Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

“Did you put on some of that green cologne?” she said.

“No, ma'am.” Lying a habit now: best now, when in doubt, always to say no .

“That stuff’s no good.” Harriet’s father had given it to Harriet’s mother for Christmas, the lime-green perfume with the flamenco dancer; it had sat on the shelf, unused, for years, a fixture of Harriet’s childhood. “If you want some perfume, I’ll get you a little bottle of Chanel No. 5 at the drugstore. Or Norell—that’s what Mother wears. I don’t care for Norell myself, it’s a little strong …”

Harriet closed her eyes. Sitting up had made her feel sick to her stomach all over again. Scarcely had she laid her head on the pillow than her mother was back again, this time with a glass of water and an aspirin.

“Maybe you’d better have a can of broth,” she said. “I’ll call Mother and see if she has any.”

While she was gone, Harriet climbed out of bed and—wrapping herself in the scratchy crochet afghan—trailed down the hall to the bathroom. The floor was cold, and so was the toilet seat. Vomit (a little) gave way to diarrhea (a lot). Washing up at the sink afterwards, she was shocked to see in the medicine-cabinet mirror how red her eyes were.

Shivering, she crept back to her bed. Though the covers were heavy on her limbs, they didn’t feel very warm.

Then her mother was shaking down the thermometer. “Here,” she said, “open your mouth,” and she stuck it in.

Harriet lay looking at the ceiling. Her stomach boiled; the swampy taste of the water still haunted her. She fell into a dream where a nurse who looked like Mrs. Dorrier from the health service was explaining to her that she’d been bitten by a poisonous spider, and that a blood transfusion would save her life.

It was me, Harriet said. I killed him.

Mrs. Dorrier and some other people were setting up equipment for the transfusion. Someone said: She’s ready now.

I don’t want it, Harriet said. Leave me alone.

All right, said Mrs. Dorrier and left. Harriet was uneasy. There were some other ladies lingering around, smiling at Harriet and whispering, but none of them offered any help or questioned Harriet about her decision to die, even though she slightly wanted them to.

“Harriet?” said her mother—and with a jolt, she sat up. The bedroom was dark; the thermometer was gone from her mouth.

“Here,” Harriet’s mother was saying. The meaty-smelling steam from the cup was ripe and sickening.

Harriet said, smearing her hand over her face: “I don’t want it.”

“Please, darling!” Fretfully, Harriet’s mother pushed the punch cup at her. It was ruby glass, and Harriet loved it; one afternoon, quite by surprise, Libby had taken it from her china cabinet and wrapped it up in some newspaper and given it to Harriet to take home with her, because she knew that Harriet loved it so. Now, in the dim room it glowed black, with one sinister ruby spark at the heart.

“No,” said Harriet, turning her head from the cup continually nudging at her face, “no, no.”

“ Harriet !” It was the old debutante snap, thin-skinned and tetchy, a petulance that brooked no argument.

There it was again, under her nose. There was nothing for Harriet to do but sit up and take it. Down she gulped it, the meaty sickening liquid, trying not to gag. When she was done, she wiped her mouth with the paper napkin that her mother offered—and then, without warning, up it came again, glub , all over the coverlet, parsley snips and everything.

Harriet’s mother let out a little yelp. Her crossness made her look strangely young, like a sulky babysitter on a bad night.

“I’m sorry,” Harriet said miserably. The slop smelled like swamp water with chicken broth mixed into it.

“Oh, darling, what a mess. No, don’t—” said Charlotte, with a panicky catch in her voice as Harriet—overcome with exhaustion—attempted to lie back down in the mess.

Then something very strange and sudden happened. A strong light from overhead blared in Harriet’s face. It was the cut-glass ceiling fixture in the hall. With amazement, Harriet realized that she wasn’t in her bed, or even in her bedroom, but lying on the floor in the upstairs hall in a narrow passage between some stacked newspapers. Strangest of all, Edie knelt beside her, with a grim, pale set to her face and no lipstick.

Harriet—wholly disoriented—put an arm up and rolled her head from side to side, and as she did it, her mother swooped down, crying loudly. Edie flung out an arm to bar her. “Let her breathe!”

Harriet lay on the hardwood floor, marveling. Besides the wonder of being in a different place, the first thought that struck her was that her head and neck hurt: really hurt. The second was that Edie wasn’t supposed to be upstairs. Harriet couldn’t even remember the last time Edie had been inside the house beyond the front hall (which was kept relatively clean, for benefit of visitors).

How did I get here? she asked Edie, but it didn’t come out quite the way it was supposed to (her thoughts were all jumbled and crunched together) and she swallowed and tried again.

Edie shushed her. She helped Harriet to sit up—and Harriet, looking down at her arms and legs, noticed with a strange thrill that she was wearing different clothes.

Why are my clothes different? she tried to ask—but that didn’t come out right either. Gamely, she chewed over the sentence.

“Hush,” said Edie, putting a finger to Harriet’s lips. To Harriet’s mother (weeping in the background, Allison standing behind, hunted-looking, biting her fingers) she said: “How long did it last?”

“I don’t know,” said Harriet’s mother, clutching her temples.

“Charlotte, it’s important , she’s had a seizure .”

The hospital waiting room was unstable and shimmery like a dream. Everything was too bright—sparkling clean, on the surface—but the chairs were worn and grubby if you looked too close. Allison was reading a raggedy children’s magazine and a pair of official-looking ladies with nametags were trying to talk to a slack-faced old man across the aisle. He was slumped forward heavily in his chair as if drunk, staring at the floor, his hands between his knees and his jaunty, Tyrolean-looking hat tipped down over one eye. “Well, you can’t tell her a thing,” he was saying, shaking his head, “she won’t slow down for the world.”

The ladies looked at each other. One of them sat down beside the old man.

Then it was dark and Harriet was walking alone, in a strange town with tall buildings. She had to take some books back to the library, before it closed, but the streets got narrower and narrower until finally they were only a foot wide and she found herself standing in front of a large pile of stones. I need to find a telephone , she thought.

“Harriet?”

It was Edie. She was standing up now. A nurse had emerged from a swinging door in the back, pushing an empty wheelchair before her.

She was a young nurse, plump and pretty, with black mascara and eyeliner drawn in fanciful wings and lots and lots of rouge, ringing the outer edge of her eye socket, a rosy semicircle from cheekbone to browbone—and it made her look (thought Harriet) like pictures of the painted singers in the Peking opera. Rainy afternoons at Tatty’s house, lying on the floor with Kabuki Theatre of Japan and Illustrated Marco Polo of 1880 . Kublai Khan on a painted palanquin, ah, masks and dragons, gilt pages and tissue paper, all Japan and China in the narrow Mission book-case at the foot of the stair!

Down the bright hall they floated. The tower, the body in the water had already faded into a kind of distant dream, nothing left of it but her stomach ache (which was fierce, spikes of pain that stabbed and receded) and the terrible pain in her head. The water was what had made her sick and she knew that she needed to tell them, they needed to know so they could make her better but I mustn’t tell , she thought, I can’t .