Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

The light was failing. A firefly blinked, down at the end of the street, and practically by her nose two more flashed in quick sequence, pop pop . She wasn’t quite ready to go home—not yet—and though Main Street got desolate and a bit frightening this far down, she told herself that she would walk a little further, down to the Alexandria Hotel. Everyone still called it the Alexandria Hotel though no hotel had existed there in Harriet’s lifetime—or indeed, even Edie’s. During the yellow fever epidemic of ’79, when the stricken town was deluged by ill and panicked strangers fleeing north from Natchez and New Orleans, the dying had been packed like sardines on the porch and the balcony of the overflowing hotel—screaming, raving, crying out for water—while the dead lay heaped on the sidewalk out front.

About every five years, someone tried to open up the Alexandria Hotel again and use it for a dry goods shop, or a meeting hall, or something or other; but such efforts never lasted long. Simply walking past the place made people uncomfortable. A few years ago, some people from out of town had tried to open a tearoom in the lobby, but now it was closed.

Harriet stopped on the sidewalk. Down at the end of the empty street loomed the hotel—a white, staring-eyed wreck, indistinct in the twilight. Then, all of a sudden, she thought she saw something move in an upstairs window—something fluttery, like a piece of cloth—and she turned and fled, heart pounding, down the long darkening street, as if a flotilla of ghosts were skimming after her.

She ran all the way home without stopping, and clattered in at the front door—breathless, exhausted, spots jumping in front of her eyes. Allison was downstairs, sitting in front of the television.

“Mother is worried,” she said. “Go tell her you’re home. Oh, and Hely called.”

Harriet was halfway up the stairs when her mother flew down at her, with a great flap flap flap of bedroom slippers. “ Where have you been? Answer me this minute!” Her face was flushed and shiny; she had thrown on a wrinkled old white dress shirt that belonged to Harriet’s father over her nightgown. She grabbed Harriet’s shoulder and shook her and then—incredibly—shoved her against the wall so that Harriet’s head knocked against a framed engraving of the singer Jenny Lind.

Harriet was mystified. “What’s the matter?” she said, blinking.

“Do you know how worried I’ve been?” Her mother’s voice was high and peculiar.

“I’ve been sick wondering where you are. Out … of … my … mind …”

“Mother?” In confusion, Harriet smeared an arm over her face. Was she drunk? Sometimes her father behaved like this when he was home for Thanksgiving and had too much to drink.

“I thought you were dead. How dare you—”

“What’s wrong?” The overhead lights were harsh, and all Harriet could think of was getting upstairs to her bedroom. “I was only at Tat’s.”

“Nonsense. Tell me the truth.”

“I was ,” said Harriet impatiently, attempting again to sidestep her mother. “Call her if you don’t believe me.”

“I certainly will, first thing in the morning. Right now, you tell me where you’ve been.”

“Go on,” said Harriet, exasperated at having her path blocked. “ Call her.”

Harriet’s mother took a quick, angry step towards her, and Harriet, just as quickly, moved two steps down. Her frustrated gaze landed on the pastel portrait of her mother (spark-eyed, humorous, with a camel hair coat and a glossy teen-queen ponytail) which had been drawn on the street in Paris, during junior year abroad. The portrait’s eyes, starry with their exaggerated highlights of white chalk, seemed to widen with lively sympathy at Harriet’s dilemma.

“ Why do you want to torture me like this?”

Harriet turned from the chalk portrait to stare back into the same face, much older, in a vaguely unnatural-looking way which suggested that it had been reconstructed after some terrible accident.

“ Why ?” screamed her mother. “Do you want to drive me crazy?”

A tingle of alarm prickled at Harriet’s scalp. Every so often Harriet’s mother behaved oddly, or got confused and upset, but not like this. It was only seven o’clock; in the summer, Harriet often stayed out playing past ten and her mother didn’t even notice.

Allison was standing at the foot of the stairs, with one hand on the tulip-shaped knob of the newel post.

“Allison?” Harriet asked, rather gruffly.” What’s the matter with Mama?”

Harriet’s mother slapped her. Though it didn’t hurt much, it made a lot of noise. Harriet put a hand to her cheek and stared at her mother, who was breathing fast, in odd little huffs.

“Mama? What did I do?” She was too shocked to cry. “If you were worried, why didn’t you call Hely?”

“I can’t be calling over at the Hulls and rousing the whole house at this hour of the morning!”

Allison, at the foot of the stairs, looked as stunned as Harriet felt. For some reason, Harriet suspected that she was at the bottom of the misunderstanding, whatever it was.

“You did something,” she roared. “What did you tell her?”

But Allison’s eyes—round, incredulous—were fastened on their mother. “Mama?” she said. “What do you mean, ‘morning’?”

Charlotte, a hand on the banister, looked stricken.

“It’s night . Tuesday night,” said Allison.

Charlotte was dead-still for a moment, eyes wide and her mouth slightly parted. Then she ran down the stairs—her heelless slippers slapping loudly—and looked out the window by the front door.

“Oh, my word,” she said, leaning forward, both hands on the sill. She unsnapped the deadbolt; she stepped onto the front porch in the twilight. Very slowly—like she was dreaming—she walked to a rocking chair and sat down.

“Heavens,” she said. “You’re right. I woke up and the clock said six-thirty and, so help me, I thought it was six in the morning.”

For a while, there was no sound at all except the crickets, and the voices from up the street. The Godfreys had company: an unfamiliar white car stood in the driveway, and a station wagon was pulled along the curb in front. Wisps of smoke from the barbecue grill rose in the yellowy light on their back porch.

Charlotte looked up at Harriet. Her face was sweaty, too white, and the pupils of her eyes so huge and black and swallowing that the irises were shrunk to nothing, blue coronas glowing at the edges of eclipsed moons.

“Harriet, I thought you’d been gone all night….” She was clammy and gasping, as if half-drowned. “Oh, baby. I thought you were kidnapped or dead. Mama had a bad dream and—oh, dear God. I hit you.” She put her hands over her face and started to cry.

“Come inside, Mama,” said Allison, quietly. “Please.” It wouldn’t do for the Godfreys or Mrs. Fountain to see their mother crying on the front porch in her nightgown.

“Harriet, come here. How can you ever forgive me? Mama’s crazy,” she sobbed, wetly, into Harriet’s hair. “I’m so sorry….”

Harriet, squashed against her mother’s chest at an uncomfortable angle, tried not to squirm. She felt suffocated. Up above, as if from a distance, her mother wept and coughed with muffled hacking sounds, like a shipwreck victim washed up on a beach. The pink fabric of the nightgown, pressed against Harriet’s cheek, was so magnified that it didn’t even look like cloth, but a technical cross-hatch of coarse, ropy skeins. It was interesting. Harriet shut the eye against her mother’s breast. The pink vanished. Both eyes open: back it popped. She experimented with alternate winks, watching the optical illusion leap back and forth until a fat tear—inordinately huge—dripped onto the cloth and spread in a crimson stain.