if we wanted to renovate it. It was in disrepair and had been used mostly as storage space for twenty-five years. All at a rent less than our current combined rents. It was hard to pass up, and of course, we ultimately didn’t.
I knew Lucy and Harriet would find me anywhere. But how would they feel, coming to Elinor’s house, Elinor who had been so critical of Harriet? Would there be skirmishes between Elinor and Harriet that I’d be witness to, as the women fought through time and space? I wasn’t really sure how those things worked.
I was sad to leave my neighborhood, so close to the shop and to Tuttie’s apartment. She was sad, too, and it felt to both of us like some sort of ending. The day before the move, Tuttie came to work carrying two bags, instead of her usual one. She handed one to me as she went to hang her raincoat in the back.
“What’s this?” I asked. The bag was crumpled, like her lunch sack, but the bottom was flat, like a book. I pulled out a copy of a book about life after death and other supernatural phenomena. It was a battered copy that she had obviously bought on the street or at a second-hand bookstore.
“I got that from one of our competitors up Broadway,” she explained. “Honey, their stuff’s not half so nice as ours.” She pulled out one of her spiral notebooks and flipped through the pages quickly. “Second Chance is the name. Don’t waste your time going there, plumcake, we got them beat by a mile. But I saw this book and thought maybe you could learn something about ghosts. Or spirits, or whatever they’re called.” She thumbed through it till she found an interesting passage. “Here, listen.” She read slowly and clearly. “‘Some moment of the past has become totally real, as real as the present, and we realize it is as real as the present—or rather, that the present does not have some special status of super-reality, just because it happens to be here and now.’ Funny, huh?”
I took it with a smile and reread the passage to myself.
“It’s a, what’s it called, a house-warming present,” she said, with an odd little crack in her voice.
“We’ll have you down for some Ouija board action just as soon as we’re settled in,” I promised. Catherine and I had begun to have Tuttie over for dinner about once a week, then would take her home, and I knew that’s what Tuttle was thinking about. It had already crossed my mind a number of times. We would just have to fix up the guestroom right away, so Tuttie didn’t feel like we’d abandoned her.
She was unusually quiet in the shop, not chatting about this and that, and when she left in the afternoon she simply said, “See you Sunday, darling.” I thanked her again for the book and asked if she would write something in it.
“Oh my,” she laughed. “I don’t know what I’d say, lambchop.” But then she took a pen and scribbled something quickly and left with a faint flush to her cheeks. When she was gone, I opened the cover. “To my partner in crime,” she had written, and I smiled, because it was the epigraph Sarah Stern had used, too, in her book. It seemed strangely appropriate, since Tuttie had become somehow a member of my own “gang.”
• • •
Sunday at work I found myself looking at Tuttie a lot, watching her putt around the store. Putting, that was her word and one I thought she used to denigrate her own work. I considered the work she did for Out of Time valuable, but perhaps I didn’t show my respect often enough. While she was busy rearranging the contents of the china cabinet to make way for some new items, I decided to tell her.
“You know, Tuttie, you’ve done a terrific job here,” I said, taking her by surprise. She stood and looked at me with a Wedgewood box in one hand, a majolica vase in the other. She screwed up her nose.
“What are you talking about, sweetheart?” she asked, with an embarrassed laugh.
“It occurred to me that I don’t tell you how much your good work has meant,” I continued.
“You feeling okay?”
“Of course. Can’t I tell you, as your employer, how much I appreciate the job you’ve done here?” I held the majolica vase for her as she slipped a few other pieces into place. She glanced at me over her shoulder.
“So, you laying me off, boss?” she asked warily.
“My God, Tuttie, you have to learn to take a compliment.” I went back to the counter and pulled out some correspondence I had to answer. Tuttie followed me to the counter and set the vase down right in front of me.
“So, Susan, darling, what’s wrong?” She almost never called me Susan. I could count the times on one hand. “You’ve been looking at me all day. I can feel it. Every time I look up
, there you are, staring at me like you’ve got something on your mind. So what’s the matter, sweetpea?” She laid a concerned hand on my wrist. “Really, you should tell me. I’m a financial burden, right? My memory loss is a problem?”
“Not at all,” I said. “You’re an asset, I told you. I’m just tired from the move.” Her gesture was touching, and I put a hand over hers with a smile. “I’ll be okay.”
She seemed to be unconvinced, hesitating before she picked up the vase again. She stood looking at me, her brow furrowed with concern.
“If you ever want to hire a younger person, you just tell me,” she said. “I can always work at McDonald’s. They hire old people, you know.” I couldn’t believe my compliment had gotten so skewed. After she’d left for the day, I decided I should give her a raise to back up my words. I’d figure out how much and tell her the next day. But the next afternoon, when she was scheduled to work, Tuttie didn’t show up.
31
I kept calling her apartment till closing time, but there was no answer. I left a frantic message for Catherine at school, but she called and said there must be a logical explanation. I didn’t see how there could be. The facts were simple: Tuttie, the world’s most responsible employee, who called if she were going to be five minutes late, hadn’t come to work, hadn’t called and wasn’t answering her phone. Something had obviously happened to her. Even if she were still upset about the day before, she would have called or come in to discuss it. That was her style. This—this silence—could only mean trouble.
I closed the shop a little early, even though it had been moderately busy, and went to Tuttie’s apartment to check on her. In the elevator, my heart was beating fast and loud. I had no idea what I would find at Tuttie’s. My mind went back in time to the day I had come back from upstate to discover Margielove missing. If I’d lost Tuttie, too, I couldn’t see how I’d face it. Maybe the shop was cursed in some way by a former owner or employee. Maybe nothing but evil could happen to people who worked there. Maybe I was doomed just like . . .
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