Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

Harriet’s hands felt useless, dangling at her sides. She longed to hug Ida, to kiss her cheek, to fall in her lap and burst into tears—yet something in Ida’s voice and in the tense, unnatural way that Ida sat made her afraid to come any closer.

“Your mama say—she say y'all are big now and don’t need looking after any more. You’s both in school. And after school, y'all can take of yourselves.”

Their eyes met—Ida’s, red and teary; Harriet’s round and ringing with horror—and stayed together for a moment that Harriet would remember until she died. Ida looked away first.

“And she’s right,” she said, in a more resigned voice. “Allison’s in high school and you—you don’t need anybody to stay at home all day and watch out for you any more. You’s in school most of the year anyway.”

“I’ve been in school for seven years!”

“Well, that’s what she tell me.”

Harriet dashed upstairs to her mother’s room and ran in without knocking. She found her mother sitting on the side of the bed and Allison on her knees, crying with her face pressed into the bedspread. When Harriet came in, she raised her head and, with swollen eyes, gave Harriet a look so anguished that it took her aback.

“Not you, too,” said her mother. Her voice was blurred and her eyes drowsy. “Leave me alone, girls. I want to lie down for a minute….”

“You can’t fire Ida.”

“Well, I like Ida too, girls, but she doesn’t work for free and lately it seems as if she’s dissatisfied.”

These were all things that Harriet’s father said; her voice was slow and mechanical, as if she were reciting a memorized speech.

“You can’t fire her,” repeated Harriet shrilly.

“Your father says—”

“So what? He doesn’t live here.”

“Well, girls, you’ll have to talk to her yourself. Ida agrees with me that neither of us are happy with the way things have been working out around here.”

There was a long pause.

“Why’d you tell Ida that I told on her?” Harriet said. “What’d you say?”

“We’ll talk about this later.” Charlotte swung around and lay down on the bed.

“No! Now!”

“Don’t worry, Harriet,” Charlotte said. She closed her eyes. “And don’t cry, Allison, please don’t, I can’t stand it,” she said, her voice trailing fitfully away. “It’ll all work out. I promise….”

Screaming, spitting, scratching, biting: none of these were adequate to the rage that blazed up in Harriet. She stared down at her mother’s serene face. Peacefully her chest rose; peacefully her chest fell. Moisture glistened on her upper lip, where the coral lipstick had faded and feathered up into the tiny wrinkles; her eyelids were oily and bruised-looking, with deep hollows like thumb-prints at the inner corner.

Harriet went downstairs, leaving Allison at her mother’s bedside, smacking the banister with her hand. Ida was still in her chair and staring out the window with her cheek cupped in her palm. Never had she seemed quite so palpable, so fixed and robust and marvelously solid. Her chest, beneath the thin gray cotton of her faded dress, heaved powerfully with her breath. Impulsively, Harriet started over to the chair but Ida—the tears still glistening on her cheeks—turned her head and gave her a look that stopped her where she stood.

For a long time, the two of them looked at each other. The two of them had had staring contests since Harriet was small—it was a game, a test of wills, something to laugh about but this time it was no game; everything was wrong and terrible and there was no laughter when Harriet, at last, was forced to drop her eyes in shame. And in silence—for there was nothing else to do—Harriet hung her head and walked away, with the beloved sorrowful eyes burning into her back.

“What’s wrong?” said Hely when he saw Harriet’s dull, dazed expression. He’d been about to let her have it for taking so long, but the look on her face made him feel sure that they were both in big, big trouble: the worst trouble of their lives.

“Mother wants to fire Ida.”

“Tough,” said Hely agreeably.

Harriet looked at the ground, trying to remember how her face worked and her voice sounded when everything was okay.

“Let’s get the bikes later,” she said; and she was heartened by how casual her voice came out sounding.

“No! My dad’s going to kill me!”

“Tell him you left it over here.”

“I can’t just leave it out there. Somebody’ll steal it…. Look, you told me you would,” said Hely despairingly. “Just walk over there with me….”

“Okay. But first you have to promise—”

“Harriet, please . I put up all this junk for you and everything . ”

“Promise you’ll go back with me tonight. For the box.”

“Where you going to take it?” said Hely, brought up short. “We can’t hide it at my house.”

Harriet held up both hands: no fingers crossed.

“Fine,” said Hely, and held his hands up, too—it was their own private sign language, as binding as any spoken promise. Then he turned and broke into a fast walk, through the yard and down to the street, with Harriet right behind him.

Sticking close to the shrubbery and ducking behind trees, they were within forty feet or so of the frame house when Hely seized Harriet’s wrist, and pointed. On the median, a long spike of chrome glinted from beneath the unwieldy spread of the summer-sweet bush.

Cautiously, they advanced. The driveway was empty. Next door, at the house belonging to the dog Pancho and his mistress, was parked a white county car which Harriet recognized as Mrs. Dorrier’s. Every Tuesday, at three-forty-five, Mrs. Dorrier’s white sedan rolled slowly up to Libby’s house and out stepped Mrs. Dorrier, in her blue Health Service uniform, come to take Libby’s blood pressure: pumping the cuff tight around Libby’s little bird-boned arm, counting the seconds on her large, masculine wristwatch while Libby—who was unspeakably distressed by anything remotely to do with medicine, or illness or doctors—sat gazing at the ceiling, her eyes filling with tears behind her glasses, her hand pressed to her chest and her mouth trembling.

“Let’s do it,” Hely said, glancing over his shoulder.

Harriet nodded at the sedan. “The nurse is over there,” she whispered. “Wait till she leaves.”

They waited, behind a tree. After a couple of minutes, Hely said: “What’s taking so long?”

“Dunno,” said Harriet, who was wondering the same thing herself; Mrs. Dorrier had patients all over the county and was in and out of Libby’s in a flash, never loitering to chat or have a cup of coffee.

“I’m not waiting here all day,” Hely whispered, but then across the street the screen door opened and out stepped Mrs. Dorrier in her white cap and blue uniform. Following was the sun-baked Yankee woman, in dirty scuffs and a parrot-green housedress, with Pancho hooked over her arm. “Two dallors a pill!” she squawked. “I’m takin forteen dallors of medicine a day! I said to that boy down there at the pharmacist’s—”

“Medicine is expensive,” said Mrs. Dorrier politely, and turned to go; she was tall and thin, about fifty, with a gray streak in her black hair and very correct posture.

“I said, ‘Son, I gat emphysema! I gat gallstones! I gat arthritis! I—What’s your problem, Panch,” she said to Pancho, who had stiffened in her grasp, his gigantic ears cocked straight out from the side of his head. Even though Harriet was hidden behind the tree, he still seemed to see her; his lemur-like eyes were fixed directly on her. He bared his teeth at her and then—with rabid ferocity—began to bark and struggle to get away.