Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

This was all a very strange design of talk, and it was even stranger because their mother had made it plain in a hundred wordless ways that the girls were not to mention Ida. Even when they referred to Ida indirectly, her displeasure was evident. And she had frozen with her drink halfway to her lips when Harriet (without thinking) had mentioned Libby and Ida in the same, sad breath.

“How dare you!” she cried, as if Harriet had said something disloyal to Libby—base, unforgivable—and then, to Harriet: “Don’t look at me like that.” She seized the hand of startled Allison; she dropped it and fled from the room.

But though Harriet was forbidden to confide her own sorrow, her mother’s sorrow was a constant reproach, and Harriet felt vaguely responsible for it. Sometimes—at night, especially—it waxed palpable, like a mist, permeating the entire house; a thick haze of it hung about her mother’s bowed head, her slumped shoulders, as heavy as the whiskey smell that hung over Harriet’s father when he had been drinking. Harriet crept up to the doorway and watched silently, as her mother sat at the kitchen table in the yellowy light of the lamp with her head in her hands and a cigarette burning between her fingertips.

And yet, when her mother turned and tried to smile, or make small talk, Harriet fled. She hated the shy, girlish way her mother had begun to tiptoe around the house, peeping around corners and looking in cabinets, as if Ida were some tyrant she was glad to be rid of. Whenever she edged close—smiling timidly, in that particular, tremulous way that meant she wanted to “talk,” Harriet felt herself harden to ice. Still as a stone she held herself when her mother sat down beside her on the sofa, when her mother reached out, awkwardly, and patted her hand.

“You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” Her voice was too loud; she sounded like an actress.

Harriet was silent, staring down sullenly at the Encyclopaedia Britannica , which was open in her lap, at an article about the Cavy. It was a family of South American rodents which included the guinea pig.

“The thing is—” her mother laughed, a choked, dramatic little laugh—“I hope you never have to live through the kind of pain I’ve suffered.”

Harriet scrutinized a black-and-white photograph of the Capybara, the largest member of the Cavy family. It was the largest rodent alive.

“You’re young, honey. I’ve done my best to protect you. I just don’t want you to make some of the mistakes I’ve made.”

She waited. She was sitting far too close. Though Harriet felt uncomfortable, she held herself still and refused to look up. She was determined not to give her mother the slightest opening. All her mother wanted was a display of interest (not genuine interest, just a show) and Harriet knew well enough what would please her: to set the encyclopedia pointedly aside, to fold her hands in her lap and put on a sympathetic frowny face as her mother talked. Poor mother . That was enough; that would do.

And it wasn’t much. But the unfairness of it made Harriet tremble. Did her mother listen when she wanted to talk? And in the silence, looking fixedly at the encyclopedia (how hard it was to hold firm, not to answer!) she recalled stumbling into her mother’s bedroom, tear-blinded over Ida, the limp, queenly way her mother had raised a fingertip, one fingertip , just like that….

Suddenly Harriet became aware that her mother had stood up, and was looking down at her. Her smile was thin and barbed like a fish-hook. “Please don’t let me bother you while you’re reading,” she said.

Immediately Harriet was struck by regret. “Mother, what?” She pushed the encyclopedia aside.

“Never mind.” Her mother cut her eyes away, drew the sash of her bathrobe.

“Mother?” Harriet called after her down the hallway, as the bedroom door—a little too decorously—clicked shut. “Mother, I’m sorry….”

Why was she so hateful? Why couldn’t she behave like other people wanted her to? Harriet sat on the sofa, berating herself; and the sharp unpleasant thoughts tumbled through her mind long after she’d picked herself up and trudged up to bed. Her anxiety and guilt were not confined to her mother—or even her immediate situation—but ranged far and wide, and the most torturous of it revolved around Ida. What if Ida had a stroke? Or was struck by a car? It happened, and now Harriet knew it only too well: people died, just like that, fell right over on the ground. Would Ida’s daughter send word? Or—more likely—would she assume that no one at Harriet’s house cared?

Harriet—with a scratchy crochet afghan thrown over her—tossed, and flopped, and shouted out accusations and orders in her sleep. From time to time, August heat lightning flashed blue through the room. She would never forget how her mother had treated Ida: never forget it, never forgive it, never. Yet angry as she was, she could not harden her heart—not wholly—against the wringing of her mother’s sorrow.

And this was most excruciating of all when her mother tried to pretend it wasn’t there. She lolloped downstairs in her pajamas, threw herself down on the sofa before her silent daughters like some sort of goofy baby-sitter, suggested “fun” activities as if they were all just a big bunch of pals sitting around together. Her face was flushed, her eyes were bright; but beneath her cheer was a frantic and pitifully strained quality that made Harriet want to weep. She wanted to play card games. She wanted to make taffy—taffy! She wanted to watch television. She wanted them to go over to the Country Club for a steak—which was impossible, the dining room at the Country Club wasn’t even open on Mondays, what was she thinking? And she was full of horrifying questions. “Do you want a bra?” she asked Harriet; and “Wouldn’t you like to have a friend over?” and “Do you want to drive up and visit your father in Nashville?”

“I think you should have a party,” she said to Harriet.

“Party?” said Harriet warily.

“Oh, you know, a little Coca-Cola or ice-cream party for the girls in your class at school.”

Harriet was too aghast to speak.

“You need to … see people. Invite them over. Girls your own age.”

“Why?”

Harriet’s mother waved a hand dismissively. “You’ll be in high school soon,” she said. “Before long, it’ll be time for you to think about cotillion. And, you know, cheerleading and modeling squad.”

Modeling squad ? thought Harriet in amazement.

“The best days of your life are still ahead of you. I think high school’s really going to be your time, Harriet.”

Harriet had no idea what to say to this.

“It’s your clothes, is that it, sweetie?” Her mother looked at her appealingly. “Is that why you don’t want to have your little girlfriends over?”

“No!”

“We’ll take you to Youngland in Memphis. Buy you some pretty clothes. Let your father pay for it.”

Their mother’s ups and downs were wearing even upon Allison, or so it seemed, because Allison had begun without explanation to spend afternoons and evenings away from home. The phone began to ring more often. Twice in one week, Harriet had answered when a girl identifying herself as “Trudy” had called for Allison. Who “Trudy” was Harriet didn’t ask, and didn’t care, but she watched through the window as Trudy (a shadowy figure in a brown Chrysler) stopped in front of the house for Allison who waited barefoot by the curb.

Other times, Pemberton came to pick her up in the baby-blue Cadillac, and they drove away without saying hello or inviting Harriet to come. Harriet sat in the upstairs window seat of her darkened bedroom after they rattled off down the street, staring out into the murky sky over the train tracks. Off in the distance, she saw the lights of the baseball field, the lights of Jumbo’s Drive-In. Where did they go, Pemberton and Allison, when they drove away in the dark, what did they have to say to each other? The street was still slick from the afternoon’s thunderstorm; above it, the moon shone through a ragged hole in thunderhead clouds, so that the billowy edges were washed with a livid, grandiose light. Beyond—through the rift in the sky—all was clarity: cold stars, infinite distance. It was like staring into a clear pool that seemed shallow, inches deep, but you might toss a coin in that glassy water and it would fall and fall, spiraling down forever without ever striking bottom.