The Education of Harriet Hatfield

by May Sarton

  “Proud to meet you, Miss Hatfield,” he says as we shake hands.

  “I don’t know why, but I’m glad you are,” I say. We are seated in a semicircle around Jonathan’s huge desk. “Isn’t this an amazing story Earl has unearthed?” I say to Jonathan, and then turn to Fred, who is on my left, and ask him, “Can you believe it?”

  “You have stepped on a hornet’s nest all right,” Fred answers, “but then you have been crazily honest.”

  “Let’s get down to business,” Jonathan interrupts. It is not the place for family squabbling.

  Mr. Firestone turns to me. “We must, I feel, if possible, keep this whole business out of the courts.”

  “I wouldn’t get a fair trial? Is that it?” I am really furious inside. Here we are back in the maze of homophobia. It makes me sick.

  “Well”—Firestone’s “well” is a long drawn-out “well”—“I wouldn’t say that, but some of the material that would have to come up is inflammatory. Why take a risk?”

  “But if we don’t go to court, what do we do?” I ask. “I do hope those devilish boys will get their comeuppance.”

  “It is Rose Donovan who is the real problem,” Jonathan says.

  “Luckily,” Fred interrupts, “from what Earl says, she is terrified now and is getting her punishment from the community. Her neighbors have rejected her because she shot your dog. Who would have believed that Patapouf’s death, poor thing, would prove to be such a help?”

  “What can we do?” I ask Firestone. He appears to be in command, undaunted by Jonathan’s formidable desk. “All I want is to get the whole thing settled so I can go on with my work in peace. We are just about making a go of the bookstore, but there is a lot to be done. This whole mess has been distracting.”

  “To put it mildly,” Firestone says, smiling broadly. “Many women in your place would have moved away.”

  “Maybe,” I answer, “but I think most women would have decided to tough it out as I have. If Rose Donovan were me I feel sure she would do as I am doing, not give in, not be scared off, stick to her guns.”

  The word “guns” causes a ripple of amusement, but it is brief as Jonathan proposes that Firestone pay a call on Mrs. Donovan and put the fear of God into her. That must include her sending the boys to his office within twenty-four hours. Otherwise, Firestone will make it clear that we have evidence, witnesses, and are prepared to go to court.

  “I’m still puzzled,” I say, as I try to sort out this plan. It sounds a little too easy, maybe, to work. “Who first bought the so-called obscene book and took it to the police? Either Joan or I would have been aware, I think, that this was no ordinary customer. Something would have given her or him away.”

  “The police must know,” Earl says, “and of course I did not talk to them.”

  “When Joan and I asked, they were very evasive. We got nowhere. I remember how I felt when we walked back—cross, put down, and treated like a crazy old woman.”

  “When the wood was stolen,” Fred asks, “how did the police behave?”

  “As usual, voluminous notes were taken, but nothing whatever was done, as far as I know. By then, of course, Rose Donovan was egging those boys on. I can’t help laughing when I realize how infuriated she must have been when the wood was replaced the very next day.” I am laughing to think of it. “Whatever has gone wrong I have to admit people have been supportive and kind. That’s one reason I want to stay. People have invested in the shop. They feel it is theirs as well as mine. Can you understand?” I ask Firestone.

  “I am beginning, perhaps, to understand that your endeavor is rather more complex and more interesting than just an ordinary bookstore.” He directs this remark to Fred actually, although it is addressed to me.

  “Thanks. But, Mr. Firestone, are we getting near to a solution? Since Patapouf’s death there is a less hostile atmosphere in the neighborhood, but is anything going to be settled?”

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” Firestone asks, before he answers my question.

  “Of course not. I smoke myself.”

  “Like one of these?” He offers me an elegant cigar case.

  “Well, I’m not Amy Lowell, I’m afraid, but thanks just the same.”

  “I’d like to see what I can do rather quietly behind the scenes if you all feel I can be trusted. I am pretty sure we have them on the run, you know. They may even be glad to be given an out, since they are now the hunted and the despised, and, except for Rose Donovan, they appear to be cowards.”

  “By the way, Hal,” Jonathan says then, “we’ve got to get hold of that gun. She can’t hang around with a gun any longer.”

  “That,” Firestone answers with absolute certainty, “I know the police will act on. Stupid as they have been, they are aware that a loose gun in the hands of someone not quite sane is a threat to them as well as to anyone else.”

  “What I would like to see,” I say suddenly, although it has been on my mind since yesterday, “is Rose Donovan freed from her son and his wife and baby who are making her life hell, from what Earl told me yesterday.”

  “Well, we are not officials in family services,” Jonathan says dryly. “I’m afraid this is one case where your passion to help people is a little out of line.”

  I am silenced. He is right of course. It is agitating to behave foolishly. Now I add, “When we are more or less in the clear I intend to give a party for the neighborhood, maybe have an accordion there. Don’t laugh at me, Fred.”

  “I’m not laughing. I am simply in a state of astonishment. Your dog is shot, your store is threatened, you have survived many weeks in a state of siege, and you decide to give a party!”

  “Vicky would understand.” Vicky is my big gun, especially where Jonathan is concerned. But it is not a lie. Vicky loved to do things with panache, to amaze people. And an accordion and a keg of beer would certainly have panache in this neighborhood. It will go very well with the window on animal friends. Perfect.

  Jonathan has been doodling on a pad for the last few minutes and is obviously impatient. Now he puts his pencil down and says rather sternly, “Are we all in agreement that Mr. Firestone, with Earl’s help, simply goes about the business of some sort of settlement with Mrs. Donovan, out of court?”

  Everyone says yes, but I realize, having said so, that I don’t really know what we are asking—that they leave us alone? That they pay some reasonable sum that will cover the buying and stacking of the wood? That in fact they give up harassing me in any way? But when I ask Firestone these questions I am told these are legal matters and must be left to him.

  “We have to strike now while there is still a lot of anger about Rose shooting your dog. This is the moment to begin to turn things around,” he says, “but the culprits are no doubt in a rather different state of mind from the neighborhood in general. They are never going to be sweetness and light, but it may be that we can scare them into behaving themselves. They will have to pay a considerable sum—not only a cord of wood is involved, but the harassment and the killing of your dog. That is what they will have to pay for. That is what this is all about really, isn’t it, Miss Hatfield?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” I say doubtfully, because punishing them is not going to change their hatred and contempt and that is what my deepest dream is. “It’s a hateful business.”

  Fred reaches over and puts an arm around my back. “You really have no options, Harriet. Either you sell out and move somewhere else, which is what they want, of course, or they get punished and shut up, don’t you see? It’s one or the other, win or lose.”

  “I suppose it is,” I say grudgingly. What had seemed so clear and such good news when Earl talked with me now looms like some repulsive monument to hatred and injustice. I dislike having become the hunter rather than the hunted, but there is no question in my mind that I must stick it out, and at least I sense that Firestone will be a powerful man to have on our side. That is a piece of luck.

  I can hardly wait to escape back i
nto my real life at the store, and it is almost time to relieve Joan, who will be anxious to hear what has happened.

  She is delighted with the news. “A case in Massachusetts—it wouldn’t get to court for at least sixteen weeks, you know. You’ll be saved all that suspense and publicity as well. It is, I do believe, a sound way of going about this unfortunate mess.”

  “It’s a long time since it all began, isn’t it? And in all that time the store has been slowly gathering customers and friends. They have not got us out! I must say, Joan, I am proud of us.”

  “You have every right to be, but …” She hesitates.

  “But what?”

  “Homophobia is not going to go away.”

  “I know … and I must call Joe. You know the landlord is trying to put them out of their apartment because Eddie has AIDS.”

  Joan is putting on her coat and getting ready to leave. “Harriet,” she says severely, “please don’t leap into another neighborhood war.”

  “But I must. This afternoon I plan to write a letter to the mayor.” I sound calm and determined, but in fact I am ruffled and longing suddenly to talk with Angelica, someone who has, known me a long time and will not try to change the original animal or paint out the leopard’s spots.

  Joan laughs now. “After all this you still take me by surprise. Of course I should have known …” She waves quite amicably as she leaves, and now I am happily alone.

  I call Angelica at once and ask whether I can come after I close the store and, at last, bury Patapouf’s ashes.

  “Come for supper, but come as early as you can. It gets dark so early now, but at least we can decide on the right place. I have been looking around and think perhaps under the dogwood tree, but you must decide, dear Harriet.”

  That settled, I hang up and sit for a while just thinking about Patapouf and crying because it is so unjust that by dying she brought about change. By dying she did what had seemed impossible, softening the hearts that had been so angry and cold. It has been a high price to pay for peace of mind. I miss my dog day and night. It doesn’t seem to be a pain that lessens with time because she is so present under my desk, on my bed, barking her deep-throated bark if she thought I might be in danger. She is seldom absent from my consciousness.

  Why did this horror happen? Why did Patapouf die? Fred used the phrase “your crazy honesty” and it jabs at me. Why is it crazy to be honest? Because, I suppose he meant, you can bring harm to others, you inevitably involve others. Patapouf, in fact, might be alive if I had not “come out,” as they say, in that Globe interview. No, I tell myself, it would be crazy … what is crazier than false guilt, neurotic guilt? That’s what it would be if I persuaded myself that I am responsible for Patapouf’s being shot.

  “Come to your senses, Harriet!” I admonish myself. Now that Patapouf is no longer there I am often embarrassed to be talking to myself. I used to pretend at least that I was talking to her, and the thump of her tail on the floor when she heard my voice suggested that she thought so too.

  All afternoon people come and go. Nan flies in with a piece of apple pie for me; Sue Bagley with the staggering news that Rose Donovan may be leaving town; and for the first time in ages, Bettina Morgan, that wonderful woman who works for Hospice. She buys several books. “I need some nourishment,” she says, looking awfully tired. She comes and goes before I have a chance to find out how she is doing with the dying boy, before I have time to talk with her about Eddie. A little girl, very shy, brings me a carefully handwritten note which says “I am very sorry about your dog. Jennifer.”

  “That is such a kind letter, Jennifer. Thank you.”

  She is blushing to the roots of her carefully plaited hair. “My dog’s name is Buster,” she informs me as her mother, who has followed her in, drags her away saying, as they leave, “Jennifer wanted to write you. It was her own idea.”

  After they have gone I look at my watch and it is time at last to lock up. I shan’t even bother to change but charge off to Angelica’s through the traffic. The small square box that contains all that is left of Patapouf lies on the seat beside me.

  But it is not only Patapouf who is behind this need to see Angelica, it is the need for someone who has known me for a long time, for the friend who has become, especially in these last months, like family. I have been rather lonely these past days, more so than ever since Vicky’s death and I do not quite know why.

  29

  Angelica is waiting for me in the dusk. The garden looks very romantic and my eye goes at once to the dogwood she mentioned. It stands against a high brick wall. For a moment, letting the whirl of traffic fall away, I stand and drink in the autumn smell of earth and leaves.

  “Welcome, darling Harriet,” Angelica says. Then, as her eye catches the box in my hands, she adds, “and Patapouf who will abide with me.”

  “Oh Angelica.” It overtakes me suddenly, the grief, the sense of the ending of so much, “I am disintegrating so fast I don’t know what to do with myself.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you,” she says. “You are simply dead tired, and no wonder. What you need is a drink. We can bury the dear thing later.”

  “No, we must do it now,” I say. “I feel I can’t face it later. Besides, it is so peaceful now in the half light.”

  “Do you like this spot under the dogwood? You see, I put a stake to mark the place I thought would be right.”

  “That’s fine,” I say. “Give me the trowel.”

  I kneel down, find the earth good and damp so it is easy to dig a fairly deep hole, while Angelica gives me advice or, what I most appreciate, watches over me like the guardian angel she is and has been for so long.

  “Take your time, Harriet. You’re out of breath.”

  “I’m all right. It’s nearly done. I long to know she is safely in the earth.” But when I open the box Angelica sits down beside me, apologizing for not being able to kneel.

  “It’s a little awkward,” she says, “but I couldn’t bear to be standing so far away up in the air.” For some reason this statement makes me laugh. “It’s not funny,” she says, somewhat taken aback.

  “I know,” but I am bursting at the seams with laughter, a wild gust of laughter like a seizure. And at that moment a slight breath of wind blows some of the ashes out of my hand as I turn the box upside down to let them fall. I am not laughing as I fill in the hole. It seems much harder and sadder than digging it was. Neither of us says anything. What is there to say?

  I get up clumsily. Angelica lets me help her up and then hugs me hard. “Come in, come in.”

  Before we open the front door, I turn back and whisper, “Goodbye, Patapouf.” It is permissible to cry at that so final moment, and I do.

  “Here’s a Kleenex,” Angelica says, pulling one out of her pocket. “You sit down by the fire. I expect the chill out there has got into your bones. I’ll fetch us a drink.”

  When she comes back and we are settled I look across at her, how smooth and seamless her face still is, not a line to be seen. It makes me happy to see old age in its beauty, which is, after all, rather rare. “You know, Angelica, you are so beautiful, it is a lesson in something, but I don’t know what.”

  “Laziness and Ivory soap,” she says, laughing gently.

  “I feel very old,” I say by way of explanation. “It’s not how I look—people tell me I look fine—it’s that something has gone out of me in these last months. I have come to the end of something I can’t define.”

  “It’s partly of course that your job, the whole complex of the bookstore in that neighborhood, is frightfully and continuously demanding. I don’t know how you have survived. Perhaps you should see a doctor, have a general checkup.”

  “The strange thing is that I was in good fighting shape—nothing like anger to get the adrenaline to flow—until things got settled.”

  “Are they settled?”

  “Of course, you don’t know! I had to keep it a secret but Fred and Jonathan persuaded me to hire a det
ective. In less than a week he found out who shot Patapouf and why, and who the goons are who wrote obscenities on the windows. So we are all set.”

  “To go to court?” Angelica says, obviously distressed.

  “Oh no, the lawyer who is advising us is against going to court and thinks he can calm things down and settle out of court.”

  “All this has been going on, and you didn’t tell me!”

  “I couldn’t, Angelica, I couldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Well,” she says, a little disgruntled, “who shot Patapouf?”

  “An old woman called Rose Donovan, and I am rather at sea about why she did it. The detective says she became furious because after all the harassment she and two boys, her son and a friend of his, perpetrated, I held out and was not frightened off. She went berserk with what amounts to jealousy. She hates me because I wear expensive shoes!”

  “Do you?” Angelica asks. “I’ve never noticed.”

  I’m embarrassed to admit it but I do. “Vicky loved expensive shoes, and I guess I followed suit.”

  “But surely Rose Donovan must have been full of fear and hatred of the bookstore itself and all you stand for. Jealousy does not sound right to me.”

  “I’ve thought a lot about it, Angelica, and I believe Earl—that is the detective—got to the truth. It all began with hatred of a newcomer who seemed a threat because of the kinds of books she sells and the kind of people the store caters to. They thought it would be easy to drive this old lesbian out, but when they couldn’t, and when after the firewood was stolen the cellar was full by the end of the next day, I guess they were frustrated and exasperated. Apparently Rose Donovan inherited the rifle from her husband. It is a fetish.”.

  “Why haven’t the police taken it away from her long ago? She’s a menace.”

  “After Earl told me about it, and about the strange, angry household in a three-decker where Rose lives with her son and his wife and baby—I know you will laugh at me, Angelica—but all I could think of was how we might get the children out. Rose seems to be worn out and in a perpetual state of fury!”